Losslessly Compress cinemaDNG RAW Files with SlimRAW – Save 60% Disk Space

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by Sebastian WöberMay 12^th, 2015

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SlimRAW is a new app that lets you compress cinemaDNG files quickly and helps you save disk space. It works with Canon 5D mark III RAW footage as well as other RAW cameras like the Blackmagic cameras, Digital Bolex or Sony FS7.

Remember the days when we shot RAW on the Canon 5D mark III? These days are not over and many people still use the Canon DSLR’s as RAW shooting machines with the Magic Lantern hack. We have an up to date guide on how to achieve this.

SlimRAW takes a folder with cinemaDNG or regular DNG files and converts them in seconds.

This saves you a ton of space. In our test the resulting files were reduced to 37.8% of the original size. We tested this with a 1 minute 5D mark III RAW sequence on a Mac Pro (quad) and it took 17 seconds to process.

Workflow with 5D RAW:

• Shoot RAW with your camera. We created MLV files with our 5D mark III as per our tutorial.
• Convert the MLV files to cinemaDNG with the RAWmagic app (yes, the usable full version costs money) [UPDATE]: Apparently as of a few days ago, the newly updated RAWmagic app has lossless cinemaDNG output also.
• Choose the folder containing the cinemaDNG files as source and target folder. (This will overwrite the old files)
• We selected “overwrite” and “Premiere CC compatibility” and clicked “Start Job”.
• Imported the resulting cinemaDNG sequence in Premiere CC via the “Media Browser” tab.
• That’s it. Start editing and grading your losslessly compressed files natively.

Since the firmware updates of the Blackmagic Cinema Cameras that now support losslessly compressed internal RAW recording, the app might not be so efficient for those cameras, but SlimRAW says that “slimRAW will generally achieve a bit better compression ratios since it is not limited by in-camera processing.”.

The SlimRAW app costs $39 and is available here: www.slimraw.com

• Digital Bolex D16
• Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera (pre-firmware 2.1)
• Canon DSLR Magic Lantern raw (converted to CinemaDNG/DNG)
• Sony FS700/FS7 raw recorded through Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q/7Q+
• Ikonoskop A-Cam dII
• Kinefinity KineMINI 4K, KineMAX 6K, KineRAW
• Indiecam indieGS2K and indiePOV (uncompressed 12-bit CinemaDNG video as exported by Indiecam Instant-RAW software)
• uncompressed DNG frame stacks from Fastec Imaging TS and HiSpec series cameras (10-bit in a 16-bit container and 8-bit)
• most other standard compliant uncompressed 8-, 12-, 14- or 16-bit CinemaDNG footage.