SlimRaw – CDNG compression tool

Started by timbytheriver, April 23, 2015, 10:43:14 AM

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timbytheriver

Anyone seen/used this yet?

http://slimraw.com/

Best

Tim

PS I'm nothing to do with this company – I just saw it on Twitter!
5D3 1.1.3
5D2 2.1.2

Danne

Seems it can create cdng files of regular dng,s. That,s good.

SamoMalo404

Yes for sure it's interesting but how much cpu usage does it need?

Andy600

I have it and it's fast!

Had some issues with DNGs in Premier Pro but ran them through the adobe converter first and then Slimraw - they open and playback in Premier Pro CC2014 without a problem. The actual compression you get depends on the original file (i.e. user does not set the amount). I get an average 40-50% file compression. Still need to do some pixel peeping.
Colorist working with Davinci Resolve, Baselight, Nuke, After Effects & Premier Pro. Occasional Sunday afternoon DOP. Developer of Cinelog-C Colorspace Management and LUTs - www.cinelogdcp.com

Danne

Why adobe dng converter? Don,t the raw/mlv produced dng files convert straight away?

Andy600

@Danne - All DNGs seem to convert ok but I had an issue with some cDNG sequences not being read by Premier or Speedgrade - I ran these through the Adobe app then Slimraw and it fixed them. I still need to find out what the issue was.

With my very minimal testing this seems to be a very good app and gets a folder of DNGs down to a similar size as a ProRes 4444 xq transcode although I would still probably transcode for editing and convenience.
Colorist working with Davinci Resolve, Baselight, Nuke, After Effects & Premier Pro. Occasional Sunday afternoon DOP. Developer of Cinelog-C Colorspace Management and LUTs - www.cinelogdcp.com

cpc

Thanks Andy for supporting slimRAW and thanks Tim for posting the link.

I believe Andy means he has converted the original uncompressed files with slimRAW and the compressed output works in Premiere/Speedgrade CC. I would be surprised myself if slimRAW actually makes DNGConverter files compatible with Premiere. :) It will in the future, but does not currently.

Uncompressed DNG and CinemaDNG should work fine in Premiere/Speedgrade CC after slimRAW compression. In fact, if a slimRAW output file does not work with Adobe CC I'd very much like to have a look at the original file. :)

@SamoMalo404: slimRAW will work on any x86-64 processor. Obviously, the more power you have available, the better. But it is fast enough that in the majority of cases storage bandwidth is the bottleneck, not the CPU.
FWIW, on my quad-core Intel i7-4770 3.4ghz running at stock core speed FullHD 5d mark3 14-bit DNG footage converts at around 95-100fps (off an SSD). Now obviously you need fast storage to achieve such speeds (SSD and/or RAID), an HDD simply can't do it physically. In any case, slimRAW will work with whatever is available on the system, at the bandwidth available.

You can read a bit more here:
http://www.shutterangle.com/2015/slimraw-cinemadng-raw-video-lossless-compressor/

Andy600

Yes, it was a very old set of DNGs that I couldn't open in PP. I think they were converted with an early version of raw2cdng. Running them through SlimRaw didn't fix the issue but running them through the Adobe converter (set to uncompressed v1.3) first then SlimRaw did the trick.

It's a great app @cpc and I would certainly recommend it! :)
Colorist working with Davinci Resolve, Baselight, Nuke, After Effects & Premier Pro. Occasional Sunday afternoon DOP. Developer of Cinelog-C Colorspace Management and LUTs - www.cinelogdcp.com

cpc

The new version of slimRAW adds a trial mode. In trial mode a few frames of each dng/cinemadng sequence will be converted. This way expected compression ratios can be previewed and the compressed frames can be tested and pixel peeped in Resolve, Premiere, Speedgrade, Scratch, etc. :)

Danne


Lars Steenhoff

Would be cool to have this integrated in to a hot folder.
to transfer files to a folder and they would be automatically converted to compressed DNG with this tool.


Or what would be nice too is to convert directly from MLV to Compressed DNG.

janoschsimon

im with lars :-)

compress mlv would be awesome just like r3d ;-)

cheers janosch

DeafEyeJedi

Definitely following this thread from here on out...

Thanks @cpc!
5D3.113 | 5D3.123 | EOSM.203 | 7D.203 | 70D.112 | 100D.101 | EOSM2.* | 50D.109

Kharak

Does anyone have any comparisons between CinemaDNG from raw2dng, preferably converted to 12 bit and 16 bit ? and then slimraw CinemaDNG of 12 bit and 16 bit conversion?

Would be nice if someone could post the files via dropbox or something alike so I could pixel peep.
once you go raw you never go back

Danne

Why don,t you test yourself? You get a few frames in demo mode to check. I have the application and it slims the files in no time.

Kharak

Hmm.. I didn't catch that part!

Thank you. I go pixel peep!
once you go raw you never go back

Markus

A compression tool like this that could put the compressed DNGs back into a MLV container, directly playable with mlv viewer and mountable with mlvfs would be a fantastic way to save storage space in archiving.

dmilligan

You mean something like this. See the OP of the MLVFS thread under the section "MLV Compression" for more info.

cpc

@Kharak:
12 and 16 bit dng will work fine, but for normal Canon ML footage there is no reason to lose precision converting bitdepth down to 12-bit, nor is there a reason to increase size going 16-bit. 16-bit in particular has no advantage whatsoever, and the compressed 16-bit files will be marginally bigger compared to the 14-bit compressed files.

Dual ISO is another story, since it is 16-bit already, AFAIK.


@Markus:
I am not sure why would you want to do this? The compressed cDNG is already compressed (obviously), so it is good for both archiving and production as is since lossless CinemaDNG is standard and compatible with a wide range of software. And if you only want to quickly preview sequences, you can drop them in either Scratch Play or Resolve Lite.

dmilligan

Quote from: cpc on May 13, 2015, 01:28:14 PM
I am not sure why would you want to do this?
There are certainly advantages to only needing to archive a single MLV file per clip, rather than thousands of individual CDNG files.

hi_immiles

Yes! Thanks for posting this. Excited to try out slimraw

Markus

Quote from: dmilligan on May 13, 2015, 01:57:47 PM
There are certainly advantages to only needing to archive a single MLV file per clip, rather than thousands of individual CDNG files.

Exactly, there is an advantage to have the data in one big chunk. There is a storage difference when they are saved in small separate files on the harddrive vs mlv container and if you whant to move the data a big chunk of a file will get higher transfer speeds. Also you have hot pixel fix and stripe removal options still available when you can mount the files with mlvfs.

Markus

@dmilligan Would love to try out your compression option but  I'm on Windows here.

Kharak

Reason for 16 bit is computational.. Or so I read on these forums quite some time ago.

It is more CPU intensive with 14 bit compared to 16 bit, because 14 bit is not on pair with 2-4-6-16-32 etc..

I believe it was in the The CinemaDNG Discussion thread that Chmee mentioned this and therefore 2 extra "empty" bits are added in RAW2CDNG conversion.
once you go raw you never go back

cpc

Quote from: KharakReason for 16 bit is computational.. Or so I read on these forums quite some time ago.

It is more CPU intensive with 14 bit compared to 16 bit, because 14 bit is not on pair with 2-4-6-16-32 etc..

I believe it was in the The CinemaDNG Discussion thread that Chmee mentioned this and therefore 2 extra "empty" bits are added in RAW2CDNG conversion.

Well, there is a minor unpacking overhead with 14-bit uncompressed files, but that's probably offset by the fact that 1/7 more data needs to be read from storage with 16-bit uncompressed files; and storage is the slowest link in the processing chain.

With compressed files there is no overhead with 14-bit files compared to 16-bit.