ARRI ART CMD Gives the DIT’s Toolbox a Shell

For those who don’t know the tool, ARRI Reference Tool CMD is the command-line edition of ARRI’s camera-media toolkit. It copies and checks originals, extracts camera metadata and looks, and turns footage into files for editorial, grading and VFX. Give it to a script when a whole stack of cards needs the same treatment and the script has yet to develop a wrist.

ARRI’s 1.1.0 update puts ARRIRAW-to-HDE encoding, media hash lists and scripted look creation in one download. It also adds ProRes 422 Proxy output, GPU-accelerated ProRes scaling and filenames built from camera metadata. Download 1.1.1 if you’re putting ARRICORE clips on a render queue. The hotfix addresses potential freezes and crashes when the queue contains several. One clip makes a lovely demonstration and a rather poor test of that fix.

A trim, a rewrap and an unfinished clip

copy trims and rewraps without rendering. ARRI documents MXF/ARRIRAW and MXF/HDE under SMPTE RDD 54 and 55, MXF/ARRICORE under RDD 61 and 55, and MXF/ProRes under RDD 44 and 55. QuickTime ProRes goes in and MXF ProRes comes out. Legacy ARRI V3 .ari ARRIRAW and .arx HDE frame sequences can become MXF clips, as can supported single-frame grabs. Gaps in a frame sequence stop it being treated as one clip. The older D20/D21 ARI formats are outside the documented input set.

Use --start and --duration for zero-based frame ranges. A JSON file passed to --metadata-overrides can replace supported static clip metadata. If the camera left an MXF unfinalised, copy can recover it into a new file up to the last complete frame. Keep the original alongside the recovery. ARRI notes that the recovered file differs in size.

Copy, process and export can build output paths from fields such as [clipdir], [camera] and [reel]. A clip can tell you what reel it came from. The folder CARD_FINAL_2 has been giving evasive answers for years.

HDE goes straight to the raw material

In process mode, --video-codec arriraw_hde writes CODEX High Density Encoding into MXF. This is lossless, variable-bitrate encoding of ARRIRAW data. ARRI says an HDE file is typically around 60% of the original size, depending on the image. The operation works before rendering, so the HDE path refuses white-balance, look, colour-space conversion, resize and desqueeze flags.

New HDE encoding is limited to eligible .ari or MXF/ARRIRAW recorded on CODEX media such as Capture Drive or Compact Drive. ART CMD can also read existing MXF/HDE and write MXF/HDE. ARRIRAW from unsupported media such as CFast, plus ARRICORE and ProRes, is refused for this output. The utility reads legacy .arx sequences but writes HDE as MXF. If you’re migrating a script from the standalone ARRI HDE Transcoder, check the output naming and folder structure before swapping executables.

The bits have paperwork now

For an ARRIRAW or HDE clip carrying embedded frame checksums, verify recalculates and compares them against the clip metadata. Pairwise verification compares video, audio and metadata between two clips and is the documented route for ARRICORE and ProRes. It also works across two directory trees, pairing clips by relative path and flagging missing counterparts. Results can go into a JSON report. ARRI reports faster checksum verification on Apple silicon but gives no benchmark in the release summary.

ASC MHL handles integrity at the file level. ART CMD creates standalone MHL 1.1 and 2.0 manifests, adds generations to a history and records files written by copy, process or export. It verifies manifests, histories and collections against files on disk, with JSON reporting. Available algorithms depend on the manifest version. The choices include MD5, SHA-1, C4 and xxHash variants such as XXH64, XXH3 and XXH128 for v2. You can request multiple hashes in one pass.

mhl-diff compares two manifests, or a manifest or history against files on disk. mhl-flatten merges a history into one manifest. Save the flattened file at the root of the recorded folder so verification resolves its relative paths. Creator-info templates, ignore patterns and adjustable hashing threads are available. ARRI documents compatibility with the ASC reference tool and histories produced by its standalone HDE Transcoder. You may now ask the files for their receipts.

Proxies that know which way up they are

The render path reads ARRICORE, ARRIRAW, HDE and ProRes. The default is scene-linear ACES AP0 in uncompressed 16-bit half-float OpenEXR. EXR options include 16-bit and 32-bit output, compression and linear ARRI Wide Gamut targets subject to input compatibility. For non-linear output, ART CMD writes uncompressed 16-bit integer RGB TIFF or MXF/ProRes. The ProRes profiles span 422 Proxy, 422 LT, 422, 422 HQ, 4444 and 4444 XQ. Even when the source was a .mov, the rendered ProRes is MXF. Check the wrapper your editorial system expects before the first overnight proxy run.

Non-linear targets include LogC3 and LogC4, Rec.709 with BT.1886, Rec.2020 with BT.1886, HLG or PQ, and several P3 variants. ALEXA 35, ALEXA 35 Xtreme and ALEXA 265 footage can use ADA-7 debayering and ARRI REVEAL Color Science. Earlier supported ALEXA and AMIRA raw footage can take the LogC4 route. Legacy LogC3 ProRes cannot render to AWG4 through this tool. For the camera side of the handoff, see DP’s ALEXA 35 Xtreme coverage and ARRI’s editorial workflow guide.

GPU-accelerated scaling, --desqueeze, --letterbox-size and --deflip now work on ProRes sources. On compatible raw and ARRICORE renders, --cct, --tint and --asa set colour temperature, tint and exposure index directly. Those three flags are refused for ProRes input. --cli runs a sequence of operations from a JSON job file. For profiling, --output perf-measure reports frames per second per clip after skipping three warm-up frames and writes nothing. It measures a TIFF-like render path. Time your actual deliverables separately if ProRes encoding or disk writes are what’s holding up breakfast.

Send the look back to the camera

export extracts original audio tracks to WAV, static and per-frame camera metadata to JSON or CSV, and embedded .aml, .alf4 and .alf4c looks or .cube 3D LUTs. CSV puts dynamic values on each frame’s row and repeats the static values alongside them. JSON can omit large string values to keep exports smaller. Audio, metadata and look extraction can be skipped independently.

The separate look-builder executable takes up to three .cube files and builds a camera-readable look. ART CMD can apply embedded or external looks to supported outputs, including custom SDR and HDR display rendering transforms. Match .aml to LogC3 and .alf4 or .alf4c to LogC4. A supported LogC3 ARRIRAW or HDE source can take a LogC4 parameter override. LogC3 ProRes cannot use that route. Scene-linear EXR output does not take a look in this mode. ARRI’s Look File 4 guide explains how the creative LUT and display rendering transforms fit together.

Before putting 1.1.1 on a production queue, test with ARRI’s sample footage and representative camera originals, including a multi-clip ARRICORE queue, the chosen hash history and a proxy relink on the target system.