What a blank cell in this ALE actually means

Blank is not zero. Blank is one of these seven.

• Never entered. VFX_Count: the column exists, but there is no path to enter it today. Nobody forgot yours — the app cannot hold it.
• Not transcribed on set. End, Tape, Camroll, Soundroll, Source File Name, Source File, Unit. These come off the camera’s screen, the reports and the magazine. The out-point has one leg you don’t have to type: the recording chain reads the screen as it stops — so a blank End means the take was never stopped in the app and nobody copied the value either. Missing inputs mean a blank cell, we do not back-calculate an end position, and the reconcile sheet names it as TC_OUT_MISSING.
• Recorded, but not in ASCII. The file is ASCII end to end, so Scene, Unit, Source File Name, Source File, Camroll and the four free-text columns — SlateX Description, SlateX Comments, Camera Notes, Director — ship empty when what you typed holds non-Latin characters. Two cells are stricter still: Tape and Soundroll accept a name only when every character in it is an ASCII letter or digit, so a space or a hyphen empties them too. When a card name holds non-Latin text, Tape, Reel # and Camroll go blank together — one source, three cells. The text is not lost: it goes out verbatim in the CSV and the PDF.
• Recorded in a shape we will not ship. A timecode that fails the shape or range check goes out empty rather than padded. That is why 00:00:00:00 no longer appears in this file: a legal-looking zero is worse than an honest blank, because the receiver cannot tell the two apart.
• Not declared. TC Mode is DF only where the camera’s drop-frame menu was actually read. A blank there means no declaration — reading it as non-drop-frame is the mistake that costs a night. FPS works the same way: a row with no declared rate leaves the cell empty; the fallback used inside arithmetic is not a number this camera reported.
• Calculated, with an input missing. Duration is the span between the two readings, excluding the tail frame (out − in). Copy only one of them and the span has nothing to derive from, so the cell ships empty rather than guessing a length.
• Belongs to nothing. A take that is attached to no shooting day leaves Shoot Day, Shoot date, Unit and Director empty and is flagged DAY_MISSING. The take itself is not lost: it still ships in the full package. What cannot be rebuilt is that day’s wrap paperwork.

What the file will not do. It fills nothing in, converts nothing, and overwrites nothing. The reconcile sheet flags a row missing a fact it can check — card, source file, sound roll, sound timecode, in-point, out-point, drop-frame declaration, shooting day, a stopwatch that disagrees with the span — fourteen codes, all against our own record, never the camera or sound report. The alphabet case is not on that list: the record holds the value, so nothing registers as missing. Check those columns against what you typed.

One page, in the binder. Full detail: What to Check Before Using an ALE for Matching.