Atomos announces immediate support for Apple ProRes RAW plug-ins

Atomos has announced immediate support for Apple ProRes RAW plug-ins, an innovation that lets camera manufacturers provide their own ProRes RAW processing pipeline to take advantage of the unique properties of their cameras, sensors, lenses, and more.

ProRes RAW is widely regarded as the universal RAW video format. With the introduction of plug-ins, now every camera maker can provide their own unique processing, in a completely confidential way, by writing a single ProRes RAW plug-in that brings out the best quality and unique looks created by their own cameras.

ProRes RAW becomes, in effect, the conduit for their custom processing, carrying the unique characteristics of any camera, sensor, processing, and lens combination into post-production. ProRes RAW plug-ins will be supported in Final Cut Pro as well as many third-party applications that have licensed the ProRes RAW SDK, such as nonlinear editors (NLEs) and colour correction applications.

The process involves installing the camera vendor’s ProRes RAW plug-in and Final Cut Pro will automatically show all the new enhanced features of the supported camera. Using a ProRes RAW plug-in enables camera-specific adjustments such as custom white balancing, noise reduction, demosaicing, lens distortion correction, and more.

Canon is the first camera maker to deliver a ProRes RAW Plug-in, with the EOS R5, R5 C and R6 Mark II cameras outputting RAW to an Atomos monitor-recorder. Atomos has already enabled full ProRes RAW plug-in support for these cameras in the current release firmware for Ninja V, Ninja V+, and Shogun Connect.

Atomos supports over 50 camera models recording ProRes RAW from the camera’s RAW output over SDI or HDMI.

“This new feature for the ProRes RAW ecosystem is absolutely going to change the way people think about recording ProRes RAW,” said Trevor Elbourne, Atomos CEO. “For the first time the filmmaker literally gets the best of all worlds: shoot in ProRes RAW with the option to immediately apply camera-specific processing, use standard processing, or customise individual parameters to their own taste. You have to ask yourself: why wouldn’t you shoot in ProRes RAW?”

“We are very proud to be working alongside Apple and Canon to bring this ProRes RAW innovation to market,” Elbourne added. “We were first to market with an 8K ProRes RAW compatible mirrorless camera – the Canon EOS R5 – and now we are making another huge advancement with the ProRes RAW format.”

The ProRes RAW plug-in model has been designed to work not only with macOS but also with Windows and Linux.