How to review your AI dailies with a select sheet before you open the edit

You finish a generation session with forty or sixty clips in a folder. You drag them all into the timeline, start scrubbing, and thirty minutes later you have a rough sequence built from whichever takes you happened to see first. The better take of shot 14 is sitting in a bin you never reopened. The shot you actually needed, a close-up to cut away to, was never generated at all, and you only find out when the scene refuses to cut.

Film crews solve this with dailies: a structured review of everything shot that day, before anyone edits. You can run the same habit solo, and it takes about ten minutes per session. The output is a single select sheet that tells you which take you are using for each shot, which are backups, and which shots you still owe yourself.

Set up the sheet before you watch anything

Open a spreadsheet or a plain text file. One row per shot from your shot list, not per clip. Columns:

```
Shot | Select | Backup | Flaw (and where) | Cut-around? | Status
```

`Select` is the take you would cut with today. `Backup` is the runner-up. `Flaw` records the problem with a timecode, such as "hand merges with cup, 0:03 to 0:04". `Cut-around?` is yes or no. `Status` is one of three words only: locked, regen, missing.

Using three status words keeps you from writing essays. Anything marked regen goes into your next generation batch. Anything missing is a shot on your list with no usable take at all.

Watch in shot order, not file order

Sort your clips by shot number, using whatever take naming you already have. Watch every take of shot 1 back to back, then shot 2, and so on. Comparing takes of the same shot within a minute of each other is how you notice that take C has the correct screen direction and take A does not.

Do the first pass at full screen with sound off if the shot is silent, and with your dialogue track playing if it is not. Do not pause and fix anything. Fill in the row, mark the select, move on.

Use the second pass for adjacency

Once every row has a select, play the selects in script order, one after another, with no trimming. You are not editing. You are checking that neighbouring shots belong to the same world: same costume colour, same time of day, same direction of travel. Flag mismatches in the Flaw column against the later shot, since that is the one you will regenerate.

This pass also exposes coverage gaps. If three wide shots run in a row, you will feel it. Add a row for the missing insert or reaction, status missing, and put it at the top of the next batch.

Decide using the sheet, not your mood

Now apply a rule. If the flaw is under a second long and the shot has a cutaway on either side, mark cut-around yes and lock it. If the flaw sits on the subject's face or hands for more than a second, mark regen. If you have already spent three takes on a shot, mark it for a reframe instead: change the shot size or angle so the problem leaves the frame.

What you should see

Before: you edit from memory, rewatch the same clips, and discover gaps mid-cut. After: you open the timeline with one select per shot already chosen, a short list of regenerations with the exact flaw to avoid written beside each, and a list of missing coverage. The rough cut assembles in a single pass because the decisions were made while the footage was fresh.

Try this next

Take your last generation session, build the sheet for just one scene, and time the two passes. Carry the regen and missing rows straight into your next batch, and keep the sheet open while the new clips render so you can fill it in as they arrive.