Chapter 10 — Shoot Reports

Scene Cards can attach shoot reports to shoot days and store them inside the document package. After import, each report file is one tap away from the card inspector — click to open it in Preview or your default PDF viewer. Cards on that day gain a colour-coded badge in the schedule header.

Five report types are supported:

Type What Scene Cards does with it
Sound Stores the file; parses scene keys to schedule cards to the shoot day; opens the whole PDF from the inspector
Camera Stores the file; ZoeLog reports are parsed into per-take entries and their per-scene pages filed into the reference carousel; opens from the day badge
Continuity Stores the source PDF; extracts per-scene pages into the reference carousel; authoritative — reschedules cards to match what was actually shot, moving anything it doesn’t confirm to Unmatched; “Shot on Day” claims override the day entered at import
Call Sheet Stores the file; parses the planned scene list and auto-detects its own shoot day from the PDF; schedules matching cards and moves anything it doesn’t list to Unmatched
Essentials Stores the file; opens from the day badge

Call Sheet and Continuity both actively manage the schedule now, but Continuity always wins where they disagree — see §10.2.3.

This chapter covers importing reports (via the day header, via the unified day-folder import, and via file batch), the formats accepted for sound and camera reports, the inspector Reports section, removing a report, and where the files live on disk.

10.1 Attaching a Report to a Shoot Day

Reports are attached at the shoot-day level. You must have a schedule imported first (§9) so the day structure exists.

10.1.1 From the day header

  1. In Schedule mode, locate the shoot day.
  2. Click the ↓doc button at the right of the day header.
  3. From the menu, choose a report type: Sound, Camera, Continuity, Call Sheet or Essentials.
  4. In the file picker, select the report file (or folder — see below).

For Camera, Continuity, Call Sheet and Essentials on 🍎 macOS, the open panel also accepts folders — single-click a folder, then click Open to import everything inside it as a batch for that day and type. For Sound, use the unified folder import (§10.1.2) or the file batch (§10.1.3) to get automatic day detection across multiple days.

After import, a colour-coded badge appears in the day header (§9.6). Sound, Call Sheet and Continuity reports also reschedule matching cards to that shoot day; for Call Sheet and Continuity, any card that was previously on the day but isn’t confirmed by the new import moves to Unmatched (§9.4.4) rather than staying behind — see §10.2.3.

🔒 Permission required — on 📐 iPadOS, the file picker prompts the first time you reach a location outside the app’s sandbox.

10.1.2 🍎 macOS — Import Reports from Folder

This is the fastest route when you receive a day folder of mixed paperwork — sound reports, camera sheets, continuity logs, sides — straight from production:

  1. Choose File → Import Reports from Folder….
  2. Select the day folder and click Open.

Scene Cards scans every PDF and CSV in the folder (including sub-folders) and detects each file’s type automatically — from the filename when it is conclusive (…sound report…, …camera report…), otherwise by sniffing the first page for recorder or report signatures (Sound Devices, Zaxcom, Cantar, ZoeLog) or call sheet layout. Call sheets are checked first, since a call sheet’s page incidentally contains text that can otherwise be mistaken for other report signatures. Files are then routed by type:

Detected type What happens
Sound Scene keys are parsed and matching cards are scheduled to the day
Camera The day badge is added and per-scene sheets are filed into each card’s reference carousel — camera rolls never reschedule cards, since a roll can legitimately carry scenes from earlier days
Call Sheet Scene keys are parsed and matching cards are scheduled — see below for which day
Continuity Per-scene pages filed into the reference carousels; matching cards scheduled — see §10.2.3 for the authority rules
Everything else Attached and archived without parsing (Essentials and any other file type)

A single prompt confirms the shoot day for the folder, pre-filled from the folder name when it carries one — sd3, SD48, SD33 - 26th October, Day_03 and D112 Block 1 are all recognised. Day entries may be typed with or without the SD prefix (12, SD012, sd12 are equivalent). Call sheet files are the one exception: each file is grouped and scheduled under its own shoot day, read from the call sheet’s page content (§10.2.3) — the folder prompt is only a fallback for any call sheet where that read fails, and doesn’t apply if it succeeds. This matters for folders that bundle more than one day’s call sheets together.

ⓘ Note — if the folder contains only sound reports, Scene Cards treats it as a sound-report archive that may span many shoot days and hands over to the multi-day pipeline instead: each file’s day is detected individually (§10.1.5) and no single-day prompt is shown.

ⓘ Note — Volume Reports (drive manifests listing media files) are recognised and yield no scene data; they are archived without affecting the schedule.

10.1.3 🍎 macOS — Import Sound Report Files

To import individual sound report files rather than a whole folder:

  1. Choose File → Import Sound Report Files….
  2. Select one or more sound report PDFs or CSVs and click Open.

Each file’s shoot day is detected from its filename or content (§10.1.5), so a single import can cover several shoot days. A summary alert reports how many days were imported.

✱ Tip — name your Sound Devices exports to include the shoot day (e.g. Day_09_soundreport.pdf or Day9_22Y10M25_1.pdf). The detector reads both the Day N pattern and Sound Devices date encoding (YYYYMMdd) and matches them against the imported schedule.

10.1.4 📐 iPadOS — Import Shoot Reports

Tap ⋯ → Import Shoot Reports… to open a folder picker. Navigate to the folder of reports and confirm. Scene Cards applies the same day-detection logic as the macOS folder batch.

10.1.5 Shoot day auto-detection

When a report is imported via a folder (not via the day header), Scene Cards tries to identify its shoot day using four strategies in order:

  1. Filename day pattern — Day_09, Day-9, day 9, D09 etc.
  2. Filename date — parsed and matched against the imported schedule. Sound Devices devices encode the date as YYYYMMdd (e.g. 22Y10M25 = 25 Oct 2022). Aaton Cantar encodes it as MM-DD-YY at the end of the filename.
  3. PDF header keyword — Day: 9, Production Day 9 near the top of the first page.
  4. PDF header date — any recognisable date string matched against the schedule.

If none of the four strategies produces a match, the file is skipped. Skipped files appear in the summary alert so you can attach them manually via the day header (§10.1.1).

10.2 Accepted Formats

10.2.1 Sound reports

Sound report files are stored in the document package and opened directly — Scene Cards reads the scene keys to schedule the matching cards to the correct shoot day but does not store individual take data.

Recorder Detection
Sound Devices (PDF or CSV) Filename encodes episode and scene: e.g. 1329S142T01 = ep 13, sc 29.
Zaxcom Nomad (PDF) Filename format {scene}T{take}, e.g. 27T002.
Zaxcom slate-based (PDF) Takes named by sequential slate number (e.g. 1049T1 = slate 1049, take 1); scenes resolved from production numbers in the Notes column, carried forward slate-to-slate.
Aaton Cantar (PDF) Slt column contains the scene reference; date detected from MM-DD-YY filename suffix.

When the PDF is image-based (scanned), Scene Cards falls back to Vision OCR at 3× scale to extract the text.

10.2.2 Camera reports

Camera report PDFs are stored in the package and open from the day badge. ZoeLog camera reports are additionally parsed: each slate block’s scene, episode, takes and metadata (lens, stop, filters, shutter, FPS, notes) become per-take entries on the matching card, and the report’s per-scene pages are filed into each card’s reference carousel (§6.4).

Camera reports never reschedule cards — a camera roll can legitimately carry scenes from earlier shoot days, so the parsed scene keys only confirm what the day badge shows.

Reports from other camera departments are attach-only: stored, badged and openable, but not parsed.

10.2.3 Continuity, Call sheets and Essentials

Essentials are attach-only — Scene Cards stores the file inside the package and makes it openable from the inspector or day badge. Any PDF, folder or supported file type can be attached.

Call sheets and Continuity are both parsed and both actively manage the schedule, but they answer different questions:

  • Call Sheet is the plan — what production expects to shoot that day. Scene Cards reads the scene list off the call sheet PDF, and also reads the shoot day straight off the same page (call sheets print it prominently, e.g. “Day 58 of 120”), so it doesn’t need the day you entered at import to be exact — a folder or file batch import falls back to the filename/date detection in §10.1.5 for any call sheet where the day can’t be read from the page itself.
  • Continuity is the record — what actually got shot, which is why it always overrides the call sheet where the two disagree. A continuity log covering fewer scenes than the call sheet planned simply reflects a shorter shooting day; a scene picked up unexpectedly (weather, a schedule change) shows up in Continuity even though the call sheet never listed it, and Scene Cards schedules it there.

Because production plans routinely change, importing either type replaces the day’s scene list rather than adding to it: every card the new import confirms is scheduled to that day, and every card that was previously there but isn’t confirmed moves to the Unmatched section (§9.4.4) — it isn’t deleted, just no longer claimed to be shot that day. If it turns out the scene was shot after all, importing its Continuity report brings it straight back.

When a continuity log explicitly records the day a scene was shot (e.g. Shot on Day: 3 in a lined script or editor’s log), that claim wins over the day entered at import, for the same reason: paperwork that says exactly when a scene was shot is more authoritative than whichever day folder it happened to be filed under.

Continuity also parses each page for its scene number and places those pages into the matching card’s reference carousel (§6.4), so you can flip through the continuity sheets directly on the card. The full source PDF is archived in Media/reports/ at the same time (§10.7).

10.3 Opening Reports from the Inspector

After import, a Reports section appears at the bottom of the card inspector for any card that has sound reports for its shoot day, or camera and continuity entries.

Each sound report appears as a row showing the report type, shoot day and filename. Click or tap the row to open the full PDF in your default viewer (Preview on macOS).

The Reports section is only shown when at least one report is associated with the card.

10.4 Removing a Report

10.4.1 Remove a day’s report badge

  1. In Schedule mode, right-click the coloured badge in the day header.
  2. Choose Remove {type} (Day N).

This deletes the attachment record from the document. The file inside the package (Media/reports/…) is not deleted.

10.4.2 Re-import to update

There is no in-place edit. To update after a re-export from the recorder, attach the new version via the day header — Scene Cards clears the old attachment record and replaces it with the new file.

10.5 Scene Number Matching

Sound scene keys are normalised before matching cards:

  • Leading zeros are stripped: 017 → 17.
  • Episode prefixes are preserved for TV-style keys: 1-14A stays 1-14A and matches a card with episode 1, scene 14A.
  • Sound Devices filenames encode episode and scene in the leading digits: 1329S… → ep 13, sc 29.
  • Setup letters (American slating: 7A, 7B) are matched both as-is and against the bare scene number, so they find whichever convention the cards use.

10.6 Transferring Reports Between Documents

The Import Project Data workflow (§12) can copy shoot reports from one Scene Cards document into another. You choose which shoot days and which report types to bring across; attachment records transfer together.

10.7 Where Report Files Live on Disk

All report files are copied into the document package at import time:

MyProduction.scenecards/
└── Media/
    └── reports/
        ├── Day_01_160921/       ← dated form (Day_NN_DDMMYY)
        │   ├── sound/
        │   │   └── Day01_SoundReport.pdf
        │   ├── camera/
        │   │   └── Camera_Day1.pdf
        │   ├── callsheets/
        │   │   └── CallSheet_Day1.pdf
        │   └── essentials/
        │       └── Essentials_Day1.pdf
        ├── Day_02/              ← legacy form (no date; older documents)
        │   └── sound/
        │       └── Day02_Sound.pdf
        └── Day_46_160521/       ← continuity source PDFs filed under the shoot day
            └── continuity/
                └── ContinuityLog.pdf

The day folder uses the dated form Day_NN_DDMMYY when the schedule carries a date for that shoot day; otherwise it falls back to the bare Day_NN form.

Files that already exist at the destination are not overwritten — re-importing a corrected report replaces the attachment record but does not delete the old file.

ⓘ Note — removing a badge from the day header deletes the attachment record; it does not delete the file from Media/reports/. To recover disk space, use Show Package Contents in Finder and delete from there.

10.8 Where to Go Next

  • Import Project Data (copy reports to another document) — see §12.
  • Schedule mode day headers and badges — see §9.6.
  • Document package layout — see §4.8.