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What are Video Proxies?

Video proxies are lower-resolution or lower-bitrate copies linked to high-quality source media. They add derivative storage but reduce transfer, decoding, and active working-set demands during editing or review while retaining a path to the originals.

How Video Proxies work

Proxy generation transcodes camera masters into edit-friendly media while preserving identifiers that an editor can use for conforming. Resolution, bitrate, codec, and sometimes color treatment are simplified, but frame rate, duration, timecode, and audio layout should remain consistent with the source. Editors cut against these lightweight files, then the conform stage replaces them with camera originals before grading, mastering, and final encoding.

Key facts

  1. An intraframe proxy codec can make frame-by-frame navigation more responsive than a highly compressed interframe delivery codec, even when the proxy file is not especially small.
  2. Reliable relinking commonly depends on stable file or asset identifiers plus matching timecode, reel information, frame rate, and clip duration; filenames alone are fragile keys.
  3. A proxy with shifted start timecode, altered audio channels, or a different frame cadence can produce incorrect edits or sync when the sequence is conformed to source media.

When Video Proxies matter

Proxies can make remote editing and browser review practical when source files are large or computationally demanding. The workflow must reliably relink to the originals before final rendering or export.

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