Mezzanine File

A mezzanine file is a high-bitrate intermediate master that sits between the finished edit and the various final deliverables. It is encoded at high quality, typically with an intra-frame codec like ProRes 422 HQ or DNxHR, so it can be re-transcoded into multiple delivery formats without compounding compression damage. The idea is to render the timeline once to a pristine master, then derive web, broadcast, and archive versions from that single source. Editors and post teams create mezzanines to avoid re-rendering from the full project for every output, to hand a clean master to a distributor or encoding service, and to keep a reliable archival copy. Because it is meant for further encoding, a mezzanine prioritizes quality and headroom over small size, unlike a final delivery file.