How to Leave Timestamped Notes on Your Video in Scoutzera

Opening the video notes page

From the Videos page, click any video card to open it. The video notes page is split into two columns: the video player on the left and the notes panel on the right. The player has all the standard controls — play, pause, a seekable progress bar, and a fullscreen toggle. The notes panel is where every note you create will appear, sorted chronologically by timestamp.

One thing you'll notice as you start adding notes: small markers appear on the progress bar at each note's timestamp. These markers are a live map of your brief — at a glance you can see which parts of the video are heavily annotated and which stretches you haven't touched yet. Clicking any marker jumps the player directly to that note. Your editor uses these same markers to navigate the video when they're working through the checklist.

Adding your first note

Play or scrub the video to the moment you want to annotate, then pause. The "+ Note at HH:MM:SS" button above the notes panel updates in real time to show your current playback position — so you always know exactly what timestamp will be pre-filled before you click. When you're on the right frame, click the button. An inline note editor opens with the timestamp already set.

Write your note in the text field. Be specific about what you want done — "cut from here to 2:38" is actionable, while "this section is slow" leaves your editor guessing about both the solution and the boundaries of the problem. When you're done writing, click Save. The note drops into the list, sorted by timestamp, and a new marker appears on the progress bar at that position.

You can adjust the timestamp after saving if you paused a second too early or too late. Click the edit icon on any note, change the timestamp field, and the note re-sorts automatically when you save again. You don't need to delete and recreate it.

Writing notes that actually work

The single most common cause of revision rounds is vague note language. "This feels off" or "can we improve this section?" puts the interpretive burden on your editor, and they'll guess wrong at least some of the time. Actionable notes use a verb and a specific outcome. Cut. Trim. Swap. Add. Remove. Blur. Fade. Move.

State the desired outcome, not just the problem. "Trim the pause at 1:19 — cut to the next sentence" tells your editor both what to do and where to land. "There's a pause here" tells them there's a problem but nothing about how to solve it. For b-roll requests, name the asset and location: "b-roll here — product close-up from the shoot, see drive folder /assets/day2." For audio issues, name the fix: "0.5s fade out before this cut," not "audio is bad here."

The 2,000-character limit per note is rarely a constraint. Most actionable notes are under 200 characters. If you find yourself writing several sentences to explain a single note, it's usually a sign the note is trying to cover too much — split it into two notes at two slightly different timestamps instead.

Note markers on the progress bar

Every saved note creates a marker on the video progress bar at its timestamp. Hovering over a marker shows a preview of the note text; clicking it seeks the player to that position and highlights the corresponding note in the list panel. This two-way navigation works in both directions — clicking a note in the list also seeks the player to its timestamp.

For your editor, this is how they move through the brief. They open your share link, see the video and the notes list side by side, and click through the list from top to bottom — the player jumps to each moment automatically. They don't need to scrub manually or cross-reference a separate document. The note and the frame are already in the same view.

Editing and deleting notes

To edit a note, click the edit icon on the note card. The inline editor reopens with the current text and timestamp. You can change either or both — update the timestamp if the note belongs at 1:47 instead of 1:45, update the text if the instructions changed since you first wrote the note. The note re-sorts into the correct position when you save.

Delete a note with the delete icon on the note card. A confirmation prompt appears before the note is removed, which prevents accidental deletes while you're clicking quickly through the list. Deleted notes are gone permanently — there's no undo — so the confirmation step is there for a reason.

How many notes should a brief have?

A 10-minute video typically needs 15–25 notes for a complete brief. Fewer notes usually means your editor has gaps they'll have to guess their way through, which leads to the kind of revision round where they got most things right but missed the three things you forgot to mention. More notes is almost always better than fewer — your editor can batch similar work (all the cuts in one pass, all the b-roll in a second pass) even if the notes are granular.

The goal is a brief your editor can work through entirely on their own, without needing to ping you for clarification. If you read back through your notes and find any that require a follow-up question to act on, rewrite them before sharing.