They did that with film too. The editors sliced up a copy of the developed film, called a “workprint,” spliced it all back together, and produced a list of nume

They did that with film too. The editors sliced up a copy of the developed film, called a “workprint,” spliced it all back together, and produced a list of numerical edit points as they went along. Then a person called the negative cutter would go through the list, duplicate the editing decisions on a high-quality negative without the generational loss, and that would go on to become the final print. That’s why sometimes you’ll see a deleted scene from a movie whose picture quality looks quite poor. That was most likely taken from the workprint, and never went through negative cutting or any finishing.