How processing works

After you upload or import a video, Reeltopus turns it into clips on its servers. This article explains the statuses you'll see, the steps in the progress bar and what affects how long it takes.

Statuses in your video list

Each video in Your videos at /app has a status badge:

The steps in the progress bar

On the project page, the progress bar shows which step the video is in, as "Step 2 of 5", and an overall percentage. The five steps are:

1. Reading the sound. Reeltopus pulls the audio out of your video. It also checks that there is sound to transcribe. If there's no audio, or no speech, processing stops here and your hours are refunded.
2. Transcribing. The speech is turned into text, with timing for every word. A long video is split into parts that are transcribed at the same time, so the bar shows a count like "Transcribing · 3 of 5 parts".
3. Finding the best clips. Reeltopus reads the whole transcript, picks the moments that work on their own, scores them and ranks them. See Review your clips.
4. Framing the speakers. Each clip gets a crop that follows the person speaking. Where two people sit far apart, a split-screen layout is prepared too. See Reframing and layouts.
5. Finishing. If your workspace has a default template, it's applied to the new clips. Then the hours are settled.

The percentage only moves when real work is counted or a step ends. It never runs ahead of the work, so it may sit still for a while during a step that can't be counted.

You don't need to watch it

The project page updates by itself, so you can leave it open. Processing runs on our servers, not in your browser. You can close the tab and come back later. The badge in your video list shows where it stands.

What affects how long it takes

We don't give a fixed time, because it depends on a few things:

• Length of the video. Longer videos have more speech to transcribe and more moments to read through.
• How busy the queue is. When many videos are waiting, paid plans' videos are taken from the queue earlier than free ones. One workspace can't take every slot, so a big batch from one account doesn't hold everyone else up.
• Framing. Framing runs on the same machines as exports, so it can take longer when many exports are running.

If framing doesn't finish in time, or fails, your clips still arrive. They use a centered crop instead of following the speaker.

When it's done

When the badge says Ready, the clip editor opens on the project page with your clips, best first. If no clips are found, the page shows the transcript and a caption preview instead.

The hours charged are based on the video's real length, and never more than what was held when the upload finished. See Hours and usage.

If processing fails, the project shows the reason and your hours come back automatically. See Upload or processing failed.