TL;DR
- The file you approve is a delivery copy, not the project. Behind it sit a master, the raw footage, the edit project, and the paperwork that makes the music and faces in it legal.
- Ask for the things you can actually use later — master, captions, licence records, a version without text on screen. Raw footage and project files are heavy, and often unopenable without the same software the editor used.
- The question that decides everything is not "who owns it" but "who still has it, and for how long" — archives cost money to keep, so someone has to be paying for that storage.
- You find out whether the handover was done properly on the day you change studios or want a small edit two years later — not on delivery day.
- A one-page checklist run at sign-off costs nothing and removes almost all of this risk. Doing it eighteen months later is archaeology.
You approve the cut, the invoice closes, the file goes up on the website. As far as most people are concerned, the project is finished and the deliverable is that one video.
It is finished. But that file is one item out of several that now exist, and the others quietly determine what you can and can't do with this video for the rest of its life — whether you can add Bahasa subtitles next quarter, cut a fifteen-second version for a campaign, swap out a product shot after a redesign, or hand the whole thing to a different studio without starting again.
None of that is urgent on delivery day. That is exactly why it gets skipped.
The delivered MP4 is one file out of several
Here is what typically exists at the end of a corporate video project, in rough order of size:
The delivery file. The MP4 you were sent. Compressed for the place it's going — a website, a social platform, a presentation. This is a copy made for one destination, not the original.
The master. A much larger, much higher-quality export, kept so future versions can be made without stacking compression on compression. Every time you re-export from a compressed file, quality drops a little; do it three times and it shows. Masters are usually in a mastering codec — ProRes and DNxHR are the common ones — and a two-minute master can be tens of gigabytes.
The raw footage. Everything the cameras recorded, including all the takes that never made it in. This is by far the largest thing in the project, and for most corporate shoots it is measured in hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes.
The edit project. The editor's working file — the timeline, the cuts, the grade, the graphics, the audio mix. Critically, this is not a video. It is a list of instructions pointing at media that lives somewhere else.
The supporting documents. Music licence, talent release forms, any stock footage or font licences, and the caption or subtitle file if there is one. Small files. Disproportionately important.
What each kind is actually for
The reason to separate them is that they answer different future questions.
If you want to upload the same video somewhere new, you need a delivery file, and possibly a new export at different dimensions. Cheap, fast.
If you want a shorter cut, a different language, or a clean version without the text on screen, you need either the master or the project — and it matters a great deal which. From the master you can trim and re-export. To move a caption, change a graphic, or replace one shot, you need the project and the media it points to.
If someone asks "are we allowed to still be running this?" — a compliance question, a tender question, or a nervous legal review — you need the licence and release documents. Nothing else will answer it.
If you want to use a shot that never made the final cut, only the raw footage will do.
The pattern is that most realistic future requests are served by the master, the captions and the paperwork. Those are also the smallest and cheapest things to keep.
What's worth asking for — and what you couldn't open anyway
There is a version of this conversation where a client asks for "everything", receives a hard drive, and is no better off than before. It happens often enough to be worth naming.
An edit project file handed to a client with no editing software is inert. Even with the software, it expects the same application, usually a compatible version, the media in the place it expects to find it, and any fonts, plugins or colour tools that were used. Miss one and it opens with red offline media where the video should be.
That doesn't make it worthless. It makes it a professional-to-professional item. Handed to your next studio along with the media, it can save real money. Handed to you alone, it is a file you'll never open.
So a sensible ask, in order:
- The master. Almost always worth having.
- Delivery versions for the places you actually publish.
- Caption/subtitle file as a separate
.srtor similar, not only burned into the picture — because a separate file can be edited, translated and re-used, and burned-in text cannot. - A clean version with no text on screen, if graphics or lower-thirds were used. This one is easy to produce at the time and expensive to reconstruct later.
- Licence and release documents.
- Raw footage and project files — only with a plan for where they'll live and who can use them.
What we hand over, and what we don't
It would be unhelpful to write all of the above and then stay vague about our own practice. So, plainly — other studios work differently, and the point is less that you should copy this than that you should be able to get an answer this specific from whoever you hire.
By default, you get the finished film as an MP4, delivered over Google Drive. That is what the project is quoted around, and for most clients it is genuinely all they ever need.
Raw footage. The practical moment to take it is the shoot day itself: bring a drive, and it gets copied on site before anyone packs up. Ask later and we can still do it — we don't charge for the footage — but you arrange the drive and cover what it costs to get it to you, courier included. What we won't do is send it over the cloud. A shoot's raw material runs into hundreds of gigabytes, and cloud transfer at that size is a slow, fragile way to move something a hard drive moves across town in an afternoon.
Project files are not included, and that is deliberate rather than protective. We cut in Adobe Premiere Pro and build motion and effects in After Effects; TVC colour work goes through DaVinci Resolve. An editor, a VFX artist and a colourist each build a timeline the way their own hands work — folder structures, naming, precomps, node trees, a hundred private habits. Handed over untouched, that isn't a document another studio can pick up. It's someone's workspace.
Making it genuinely usable by a stranger means consolidating the media, tidying the structure and documenting what's where, which is real work rather than a copy-paste. We charge RM1,000 per project file to prepare one for handover.
The distinction worth keeping hold of: that fee isn't for the file. It's for making the file mean something to someone who wasn't in the room.
Where it lives, for how long, and who pays for that
This is the part that gets assumed instead of agreed.
Archives are not free. Terabytes of raw footage sit on drives that fail, on cloud storage that bills monthly, or on shelves in an office. Somebody is carrying that cost, and if nobody has said out loud who, the honest default is that it will not be carried forever.
The failure mode is unglamorous and extremely common: nobody set a retention period, a drive was cleared during a routine cleanup, and the question surfaced eighteen months later when someone wanted one extra shot. No rule was broken. There was simply never an agreement.
Three questions settle it, and they take about two minutes at sign-off:
- How long is the material kept? A number, written down.
- Where? On the studio's storage, on a drive delivered to you, or both.
- What happens at the end of that period — deleted, or a reminder sent asking whether you want to extend or take delivery?
Ours, in numbers
We hold raw footage for 90 days after delivery, then clear it. That sits in our invoice terms, so it isn't a surprise — but terms get skimmed, which is exactly why it's also here.
Ninety days covers the ordinary aftermath of a project: the extra cut nobody planned for, the platform that changed its aspect ratio, the stakeholder who surfaces late with one good note. It is not an archive, and it was never meant to be one.
If you want the material held longer than that, we host it at RM500 per year for 4TB. It's charged because it's a running cost, not because it's a product.
Has anyone ever come back long afterwards? Yes — and it has never once turned into a dispute, because the answer was already agreed before it was needed. In practice almost nobody pays to have footage held, so when someone returns a year later we tell them it was deleted, and that is the end of the conversation. Nobody has been surprised.
That is the whole value of writing it down. Not that the answer is generous — ours isn't especially — but that it is known in advance by both sides.
The day you change studios
Every handover question above is theoretical until the day you work with someone else. Then it becomes concrete very quickly.
A new studio picking up an existing video can do three quite different things depending on what they receive:
- With only a delivery file: they can trim it, and that's roughly it. Any real change means remaking the video.
- With the master and the clean no-text version: they can produce new cuts, new lengths, new formats, and add or change on-screen text. This covers most of what people actually want.
- With the project and the media: they can genuinely edit — replace shots, adjust the grade, fix the mix.
Notice that the middle option covers the majority of real requests, and it is also the cheapest to arrange. You do not need to negotiate custody of a terabyte to protect your future options. You need a master and a clean version.
The other half of a change of studio is permission rather than files. If the music licence was bought for a defined term or a defined use, a new cut for a new campaign may sit outside it. That is a document question, and it is why the small files matter more than their size suggests.
A handover checklist to run at sign-off
Run this in the same conversation where you approve the final cut, while everyone still has the project open and cares about it.
- Master file received, and I can confirm it plays
- Delivery versions for each place we publish
- Clean version with no on-screen text (if graphics were used)
- Caption/subtitle file as a separate file
- Music licence: what's covered, and until when
- Talent releases for everyone identifiable on camera
- Raw footage and project files: kept by whom, for how long, and who to ask
- A named contact to ask about any of the above in two years' time
The last line is not a joke. Studios change staff; so do clients. "Ask Ahmad" stops working when Ahmad leaves. A written note in the project folder outlives both of you.
When a single MP4 genuinely is enough
Not every project needs this treatment, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of waste.
A short social piece with a two-week life, no on-screen text, licensed library music and no identifiable faces does not need an archive plan. Neither does anything you already know is one-use — an event recap, a seasonal greeting, a piece tied to a campaign that ends.
The judgement is simple: is there a realistic version of the next twelve months where someone asks for a change to this video? If yes, spend the two minutes. If genuinely no, take the file and move on.
Not a claim on anyone's archive
This is a guide to asking the right questions at the right moment, not a statement about who owns what. Ownership of footage, of the edit, and of the rights to use the people and music in it is set by your agreement with the studio, and it varies. Nothing here overrides what you signed, and nothing here is legal advice.
What it will do is stop the specific, avoidable situation where the material still exists, everyone is willing, and the only reason you can't make the change you want is that nobody wrote down where things went.
Thinking about a project like this?
Tell us what it needs to do — we'll take it from there.
Frequently asked questions
- What files should I ask for at the end of a video project?
- At minimum: the master file (the highest-quality export), the delivery versions you'll actually upload, a caption or subtitle file if the video has text, and the paperwork covering music and anyone appearing on camera. Those four cover almost every future need without asking anyone to hand over hundreds of gigabytes. Raw footage and edit project files are a separate conversation, because they are large, and because having them is not the same as being able to use them.
- Do I own the raw footage from my video shoot?
- Ownership and possession are different questions, and the answer to ownership lives in your agreement rather than in any general rule. Even where a client owns the material outright, the studio usually still holds the only copy, because raw footage is far too large to hand over casually. The practical move is to settle both at the start: what you own, and whether a copy is delivered, archived, or deleted after a set period. If you do want a copy, the cheapest moment by far is the shoot day itself: bring a drive and have it copied on site before the crew packs up.
- Why can't I just open the editor's project file myself?
- A project file is a set of instructions, not a video. It points at media on a specific drive and expects the same editing software — Premiere Pro, After Effects or DaVinci Resolve, in our case — often the same version, plus any fonts, plugins and colour work used. Opened without those, it either fails or opens with most of the timeline missing. It is genuinely useful when handed to another professional together with the media, and close to useless on its own.
- How long should a studio keep my footage?
- There is no universal answer, because storage is a running cost someone has to carry. For reference, we hold raw footage for 90 days after delivery and then clear it, with longer-term hosting available as a paid service. What matters is that the period is written down and known to both sides, rather than assumed. The failure everyone regrets is the quiet one: nobody agreed on a retention period, the drive was cleared during a normal cleanup, and the question only surfaced two years later.
Keep reading
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