Do we need Avid Production Management for verified handoffs?

No. Handoff verification is not an Avid feature. Whatever system knows which cuts exist pushes that in, and Wheelhouse takes the same shape from all of them - Avid MediaCentral, a PilotWare export, a nightly export, or a person pasting the list. All four produce verified handoffs, so this is not gated on owning an enterprise system.

No. This is the thing most people assume wrong, so it is worth being blunt.

Wheelhouse does not go and ask your production management anything. The information about which cuts exist is pushed in, and it arrives in the same shape whoever sends it:

  • Avid MediaCentral or Production Management
  • A PilotWare export
  • A nightly export from whatever you run
  • A person pasting in the list of cuts

All four produce verified handoffs. Avid Production Management is an enterprise system most shows do not have, and it was never the requirement. Knowing which cuts exist is.

What you get

A handoff names a version, and the board marks it verified, superseded (a newer cut exists, named right there in the message), or not found.

The verdict is worked out fresh each time it is asked. Nothing stores “1.7 is verified”, because a later report or a corrected handoff both change the answer — and a stored verdict would go quietly stale while still looking authoritative.

When a source cannot be reached

It reads as unknown, never as “this episode has no versions”. A system that is down and a cut that does not exist are different facts, and that difference is enforced in the code rather than left to whoever writes the screen.

On the card it is grey, not red. Nobody having looked is not a problem with the episode.

With nothing connected at all

Handoffs still name the version and it still shows on the card. It is simply marked not checked. Everything else on the board — episodes, stages, whose spin it is, the queue, packages, deliverables, activity — works with no version source at all.

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See it on a real board

The demo is the actual software, running on a made-up show. Nothing to install, no sign-up.

Walkthroughs are with Kevin Kelsey — 15 years an assistant editor, Children's & Family Emmy-nominated, and the person who built this. More about him.