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Detailed Production Workflow

Generalized production workflow from pre-production planning through photography, visual effects, post-production mastering, deliverables, distribution, and preservationPre-production planning feeds production. Photography and visual effects elements move through editorial, VFX production, the digital intermediate, titles, and mastering. Deliverables then move into exhibition, distribution, and preservation.PRE-PRODUCTIONPRODUCTIONPOST-PRODUCTIONDELIVERABLESDISTRIBUTIONCreative +Technical PlanCamera, Lens+ Look TestsWorkflow +Round-Trip TestsNaming, Data +Handoff SpecsPrincipal PhotographyVFX UnitPlates + ElementsDailiesEditorialDigital IntermediateVFX ProductionTitles + GraphicsMasteringDCPFilm OutVideo MastersArchive PackageTheatrical + FestivalsStreaming + BroadcastArchive + Preservation

Pre-production defines the workflow. Photography and VFX elements move through editorial, VFX production, the DI, titles, and mastering before deliverables move to exhibition, distribution, and preservation.

This chapter expands the Production Workflow at a Glance. Use it when building the show workflow or supervising a handoff. Directors and producers do not need to execute every technical operation. They do need a named specialist to own it, a written specification, and a test proving that it works.

Pre-Production

Pre-production is not previs. It turns creative intent into a tested production and post-production plan. Production, editorial, VFX, dailies, color, sound, and the DI must agree on how images, sound, metadata, and approvals will move between them before photography begins.

Define the Workflow

Document the decisions that every department and vendor must follow:

  • Ownership: pipeline owner, handoff owners, contacts, approval authority, and escalation path.
  • Acquisition: cameras, recording formats, frame rate, timecode, raster, framing, audio, and required camera and lens metadata.
  • Data management: folder structure, file and shot naming, versioning, checksums, backups, transfer methods, security, and retention.
  • Dailies and editorial: proxy format, sync method, burn-ins, color metadata, review system, and the metadata required to relink camera originals.
  • VFX: bid and turnover process, plate and final-render specifications, handles, mattes, references, review media, version tracking, and delivery schedule.
  • Finishing: editorial turnover, conform method, titles, audio references, color pipeline, masters, distribution deliverables, and archive.

Publish these decisions as one show specification and one vendor-onboarding package. Use a shared tracking system so production can locate the current asset, version, owner, and approval state without reconstructing the history from email.

For every handoff, define who publishes the material, where it goes, how the recipient confirms receipt and QC, when it is due, and how missing or rejected material is corrected. The tool can vary. Use the same documented process throughout the production.

Start with the Production Checklists, Technical Specifications, and Reusable Production Templates.

Develop the Look and Vet the Color Pipeline

Include the colorist in camera, lens, lighting, wardrobe, makeup, and production-design tests. Use those tests to develop the show look with the director and cinematographer, establish exposure and monitoring practices, and identify where the intended look creates limits for VFX or delivery.

Document each camera input transform, working space, viewing transform, Show LUT or creative transform, and target display. Distribute the same versioned package to dailies, editorial, VFX, and finishing.

Prove the pipeline with a round trip:

  1. Shoot representative material with every camera and recording mode.
  2. Process dailies and editorial proxies with the approved look and metadata.
  3. Pull a VFX plate using the production specification.
  4. Return a test composite through the approved interchange encoding.
  5. Conform and grade the returned shot in the DI.
  6. Compare it with the source outside the composited region and review it on the target display.

Resolve mismatches before production. A visually plausible test is not enough. The round trip must preserve framing, frame range, metadata, dynamic range, gamut, and unaffected pixels.

Plan Lenses and VFX Data Capture

During camera prep, the DP and VFX supervisor should review how the proposed lenses affect VFX. Photograph distortion grids and lens charts for every production lens. Repeat the tests at the focus and zoom settings that materially change the lens.

Decide whether VFX plates and elements should use the principal-photography lenses. Green-screen elements may be easier to extract and track when photographed with cleaner, less distorted spherical lenses instead of vintage or anamorphic glass. The DP and VFX supervisor should make that choice together, balancing the VFX requirements against the intended look.

Test the lens-metadata path during prep. Systems such as Cooke /i Technology, ARRI Lens Data System (LDS), and ZEISS eXtended Data can record lens identification, focal length, focus, iris, distortion, shading, and other measurements. Some cameras and lenses also record inertial data. Confirm that the camera records the required fields, that dailies and VFX plate pulls preserve or export them, and that the receiving vendor can read them. Automated metadata supports the VFX camera report. It does not replace it.

Previsualization

Previsualization (previs) is a separate creative-planning tool. Use it to test complex blocking, staging, camera movement, lenses, equipment, coverage, and pacing. It complements storyboards. It does not replace workflow planning.

If a full previs team is outside the budget, assign a freelance artist to the shots with the greatest technical or scheduling risk.

Production / Acquisition

Camera and Workflow

Choose a camera that records high-dynamic-range, scene-referred images in a documented gamut and transfer function. The label (cinema, mirrorless, drone, or action camera) matters less than what the file preserves and whether post can build a correct input transform.

Scene-referred recording either manifests itself as a recorded logarithmic (log) raster image, a scene-linear raster image, or a Camera RAW file. These topics are explored further in An Overview of Digital Intermediates.

On-Set Visual Effects

Poor plates increase cost, schedule, and risk. Put the VFX supervisor on set for VFX photography, ideally the same person who will supervise post. If unavailable, assign a trusted senior artist or another supervisor.

The on-set supervisor coordinates with the director, DP and camera department, production design, and practical effects. They decide what to capture practically, flag conditions that complicate post, and collect the measurements and references artists will need.

The VFX team owns the VFX camera report. It records the information a matchmove artist needs, including camera height and tilt, lens and filtration, focus distance, sensor mode, and survey data. The AC's report covers camera-department information for editorial and the lab. It is not a substitute for the VFX report.

See Lens distortion grids and camera metadata.

Common Visual Effects Production Mistakes

Do not assume a difficult setup will be easy to fix later. Have the supervisor document each risk and solve it in camera where practical. For example, production design can incorporate trackable patterns into a set instead of adding markers that must later be removed.

Frame Rate: 23.976 or 24.000

Choose the rate before photography and use it across camera, sound, editorial, VFX, and finishing. 23.976 and 24.000 are both normal. Mixing them creates progressive picture and sound drift.

Why both exist. 24.000 is true 24 frames per second. 23.976 is 24000 ÷ 1001 and exists due to legacy broadcast compatibility with interlaced 29.97. It uses 24-frame counting and is not a drop-frame timecode rate.1

Modern displays are not region-locked by mains frequency. Current TVs commonly play 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, and 60 fps regardless of whether the local power system is 50 or 60 Hz. Display capability is not a good reason to choose between 23.976 and 24.000.

Broadcast is the important exception. Existing broadcast plants, schedules, and delivery systems often require a specific rate. Streaming apps do not have the same infrastructure constraint, and there is little legitimate technical reason they cannot support both 23.976 and 24.000. Delivery specifications can still impose business or workflow requirements, so confirm them before production.

Scanning or telecining film at the agreed frame rate is not a problem. Re-clocking a progressive master between 23.976 and 24.000 also preserves every frame. Avoid conversions that blend, interpolate, drop, or repeat frames. Avoid delivering 2:3 pulldown as if it were a native progressive master. Those are the damaging conversions that specifications reject.

What a mismatch costs. Run material at the wrong one of these two rates and nothing drops or repeats. Each frame stays on screen for slightly the wrong duration, so the error accumulates:

Elapsed Drift
1 minute ~1.44 frames
42 seconds ~1 frame
1 hour 3.6 seconds (~86 frames)
90 minutes ~5.4 seconds
120 minutes ~7.2 seconds

The signature is progressive drift, not a fixed offset. Everything lines up at the head and degrades from there. If each reel is head-synced separately, the drift resets at every reel head and then climbs again.

Sound is where a mismatch becomes obvious. At 48 kHz, one 23.976 frame is exactly 2002 samples. One 24.000 frame is exactly 2000 samples. Production recorders can record at 48048 Hz so the file plays at the intended speed when a 48000 Hz clock reads it. Recorder labels and NLE behavior vary.

Specify the operation

Pull-up and pull-down can describe the sample rate, playback speed, or other unrelated processes. Write the actual instruction: "Record at 48048 and stamp it 48000," or "Slow the audio by 1000/1001."

A DCP cannot be 23.976. Digital cinema uses integer frame rates. A 23.976 finish destined for theatrical must be conformed to 24.000.2 The picture keeps the same frames and plays them 0.1% faster. Every audio element must change speed to match.

The frame-rate decision. Converting a finished master between the two rates is routine. Fixing mismatched camera and sound rates is not.

Choosing the Rate

Converting between 23.976 and 24.000 is a small speed change. The frame count stays the same. Choose the rate that avoids conversion on the primary delivery:

Leaning Finish at Why
Independent VOD/TVOD is the realistic destination 23.976 Common in independent distribution schedules. Confirm the actual platform specification.
Theatrical or festival exhibition is the priority 24.000 23.976 is not a legal DCP rate, so a DCP always forces the conform. Festival acceptances arrive late and their deadlines are short.
Broadcast is primary The broadcaster's required rate Broadcast infrastructure creates real regional and technical limits. Get the specification before photography.

Consistency matters more than the choice. A show shot consistently at either rate is fine. Re-clocking a finished master is routine. Mismatched camera and sound rates create a sync problem that compounds through every reel.

Pick one number, put it in both departments' paperwork before you shoot, and do not change it mid-production.

Digital Dailies

On a studio production, a DIT or digital loader ingests and verifies the camera originals, creates the required backups, and sends a copy to dailies. The dailies colorist or technician syncs sound, applies the approved look, and renders editorial proxies with the source metadata required for relinking. The framing chart defines raster and masking. Unmatted proxies preserve editorial reframing room.

Independent productions often combine these jobs. One DIT or loader may also sync and process dailies, or editorial may take over after the camera originals are secured.

The colour pipeline from set to editorial. On-set grading reaches dailies as CDL values, so the decision made in pre-production has to hold all the way along.

Dailies Must Execute the Pre-Production Color Decision

Dailies is the first production use of the approved color pipeline, not the place to invent it. The dailies team applies the documented camera input, color metadata, Show LUT or creative transform, and viewing transform when producing editorial and review media.

On an ACES show, dailies applies the specified Input Transform for each camera and the approved Output Transform for viewing. Every vendor must use the same configuration and version.

Choosing ACES, RCM, TCS, or a manual pipeline affects the entire post chain. Changing course after dailies begins means re-deriving looks, re-issuing plates, and re-testing vendor round trips. The colorist, cinematographer, VFX supervisor, dailies team, and post supervisor must approve the pipeline before the first day's material is processed.

ACES, RCM, TCS, and manual pipelines can all work. Document the choice and match the approved pre-production test. See Assigning and Approving Color Management.

Editorial proxies are commonly Avid DNx LB QuickTimes or MXFs, or Apple ProRes QuickTimes. Review copies may be H.264 with synced audio and burn-ins. Use a secure review system such as Autodesk Flow Capture, CLEAR, PIX, or Frame.io when the material or client requires controlled access and frame-accurate notes. Vimeo and Dropbox can distribute files, but they do not provide the same shot-review controls.

DaVinci Resolve can cover camera RAW processing, sound sync, dailies color, LUT application, metadata burn-ins, and proxy transcoding when one person handles several dailies tasks.

Creative Editorial

Studio editorial often works on set or nearby, assembling scenes as dailies arrive. Early cuts let the director and VFX supervisor judge timing, select plates, and identify fixes that can still be photographed during production. Keep the VFX shot list current as editorial adds, removes, or changes shots.

Temporary graphics, slap comps, and previs help editorial test timing and communicate work that will be finished later. A VFX editor normally manages these on a studio show. On a smaller production, the picture editor or assistant may take that role.

Editorial may also create morphs, split screens, and rough composites to solve performance or coverage problems. Involve the VFX supervisor before treating an editorial effect as final. The offline effect communicates intent and may not be suitable for finishing.

Visual Effects Plate Pulls

Once a sequence edit is locked, or very close to locked, the editorial team will produce a pull list of the visual effects shot elements so that they can be prepared and delivered to the vendors or artists who will be working on them. This list is often as simple as an EDL or XML of just the necessary visual effects shots, excluding any non-VFX footage. This list also correlates the original camera shot names with their intended VFX shot names.

Do not give artists the camera originals and expect each vendor to reproduce the plate pull. Production or one designated facility should generate every plate from the approved specification.

Pulls include handles, which are extra frames at the head and tail of the cut. This gives the visual effects artists the frames they need plus margin in case the edit is creatively rolled once the shots are complete.

Specify plate handles and comp handles separately. Pull plates with 16 to 32 frames at the head and tail. Re-pulling a plate months later costs far more than pulling extra frames now. Delivered composites usually carry 8 frames head and tail. The VES Handbook's rule of thumb is a minimum of 8 at each end. Facility specs commonly ask for 32 on plates and 8 on returned comps.3 The exact counts are a per-show agreement between production and the vendors, because every handle frame is also a frame the artists must finish and the production must pay for.

Visual effects plate pulls are commonly produced as image sequences (DPX or EXR), where each frame is an individual file rather than a single movie container. This is a common practice in visual effects and is highly recommended.

Debayer camera RAW once with the approved resolution, color encoding, and debayer settings. Deliver scene-referred image sequences that preserve the source range and gamut. A standard plate format keeps results consistent across cameras and applications. It also avoids repeated debayering and differences between RAW implementations.

In studio productions, plate pulls are often handled by the digital intermediate vendor, as they have intimate knowledge and experience working with Camera RAW formats and color-managed workflows. At the independent production level, involving the colorist, or someone else with digital intermediate experience, is advisable. This can be someone like a DIT or a very technically savvy editor. When in doubt, consult with a post-production vendor or the final colorist to make sure you are following the correct procedures.

Codex Backbone and Technicolor PULSE once automated asset management, plate pulls, and vendor turnovers, but both have left the market. Current media-management and production-tracking platforms serve the same need.

Visual Effects Plate Pre-Grading (Optional)

Some studio productions pre-grade VFX plates before turnover. The colorist develops an approximate shot grade with the director, cinematographer, and VFX team so vendors can review their work near the intended final appearance.

Use pre-grading when the intended grade affects CGI lighting or rendering. A day-for-night look, for example, should inform the CG lighting.

These grades usually use the ten ASC Color Decision List values: slope, offset, power, and saturation.4 These controls are analogous to, but not identical with, lift, gamma, and gain. Apply them to the scene-referred plate under the display-referred Show LUT.

Deliver the unaltered plate and the CDL as metadata in an EDL, ALE, CC, or CCC file. This lets VFX preview the pre-grade without baking color changes into the image.

If production supplies a baked pre-grade, also supply the ungraded plate. A baked grade may remove detail needed for tracking or weaken green- and blue-screen separation.

Deliver the ungraded plate, shot CDL, and Show LUT together. Vendors apply the CDL and Show LUT for viewing, then render the final shot without either baked in. Product colors, day-for-night work, and established character palettes especially benefit from this preview.

CDL grading operations are applied prior to the viewing transformUngraded Log Plate to ASC CDL to Show LUT to Rec.709 Preview.SourceUngraded Log PlatePrimary correctionASC CDLDisplay transformShow LUTDisplay reference transformViewing outputRec.709 PreviewSignal flow

Figure 1: CDL grading operations are applied prior to the viewing transform. Ungraded log plate → ASC CDL → Show LUT (display reference transform) → Rec.709 preview.

Bake the grade and Show LUT into editorial reference QuickTimes to match dailies. Do not include them in the final VFX render. The colorist applies those operations in the DI.

Visual Effects Production

VFX production may involve one generalist or several specialized departments across multiple vendors. The VFX producer and coordinators track plates, assignments, versions, reviews, approvals, and delivery dates. On a small production, the supervisor or editor may also own this work.

Use a shared spreadsheet for a small shot count. Use ftrack Studio, Autodesk Flow Production Tracking, Kitsu, or AYON when the show needs a shot database, review integration, or pipeline automation. In either case, maintain one current record for every shot. See Visual Effects Production Management.

Zero Net Change

Unaffected pixels must survive the round trip.

Any original plate retained in the final comp must return unchanged. An unintended color shift, clipped value, resampling artifact, or encoding change is a pipeline failure.

VFX may transform camera-log plates into scene-linear or another compositing space. That transform is temporary. Return the final render to the agreed encoding without clamping, quantization, or unintended changes to gamut, tone, or detail.

Prove zero net change before production work begins:

  1. Pass representative plates through the complete vendor pipeline with no effect, returning the agreed final-render format and encoding.
  2. Difference the return against the source. Matching formats should difference to zero. If formats differ, compare them in a common high-precision state against an agreed tolerance.
  3. Fix every unexplained difference before approving the pipeline.

Include this zero-effect round trip in every vendor confidence package. Repeat it after any color-management, application, codec, or configuration change.

Visual Effects Editorial

Vendors send review QuickTimes with the temporary grade and Show LUT baked in. Editorial cuts these into the timeline to review content and design in sequence context. Name them and embed timecode so they match the full-quality scene-referred renders delivered to the DI.

Test this exchange among VFX, editorial, and the DI before the first production delivery. Confirm that editorial preserves clip names and timecode.

Visual Effects Reviews

Review near-final shots at full quality on a calibrated display appropriate to the release. Apply the approved Show LUT and shot CDL. Include the colorist when the review requires grading decisions or when issues appear only under the final display transform.

Digital Intermediate

VFX sends full-quality renders to the DI while editorial cuts the matching review versions into the offline timeline. Editorial then supplies an EDL, XML, or AAF naming the exact approved versions. File names, frame numbers, handles, and timecode must match between review and final media.

Send useful WIPs to the colorist before every shot is final. The colorist can establish the grade and identify problems while VFX still has time to correct them. Near delivery, the colorist may handle minor continuity and color fixes that do not justify another VFX revision.

Track shots as WIP, final, or could-be-better (CBB). A CBB is usable but still has identified work. Finish WIPs before spending time on CBBs. Do not assume an independent film will receive a later home-video pass. Schedule any CBB that must not remain in the released master.

Visual Effects Version Checking

Before finalizing a reel or episode, editorial, VFX production, and the conform editor must verify every VFX version in the DI. Compare the DI's VFX EDL against the approval record and inspect shots whose revisions cannot be confirmed from the version number. The highest version is not always the approved version.

Theatrical Distribution Masters

Feature films destined for digital cinema release are mastered and delivered to theaters in Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs). DCPs are mastered from a DCI-P3 referred graded master. They are often assembled and mastered on separate systems apart from the DI, and oftentimes by facilities separate from the colorist's. The various picture deliverables required to produce a DCP are:

DSM (Digital Source Master)

An uncompressed, unencrypted, graded render of the film. Typically DCI-P3 (RGB) color space. Sized per digital cinema specifications. Often 10-bit or 16-bit DPX.

Note

The colorist or DI facility may produce a DCDM directly from the grading system rather than from a DSM. Even when it is not used for DCP authoring, a DSM is a valuable archival master.

DCDM (Digital Cinema Distribution Master)

A graded, unencrypted DCI-X'Y'Z' image master sized to a DCI raster. The traditional form carries 12-bit code values in 16-bit TIFF frames. A DCDM is used to produce a DCP and may also be delivered or archived as a mastering element.

Because those 16-bit TIFF sequences can reach about 10 TB for a feature, exchanging a DCDM between facilities is slow and costly. SMPTE ST 428-24 (2024) addresses this with what it calls a packed image, known in practice as pDCDM. A pDCDM maps the DCDM into a losslessly compressed JPEG 2000 file sequence and packs the image's 12-bit code values directly instead of padding them into a 16-bit container. The baseband image reconstructs exactly. This is not a lossy proxy. File size drops by roughly half from the reversible coding, plus a further ~25% from the 12-bit packing. It may optionally use the high-throughput JPEG 2000 (HTJ2K) block coder for much faster encode and decode. Frames carry the required suffix .pdc.j2c to distinguish these reversible frames from the lossy .j2c codestreams destined for a DCP. Think of it as a transport-efficient equivalent of the TIFF DCDM, not a substitute for the DCP's lossy essence.

DCP (Digital Cinema Package)

The DCP is a compressed, encrypted package muxed from the DCDM picture render, audio printmasters, subpictures, and timed text (subtitles). Encrypted DCPs can be played back on servers that have had valid KDMs (Key Delivery Messages) generated for them by the DCP creator.

Features being commercially exhibited in mainstream theaters are encrypted and the various theaters are given digital keys that allow them to play the film for a certain range of dates, often limiting the hours of the day that the film can be played. For festivals and private screenings of independent films, it is most common to produce unencrypted DCPs to avoid potential security issues in the event that a venue changes last minute or there is not enough time to test and validate the keys prior to the screening.

Theatrical masters. Captions are authored from the offline reference rather than the graded master, and a premium format is a parallel grade producing its own DCDM and DCP.

Accessibility Tracks Can Block Delivery

Captions are not an optional extra on a theatrical deliverable. Distributors and festivals may require them as a delivery condition. Sundance, for example, requires selected projects to deliver both closed-caption and open-caption DCP versions.5

Two distinct things get confused:

  • CCAP (closed captions) are delivered to a personal display or handheld unit. They carry dialogue plus non-speech audio information: sound effects, speaker identification, musical scoring cues.
  • OCAP (open captions) are burned into the picture and visible to the whole auditorium. These are subtitles by another name and are a picture decision, not a metadata one.

Author closed captions to these constraints:

  • Keep each closed-caption timed-text DCDM XML essence file at or below 256 KB. This limit applies to the XML inside the timed-text MXF, not the MXF file itself, which will usually be larger. Split the composition into reels if the XML exceeds the limit.
  • Keep the complete timed-text track for each reel, including XML, PNGs, and fonts, below 115 MB.
  • Use no more than three lines. Bv2.1 allows 32 characters per line, while some festivals specify 30.6

Stay within these limits for compatibility with common older personal-display hardware such as Doremi/Dolby CaptiView.7 Non-English content generally needs English subtitles whether or not captions are also supplied.

Captioning a feature properly is real work to do accurately. Do not rely on fast AI transcription without a human auditor in the mix.

Premium large format

If the show has a premium-format release, those are separate deliverables, not necessarily exhibitions of the standard DCP. Dolby Cinema takes a Dolby Vision cinema grade. This is a PQ-graded DCDM at a far higher peak luminance than the SDR master, flagged in the CPL rather than carried as an enhancement layer. IMAX produces its own DCPs. It will request a DCDM and may run it through DMR, depending on the agreement with the filmmakers. Other PLF chains sit somewhere between.

Each means an additional grade, additional QC, and a delivery specification you obtain from the vendor rather than infer from the general-release rules. See DCP. Almost no independent film will need this, but if a premium release is on the table it belongs in the post budget from the start, because it may require additional creative finishing time and resources in addition to a new render.

Video Distribution Masters

For projects destined for home video or over-the-top (Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, etc.) release, there are some typical delivery formats:

Uncompressed Video Master

A complete, color graded master with titles, graphics, and visual effects, with accompanying textless elements. Textless elements are often delivered with handles (the entire shot before and after the textless element). Video masters are rendered in the mastering display's color space (i.e. Rec.709 or Rec.2020) and at agreed-upon delivery resolutions, typically HD (1920x1080) and UHD (3840x2160).

IMF (Interoperable Master Format)

The studio and streamer interchange master, mastered per the SMPTE ST 2067 (IMF) specifications. Unlike a flat video master, an IMF package is not one married file: picture (JPEG 2000), each audio configuration (linear PCM), and timed text are carried as separate track files, referenced by a Composition Playlist that describes how to assemble them. That structure is what makes territory and edit versions possible from one package via supplemental packages. It is why textless elements are a core requirement rather than an omission: the alternate versions are built from them. See IMF.

ProRes 422 HQ

For independent distribution, the great majority of TVOD platforms and distributors want a compressed ProRes 422 HQ variant of the video master. ProRes 4444 or 4444 XQ is increasingly specified outright, particularly for HDR. Very few independent distributors ask for an IMF package at all. IMF is a studio-and-streamer interchange format. The label releasing an independent feature almost always wants ProRes and handles the platform-specific encoding downstream. See Distribution Deliverables for Independent Film for what real indie delivery schedules actually require.

Archival Elements

Budget archival before delivery. Preserve the graded digital source master, ungraded conformed master, camera originals, project files, and VFX elements. Some distributors also require an ungraded, uncropped preservation master so a future remaster is not locked to the current grade or framing.

Archival is a chapter in its own right. See Archival and Preservation for storage media, migration intervals, and what actually belongs in a preservation package.

  1. Poynton, Digital Video and HD, chs. 32–33. See also SMPTE ST 170M §11 and SMPTE ST 12-1 §§5.1.2, 7.1.2, and 7.2, including table 3. ↩

  2. DCI, Digital Cinema System Specification, §3.1.4.2; SMPTE ST 429-2 §8.2; SMPTE RP 428-4 §5.1.3. RP 428-4 also specifies the permitted sample counts per edit unit. ↩

  3. Zwerman and Okun, VES Handbook of Visual Effects, p. 509: “generally a minimum of 8 frames at the head and tail of each element or plate.” ↩

  4. Pines and Reisner, ASC Color Decision List, release 1.2. See also Academy Software Foundation, Common LUT Format Specification, ASC_CDL ProcessNode. ↩

  5. Sundance Institute, 2027 Sundance Film Festival Submissions FAQ, p. 8. ↩

  6. SMPTE, RDD 52, §7.2.1, pp. 9–10; Sundance Institute, Technical Specifications for Festival Presentation, p. 2. ↩

  7. Inter-Society Digital Cinema Forum, Closed Caption Authoring Best Practices, p. 1; Dolby Laboratories, Dolby CaptiView. ↩