How to Use The Intrigue Studios Review System
Updated: Jun 17
Introduction
Welcome! This brief tutorial will show you how to use the Intrigue Studios review system to watch your assets and leave feedback. It only takes a few minutes, and after watching, you'll know exactly what to do. We use this system to share all kinds of assets — videos, audio, images, and more. This tutorial walks through it using a video as the example, but everything works the same way no matter what type of asset you're reviewing.
If you'd like to understand how your project moves through post-production before diving in, start with our overview of the post-production process.
One important thing before we dive in: please designate one person on your team to be the one who actually enters feedback into the system. It's totally fine for your whole team to watch and discuss, but rather than everyone jumping in and leaving their own comments, we find it works much better when one person collects all the team's notes and enters them in one go. It keeps things clear, organized, and avoids confusion on our end.
Part 1 — Accessing Your Assets
Your producer will send you a link. Just click it and you'll land right in the review system, which is powered by Frame.io. If there is only one asset to review, it will open automatically. If there are several, you will see a gallery of thumbnails — just click whichever one you want to open first.
Part 2 — The Review Screen
Once you are inside an asset, here's a quick tour of what you're looking at.
In the top left, you'll see a breadcrumb trail — that's just a navigation link that takes you back to the gallery if you need to switch to a different asset.
The play bar runs across the bottom. You can click anywhere on it to jump to that part of the video, or click and drag to move through it. The spacebar on your keyboard works as a play and pause button.
In the bottom left, you have your basic playback controls — play, pause, a loop button if you want the video to repeat, the playback speed, and the volume.
In the bottom center, you'll see a timecode — that's just the timestamp showing you where you are in the video. There's a small dropdown to change the format, but we recommend leaving it as is.
In the bottom right, there's a gear icon where you can adjust the video quality and turn on aspect ratio guides if you want to see how the video looks at a specific screen size. There's also a full screen button there.
Part 3 — Leaving Comments
The panel on the right side of the screen is where you'll spend most of your time. This is where all the comments live.
To leave a comment, just start typing — you don't even need to pause the video first. The system will pause it automatically and pin your comment to that exact moment in the video. When you're done typing, just hit Enter to post it.
Commenting on a Specific Moment vs. a Range
Normally, a comment gets attached to the single frame where you were when you started typing. But if you want to flag a longer section — say, a whole sentence, a music passage, or a sequence of shots — you can grab the white bracket handles on either side of the playhead and drag them to select a range. The comment will then be attached to that whole section, which makes it much easier for us to know exactly what you're referring to.
Annotations
If you want to point to something specific on screen, click the annotation button after you start a comment. You can draw arrows, boxes, lines, or even freehand directly on the video frame, and change the color if you want. Your drawing gets saved right along with your comment.
Comment Threads
Every comment has its own reply thread built in. So if your producer responds to one of your notes, or you need to follow up, it all stays inside that one comment. No separate email chains to track — everything related to that specific moment stays together in one place.
Filtering and Searching
At the top of the comments panel, you can filter comments by status or by unread, sort them in different ways, search by keyword, and even print the full comment list from the dropdown menu.
Leaving a General Comment
If you have a note that's about the video overall and not tied to any specific moment, you can turn off the timecode before you type by clicking the timecode icon in the comment box. Just make sure to turn it back on before your next comment so everything else stays properly timestamped.
Part 4 — Using the Transcript
If the video has a voiceover or any spoken audio, you'll see a Transcript button in the comments panel. Click it and a full text transcript of the audio will open in a panel on the left side of the screen.
This is really handy when you want to comment on something that was said. Instead of scrubbing back and forth through the video trying to find the right section, just read through the transcript, highlight the line or section you want to comment on, and hit Add Comment. The system automatically lines up the timecode to match exactly what you selected. Then just type your note and post it. It's a much faster way to give feedback on narration or dialogue.
Part 5 — Updating the Status
Once you've finished watching and entering all of your feedback, there's one last step — and it's an important one.
In the upper right corner of the screen, you'll see a status field. Click it to open a dropdown with a few options that your producer has set up. When you're finished entering your comments, select Finished Entering Comments. If everything looks good and you're happy to move forward without any changes, select Approved for Next Step.
When you are done reviewing and entering comments across all the videos and you've updated all the statuses, send your producer a message letting them know. We don't move forward with revisions until we receive confirmation that all the videos have finished being reviewed.
Part 6 — Version History
When your producer delivers a revised version of the video, the new version will appear automatically — but you can always go back and look at any previous version. Just click the version label next to the video title in the upper left — it'll say something like V1 or V2. That opens a dropdown where you can select any earlier version and see exactly how it looked, along with all the comments and threads from that round.
Comparing Versions
You can also use Compare Versions to put two versions side by side. Choose which version goes on the left and which goes on the right, then hit play — both versions will play at the same time so you can see exactly what changed. You can drag a slider back and forth to compare them while they're playing, and if you click on either side, that becomes the active version, meaning you'll hear its audio and see its comments.
Questions?
If anything comes up or you have questions while you're reviewing, just reach out to your producer and they'll help you out.