How to deliver a graphics layer to someone else's exact spec

Last updated 2026-09-22 · 8 min read

What is the short version?

Someone else is compositing your layer, so it has to arrive to their spec exactly. A file that is 19.04 seconds, or carries a silent audio track, or reports alpha it does not have, will be rejected or, worse, quietly break their edit. Vizard Agent treats the spec as a checklist.

1. Give Vizard Agent the spec verbatim.
2. Ask for each clause to be verified on the delivered file.
3. Have the checks re-run after every correction.

What do you need before you start?

The spec, as literally as you were given it. Resolution, frame rate, exact duration, codec, alpha or a named fallback background, audio or none, safe zones, colours by hex value. Every one of those is either met or not, and the ones people paraphrase are the ones that come back.

You also need the fallback. "ProRes 4444, or WebM with alpha, and if neither is available render on pure black with nothing else in frame" is a much better instruction than "transparent", because it tells Vizard Agent what to do at the point the first option fails rather than leaving it to guess.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

Paste the spec, whole. Do not summarise it or tidy it up — a specification is written to be unambiguous, and paraphrasing one puts back exactly the ambiguity it was written to remove. The clauses that get dropped in a summary are almost always the ones that come back as a rejection.

Canvas 1080×1920, exactly 19.0 seconds, 25fps, fully transparent background, no audio, text only, all text inside the central 80% of the frame height.

Then add what matters most if something has to give. In the session behind this article the fallback was spelled out in detail — pure black, only white and one accent colour, no outlines, no shadows, no gradients fading to black — precisely because a fallback done carelessly is worse than no fallback.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

It verifies each clause on the file it is about to hand over rather than on the command that produced it. Those are different things, and the gap between them is where almost every spec failure lives — an encoder can accept a flag and not honour it.

In that session the checks that caught something were:

• Found a silent audio track in the generated file, which the spec forbade, and stripped it.
• Found a timing offset in the container and corrected the export to exactly 19.0 seconds — 475 frames at 25fps.
• Discovered the timestamp correction had removed the transparency flag, restored it, and re-verified the actual alpha pixels.
• Composited the layer over a neutral background to check edges, spacing and legibility rather than viewing it against black.
• On the black-background version, confirmed the empty areas were absolute black on every frame, and found a faint compression residue on one transition frame that would have lifted the black in the client's composite.

That third item is the lesson. Fixing the duration broke the transparency, and only re-running the earlier check caught it.

What does the result look like?

A file that passes every clause of the spec, with the numbers stated: the frame count, the duration to the frame, the presence or absence of audio, and a confirmation that the alpha is real. Vizard Agent gives you those figures so you can forward them rather than re-measuring.

You can also check it in context. In that session the layer was later composited onto the actual promo video, where the end card was held to cover the extra two seconds of footage and the original audio was verified unchanged.

When does this not work well?

When the spec is internally impossible. Exactly nineteen seconds at 25fps is 475 frames, which is fine; exactly nineteen seconds at 24fps is 456 frames, which is also fine — but a duration that is not a whole number of frames at the required rate cannot be met, and Vizard Agent will say so rather than round silently.

Alpha export is the other common wall. Not every pipeline can produce every alpha format, which is exactly why the spec should carry a fallback. Without one, the job stops at that point rather than making a choice on your behalf.

And a spec that describes a look rather than a file — "on brand", "premium" — is not a checklist. Those clauses still matter and they are reviewed by eye, not verified.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

If the recipient rejected it, ask for their error verbatim. "Wrong frame rate" and "no alpha channel" point at different checks, and Vizard Agent can verify that specific property on the file you sent rather than re-rendering on a guess.

If a correction is needed, ask for the full check set afterwards rather than just the one you changed. That is how the transparency loss was caught in that session, and it costs seconds.

If the layer looks right alone and wrong in their composite, the issue is usually the background. Ask Vizard Agent to check the empty areas are genuinely clean — true transparency or true black — on every frame rather than on a sample.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

Exporting to a spec by hand means setting it up in the export dialogue and trusting the dialogue. That is right most of the time, and the exceptions — a silent audio track added by the encoder, a container duration that disagrees with the frame count, an alpha flag without alpha data — are exactly the ones a dialogue will not tell you about.

The difference is probing the delivered file. Reading back the frame count, the streams and the actual pixel values takes moments and turns a spec from a set of intentions into a set of confirmed facts. On a handoff to someone else's pipeline, that is the whole value.

Common questions

Which alpha formats work? ProRes 4444 and WebM with VP9 alpha are the usual two. Vizard Agent reports what it produced.

What if alpha is not available? Give a fallback in the spec. Vizard Agent will not choose one for you.

Why does a silent audio track matter? Because some pipelines treat it as a real stream. The spec said none, so Vizard Agent removed it.

How exact is "exactly 19 seconds"? To the frame. Vizard Agent reports the frame count as the proof.

Can it export at a higher resolution too? Yes, if you ask. Vizard Agent delivers both if the spec offers it as an option.

Will it check the safe zones? Yes, on rendered frames rather than on the layout values.

Can I specify colours by hex? Yes, and you should. Vizard Agent matches the values rather than the description.

What about fonts? Name them and any acceptable substitutes. Vizard Agent says which it used.

Does it check the file after every fix? Yes if you ask for the full set, and you should — one repair can undo another.

Can it composite the layer for me as well? Yes. Vizard Agent can deliver both the layer and a composited preview.

What if their spec contradicts itself? Vizard Agent flags the contradiction rather than choosing a reading.

How do I prove it meets the spec? Ask for the figures. Vizard Agent reports frame count, streams and alpha verification.

Does compression affect the black fallback? It can. Vizard Agent checks every frame for residue that would lift the black.

Can I reuse the layer at another length? Yes, though a re-render is cleaner than a retime.