DIT Services & Dailies Pipelines

How Does a Dailies Pipeline Work?

At Sawtooth Post, we view the dailies workflow as a four-part process: ingest and verification, synchronization, color correction, and finally, transcoding and distribution. Whether that full workflow lives on-set or off-site depends entirely on a project’s schedule, location, and budget. Commercial productions facing tight turnarounds benefit from dailies processing on set and can even help editorial to start cutting the same day as a shoot. Feature and episodic productions can benefit from on-site processing like this too, but the scope of a larger production can often push the needs of transcodes, color work, and redundant backups to an off-site facility for more processing power.

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What Happens During Ingest and Verification?

The moment camera cards hit the DIT’s cart, they are copied to master and backup hard drives using dedicated offloading software like Silverstack, Offshoot, or ShotPut Pro. It’s never a basic drag and drop or copy and paste within Finder. The data moving from cards needs to be verified byte-for-byte, which offloading software handles accomplishes using digital checksums.

A failed checksum indicates a problem that could later surface as missing files, corrupted media, or dropped frames in editorial, but thanks to the software is often traceable and possible to remedy. Verified offloads give producers, directors, and post teams the peace of mind that their media is safe. In certain high-stakes scenarios, the chain of custody starts right here. Every copy or handoff gets logged so that there’s a traceable record in the event media ever goes missing.

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What Does Synchronization Involve?

Synchronization, or syncing, is where video gets married to externally recorded audio. This is accomplished with embedded timecode, scratch audio waveforms, or visual markers like a clapperboard. Jam-sync’d timecode aligns all cameras and audio to the same timecode on set so that the DIT can group clips down to the frame. If timecode isn’t available, the on-set DIT or an editor back at the post house manually aligns media using a combination of audio waveforms and visual markers in the video. On a multicam shoot with dozens of setups, that manual correction can eat time quickly, so it pays to make sure sync is dialed in before the day starts. This sync process typically happens before dailies are printed, ensuring the editorial rushes have source audio tied directly to them.

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Why Does a DIT Color Correct On Set?

On set, DITs can perform a light color correction pass while churning out dailies. This ensures the transcodes used by editorial and stakeholders perfectly align with the Director and DP’s creative intent. Source camera files are most commonly captured in either a raw codec or a flat, desaturated log color space to preserve dynamic range.

Straight out of the camera, these flat images aren’t exactly pleasing. With a little love from a basic LUT, the image’s color comes alive. Often, the LUTs used by DITs are developed in tandem with the film's DPs and Colorists. This guarantees a consistent look from production to post. In many workflows, color decision lists (CDLs) from the DIT can even be passed straight to the final colorist, giving them a head start on final color grading sessions in DaVinci Resolve or Baselight.

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What Happens During Transcoding and Distribution?

OCF (original camera file) media is generally too massive to work with or play back efficiently. The solution is to transcode clips into lightweight proxies used for offline editing or creative review. Typically that’s a flavor of ProRes Proxy, DNxHD, or H.265 codecs. Once synced, graded, and properly named, this proxy media (often called rushes) is packaged up into various formats. Some may have watermarks so they can be reviewed externally, while others are lower resolution, but unwatermarked so they can be used in editorial without distraction. The various formats are routed to network storage and secure review platforms where editorial teams, producers, and studio execs can start reviewing and cutting. Industry standard is delivery within 12 hours of wrap, but that speed is ultimately dictated by the project's scope.

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Where Should Dailies Be Made: On-Set or Off-Site?

On-set dailies add a distinct line item to the production budget, which includes paying for a dedicated DIT, gear, shuttle drives, upload equipment, and often travel and per diem. Off-site dailies shift that cost into a facility's day rate. On location the DIT person gets replaced with a media wrangler or camera assistant pulling double duty, which may introduce oversight problems. Transfer time and courier or bandwidth costs inevitably come along for the ride as well. For sheer speed and quick review, on-set wins. The footage never leaves the set before processing begins.

Off-site workflows depend entirely on the transfer speed out of the location - whether that’s an upload or a courier. A facility like Sawtooth Post, armed with high-performance workstations, can easily outrun a portable setup once the footage actually arrives. The variable is just the time it takes to get the footage to the facility, whether that’s an upload or courier. Small crews with stable schedules and strong upload bandwidth are usually better off sending footage to an off-site facility, assuming they’re still offloading media and creating backups on set.

Large productions often run a hybrid approach, using on-set ingest and verification for maximum security and speed, with the heavy-lifting of full processing handled off-site. Ultimately, the complexities of safely creating dailies vary wildly from project to project. That’s why productions need to bring their post partner in early to test and establish workflows before cameras start rolling.

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