Collectors ask a plain question before money moves: where did this piece come from? A clip deserves the same question. Every clip in a well-kept cabinet has provenance — the still it grew from, the cabinet card it was briefed with, the date it was rendered. When a clip drifts, provenance is how you find the fault: not in the finishing rooms, where faults only get more expensive, but at the source, where a still costs 6 credits to re-cut. Judge the motion against its origin first, at working size, where a failed judgement costs nothing.
Three traces, three questions
First trace — back to the still. Set the clip’s first frame beside the still it came from, with the cabinet card beside both. Hair, face and signature should agree across all three. Most drift arrives mid-turn, when the model is busiest inventing, so watch the whole duration rather than the opening second the still supplied.
Second trace — along the joins. Hands entering and leaving frame, hair crossing the face, fabric edges against the background, the moment light changes. Transfers and animations strain exactly at joins, so the joins are where an honest provenance check is taken.
Third trace — around the loop. If the clip will loop, watch the seam five times in a row. A gesture that reads cleanly once can stutter at the join, and the seam is the part a viewer’s eye learns fastest.
Then, and only then, finish it
A clip whose provenance holds has earned the finishing cases: a face held by the video swap where casting drifted, or the video upscaler at the destination’s size for a paid tier. A clip that fails goes back to the still — because in this cabinet the still is where character is decided, at 6 credits, and motion is only ever a pass over a frame that already belonged. That ordering, kept consistently, is the whole cost discipline of video: trace cheap, finish dear, never the other way round. Write the provenance down beside the clip — source still, card version, date — even when it passes, because the notes from a clip that nearly failed are the brief for the next one.