What Is Raw Footage? Meaning, Why It Matters as Evidence, and What Editing Removes
Raw footage is video exactly as the camera or screen recorder captured it, before any editing: no cuts, no speed changes, no colour correction, no overlays and no sound added. In a product walkthrough it is the primary record of what happened on screen, including the pauses and the attempts that failed.
What editing removes
- Time: waiting for a job to finish, a reboot, a download.
- Mistakes: the wrong menu, a typo in a command, an error on the first try.
- Context: the version string in the corner, the terminal output scrolling past.
- Order: two takes joined so the second looks like the first.
All four are reasonable cuts for a marketing video and all four are exactly what an evaluator would want to see. That is why the raw recording and the edited video do different jobs.
Raw footage as evidence
A verified walkthrough keeps the raw recording alongside the edited video, with a run log whose timestamps point into it. The edited cut is for watching; the raw file is for checking. When a buyer asks whether the error at 04:12 was staged, the answer is the uncut recording. The Proxmox VE 9.2 install has both.
Raw footage and generated footage
The idea of raw footage only applies to a recording. A generated clip has no raw version, because nothing was captured; the first frame it ever had was the finished one. That is the simplest test for whether a product video can be evidence: ask for the raw footage. What an AI operator is explains why a recorded run can fail and a generated one cannot, and B-roll covers the one place generated footage belongs.
Keeping it
Record to a format that survives a crash, keep the original file untouched with a checksum, and note the product version and date beside it. Storage is cheap; a re-run is not. The brief for a run that keeps its raw file is in brief a walkthrough in one sentence.
Questions
What does raw footage mean?
The recording exactly as captured, with no edits: no cuts, speed changes, corrections, overlays or added sound.
Why keep raw footage of a product demo?
Because it is the only record of what actually happened, including the version on screen, the time steps took and the attempts that failed. The edited video is for watching; the raw file is for checking.
Is a screen recording raw footage?
Yes, until it is edited. The file the recorder writes is raw; the trimmed, zoomed, captioned export is not.
Does AI-generated video have raw footage?
No. Nothing was captured, so there is no original to compare against. Asking for the raw footage is a quick way to tell a recording from a generation.
See one, with its run log and the attempts that failed.
$ cd /library →