Reels

A reel is a named, ordered playlist of participant clips that plays and downloads as a single video. It is how a readout gets its evidence: several voices, in the order that makes the point, without cutting anything together outside Verso. Every member of a study can open, play and download its reels. Editors create them and decide what goes in.

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Collect clips as you read

The usual way in is where the answer is. Wherever an answer appears, in an interview, under a finding or in a Research Agent conversation, its ••• menu offers Add to reel: pick an existing reel or name a new one, and the answer joins the end. The same answer can sit in several reels, cut differently in each. Adding an answer twice to the same reel is refused, so a reel never repeats a voice by accident. An answer with no recording cannot become a clip. An audio-only answer can: it plays as sound over a plain frame.

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Or describe the reel you want

When you know the reel by its argument rather than by the answers behind it, New reel from a brief on the Reels page (and Add clips from a brief inside a reel) opens the Research Agent with the start of a brief already written: “Help me create a reel of participants who …”. The draft asks for around ten different participants if enough relevant clips exist. Change that number if needed, finish the sentence and send it. Its reply carries a short card and opens a panel beside it holding the candidate clips, each cut to the moment the agent picked. All playable clips start selected. Each response shows Included or Excluded; uncheck the clips you do not want, or use Select all / Deselect all. Click a response to preview it. Choose clips on the card reopens this panel. Use the card’s button to build the reel from your selection. The clips land in the order the panel shows them, and you can trim and reorder them afterwards like any other reel. The card becomes Reel created with an Open reel link and keeps that result when you return to the chat. The agent proposes and you decide, so it offers more candidates than you asked for rather than fewer. Quotes are matched to the original recording even when the displayed transcript is translated or cleaned. A quote that cannot be located is left out of the proposal, rather than including the whole answer. A reel belongs to one study, so ask inside that study’s conversation rather than one covering several.

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Trim a clip to what matters

Open a reel from Reels in the study menu, then select a clip. The bar under the player shows the whole recording with the retained part highlighted, and the transcript below it highlights the same span as you move the handles. Where the transcript carries word timings, the handles settle on word boundaries, so a clip never opens or closes mid-word. Click a word to move the nearer handle onto it, or use the arrow keys to step one word at a time. Reset trim puts the whole answer back. Trimming changes only this reel’s copy of the answer. The interview, its transcript and any finding that cites it are untouched.

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Order the reel

The strip along the bottom shows the reel in playback order, one card per clip with the participant and the retained length, and the reel’s total at the end. Drag a card to move it. Clicking a card selects that clip in the player and the trim bar. Order for the argument you are making rather than for the order the interviews happened in: open on the clearest statement of the pattern, then the variations around it.

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Download the video

Download renders the reel to one MP4 in the order and trims you set. Subtitles follow the player’s own subtitle setting: the language you have selected is burned into the video, and nothing is burned in when subtitles are off. The first render of a reel takes a minute or two while each clip is prepared; the button says so while it works, and you can keep using the app. Re-downloading an unchanged reel is immediate, and changing one clip only re-prepares that clip. Play the finished file before presenting it: check that each clip starts and ends cleanly and that the subtitle language is the one your audience reads. See Highlights for the clips attached to a report finding, and Interviews and transcripts for reading the full answer behind a clip.