From set audio to finished hot sheet
The full daily workflow: media handoff, local transcription, Scene Explorer review, and shipping a polished hot sheet before the crew hits the hotel.
August 10, 2026 · 2 min read
This is the loop Hotsheetz was built around: the day gets shot, the audio gets transcribed where it lands, and the story team curates instead of logging. Here's the whole cycle, from last take to sent hot sheet.
1. Media handoff — nothing changes on set
When a scene wraps (or the day does), audio files head to your DIT or media manager exactly the way they always have. Hotsheetz doesn't touch your on-set workflow; it starts where the media stops.
Pro tip: if your schedule allows a media handoff at lunch, do it. Half the day's transcripts will be waiting before martini shot.
2. Local transcription
On the DIT's machine, the Hotsheetz desktop app processes the audio: transcription runs locally — no internet connection required, and your media never hits our servers. The output is a speaker-labeled, timecoded transcript for each scene, identified automatically from your sound department's filenames (that's the naming pattern you set up in project settings).
When processing finishes, the app pushes transcripts — just the text data, never the media — to your show in Story Hub.
3. Review in Scene Explorer
In Story Hub, the day's scenes stack up in Scene Explorer as they arrive. This is where the story team works:
- Filter by cast to follow one storyline across the day.
- Search dialogue to find the line someone half-remembers from set.
- Read with timecodes, so anything worth flagging can go straight to post.
- Add notes on scenes as you review — they stay attached to the scene alongside the transcript.
A transcript and draft hot sheet can be ready within about an hour of the DIT receiving media, depending on how many crews were rolling.
4. Draft the hot sheet
Generate an AI-drafted hot sheet from the day's transcripts and notes. The draft follows your show's hot sheet format — set up a template in project settings once, and every draft comes out in your show's look instead of a generic one.
The draft is a starting point, not a verdict: your team reviews, edits, and layers in the context only people on the ground have. The point is that nobody starts from a blank page at 11pm.
5. Compile and ship the day
The Day Breakdown view rolls the whole shoot day up — scenes, notes, and highlights in one place. When the hot sheet reads right, export it from the Exports hub as a print-ready PDF, along with any transcripts (TXT, HTML, or PDF) the story team or post needs.
Send it out. Go to sleep.
The short version
Shoot the day → hand off media → local transcription → Scene Explorer review → AI draft → your edits → export and send. The story team's job shifts from logging what happened to deciding what matters — which was always the actual job.
Put it to work on your show
Create your show in Story Hub, install the desktop app, and let tonight’s hot sheet write its own first draft.