Offline vs Online Editing: Where Client Review Belongs in Each Stage
A plain explainer of the offline and online edit, and how I run client approval so finishing money is only spent on a locked cut every stakeholder has actually watched.
Paying for the same conform twice on one job is basically how I found out that the way we handled offline vs online editing in my agency was, to be very honest, a bit of a mess, right. The editor would cut on proxies, we would send the client a link over WhatsApp, and two or three people would reply with voice notes saying it looked great. The deadline was close and everyone sounded happy enough, so we moved straight into color and sound, and then the founder who never opened the first link would watch the finished version and ask to swap the opening shot, which meant paying for the conform, the grade and the render all over again.
Now the way I run it is very very different, and the funny part is that the order of things changed a lot more than the software did. Every creative decision gets approved on the offline versions, which stack up as MV1, MV2 and MV3 on one card in PlayPause. Nobody books finishing time until I can see that every approver has actually watched the locked cut. When the online comes back, I put it next to the approved offline and check it shot by shot, so the only surprises left are conform mistakes, which are cheap to fix, right.
So this is basically the explainer I wish every producer and marketer had when a post house starts saying offline, online, conform and picture lock while you nod along.
Offline vs online editing in plain language
The simplest way I explain it to a new client is that the offline is where you decide and the online is where you finish, right. In the offline edit, the editor works on lightweight proxies, because what matters at that stage is the story and the pacing, and you do not need heavy camera originals to decide which interview answer comes first. If you searched for the offline edit meaning in one line, it is basically the creative edit done on stand-in media, and the name comes from the days when that work happened on cheaper machines that were never connected to the master tapes.
The online is the other end of the job. Once the cut is locked, the timeline gets reconnected to the full quality camera files, which is the conform, and then it moves through color, visual effects, titles, the final mix, quality control and delivery. In the tape era the decisions travelled between the two suites as an edit decision list, a plain list of every cut with its source timecode, and the online suite was the expensive room you booked by the hour. Today one editor might do both on one machine, but the two stages still exist, right, because deciding and finishing carry very different costs.
Proxies and temp media, where story, pacing and length get decided and a change costs minutes
Camera originals, conform, grade and mix, where the same change costs hours of finishing work
The catch here is that the words sound like internet words, and I'm pretty sure plenty of the marketing managers I have worked with assumed the online edit was the version that goes online. Online here means connected to the full quality media, and offline means working away from it. If you want the wider background on how the craft grew up, the film editing overview on Wikipedia is a decent place to start.
What gets decided in the offline edit
Pretty much everything a client actually cares about gets decided in the offline, right, so this is where I want all of their attention. That means the structure, which takes get used, the running time, where the music hits and whether the ending actually lands. In my agency the offline usually goes through a rough cut and then a fine cut, and I have written separately about what clients review at each cut because the questions at those two points are really really different.
In PlayPause every offline version goes onto the same card, so the rough cut is MV1, the revised cut is MV2, the fine cut is MV3 and so on. The client opens one link in a browser with no account and no install, and their comments stick to the exact frame. They can draw on the frame to circle a logo that feels too small, or drop a range comment when a whole section drags, and the editor answers in threaded replies on that version. Our page on sharing rough cuts with clients walks through the setup if you want to copy it.
I also tell the client upfront what not to judge in the offline, because proxies look soft, the color is a quick temp grade and the graphics are placeholders. Trust me on any level, if you skip this you will get a pile of comments about skin tones on a log proxy, and the round gets wasted on something that does not exist yet. A short set of questions that guide client feedback keeps people on story and pacing instead.
What the online edit adds: conform, finishing and delivery
The online edit conform is the first real step after lock, right, and it is more fragile than most people expect. The online editor relinks every clip in the locked sequence to the camera originals and checks that every edit still lands on the same frame it did in the offline. The things that break are pretty predictable, for instance speed ramps, 4K shots reframed inside an HD timeline, nested sequences, multicam clips and anything transcoded at a different frame rate. I keep a full online edit conform checklist for these handoffs, plus a note on what travels with a locked cut, because missing paperwork here costs hours.
After the conform comes finishing, and in a normal finishing workflow the colorist grades the full quality media, the final VFX shots drop in, titles get rebuilt at full resolution and the mix gets married to picture. Delivery is where a lot of jobs quietly slip, because you might need a master, a broadcast version, vertical cutdowns and captions, each with its own spec. If you run a facility that does this every week, the PlayPause setup for post houses is built around exactly this handoff.
Why creative approval must happen before the online
At the end of the day the whole reason the offline and online are separate is money, right. Swapping a shot in the offline takes an editor a few minutes. After the grade, the same swap means conforming the new clip, grading it to match, adjusting the mix, running quality control again and exporting every deliverable again. So the move from picture lock to online is the most expensive line on the whole schedule, and it only stays cheap if creative approval is genuinely finished before anyone crosses it.
In practice I write down every approver at the start of the job, including the people who never email me, and picture lock only happens when all of them have signed off on the same version. I set a custom status on the card so everyone can see when a cut is locked, and on Agency and up I keep a Playbook for each client with a lock checklist that is not done until every item is ticked. Anything after lock is new scope with a new price, and clients are usually fine with that when it was agreed at the start. Does that make sense, right, an hour spent getting the offline approved properly saves you a day of redoing finishing work later.
A shot swap means regrading, rendering and QC again, plus fresh deliverables
Creative changes land on proxy versions MV1 to MV3 before any finishing money is spent
Every creative note that arrives after lock gets paid for twice, once in the edit and once in finishing.
Checking the online against the approved offline side by side
This is the part a lot of agencies skip, and it is where conform errors sneak through to the client, right. When the online render comes back it goes onto the same card as the next version, so if MV3 was the approved offline, the online becomes MV4. On Agency the finishing house can put it there themselves through guest version upload, which collects their name and email without making them create an account. Then I open side-by-side version compare, which is also on Agency and up, and walk through both versions edit by edit.
For instance, take a 90-second brand film where MV3 was the approved offline. I play MV3 and MV4 together from the top and pause at every cut, and the kind of thing that turns up is a punched-in shot coming back at full frame because the scale did not carry over. Another classic is a speed ramp near the end playing at normal speed because the retime got lost in the relink. Each of those gets one comment on MV4, the online editor fixes them and sends MV5, and I compare MV5 against MV3 again, because a fix in one place can quietly shift a cut somewhere else.
- Every cut lands on the same frame as the offline
- Reframes, speed ramps and stabilisation survived the conform
- No flash frames or gaps at edit points
- Titles and lower thirds match the approved text
- Audio stays in sync to the final frame
- VFX shots are the approved versions
Every mismatch gets a frame-accurate comment with an @mention for the online editor, and when audio slowly drifts across a section I use a range comment so they see where it starts and ends. If the online editor works in Premiere, our Premiere Pro panel shows those comments inside Premiere and clicking one jumps the playhead to that frame, which I covered in the Premiere Pro productions workflow. When the colorist finishes in DaVinci Resolve, the loop is export, upload, review, and then they work through the notes back in Resolve.
Upload a decent quality file for this check, because you are hunting single frame problems and a heavily compressed render can hide them, and I wrote about picking a review codec separately. This is also where the plan matters, right, because a ProRes online of a longer film can easily pass the 10 GB upload cap on Creator, while Agency has no upload cap at all. Playback in the browser runs from a streaming copy, so your original stays untouched.
Proving stakeholders saw the locked cut before finishing
Before I book the colorist and the mixer, I check that everyone actually watched the locked version, because an approval from someone who never opened the link is not really an approval, right. PlayPause shows who watched, when and from which city on Creator and up, so I go down my approver list, and if the founder has not played it, I chase them that same day. You see what I mean here, the sign-off still has to come from the person, and the watch data simply tells me whether they actually sat through the cut before giving it.
I also route every comment to a Slack channel so nobody misses a late note, and for unreleased work I use password-protected links that I can revoke instantly. For documentaries with lots of stakeholders this matters even more, and our page on post-production for films goes deeper into that kind of job. I have also written about how editors prove a cut was approved, which is basically the paperwork side of the same idea.
Frequently asked questions
What does offline edit mean in simple terms?
The offline edit is the creative edit, done on lightweight proxy copies of the footage, where the story, structure, pacing and length get decided. It is called offline because historically it happened away from the full quality master media, on cheaper machines. In my agency this is where clients give almost all of their notes, because changes here are fast and cheap compared to changes after the grade.
Can one editor do both the offline and the online?
On smaller jobs in my agency one editor does both all the time, because Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve handle full quality media fine on a decent machine. The stages still exist though, right, so I still want creative lock signed off before the grade starts, and I still compare the finished render against the approved offline before it goes out to anyone.
Should the client review the online version at all?
They should, though for a different reason than in the offline. By the online the creative is already approved, so I ask the client to look at the color, the sound mix, the titles and the delivery formats rather than rethinking the edit. The structural check against the approved offline is done by me or the producer with side-by-side compare before the client ever sees it.
What is the difference between a conform and finishing?
The conform is the technical step of rebuilding the locked timeline with the full quality camera originals and checking every cut still matches, frame for frame. Finishing is everything that happens to that conformed timeline afterwards, so grading, VFX, titles, the mix and quality control. A conform error means the online no longer matches what was approved, which is why I compare the two first.
Does this work if my finishing happens in DaVinci Resolve?
It does, with one honest caveat, which is that the comments will not appear inside Resolve itself the way they do in Premiere. So the loop is to export the render, upload it as the next version on the same card, compare it with the approved offline, and then the colorist works through the frame-accurate notes back in Resolve.
Where to start on your next job
If you want to try this order of operations, pick one real project, run the offline rounds as MV1, MV2 and MV3 on a single card, lock only when every approver has watched, and check the online against the approved offline before anyone touches color. Side-by-side compare and guest version upload sit on the Agency plan, which is one flat monthly price for the whole workspace rather than per person. Every plan on our PlayPause pricing page starts with a 7-day free trial, so you can run a full job through it before you decide.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
Related resources
Keep reading
Bring your team into one review space
Centralize feedback, lock approvals, and deliver faster, start free today.
Sign Up for Free