Apple codec with four variants — ProRes 422 HQ for grading and VFX, LT for rapid cutting. Lossless quality at manageable file sizes; postproduction standard.
ProRes (Apple ProRes)
Anyone working with high-end footage on set or in post-production will inevitably encounter ProRes. Apple has established a standard with this codec set that intelligently balances storage space and processing speed—and this is no accident. ProRes was originally developed for Final Cut Pro but has long since become the universal editing system codec because the quality is right and the hardware doesn't falter.
The four variants signify different application scenarios. ProRes 422 HQ is the heavyweight solution—you use it when color grading, VFX, or multiple re-renders are planned. It retains maximum information in the image without being uncompressed. ProRes 422 is the midweight, the standard for many productions that need to balance quality preservation with file size. ProRes 422 LT significantly reduces the bitrate—perfect for fast offline edits or when you're recording multiple cameras in parallel and storage space is limited. ProRes 422 Proxy is the lightweight for previews and quick editing decisions without performance loss.
In practice, ProRes's advantage becomes apparent during grading. Unlike more compressed formats like H.264, you have significantly more headroom in the color channels—the so-called 4:2:2 chroma subsampling is preserved, which is crucial for keying or extreme color corrections. Parallel grading with multiple grading software runs smoothly without artifacts creeping in. This does consume storage, but modern SSDs and RAID systems make it manageable.
A common misconception: ProRes is not lossless. It is lossy compressed—but intelligent enough that these losses remain invisible in the image as long as you don't perform excessive intra-frame compression. Cutting ProRes over ProRes multiple times still results in no measurable quality loss. On set, ProRes is less commonly used as a recording codec—most cameras still shoot in their native format (DNxHD, RAW, ARRIRAW). The export to ProRes then happens in post, as a working format for editing and grading. This saves recoding steps and time complexity.
Compatibility is an additional plus: From Resolve to Premiere to Avid—every relevant system understands ProRes natively. No wrapper drama, no failed decodings. For international teams using different software, ProRes is therefore often the pragmatic compromise between quality and portability.