About Developing Tank

Post-Production suite of tools Built by an Assistant Editor for Avid Media Composer Automation.

Developing Tank started as a script, then another, and another, just so I could get back to the tasks I enjoy.


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 never carried through, and four departments waiting on the same numbers.

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 scripts I wrote over those years became Developing Tank.


The Problem We Lived

01
Dailies Prep Dread
You 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.
02
Re-entering Timecodes
After every recut. Frame counts, markers, metadata. EDLs don't carry much of the information needed. Good luck if your tracker got deleted.
03
Being the Only Person Who Knew How to Fix Things
You know how the spreadsheet formulas work, but one person mistakenly changes it and the whole workflow grinds to a halt.
04
The Cut Goes Out
After the cut is ready to go out, you are stuck updating the tracking documents and continuity just to hit send on that email.
05
Managing VFX in Spreadsheets
Every 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.
06
Combining PDFs to Make a Digital Editor’s Binder
Clicking 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."

Assistant editors are skilled professionals. Hours of repetitive data entry waste that skill, and the show gets nothing extra for it.

"Your tools should work for you."

Developing Tank works the way Avid works. It reads the files you already have, leaves your workflow alone, and exports formats you can drop straight back into the bay.

"Post-production professionals deserve better software."

Google Sheets, Airtable, and FileMaker were built for everybody, so getting post-production data into them takes half a dozen steps every time. Developing Tank is built for the person who knows what a framerate is.


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:

No other tool in this category does these five.


The Principles

01
No AI Guessing

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.

02
Files In, Files Out

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.

03
Workflow Compatibility

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.


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