Rather, a mezzanine codec is used as part of the editing and post-production workflow. In this article, we’ll be looking at several codecs for creating mezzanine files, which are not meant for final delivery – they’re much too large. Think of a photocopy of a photocopy…the quality gets progressively worse. They can be re-edited as a last resort when no other source exists, but the results may be poor by the time you get done re-compressing them again. Delivery files are going to be highly compressed to keep the size down, and therefore are not good options for further editing or recompression. A delivery codec would be used to create DVD and Blu-rays discs, or digital files for computer, online, or mobile device viewing. When exporting clips from any video application, there are really two kinds of exports to consider – mezzanine and delivery.
Many codecs are pre-installed with Windows and others may come with your NLE software, and more will be available online for free, while some others may be purchased.
This means that the codec needed to play that clip type is not installed, and also that you would be unable to export video using that particular codec. You’ve probably at one time or another tried to play a video clip, only to get an error message about an “Unsupported Codec”. mov file could be any number of things, such as uncompressed, Apple ProRes, PNG, or some variety of H.264 for instance. mov extension at the end, but the codec inside of that. The container might also be referred to as the format, as in Please submit the footage in a QuickTime format.
A codec is a “coder/decoder” – the specific set of instructions that tell the computer exactly how to encode or decode a video clip. mov – rather, these are containers or wrappers that the codec lives inside of. Since pre-edit transcoding is seldom necessary these days, the focus here will be mezzanine codecs for use during the editing and post-production processes.īefore jumping into the codec options, it’s important to understand the difference between containers and codecs –. This saves both time and precious hard drive space, as mezzanine files are typically several times larger than the originals.
NLE programs like Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014, Grass Valley EDIUS Pro 7, and Sony Vegas Pro 13 are optimized to edit practically any format natively. Most newer PCs having decent specs, such as those with Intel Core i7 processors, should have no problem editing AVCHD and similar sources natively, without having to transcode. Mezzanine codec file sizes fall in between those of the camera source clips and uncompressed video, hence the name. These new clips had far less compression applied, and were therefore easier to decode for playback. In years past, it was often necessary to convert, or transcode, original HD camera video clips into another codec, known as an intermediate or mezzanine, prior to beginning any editing.