Canon R5 12bit RAW 8K Video is Easier to Edit than HEVC 422 8K Video - the Workflow (DaVinci Resolve)!

First, for the 8K All-I or IPB HEVC 422 clips you either create proxy files and work with them or you try to work with the original clips, which will be very painful and slow, M1 chip or not. The problem is that creating the proxy files takes a long time. I mean a long time - it took 20 hours(!) to create the "optimized" proxy files for the Grand Central Terminal 8K video I posted. Yes, 20 hours, not a typo. Using the optimized files was very easy, and editing with them was a breeze. But, who wants to wait 20 hours before editing?

But, the R5 has a capability to simultaneously record proxy files while shooting 12bit RAW - the RAW files go on the CFExpress card (necessary for 8K RAW) and the proxy files go on an sd card in the second slot, at the same time. The RAW and proxy files have exactly the same name (different extension), just like real proxy files. And they are not low quality - they are 4K HEVC.

So you copy the RAW files to a folder on your computer. You copy the proxy files to another folder. In DaVinci Resolve you import the RAW clips in Media management, as usual. Then you select them all, right click and you get a menu of operations - click on link to proxy media, and then you can browse to the folder than has the proxies and you select that folder. Done. You now edit using the proxies, and despite being 4K, so you see what is in focus very well, everything moves around smoothly with no problem.

When you go to render the final edit and color-graded video you can render the original RAW clips or the proxy clips (the default is the originals) in 8K or whatever resolution you want. Very easy.

What are the downsides? 1. The files are huge. 2. The render takes a long time.

Here is a 12bit 8K RAW test video:


The RAW clips totaled 153 GB's (I used most but not all of them, and just parts of each clip in the uploaded video). The proxy clips were 10.2 GB's in total. No wait,

Now, if you shoot in RAW Light, you can cut the size down by almost a half.

The render took 2.5 hours.