Getting feedback in Flixier Pro

In a previous post we talked about the importance of communication between video editors and other involved stakeholders like team members, customers or directors. Today I will go into more details about our "Review Link" system and what makes it so great. To start I will reiterate that with Flixier you don't need to render your video to send drafts for feedback, we think that this is a huge leap in the entire editing workflow when compared to any other existing tool. That's because even though Flixier renders videos online in a matter of minutes, we believe that's still too much time to spend waiting around whenever you need to send something for review.

Getting feedback with Flixier starts when you click the share button! A pop-up allows you to select "Share review link" and now all you have to do is copy the link and share it with whomever you want. When a recipient opens it he will be greeted by the screen you see above! Now let's get into more detail about the tools at your disposal.

1. Review Timeline

Besides the regular timeline functionality, the review timeline accepts time-stamped comments through a comment box, displays the avatar of the team member that left the comment and clicking on the avatar makes the video jump to that position so you can quickly see what the reviewer was talking about.  

2. Review comments

The comments that were added in the comment box also show up in full detail on the right side of the player. Here you get a list of all the comments, information about the project and when the project was last updated. There are also multiple options like deleting a comment, replying to it or liking it.

3. Versioning

When sharing a review link, the editing tool allows the editor to add a new version number to each link update he makes. In turn this enables the reviewer to switch between different versions of the project using a simple drop-down tool. It makes it very easy to compare new versions to older ones and also lets you see which comments lead to what updates.

4. Editor Timeline integration 

The icing on the cake regarding this whole system is that comments appear in a similar fashion in a comments section in the Flixier Pro editor and in the editing tool timeline. This is great because the creator always has the feedback close by and can enable them if required. He can even reply from within the editing tool making the whole system as friction less as possible for everyone involved. (Coming soon)

5. Review Link Management

Having a lot of projects can also make it trickier when it comes to keeping track of all the links that were shared. For this scenario we built an easy management tool that gives you quick access to your links and offers an overview of the state of each link. Additionally clicking on the three dotted options menu reveals some more actions that you can take on your links like adding an expiration date, public/private toggles or the option to delete it.

6. Video Mark-ups 

Adding power to the whole system is the ability to create time-based mark-ups while offering feedback. A very handy tool if you want to close in on very specific parts of a video that need adjustments. You can draw freely over a frame and you can even add shapes and lines. As before all this shows up directly in the editing tool.

7. Presentation mode vs Review Link

Presentation Mode is a simplified version of the Review Link system that was described above, it removes any option of interaction with that video from a third party collaborator besides playing it, the mode helps you share the video with persons that shouldn't interact with your current versions or comments.

We are very excited of the entire feedback system and we hope you are too. Our aim was to cut down many hours of your production workflow with this simple yet effective approach to receiving feedback on your work. For the future we would like to improve on this system so if you have any ideas on how we could do that you are more than welcome to send them to us. In the mean time subscribe to our newsletter for more insights into Flixier Pro.