# Scoring To Picture — What's the standard for quality of video file to work with from director?



## ryanstrong (Feb 1, 2016)

I'm sure it's different across the board from 4k to 480p, but I am curious what the standard is in Hollywood that most directors would send to a composer?

Obviously you want to work off of a video quality that is inspiring but then I'm sure you will need to consider CPU efficiency as well.

What do you all like to work with?


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## pkm (Feb 1, 2016)

I don't know if it's the norm but I get 1280x720 almost every time.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 1, 2016)

Lately it's been 1920 x 1080 files in h.264 format in a QuickTime container.


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## afterlight82 (Feb 1, 2016)

Same as above which works great, but did do one movie last year with DNxHD in quicktime containers, and provided the picture was on a fast drive it was actually very nice indeed to look at really top quality footage. Always watermarked though, with 2 pops and leaders. I've generally just asked for the same reels that go to sound, figuring that if it's good enough to do dialogue sync and ADR, it's good enough to write to.

I have found some directors get...weird...with bad picture quality when reviewing music, including one director who practically refused to look at anything other than pretty much the same quality as the edit bay.


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## Dean (Feb 2, 2016)

Med quality QT movs are absolutely fine for scoring,if youre talking movies its always handy to work in reels (5 reels more or less) about 1GB or less in size.I find this a much easier way to work.Also makes life easier to work with smaller files when youre rendering out and uploading countless versions of scenes and cues for approval/revisions etc. D


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## cc64 (Feb 2, 2016)

Dean said:


> Med quality QT movs are absolutely fine for scoring,if youre talking movies its always handy to work in reels (5 reels more or less) about 1GB or less in size.I find this a much easier way to work.Also makes life easier to work with smaller files when youre rendering out and uploading countless versions of scenes and cues for approval/revisions etc. D



What Dean says is so true about the advantages of working with smaller resolutions. I did a movie 2 years ago that was done for a National Provincial park here in Canada, it was 20 minutes of breath-taking shots of glaciers in the Rocky mountains, there was no dialogs just music telling a story so i tought of asking for a ProRes version for inspiration, the file ended-up weighing something like 32 gigs for 20 minutes...Rendering my scenes for approvals was a nightmare, ended up with 4 gigabyte files for a 3 minute scene so each time i had to compress to h264 to be able to send these files and it took an eternity in QuickTime Pro. Long story short i decided to make myself a LoRes version for day-to-day work and used the Full Res version when the filmmakers where in my studio. 

Claude


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## Vin (Feb 2, 2016)

Medium quality .mov or .mp4 with TC baked in here.


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## cc64 (Feb 3, 2016)

Weird coincidence, a few hours after i posted, the assistant editor on a series i'm working on sent me an episode in ProRes 422. It had been 2 years since i saw one of those, it was super heavy, cost me a lot of bandwidth (i don't have the unlimited data plan) plus it made my freshly installed DP 9.02 crash every 10 minutes for some reason. I converted it to H264 and everything works as expected now...

YMMV

Claude


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## afterlight82 (Feb 4, 2016)

Interesting...ProRes in PT on its own drive on a fast mac was pretty solid. And very pretty to look at too. That said, the computer was doing nothing else other than that and one track of audio (dialogue/fx)...


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## Rob Elliott (Feb 4, 2016)

Throw up 1920 x 1080 files in h.264 format to a 70" screen and I have never had an issue with 'looks like crapola' from Directors. Daw seems to also play well with this resolution.


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## geoffreyvernon (Feb 11, 2016)

I request 1920x1080 when I'm scoring to picture. I don't have any CPU issues, because I use a separate computer running Pro Tools for the video. If 1920x1080 is too resource intensive for you request 1280x720. That's also a great quality format


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