What is a mezzanine file?
A Mezzanine File (also known as the “master format”) is a high-quality and lightly compressed video file. When enlisting Cabanski’s multimedia services, your final delivered revision will be a mezzanine file. Mezzanine files will be quite larger, as they carry complete information and have generation loss resistance, meaning they can be re-encoded multiple times with minimal image degradation, such as for transcoding.
Mezzanine files are not “RAW” video files. As of May 1, 2026, Cabanski does not deliver RAW video files with no exceptions.
Mezzanine files are generally provided to distribution, such as distributing to social media platforms, movie theaters (DCPs using JPEG 2000), or digital broadcasting & streaming services.
Digital broadcasting & streaming services, as well as social media services, will create “transcodes” from the mezzanine file. Transcodes are lower quality versions of your video, which makes content delivery
more cost-effective when considering egress charges
faster to deliver to your viewers, even with slower internet connections, as lower quality transcodes will be available to suit their internet speeds