Reels with multiple versions along with VFX updates

Matchbox
1

Hi All,

I’ll soon be working on a feature that will have several versions for international release. The VFX is also not yet finalized, so I will likely receive updated picture references as those changes are completed. There will be no EDLs or AAFs provided, so essentially all I will have to work with is a picture reference with embedded audio.

I won’t be conforming in the traditional sense, but I will need to identify and spot any differences between the previous picture reference and the most recent version (VFX updates, added sound design, music changes, etc.). There will be a team of us involved in this process, so I have a few questions:

  1. Are there any specific settings I should enable or review to best accomplish this task? For example, VFX settings or picture comparison settings?

  2. How reliable is the process when working solely from picture references?

  3. Since we will all be working in Pro Tools (2025.6), is there anything I should be aware of or any best practices I should follow?

  4. Whether in Pro Tools or another application, is there a way to share the differences and notes that Matchbox displays with the rest of the team? I am currently the only one who has Matchbox 2.

  5. Are there any tutorials, guides, or resources you would recommend for my specifc needs and workflow?

Thank you all very much for any assistance or guidance on this matter.

2

Hi.
Firstly, I’d say give it a try - basically everything you asked about is covered by matchbox.
There’s about an hour of tutorials on our YouTube channel (from v1 era) plus a couple of videos on new features in v2.

  1. Start with defaults.
  2. pretty reliable… but when the image changed a lot, it wont match the shot. But that’s another indication to you that something changed and you can eyeball it or force-match it manually.
  3. Just use defaults.
  4. Save… a .matchbox session.
3

Thanks for getting back to me. Really appreciate it.

Is there a way to customize a setting to omit specific things such as burn in TC window, or text on-screen that I would like to ignore?

4

Yes, there’s a video frame cropping setting which defaults to “2.35 image in 16:9 frame”. Its assumes burn-ins are in the masking. See the prefs for this

5

If there’s a persistent watermark difference across the active image area, it does match matching harder and less reliable. There’s a “diff mask” which you can set to eliminate this watermark when it goes looking for “Visible diffs”, but this doesnt help at all when it’s trying to match shots up visually. I can’t use the diff mask for that process