WHICH IS BETTER: PRORES RAW OR XAVC-S???

Full disclaimer, this is by no means a scientific test! This was done mainly for my own curiosity but I figured some of you guys out there might also be interested in the results. Keep reading to find out more!

I decided to shoot in a fairly high contrast situation, one that you admittedly won't find yourself in that often unless you film outdoors a lot in bright sunlight and dark places. In any case, I wanted to see how both the built in XAVC-S 4k codec on the Sony A7Siii holds up in comparison to the Prores Raw coming out of the Atomos Ninja V. Is Prores Raw really worth all the hullabaloo??

As I think it is clearly demonstrated in this comparison video, the Prores Raw footage is indeed much cleaner and smoother than the XAVC footage. I didn't use any noise reduction software, and this was all filmed at I believe ISO 12800. I think the real winner here though is the bit depth. Those lovely 12bits in the Prores Raw give much cleaner footage, with smoother, softer color gradations, than the 10bits of XAVC-S. If I had shot in XAVC-SI (intraframe), it may have been a bit less noisy but I doubt by much. The grading was done in Premiere Pro, with both clips being in the Slog3/S-Gamut3 Cine color profile. I used the Blockbuster V2 LUT and really pushed the exposure and contrast to the max until the footage started breaking down.

A common misconception with RAW footage is that it provides more dynamic range than other types of footage. This is not true. What I would say though, is that it DOES give you easier access to the dynamic range within your footage. You don't have to push the exposure slider as far as you would with non-RAW footage to get to some of those more extreme ends of the dynamic range. But as I said earlier, the bigger factor here is the bit depth. Having 12 bits vs. 10 bits really does make all the difference.

Now the ultimate question here is, well, is Prores Raw really worth it? I've found the file sizes to be about 6-7 times LARGER than XAVC-S, which is just massive. You need a lot of expensive SSD drives to record a bunch of Prores RAW, vs. a single 128GB Sony Tough SD card to record the equivalent amount of footage in XAVC-S. So if you are shooting lots of interviews, events, anything that requires long shoot times, don't shoot in Prores Raw, especially when you have control over the lighting and exposure. It's just not worth the extra cost in my opinion. However, if you find yourself shooting short clips outdoors, and you are going from shooting a bright sunny sky to a really dark forest or something like that, then you'll definitely get some benefit out of Prores Raw. You'll more easily be able to pull out all that dynamic range and get really lush gradations in the sky and bright to dark areas than the 10 bit footage. So I would say it is a fun and worthwhile codec to use in LIMITED situations. But for the vast majority of shooting, you are just fine using XAVC-S 10 bit.

Let me know what you guys think in the comments below, curious to hear your thoughts! What are your own experiences using Prores Raw vs. XAVC-S or other codecs?

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