Q-1062
Address notes
What it does
Everything it does, and what each part replaces
One entry per thing that has shipped. Each says what it does, what it replaces, and how you would show it to somebody in thirty seconds. Anything that needs a system you may not own is marked as an add-on.
Included
The numbers at the top are about you, or they are not there
The top strip only shows what needs doing, by the person looking at it. When nothing qualifies, it collapses to one green line.
The numbers across the top are about you, and they only appear when something needs doing.
An editor sees what is on their desk. A supervisor sees holds with their reasons, work nobody is on, shows close to air with picture still unlocked, and note passes that have stopped moving.
When nothing qualifies, the whole strip collapses to one green line: “Nothing needs you.”
The test a number has to pass
Three things, and a number failing any of them is furniture:
- It has to change. A count that is the same every morning is wallpaper.
- Somebody has to be able to act on it.
- It has to be that person’s problem. A hold an editor cannot lift does not belong on an editor’s screen.
And it has to be right
The first version of this counted every episode with nobody on it and reported thirty — because delivered shows legitimately have nobody on them.
A metric that is wrong thirty times is noise, and noise is what got the previous strip deleted in the first place. It now counts work that exists and belongs to nobody.
That correction is the whole argument for this feature in one story: the reason the old counts went away was not that counting is bad, it is that a number nobody can act on trains people to stop looking at the top of the screen.
Thirty seconds
Sign in as a supervisor with a clean board: one green line. Put an episode on hold and the strip grows a card naming who holds it and why. Sign in as an editor and the hold disappears, because they cannot act on it.
ReplacesCounts. Episodes in the window, packages in the library, how many are reused - numbers everybody already knew, taking the most valuable strip of the screen every day.
Included
Build the season by dragging across the calendar
Drag across the days a block airs. Say how many episodes, which tape day, who cuts them. Everything else works itself out.
Drag across the days a block airs. A panel opens and asks three things: how many episodes, which tape day, who cuts them.
It numbers from where your show already is, shows you exactly what it is about to create, and places it. Stages, milestones, the queue and whose spin it is all work themselves out from those dates.
Why building a season is a different job from tracking one
Nobody plans a season one episode at a time. They place tape days and broadcast weeks: “we shoot five on the 22nd, they air the week of the 16th.”
The episode board is very good at tracking a season and the wrong place to build one, because it asks about the wrong unit. So this is its own screen that asks in the shape people actually think.
The preview is the real thing
Every keystroke re-plans through the same code that does the writing, so the panel cannot show you one thing and then do another.
It refuses an episode number that already exists, a night that already has something on air, and a tape day after the air date. It warns without blocking about a tight turnaround or a missing editor — because those are things people really do, and software that will not let you do them gets worked around.
Thirty seconds
Drag across a week. Say five episodes, tape day the 22nd. Watch it number them from where the season is, show you the exact list, and place the lot.
ReplacesThe season spreadsheet, and the re-numbering by hand every time a block moves.
Included
The card moves when you open the cut
Everybody gets their own list in three columns, and a card moves by itself when someone picks the work up.
Everybody gets their own list, in three columns: Pending, In Progress, Done.
Press WATCH NOW and the cut opens. The card moves by itself. Nobody has to remember to mark anything, because opening the cut is what moves it.
Each card shows the date that step is due, not just the air date. Work from episodes and work from packages sit in the same list, because your day is not sorted by which system the job came out of.
Why it stays right
A status somebody has to keep up to date is a status that will eventually be wrong, and one wrong field is all it takes for people to stop trusting the board. So nobody is asked to confirm they started. Starting is the confirmation.
Thirty seconds
Open one person’s list. Press WATCH NOW. The cut opens and the card lands in In Progress with a clock running on it. Now switch to the episode board — whose spin it is has not changed, because picking something up is not the same as finishing it.
Replaces"Has anyone started on 1062?" Before this, a card looked the same whether it had sat untouched for two days or someone was watching it right then.
Optional add-on · needs any source that knows which cuts exist
Find out before you give notes on the wrong cut
Checks the version named on every handoff against the cuts that actually exist — from whatever system knows, not just Avid.
Every handoff already names a version. This add-on checks that version against the cuts that really exist, and marks it:
- Green tick — that cut exists, and it is the newest one.
- Warning — a newer cut turned up, or the one named is not there. The message names the newer cut right in the line, so nobody has to go looking.
- Grey question mark — nothing was checked.
It is not an Avid feature
This is the part most people assume wrong, so it is worth being blunt about.
Wheelhouse does not go and ask your production management anything. The information is pushed in, and it takes 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. Whatever holds the answer at your facility sends it, and the board compares it against what the handoff claimed.
That matters because Production Management is an enterprise system most shows do not have. It was never the requirement — knowing which cuts exist is.
The fourth state is the honest one
A verdict is worked out fresh each time it is asked, never frozen. 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.
And when a source cannot be reached, that reads as unknown — never as “this episode has no versions”. A drive that is down and a cut that does not exist are different facts, and the difference is enforced in the code rather than left to whoever writes the screen.
What it looks like with nothing connected
Handoffs still name the version, and it still shows on the card. It is just marked not checked — deliberately grey rather than red.
Nobody having looked is not a problem with the episode. A board that flashes red about its own blind spots is a board people stop reading.
Thirty seconds
Four episodes, four editors, all handing off “1.7”. One checks out. One was replaced by 1.8 forty minutes ago. One does not exist. The fourth could not be checked.
ReplacesAn hour of notes given on a cut that had already been replaced — the mistake that tells nobody it happened.
Included
Your show decides who reviews a cut
How many people review a cut, and at which stage, is a setting. One show sends it to two people, another to four, on the same cut.
How many people review a cut, and at which stage, is a setting on your show.
A daily strip might go to a Co-EP and an AD. A celebrity edition goes to those two and, on the same cut, to the studio and the network. That is four chips on the card, each with its own state: waiting, notes given, notes addressed.
The stage does not finish until every one of them is addressed.
Why this was not a special case
Each reviewer is an ordinary review-and-address pair, so nothing new had to be invented. The chips already tracked their state separately, and a stage already waited on its outstanding steps.
That is the point: taking on a show with a different review chain is a line of setup, not a separate version of the software.
Thirty seconds
Put two shows side by side. The daily strip’s fine cut carries one chip. The celebrity edition’s carries three, two of them out at the same time — and addressing two of the three leaves the episode exactly where it was.
ReplacesThe separate spreadsheet tab for studio and network notes, kept because the main schedule had nowhere to put them.
Included
A wall calendar that cannot disagree with the board
A month calendar where every line comes from the same place the boards do - and where a projection looks like a projection.
A month wall calendar. Seven columns, Sunday first, each day stacking lines like
1056 RF ONLINE FINISH — the episode, the initials, and what happens.
Every line comes from your show’s own cadence and workflow, so the calendar and the boards cannot disagree about when something is meant to happen. There is nothing to re-key, so there is nothing to get out of step.
A projection looks like a projection
Most lines on a post schedule are not commitments. They are the model working out when something should happen, based on the air date.
So those are drawn dashed and faint. A date somebody actually set is solid. One toggle hides the projections entirely — which answers a question nothing else in the building answers: what have we actually committed to?
On a daily strip that turns four hundred lines into about thirty.
Nothing projected is ever marked late
A projection slipping means the model was wrong about a show that may be perfectly fine. Colouring it red fills the calendar with alarms nobody caused, and a calendar full of red is a calendar nobody opens.
Thirty seconds
Open the month. Hit the toggle and watch four hundred faint lines drop away, leaving only what people have actually committed to.
ReplacesThe schedule spreadsheet that gets re-keyed every week and is wrong by Wednesday.
Included
The 4pm status email, gone
A bell that opens this week's activity — who was told what, about which episode, and how they were told.
A bell at the top of the screen opens this week’s activity: who was told what, about which episode, and how they were told. It updates on its own, so a board left up on a wall in the edit bay keeps moving without anybody touching it.
Nothing to connect
It works with no Slack, no setup and no passwords handed over. There is nothing to plug in and nothing that can stop working. If you do use Slack, it posts there too.
Thirty seconds
Finish a step on one screen. The bell counts up on the other screen, which nobody has touched, within five seconds.
ReplacesThe 4pm status email. And the reply-all that follows it.
Included
Messages that say your name
One line, sent to one person, naming the show, the cut and what they need to do.
Hey Devon — Q-1060 is your spin from Harper: Address notes — Avid v1.7 ✅
One line. Sent to one person. It names the show, the cut, and what they are expected to do about it.
Slack today. Push, email and text are each person’s own choice, so nobody gets pinged three ways for the same thing.
ReplacesThe email chain whose subject line is the episode number and whose body says "see below".
Included
Split an episode into a second version
ALT, INTL, a network-specific cut. The copy brings over everything except what is not cleared for it, and tells you what it left out.
A second version of an episode — ALT, INTL, a network-specific cut — starts as a copy of the first one.
It brings over the parent’s packages except the ones not cleared for that version, and it tells you what it left out instead of quietly dropping it.
A promo that must not go to another network cannot get there by accident.
ReplacesA separate spreadsheet per version, and the hope that nobody drops a promo into a cut it was never cleared for.
Included
Watch a cut without copying it anywhere
Review copies play straight from your media system, and the login never reaches the browser.
Review copies play through Wheelhouse straight from your media system, and you can scrub through them normally. The login for that system never reaches the browser.
There is no second library to keep secure and keep in step with the first one — which is the usual reason somebody ends up watching last week’s cut.
ReplacesA second copy of everything, to keep secure, keep current, and expire on time.
Included
Things get archived, never deleted
Everything keeps its history, along with the reason it was put away.
Nothing is ever really deleted. Everything keeps its history, along with a note saying why it was put away and who did it.
“What was in that show?” stays answerable — including after the people who knew have moved on to another production.
ReplacesThe row somebody deleted, and the argument afterwards about what was in it.
Included
Whose spin it is, on every card
Initials sit on the episode card, so the board answers the building's most-asked question without anybody opening anything.
Initials sit right on the episode card.
A board up on a wall answers the most-asked question in the building without anybody opening anything, clicking into anything, or getting up.
ReplacesWalking down the hall to ask.
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.