BRAW is the best format that Blackmagic cameras can use — and it’s a good choice. Though many older BM cameras included ProRes alongside it, not all the modern ones do. While the BRAW codec is certainly capable, offering quality/file size tradeoffs that ProRes doesn’t, using a custom codec means that using those files is harder than it is for standard formats.

The major downside of using BRAW is that support isn’t everywhere — you’ll have to install plug-ins. 

Let’s start with a recap of why codec choice matters.

Open codecs

H.264 and HEVC are common standards, overseen by independent standards bodies and patent pools. Many discussion have been had about patent pools, but the bottom line for video professionals is that the companies that make the OS and the NLE have paid for the standard codecs and they work nearly everywhere.

Another advantage of standard codecs is that they usually end up being accelerated in hardware, and sometimes, if you go with a codec for which acceleration is not available, playback suffers. For example, YouTube has standardised on the newer AV1 codec, but since the original Apple Vision Pro used the M2 chip, which lacked AV1 decoding, it’s not possible to play back 8K video from YouTube on the original Apple Vision Pro. (Apple’s own videos use HEVC, which is accelerated everywhere.)

ProRes decoding is an open standard, so you’ll always be able to read files encoded in any ProRes format. While that doesn’t mean there’s system-wide support on Windows, the NLEs have built in support so it’s safe enough for editing. However, encoding to ProRes is not an open standard — a company has to talk to Apple first. The major NLEs have all done this at some point, and today a video professional can pretty much rely on ProRes as an intermediate or capture codec. On any Apple device, it’ll just work.

If you want more details on ProRes, check out this article I wrote in 2022.

So, given that ProRes is a useful, well-supported option, why don’t newer Blackmagic cameras support ProRes, and 

force you to use BRAW instead? It’s not an ideological stand, and Blackmagic doesn’t hate ProRes RAW. If you do want to shoot ProRes RAW, on some cameras, you can. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K had support added in 2025.

Why only BRAW, then?

The strengths and downsides of BRAW

ProRes support is mature, but standard ProRes is not a raw codec, and doesn’t offer the same flexibility in terms of colour correction that raw codecs do. BRAW allows better access to the original sensor data, allowing you to push white balance and exposure further. When you really need to rescue an image, that can make the difference between getting the shot or not; RAW codecs have a natural leg up.

While Apple do offer ProRes RAW, capturing sensor data more directly with similar controls to BRAW, it doesn’t allow the data rate flexibility that BRAW does. All flavours of ProRes use a fixed data rate for a specific resolution and frame rate combination. Here’s the ProRes White Paper that includes many target data rates.

While the highest quality BRAW settings can indeed take more space than ProRes HQ, at the more compressed end of things (12:1) the BRAW takes up significantly less space. For example, UHD 24p ProRes 422 HQ takes 707Mb/s, or ~88MB/s. Blackmagic’s Constant Bitrate settings can stretch as low as 58MB/s. 

With the extreme resolutions (12K, 16K) and frame rates that newer Blackmagic cameras support, shooting at ProRes’s data rates wouldn’t always be feasible.

Recording RAW in-camera was also subject to patent infringement issues for a long time, and it’s rumoured that BRAW’s partial debayering sidesteps these patents in a way that ProRes RAW (which requires an external SSD on iPhone) might not. I have no idea if licensing ProRes incurs a significant financial cost, but that could be a factor too.

Let’s assume efficiency is enough of a reason to go with BRAW alone. Whatever the reason, if you buy a new PYXIS or URSA, you’re shooting BRAW, not ProRes. What are the implications?

BRAW support across Mac NLEs

The biggest issue is that BRAW clips can only be played back in an NLE; you won’t be able to quickly identify a clip by opening with QuickTime Player. The same issue often occurs with RAW still images after a new camera is released, and it can persist for months. RAW support for new RAW stills formats is pretty swift in in Adobe Lightroom, but support in macOS can lags many months behind that, and in fact I’m in exactly the same boat with my Lumix GH7 with regard to DaVinci Resolve — there’s no support.

Custom RAW formats are a hassle, because you can’t just quickly check that a specific file in the Finder is the one you think it is, but have to open it in a dedicated app instead.

If you live in Resolve, no big deal, but in Premiere, Avid MC or FCP, you’ll need a plug-in. For Premiere and Avid, this has been relatively easy and free, from Blackmagic themselves. Support for FCP needed a different approach — a Media Extension — but there’s no official BRAW support from Apple or Blackmagic. Though a Media Extension was announced as “coming soon” at the last FCP Creative Summit back in 2024, it’s yet to arrive.

BRAW Toolbox has filled the gap for Final Cut Pro users for a few years now, and recently added support for the URSA Cine Immersive’s colossal 16K files. In previous versions of BRAW Toolbox, workarounds were needed to make BRAW playback possible: an effect on a still image would link to the right movie and play back the right clip at the right time.

Now, BRAW Toolbox comes with a Media Extension, beating Apple and Blackmagic to the prize. With official support on board and activated in the Settings app, FCP doesn’t need any hacks to be able to read the file itself, make proxy files, relink media; it just works, like many other types of clips. QuickTime Player can play back BRAW files too.

It’s pretty wild to be able to preview gigantic stereo URSA Cine Immersive files on a matching FCP stereo 3D timeline (16320×7200 @ 90fps), and all you’ll need to do it create the right kind of Stereo timeline and tick “Side by side” in the Inspector for each clip.

Don’t expect miracles: 16K @ 90fps isn’t going to play back smoothly on anything but a top-spec Mac, but regular 2D clips at sensible frame rates but large resolutions have worked well on my MacBook Pro M3 Max. BRAW Toolbox v3 is a big technical step forward.

You won’t be missing any of the RAW controls either. In FCP, the Raw Processor Settings window lets you dig into the settings that the official BRAW SDK allows, changing the color space, gamma, color temperature, tiny, exposure and ISO in the edit. Gyroflow is supported too — just tick the box.

Helpfully, the BRAW Toolbox app itself can play back clips, but in a step up from Blackmagic’s own BRAW Player app, you can adjust the RAW settings here too — handy if you want to see how far a clip could be pushed.

So far, it’s been working well for me — just make sure you have some space free on your boot drive for cache files. It’s not perfect, but if you’d prefer to stay in FCP for your main edit, this is the key.

Conclusion

Media Extensions are the official, supported way to expand format support for non-standard cameras, and now they’re getting useful. I’d love to see a Media Extension for native 360° clips from all kinds of 360° cameras, but as yet, none are available. DJI did ship a Quick Look plug-in, which really helps to find the right clip at the Finder level, but processing is still required before I can work with the footage. If a Media Extension could perform stitching on the fly, that’d save a ton of time.

BRAW is in the same boat, and the shorter the journey between the camera and your NLE, the better. Transcoding takes time, can easily lose information, and complicates the whole process. Why not skip it if you can?

If you edit in Resolve or Premiere, you’re already good, but if you prefer FCP — well, now you’re in luck too.

BRAW Toolbox is on the Mac App Store now.