Raw Footage#
Raw footage, aka “source footage,” is the unprocessed video as it was captured by your camera. These files (if your camera is even capable of giving you them) are going to be EXTREMELY large, difficult to open on your computer, and look pretty bad (at least at first). For instance, the colors in your raw footage won't look good right out of the box, but there will be so much color data stored in the file that you'll be able to have maximum flexibility when color grading later.
For many filmmakers, their gut reaction is to want to shoot raw, but often this isn't actually the most logical course of action. Remember, you're going to have to compress the footage at some point for delivery. Unless you have a specific reason to need raw footage, why not shoot in a high-quality compressed format right from the start to make your whole post-production process easier?
Video Format: Codec#
A codec is what is used to compress and decompress your video file for both playback and storage. There are two main subcategories. First, you have lossless codecs which keep all the information from the source file. However, you’ll more often be dealing with lossy codecs which will help make your file smaller but you will lose some of the original image quality.
Some of the most common codecs you'll see are H.264, H.265, and ProRes.