Welcome Inspire Pilots!
Join our free DJI Inspire community today!
Sign up

Still Photo RAW Burst to CineSSD creates different RAW files?

Joined
Mar 25, 2017
Messages
41
Reaction score
12
Location
US
The RAW files created when using RAW Burst to a CineSSD card are 21 MB in size. The RAW files normally created and written to the micro SD card are about 42 MB in size. The files from a RAW burst do not seem to have a lens profile included in the file so no corrections for distortion or chromatic aberration (CA) are made.

This would seem to make the RAW burst nearly useless for still images. Does anybody have a good source for information on the RAW files created during the 20 fps RAW Burst and the differences they have from regular RAW files?
 
Not come across any information on it and no one had any comments when I posted a query about it a month or so back :(.

I've wondered if the raw SSD burst has dropped quality to 8-10 bit colour, and had ditched any inbuilt jpeg preview to save space and increase speed, but lightroom seems to treat the files as still being 12 bit and aside from a slight difference in pixel size, there doesn't seem to be any major differences visible! I've not had time to investigate it any further since.
 
Looking at the files in Adobe Bridge it shows the following file information:

Normal still image RAW file written to micro SD:

full


File written with RAW Burst to CineSSD:

full


This shows a couple of differences. First, the color depth is shown as 16-bit for Single Shot files and 12-bit for RAW Burst files. The X5S is advertised as having 12-bit color so I am not sure what the difference between the files actually is. The Single Shot file is not really 16-bit but perhaps has a data structure for 16 bit? Also, the image size is different between Single Shot (5272 x 3948 pixels) and RAW Burst (5280 x 3956). Not sure what this indicates either.

It would be nice if DJI was forthcoming with documentation of the differences between the files. The apparent lack of CA correction makes the RAW burst files unusable.
 
Last edited:
Can you not assign the camera/lens profile to them in Lightroom/ACR? I think it recognises the "normal" Raw DNG's automatically, so should have the lens corrections available for manual assignment. If not, then try the ones for the X5 - pretty sure they're in there.
 
The RAW files created when using RAW Burst to a CineSSD card are 21 MB in size. The RAW files normally created and written to the micro SD card are about 42 MB in size. The files from a RAW burst do not seem to have a lens profile included in the file so no corrections for distortion or chromatic aberration (CA) are made.

This would seem to make the RAW burst nearly useless for still images. Does anybody have a good source for information on the RAW files created during the 20 fps RAW Burst and the differences they have from regular RAW files?


All of my burst raw dng's on SSD are also half the size of raw dng's saved to the micro sd card. They are useless to me also with huge CA.
 
Can you not assign the camera/lens profile to them in Lightroom/ACR? I think it recognises the "normal" Raw DNG's automatically, so should have the lens corrections available for manual assignment. If not, then try the ones for the X5 - pretty sure they're in there.

No, there is not a profile for the X5S or X5 under DJI. Just X3 and phantoms.

Just so people know how bad the CA is, here is a sample:

full
 
As I understand it, M4/3 embeds the lens profile into the image so there will never be one that is available to be chosen in post editing. When I was shooting an Olympus EM-1, also M4/3, there was no correction profile.

Just dug this up from DPReview. It explains about M4/3 lens corrections.

Micro 4/3, Lightroom, and lens correction profiles: Micro Four Thirds Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

I'm gonna try a copy of PT Lens as I do get a bit of CA from the X5S. Probably a consequence of the lens design. Might be worth a try to shoot the same subject under the same conditions but with a different lens to isolate the problem of the X5S lens or the complete camera system.
 
Last edited:
The same lens is just fine when shot in Single Shot mode and written to the SD where it gets a lens profile embedded. Only using RAW burst to SSD does this CA show up uncorrected. This was with a Olympus 25mm f/1.7.
 
The same lens is just fine when shot in Single Shot mode and written to the SD where it gets a lens profile embedded. Only using RAW burst to SSD does this CA show up uncorrected. This was with a Olympus 25mm f/1.7.

Are you getting a lens correction profile for the Oly 25mm? You shouldn't as the lens profile is a software correction. This is typical of M4/3 lenses. Not one of my Oly lenses offered a profile in LR. Even down in LR's Camera Calibration section, you don't see options to change anything. It only says "embedded".
 
The same lens is just fine when shot in Single Shot mode and written to the SD where it gets a lens profile embedded. Only using RAW burst to SSD does this CA show up uncorrected. This was with a Olympus 25mm f/1.7.

A friend of mine let me borrow his Olympus 12mm. I want to give that a try now. You've got me curious.
 
Are you getting a lens correction profile for the Oly 25mm? You shouldn't as the lens profile is a software correction. This is typical of M4/3 lenses. Not one of my Oly lenses offered a profile in LR. Even down in LR's Camera Calibration section, you don't see options to change anything. It only says "embedded".

Let's try this one more time.

It has nothing to do with the particular lens being Olympus. and occurs with all lenses.

The embedded OP code is used (normal for m43 lenses) with Single Shot. With RAW burst there is no embedded OP code written into the DNG (not normal for m43 lenses and different behavior).

So the DNG files are written differently, are half the size and have huge CA issues when RAW Burst is used rendering the files useless.
 
Last edited:
Does anybody have a good source for information on the RAW files created during the 20 fps RAW Burst and the differences they have from regular RAW files?
Well, that depends on what you mean by "good source". After finally giving up on the Adobe DNG SDK (even though I got it to compile), I decided to write my own Python code to rip these DNG files apart into their constituent components. This is still a work in progress, but I can tell you this much: the SSD raws are CineDNG video frames and the SD card raws are normal still photos. The internal file structure is radically different.
I can't really post a tabulated side-by-side comparison here, but suffice it to say that the various TIFF/DNG fields (IFD entries, technically) are very much different. I'd like to think that eventually I'll be able to graft the raw image data from a SSD raw into a SD card raw file and then feed it to Photoshop, etc., but I don't yet know if that will work due to several factors. Time will tell.
As an aside, there are quite a few interesting tidbits tucked away inside both of the raws the X5S produces (as there are with raw files from just about every camera ever made), none of which have been published to my knowledge. And you absolutely can't see all of these from Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever other tool you might be using. You can only get at them by ripping the raw file apart byte-by-byte (in a structured way, of course). The good news is that the SD card raw from the X5S is relatively simple as raw files go (I've seen some that are much uglier).
More to come, eventually.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pandion
Thanks, Grumpy. That qualifies as a "good source" for me. The SSD DNG files are fundamentally different, are merely video frames and are useless without heroic efforts.
 
Yea, you're not kidding. I've got the raw CFA bytes from both raws, but they are not the same sort of creatures at all. One is stored uncompressed as 5280 strips (1px wide by 3956px tall), the other is stored as 2 JPEG compressed tiles that are each 2640 by 3956. But wait, there's more. Even taking out the compression, the bits are still somehow different. Trying to figure that out right now. Why does my fridge have no beer?:eek:
 

New Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
22,273
Messages
210,620
Members
34,252
Latest member
catalyst