Fergus H • Adobe Employee, Jan 24, 2023Jan 24, 2023
Hi all,
I'm a product manager in the video team at Adobe and I've recently become the product manager specifically responsible for formats.
My apologies that we have not responded already to this post. ProRes RAW is definitely important to us - and, more specifically, the additional controls that are being ask for here.
Raw support is very important to us, particularly as it becomes more common thanks to devices like the Ninja V and cameras that support it directly like the Nikon Z9.
I think we're all surprised when Adobe interacts with its users. I hope there is a shift in Adobe's philosophy to keep up with the competition. It is increasingly more difficult to justify CC Suite vs Davinci Resolve. I myself am very seriously considering leaving Adobe for Resolve. It's not so much the price as much as the lack of innovation. It feels like Adobe doesn't innovate because they are so big and don't need to, therefore, the users suffer.
I want to be clear, I don't want to change because I know CC and how the apps work. I have my workflow down. But I will if I have to.
Any update? It's been almost 2 months since the last one. What's the point of a product manager specifically responsible for formats if we're left in the dark regarding the rollout of crucial codecs needed to do our jobs ?
I own a s1h with a ninja V, I tried prores raw 6k but honestly it was a pain to work with it in premiere pro. I tried a 16bit 3rd file from red digital website after that and my mind was blown away with the quality and the easyness to work with it on premiere. I owne now a red komodo and I am so happy ! I still have my s1h for bcam and for very fast run n gun situation. So I hope one day the proresrae w files from my ninja will be as super cool to edit as the 3rd files to match even better my komodo with my s1h for high end shooting.
Hi Fergus, may I ask if you've got some learnings from implementing other RAW features in the past, that could give us an Idea how long it may take to get the prores raw controls? Regards, Moritz
I am strongly thinking about switching to Finalcut pro as this feature is way overdue and there is no official report stating it will come anytime soon. Stability is also something to wish for.
Check the social Media pages Adobe. More people are changing to other editing software at the moment. You are losing customers.
Hi Fergus, thanks for the honest info. Another half year has passed by, so I was wondering, if you now had a better idea about when these updates to ProRes RAW would materialise?
As a little addendum, it'd be great, if you could improve the ProRes RAW implementation in After Effects a little, because it currently is very clunky and even if you did add all of the requested features (Kelvin, tint and ISO control), I wouldn't want to have to dive into the Interpret Footage sub menu every single time to make changes.
Is there a way to make changes to ProRes RAW more immediate? That'd be great.
Thanks Fergus- in addition to your Facebook comments I appreciate you going to bat for PreRes Raw.
The importance of these new raw formats to the industry is huge- bigger than Adobe seems to recognize. I can see creatives like myself either leaving the Adobe ecosphere or committing further into it depending on how new tech is adopted and where the best workflow will be.
As a conceptual artist ProRes Raw opens a world of possibilities that are now only available for large, time and resource consuming productions. Give us a chance to showcase this on Adobe!
Lastly, please include compatibility with Fuji's latest codecs coming from the XH2S.
I'm a product manager in the video team at Adobe and I've recently become the product manager specifically responsible for formats.
My apologies that we have not responded already to this post. ProRes RAW is definitely important to us - and, more specifically, the additional controls that are being ask for here.
Raw support is very important to us, particularly as it becomes more common thanks to devices like the Ninja V and cameras that support it directly like the Nikon Z9.
Currently, there are two raw formats ahead of ProRes RAW in terms of urgency for us to support better. I understand that might be frustrating to people eager for better ProRes RAW support but I want ensure you all that it's not a matter of indifference or neglect.
While I don't have a date for improved ProRes RAW support that I'm willing to share at this point, I will update this note when that changes.
Lastly, I'm alway happy to talk 1:1 with you about our formats support. It's critically important to us and getting your feedback directly is always welcome.
Ideally, RAW support with White Balance and ISO across the board would be spectacular. Lack-luster Sony RAW continues to aggravate, but now with Prores Raw on the market as a viable alternative, Adobe users NEED full support for this codec. We all pay PER MONTH for the use of the software - we expect it to keep up with evolving codecs at the very least. BE COMPETITIVE ADOBE.
Jake, the more support for any raw format the better! Arri, BlackMagic, whoever ...
And that said, you outta see the angst on the BM forums, as Resolve doesn't support ProRes RAW at freaking all. You have to transcode to something else.
I've definitely picked up on that consternation, but I do also see the broad trend in the industry to move to Davinci, particularly for color management and grading. Adobe investing in earnest RAW support as opposed to the current handicapped commitment would represent a decisive effort to compete on Adobe's part, while also being very much appreciated by Adobe users. We've got equipment that allows this kind of flexibility in post, but so far we can't fully embrace it without sacrificing functionality in FCPX.
Agreed. A few years back the then-head of Pr was happy to EOL SpeedGrade, as he said any sensible pro would be using a round trip to Resolve.
He chose EOL-ing their own grading app, replacing it with Lumetri, rather than rebuild or upgrade of SpeedGrade. I howled about this then, as it seemed very short sighted to me. And I was pretty near officially persona non grata at NAB over my comments. Weird but oh well.
He's long gone, and the guy what created Iridas/SpeedGrade was brought back as head of Adobe pro video to, I guess, fix as much as possible.
Within the corporate limits of Adobe policies and such, of course, as it would be with any company.
Too bad they haven't brought back SG though. Ah well.
I find Lumetri to be pretty powerful. Maybe not as neat / clean of a workflow as a node tree, but I rarely find myself too hindered by it. Certainly the mentality is different than a LGG approach, but I don't see it as the obstacle others do, and I definitely don't find Lumetri to be such a hindrance that I need to bother with round tripping for most projects.
I do think the writing is on the wall for round trip color environments though. Within the feature / high end space, sure, round trip workflows will persist, but what Davinci really offers is the ability to circumvent that process.
Maybe ditching SG was a mistake (I did find it to be really nice to work in) but I think having a SG workspace inside of PP would make a lot more sense given the current industry sentiment.
I can do an awful lot with Lumetri. I'm "on staff" over at MixingLight, teaching Pr color stuff for those colorists stuck working within a Pr project for some reason. So I work with both Resolve and Pr daily. Test things out between them and within each.
My biggest frustrations with Lumetri are the difficulty in doing targeted work, and the inability to change the order of the tabs to my needs for any X clip.
You can do very targeted work of course, you just need to know how, and it oft involves a couple extra steps. And yes, I miss the "9 way" wheels of Sg ... that was amazingly agile and fast.
The problem of not being able to say move the HSL tab to the top ... or whatever ... that's also "fixable" by stacking Lumetri effects. But stacked Lumetri isn't nearly as workable with a control surface like my full Elements panel. Dangnably so.
I almost exclusively work with stacked Lumetri effects. At the very least, for a basic grade, one to push the log profile around, and then another for the color space transform. For specific windows I'll add additional iterations either before or after the transform, depending on what I'm trying to do. This is certainly more clumsy than a node based approach, but it's not limiting, perhaps outside of the most complicated grading environments.
I find any weird specific, targeted work that I need to do is better addressed in AE, which admittedly is not built for color, but you can't beat the masking and tracking tools.
None of these workflows play nice with control surfaces. I'm definitely too much of a jack-of-all-trades to commit to a single control surface, but without a doubt this is a concern for dedicated colorists. Then again, for dedicated colorists, they're already comfortable round-tripping from NLEs and probably working exclusively inside of Davinci.
Hello Fergus, please update the status of ISO, WB and Tint controls for ProRes RAW. I came to this thread from others started in 2020 and it appears Adobe has made no progress in over 2 years. Two months ago you stated you have other formats prioritized before you will work on the ProRes RAW issue. Meanwhile we're all paying subscriptions for a program with diminishing utility. Lots of frustration out here.
Yes, we deserve answers on when complete Prores Raw support is coming. Just counting the number of accounts in this thread alone we have collectively contributed around $50k since we last heard from you. Rough estimate, but also a reality check. You have the resources to give us what we're asking for, and it's frustrating to beg—almost as frustrating as working with footage for which software support is incomplete. All we want is the ability to adjust the Raw variables that already exist in the files we shot. Please just work on this for like a month. Please don't make me use Final Cut Pro. Thank you for your consideration.
Like others here, I really wish the devs would get better ProRes raw support. But then, I also want vastly expanded Fuji log support, as I'm starting to get some of that media also.
Because ... it is annoying that all we have for ProRes raw is an exposure slider, and then ... use Lumetri on the clip in the Source monitor or Source tab to do our major prep of the file for timeline use.
But at least, I do admit, we can use ProRes raw in Premiere. I also work in Resolve, and there ain't no ProRes raw work there at all. And from the posts by a couple staffers on their forums, it ain't likely we'll get any support ... maybe ever.
I can't use FCP as I'm not on Apple hardware. So ... Premiere is it for ProRes raw for those like me. Limited as it is.