How to give an editor shot-by-shot feedback on a rough cut

StoryFolder — 2026-09-02

Last updated: 2026-09-02

You just watched the rough cut with the client, or you're reading their reply to the file you sent. Somewhere in there is "blur every laptop screen" and "change the lower-third throughout." Your editor needs to know exactly which images each note touches, and a paragraph of prose won't tell them that.

Attach each note to the shot it's about, its thumbnail and its number, and reach for a timecode only when the change is frame-specific. Hand the editor one ordered list, one row per shot, and they don't have to guess.

StoryFolder's shared board is a view-only deliverable. There is no comment field, click-to-annotate or approval button on it. The client's actual reply (an email, a WhatsApp voice note, a phone call) comes back outside the product, and you're the one who types it into the shot. Everything below is about making that typing fast and unambiguous.

What makes a video note actionable?

An actionable note names the shot it applies to, says what is wrong with the image, states the specific change requested, and identifies which version of the cut it was written against. Drop any of those four and the editor has to interpret, which is how one note turns into a follow-up email and another day of waiting.

The vocabulary that shows up when a note skips straight to the vibe is well documented. On r/editors in 2023, u/harpua4207 described a client who "can't stop dropping 'Flurry'", and u/Strottman in the same thread listed "Elevate. / Can we elevate this sequence? / Graphics treatment could be elevated." On r/Filmmakers in 2025, u/Styphin got "not sure what the vibe should be, I'll know it when I see it." None of those tell you where to look or what to touch.

Real client notes read differently once they're tied to a shot. Two examples, in the shape those notes take on paying StoryFolder boards: "Swap the old logo for the new one, centre bottom," and just "Remove the lens flare." Both are short. Both are actionable, because they're sitting on the shot they describe. There's no ambiguity about which frame the logo is in.

That's also why "make it warmer" still isn't enough on its own, even once it's pinned to a shot. A coordinate tells you where; it doesn't tell you what "warmer" means to this client on this shot. You still need the second half of the note, the requested change, before an editor can act without a follow-up email.

A note that repeats across a run of shots is one edit rather than ten, and "collecting revision notes shot by shot" covers the field types and how to build that schema.

When is a shot better than a timecode?

Use a shot when the note is about the image or the action as a whole. Use a timecode or frame number when the exact onset, the trim point, or a specific moving frame is what matters.

Most established review tools treat the video as one continuous timeline and a note as a point on it: 0:23:14. That's a fine address for "the cut is a frame late here." It's a bad address for "I don't like this shot," because the client isn't thinking in frames.

StoryFolder treats the shot itself as the addressable unit: a named, numbered, thumbnailed row that carries fields and state. Import a rendered cut and StoryFolder detects the shots automatically, laying each one out with its own frame. From there a note isn't "at 0:23," it's "on shot 14," and shot 14 comes with a picture attached, which is the part a client can actually read.

A working note log, built from the kinds of changes that show up in real per-shot notes, looks like this: a laptop screen that needs blurring, a lower-third that needs replacing throughout, a release-form status that needs checking before publish, and an audio cut that needs two seconds of breathing room.

The note and the status are metadata on the shot, so they travel with it: next to the frame on the shared page if you publish notes, and as a column in the spreadsheet and PDF exports. Building your own fields, rather than using the ones a new board ships with, is a Pro feature.

The shot isn't a universal address, though. The shared board shows no timecode anywhere, and even the shot number stays hidden until you hover over it, so it doesn't solve every addressing problem on its own. When the request really is about a frame ("the cut lands one frame early"), a shot address doesn't help. That's still a job for a timecode, and the move is to write the frame number into the note text itself.

How do you preserve which cut the note belongs to?

Put the client-facing version in the board title and the export filename, because StoryFolder doesn't keep a review audit trail or hand out a new URL per version.

StoryFolder's version history is not rough-cut version storage. New in 0.4, it records the edits you make to a video's notes, metadata, transcript, title and shot boundaries, one restore point per gesture, and lets you preview and roll them back. It does not version media, and it does not know which cut a note belongs to. What it captures and what it does not.

This happens constantly. Internal version numbers and client-facing draft numbers drift apart, and a note comes back referencing a cut nobody can identify anymore. On r/editors in 2024, u/indymoguler described being "on version 5 of a sequence, but the client is only seeing draft 2," and u/tipsystatistic put the requirement plainly: "The only thing that matters is that if they approve v012, everyone knows which cut it is."

Paying StoryFolder customers already solve this the low-tech way: board titles carrying the version right in the name, V12, WIP5, FINAL_V6, Animatic_7, Edit 1 of 3, turn up across roughly thirty of the 295 paying accounts in a 2026 analysis of 813 boards. It's a naming convention, and it works because it's the one piece of version information that survives every export and every republish.

It has to be the naming convention, because republishing a board overwrites the same link. There's no versioned share URL and no "compare this round to the last one" on the recipient's side. A board published six times is still one URL showing one current state. StoryFolder's own local Version History keeps restore points as you work, which is useful for your own rollback, but the client never sees it. The version number in the title is the only version information that reaches them.

How does the client see the shot list?

The client opens a link in a browser, with no account and nothing to install, and reads a view-only board: your notes sitting next to each frame, in whichever of three layouts you chose. They reply the way they already reply to you (email, a call, whatever's normal for that relationship), because there's nowhere on the page for them to type anything back.

The link offers three layouts, Storyboard, Thumbnails or Shot List, each showing the shot's frame and the note fields beside it, and none of them gives the client anywhere to type.

If the source is a local file rather than something hosted on YouTube, the recipient doesn't get a video player at all, just the frame and the notes. That's the normal case, since most paying customers work from local .mov and .mp4 files rather than YouTube links.

And check the notes toggle before you hit publish. "Include notes & data" is all-or-nothing: it publishes every shot-scoped field on the board, including any internal field with a colleague's private thoughts in it. There's no per-field selection on this particular export; that level of control exists on the spreadsheet and PDF exports.

What should you hand the editor after review?

Export XLSX when the editor needs to sort and filter rows, or PDF when they need the frame sitting right next to the note.

The spreadsheet export gives one row per shot and a column for each metadata field you include, which is what you want once the review notes are in and you need to work through them systematically; it's the one Pro-gated export in the list. The PDF keeps the frame and the note together on the page, which is better when the editor is scanning visually rather than filtering a table, and it isn't Pro-gated, though a free board caps at 12 shots.

Neither export turns your notes into markers inside Premiere or Resolve. The editor gets a document to work from and rebuilds the changes in the timeline themselves.

FAQ

Should video feedback use shots or timecodes? Use a shot for anything about the image or action as a whole; use a timecode or frame number when the exact onset or trim point is what matters.

Can a StoryFolder viewer leave comments on the shared page? No. The shared board has three read-only layout modes and no comment form of any kind.

How many field types can hold shot-level notes? Six: Text, Tag, Dropdown, Checkbox, Rating and Number.

Where should the client-facing version number live? In the board title and the export filename. StoryFolder republishes to the same URL and keeps no per-version share link, so the title is the only version marker that reaches the client.

Does republishing a board create a new link? No. Republishing updates the existing board at the same URL — there's no per-version share link.

Can StoryFolder notes become Premiere or Resolve markers? No. There's no marker round-trip back into an NLE.

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