Assimilate ProRes RAW Transcoder (still briefly) as a free Atomos add-on
[10:44 Sat,24.June 2023 by Rudi Schmidts]
Since the introduction of ProRes RAW, there's been a big elephant in the room named Blackmagic Design. That's because its big color correction suite, DaVinci Resolve, still doesn't support importing Apple's proprietary RAW format. With its external recorders, Atomos offers numerous cameras a cost-effective RAW recording option via HDMI and SDI. However, these files cannot be used in one of the most widely used color correction systems for RAW material without conversion.
In the meantime, the Apple codec is not only bound to the Mac platform, but there are also Windows programs that can process ProRes RAW files. Besides Edius or Premiere, these are also products from Assimilate.
One of these products is Assimilate Play Pro Studio - a universal player and transcoder for various camera formats. The successor to Assimilate Scratch Play Pro, which was already introduced in 2018, is much more than just a media player and offers features such as comprehensive media management, look and metadata management, playout in full-screen, dual-view or split-view mode via the graphics card (also on two monitors and/or via SDI and NDI), and backup & offload (including checksums and MHLs). Vectorscopes, histograms, waveforms and other tools can also be used when viewing source material.
At the heart of Assimilate Play Pro Studio's capabilities, however, is the ability to play back and also transcode a wide range of camera formats and video codecs. Such as various RAW dialects, including Apple ProRes RAW, Blackmagic RAW, RED REDCODE RAW (R3D), ARRI RAW (ARI, ARX and MXF), Kinefinity RAW (DNG & KRW), Sony F65/F55/F5 RAW, Canon C200/C500/C700 RAW (RMF and CRM), Cinema DNG (Blackmagic, AJA, AATON, Bolex, Kinefinity, Ikonoskop, Panasonic, Pentax and DJI), Cineform RAW and Z CAM ZRAW.
Normally, a perpetual license of Assimilate Play Pro Studio costs , but buyers of the Atomos Ninja V, Ninja V+, Shogun Connect, Sumo19SE or SS2 have been getting it as a free add-on for a few weeks now. The prerequisite, however, is a registration of the device with Atomos. Those who already own one of the devices can also purchase the license for the special price of 99 dollars. In addition, the promotion only runs until June 30, 2023.
However, those who want to use the transcoding for Resolve still have to swallow a small toad: Because you can NOT convert to Blackmagic RAW with Assimilate Play Pro Studio. If you still want to work "RAW" in Resolve, you have to convert to Cinema DNG (CDNG), which usually means significantly larger files.
;)