Digital technology enables us to be very flexible with how we use our original content. Coverage of a live event can become a training video, a marketing reel and social media posts on YouTube. In order to get the most flexibility, you’re going to want your masters.

The original raw footage off the camera is the master footage. The video and audio are recorded as separate tracks and are the basis of the finished product you’ll receive.  In order to be burned to a DVD or uploaded online, a lot happens to that footage. When all the pieces are laid out to create a great final product, the file is exported onto a DVD, a Blu Ray, or as a web video. However you have requested the file, you will receive it – but there’s a catch. That file is no longer made of separate components. It has been compressed.

Have you ever built a very complicated puzzle and then glued it on a board so that you could hang it as artwork? The compression process effectively glues together all the different pieces that have come together to make a video. The graphics, the audio, the video, they all become solidified into one piece of data.

In the future, you may want to add one new title, or remove one employee interview and add a different interview. You may decide that you want to take just part of the video for a presentation, but without the background music. With the original footage, each of these changes can be made without complications. Every piece of the puzzle is still independent and easily reordered. Making changes to a video that has been compressed, all the pieces glued together, so to speak, can be a little more difficult – especially if you are hoping to make clean cuts.

One solution is to ask for your masters up front, before your video company closes out the project. With the original electronic files, you’ll be keeping your options open to use your digital footage in as many ways as you can think of. Please realize, of course, that creating copies of the master files can be a time consuming project, so make sure to ask about costs involved as well.

Capture Video is dedicated to ensuring their customers get the most out of their investment in video production.