# Wheelhouse > Post-production coordination software for episodic television. Wheelhouse answers "where is this episode and who has it" for everybody at once, so the answer stops travelling by email. Wheelhouse is built by Manifest Post (Kevin Kelsey). It replaces the spreadsheet family most shows run on with one live picture of an episode's journey from pre-production through delivery. Note: "Wheelhouse" is a working name and may change. The publisher, Manifest Post, and the canonical site, https://postmanifest.com, are stable. ## Who built it Kevin Kelsey, an assistant editor with 15 years in post-production across scripted television, unscripted television, scripted features and VFX-heavy shows. He was NOMINATED (not a winner) for a Children's & Family Emmy for editing on The Muppets Mayhem. He wrote the software and still maintains it, and walkthroughs are calls with him rather than with a salesperson. This matters to the product rather than being biography: the domain rules were taken from doing the job, not gathered by interviewing people who do it. ## Who it is for Post supervisors, post producers, editors and assistant editors on episodic television — shows running a recurring pipeline of episodes through cut stages (taped, timelined, rough, fine, lock) to a fan-out of delivery endpoints. ## What it does - **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. Replaces: Counts. 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. - **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. Replaces: The season spreadsheet, and the re-numbering by hand every time a block moves. - **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. 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. - **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. Replaces: An hour of notes given on a cut that had already been replaced — the mistake that tells nobody it happened. - **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. Replaces: The separate spreadsheet tab for studio and network notes, kept because the main schedule had nowhere to put them. - **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. Replaces: The schedule spreadsheet that gets re-keyed every week and is wrong by Wednesday. - **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. Replaces: The 4pm status email. And the reply-all that follows it. - **Messages that say your name** — One line, sent to one person, naming the show, the cut and what they need to do. Replaces: The email chain whose subject line is the episode number and whose body says "see below". - **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. Replaces: A separate spreadsheet per version, and the hope that nobody drops a promo into a cut it was never cleared for. - **Watch a cut without copying it anywhere** — Review copies play straight from your media system, and the login never reaches the browser. Replaces: A second copy of everything, to keep secure, keep current, and expire on time. - **Menus that know your job** — The menu shows what you can do, and shows what you cannot along with the reason. Replaces: "Permission denied" — a message that tells you nothing about who to go and ask. - **Things get archived, never deleted** — Everything keeps its history, along with the reason it was put away. Replaces: The row somebody deleted, and the argument afterwards about what was in it. - **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. Replaces: Walking down the hall to ask. ## How it is built - Two halves: a hosted control plane (boards, tasks, append-only event log) and an optional on-prem agent that watches facility storage. - The control plane never touches production storage. The agent never listens on a port. Facility credentials never leave the facility. - Every fact on screen is either *observed* (reported by a connected agent) or *modelled* (derived from air-date cadence), and the interface always says which. - Adopting a new show is configuration in seven tables, validated as a unit. It is not a fork, and it involves no TypeScript, Go or SQL. ## What it does for each role ### Post Supervisor Stop being the place answers live. You are the human router. Everybody interrupts you to ask where something is, and the real answer is in your head and in a spreadsheet only you fully understand. - The board answers instead of you: Stage, whose spin it is, what is due next, and what is blocked — visible to everyone without anybody asking you. - You see what is actually moving: A card in progress is a card somebody has genuinely opened, not one that got marked started in a status meeting. - What you know stops being a single point of failure: The schedule, the handoff chain and the delivery list are written down as settings, not carried by one person. - Asks of them: Nothing daily. Setting up your show once, and then it runs on what people actually do. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/post-supervisor/ ### Post Coordinator The status chase ends. Most of your day goes on asking people for updates and retyping the answers into a tracker that is out of date by the time you finish. - Nobody has to be chased for a status: Cards move because work was opened and finished. There is no round of messages to collect what already happened. - One list instead of six tabs: Episodes, packages, deliverables and tasks are the same system, so nothing has to be reconciled between sheets. - Delivery is per destination: Each endpoint has its own spec, owner and due date, so "delivered" never quietly means delivered to one of five places. - Asks of them: Nothing that is not already your job. You stop re-keying facts other systems already hold. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/post-coordinator/ ### Post Producer See the whole season without a status meeting. You need to know what is at risk far enough out to do something about it, and you need it without adding a meeting to get it. - Risk is visible before it is a problem: Blocked is shown separately from late, so the list of things actually stuck is short and true rather than a wall of red. - Every change has a record: Who was told what, when, and about which episode. When something goes wrong near air, the question of what happened is answerable. - The board says what it does not know: Confirmed and estimated are labelled per card, so you are never making a call on a date that only looked solid. - Asks of them: Nothing. You read it. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/post-producer/ ### Editor Be told what is yours, then left alone. You do not want another system. You want to know what is on you, open it, and not be interrupted for the rest of the afternoon. - One line, addressed to you: "Q-1060 is your spin from Harper: address notes — v1.7." It names the show, the cut and what is wanted. - You find out the cut was replaced: If a newer version exists, the message says so and names it — before you spend an hour on the wrong one. - Nobody has to ask if you started: Opening the cut is what moves the card. That is the whole interaction. - Asks of them: Nothing. No status to maintain, no daily update, no tickets to close. Anything that asked an editor to keep a field current would be abandoned in a week, so nothing does. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/editor/ ### Assistant Editor Stop being asked for the same file twice. You carry the media, the deliverables and the requests, and most of the interruptions are for things somebody could have looked up. - The delivery list is real: Every destination, its spec, its owner and what it is waiting on. Blocked is distinguished from late, so you are not defending a red row that was never yours. - What landed is seen, not reported: A program watching your storage confirms a master exists. You stop confirming it by hand. - Requests arrive attached to the thing: A request for an element sits on the episode or package it belongs to, not in a thread you have to search. - Asks of them: Nothing beyond the work. Nothing asks you to re-key what the storage already knows. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/assistant-editor/ ### Online Editor Know the cut is locked before you conform. Starting a conform on a picture that moves afterwards is the most expensive mistake in the chain, and it usually announces itself late. - Lock is a state, not a rumour: The board says whether picture is locked, who locked it and when — rather than a message saying it should be by now. - The version you were handed is checked: If a newer cut exists, you are told, and told which one. That is the failure that otherwise reaches nobody. - Credits are frames, not guesses: Credit durations are counted in frames at your show’s real frame rate, so the crawl is timed rather than approximated. - Asks of them: Nothing. Your completion is recorded from finishing the step. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/online-editor/ ### Audio / Sweetening Get the handoff with the version on it. You are near the end of the chain, which means you inherit every upstream slip and usually hear about it last. - The handoff names the cut: Not "the latest" — the actual version, checked against what exists where it is checkable. - Your due date is your step’s: Cards carry the date that step is due, not just the air date, so the real window is visible. - You can see what is ahead of you: Whether picture is locked, and whether the thing you are waiting on has moved. - Asks of them: Nothing. Being an outside vendor does not mean being outside the board. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/audio-post/ ### Captioning / Localization One place that says what is ready and what is cleared. You need the finished picture, the right variant, and certainty about what is cleared to travel where. - Variants keep their clearances: An INTL cut inherits the parent’s packages except the ones not cleared for it — and it names what it left behind rather than dropping it quietly. - Your deliverable is its own line: With its own spec, owner and due date, and its own gate if it waits on a QC pass. - As-broadcast captions stay searchable: What was said, on which episode, without reopening a master. - Asks of them: Nothing. You are a destination on the delivery list like any other. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/captioning-localization/ ### Standards & Practices Your note is attached to the episode, not an inbox. A compliance note that lives in an email thread is a note that can be missed, and the miss is found after air. - Notes attach to the object: On the episode or the package, with an owner and a done-state. Not in a thread whose subject line is a number. - You are a gate, if you should be: A destination can be configured so the rest of the fan-out waits on your pass, rather than going out in parallel and hoping. - Nothing is deleted: Everything is archived with a reason, so "what was in that show" stays answerable long after. - Asks of them: That your note goes on the episode rather than into an email. That is the whole change. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/standards-compliance/ ### Showrunner / EP One screen, no status meeting. You want to know the season is on track and to hear about the exceptions, without becoming part of the reporting chain. - The season at a glance: Every episode, its stage, and what needs attention — on a board that can stay up on a wall and keep moving. - Exceptions, not noise: Things genuinely blocked are separated from things merely late, so what you are looking at is short. - Nothing is being staged for you: It is the same board post is working on, not a summary built for a meeting. - Asks of them: Nothing. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/showrunner/ ### Line Producer / UPM See post from the production side. Post is where the schedule either holds or quietly stops holding, and you usually find out at the point it costs money. - Tape days connect to air dates: One tape day can serve several broadcast weeks, and the board resolves that rather than making somebody work it out. - Slip is visible early: Stages have real dates derived from your cadence, so drift shows up while there is still room to act. - Pre-production is in the same place: The paperwork spine for each show lives with the episodes it belongs to. - Asks of them: Nothing daily. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/line-producer/ ### Network / Delivery Know what shipped, where, and whether it passed. You care about one thing per episode: did the right file reach the right place on time, to spec. - Delivery is per destination: Each endpoint tracked separately, with its own spec and timing. Never one "delivered" flag covering five places. - Passed is distinct from sent: A QC gate is a gate: the things behind it wait, rather than going out and being pulled back. - Re-deliveries are tracked as such: A revision is a different thing from a version, and only an episode that actually delivered can carry one. - Asks of them: Nothing. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/network-delivery/ ### IT / Engineering Nothing new is exposed to the internet. You are being asked to approve a cloud tool that wants to know about facility storage, which is normally where the conversation gets difficult. - The program in the building only sends out: It does not open a port and does not accept connections. There is no inbound path to approve. - Credentials never leave: Logins for your storage and media systems stay in the facility. They are never uploaded. - Facts travel, files do not: "A master exists", "a file landed", "a cut was updated". Never the media itself. - Asks of them: Running one outbound-only program where it can see the volumes that matter. It is optional — the board works without it, showing estimated dates instead of confirmed ones. - Source: https://postmanifest.com/for/it-engineering/ ## Integrations, and their real status Three states are used and never blurred: WORKING TODAY (written and shipped), BEING BUILT (in progress), and ON REQUEST (not written; built for the first show that needs it). Most of the list is ON REQUEST. ### Where people watch the cut - **Frame.io** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Put the review link on the card, and open the right version from the handoff. - **Sony Ci** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Open the cut from the card, and stream the proxy without a second copy. - **MediaSilo** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Carry the review link per episode and per deliverable. - **Vimeo / Wipster** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Same seam. A link on the card that goes to the right cut. ### Where your cuts are tracked - **Avid MediaCentral / Production Management** — WORKING TODAY. Reports which versions exist, so a handoff is marked verified, superseded or not found. - **PilotWare** — WORKING TODAY. A PilotWare export feeds the same version check. No Avid Production Management needed. - **A nightly export, or a pasted list** — WORKING TODAY. Genuinely supported. If a person pastes the list of cuts, the check still works. - **DaVinci Resolve** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Read version and timeline state from a Resolve-based post, and carry it onto the card. - **Adobe Premiere / Productions** — BUILT ON REQUEST. The same version check, against a Premiere-based post. ### Where the files live - **Your own storage** — WORKING TODAY. Watches your volumes and masters, and reports what exists. Confirmed dates come from here. - **Box** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Watch a delivery folder and mark a deliverable as arrived when it appears. - **Dropbox** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Same: watch the folder that matters, report what landed. - **Aspera / Signiant** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Confirm a delivery actually completed, rather than that somebody started one. - **Amazon S3** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Watch a bucket or prefix used as a delivery destination. ### Where the media is catalogued - **Iconik** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Read asset and proxy records so the board can point at them. - **Dalet / Ateliere** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Read catalogue state for episodes and masters. ### How people get told - **Slack** — WORKING TODAY. Posts the handoff message to the person or channel. - **Email** — WORKING TODAY. Same message, for people who do not live in Slack. - **Microsoft Teams** — BUILT ON REQUEST. The same message, in Teams. - **SMS / push** — BEING BUILT. Per-person choice, so nobody gets pinged three ways for one thing. ### Somebody else’s transcode and delivery - **Telestream Vantage** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Report job state per deliverable, including failures. - **Your network’s delivery portal** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Whatever the network makes you use. These are usually bespoke. No integration is required to use it. The board runs a full season with nothing connected; connectors reduce re-keying and turn estimated dates into confirmed ones. Connecting a review platform fills a seam that already exists, because an episode stores a review link without the board knowing which platform issued it. Product names above belong to their respective owners and are used only to describe what this connects to. No partnership or endorsement is implied. ## Transcode and delivery, first-party Transcode and delivery run on our own cloud platform, so a show that does not want to buy, run and babysit a transcode farm does not have to. - The board already knows what is due where: Your delivery list, with each destination’s spec, owner and timing, is already in the system. Handing that to a transcoder you also control removes the step where somebody re-enters it. - Delivered means delivered, not submitted: Because the job is ours, the board sees it finish or fail. That is the difference between a deliverable marked done and a deliverable somebody pressed go on. - Nothing about it is compulsory: If you already run Vantage or a facility farm, keep it. The board reports on that instead. This exists for shows that would rather not own one. This is NOT an integration. It is run by the publisher, so a show that does not want to operate a transcode farm does not have to. Using it is optional. ## Migrating from another system If you are already on something, you do not have to start from an empty board — and you do not have to switch mid-season to find out whether this works. - **PilotWare** — WORKING TODAY. Run alongside it or move off it. A PilotWare export already feeds the version check, so the same export that keeps the two in step is the one that brings your season across. - **Spreadsheets** — WORKING TODAY. The most common starting point by a distance. Episodes, air dates, packages and the delivery list come across from the sheets you already keep. - **Airtable, Monday, Notion** — BUILT ON REQUEST. Export-led, same as a spreadsheet. What transfers depends on how you shaped it. You can run both for a stretch. Nothing about this requires a cutover date, and a season already in flight is the worst possible time to be forced into one. ## What this system explicitly does not claim - It does not render never-observed state as missing. An unreachable volume, an unconfigured source and a genuine absence are three different facts and stay three different facts on screen. - It does not present modelled state as observed. The board says which it is showing, per episode. - It does not rely on a status a person has to maintain. Anything a human must remember to update is a field that will eventually lie. ## What it is not - Not a media asset manager, and not a replacement for one. It reads from asset management; it does not store or catalogue media. - Not an NLE, a transcoder, or a review-and-approve tool for frame-accurate notes. - Not a general project manager. The domain model is specific to episodic television: cut stages, comp weeks, package versions, delivery endpoints, frame-accurate credit durations. ## Direct answers ### What software do TV shows use to track post-production? Most episodic television shows track post-production in spreadsheets - usually several, one per department. Purpose-built options fall into three groups: media asset managers that catalogue files, review tools that collect notes on cuts, and coordination tools that track where each episode is and who has it. Wheelhouse is the third kind, built for high-volume unscripted shows. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/post-production-tracking-software/ ### How do you track post-production deliverables without spreadsheets? Replace the spreadsheet with a system that works out status from what people actually do, rather than asking them to report it. In Wheelhouse, a card moves when someone opens the cut, every delivery destination is its own line with its own due date, and blocked is shown separately from late - so the list stays true without anybody maintaining it. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/replace-post-production-spreadsheet/ ### 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. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/do-we-need-production-management/ ### Does it integrate with Frame.io, Sony Ci, MediaSilo or Box? Those four are built on request rather than shipped today. Wheelhouse stores a review link per episode and does not care which platform issued it, so connecting one fills a seam that already exists instead of changing how the board works. Working today: your own storage, Slack, email, handoff version checking, and our own cloud transcode and delivery. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/does-it-integrate-with-frameio/ ### Does our media have to move to the cloud? No. Your footage never leaves your building. Wheelhouse has two pieces: a board that runs in the cloud so anyone can open it from anywhere, and a small program that runs inside your facility and reports what it sees. The cloud side never touches your storage, the program in your building does not open anything to the internet, and your logins stay with you. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/where-does-our-media-live/ ### What happens if the connection to our storage goes down? The board keeps working and tells you what it no longer knows. Wheelhouse falls back to estimated dates and marks affected cards as unchecked rather than guessing. It never turns 'nobody could check' into 'missing', because a drive that is temporarily unreachable and a file that genuinely is not there are different facts. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/what-if-the-watcher-goes-offline/ ### How long does it take to set up for a new show? Adding a show is settings, not new software. You supply your stage names and how many days before air each one starts, your target runtime and frame rate, who holds which role, your asset libraries, your delivery destinations and your handoff order. It is checked as a whole before the board will load, so a schedule that skips a stage is caught at setup rather than three weeks in. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/how-long-does-setup-take/ ### Does it work for a daily strip show? Yes, and daily strip shows are the strongest fit. Wheelhouse handles taping on one day and airing across several broadcast weeks, packages reused across a 190-episode season with a flag on every episode still on an old version, and a delivery list that fans out per destination. That volume is exactly what breaks a spreadsheet. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/does-it-work-for-a-daily-strip-show/ ### How is this different from a review tool, a media asset manager, or Monday? They answer different questions. Review tools collect notes on a cut. Media asset managers catalogue and store files. Monday, Asana and Airtable are general trackers that need somebody to keep them current. Wheelhouse tracks where each episode is and who has it, and works that out from what people do rather than asking them to report it. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/how-is-this-different/ ### How do you know the board is telling the truth? Three rules, kept deliberately. It never turns 'nobody checked' into 'missing', it never presents an estimated date as a confirmed one, and it never relies on a status a person has to keep up to date. Every card says whether what it shows was confirmed by a system or worked out from the air date. Source: https://postmanifest.com/answers/three-things-it-will-never-do/ ## Pages - [What it does](https://postmanifest.com/features/): Everything it does today, and what each part replaces. - [Integrations](https://postmanifest.com/integrations/): What it connects to today, and what gets built on request. - [Pricing](https://postmanifest.com/pricing/): Per show, per season. Never per seat. - [Live demo](https://postmanifest.com/demo/): The real thing, running on a made-up show, in your browser. - [Answers](https://postmanifest.com/answers/): Straight answers to what post teams ask before they buy. - [About Manifest Post](https://postmanifest.com/about/) - [Request a walkthrough](https://postmanifest.com/contact/) ## Provenance of this file Generated at build time from the same content that renders https://postmanifest.com. It cannot describe a capability the site does not also describe in visible copy. Publisher: Manifest Post. Canonical: https://postmanifest.com