Red Pen Tools

VFX editorial desktop toolkit — 17 tools for EDL parsing, shot tracking, vendor management, and Avid integration. Built in Electron, used live on HBO's DTF St. Louis.

17 tools 4,100+ lines of renderer code Cmd+1–9 keyboard switching Avid MCP integration
Custom EDL parser Custom SubCap engine Custom AAF cut-in writer
The Case Study

Why an editorial supervisor wrote his own toolkit.

Editorial pipelines for VFX-heavy shows live in the gaps between Avid, the vendor's spreadsheet, the producer's tracker, and the post house's conform. Each gap is a place where shot IDs, timecodes, version numbers, or status updates get re-typed and slowly drift out of sync. Red Pen Tools is what happens when an editor stops re-typing and starts writing tools.

Every tool here started as a problem on a real show. EDL Compare started when a director's cut moved 40 shots and nobody could figure out which ones were new. The Auto Cut-In started when a vendor delivered 60 comps overnight and the assistant editor had to place them all by morning. Vendor Assignment started when three vendors needed pull EDLs split by scene before lunch. Each tool replaced a few hours of mechanical work with a few seconds of clicking — and, more importantly, eliminated the typo surface area where most pipeline errors actually live.

Editorial Tools

EDL parsing, shot ID generation, lineup, and pulling.

EDL & Shot ID

Tools 1–3, 11, 12 · the foundation
Change ListCompare two EDL versions, identify added/removed/modified VFX shots, export CSV/TXT.
SubCap to MarkersConvert Avid SubCap files to marker lists for re-import — frame rate, color, track configurable.
Sequence MarkersGenerate VFX IDs and markers for every shot in an EDL — show code, episode, scene/shot digits, increment.
Shot ListerImport EDL, output a clean VFX shot list with IDs, timecodes, descriptions, versions.
EDL InspectorParse any EDL into a sortable/filterable table — events, transitions, speed effects, comments.

Lineup & Pull

Tools 4, 9, 15 · vendor-facing deliverables
VFX Lineup MakerLoad AAF, click-to-add, generate lineup with timecodes, effects, speed ramps, markers, descriptions. Card and table views with canvas-drawn effect graphs. Connects to shot-history.db.
VFX Shot PullerGenerate ffmpeg commands to split a master QuickTime into individual shot files — codec, ProRes profile, handles, audio, timecode all configurable. Outputs .sh and .bat scripts plus a shot CSV.
Pull List GeneratorGenerate pull lists from EDLs with source clips, timecodes, configurable handles. Deduplicates overlapping ranges.

Tracker Updates

Tools 5–7 · keep the master spreadsheet honest
Shot MergerMerge timecodes from an update file into the master tracker by matching VFX IDs.
Version UpdaterExtract version numbers from EDL clip names (e.g. _V007) and update the tracker.
Status SubCapAppend VFX pipeline status to SubCap IDs from tracker data — separator style, default status configurable.

Vendor & Conform

Tools 8, 10, 14, 16 · downstream artifacts
VFX Title MakerEDL markers → SubCap TXT for Avid SubCap effect + XML for database import.
EDL to SubCapConvert EDL events/markers to Avid SubCap format. Extracts VFX IDs from LOC markers or clip names.
Vendor AssignmentLoad EDL, view shots by scene, assign vendors (CUR/CRA/BOT/CO3/custom). Export per-vendor CSVs and filtered pull EDLs.
Auto Cut-InGenerate AAF with VFX comp deliveries pre-placed at correct timeline positions. Import into Avid, paste as track. Uses the Avid MCP and shot-history.db for duration lookup.

Math

Tool 13 · the calculator that should ship with Avid
Speed EffectRecord duration + speed % → source duration with handles.
TC ↔ FramesBidirectional timecode/frame conversion at any frame rate.
TC MathAdd and subtract timecodes.
Stack

How the toolkit is built.

ElectronNative macOS app, menu integration, file save/open dialogs via context bridge.
RendererSingle-file 4,100+ line app.js implementing all 17 tools. Each tool is a panel with file inputs, settings, and results.
Avid MCP integrationAAF analysis (aaf_analyze_sequence) and cut-in generation (aaf_generate_cutin) called from the renderer for the Lineup Maker and Auto Cut-In tools.
VFX Dashboard DBOptional connection to shot-history.db for description enrichment in lineups and duration lookup in cut-in.
Keyboard-firstCmd+1 through Cmd+9 to switch tools. Sidebar is drag-reorderable.

Let's build something together

Available for editing, supervising, and tool-building consulting.

Contact
IMDb
Ron Rauch