Compressed vs. Uncompressed Media

fundamental strategic decision in post-production workflow concerning the trade-off between image fidelity and data overhead. Uncompressed or lightly compressed camera-original media (e.g., RAW files) offers maximum quality for color and VFX but requires massive storage and processing power. Heavily compressed media (e.g., H.264 proxies) is lightweight and nimble for editing but sacrifices quality, necessitating a final conform back to the source material. Early non-linear editing systems relied heavily on compression codecs like Cinepak to function on the desktop computers of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The processing power and storage were insufficient for uncompressed video, making effective compression the key enabling technology for the entire NLE revolution. The rise of desktop nonlinear editing in the early 1990s was fundamentally dependent on compression, as the limited bandwidth and storage of personal computers were insufficient to handle uncompressed video. This technical necessity drove the development and adoption of early codecs and shaped the offline/online workflow.