5D3 Raw and Premiere Pro

[chadandreo]

Hi,
Sorry if this has been answered already. I have searched on here and google and have not been able to find an answer.

I was wondering, since Premiere Pro CC 2014 now supports 5D3 Raw video, what is the most efficient workflow for editing 5D Mark III footage in PP?

I just tried to drag the raw files from the 5D into premiere pro and that didn't work. Also when I converted the footage using RawMagic, but all of the footage appears green.

[nigel]

I believe they only play the CDNGs and not the .MLV file. Tried searching around but could not find anything usable.


I guess what you can do while waiting is to ensure that your Rawmagic is updated to the latest version and try again?

[DFM]

Unless you use a third-party plugin, Adobe software does not support .RAW or .MLV files.

You can import all types of DNG frame sequence (stills and CinemaDNG) via the Adobe Camera Raw interface in After Effects CC. There's no need to process the DNGs in any particular way, and no issues with strange-colored highlights, but it's not a real-time editor. The workflow I'd advise for fluid editing in Premiere Pro would be to import to AE, render a visually-lossless mezzanine format such as DNxHD or ProRes HQ, and import that into Pr. You don't need to use proxies as the rendered footage is perfectly adequate, and it's MPE-compatible for real time playback.

In Premiere Pro CC we have native support for a couple of camera-specific flavors of CinemaDNG. "Still image" DNG sequences will not import at all, so you must convert your MLV/RAW files with one of the transcoding apps that makes cDNGs (such as Chmee's raw2cdng app). Because right now Adobe only guarantee ingestion of footage from the Blackmagic range, you will see channel range issues with pretty much anything else (pink highlights, green color casts, etc.) so you need to ensure the transcoder makes cDNGs with the same bit-depth and channel ranges as a BM body, or do a bunch of refactoring in Speedgrade. Developers should concentrate on making perfect 'Blackmagic flavor' cDNGs rather than hoping PrCC will support the stuff they're currently exporting. Of course there's nothing to stop developers creating a synthetic importer that loads MLV or RAW files into Premiere's frame buffer on demand (the SDKs are freely available) but whether there's a commercial justification for one is another matter entirely.

There will be more camera bodies supported by PrCC in the future but if you're holding out hope of seeing "Magic Lantern" on the official list of import formats for any Adobe application, you're going to be disappointed. Adobe has close relationships with camera manufacturers - if MLV or RAW were ISO standards then software developers could add support without annoying their industry partners; but that's not going to happen.

[Thomas Worth]

I was wondering, since Premiere Pro CC 2014 now supports 5D3 Raw video, what is the most efficient workflow for editing 5D Mark III footage in PP?

I just tried to drag the raw files from the 5D into premiere pro and that didn't work. Also when I converted the footage using RawMagic, but all of the footage appears green.

RAWMagic (paid version) should not be producing green CinemaDNG files. I spent a lot of time making sure the CinemaDNG files from RAWMagic render properly in Premiere CC.

Post a CinemaDNG file from the sequence that is giving you trouble and I'll have a look at it.

[dmilligan]

In Premiere Pro CC we have native support for a couple of camera-specific flavors of CinemaDNG.

No offense to you DFM, b/c I know you can't control it, but this is really stupid to me. CinemaDNG is Adobe's own spec. Why don't they support their own spec? What's the point of having a spec at all if you're not going to support it? It's also pretty two-faced to me as well. Adobe can say: "Look we have this open spec, we're all about open standards". But then behind the scenes they are "Working with industry partners" basically creating closed proprietary formats => "only blackmagic files are supported".

Pretty much the only (and main) software that Adobe makes that would need a "Cinema" DNG spec, doesn't abide Adobe's own CDNG spec!?

There will be more camera bodies supported by PrCC in the future but if you're holding out hope...

I'm holding out hope that Adobe will simply implement it's own "open" standard.

[eyeoftheabyss]

Thomas, I've been reading for hours the past few days and no one discusses the difference between dng and cdng except to speak as if everyone already knows. You're the first I've read to really state explicitly that RAWMagic paid is to be used. So, just to confirm, the paid version creates cdng, whereas the free version creates only dng, and Premiere can only read cdng, not dng?

Also, I've been seeing a lot of posts about creating cdng with raw2cdng that seems to be only for windows. So, as a mac user, I seem to be left with only the RAWMagic paid version to create cdng files.

To anyone else that discusses on these forums, please, always be thorough about the following:
1) PC and/or Mac platform
2) Programs used to transcode RAW or mlv files to dng - like I just said, in all my research these past few days, Thomas is the first to make the slight distinction of paid versus free versions of RAWMagic. As far as I know, programs that convert these are: RAWMagic paid and free versions, MLVMystic, raw2dng, and raw2cdng. Furthermore, as a Mac user, I know the first 4 work on a mac, but the last seems to be a windows only program.
3) Of these conversion programs, which OS can use these, e.g. raw2cdng is windows only.
4) Work flow once the dng or cdng files are created. Just be thorough. I'm surprised how many work flows there are and how few discuss the benefits and drawbacks to each one. For example, for anyone with Adobe CC, all the programs are accessible, so why does no one discuss clearly the drawbacks or benefits of using Lightroom instead of ACR, of skipping AE if one does not know how to use the program, of using Speedgrade instead of Da Vinci Resolve, without degrading the neutral discussion with passionate adherence to a favored programs worth.

There are some incredibly intelligent people around, but the drawback is they talk as if we are in on their thinking. I'm not. Maybe I would be if I dedicated to reading the forums weekly, but I come here every couple of months as advances are made. It would be wonderful to find a summary of all the workflows and programs, but everything I've seen online, elsewhere too, limits itself to a very narrow perspective that often excludes my needs. And I'm certain to not be so unique that there aren't a hundred others confused too.

Sorry for the rant

[dmilligan]

Both MLRawViewer (which can also do realtime playback via GPU) and (as of today) my own 'on the fly' MLV converter MLVFS can create Preimere/SpeedGrade compatible CDNGs on Mac. Unlike Thomas's app both of these are free and open source.