Camera original
Nothing a client owns opens a .braw. Ship a drive, render a viewing copy, or stream the camera original itself: only one of those shows the image you actually shot.
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Updated September 2026
The format problem
A finished master is a picture. BRAW is a set of decisions that have not been made yet. Reviewing those decisions means showing the client the camera original, and the camera original is a file nothing on their machine will open.
The decoder is the obstacle. Blackmagic RAW playback comes from Blackmagic’s own SDK, which lives in DaVinci Resolve and in applications built against it, not in stock media players and not in any browser. The generic clouds do not fill the gap either: Google Drive’s playback list covers consumer formats only, with no camera RAW of any kind, and its player stops at 1080p whatever your storage plan. Share a .braw there and the client gets a download button and a decoder problem, in that order.
Productions work around this four ways: courier a drive, render a viewing copy for a review platform, drop the files on a cloud drive, or stream the .braw natively. Three of those trade away fidelity, time, or custody of your originals. The comparison in full:

Cloud drive column reflects Google Drive: playback tops out at 1080p and the supported-format list carries no camera RAW. Read from vendor documentation, September 2026.
The data rates
Blackmagic publishes exact data rates for every sensor, frame rate and compression setting. Storage and bandwidth planning starts there, not with a guess.
The constant bitrate settings are ratios of the unprocessed size of a single sensor frame, so they scale with resolution and frame rate. A Pocket 6K recording its full 6144 by 3456 sensor at 30 fps writes 194 MB/s at 5:1 and 81 MB/s at 12:1, against an uncompressed 965 MB/s. A Pocket 4K at 12:1 is a comparatively light 35 MB/s. Constant quality removes the upper data limit entirely: on the full 12K sensor at 24 fps, Q0 averages anywhere from 289 to 1,200 MB/s depending on the image.
Those numbers decide the workflow. They are why nobody attaches BRAW to an email, why proxies exist for editing, and why storage is the meter to watch on any review platform. Take the published rate for your own recording setting and the rest of this page is arithmetic.
194 MB/s
6K at 5:1, 30 fps
Blackmagic's published rate for the Pocket 6K's full sensor, read September 2026
11.6 GB
One minute at that rate
194 MB/s times 60 seconds of footage
35 MB/s
4K DCI at 12:1, 30 fps
The lightest Pocket 4K constant bitrate setting
2,888 MB/s
Uncompressed 12K, 24 fps
The firehose the BRAW ratios are measured against
The native path
The uncompressed.io macOS app carries the Blackmagic RAW decoder, so the review link plays the .braw directly: the same bytes that came off the card, debayered on the client’s machine, with no derivative anywhere in the chain.
In the app the ceiling is 15,000 Mbps. The heaviest constant quality average on the 12K chart, 1,200 MB/s at Q0, converts to 9,600 megabits and still clears it. The same decoder set covers RED R3D, Nikon N-RAW and ProRes up to 8K 4:2:2 HQ at 60 fps, so a mixed-camera job reviews in one place; the R3D remote review guide walks the RED side. Your client opens the review room link with no account and no Resolve seat, presses play, and leaves notes on the frame at the exact timecode.
One boundary stated plainly: no browser plays camera RAW, here or anywhere else. A reviewer limited to the web should get an HEVC export beside the master; hardware decoding carries a browser to around 300 to 400 Mbps, and 100 to 150 Mbps runs without a dropped frame. Proxy-first platforms sit at the other end of the scale: Frame.io converts every upload to H.264 or H.265 streaming proxies by its own spec, and its 4K playback measures about 50 Mbps, roughly thirty times under the 6K file’s own rate.
uncompressed.io macOS app
12K BRAW 5:1 master (full sensor, 24 fps)
Pocket 6K BRAW 5:1 master (30 fps)
Frame.io 4K proxy playback
Vimeo 4K delivery ceiling
BRAW rates are Blackmagic's published MB/s figures converted at 8 megabits per megabyte. Frame.io 4K proxy playback measured August 2026; Vimeo 4K ceiling read from vendor documentation, September 2026. Bars below the chart's resolution are drawn at a minimum visible width.
The workflow
From offload to graded answer without a courier or a render pass.
Uploads take the .braw straight from the card structure: masters up to 50 GB per file, resumable if the connection drops, still running while you work in another tab. Unreleased footage belongs in vault storage: encrypted at rest, password or unlisted links, expiring access, session watermarks, and invisible forensic marks on the stream. Notes come back through the free NLE sync tools, so nobody retypes a timecode.
Drag the .braw files in as they come off the card. Masters up to 50 GB per file, resumable, and the upload survives navigation.
Sensitive footage gets encrypted-at-rest vault storage, password or unlisted links, expiring access, and session watermarks.
The share link is the auth. Your client opens the review room and plays the camera original in the macOS app. No account, no Resolve.
Timecoded comments and frame drawings land as timeline markers via the free Resolve script, refreshing as new notes arrive. Premiere and Final Cut sync too.
Generation loss
A proxy shrinks more than the picture. It quietly answers the questions the review was supposed to ask, and the platform it lands on translates it once more.
Rendering a viewing copy locks a debayer, a white point, a tone curve and one exposure interpretation, then quantizes the result down to a delivery bitrate. Highlight detail that sits above the curve’s shoulder in the RAW is flat white in the proxy. Latitude the sensor kept in the shadows arrives as blocked-up noise. Lossy codecs work by discarding detail, more compression discards more, and coarse quantization is the exact mechanism that turns smooth gradients into visible bands.
Send that render to a proxy-based review platform and it gets translated again into the platform’s own streaming ladder. Count the versions standing between the sensor and the screen.
The render commits a debayer, a color space, a tone curve and an exposure read. Every decision the RAW held open is now closed, invisibly, before anyone has reviewed a frame.
The viewing codec spends its bits against a delivery target. Gradients step, shadows block up, grain smears. Heavier compression loses more; that is the design, not a defect.
Proxy-based review services convert the upload into their own streaming versions. The client watches a compressed copy of your compressed copy, two generations from the RAW.
What the client then reviews
Questions
No. Browsers carry no Blackmagic RAW decoder, so any service showing BRAW in a web player is showing a transcode. uncompressed.io plays the .braw natively in its macOS app; for a web-only reviewer, put an HEVC export beside the master, which a browser handles cleanly in the 100 to 150 Mbps band.
Neither. The share link is the auth: the client opens the review room, plays the camera original in the macOS app, and leaves timecoded notes and drawings on the frame. Resolve stays on your side of the workflow, where the markers land.
Roughly the file's own data rate, because the stream is the file. A Pocket 6K 5:1 recording runs 194 MB/s, about 1,550 megabits, which wants serious wired bandwidth; a 4K 12:1 recording at 35 MB/s is far easier. On a weak connection the player buffers rather than swapping in a mushy low-res version, and sometimes the honest call is a cut review from a master file instead.
Camera originals are per-take files, and most takes fit with room to spare. At the Pocket 6K's 194 MB/s 5:1 rate, 50 GB holds about four minutes; at the 81 MB/s 12:1 rate, about ten. Long interview rolls at heavy settings are the case to watch: record those at a higher ratio, or review the selects.
Yes, for editing. That is what proxies are for, and they are good at it. The line to hold is review: cut and story notes work fine from a master file, but exposure checks, select reviews with a DP, and grade approvals need the RAW, because a proxy has already made the decisions you are asking about.
Upload one .braw to the free 1 GB tier, send the link, and watch the camera original play. Streaming, uploads and viewers are unlimited on every plan; storage is the only meter.