Collaboration and Handoff
What to freeze, name and write down before another person opens your session, so the handoff survives missing plug-ins.
Related
Handing off is not sending a project file. It is letting someone else open it, understand it and continue without asking you.
The problem
The other person opens the session and finds missing plug-ins, missing samples and a misaligned tempo map. Questions arrive one message at a time, and an afternoon stretches into a week.
The practice
Freeze heavy virtual instruments to audio, but keep the MIDI so edits remain possible. Name tracks by role and mark verse, chorus and key change. Attach a one-page note with sample rate, tempo, meter, key, reference track and the main decisions. Deliver session and stems together, starting from the same zero point.
Settings and judgement
Use 48 kHz for picture work and 44.1 kHz for music-only projects, at 24 bit. Leave about 6 dB of headroom instead of sitting near zero. Confirm fades and tails survive printing. List which plug-ins are essential and which are taste. For anything they lack, print audio or use stock replacements.
What to listen for
Open it on a machine with only stock plug-ins and solo each group. Hear whether the balance still holds and whether section markers land on the right bars. If one track is thinner, a missing plug-in was probably skipped.
Common misunderstandings
Stems are not a substitute for a session when the other side must edit. Sending audio only is not safer either; it removes the ability to change a note. A long message is not documentation, because it cannot be searched next month.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- 工程交接与并轨、冻结的做法，依通行 DAW 文档核查，未抄文本
- 分轨与工程说明的交付惯例，依影视与唱片后期流程通识核查，未抄文本
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.