In the pharmaceutical industry, there is currently no way of predicting differences in film growth rate on different faces of a tablet during a coating operation. A new technique based on digital video analysis of moving tablet beds has been developed to allow elucidation of bed behavior and dynamics inside coating pans as well as mapping of bed behavior transitions based on changes in processing conditions and parameter settings. The methods consist of recording and analyzing the movement and orientations of biconvex tablets having black caps or faces and white bands, inside of a commercial side-vented coating pan. The methods developed provide a novel way to measure tablet orientations in the spray zone and thus assess Intra-tablet variability (band vs cap exposure) for biconvex tablet shapes. This research demonstrates the effect effect of coating process variables such as inlet air flow presence, presence of baffles, pan loading size, and pan speed on the movement and orientations of tablets inside a pan coater. The results have implications on tablet pan coating process design and equipment selection.