ABSTRACT
VIDEO FILE FORMATS Video can be defined by its compression format, resolution, aspect ratio, color depth, the type of “wrapper” or other criteria. For example we might refer to a clip as “4K video” or “ProRes” or “a 10-bit file.” In the end, all of these are important, and people tend to talk about the video in terms that are important to what they are doing with it. For example, a cinematographer or DIT might refer to a video file as variously “24P,” “anamorphic,” .r3d or “RAW” video — even though all of these are the same video clip; the DIT might refer to it as 4:4:4, while the editor might talk about the same clip as ProRes video and the colorist might refer to it as “12-bit.” Everybody is talking about the same piece of video; they are just referring to dierent attributes of the same shot. To the director reviewing dailies at night; it might matter whether it is a Quicktime .mov file or an MKV file — but probably only in regard to whether their device (computer, iPad, etc.) can play it back.
