Intra-only coding is the video encoding mode where every frame is an I-frame — coded entirely from its own pixels, with no reference to any other frame. The opposite is the normal hybrid coding of delivery codecs (H.264, HEVC, AV1), which uses inter-prediction (P-frames and B-frames) to compress dramatically. By forbidding inter-prediction, intra-only coding gives up most of video compression's efficiency — files are typically 4–10× larger than the same content with inter-prediction — but gains two critical properties for production work.
Property one: every frame is independently editable. Cut a scene anywhere, splice it anywhere, fade in or out from any single frame — no need to wait for the next keyframe, no risk of corruption from missing reference frames. Property two: random access is trivial. Scrub frame-by-frame in an editor with zero latency. Both properties matter enormously in production pipelines where editors and colourists are interacting with footage rapidly. They're irrelevant in delivery, where viewers stream forward and only seek occasionally.
For a product team, intra-only is the production-format pattern, not a delivery choice. Production codecs that are intra-only: ProRes (Apple), DNxHR/DNxHD (Avid), FFV1 (open archival), AVC-Intra, JPEG2000, and the highest tiers of HEVC and AV1 (used in some niche applications). Delivery codecs are virtually all inter-frame. The standard pipeline: receive intra-only master from production (ProRes/DNxHR/FFV1), transcode to inter-frame delivery codecs (H.264/HEVC/AV1) for streaming, keep the intra-only master in archival storage. If a streaming product is producing its own content, the master is intra-only; what reaches viewers is not.
