About Developing Tank
Cut hours of repetitive Avid prep with tools built by someone who also does the job.
Developing Tank started as a way to get repetitive Avid prep off my plate and give those hours back to the actual editorial work.
The Origin Story
Will Smith, an editor and assistant editor with more than 10 years in film and television post-production, working mostly in Avid Media Composer. I built Developing Tank against the problems that filled my own days: repetitive manual work, metadata that disappeared during re-cuts, and four departments waiting for the same shot counts and timing data.
The same jobs came back at me show after show. A re-edit meant redoing dailies organization from the top. Timecodes went in by hand. Markers vanished out of VFX sequences. Continuity documents and turnover packages ate the hours between the cut going out and the email going out. Better spreadsheets were never going to fix that. The fix was software that reads Avid files.
I want the computer working FOR ME, and I want fewer places where I can make a mistake at 6am.
The Problem We Lived
- Dailies Prep DreadYou don't want to spend HOURS clicking and dragging to get dailies ready first thing in the morning just to be able to do the fun part.
- Re-entering TimecodesAfter every recut. Frame counts, markers, metadata. EDLs don't carry much of the information needed. Good luck if your tracker got deleted.
- Being the Only Person Who Knew How to Fix ThingsYou know how the spreadsheet formulas work, but one person mistakenly changes it and nobody can untangle what broke.
- The Cut Goes OutAfter the cut is ready to go out, you are stuck updating the tracking documents and continuity just to hit send on that email.
- Managing VFX in SpreadsheetsEvery shot, every frame count, every change tracked manually in a spreadsheet. One person leaves, and nobody else understands the system. The spreadsheet gets out of sync with the edit.
- Combining PDFs to Make a Digital Editor’s BinderClicking and dragging each page of a lined script and facing pages to create a digital editor’s binder to email to the editor. This paperless version sure feels like it takes twice the time.
What We Believe
“Manual work is the wrong way to spend a career.”
“Your tools should work for you, not the other way around.”
“Post-production professionals deserve better software.”
Ready to work differently?
See what we've built or try a free tool to experience the workflow that respects your time.
What We're Building
Developing Tank takes the manual repetition out of dailies prep, VFX tracking, paperwork, and delivery. We went after the hardest jobs first, scene bin creation, retime conforming, and change detection, and finished them, so your team can spend the day on the cut.
What makes us different:
- Dailies Automation: Scene bins, offspeed prep, and cleaner metadata from Avid files. Learn about Film Dailies →
- Deleted Marker Memory: We remember VFX shots even after editors delete them. Learn about VFX Tracking →
- Continuity and Paperwork: Reports and change lists come from the same sequence data. Learn about Continuity →
- Enhanced Detections: A human review layer for VFX shots the rules read two ways, so you catch the odd ones before a vendor does.
- Google Sheets Sync: Your producer's tracker updates itself. Learn about Google Sheets Sync →
No other tool in this category does these five.
The Principles
Every number here is calculated. We parse your timecodes out of the file data itself and hand back metadata that matches the source exactly. Nothing gets predicted, so nothing gets hallucinated.
You upload what you have and we hand back something you can open. AVB in, CSV out. EDL in, clean pull out. No conversion step waiting on the other side.
Keep Avid, keep Google Sheets, keep your FileMaker database. Developing Tank runs beside your pipeline and takes over the manual parts.
Proof / References
If you’re evaluating Developing Tank for a show, a feature, or an enterprise team, these pages answer the most common trust and rollout questions.
Trust
Data handling, what we do (and don’t) track, and how deletion works.
Legal
Terms, privacy, and the plain-language commitments behind the product.
Help Center
Operational guides and workflow explanations for day-to-day use.
Tutorials
Short walkthroughs that show exactly what you’ll get back from your files.
If any of this sounds familiar, you're our user.
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Concerned about data privacy? Read how we handle your data.
Still comparing options? See how Developing Tank compares to spreadsheets, FileMaker, scripts, and macros.