Post Production Checklist Template From Ingest to Final Approval

A brand documentary in post production is due at ten tomorrow morning, and one of my editors is scrubbing around 00:08:42 of brand_doc_v3_FINAL_really.mp4, because the client just sent a voice note saying the music drops out weird. Nobody on our side can tell whether she means version three or the version two she watched on Monday, right, and the mix already went to the sound designer this afternoon.

Nothing in that scene is a talent problem, to be very honest, since the editor is good and the client is genuinely nice, so the mess comes down to a few boring checks nobody ticked at the right stage. That week I wrote a proper post production checklist template for my agency, running from ingest to final approval with review built into every stage.

This is the version we run on client work, so I'll go stage by stage with the reasoning behind each check, right, and you can copy it and trim it for your own team.

What a post production checklist template should cover

A lot of the checklists I find online are basically a QC sheet with a few ingest lines on top, and the catch here is that QC is only the last slice of the job. The failures in my agency happen in the handoffs, like a rough cut going out without a clear question or a client note landing after the audio went to the mixer. So my post production process has five stages, each with an owner, an exit condition and a few checks ticked before work moves on.

The post-production overview on Wikipedia lays out the classic video post production steps, and it's a fine map, right, but it won't tell a four-person team who checks what on a Tuesday afternoon, which is also why my pre-production planning checklist exists for the shoot side.

1Ingest and organize

2Edit and review internally

3Client review and revisions

4Lock, finish and hand off sound

5Deliver and archive

Here is the skeleton I paste into every new project, with an owner and an exit condition per stage:

• Ingest and organize: assistant editor, done when every clip is backed up twice and plays through.
• Edit and internal review: editor, done when a teammate has watched the cut and every note has a reply.
• Client review and revisions: producer, done when the named approver signs off a specific version in writing.
• Lock, finish and sound handoff: lead editor, done when the locked version is compared with the last one and turnovers are out.
• Deliver and archive: producer, done when every deliverable was watched end to end and everything is stored together.

Under each stage the template is just five columns, the check, the owner, who verified it, the version and the date, so a filled row reads like "client approval recorded, producer, verified by editor, MV3, 14 March". The rule behind every check is that someone other than the person who did the work can verify it, so "client is happy" fails while "approval recorded against MV3" passes. Does that make sense, right, because written that way the list becomes a record of what actually happened. In PlayPause it lives in a Playbook on Agency and up, where a checklist isn't done until someone ticks it, though a plain shared doc works fine on day one.

Ingest and organization checks

Ingest is where you save yourself hours or lose them, and small teams rush it because it feels like admin, so my first check is that footage lives in two places before any card gets formatted. I've seen a card wiped on a Friday evening by someone who thought the copy had finished, right, so this one is never optional.

Then every clip gets opened and scrubbed, since a corrupted file nobody noticed at ingest becomes a missing shot halfway through the edit, which is a really really expensive time to find out. Folders follow one convention, audio gets synced and labelled by speaker, and camera, date and so on go into the clip names, so an editor who joins late finds things without pinging anyone.

The check people skip is sharing selects before the edit starts, which film sets have always done with dailies from the shoot, and for a small team it means the producer flags favourite takes before the editor commits to a structure. In PlayPause I bulk upload 100+ files at once, every clip plays in the browser from a streaming copy while the original stays untouched, and custom statuses like Selects, Needs Sync and Ready to Cut show where each file stands.

• Footage backed up in two places before any card is wiped
• Every clip opens and plays through without errors
• Folders follow the same naming convention on every project
• Audio synced and labelled by speaker
• Selects shared for review before the edit starts

Edit and rough cut review checks

This is the editing checklist template part, and my rule is that nothing goes to the client until someone inside the team has watched it, because that pass catches the obvious stuff, for instance a flash frame or a typo in the client's own job title, and keeps the client on the story instead of our mistakes.

A rough cut in the classic sense has the story order in place and nothing polished, so before it leaves the building I want temp music and placeholder graphics labelled as temp, the runtime inside the agreed range, and one written question going with it. Asking "is the order of the three testimonials working for you" beats "thoughts?", because an open question gets you rambling feedback on everything at once.

Internally we use frame-accurate comments, range comments and drawing on the frame, with threaded replies and @mentions keeping each conversation on its note.

• Someone other than the editor watched the full cut
• Temp music and placeholder graphics labelled as temp
• Runtime inside the agreed range
• Every internal note has a reply in its thread
• One written question ready to go out with the cut

Rough cut review is about story, so say that out loud in the checklist and nobody spends round one debating a font. Our page on sharing rough cuts with clients and the client approval stages in video production post go deeper.

Client review and revision checks

That voice note came from this stage, right, so it carries the most checks, starting with one rule, every client review goes through a single link instead of WhatsApp, email attachments and a Drive folder. The client opens the PlayPause link in a browser with no account and no install, and their comments stick to the exact frame, so a note already knows it's 00:08:42 on MV3.

Version stacks do the other half, since each upload lands on the same card as MV1, MV2, MV3 and MV4, so there's one card per deliverable instead of five files with FINAL in the name, and every comment sits on the version it was made on. I'm pretty sure that alone would have killed my voice note problem, and the rest of the stage is four checks I tick every round:

• The review link is password-protected while the content isn't public.
• Who-watched analytics confirm the client opened it before anyone chases.
• Every comment has a reply in its thread before the next version goes up.
• One named approver on the client side owns the final list of notes.

Revision rounds get agreed up front with the wording in my video production proposal template, and each cut goes out with a short email asking one clear question, the same shape as my client approval email template.

The voice note, run through the checklist

Here is how that note plays out with the template, right. The who-watched view shows the client opened MV3 that evening, and instead of a voice note she leaves a range comment from 00:08:38 to 00:08:47 saying the music dips under the interview. The editor replies in the thread that the dip is a duck added in MV2 and asks one question back, keep it or ride the music up. The approver answers in the morning and the fix goes up as MV4, and since picture was never called locked, the mix never left early, so the sound designer gets one clean turnover.

Old way

notes over WhatsApp with a vague time and no version attached, so every round starts with detective work

With PlayPause

every note is pinned to a frame on the exact version the client watched, so the editor just works down the list

Review_Cut_v4.mp4In Review

212160p · ProRes

00:34 / 02:18

SR

Sarah 0:34

Frame-accurate note, everyone sees the exact same thing.

Picture lock, finishing and sound handoff checks

Picture lock is the most important line in the whole post production workflow checklist, right, because the grade, the mix and the captions all assume timing never moves again, so before anyone calls a cut locked I want the final round signed off against a specific version and compared with the one before it.

“

Picture lock is a promise to everyone downstream, so any change after it gets treated as a new job with its own checklist.

On Agency and up, PlayPause has side-by-side version compare, so we open MV3 and MV4 together and check that every note landed and nothing else moved, which is how you catch a trim that quietly shifted a music hit by a few frames. Only then does the status change to Locked, and the sequence gets protected too, as in my post on locking a Premiere Pro sequence.

Then the colorist and the sound designer each get the locked cut, a reference export and only the notes that still apply to them, and my picture lock to sound design handoff checklist covers that turnover. Captions start from the clickable transcript that AI transcription gives you on Agency and up, exported as SRT, with someone proofreading every name against the script, while logo placement, fonts and the end card get checked against the client's brand Playbook.

• Final round signed off against a named version
• Locked version compared side by side with the previous one
• Status set to Locked and the sequence protected
• Colorist and sound designer handed the locked cut and their notes
• Captions proofread against the script

Delivery and archive checks

Delivery is the easy part as long as the deliverables list was written down at the start, so my checks are that every deliverable exists in the agreed formats, that someone who didn't export it watched it end to end, and that final approval is recorded against the exact version being delivered, right, never the one before.

For a brand documentary like the one above, that list might be the 14-minute master in 16:9, three 60-second cutdowns in 9:16 and an SRT file, so the stage gets five lines with a name on each, and the cutdowns get watched on a phone because that's where people will see them.

People forget the links, because share links on Creator last 30 days and the files expire, Agency links last 90 days and Enterprise links never expire. If a client might come back months later, plan for that or move the master somewhere permanent, and on Agency and up, Google Drive lets viewers save to their own Drive and gives you a backup.

30 days

link life on Creator

90 days

link life on Agency

Never

link expiry on Enterprise

Archive is the last check, and I store the project file, the media and the review history together, because that history is the only record of why a decision was made, and when the client asks for a cutdown six months later you'll want to know they picked the blue end card on purpose. Downgrading never deletes content in PlayPause, and my video project closeout checklist picks up where this template ends.

Using the checklist with Premiere Pro and other editors

If your team cuts in Adobe Premiere Pro, the review part gets much shorter, because the Premiere Pro panel for PlayPause brings comments inside Premiere, a click on one jumps the playhead to that frame, and once the panel is paired with a code you upload the next version from the timeline.

Only Premiere Pro has a native PlayPause panel, so editors in Resolve, Final Cut Pro or After Effects follow the honest workflow, where you export the cut, upload it, review in the browser and take the frame-accurate notes back into the editor. For a colorist doing review in DaVinci Resolve that works well, since grading notes are about specific frames anyway.

Cutting outside Premiere Pro

Export the cut, upload it, review it in the browser, then work through the frame accurate notes in your editor with the timecodes beside you.

You see what I mean here, right, the checklist only cares that every note is tied to a frame and a version and every stage has a clear exit, so a panel versus a browser tab is basically a comfort question at the end of the day. Teams juggling lots of clients can see how roles, statuses and Playbooks scale on our PlayPause setup for post-production houses page.

Frequently asked questions

What should a post production checklist template include?

It should cover ingest and backup, the edit with an internal review, client review and revisions, picture lock with the sound handoff, and delivery with archive. For each stage I write down the owner, what must be true before it moves on, and checks a second person can verify, and if they can't, I rewrite the check until they can.

How is this different from a QC checklist?

A QC checklist looks at the finished file, things like flash frames, audio levels, caption timing and export specs. This template spans the whole pipeline with QC inside the delivery stage, and since the expensive problems in my agency come from handoffs between stages, which a QC sheet never sees, I run both.

How many revision rounds should the checklist allow?

That's really a contract question, but I write the agreed number into the checklist so nobody forgets it. In my agency we usually agree two rounds on the rough cut and one on the fine cut, with anything after picture lock counted as a change request, and trust me on any level, tracking who signed off each round ends a lot of arguments.

Does this work if my team doesn't edit in Premiere Pro?

It works with any editor, because the checks are about stages and approvals rather than software. In Resolve, Final Cut Pro or After Effects you export each version, upload it for review and work through the frame-accurate notes in your editor, and what you give up compared with the Premiere Pro panel is clicking a comment and landing on that exact frame.

If you want to run this template with review built in, every plan has a 7-day free trial, frame comments and version stacks come from Creator, and Playbooks and side-by-side compare come with Agency, so pick yours on the PlayPause pricing page. Run it on one project first and you'll know pretty quickly whether it saves you a late night before a ten o'clock delivery.

So yeah. That's my way of saying it.