Composite step: where separate clips become one
A composite step joins separate generated segments into one finished piece. One entry in this register places its visible mark at that stage, which decides which files carry it and which do not. As of 2026-09-22.
| The term | Composite step |
|---|---|
| What it names | The stage where separate generated clips are joined into one piece |
| What it is not | The generation of any individual clip |
| Where the register uses it | One entry's free-tier and control readings |
Inclusion rule. Words this site uses in a narrow sense, where the ordinary sense would lead a reader to misread a cell. No vendor statement appears on this page. Order. Fixed order: what the word names, what it excludes, then where it is used here.
1Why naming a stage is unusual
Almost every marking statement in this register is about a plan or a surface. One is about a step in a pipeline: the mark is applied when segments become an episode. That is a more precise claim than a tier, and it answers a question a tier cannot.
The question is which of a project's files are affected. If the mark lands at compositing, the deliverable carries it and the intermediate clips do not, so two files from one project are in different states with nobody having changed a setting.
2What follows for a production
Material pulled from the middle of a pipeline behaves differently from the finished piece. A shot handed to a colleague before assembly is unmarked; the episode is marked. Neither state is wrong and a team that does not know the rule will be surprised by one of them.
A register that recorded only marked or unmarked would lose the distinction entirely, which is why the value names the stage. It is the only entry here where the answer depends on where in a workflow a file was taken from.
3Why other vendors have nothing to say about it
Most of the products here generate clips and leave assembly to the customer, so there is no composite step inside the product for a mark to attach to. The question only arises for tools that produce a finished piece from parts.
Where a vendor does assemble and says nothing about the stage, the register records nothing rather than assuming. A mark could be applied per clip, at assembly, or at export, and the three produce different sets of marked files.
Nothing on this page is a vendor statement; the values it helps read are on the support table, with the page and the date each one was read from. See also the machine-readable column, what survives an export. Nearby terms: intermediate clip, deliverable, console surface.