4 Examples How to Benefit From RAW Settings in Silverstack Lab

Shooting RAW video has become increasingly popular over the last few years. Yes, it is much more data to handle with all associated consequences. Still, regarding image quality, shooting RAW ensures that you get the most out of your camera by storing the recorded data in its original state. The adjustable RAW settings apply based on the unprocessed sensor data before it encodes into a specific color space with a curve and gamut. Standard RAW settings include ISO, color temperature, and tint. More parameters (like sharpness or noise reduction) can be available additionally depending on the unique camera RAW format and its SDK depending on the utilized camera system.

Moreover, shooting RAW has many other benefits, e.g., ensuring that your footage is future-proof in case of reuse with prospective curves and color spaces or getting a more precise color resolution for green screen and VFX shots. ^[1]

Did you know that Silverstack Lab lets you adjust the available parameters of RAW footage directly? The RAW development settings panel allows you to customize settings for ARRIRAW, REDCODE RAW, Sony X-OCN, and Canon CRM footage. They can be selected for each clip individually and batch-applied to many clips. Get full control of the RAW development process and adjust or correct the “as shot” parameters before applying your custom grading.

In this blog article, we look at four examples how you can benefit from using the custom RAW development settings inside Silverstack Lab. Let’s start with more obvious technical aspects and then go over to creative ones, exploring the gains from multiple perspectives.

1. Revise Settings Selected In-Camera

In the heat of shooting a scene, it might occur that you didn’t adjust all settings in the camera as intended. Shooting RAW, allows you to rework the balance of the footage afterward. Using Silverstack Lab’s custom RAW development settings comes in handy with several benefits: 

• Live-preview a clip with adjusted RAW settings within the Silverstack Lab playback view. 
• Easily compare a clip’s modified RAW settings and original in-camera settings by toggling between them.
• All metadata is stored in your production library: The original clip settings and the adjusted RAW settings.
• Pass along your settings via the cloud using ShotHub to establish your distributed production library with all metadata and make each step retraceable at any time within the production team.
• Upon request, add RAW settings information to your reports.
• Make technical metadata like in ALE files available, including your custom RAW settings, for further processing.

Working with the custom RAW development settings in Silverstack Lab expands your technical toolset on many levels. It enables a more consistent color pipeline as a starting point for subsequent LUT and CDL adjustments. 

2. Enhance Your Creative Work

In addition to a technical view of the possibilities, it makes sense to consider the more profound creative work possible with RAW adjustments.

The adjustable RAW settings are integrated with the different grading pipelines in Silverstack Lab. Hence you gain complete control over the look of the image, from the RAW settings, through CDL adjustments and technical or creative use of LUTs, including advanced grading tools like RGB curves for different color pipelines such as ACES. 

Before the RAW settings were directly available in Silverstack Lab, you had to use extensive workarounds to achieve similar results. Moreover, adjusting the RAW settings of a clip in another tool often leaves you behind with the wrong metadata in your reports. Easily compare the original and modified settings shown in separate columns of your clip list and export them into your reports.  

Within Silverstack Lab, you gain all the control for modifying, reporting, and transcoding in one place. Learn more on dailies creation with RAW adjustments in the next section.

3. Create Dailies with RAW Adjustments

Creating transcoded clips in the correct format for viewing or editing is one of Silverstack Lab’s core competencies. 

Being able to adjust the RAW settings of clips within the dailies creation process helps in at least two ways:

• The ability to make RAW settings adjustments to correct technically across all clips of a scene.
• More flexibility for creative work across the complete possibilities of look adjustments.

In any case, being able to use RAW controls gives you a complete toolkit to either solve problems in the image or work on it creatively. This results in a quality update to the camera OCF RAW footage early on and improves all subsequent deliverables.

Additional technical remark: For some RAW formats (Sony, Canon, ARRI) Silverstack Lab allows you to select a decoding color space manually which is essential for further grading and especially helpful when shooting with various camera models by a specific vendor.

4. Work With On-Set RAWs in the Facility

Footage involving visual effects work, e.g. shooting with green screen, is another example of how shooting RAW unfolds its qualities. Adjusting RAW settings right after offloading helps to make better decisions for similar shooting situations during a project. Silverstack Lab also contributes to pass on more detailed information into post-production. 

Have you thought about extending your workflow to the cloud for post-production? The seamless transmission of your production library via Pomfort ShotHub enables you to work with Silverstack Lab in a facility context, offering you a more convenient environment than in unstable on-set conditions.

Accessing the RAW adjustments can help you with multiple jobs in the facility:

• When transcoding for editing or VFX, make more precise adjustments than before at an early stage.
• Determine on a more detailed basis for decision-making which shots to transmit to a VFX artist.
• Easily pass on required metadata to other departments. 
• Make your production library available to others in your ShotHub cloud project.
• Have RAW settings information (and additional metadata) at hand anytime after shooting.

In a nutshell, Silverstack Lab supports you with improved decision-making and distribution of RAW settings to other tools.

Conclusion

Silverstack Lab supports the complete image adjustment pipeline for basically all standard professional camera RAW formats and much more. Get rid of tiring workarounds by introducing more tools! Instead, adjust the RAW footage, continue creative work down the line with CDL, LUT, and curves control, follow with transcoding to all relevant formats, and report your work comprehensively in one application.

Head to the Pomfort Knowledge Base for more technical specifications about the custom RAW development settings feature: Custom RAW Development.

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REFERENCES

[1] frame.io Blog, A Beginner’s Guide to Shooting Raw, accessed 6 March 2023, online resource (available here) – Great blog article, that gives an overview of what RAW is and what you need to know before choosing it for your next project.