Defining Responses, Drafts, Published, and Uploaded Videos in Your Account

Vocal Video takes you from asking people to record to sharing a finished video, and each step has its own place in your account. This guide explains what responses, draft videos, published videos and uploads are, how they connect, and where Vera and video templates fit in.

In this article:

The four kinds of video in your account: Responses recorded with your collectors, Uploads you add yourself, Draft videos built automatically with your video template, on demand, by Vera or from scratch, and Published videos rendered in HD.

How it all fits together

  1. Collect. A video collector is the recording experience you send people to: a welcome page, your questions and a thank-you page. One collector is one set of questions for one audience, so if you want to ask customers and partners different questions, make two collectors. To start a new one from an existing collector, open its menu and choose Duplicate. How to Set up a Vocal Video Collector
  2. Invite. Send requests from Vocal Video (one at a time or from an uploaded list), or share the collector's link or QR code yourself. How to Request Videos
  3. Receive. Each person's recording arrives as a response. Nothing is published or shared when a response arrives.
  4. Build. Turn responses into draft videos. By default, Vocal Video builds a draft for every response automatically, using a video template. You can also build videos yourself in the editor, or ask Vera to build them for you.
  5. Publish and share. When a draft looks right, publish it to get a share page, embed code and download.

Everything lives in a workspace, which holds one brand's collectors, responses, videos, galleries and Brand Kit. Your plan, its limits and your AI credits belong to your account, and are shared by all of its workspaces.

From collector to published video: video collectors gather responses, a video template or Vera builds draft videos from them (uploads can be added too), and published videos can be embedded, shared by link, added to galleries, downloaded on paid plans, or sent to other apps with Zapier, webhooks, the API and MCP.

Responses

A response is everything one person recorded in one sitting. Each question they answered is a separate video or audio clip inside that response, with its own automatic transcript, alongside the respondent's name, email and any other details you asked for.

So one response with five answers is still one response, and by default it becomes one draft video containing all five answers. You choose which answers end up in your finished videos.

To see responses from all of your collectors, click Responses in the left navigation. To see responses to one collector, open the collector and click its Responses tab.

A response is never changed by editing a video. You can use the same response in as many videos as you like.

Note: Responses count toward your plan's video processing allowance. Understanding Video Processing

Draft videos

A draft video is a video you're still working on. It's made of scenes: clips of people answering, plus text, logo, image and uploaded-video scenes. You can preview it, reorder and trim scenes, edit captions, and change its design and music before you publish. The editor saves every change as you make it.

A video stays a draft until you publish it. If you don't want a draft, you can delete it without ever publishing it.

There are four ways to get a draft video:

  • Automatically, for every response. Autogenerate draft videos is on by default for each collector. When a response arrives, Vocal Video assembles it into a draft using your workspace's default video template, or a different template you've chosen for that collector. To change this, open the collector and click Settings.
  • From a response, whenever you want. Open a response, click its actions menu and choose New draft video from this response. If you have more than one template, you'll pick which to use from Your Templates or the Template Library. This is handy for making a second cut from the same response, such as a short social clip.
  • From scratch. Click Create... and choose New Draft Video, then add scenes from any responses, uploads or other videos. How to Create Videos Featuring Multiple People
  • By asking Vera. See Building videos with Vera below.

A collector's Settings with Autogenerate draft videos switched on and the Standard Cut video template selected, with a Change button

A template controls how a draft is built and how it looks: its theme, format, captions, music and AI tools. Some templates are AI-directed: they pick the strongest moments from the response and cut them into a finished video, and they use AI credits. Video Templates: the Complete Guide

💡 A template makes one video from one response. To combine several people into one video, such as a highlight reel, ask Vera or build it in the editor.

Building videos with Vera

Vera is the AI assistant built into Vocal Video. Click the Vera icon in the bottom-right corner of any page, or Vera in the editor's right-hand menu, and tell her what you want in plain language.

Vera can build a video from one response or from many, like a highlight reel that pulls the best answer from each of five customers. She can also edit an existing video, find the best moments in your responses, and help you set up collectors and galleries. Videos Vera builds use your templates' design, and they're saved as drafts, so you review them and publish them yourself.

Vera's panel after a request for a highlight reel, listing the steps she took, the five scenes she added and a note that the video is ready

Vera uses AI credits for the work she does. AI Credits: What Uses Them and What Happens When You Run Out

Published videos

When you're happy with a draft, publish it. Publishing renders the final video file, with the theme, captions, music and audio cleanup applied at full quality: 1080p on paid plans, and 720p on the Free plan. It's the published video that gets a branded public page, an embed code, a place in your galleries and a download.

Every Vocal Video account includes ad-free hosting, so each published video has its own share page and a mobile-friendly embedded player. How to Share and Embed Videos

On a paid plan, you can control who can find and watch each video: Public & Searchable, Public (not indexed by search engines) or Private (only people logged in to your account). Video Visibility & SEO Settings

The Video Visibility & SEO dialog with three options: Public & Searchable, Public, and Private

You can keep editing a published video: open it in the editor, make your changes and republish. If the video is embedded on your site, the embed updates by itself, so you can add new testimonials to a highlight reel without touching the embed code.

If a published video uses AI effects such as Studio Sound or filler-word removal, its first publish uses AI credits. Studio Sound and filler-word removal are on by default. Republishing doesn't use AI credits again.

💡 Note: On the Free plan you can publish up to 5 videos. Republishing a video you've already published doesn't count toward that limit. To publish more, upgrade to a paid plan.

Uploads

Uploads are video or audio files recorded outside Vocal Video, such as an existing testimonial, a product demo or an animated logo. They live in your workspace's Uploads page (in the left navigation), not in a collector.

You can add an upload to any video as a scene, start a new draft from it (open the upload and choose Create Draft from its menu), or embed it and add it to a gallery on its own. You can also upload a file straight from the editor while you're adding scenes. How to Upload and Use External Video Clips

An upload can't be added to a collector as if it were a response.

Note: Uploads count toward your plan's video processing allowance. Understanding Video Processing

Good to know

  • Galleries show a set of published videos together as a grid, carousel or wall, with one embed code.
  • Changes save automatically in both the video editor and the collector builder. There's no Save button to find.
  • Branding: collectors use your Brand Kit as it is now, so a new logo shows up on every collector. A video takes its design from its template when it's created, so changing a template later doesn't restyle videos you've already made.
  • Roles: Admins manage the workspace, its Brand Kit, members and billing. Editors build collectors, send requests, and edit and publish videos. Reviewers can watch, comment on and star responses, but can't change anything else.
  • Storage is unlimited for videos, responses and collectors. You can still delete anything you no longer need. How to Delete Videos and Responses

For more information see:

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

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