topic Re: Canon RAW Color Space in Professional Video

Canon RAW Color Space

mpeach — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 03:16:04 GMT

I have a quesiton i'm hoping to get an offical answer on.

What is the color space or chroma subsampling of the Canon RAW format on the C300 Mk iii

The new C300 Mark iii doesn't have a 4:4:4 color space recording option as the previous model did. This is rather disapointing for green screen work specifically.

Is this because the RAW format is the 4:4:4 replacement? Or is is 4:2:2 like the other recording formats on that model. Having a difficult time find the answer so hoping for some more clarfication.

Thanks everyone!

Re: Canon RAW Color Space

Mark35mmF2 — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 06:07:36 GMT

Hi there,

It can be a little confusing because RAW video files themselves do not really have a colorspace on their own, they only record the raw exposure data of each pixel and the color space and other factors are determined in the RAW processing and encoding process. I believe you would be able to get a 4:4:4 clip from the RAW video once it has been processed or encoded through a recorder, but the RAW file itself would not have a "baked in" colorspace.

Re: Canon RAW Color Space

rs-eos — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 12:03:46 GMT

Color space and chroma subsampling are independent of each other.

The color space would be one of BT.709, BT.2020, or Canon's Cinema Gamut (C.Gamut). But as mentioned above, this would not be baked in to RAW (although I don't know if there's any setting to bake that in?)

For chroma subsampling, I believe that RAW would be 4:4:4. I've only seen user manuals and spec sheets outline the color depth (bits per component) for RAW. The C300 Mk III does allow for either 10 bit or 12 bit RAW depending upon the sensor mode. So, I would thus assume this would be 10-bit 4:4:4 and 12-bit 4:4:4 respectively.

When using XF-AVC, it's always 10-bit 4:2:2

Re: Canon RAW Color Space

mpeach — Sun, 25 Jul 2021 23:42:38 GMT

Thanks for the info! Very helpful. 🙂

The reason I ask is for Green Screen work, we alway got a better key with a 4:4:4 as you have more data in the green color sampling. If RAW is 4:4:4 then our green screen shoots will have plenty of data for keying! Both in chroma sampling and in pure data.

Now what's unfortunite is that would mean even small basic talking head green screen shoots have to be in RAW, which takes up so much space for long segments. That would mean unrelestic storage costs for some clients. We'll likely have to keep using the C300 Mkii for thoese setups. It would be nice to see a non RAW 4:4:4 option on the Mk3.