How to harvest shots from another cut of the same shoot when the rushes are gone
Send Vizard Agent every delivered version of the project you still have. A longer cut keeps angles the short one dropped, so it measures the timing offset between the two files to the millisecond, finds the same moment in both, compares the framing, and lifts the shot you need, checking first that the borrowed frames carry none of that version's own graphics.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Tell Vizard Agent up front that the rushes are gone. Otherwise the obvious plan is to go back to the original source footage, and several minutes of the session are spent discovering that the source is unreachable before the real work can begin. Send every version you have, longer ones especially.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
When a project is a couple of years old, the rushes are usually the first thing to disappear, but the delivered versions survive. Vizard Agent aligns them first, because without that the two cuts are just unrelated files that happen to share a subject. Here the master was thirty seconds and the other cut seventy-three. In the session behind this article it:
- Downloaded the other delivered cuts and built contact sheets of the longer versions to find angles the short one did not have.
- Pulled candidate replacement shots from the longer cut and assembled them into one grid for review.
- Measured the timing offset between the two cuts and refined it to millisecond accuracy, since they were exported at different times with different handles.
- Compared the framing of the two cuts at the same moment, because the longer cut may hold a wider framing of the identical second.
- Measured when the other cut's graphic cleared and where it changed shot.
- Verified the area it needed was clean across both versions.
When does this not work well?
You can only harvest what somebody delivered. If every version used the same selection of shots, there is nothing new for Vizard Agent to find, and a heavily graded or cropped delivery may not cut convincingly against your current master. Graphics over everything and low-quality exports limit it too.
Common questions
How many versions should I send? All of them. Vizard Agent gets more from a longer cut than a short one.
Will the borrowed shot match? Usually, since it is the same shoot. Vizard Agent grades it to its neighbours.
What about graphics in the other cut? Vizard Agent measures when they clear and uses the window after that.