Note Taking Workflow Breakdown

Universal Note Taking Steps

While there are many ways to take notes in the M&E world, there are a few steps that have surfaced after being iterated on by many larger companies in the industry. This document hopes to start there, with what is mostly established as the important elements of the note-taking process, independent of what applications are used.

Step 1: Organizing by Context

Notes need to be attached to a context. What is the note on? is it a recent version? or for the whole shot, and applied to all versions? The industry standard is to utilize relationships between versions, tasks, shots, sequences and so on. These relationships allow context for a note to be readily retrieved. Tracking and storing these relationships is what makes production tracking software so useful.

Step 2: Review Preparation

To start a review, Coordinators typically prepare media in a playlist that they can load into a review platform for media playback. Once a review platform is chosen, one important thing is to make sure the history of the work (earlier versions, notes) are also accessible for comparison. Many proprietary platforms do this natively.

Step 3: Media Playback

Reviewing media means playing back media, and often a way to view that playback collaboratively. Many approach this with a presenter - viewer setup, like a video conference with screen sharing. Open-RV has a Live Review feature that allows users to select a version and have that be the version everyone else sees as well.

Step 4: Taking Notes and Making Annotations

The core of any review session is capturing feedback in a way that's actionable and traceable. Notes in VFX workflows typically fall into several categories: frame-specific notes, overall version feedback, and general task direction. In addition to notes, many review platforms support multiple annotation types including text overlays, drawn shapes, arrows, and freehand sketching directly on the video timeline.

Step 5: Saving Notes

This is where notes are saved to the platform being used for note taking. Can be thought of as a git commit. In collaborative note taking environments, this is where you can see the notes others have added to your session.

Step 6: Distributing Notes

Whether via email or through direct API integration with a production tracking tool, notes need to find their way to the relevant parties. Can think of this as a git-push to remote, where notes are shared for continuing tracking and collaboration. This is also where you'll see applications with options to generate exported files like CSVs or PDFs.

Adding the Dailies Notes Assistant Workflow

The Basics

The most important base elements of a collaborative media review session.

DNA

Above you can see the DNA backend and frontend added to the note taking process. In a bare-bones standalone version, CSVs are exported from the DNA application for use in a production pipeline.

Integrating DNA with a Production Tracking Application

Above you can see DNA fully integrated with a production tracking application that also integrates with the media player. This allows DNA to pull data from the application as well as push data back when the note taking session is completed.

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User Story and Flow Without Dailies Notes Assistant:

Name: Example

Role: Production Coordinator

Studio: Example

Context: Visual Effects for Film and Media

Macro Goal: To maintain and communicate an accurate and up-to-date record of work done and to be done on media projects.

Workflow Goal: To capture and distill important information discussed in dailies meetings to create actionable next steps for artists and team members while supporting the macro goal.

Step	User Action	Tools Used	Pain Point	Outcome
Organizing by Context	Set up task, shot and version entities in a production tracking software.	Production tracking software	Proprietary, requires subscription.	Shots, Tasks, Versions are all arranged and relationships are stored for retrieval.
Review Preparation	Make and wrangle a list of versions for review.	OS Default File Manager, OpenRV, production tracking software	Requires manually editing a .csv file or spreadsheet.	Versions available in review software, but integration with notetaking is lacking.
Media Playback	Plays the media back for review.	OS Default File Manager, OpenRV	Syncing with other reviewers requires they also have RV installed.	Reviewers can view material.
Taking Review Notes	Make notes based on key points and next steps mentioned in the session.	Spreadsheet editor	Separate application, requires some manual setup e.g column headers, table formatting.	Notes taken based on discussion.
Making On-Media Annotations	Add context to notes by drawing or otherwise annotating directly on media.	Open RV, OS Screenshot, Spreadsheet editor	Need to screenshot with limited context e.g frame number. Manually pair with notes. Hard to import elsewhere.	Annotations collected in Spreadsheet editor, paired with notes.
Saving Notes	Save notes once typed.	Spreadsheet editor	Separate application, requires some manual setup. Notes not available to other users without shared filesystem access / cloud.	Notes saved available on filesystem.
Exporting and Distributing Notes	Export CSV from Spreadsheet editor	Spreadsheet editor	Images need to be exported separately.	CSV and images available for import or email sending.