Sound
Sound notes that survive the shoot.
Production sound generates critical information — wild lines, room tone, problem takes, playback requirements — and most of it is written on a report that reaches post as a photograph, if at all.
What is sound department software?
Sound department software organises a production's audio records — music cues with their timings, composer and status, and sound design notes tied to a scene and an SMPTE timecode range. It keeps both in the same project as the script and the schedule, so a note written on set is still attached to its scene in post.
What you get
Notes against a timecode, not a day
Sound design notes carry SMPTE in and out points (HH:MM:SS:FF) and the scene they belong to. A note that says 'generator, from here to here' is actionable; one that says 'Tuesday was noisy' is not.
Your own categories
Category is a free text field, because every production names this differently — ADR, foley, ambience, wild line, room tone. Pick your vocabulary rather than ours.
Music cues with their timings
Cue number, title, composer, and whether the cue is temp, original or licensed. In and out timecodes where you have them. Cue numbers are unique per project.
A spotting-to-mix pipeline
Spotted, in progress, demo, director review, approved, recorded, mixed — one stage at a time, forwards or back. The status answers 'where is cue 4M12' without opening a thread.
Everything hangs off a scene
Cues and sound notes both carry their scene, so a recut or rescheduled scene shows up against the audio work attached to it.
Filter down to what you are working on
By status, by cue type, or by scene. A spotting session is one filter; a mix review is another.
Room tone is always the problem
Every sound mixer knows to capture room tone. It still gets missed, because it's captured at the end of a location when everyone is packing and the unit is being called to move.
What helps is writing it down somewhere the whole department reads. A sound note here carries a category you name yourself — room tone, wild line, ambience — and the scene it belongs to, so the gap is at least legible before the trucks leave. It is a list you keep, not an alarm that fires.
Notes that mean something in post
"NG sound" tells post nothing. The useful note is specific: what the problem was, whether it's fixable, and whether a wild line was captured to cover it.
That distinction determines whether a take is usable and whether ADR is needed — which is a scheduling and budget question, not just a technical one.
Where sound gets lost
The handover from production sound to post is one of the weakest links on most productions:
- Reports written on paper, photographed, and emailed
- Wild lines captured but not logged, so nobody knows they exist
- Room tone assumed rather than confirmed
- Playback and sync requirements known only to the mixer
- Slate mismatches with camera, discovered during sync
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is room tone and why does it matter?
- A recording of a location's ambient sound with nobody speaking, used in post to fill gaps and smooth edits between takes. Without it, cuts in dialogue sound abrupt. It's easily missed because it's captured last, as the unit is packing.
- What is a wild line?
- A line recorded separately from picture, usually because the on-set take was unusable or a delivery needs replacing. Capturing it on the day is far cheaper than scheduling ADR later.
- How does this connect to the camera report?
- Loosely, and by hand. Scene, slate and take numbers have to match between sound and camera or sync becomes a manual problem in the edit — but a sound note here is filed against a scene and a timecode, not against a slate or take, and it does not cross-check the [camera report](/templates/camera-report). Matching them is still the script supervisor's job.
- What should a production sound note contain?
- Specifically what happened — the source of any problem, whether it's fixable, and whether a wild line was captured to cover it. 'NG sound' is not actionable in post.
- Does it handle post sound too?
- Partly. Sound editing, ADR and mix are tracked as tasks in the [post-production hub](/post-production-software), and music cues run their own pipeline from spotted through to mixed. What does not happen automatically is the handover — production sound notes do not flow into post tasks on their own. Both live in the same project, which is a start and not the finish.
- Is it free?
- Yes, on the free tier alongside the other department hubs.
Terms explained
- Slate
- A slate is the board filmed at the head of a take carrying the production, scene, take and roll numbers. Its hinged arm is clapped to produce a sharp sound and a matching visual frame, giving post a point at which picture and separately recorded sound can be aligned.
- Take
- A take is a single recorded attempt at a shot. Takes are numbered sequentially within a setup, logged with a circled marker when the director considers them usable, and identified by scene, slate and take number so the edit can find them.
- Continuity
- Continuity is the consistency of everything visible and audible across shots that will be cut together — wardrobe, props, hair, position, eyeline, screen direction and the state of the action. It is tracked on set by the script supervisor and matters because scenes are shot out of order.
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Stop losing sound notes to paper.
Cues and notes filed against the scene, in the same project as the script. Free to start.