Why I ran this test
A wedding day leaves me with hours of footage. In RED RAW 6K straight from the Nikon ZR, one hour is roughly 700 GB, before backups. I wanted to know which format I can live with for archiving and editing, and where the losses start to show.
So I took one shot from a walk in the woods at Cesate, a man on a leaf-covered path under a bright, overcast sky, and delivered it four ways.
The four versions
| Version | Resolution | Bitrate | GB per minute | 1 hour | Size vs original |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R3D 6K original | 6048×3402 | 1553 Mb/s | 11.65 | ~700 GB | 100% |
| R3D Q3 (1.7 bpp) | 6048×3402 | 881 Mb/s | 6.60 | ~396 GB | 57% |
| Apple ProRes 422 LT | 3840×2160 | 326 Mb/s | 2.44 | ~147 GB | 21% |
| H.264 | 3840×2160 | 87 Mb/s | 0.66 | ~39 GB | 5.6% |
The ProRes and H.264 files were exported from the R3D in Log3G10 / RED Wide Gamut, with ISO 800 and 8478 K white balance.
How I tested
I cut all four into the same Final Cut Pro timeline, on the same 11.96-second range. Each version plays in LOG first, then with an identical grade: Colour Space Transform and BASIS on the clip, plus a LUT on an adjustment layer. At the end the four play together in a synced 2×2 grid, so you can compare them frame by frame.
The shot is a tough one for compression. It has fine leaf texture everywhere, deep shadows in the undergrowth and a bright sky through the branches, which is exactly where banding and blocking show up once log footage is graded.
What I saw
R3D original. This is the reference. ISO and white balance stay open in post, and the 6K frame gives me room to reframe, stabilise and downsample to 4K for a cleaner image.
R3D Q3 at 1.7 bpp. This was the surprise. It is still a RAW file, with the same flexibility as the original, at 57% of the size. Viewed at 100% the leaf texture and shadow noise look virtually the same as the original. On a 4K timeline I can’t pick it out.
ProRes 422 LT. Once you leave RAW, the debayer, ISO and white balance are baked in, and the frame drops to UHD. The image itself holds up well. It is 10-bit 4:2:2 and takes a normal grade on log without trouble. I would use it as a light editing format, not as my master.
H.264. One twentieth of the storage, and in the ungraded log frame it looks closer than you would expect. The fine leaves on the ground and in the bushes are slightly softer. Grading is where it gets exposed: stretching log footage with a CST and a LUT is the worst case for a heavily compressed codec. Watch the sky and the shadows in the grid. Fine for delivery or proxies, not for grading.
My takeaway
For wedding work, recompressing the R3D files to Q3 looks like the right trade. I keep everything that makes RAW worth shooting and save almost half the storage, which across a full wedding is hundreds of gigabytes. ProRes LT is a solid editing format if I don’t need to reframe, and H.264 stays where it belongs, at the delivery end.
Watch the full comparison on YouTube
Shot on Nikon ZR with a 40mm f/2 lens, in RED RAW 6K 25p. Edited and graded in Final Cut Pro.