If you’ve been wondering if Apple is going to loosen the reins on ProRes RAW then wonder no further. Today, on NAB 2019 eve eve we get a slew of new companies that are going to bring ProRes RAW to their platform. Assimilate, Colorfront, Filmlight, MTI Film, Telestream and Grass Valley will all be adding ProRes RAW to their products.

Assimilate will add ProRes RAW to SCRATCH. This isn’t a shocker as SCRATCH has always been at the forefront of new codecs as we saw way back in the day with native support for RED’s REDCODE R3D codec before most anyone else. They were also early in support ProRes export on Windows.

Colorfront is a system of high-performance, on-set dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, broadcast, OTT and commercials. They already support (or will soon be supporting) ALEXA Mini LF, Sony Venice V3, RED 8K Decompression on NVIDIA GPUs, Blackmagic RAW cameras, codecs and hardware to name a few.

Filmlight is the creator of Baselight and Daylight and one of Hollywood’s premiere color grading and finishing systems.

MTI Film makes the ORTEX software family of products provide high quality, powerful and secure workflow solutions which offer comprehensive solutions for dailies processing, media management, deliverables and more for on-set and post-production.

Telestream will add support for their multi-format video player and encoder Switch.

Grass Valley will add ProRes RAW support to EDIUS starting with their May 2019 release of EDIUS 9.4. That’s intriguing as that’s the only true NLE beyond Final Cut Pro X that will support ProRes RAW.

You might see what is missing. No Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve. We know that Adobe recently added ProRes encode on Windows and Resolve has their own competing format in Blackmagic RAW so we may or may not get ProRes RAW at all. But with all these other companies coming on board with ProRes RAW maybe these more common post-production tools supporting it won’t be far behind.

Some of the full press releases are below.

Assimilate’s SCRATCH Among First to Support Apple’s ProRes RAW

Ubiquitous Format Enables Streamlined Dailies and Post-Production Workflows

April 6, 2019 – NAB 2019, Las Vegas NV – Assimilate today announced its SCRATCH software product line is among the first to support Apple’s new ProRes RAW acquisition and compression format. Dailies and post-production artists will now be able to read and import ProRes RAW files into SCRATCH for streamlined workflows, from dailies through post-production.

Jeff Edson, CEO at Assimilate, explained, “Apple’s ProRes RAW announcement is significant for a number of reasons. The ProRes codec is the most widely used compression format for acquisition, editing, and delivery, worldwide, because it simplifies the camera to delivery process. At the same time, numerous RAW camera formats are available today, which work well for in-depth analyzing of data for their specific product line. Currently all camera manufacturers write their own SDKs for their proprietary RAW formats. There is potential for ProRes RAW to become a ubiquitous camera format, which means camera manufacturers would no longer need to develop the variety of SDKs, resulting in significant cost savings, lowering the barrier to entry, and streamlining the camera workflow. This would also be advantageous to all DITs and post artists who would benefit by streamlining their workflows by working with a ubiquitous file format rather than the large variety that exists today, thus saving time, money, and enabling faster time to market.”

“It’s a priority for Assimilate to provide timely support for the latest camera and file formats to ensure our SCRATCH user base has access to all the latest digital media content, so we are very pleased to be among the first to support ProRes RAW,” added Edson.

The SCRATCH tool suite and workflow is resolution independent and currently supports the wide variety of camera and file formats on the market.

FilmLight introduces ProRes RAW native support

LONDON — 8 April 2019: The latest version of the core Baselight software, version 5.2, and Daylight now support native access to the ProRes RAW format. This is one of the first full implementations of the ProRes RAW format from a world-leading professional colour grading application. The high-quality ProRes RAW image format is now available on cameras from a wide range of vendors, including Canon, Panasonic and Nikon via Atomos recorders, and directly on the DJI Inspire 2 with a Zenmuse X7 camera.

“Our philosophy has always been to provide the tools that our users need,” said Wolfgang Lempp, CEO at FilmLight. “Apple ProRes RAW is a powerful, very high quality, standardised way of handling raw camera outputs that is ideal for high- dynamic-range (HDR) content creation, and controlling the colour from set to post is extremely important to production and post pipelines. We naturally wanted to provide native support as soon as possible.”

ProRes RAW was introduced at NAB last year and uses the same rich underlying technology as existing ProRes codecs, offering powerful performance with all the benefits of pristine image quality along with the ease of use that ProRes has brought to conventional video. Since ProRes RAW directly encodes the Bayer pattern image from the camera sensor, the format provides access to the full high dynamic range imagery in our software. That means greater control of the contrast and colour but within a compact and manageable file size. FilmLight has licensed ProRes for many years and supporting ProRes RAW was the natural next step.

“ProRes RAW is designed for uncompromised top-end projects,” said Phil Barrett, Senior Software Engineer at FilmLight. “It does not compromise image quality to meet a target data rate: so if the detail in an image needs more data, then it gets it. ProRes RAW was designed so that every frame maintains constant and immaculate image quality. That is why ProRes RAW is going to be a really important format for very high-quality acquisition, particularly for HDR projects.”

From set to finishing, FilmLight creates the most sophisticated and professional post-production tools. And because support for ProRes RAW is implemented in the core 5.2 software, it is available at every stage of the pipeline. Customers will ingest media using FilmLight’s Daylight dailies system, which also produces viewing copies for editorial from the ProRes RAW files, and then continue to work with ProRes RAW in their project on the Baselight colour grading system.

ProRes RAW support will be available as a free upgrade to FilmLight’s supported customers, and will be available April 8th 2019. It will form part of the FilmLight demonstration at NAB (8–11 April, Las Vegas Convention Center): the company can be found on booth SL4105.

NAB NEWS: MTI Film Announces ProRes RAW Support in CORTEX v5.2

HOLLYWOOD—April 5, 2019— MTI Film, developer of the industry-acclaimed post-production software CORTEX, has added a powerful new feature, support for ProRes RAW. Our exciting update will be presented at NAB 2019 as part of MTI’s latest upgrade to CORTEX. The new CORTEX 5.2 version supports ProRes RAW at all frame sizes, leveraging the ability to work directly with the camera sensor’s pristine raw image data for finer control during color correction. Since ProRes RAW has phenomenal performance and high quality, it provides our customers with a format ideal for high-dynamic-range (HDR) content creation.

Randy Reck, MTI’s Director of Development, said, “We believe the industry is ready to adopt ProRes RAW as a standard for acquisition, naturally building on the success of the ProRes codec family”. CEO Larry Chernoff exclaims, “We are very proud of our integration of outstanding technologies like ProRes RAW, and we are excited to be able to continue the development”.

Apple ProRes RAW is a groundbreaking new development that combines the color workflow benefits of raw images with the performance of ProRes. CORTEX v5.2 now takes advantage of these benefits throughout your workflow, from dailies through color correction, with the ability to deliver high quality HDR outputs direct from the camera; from set to screen CORTEX v5.2 offers a world class toolset for the professional content creator.

MTI Film will be showing CORTEX v5.2, with its new ProRes RAW capability, at NAB, booth SL14807. NAB runs April 8–11 in Las Vegas.

Telestream Switch® Supports ProRes RAW

Switch: World’s first cross-platform playback tool to include support for ProRes RAW

Nevada City, Calif., April 6, 2019 – Telestream®, the leading provider of digital video tools and workflow solutions today announced that its multiformat video player and encoder, Switch, will include support for ProRes RAWinspection and correction capabilities within Switch, and they can now use those same tools with ProRes RAW files. The powerful Switch benefits include the ability to preview camera footage prior to converting it to other formats, trim video to save disk space, inspect and modify the file properties, and convert media into lightweight formats for wide distribution.

“Supporting Apple ProRes RAW in Switch means our customers can reap the benefits of powerful ProRes performance, in a format ideal for high-dynamic-range (HDR) content creation. With the introduction of ProRes RAW our Switch customers have everything they need in a professional cross-platform production tool – whether in the studio, the office, or even in the field,” commented Shawn Carnahan, Chief Technical Officer at Telestream.

In 2007, ProRes was introduced, providing a combination of real-time, editing performance and image-quality preservation at a reduced file storage rate for high-bit-depth 4:2:2 and 4:4:4:4 video. ProRes RAW builds on that same ProRes architecture, while increasing performance and image quality, enabling access directly from a camera sensor’s pristine raw image data. ProRes RAW is designed to maintain constant quality and pristine image fidelity for every frame.

Designed for media professionals, Switch enables unparalleled QC tools to inspect and correct all your media files, including trimming, scale, crop and speaker assignments. Then convert or publish your corrected media directly to Vimeo, YouTube or Facebook.

For more information on Switch visit: http://www.telestream.net/switch/overview.htm. NAB attendees can see Switch support for ProRes RAW at NAB booth SL3308.