Video Templates: the Complete Guide

A video template is a reusable recipe for a video. It holds the design (theme, fonts, colors, format, captions and music), the structure, and, if you like, written Instructions that tell the AI how to cut a response into a finished video. Set a template up once and every video built from it starts looking the way you want.

You'll find your templates under Video Templates in the left navigation.

Three ways to use a template

1. Automatically, for every new response. With Autogenerate draft videos switched on (it's on by default), every new response to a collector arrives as a draft video built with a template: the collector's own, or your default template if you haven't connected one. You review it, change what you like, and publish. Publishing is always your click.

To choose a collector's template, open the collector's Settings and click Change on its Video template. Or work from the template side: open a template and use Connect a collector in its Collectors panel.

A collector's Autogenerate draft videos setting switched on, with the Standard Cut template selected and a Change button to choose another.

2. On demand, from a response you choose. Click Use Template on any template and choose Pick a collector response. The template turns that response's raw footage into a finished draft video. This is handy for older responses, or for trying a second template on a response you've already made a video from.

3. As a starting point. Choose Use Template → Start with sample content to get a draft video built from placeholder footage. Swap in your own clips and uploads, adjust anything else, and publish. (For a template you saved from one of your own videos, the option reads Start with your own footage.)

A template builds one video from one response. To combine several people's responses into one video, such as a highlight reel, ask Vera, the AI assistant in the editor, or see How to Create Videos Featuring Multiple People.

Your default template

Every workspace starts with a default template, called Standard Cut. Your default template replaces the old Default Video Settings page: the theme, format (including Auto, which matches the format of the footage), captions, music and AI tools that new videos start with all live here. If you've been using Vocal Video for a while, everything you wish you could manage with Default Video Settings, you now can!

Collectors use your default template to build draft videos unless you connect them to a different template. To make another template the default, open its menu on the Video Templates page and choose Make default. The default template can't be deleted.

💡 In the video editor, the design panel links straight here: Set the default theme in your video template →

Start from the Template Library

Below your own templates is the Template Library: 13 ready-made templates by Vocal Video, which you can filter by use case.

  • Stories: Customer Story Spotlight, One-minute Testimonial, Long-form Story, Employee Story, Community Story, Patient Story and Executive Endorsement.
  • Platform cuts: four portrait styles for TikTok and Reels (Rapid Fire, Marquee, Newswire and Tilt), YouTube Shorts, and Square Feed Cut for LinkedIn.

The Template Library in Vocal Video, with filters by use case and the first row of templates: Customer Story Spotlight, One-minute Testimonial, Long-form Story and Rapid Fire.

Click Use Template on any of them and choose how to start:

  • Pick a collector response – the template styles a response's raw footage into a finished draft video.
  • Start with sample content – creates a draft video with sample footage, so you can see the template at work and swap in your own media.

Using a library template adds a copy to your own templates, and that copy is yours to change, including its Instructions. Switch on Use my colors to see the library in your brand colors before you pick.

💡 Note: Templates marked Pro use a Pro theme, font or background effect. You can use them on any plan, but on Free and Essential you'll need to swap those elements before you publish.

The template editor

Click any template on the Video Templates page to open it in the template editor. It looks and works like the video editor, and what you see is what you get: the preview in the middle shows a video built with the template, so every change you make shows up there right away. Changes save automatically, and you can undo them from the top bar.

The Vocal Video template editor: the Structure panel on the left, a live preview with sample footage in the middle, and the Design panel with video themes on the right.

  • Left sidebar: Structure (how videos get built, below), Scenes (every scene in the preview, in order), and Collectors (which collectors use this template).
  • Preview: a sample video. The scenes built from footage are placeholders, replaced by each response's footage when a real video is built. Set the format (including Auto) and layout just above it.
  • Right sidebar: Vera, AI Tools (such as Studio Sound, filler-word removal and background effects), Design (theme, colors, fonts and logos), Captions, Music, and Scene settings for thumbnails, video, audio, logo and text scenes.

How videos get built: standard or AI-directed

A template's Video Structure decides which scenes go into each video, and in what order. Open a template, click Edit on its Video Structure, and choose between Don't use AI (the standard structure) and Build with AI (AI-directed).

The standard structure

The standard structure builds every video the same way, from switches you set. It doesn't use AI credits.

The Video Structure dialog set to Don't use AI, with switches for an AI-selected hook, a title card with logo, a question card, answer clips, a logo outro, and fixed opening and closing clips.

  • Lead with an AI-selected hook: open with the strongest quote from the response, to pull viewers in. It's picked by AI but doesn't use AI credits, and it's left out if the response is too short.
  • Title card with logo: shows your collector's title and the storyteller's company (or name).
  • Question card: a styled card showing each question, before the answer to it.
  • Answer clips: the respondent's video or audio for each question. Always on.
  • Logo outro scene: closes the video with your logo, and is a great place for a call to action.

The question card and answer clips repeat for every question the respondent answered. You can also add a Fixed opening clip or Fixed closing clip, such as an animated logo, which plays as-is at the start or end of every video.

AI-directed templates and Instructions

A template can follow a deterministic, same-every-time standard structure, or it can be AI-directed. An AI-directed template has written Instructions that describe how to build a video from a response: what to open with, how to order clips, what to keep or cut, the pacing and tone, and a target length if you want one. The AI picks the strongest quotes and assembles the draft to match.

Instructions do more than pick footage. They direct the edit, the way you'd brief a video editor: which scenes to include, how the story is ordered, how tightly to cut, and the pace and feel of the finished video. The Instructions behind the library templates show the range:

  • Rapid Fire: "Open on the hardest claim in the footage — a number, a comparison, a verdict… Cut mid-sentence where the second half is the part that lands. Keep the closing logo to 3 seconds. Aim for about 30 seconds."
  • Long-form Story: "Tell the story in order rather than by strength… Don't lead with a pull quote."
  • Patient Story: "Play every kept answer whole; never trim inside an answer… No urgency in the cut: leave the pauses in."

To add or change Instructions, open a template, click Edit on its Video Structure, and choose Build with AI. Stuck on what to write? See examples shows the Instructions behind the ready-made library templates, ready to copy and adapt.

A template's Video Structure dialog set to Build with AI, with written Instructions for the AI and fixed opening and closing clip slots.

  • Instructions describe the cut, not the look. Design, captions and music come from the template's other settings, managed in the WYSIWYG template editor.
  • Fixed clips, such as an opening or closing clip you pin to the template, are always included, whatever the Instructions say. This is extremely handy if you have an animated video of your logo that you want to always begin or end with.
  • If the Instructions are blank, videos fall back to the non-AI-powered standard structure.
  • Building a draft with an AI-directed template uses AI credits. If you run out, the template still builds the video but falls back to a standard edit, and tells you it did.

Design and edit templates with Vera

Vera, your AI assistant, works in the template editor too. Click Vera in the right sidebar and describe what you want in plain language, such as "Give this template a bolder look for social" or "Make the videos faster paced and under a minute." Vera makes the changes to the template you have open and tells you what she changed, and you can undo anything you don't like.

Vera, the AI assistant, in the template editor: asked for a bolder look for social, she switches the captions, the accent color and the soundtrack volume, and lists what she changed.

Vera can change a template's theme, colors and fonts; its captions, music and AI tools, such as Studio Sound and background effects; the standard-structure switches; and its fixed opening and closing clips, from clips you've uploaded. She can also write or rewrite its Instructions, and switch AI direction on or off. Conversations with Vera use AI credits.

Save any video as a template

Made a video you'd like to repeat? In the editor, click the video's title to open its menu and choose Save to template.

The video title menu in the Vocal Video editor, with the video's title, internal title, description and link, and a Save to template button.

Name the template, choose its format, and choose how videos get built. With Build with AI, Vocal Video analyzes your video and suggests Instructions that describe it, for you to edit; with Don't use AI, you set the scene order instead. If your video opens or closes with a clip you might want in every video, such as a logo animation, it's offered as a fixed opening or closing clip. Click Create template, and the new template keeps your video's design.

The Create a template based on this video dialog, with a template name, a choice of format (Auto, Horizontal, Vertical or Square), How videos get built, and a Create template button.

Save to template always creates a new template. It never changes an existing one, and it doesn't change the video you saved it from. To change a template you already have, open it in the template editor, or ask Vera. Changes to a template apply to videos built from it afterwards; videos you've already made keep their look.

Frequently asked questions

What happened to Default Video Settings?

Those defaults now live in your default template. Open Video Templates and edit the template marked as your default.

Can I use different templates for different collectors?

Yes. Each collector can be connected to its own template, so a customer-story collector and a social-cut collector can produce different kinds of drafts.

Do templates use AI credits?

Only AI-directed templates, when they build a draft. AI effects set by a template, such as Studio Sound, use credits when the video is first published. See AI Credits.

Are these the same as the question templates for collectors?

No. Video templates style and cut videos. Collector templates are ready-made question sets for collecting responses.

For more information see:

Editing your videos: a complete guide to the Vocal Video editor

How to Set up a Vocal Video Collector

Video themes

Still need help? Contact Support at support@vocalvideo.com