Student Handbook

House Codec

Last Updated:August 29, 2019
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CalArts School of Film/Video has a “House Codec” to use for ingest or output when applicable:

Mastering Codec: ProRes 4444 XQ

This codec should be used for the final master of your project. This is your “digital negative” and archive. This file type is often too robust to use as a screening format so it is necessary to make additional screening versions with a different codec.

Screening/Delivery Codec:

ProRes 422(HQ)

Standard codec for screening in classrooms, Bijou Festival, Showcase, etc.

Resolutions:

HD/UHD (1920×1080 or 3840×2160)

Full/DCI (2048×1080 or 4096×2160)

Scope (2048×858 or 4096×1716)

Frame rates: 24fps (preferred) or 23.98

Audio: 5.1 or stereo channel, 48kHz, 24-bit

Containers:

Our currently chosen container for digital video files is .MOV

Our currently chosen file type for digital audio is .WAV

For transferring audio files to FVSound, our adopted file interchange format is .AAF or, if unavailable, .OMF

All Avid produced .MXF files should be converted on output to .MOV QTs