Clip studio

Clip studio, under Library in the menu, is where you make a clip from a template straight away, with no channel and no post: pick a template, fill it in, and take the video away. Its first card, Choose a template, lists every template your workspace is offered; the videos you made wait under Exported videos below it.

A template is what a clip looks like before your own colours and type are put on it. Reelwire writes and maintains them; you choose which one a source is drawn through, and your brand supplies the rest. A feed arrives with its own template; a custom feed's stream or a post in a post list picks one of these.

The screen lists only the templates offered to this workspace: the ones made for the industries your workspace chose, under Your industries on your profile. A template you are not offered is neither shown nor mentioned, and it is not available to a stream or a post list either. A package made for your workspace alone, in your own style, is offered to you whatever your industries are, and nobody else sees it: the green note at the top of Choose a template names each one, and pressing a name puts it in the search box so you find it at once. The Catalogue in this documentation has a page for every template, its variants and versions, with an example video each.

Each template is a card, two side by side on a wide screen: on its left a picture of a short example standing in 9x16 (one of the template's variants, chosen at random when the page opens and kept until you open it again, named over the picture), which opens Preview on that variant when you press it, beside it its name, what it draws and how many variants it has, and under them Preview and Create clip side by side, Create clip in green. Above the cards, the search box reads the templates' names, descriptions and variant names, so a style or a use case finds every template that has it, and the cards can be sorted by name or description.

Filter by kind, the line under the search, shows one kind of template at a time:

• Package (different things, same style): every variant a different kind of post in one house look, such as a package made for your workspace alone.
• Looks (same thing, different styles): one short piece of brand motion, such as an intro, an outro or a background, in every style.
• Style and format (one format, in the styles that suit it): one way of presenting data, such as a big number or a line chart, in the styles it reads well in.

Reset beside it empties the search, puts the order back to name A to Z and the filter back to Any kind.

The figure at the top right of Choose a template counts the videos used this month against your allowance, as on Posts, because every video made here spends one. It moves as soon as you start a render. Its question mark takes you to Allowance.

Preview shows the template, not your clip

Preview plays a reference video for a chosen variant, version and aspect ratio. It is an example: example content, example brand. A real clip is drawn with the data that arrives and with the brand of the channel it is made for. If you want to judge your own brand against a template, the brand editor's Review column is the other half of the picture.

To see the template in one of your own brands, choose it under Brand. The video then gives way to one still of the same example in that brand: a frame from the last third of the clip, where everything is on screen, drawn by the template itself in a few seconds. It is a picture rather than a video and it does not count against your videos. Example brand brings the video back, and the brand you chose last is the one the next Preview opens on. Press the still to open it full screen and look at it closely; the cross closes it again.

The clip fills as much of the screen as its shape allows and starts muted; the player's own control turns the sound on. Previous variant and Next variant, above Close, step through a template's variants without opening the dropdown, and Select, between them, opens Create clip on the variant shown.

A variant is a cut of the template. A version is a build of it. Which variant and which version a channel wears is decided where the channel subscribes to the source, under Channels, or, for a post list, on each post. Not here.

Create clip

Create clip fills a template in once and hands you the result, without a channel, a source or a post. It is for the clip you need for something else: a one-off, a mock-up, a still for a deck.

It also opens from Reuse, on a post on the Posts screen, on a clip under Rendered clips on the Media page and on a row of Exported videos: already filled with that post's, clip's or video's template, variant, build, brand, shape, language and content, so a small mistake is one change and a new render. Anything no longer offered, such as a build or a brand removed since, falls back to the first there is.

Under Template you pick the variant and the version side by side (the newest build is picked for you), then the brand and the shapes: the questions a channel would otherwise have answered, with the languages in a section of their own below. A Settings button beside the brand opens that brand's editor over the dialogue, to check or change it there, and Duplicate this brand, under it, makes a copy of the brand, picks the copy and opens its Settings, for a clip that should look a little different without changing the brand your channels wear.

Preview, under the shapes, shows one still of the content as the form holds it, in the brand chosen, in one of the ticked shapes and one of the ticked languages. Where more than one shape or language is ticked, a row of them is centred above the still, and the one pressed there is the one drawn. Update frame draws what the fields say now, Start, Middle and Keyframe jump through the clip and << and >> step a second; a still counts against nothing, and pressing it opens it full screen. Render video below makes the videos themselves.

Aspect ratios and Languages are ticks, as many of each as you need, and every ticked shape in every ticked language is a video of its own: two shapes in three languages are six videos, and one render makes at most 24. The line under the ticks says how many that is before you start. Only the languages the content has copy for are offered: English, the default content, and each further language you add to the content below. Content with no further language offers English alone.

Then you fill in the content either through the generated form or as JSON (Form and JSON switch between them). The dialogue opens with the template's own example in it, and Render video and Download keyframes wait until it has loaded. Fill with the template's example, under the content, puts that worked example back, which is the fastest way to see what a template expects; over content you wrote, it asks first, since what you wrote is replaced. Another variant starts from its own example; if you changed the content, the dialogue asks first, since your changes are then lost. Between the styles of one collection, which take the same content, what you wrote stays. Validate input, under Fill with the template's example, checks the content against the variant and version you chose, exactly as Render video will, and names every field that is missing, over its limit, or names a picture the media library does not have; nothing is rendered or stored. Content that fits can still come with warnings, which change nothing but say what would not look or sound as you expect: a picture or video enlarged so far to fill the frame that it would look soft, or a video with no sound of its own where the clip would play its sound. Under the content, Soundtrack takes a sound file from the media library for this clip alone, in place of your brand's soundtrack; left empty, the clip plays your brand's. The brand you chose last opens the next Create clip.

At the foot, Render video (or Render 6 videos, with that many ticked) and Download keyframes are the two ways to take the result away.

The Background, Stinger, Intro and Outro templates make a brand's own films, so they are rendered on their own, without the brand's stinger, intro, outro, soundtrack or background around them. The same templates open from a brand's file slots as Create one with Reelwire, which lays the finished films on the brand.

Three things are worth knowing before you use it.

A finished video is kept. It goes into Rendered clips on the Media page, beside the clips Reelwire makes for your channels, and it is kept the same way: in their share of your storage, where the oldest clip makes room for the newest once that share is full. You can download it again from Media or from Exported videos at any time, or delete it on either.

Closing never stops a render. A video carries on after you close its dialogue, and after you close Create clip altogether, and waits under Exported videos, below Choose a template. Closing while something still renders says so first. If the render finished but the video did not arrive in the dialogue, the button reads Try again rather than Download video.

Every finished video counts against your monthly allowance. Keyframes do not. So a still you need at exact frame 90 is free, and a video is not. Several videos are checked against what is left before any starts, counting the ones still rendering, so a batch is started whole or refused whole.

While a video is rendering, the dialogue distinguishes waiting from drawing: "Waiting for a free renderer, with 3 clips in front of it" is a normal queue, not a stall. A renderer draws a few clips at a time and takes your channels' posts as well as these. The clock counts from the moment you pressed the button, because the wait is part of what you sat through. Once the video is there it plays in the dialogue, and Download video saves it.

Several videos show as a list instead, one row each with its shape, its language and how far it has got. Each row has its own View and Download once it is ready, and Cancel while it still renders. View plays the video in the same viewer the Media page uses, over the list, so you can look at one while the others carry on rendering and come straight back. Tick several, or Select all, which here ticks every video of the batch on every page, and Download selected saves them together as one zip. Closing the list returns to the form with everything still filled in.

Place the words and the logo yourself

On Overlay and Slideshow, what stands over your picture or video can go anywhere on it, at an angle. Every style of both has it, and it stays off until you switch it on under Look: in Create clip, in a post, on a channel's source and on a pocket's template.

• Place the words freely on a Slideshow, and Place the title and label freely and Place the captions freely on an Overlay, give them a place across and down, from 0 to 100, and an angle from -90 to 90. 0 is as far left or as high as they fit, 100 as far right or as low, 50 the middle, in every shape and however long your words are. On a tall video they are kept narrow enough to move across.
• Place the logo freely gives the logo a place the same way and a size, from 25 to 400 percent of the style's own. On an Overlay with the title and label beside the logo in the top row, the logo stays with them.

Nothing gets covered. The logo, the presenter, the footer line, the source line and a Slideshow's progress bar stay clear: what you place moves the least it can to stand beside them, and gets smaller only if it fits nowhere. With none of them showing, the whole frame is free. Near the edges of a tall video, the buttons and captions of the apps that show it may cover what you place, so look at it there too.

A keyframe shows where it landed, and costs nothing.

Keyframes

Download keyframes saves one PNG per frame you name, together in one zip. The dialogue works out how long the clip runs first, because for some templates that depends on the content, and then tells you the facts you need: how many frames, at what rate, and that frames count from 0, so the last one is one less than the total. Add keyframe adds a row; each row takes a name and a frame number, and the Time column converts the frame to seconds so you are choosing an instant rather than an integer. One export holds at most 60 keyframes. Keyframes are not kept in Reelwire. They are cut from the first ticked shape and language.

Both exports are named after what made them: the template, the variant, the version, the brand, the shape and the language. Two exports of one template in two languages do not land in your downloads folder as the same name, and neither do the videos inside one zip.

Exported videos

Exported videos, the card under Choose a template, lists every video made with Create clip, newest first: waiting, rendering, failed (with the reason, for two hours), and finished ones for as long as they are kept with the rendered clips on the Media page. It is where a render you closed is waited for and fetched, and it keeps itself up to date while anything renders.

Above the list, as on every list, are Search (the template, its variant, build and brand, the shape, the language, the status and the date, as the rows show them), Sort by (started, template, shape, language or status, either way round) and how many rows a page holds. The line under them filters by status (waiting or rendering, ready, failed or cancelled), template, shape and language, with Reset to start again: the search is emptied, the order goes back to newest first and every filter goes back to Any, while the number of rows a page holds stays as it is. The ticks and the buttons under the table act only on what the search and the filters leave showing.

Each row starts with the video's picture, as on Posts, then names the template, its variant, version and brand, the shape and language, how far it has got (with its size once it is ready) and when it started. Pressing a finished row's picture plays the video in the same viewer the Media page opens its files in. Every finished row has its own Download, which saves the .mp4, and its own Delete, which a failed or cancelled row has too, to clear it away. A row still rendering has Cancel instead, which stops it; a cancelled video is not counted against your allowance.

Reuse, on every row, opens Create clip already filled with what that video was made from: the template, variant, build, brand, shape, language and content, every language included. A small mistake is then one change and a new render, and it works as well for a video still rendering or one that failed as for a finished one.

Under the table, above the pages, are the buttons for the ticked rows. Select all ticks every row on the page and Select none clears the ticks. Download selected saves the finished ones among them, together as one zip when there are several, at most 24 videos and 400 MB at a time. Delete selected removes every ticked row: what still renders is cancelled, and what is finished is deleted.

Cancel, Delete and Delete selected each ask once more before anything goes, and say what will happen. A finished video you delete here is gone from Rendered clips on the Media page too, and the space comes back to your storage.

Compliance lines

A line every clip of a brand must carry, such as a risk warning, a licence line or the company's registered name, goes in the brand's Texts on the clip, which every template draws, and an end card's notice in the Legal line of its outro. The words are yours; Reelwire never writes what your regulator asks for. How these lines and the ready-made feeds' disclaimers work together is in the Compliance guide.

Your own collection

The green note at the top of Choose a template is always there. Every template already wears your colours, fonts and logo; if your company has a design system of its own, a collection made for you follows your design itself, your layouts, graphic elements and motion, in the formats you post most, and is added to Clip studio for your workspace alone. Contact us in the note opens the contact page in a new tab with the request already started. Once templates have been made for your workspace, the note names each of them instead, and still offers Contact us for more or a change.

When a template is no longer offered

Reelwire never removes a template, or one of its styles, while a channel, a post in a post list or a custom feed of yours still draws with it. A template that is no longer offered disappears from Choose a template and from every list a template is chosen from, and whatever you set up with it keeps drawing with it as before.