1. Your Role in Netflix Dailies
In this system, your files do two critical jobs:
- Provide sound that can be auto‑synced to camera files
- Provide metadata (Scene/Slate/Take/Circled) that becomes the naming backbone for dailies and editorial.
Netflix Dailies is a system. That means:
- It uses your BWAV timecode and metadata as the source of truth.
- It does not try to fix mistakes or guess what you meant.
- If your metadata is wrong, those wrong values go downstream as‑is.
2. Audio Recording Requirements
2.1 Format & Technical Specs
Record production sound as:
- WAV (Broadcast Wave)
- Polyphonic (all tracks for a take in one file)
- 48.000 kHz
- 24‑bit
Avoid:
- Split mono files instead of a poly mix (unless pre‑coordinated with Netflix).
- Unusual sample rates, bit depths, or proprietary formats.
These specs are required for the auto‑sync logic to behave predictably.
2.2 Timecode (TC)
Timecode is the first step of the Netflix Dailies auto‑sound-sync workflow.
- Camera(s) and sound must be jam‑synced to a common timecode source:
- At call time
- After battery swaps or reboots
- After cameras have flipped from offspeed back to regular speed
- Check TC regularly and re‑jam as needed.
If TC is:
- Accurate and stable → the system can:
- Pair audio and video quickly
- Use slate claps to further refine alignment (see below)
- Wrong / drifting / inconsistent → the system will:
- Struggle to find matching audio
- Increase manual work down the line
2.3 Slate Claps
In addition to timecode, the system uses:
- The visual slate clap (frame of contact in picture)
- The audio peak (clap in your WAV file)
Workflow:
- TC is used to pair potential matches.
- System looks in video for a clapper board and the frame where it closes.
- System looks in the audio for the corresponding clap spike.
- If both are found:
- Audio is slipped to match the exact clap.
- Sync is then re‑checked.
***If the clap points detected between video and audio are not within 15 frames of one another, nothing is slipped. This avoids false positives from clap detection throwing off the sound sync)
If there is no slate clap visible/audio:
- The system syncs only by timecode.
- It cannot auto‑correct for TC drift.
Make sure visual and audio slates are used consistently where possible.
3. Naming Metadata: Scene / Slate / Take / Episode
Many productions want to label every take with Episode, Scene, Slate, and Take.
Most sound recorders, however, only give you a small set of fields—often just Scene and Take.
That’s okay.
Netflix Dailies is designed to work with that reality: it can pull multiple pieces of information out of a single field (for example, parsing Episode, Scene, and Slate out of the Scene field). But for that to work, two things are absolutely critical:
- You use a consistent pattern for how you type those values.
- You always include a separator (like _ or -) between them.
If everything is just jammed together (e.g., 10137A02), or how these are separated from one day to the next, the system has no way to reliably tell what is the Episode, what is the Scene, or Slate.
The system can also only be set up with one configuration for the show. Therefore if there is a second unit, ensuring your naming convention is aligned with the other units sound mixer is critical.
3.1 Decide on a Consistent Naming Pattern
Before shooting begins, agree—with:
- Editorial
- Script Supervisor
- Other units’ sound mixers
on how you’ll encode labeling metadata fields like Episode, Scene, Slate, Cut and Take into your recorder’s fields (most commonly the Scene field, plus the Take field if you use it).
A few example patterns:
- Episodic split in one field
101-37 in the Scene field, where:- 101 = Episode
- 37 = Scene
- Scene + Slate
25_01 in the Scene field, where:- 25 = Scene
- 01 = Slate
- Scene with suffix + Take
37A-02 split across fields, for example:- Scene field: 37A
- Take field: 02
or, if everything must live in Scene: 37A-02 where: - 37A = Scene
- 02 = Take
Guidelines:
- Use clear separators:
- _ (underscore) or - (dash) between pieces of information.
- If you add tags like PU (pickup), RTK (retake), etc.:
- Use a separator: 02-PU not 02PU
- Always place these at the end of the string. As an example: 02-PU, 03-RTK).
The Netflix Dailies system will beis configured by PPS to split your strings around these separators.
If separators are missing, or if you frequently change patterns (some days 101-37, other days 10137), the logic that extracts Episode/Scene/Slate/Take will break down.
Netflix Dailies then:
- Extracts Scene/Slate/Take (and, if configured, Episode) from the iXML fields you use.
- Optionally splits a combined field like 101-37A-02 into its parts based on the separators you’ve chosen.
Important:
- The system does not correct typos.
- If you type 13 when it should be 31, everything downstream will see 13.
- If two different clips end up with the exact same combination of Episode/Scene/Slate/Take (for example, both labeled 101 / 37 / A / 1):
- The system will flag them as duplicates, but it will not guess which one is “right” or change the values on its own.
Your consistency here is what allows editorial to see clean, searchable Scene/Slate/Take data that matches exactly what you entered on set.
4. How Your Metadata Interacts With Script Notes (Marking Selects)
Netflix Dailies doesn’t decide which shots are circle takes on its own. It reads them from the Script Supervisor’s Top Sheet and then tries to match those entries to actual clips in the system.
There are two main ways it can do that:
- Best case: Script Notes include the original camera file name
- Fallback (more common scenario): Script Notes only list Scene / Slate / Take
Your metadata is critical in the fallback case for marking select takes.
4.1 Matching When Only Scene / Slate / Take Data Is Available
On many shows, Script Notes do not include camera filenames—only Scene, Slate, and Take. In that case, Netflix Dailies has to rely on:
- Script Notes (Scene/Slate/Take)
vs. - Your iXML metadata (Scene/Slate/Take)
The system will:
- Read Scene/Slate/Take from the Script Supervisor’s Top Sheet.
- Read Scene/Slate/Take from your iXML fields.
- Use timecode/sync to connect sound → camera.
- Mark a clip as select only when these two views line up.
Because of this, it’s important that:
- You and the Script Supervisor agree exactly on:
- How Scenes are written (e.g., 37A vs 37.A vs 37-A).
- Whether Slate lives inside the Scene field (e.g., 25_01) or as a separate value.
- How pickups and retakes are labeled (02-PU vs 02PU, RTK placement, etc.).
- Whatever pattern you choose is applied consistently across:
- Your recorder’s metadata
- The Script Supervisor’s Top Sheet
- The slate on camera (ideally)
If the Script Notes say 37A / Take 3 but your metadata says 37-A / 003, the system won’t “intelligently guess” that they’re the same thing—it just sees a mismatch.
4.3 Why This Matters to You
Your Scene/Slate/Take entries are not just for labeling audio; they are the anchor the system uses when camera filenames are missing from notes.
When your naming:
- Uses clear separators (_, -)
- Follows a consistent pattern (agreed with Script and Editorial)
- Matches how the Script Supervisor writes Scene/Slate/Take
…the system can reliably:
- Match Script Notes to clips
- Mark selects correctly
- Pass those select flags all the way through to Avid and review tools
When there’s a mismatch, editorial may:
- Receive dailies with no selects marked, or
- See selects that only partially match what’s in the script notes.
A short conversation with the Script Supervisor at the start of the show—aligning on exact Scene/Slate/Take patterns—can make the difference between clean, automated selects and a messy manual clean‑up later.
6. What Happens If Something Is Off?
- Incorrect Scene/Take numbers in iXML:
- Those wrong values show up in Dailies, Avid, PIX, etc.
- The system does not know they’re wrong.
- Inconsistent patterns between units:
- Parsing logic may work for Main Unit and fail for 2nd Unit, or vice versa.
- Editorial sees different conventions for what should be the same field.
- No poly WAV / wrong sample rate:
- Auto‑sync may fail or be skipped.
- Editorial gets more wild or manually‑synced audio.
7. Sound Mixer Checklist
Daily:
- Recording as 48kHz, 24‑bit poly BWAV
- Camera and audio jam‑synced to same TC at start and after any resetting camera off-speed shooting
- Using a consistent Scene/Slate/Take pattern in iXML
- Slates with clear claps recorded whenever feasible
- Sound rolls organized per day/unit and backed up by DIT with ASC‑MHL checksum
- Coordination with Script Supervisor on Scene/Slate naming conventions
Your metadata is the naming spine of the whole dailies pipeline. Precision here saves hours downstream.