Runway ProRes Export Explained: What You Get, What You Don't, and How We Finish It
Runway Gen-4.5 generates at 720p SDR. ProRes and PNG exports are a container option, not a bit-depth upgrade. Here is what that means for colour grading and how Apostle makes Runway footage broadcast-ready.
Runway’s ProRes export is one of the most misunderstood features in AI video. Clients ask for it assuming it means a graded, high-bit-depth file. It does not. It is a wrapper around an SDR generation, and knowing that changes how you plan a finish.
What Runway Gen-4.5 actually produces
Gen-4.5 generates at 720p, at 24 or 25 fps, for 2 to 10 seconds, on Standard plans and above. You can upscale to 4K in-app as a separate credit action. Aleph 2.0, Runway’s in-context editing model, preserves your input resolution up to 1080p on clips up to 30 seconds.
On Max, Unlimited (Legacy) and Enterprise plans you can choose ProRes or a PNG sequence as the output format at generation time, for an extra 5 credits per second. The Runway video editor exports ProRes 4444. Runway’s own note warns that ProRes support varies across models and features.
What Runway does not document: the bit depth of the ProRes output, the bit depth of the PNG sequence, or any colour-space tagging. There is no HDR10, PQ, HLG or Dolby Vision. No log profile, no ACES, no EXR. The generation is Rec.709 SDR, and a ProRes 4444 wrapper can carry 12 bits per channel, but it cannot invent tonal information that the generation never had.
What that means in the grade
An 8-bit source has 256 levels per channel. A modest primary correction will hold. A power window on a sky, a heavy secondary on skin, or a relight will show banding in the gradient and macroblocking in the shadows. That is the ceiling for raw Runway footage, ProRes or not.
The honest use of Runway’s ProRes option is alpha. Gen-4 era models support alpha via ProRes 4444, which matters for compositing. For grading, the wrapper does nothing on its own.
How Apostle finishes Runway footage
We treat every Runway clip as 8-bit Rec.709 that needs an uplift before an aggressive grade.
- Generate at 720p, upscale to 4K in Runway if the shot needs it, or take the 720p into Topaz Starlight Precise 2.5 for a cleaner upscale with artefact correction.
- Run Topaz Hyperion 2.5 to convert the 8-bit SDR to 10-bit ProRes in BT.2020 PQ, or 16-bit EXR in ACES2065-1 when the shot is going to VFX.
- Bring it into a colour-managed Resolve project, grade it as a proper source, master to the delivery spec.
We do this for Runway-heavy campaigns where the look was built in Runway and the client then needs a Free TV master, a YouTube HDR version and a portrait OOH cut. The same graded master feeds all three.
When to use a different generator
If the shot is going to be graded hard, or the deliverable is HDR, we often swap the source. Luma Ray 3.2 gives us a 16-bit ACES EXR at generation for 5-second shots. LTX-2.5 gives native 4K HDR. Runway stays in the mix for what it is good at: fast iteration, in-context editing with Aleph, and compositing passes with alpha.
Talk to Apostle about finishing a Runway campaign for broadcast