It took almost 9 months for Producers and DPs to become familiar with the Codex, and now its rental activity at the Bertone Visuals Camera Rental Department has really picked up.
Not long ago, Producers couldn’t figure out why they should allocate financial resources for the rental of an external Codex Recorder when they could instead rent two fancy cameras for their production for the same amount of money. Although Producers are not DPs or DITs, they usually pay the bill for DI and Post, and they have recently discovered the advantages of grading raw vs. compressed footage (Apple Pro Res, AVCHD, DNxHD, etc…). They have learned that Colorists will execute their grading sessions more efficiently with the Raw material as opposed to compressed. Why? Because with Raw footage (14-16 bit), the colorist is going to spend more time Grading rather than solving problems and trying to pull out acceptable masks for local/selective adjustments.
Another interesting phenomena that I’ve noticed is that sometimes a “Take” gets discarded because it wasn’t properly exposed, even though it rendered a better action than any other “Take.” Well, here, we are dealing with another great benefit of shooting in Arri Raw with the Codex: almost all the “Takes” become usable because they inherently contain more data information. For example, when a Colorist needs to increase only the brightness of a talent’s face, the Colorist can simply Push-Up a stop in a Power Window (DaVinci Resolve), but if the Colorist tries that without Raw, annoying artifacts will show up, making the “Take” unacceptable. This is an extremely valuable characteristic.
Another advantage is that Arri Raw footage using the Codex conceptually resembles film stock. What I mean is that film stock contains a sequence of frames, not a single file, and that is true for the Arri Raw footage as well. When you open a folder containing a scene that was shot in Arri Raw, you don’t see a single file (like with an Apple Pro Res — .mov), but you instead see a sequence of frames progressively numbered. With the single file, I have seen its encoding so corrupted that it can’t be opened with anything – the file is simply lost forever, usually at great expense.
Furthermore, there are additional benefits when you shoot raw with the Arri Alexa Codex:
1) The DIT can embed useful metadata for post production facilities (think of those who make CGI/VFXs, how much they will appreciate having immediate information about the focal length of the lens used - Cooke S4i / Arri LDS systems.)
2) The .ari files are 3K resolution, so they look appropriate for theatrical releases.
3) The Codex has its own VFS (Virtual File System) software that’s capable of generating deliverables — transcoding easily from Raw to editing formats such as those used by Avid Media Composer or Final Cut.
Additionally, with the new Abobe CS 6 Production Suite, Arri Raw can be ingested directly by Premiere Pro, which sounds absolutely remarkable.
Finally, the last feature I really like about shooting with the Alexa Codex is that footage can be transferred using only the Codex transferring station. That is an important safety feature against unauthorized copies. The digital magazine encapsulates the SSDs inside, and they can only be read by a computer with both Codex software and hardware, which is different from SXS cards that can be easily copied by anyone with a USB reader attached to his laptop.
Honestly, talking as a Cinematographer, the Codex way is the way to go with an Arri Alexa today.