H.264

What this is about

H.264 owes its reach to hardware support: browsers, phones, televisions and edit systems all decode it. It reaches small files by storing only the differences between frames within a group, which is exactly what makes it awkward to cut — the machine has to rebuild frames before it can show them. As a review copy, a client link or a web master it is the default answer. As an acquisition format on a long project it turns every scrub into a wait, which is why proxies exist.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Long-GOP structure keeps files small but makes scrubbing and frame-accurate trimming slow
• The safe format for review links, client copies and web masters on any device
• Recording H.264 is fine for short jobs; on long ones, transcode to an intermediate first

With TillyGen

Review rounds in TillyGen run on a light viewing copy, so feedback arrives without anyone downloading a master or waiting on a large file.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.