How Post Teams Can Use AI to Save Hours Without Replacing Creativity

Netflix’s new Generative AI Guidelines make one thing clear:

AI isn’t being ignored, but it isn’t replacing people either.

The focus is on guardrails — making sure that editors, coordinators, and artists stay at the center while the tools around them get faster and smarter.

Most of the industry chatter about AI in post comes in two flavors:

“This will replace us.”
“This is just hype.”

The truth lives in between. AI shouldn’t make creative decisions, but it can take hours of repeat work off the table.

The trick is using it for the right kind of tasks. Not to cut headcount, but to cut inefficiency.

Why Efficiency Matters More Than Ever

Post budgets are tighter than they’ve ever been.

The same crews are expected to deliver more hours of content, with less money and less breathing room. Every duplicated export, every missed note, every buried approval becomes a leak that burns both time and payroll.

AI can’t fix a bad workflow, but it can accelerate a good one:

• If approvals are surfaced

• If requests are ticketed

• If rights are tracked

…then AI becomes a force multiplier. Without that foundation, it just produces more noise.

Think of it as a junior assistant: useful, but only when pointed at the right task and kept inside clear guardrails.

Use Case 1: Catching Problems in Timelines and EDLs

Hidden costs often show up in the timeline. Common problems include:

• Duplicated clips

• Missing media

• Mislabeled tracks

An assistant editor might spend hours combing through an EDL or XML export just to catch these issues. AI can scan the file and generate a checklist in minutes.

System prompt to try:

Export your timeline, paste the EDL into GPT with these instructions, and you’ll have a pre-flight checklist ready before online or mix.

Use Case 2: Turning Notes and Transcripts Into Actionable Lists

Notes are the oxygen of post, but they rarely arrive structured. You’re often buried under:

• Raw transcripts

• Producer feedback

• Network memos

AI can collapse that pile into a roadmap of tasks: grouped by category, prioritized, and linked to timecodes.

System prompt to try:

You are a post-production coordinator specializing in managing notes.  
Your job is to convert transcripts and feedback documents into an actionable task list.  

Instructions:  
- Group similar comments into no more than six categories (e.g., Story, Pacing, Graphics, Audio, Compliance, Other).  
- Highlight any comments marked “must fix” or repeated more than twice.  
- Assign each comment a priority: High, Medium, or Low.  
- Include any available timecode or page references.  

Output format:  
- Category: [name]  
- Priority: [High/Medium/Low]  
- Note summary: [1-line description]  
- Reference: [timecode or page]

Instead of losing half a day sorting through feedback, you can paste in the transcript and get a clean, categorized task list.

Use Case 3: Creating a Catalog of Assets

Still frames, temp graphics, and sound pulls pile up fast. Without consistent tagging, the right version gets buried.

AI can act as a digital librarian, building a searchable catalog from your file dump.

System prompt to try:

Feed in your folder directory, and you’ll have a structured catalog in minutes instead of hours of search.

The Guardrail That Makes AI Work

All of these examples assume one thing: you already have a structured workflow.

If:

• Approvals are buried in email

• Requests are scattered in Slack

• Rights metadata is missing

…then AI just multiplies the mess.

But when the plumbing is clean — approvals gated, requests ticketed, rights tracked — AI becomes the assistant that buys back time instead of creating rework.

That’s why at SAMEpg, we start with sealing leaks and steadying the workflow. AI rides on top of that clarity layer.

Try It Yourself

You don’t need a platform or a subscription. Just copy the three system instructions above into GPT and test them on your own:

• Export an EDL → paste and scan for issues

• Drop in a transcript → get a categorized notes list

• Feed in a folder directory → create an asset catalog

The point isn’t to automate creativity. It’s to protect the creative by removing the grind that burns hours and budgets.

👉 Curious what a fully structured post workflow looks like when AI actually helps instead of hinders?

Explore the Interactive Preview