The hard stops

A frame, sheet or take that fails a hard stop is not approved, however good the rest of it is.

What is checked at full size:

1. Hands and touch points (decided), in every frame, sheet and take where a hand touches a product, a prop or a person: the finger count and joints, the nails, the grip and how the weight sits, the line where skin meets the object; no merged or floating fingers, no extra hands. In video, every frame of the window (the part of the take that will play in the cut), not the first frame only.

2. Faces [proven]: a crop beside the casting close-up or source photo at the same height, profile included: the face shape, eyes, nose, jaw and chin, the skin tone of the lower face. In video, every frame where the face reads. A face too small to judge is logged as inconclusive, never as a pass.

3. Lips [proven], on every speaking shot (the measured checks are in Speaking shots and lip sync → Checks on the 1080p result).

4. Labels and logos [proven]: read letter by letter at 100%, Arabic included; the logo colour against the brand guide; no third-party marks. In video, check the label in every frame of the window: a label that passes in the still anchor (the approved image the shot is made from) can still break while it moves. Where a label must be read (a packshot, the end card), that moment takes one of the four build routes (see Graphics, captions, versions and delivery → Built label moments).

5. Arabic text in any picture [proven]: a blind read. Before you look at the approved spelling, write out every Arabic word you see, letter by letter, enlarging small text first. Only then compare it with the approved spelling. Reading with the approved line in view makes you see what you expect, which is how a missing dot or a wrong hamza gets through. The key lines are checked again at full size before approval.

Judged on the clean take, before grain [proven]. Grain never rescues a failed take, and the hard stops are checked again on the delivered file (see The grade and texture → Texture once).

How to check at full size. Full size means 100% zoom with the playback resolution set to Full. A monitor at 100% zoom but half or quarter resolution shows an enlarged low-resolution frame, and nothing on screen tells you so.

• A take: step through the window that plays frame by frame at 100% zoom and Full resolution, or export just the area you are checking as frames, cropped and never scaled (steps for Premiere, DaVinci Resolve and ffmpeg in Do it yourself below). For a still, crop in any image editor without resampling.

• Small Arabic text: make a 4× copy for reading only, with nearest-neighbour scaling so no detail is invented (steps below). Everything else is judged at 100%.

• Arabic spelling, compared word by word, after your blind read:

  1. Write down what you read, and set it beside the approved line copied from the project file's text, never from a PDF or a page: copied text can carry invisible direction marks that show as false differences.

  2. Compare the two with a word-level compare, which marks each changed word and shows nothing when they match (steps below).

  3. Look again at every flagged word on a larger crop, and keep the look-alike letters in the table below apart exactly as written.

• Strips and contact sheets are for scanning only. A frame shown smaller than 100% is not a full-size check; recheck anything doubtful on its own crop.

When something fails (decided):

• Stills and sheets: up to two edits by the image model (one where possible), one change each, with the identity close-up re-attached and a full-size check after each; then a fresh image.

• Video takes: the failing take goes to the round's Archive. The next take carries one diagnosed change, or the take gets one model edit pass. A shot that keeps failing goes to the next batch review with its diagnosis (see Planning, budgets and takes → The generation rhythm).

• No pixel fixes, by hand or in any editing app: no retouch, paint-over or composite on a still or a take. The only fixes are a model edit pass or a fresh generation.

• Don't drop a chosen design after one failure. Find why it failed and make it again correctly; dropping it is your call.

How each retry is diagnosed and changed: Planning, budgets and takes → Fixing a failed take.

Do it yourself

Check at full size in Premiere (Premiere Pro)

1. Open the take in the Source Monitor, or in a sequence whose frame size matches the take.

2. In the monitor's settings (the wrench), set Playback Resolution and Paused Resolution to Full.

3. Set the zoom to 100%, scroll to the hand or label, and step frame by frame with the arrow keys.

Check at full size in DaVinci Resolve (DaVinci Resolve)

1. Set Playback → Timeline Proxy Resolution to Full, and switch off proxy and optimised media for the check.

2. Set the viewer zoom to 100% and step frame by frame.

Export a cropped area as full-size frames (ffmpeg)

1. Export only the area as PNG, cropped and never scaled. The crop takes the width, the height, then the top-left corner, in pixels:

ffmpeg -i take.mp4 -ss 2.0 -to 3.5 -vf crop=320:200:700:700 hand_%04d.png

1. Keep the box inside the frame (1920 × 1080 for 16:9, 1080 × 1920 for 9:16): the left edge plus the width, and the top edge plus the height, must stay within it. If the box runs off an edge, ffmpeg moves it back inside without a warning, and you check a different area from the one you typed.

Make a 4× reading copy of small Arabic text (ffmpeg)

1. In the command above, use this filter in place of the crop alone:

-vf crop=320:200:700:700,scale=iw*4:ih*4:flags=neighbor

Compare Arabic spelling word by word (Word, or git in a terminal)

Word needs no terminal. Use the command only if you already work in one.

1. Type what you read into one text file. Paste the approved line into a second file, copied from the project file's text.

2. Compare the two files with a word-level tool: Word's Review → Compare, which marks each changed word, or this command:

git diff --no-index --word-diff=plain approved.txt read.txt

1. The command prints each changed line with only the differing words marked (approved in [-…-], your reading in {+…+}), and prints nothing when the files match.

Sources

• This Guide's own rules.