Shooting Prores 4444 or 4444 XQ

[lubaseggio]

I'm shooting a low/medium budget film and the amount of storage is an issue. Shooting ARRIWAW is out of question for that reason and I was wondering if it's worthy, in this case, to shoot XQ on the Alexa 35. I ask that because I don't have VFX on this film and as I've read that would be the biggest pro argument for shooting XQ. Does anybody have an input based on previous experience with grading images from this camera? Thank you.

[Andreas Berkl]

Dear lubaseggio,

well, it depends on your own definition of image quality. As a rule of thumb: most productions who cannot afford ARRIRAW shoot Apple ProRes 4444.
4444 XQ is something for extreme grading/VFX and typically not required. If you want to keep the data rate as low as possible and there is no aggressive grading, even 422 HQ may be considered.

I would recommend to shoot a test of a typical scene with different codecs and run through your post pipeline. This should help to come to a reasonable decision.

Best reagrds,
Andreas Berkl

[elijahnelson]

Good comparison, I've been curious about this for a project I'm shooting on the mini soon. 4444XQ in UHD, or 3.4k raw. ill probably decide on raw

[Jan Heugel]

Dear Elijah, If you're interested in the footprint of both formats, the graphic in our HDE page comes in handy:
(spoiler; XQ is heavier than HDE)

https://www.arri.com/en/learn-help/lear ... tab-326464


Cheers,
Jan