Remastering an event with Codex.

The first installment began with information cards. I had the copy in a spreadsheet and an existing animation to work from. The job grew to include still images, removals, and audio repairs.

There was also a Spanish recording made against the earlier English version. Every change to the edit could affect where that translation belonged.

I had mostly deleted things and left gaps, but there were a few moments where I had to shift things, and some ended up extending a bit. Keeping the gaps was no longer enough to preserve the original timing.

We needed to map where each retained passage came from and where it ended up. The version labeled "with gaps" already included my extensions, so its name couldn't tell us which clock we were looking at.

Some empty stretches were there because I wanted a pause. I wanted a little breather at the end, for example. Those needed to stay when we closed the gaps left by removed material.

Codex turned the editing notes into a cue sheet, with timing recorded in integer frames at the sequence's verified 25 fps. I reviewed the planned actions before each editing pass, and the saved project was checked afterward.

The initial pass placed 48 visual inserts: 19 information cards and 29 still images. Removals first left gaps. Once I had finished my refinements, 4 selected gaps were closed from the end backward, with the other sequences protected.

For the Spanish audio, the map selected 7 retained source segments and placed them in the final edit, with 6 intentional silent intervals. Each segment kept its playback speed. The original recording stayed on a muted track, and the conformed audio went on a separate track for review.

We also made a bilingual timing-review document to help locate passages. Its speech-recognition text could guide listening, but still needed checking against the audio.

Moving the clips hadn't settled the transitions. Their positions were stored separately and needed a correction pass. We also had to refresh the English transcript after the final timing changes.

The first graphics delivery contained rendered cards and structured copy data, but the promised editable After Effects builder was missing. That became one of the jobs for the second installment.

The next installment needed 35 information cards and 39 supplied still images. I was still reframing photos and adjusting transitions while the automation work was underway, so each pass needed to start from the current saved edit.

We rebuilt the graphics system from the approved renders and previews. I approved 3 prototypes before the batch: a long card, a biography, and a short card. Their sampled transparency bounds matched the references, with text-line endpoints no more than 2 pixels apart.

This time, the delivery included the editable After Effects project, the builder, and structured text data, alongside 35 transparent renders and 35 previews. New types of layout would still need their own prototype review.

I set the treatment for the photos by hand. Codex continued that pattern for the remaining stills: replace the picture, keep the program audio, and use the demonstrated 30-frame transitions.

A video contribution inside a nested sequence also needed repair. Two broad attempts failed their checks and stopped without saving. A narrower repair fixed the picture join and restored the known transitions, then checked the saved result.

The final audit reset all 35 cards to the default framing. I had deliberately moved 2 of them because faces were low in the frame. Making those cards match the others undid an editing decision.

After I pointed it out, their exact approved offsets were restored and checked in the saved project. The rule the check was using didn't allow for exceptions, so it treated my two changes as mistakes.

The third installment had 10 new information cards, a title card for a poem, and 64 supplied images. Codex built the cards with the Part 2 system. I approved the card text and a plan for the edit before anything was rendered, and I approved the renders before anything went into the timeline.

For the photos, I asked Codex to repeat what I had set up by hand in Part 2: replace the picture, keep the program audio, and dip to black at each end. Where the editing notes asked for a photo to sit over the video instead, that stayed an exception. In total, 69 visuals went in: 56 photo replacements, the 10 cards, the poem title, a book cover shown beside a speaker, and a card covering a name animation that was built into one interview.

This time, the framing exceptions came up before anything was placed. The poem title would have covered a face in the usual position, and one card sat over a speaker's mouth. Codex asked about both, and I approved moving them. It also measured the enhanced speech running 2 frames behind the original at three points, and asked before shifting it.

Codex kept the sequence at its original timing as a reference, and built the final version as a separate copy with the intro and outro. Five removals were still only proposed, because the exact cut points had to be chosen by listening. Codex gave me the timecodes and a short audio excerpt for each one, and left all five alone.

I made the five cuts and closed the first gap myself. Codex closed the other four, starting from the end so the earlier gaps kept their times until it reached them. Then it added transitions at those four joins, on the picture track only. One became a cross dissolve, because I had kept a thank-you at the end of one segment. The music, graphics, and audio tracks got no new transitions.

After saving, Codex read the project back. The four closures removed 6,548 frames, and every clip's source position, effects, and mute setting had moved exactly as planned. The 12 other sequences in the project were unchanged.

Codex had pointed out that my edit opened with about 20 seconds of empty time. I fixed that by moving everything earlier. That left the end point about 20 seconds past the last picture and music, so an export would have run on into black.

A final read-only pass caught it, and I moved the end point. The saved project now ends on the same frame as its last picture and audio, at 1:54:17. The same pass flagged two joins where a transition had changed or gone missing. It changed nothing and left those for me to judge by watching.

The Spanish versions are on hold for now, so that part of the story will come later. Part 1 produced a technically checked review file, but its listening approval and translated-card reviews are still open. Parts 2 and 3 don't have Spanish conforms yet.

Part 3 settled its two framing exceptions before placement. The next step is to store each exception as a record that later checks read: which card changed, the exact setting, why I changed it, and the saved version where I approved it. Once I say an edit is ready to lock, any further change needs my go.

The reusable workflow documents carry those rules forward. Graphics, captions, and language review keep their own approval steps, and a changed final edit needs a new timing map.