What conform actually verifies
Conform answers one question per shot: does what is on disk satisfy what the timeline needs? That decomposes into five concrete checks:
- Presence - a render exists for every shot in the cut. Sounds trivial; is the most common failure, because shots enter the cut faster than the tracking sheet updates.
- Range - the rendered frame range covers the cut duration PLUS handles on both sides. A shot cut at 48 frames with 8-frame handles needs 64 on disk, not 48.
- Continuity - no missing frames inside the range. A render that died at frame 1050 and restarted at 1051 can leave a hole nobody sees until playback.
- Version - the version in the timeline is the version intended for delivery. If the cut references v001 while v003 sits on disk, someone chose wrong - or nobody chose.
- Orphans - renders on disk for shots no longer in the cut. Not an error, but every orphan is either wasted render time or a sign the cut changed and someone missed the memo.
The checklist, in order
- Get the CURRENT cut - EDL or OTIO from the editor, not last week's. Confirm the frame rate.
- Confirm the handle count with editorial (8 is common; assumptions here are how ranges fail).
- Map clip names to shot IDs with your naming convention - and eyeball the mapping before trusting it.
- Scan the renders folder and compare: presence, range incl. handles, gaps, versions.
- Fix in order of pain: missing shots first (longest to remedy), then ranges, then version confirmations.
- Re-run the whole check after fixes - the second pass catches what the fixes broke.
- Export the report and attach it to the delivery email: evidence beats assurance.
The failure mode is manual sampling. Under deadline, people spot-check five shots and extrapolate. The bounced deliveries are always in the shots nobody sampled - the fix is a check cheap enough to run on every shot, every time.
Cutlist Tracker runs this whole checklist as one click: import the cut, scan the folder, and every shot gets a status - ok, missing, range mismatch, stale version, or not-in-cut - with a CSV and printable report at the end.