Digital Intermediates for Film and Video

5

Acquisition

Any digital intermediate process begins with the acquisition of media (sometimes referred to as the “ingest” of media). In many cases, the digital intermediate process is the final stage of a production, following shooting and editing. In these cases, the type of media required can be worked out before the digital intermediate process begins. Typically, there is footage for the final cut and there can also be audio and textual elements, such as titles and dialog. The focus of the majority of this book will be on the visual component of the digital intermediate, because the audio is almost always mastered independently and added separately at the end.

5.1 Crunching Numbers

Computers don’t understand analog information (which includes ...