Start on the cut.
Transcode, sync, label, log, bin, string out. None of it is a decision, and all of it has to happen before anyone can cut — which is why the first days of an edit are spent not editing.
Sproket runs on Grok Bot, which gives each agent its own machine and a reporting loop. The two bots are mine, built for a Spanish-language film shot on 16mm in Menorca — the shot pass, the slate read, the log format, the XML writer that Premiere imports, and the sound pass that runs beside them.
Meet
You are Sproket. You are the assistant editor on [YOUR PRODUCTION].
Dailies: shot detection, slate reads, subclips, audio sync, string-outs, and the Premiere XML that carries them.
Take the material as it arrives. Where there is timecode and sound, sync to it. Where there is not, the slates are the only metadata that exists. Read what is there, log it, and write down what you could not read rather than guessing a take.
The log is the deliverable. The project is generated from it and never edited by hand. You do not cut the picture. You hand [YOUR EDITOR] a project they can cut in.
Hey! I am ready to get started. First, tell me more about the project.
Hunts the slates
Pulls a head and a mid frame from every shot, then samples a grid of thumbnails every second and a half, looking for the board.
Ninety-six frames of reel 104, one every second and a half — what Sproket reads, cell by cell, looking for a board. At this size nobody is anybody and nothing on a slate is legible, which is the resolution the hunt runs at before it zooms in on a hit.
Writes the row
Reads scene and take off the slate and writes one row per subclip — reel, in and out frame, bin, name, scene, take, note, label.
One row of the log
- reel
- 101
- in
- 23067
- out
- 23382
- bin
- SCENES/SCENE-08 MIQUEL HORSE ARENA
- name
- 8D-T6 HORSE GALLOPS LOOSE DUST
- sc
- 8D
- tk
- 6
- label
- Forest
One clip in the project
lands in SCENE-08 MIQUEL HORSE ARENA
- what it is called
- what colour it is
- where it starts and stops
315 frames · 12 seconds 15 frames
Builds the project
Turns the log into a Premiere XML — subclips in bins, string-outs per reel, reels in shoot order — and never edits the project by hand. One import and the cut can start.
- 01. MEDIA
- 02. SCENES
- GENERAL COVERAGE
- INSERTS
- SCENE-01 SEA OPENING
- SCENE-05 TERRACE
- SCENE-05A LIVING ROOM
- SCENE-06 KITCHEN LUNCH
- SCENE-08 MIQUEL HORSE ARENA
- 00 STABLE INSERTS
- 8A-T1 MIQUEL + LLUC RAIL CU
- 8A-T2 MIQUEL + LLUC RAIL CU
- 8A-T3 MIQUEL + LLUC RAIL CU
- 8A-T4 MIQUEL RAIL MCU
- 8B-T1 NEUS FENCE POST MED
- 8C-T1 STABLE DOORWAY LLUC DOG
- 8C-T2 LLUC STALL DOOR FAN
- 8C-T3 STABLE EXT WIDE HORSE DOOR
- 8D-T1 ARENA WIDE FENCE
- 8D-T2 ARENA HIGH EMPTY
- 8D-T3 HORSE ENTERS ARENA HIGH
- 8D-T4 HORSE ROLLS IN SAND HIGH
- 8D-T5 HORSE FAR BY FENCE HIGH
- 8D-T6 HORSE GALLOPS LOOSE DUST
- 8D-T7 LLUC IN ARENA HORSE WALKS
- 8D-T8 HORSE STANDS SHADOW HIGH
- 8D-T9 ARENA HIGH SHADOWS MIQUEL
- MIQUEL ON HORSE
- STABLE INTERIOR
- XX-INS MULE ON WALL
- SCENE-09 CAR - FARMER
- SCENE-14 ROAD HUT + CAR
- SCENE-15 CALLIAN + DONKEY WATER WELL
- SCENE-18 CALLIAN DRAWS MARG NAME
- SCENE-20 MARGARITA WALL
- SCENE-21 BEDROOM NIGHT (number tbc)
- SCENE-22 FESTIVAL MORNING (number tbc)
- SCENE-29 CAVE MUSICIAN
- SCENE-30 QUARRY LITHICA
- 03. SEQUENCES
The project, built. The log became 261 subclips in sixteen bins and sixteen string-out sequences, filed the way this cutting room files them — here opened to SCENE-08 and the take the row above describes. Every name and colour is read from the delivered XML.
Introducing
You are Piper. You keep the sound library for [YOUR PRODUCTION]. Read the scenes, go and find what they need, group it, and put it in the project.
Pull from the drive that already exists before anything else. Hardlink, never copy — a second library on the same disk is a mistake waiting to be edited into.
When the library does not have it, say so in the log. A bin filled with something close enough is worse than an empty one.
Finds the sound
Reads the scenes, goes through the library already on the drive, groups what they need into bins and imports the lot — while the cut is happening.
Fifteen bins and 124 files, read off the drive. The one selected is the Sony library’s own Horse Walking On Dirt.wav — created in 2008, and now hardlinked into dirt, donkey-feet and horses-galloping: four places on the drive, on disk once.
It sits in donkey-feet because the library had no honest donkey, and her log says so — horse walk is a stand-in
— rather than filling the bin with something close enough. Writing down what she could not find is the half of an assistant editor’s job that actually takes judgement.
Sproket and Piper are a description and five scripts. Built to streamline your post-production process. Now every task is one request away.
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