Don’t Convert Raw to ProRes Before You Do Your recording.

This comes up again and again, hence why I am writing about it once again.
Raw should never be converted to log before recording if you want any benefit from the raw. You may as well just record the 10 bit log that most cameras are capable of internally. Or take log and output it via the cameras 10 bit output (if it has one) and record that directly on the ProRes recorder. It doesn’t matter how you do it but if you convert between different recording types you will always reduce the image quality and this is as bad a way to do it as you can get. This mainly relates to cameras like the PXW-FS7. The FS5 is different because it’s internal UHD recordings are only 8 bit, so even though the raw is still compromised by converting it to ProRes log, this can still be better than the internal 8 bit log.
S-Log like any other log is a compromise recording format. Log was developed to squash a big dynamic range into the same sized recording bucket as would normally be used for conventional low dynamic range gammas. It does this by discarding a lot of tonal and textural information from everything brighter than 1 stop above middle grey, instead of the amount of data doubling for each stop up you go in exposure, it’s held at a constant amount. Normally this is largely transparent as human vision is less acute in the highlight range, but it is still a compromise.
The idea behind Linear raw is that it should give nothing away, each stop SHOULD contain double the data as the one below. But if you only have 12 bit data that would only allow you to record 11 stops of dynamic range as you would quickly run out of code values. So Sony have to use floating point math or something very similar to reduce the size of each stop by diving down the number of code values each stop has. This has almost no impact on highlights where you start off with 100’s or 1000’s values but in the shadows where a stop may only have 8 or 16 values dividing by 4 means you now only have 2 or 4 tonal levels. So once again this is a compromise recording format. To record a big dynamic range using linear what you really need is 16 bit data.
In summary so far:
S-Log reduces the number of highlight tonal values to fit it a big DR in a normal sized bucket.
Sony’s FSRaw, 12 Bit Linear reduces the number of tonal Values across the entire range to fit it in a compact 12 bit recording bucket, but the assumption is that the recording will be at least 12 bit. The greatest impact of the reduction is in the shadows.
Convert 12 bit linear to 10 bit S-Log and now you are compromising both the highlight range and the shadow range. You have the worst of both, you have 10 bit S-Log but with much less shadow data than the S-log straight from the camera. It’s really not a good thing to do and the internally generated S-Log won’t have shadows compromised in the same way.
If you have even the tiniest bit of under exposure or you attempt to lift the shadows in any way this will accentuate the reduced shadow data and banding is highly likely as the values become stretched even further apart as you bring them up the output gamma range.
If you expose brightly and then reduce the shadows this has the effect of compressing the values closer together or pushing them further down the output curve, closing them together as they go down the output gamma range, this reduces banding. This is one of the reasons why exposing more brightly can often help both log and raw recordings. So a bit of over exposure might help, but any under exposure is really, really going to hurt. Again, you would probably be better off using the internally generated S-Log.
To make matters worse there is also often an issue with S-Log in a ProRes file.
If all that is not enough there is also a big problem in the way ProRes files record S-Log. S-Log should always be recorded as full range data. When you record an internal XAVC file the metadata in the clips tells the edit or grading software that the file is full range. Then when you apply a LUT or do your grading the correct transforms occur and all shadow textures are preserved. But ProRes files are by default treated as legal range files. So when you record full range S-Log inside a ProRes file there is a high likelihood that your edit or grading software will handle the data in the clip incorrectly and this too can lead to problems in the shadows including truncated data, clipping and banding, even though the actual recorded data may be OK. This is purely a metadata issue, grading software such as DaVinci resolve can be forced to treat the ProRes files as full range.
 
 
more on S-Log and ProRes files here: https://www.xdcam-user.com/2019/03/sonys-internal-recording-levels-are-correct/

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