video format for pre-demosaic'ed stream As we all know individual cells in CMOS sensors are essentially identical. The only thing that differentiates them from each other is the thin filter layer (turning them into R, G, B sensor cells). The most standard pattern for that "coloring" is the RGGB "Bayer filter".

In essence those individual cells produce grey-scale image which is then turned into color by the process called demosaicing.

Here's my question:
Is there a recognized (standard?) video format for streaming/storing that kind of video stream?

N.B.
Please note that a naïve answer "this is grey-scale!" doesn't work since a simple parameter like windowing will affect the image, completely changing its colors. Also there's definitely a need for "sensor sensitivity" information to be able to properly reconstruct the original color. And so on and so forth...
Turns out the answer is yes. Such format is called CinemaDNG and is used for professional video production since 2009.

Here's the spec for the format: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/cinemadng/cinemadng_p1_spec_091009.pdf

Among other things it supports:


Integer sensor values of any bit depth from 8 to 32 bits
Arbitrary size color filter arrays with up to seven color channels
Black level, white level, and linearization parameters for scaling of sensor values
Color-processing parameters for mapping camera RGB to CIE XYZ color space


Adobe's Creative Suite supports CinemaDNG on both Windows and Mac OS platforms since version 4 and the codec (at least for Windows) is available from Adobe's website: http://supportdownloads.adobe.com/product.jsp?product=194&amp;platform=Windows

There are other products out there that process video in CinemaDNG format, some even with GPU (CUDA) support.