Camera original

BRAW client review.
No proxies, no transcodes.

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

Your client cannot open the file.

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:

Ship a drive
Transcode + upload
Cloud drive link
uncompressed.io
The cost
Drive plus courier,every round, both ways
A render pass over everyselect, every revision
Storage plan, plus theclient's download time
Storage only. The free1 GB tier holds a test clip
Turnaround
Days per note cycle
Hours of renderingand re-uploading
The full download finishesbefore frame one plays
Minutes. Upload once,send one link
What theclient watches
The real files, if they ownsoftware that opens them
A derivative: debayer, gradeand bitrate already baked in
Nothing. A .braw is not onDrive's supported playback list
The camera original, decodednatively on their Mac
Custody
A full-quality copy insomeone else's drawer
Viewing copies multiply;the master stays home
Synced copies on machinesyou do not control
Streamed, not handed over.Access can expire on a date
Feedback
Email against filenamesand guessed timecodes
Comments left on there-encoded preview
An email thread;there is no player
Timecoded notes and drawings,synced into Resolve

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

Know what a minute weighs.

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

Stream the .braw itself.
Decoded on their Mac.

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

plays the .braw itself, up to 15,000 Mbps

12K BRAW 5:1 master (full sensor, 24 fps)

about 4,600 Mbps (578 MB/s)

Pocket 6K BRAW 5:1 master (30 fps)

about 1,550 Mbps (194 MB/s)

Frame.io 4K proxy playback

about 50 Mbps

Vimeo 4K delivery ceiling

22 Mbps max
05k10k15kMbps

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

Card to client in four steps.

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.

1

Upload the takes

Drag the .braw files in as they come off the card. Masters up to 50 GB per file, resumable, and the upload survives navigation.

2

Vault the unreleased

Sensitive footage gets encrypted-at-rest vault storage, password or unlisted links, expiring access, and session watermarks.

3

Send one link

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.

4

Pull notes into 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

Three translations from the sensor.

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.

Translation one: the look

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.

Translation two: your encoder

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.

Translation three: their re-encode

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

The failure mode is specific: the client flags “noise” that is compression, approves an exposure that will fall apart in the grade, or asks why the sky is clipped when it is not. You spend the next email thread explaining that the footage looks different from what they watched, which is the conversation a review round exists to prevent. Cut notes on story and pacing work fine from a master file. The moment the answer depends on what the sensor captured, review the sensor’s file.

Questions

Frequently asked

Can a browser play BRAW files?

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.

Does my client need DaVinci Resolve or an account?

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.

How much bandwidth does full-rate BRAW streaming need?

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.

What fits under the 50 GB per-file upload limit?

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.

Should I still make proxies at all?

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.

Put a real take in front of a client

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.

Sources

  1. 1.Blackmagic RAW encoding chart, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera (Blackmagic Design) (6K and 4K DCI constant bitrate and constant quality data rates, read September 2026)
  2. 2.Blackmagic RAW product page (Blackmagic Design) (12K encoding chart and the constant bitrate ratio definition, read September 2026)
  3. 3.What are my assets converted to when it's uploaded? (Frame.io Support) (legacy-documented transcode spec: H.264/H.265 MP4 proxy ladder)
  4. 4.Guidelines for determining playback resolution (Vimeo Help Center) (4K maximum 22 Mbps, read September 2026)
  5. 5.Store and play video in Google Drive (Google Drive Help) (1080p playback ceiling and the supported-format list, read September 2026)
  6. 6.Web video codec guide (MDN Web Docs) (lossy coding and quantization banding mechanics)
BRAW Client Review: Share Blackmagic RAW Without Transcodes