TV Commercial Post Production Process: From Offline Cut to Final Master
How I run the TV commercial post production process on a 30 second spot, from offline edit and client lock through online, grade, mix and clearance to a signed off broadcast master.
The TV commercial on my edit suite monitor tonight is Bank_30_MV3_online.mov, parked at 00:00:28:12, which is the end frame of a 30 second spot whose grade wrapped at lunchtime. That's the packshot, right, with the logo and the line of legal copy that the client's compliance team reads very very slowly two days before air.
The producer has just messaged me that legal wants the logo held half a second longer, and this is the TV commercial post production process going wrong in its most ordinary way. That note was left on the offline two weeks ago and never reached the online editor, so the colourist graded the old end frame, the mixer timed the music sting to the old length, and a cut everybody believed was locked is opening up again.
I run a video editing agency and I also build PlayPause, so I see this from the edit suite and the review tool at once. To be very honest, every guide lists the same stages and the money gets lost in the handoffs between them, so this is how I run a spot with a named gate at every stage before anybody spends money on the next one.
What the TV commercial post production process looks like end to end
Basically, the TVC post production stages run in a fixed order because each one needs the stage before it frozen, right, you don't grade a shot that might still get cut. The offline makes the creative decisions on proxy files, the agency reviews it internally, and the client approves it into picture lock. Then the online rebuilds that locked cut at full quality, the colourist grades it, the mix adds the final voiceover, and supers go on before clearance, cutdowns and the broadcast master. It's the same family of steps as post-production in film and TV, just squeezed into a much tighter box.
A commercial can't flex in duration because airtime is bought in fixed slots, and a 30 second spot at 25 frames a second is exactly 750 frames, so every late change has to fit inside those same 750 frames. That's why I treat each stage as a gate, and for me a gate is a named status that a specific person set on purpose on a specific version.
In-house teams run the same stages with different approvers, as I covered in the brand video production process guide.
Offline edit and the first agency review
The offline editor usually cuts in Adobe Premiere Pro from proxies, against the approved script and animatic, and the first passes are basically a series of rough cuts tightening toward something the agency is happy to show. The first people to see it should be the agency's own creative director, copywriter, art director and producer, never the client. The catch here is that the internal round is where the taste notes should go to die, right, the "try the other take of the pour" and "bring the line in two beats later" and so on, because any of those that leak into the client round become a debate in front of the person paying.
In PlayPause I upload that first offline as MV1 onto a card for the spot and set the custom status to Agency review. The creatives leave frame-accurate comments on exact moments and range comments on whole passages, for instance a range from 00:00:12:04 to 00:00:15:20 saying the middle drags and the second product angle can go.
The offline editor never has to leave the timeline, because the PlayPause Premiere Pro panel shows those comments inside Premiere, a click on one jumps the playhead to that frame, and the next cut uploads straight from the timeline, with pairing done by a code. I'm pretty sure this gives my editors more time back than anything else on a spot, because the loop of exporting, uploading, finding the email and then finding the frame is where an offline day quietly disappears.
Client offline approval and how to lock it
Once the agency is happy the client sees the offline, and this round decides your schedule, because the online, grade and mix all cost money by the hour and all of them assume the offline is locked. The brand manager and marketing director get a password-protected link that opens in a browser with no account, and they comment on the frame that bothers them or circle the packshot to say it needs to be bigger.
I keep two habits on every client round, right. The first is that once MV2 replaces MV1, any link still pointing at the older cut gets revoked instantly, because a full round of notes on a superseded cut burns a whole day, which is the mess I described in notes on a cut you already replaced. The second is that I check who-watched analytics before chasing anybody, since it shows who opened the link, when and from which city, so I know whether silence means no notes or means nobody has pressed play yet.
Then comes the lock, and this is where ad agency post production approval usually goes soft, because the client says "looks great" on a call and everybody hears something slightly different. I want the approval written as a comment on the approved version, like "MV2 approved for online", with the producer moving the status to Offline approved on the same card. Agree the number of client rounds up front too, as I laid out for a 15 second ad over four rounds, and the full map of approvers sits in client approval stages in video production.
Write down who approved the offline, on which MV number and on which day, because the online is expensive to reopen and that one written line protects the schedule.
Online, grade and mix without losing earlier notes
The commercial offline online edit split exists for a practical reason, right, the offline is cheap and fast so every creative decision happens there, and the online is slow and expensive so you only want to do it once. The online editor conforms the locked cut to the camera originals and handles cleanup, product retouching and compositing. The colourist then grades, usually to Rec. 709 for HD broadcast, and the mix lands on the broadcaster's loudness spec, which is EBU R128 at minus 23 LUFS in the UK and most of Europe and ATSC A/85 at minus 24 LKFS in the US.
This is where notes get lost, because the online editor, colourist and mixer often sit in different rooms and none of them was in the client round, so here's how I make a note travel, using the logo note from the top of this post as the worked example. On MV1 the creative director comments at 00:00:28:12 asking for the logo to hold half a second longer. The offline editor sees it in the Premiere panel and extends the end frame by 12 frames, which is basically half a second at 25 frames a second, right. Because the spot can't grow past 750 frames, the same editor trims 12 frames out of the passage already flagged at 00:00:12:04 and replies on the thread saying where they came from. When the online comes back as MV3 on the same card, that thread still sits against its frames, so the whole finishing team reads the same history and the sting gets timed to the new end frame.
Then I open side-by-side version compare with MV2 against MV3, which is the fastest way to show the agency what changed since the approved offline, say a shot that lost four frames in the conform. The version compare for ad agency producers page shows that on screen, with more on the habit in my post on comparing two Premiere Pro edit versions.
An outside colourist can send the graded cut back through guest version upload, which collects their name and email. For a colourist working in DaVinci Resolve the honest route is export, upload, review and then carry the notes back into the grade by hand, since in-editor comments are a Premiere thing, and I tell clients that a browser review is for content, timing and supers while final colour gets judged in a properly calibrated suite.
Every creative idea belongs in the offline, so the expensive hours in the online, the grade and the mix only go into finishing the cut the client already approved.
Frame-accurate note, everyone sees the exact same thing.
Tracking every version of the spot from MV1 to final master
Almost every agency job that reaches my edit suite arrives with a file called something like Bank_30_v7_FINAL_grade2_legalfix.mov, right, and the problem is that the file name is the only record of what happened to it, so nobody can say which version legal actually watched. On a spot I want MV1 as the first offline, MV2 as the approved offline, MV3 as the graded online and MV4 as the mixed cut with supers, all in one version stack on one card, and if clearance sends back a fix, the corrected cut lands on that same card too.
A folder of files all called FINAL with the notes scattered between email and WhatsApp, so nobody can say which cut legal watched
MV1 to MV4 stacked in order with every note pinned to its frame and version, plus a status saying where the spot is
AI transcription helps at this stage too, because I check its clickable transcript of the final voiceover word for word against the cleared script, and it exports an SRT when a subtitled version is on the delivery list.
Clearance, cutdowns and delivery sign off
Clearance is its own gate, and in the UK that usually means Clearcast, where the script is cleared early and the finished spot is cleared again before air, which I cover in the Clearcast approval process for agencies post. In the US each network's standards team does the equivalent check. What trips a spot at this stage is usually small and mechanical, right, like a super that isn't held long enough to read, or a voiceover that drifted a word away from the cleared script during the mix.
- Final voiceover matches the cleared script word for word
- Every super is held long enough to read
- End frame logo and legal line follow the brand rules
- Duration lands exactly on 30 seconds
- Client approval is written on the master version
Then come the cutdowns, usually a 20, a 10 and a 6 second social edit, and each one gets its own card and its own version stack, so a cutdown note never ends up applied to the master. A Playbook holds that client's creative rules, like how long the end frame holds and where the legal line sits, so every editor on every cutdown works from the same document.
The final gate is delivery sign off, where the client comments "approved for air" on the master version and the status moves to Master approved. In the UK the file usually goes out as an AS-11 DPP master, with the clock number on the slate matching the one on the Clearcast submission, and elsewhere it gets built to each channel's own delivery spec. The commercial video production page shows that whole flow from the client's side.
A simple status board for commercial post production
A commercial post production workflow only works if every card is honest about where the spot actually is, so these are the custom statuses I use for commercial work:
- Offline in progress
- Agency review
- Client offline review
- Offline approved
- Online and grade
- Mix and supers
- Clearance
- Cutdowns
- Master approved
- Delivered
Here's some illustrative math rather than a real job, right. Say a 30 second spot comes with a 20, a 10 and a 6 second cutdown. The offline takes three internal passes and two client rounds, the online, grade and mix get one round each, and each cutdown gets two, so that's 5 plus 3 plus 6, which makes 14 review rounds across four cards. Every one of those needs a link, a status and a named person who said yes, because on the day legal asks who approved the super at 00:00:27:15, the answer has to be sitting on the card, you see what I mean here.
For commercial work I'd put the team on the Agency plan at $19 a month, flat per workspace, because side-by-side version compare, guest version upload, AI transcription and Playbooks all start there. I give the producer the Manager role and connect Slack so every comment lands in the spot's channel, and the page on PlayPause for advertising agencies plus my post on video review and approval for commercial production fill in the rest.
At the end of the day the status board means that when anyone asks where the spot is, the answer is one word on a card that somebody chose deliberately, does that make sense, right.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the post production process for a TV commercial take?
It depends more on approvals than on the edit, right, because the offline, online, grade and mix on a 30 second spot are each fairly contained jobs and the waiting happens between them. I plan in weeks rather than days and put every gate on the calendar as a date, so a slow approval shows up early instead of in the week of air.
What is the difference between an offline and an online edit for a commercial?
The offline is where every creative decision gets made, cut from lightweight proxies so it's quick to change, and it ends at picture lock. The online rebuilds that locked cut from the full resolution originals and adds cleanup, compositing and finishing before the grade and mix, so you decide in the offline and you polish in the online.
Who signs off a TV commercial before it goes to air?
The creative director and producer sign off inside the agency, then the brand manager or marketing director signs off the offline and the master while the client's legal team checks claims and supers. Clearance comes after that, and I want every one of those approvals written on the exact version that person watched.
Can the client review the spot without a PlayPause account?
Clients open the share link in a browser with no account and nothing to install, then comment or draw on the exact frame. I put a password on commercial links because an unreleased spot is sensitive, and I revoke any link still pointing at an older cut, so nobody spends an afternoon reviewing last week's version.
If you want to run your next spot with a named gate at every stage, every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, and you can see what each plan includes on the PlayPause pricing page. Trust me on any level, the first clearance round alone will show you why it's worth setting up properly.
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.
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