“Move the logo a little” is the kind of note that turns into two more rounds. The editor nudges it to the right, the client meant up, and the next version comes back with “no, not like that”.
An arrow on the frame would have settled it the first time, because the note was about a position in the picture.
Drawing has limits too, and plenty of muddled feedback comes from people drawing when they should be writing. This post covers when to draw and how to draw so the editor gets it on the first read, plus the sentence that goes next to the drawing.
The general rules for notes (a timecode on everything, one problem per comment, the problem before the fix) are in our guide to giving video feedback.
In short
- Draw when the note is about a place in the frame: a graphic’s position, a crop, something to remove or which person you mean.
- Write instead of drawing for pacing, audio, moving subjects, taste and spelling.
- Pause on the right frame, make one mark per note and use a circle, a box or an arrow.
- Add one sentence with the action, because a marker in Premiere or Resolve holds only the text.
Notes that need a drawing
A drawing helps when the answer to “where?” is a spot in the frame. On a corporate or ad job, that usually means one of these:
- The position of a logo, a lower third or any other graphic. An arrow to where it should go beats “a bit higher and more to the left”.
- A crop or a reframe. For the vertical cut, a box around the area to keep shows the crop. “Center it on her” stops working once there are two people and a product in the shot.
- Something to remove: the boom dipping into the top of frame, a competitor’s logo on a T-shirt, an exit sign, a coffee cup left on the desk.
- Which person. In a group shot, “the guy on the right” can mean three people. A circle around one face can only mean one.
- A detail too small to name, like a reflection in a window or a crew member at the back of the set.
Each of these is a place in the frame that stays put, and a drawing records exactly one frame.
When a drawing gets in the way
Because a drawing lives on one frame, it’s the wrong tool for anything that happens over time.
Pacing is the clearest case. “This section drags” is about twenty seconds of the cut, and a circle on some frame inside those twenty seconds tells the editor nothing.
Audio is the same, since you can’t circle a sound. Write the note, or record it if it’s quicker to say out loud.
Moving subjects are trickier. If a car crosses the frame and you circle it at 0:42, the circle is right for that one frame and wrong a second later. When the problem is the whole move, describe it in words and use the drawing only to show where it starts.
Taste doesn’t survive a drawing either. A circle around the entire frame with “more energy” points at nothing.
Text corrections need text: circling a misspelled name shows where the mistake is but not how the name is spelled, so type the correct spelling in the comment, letter by letter.
How to draw so the editor understands
Pause on the right frame first. The drawing belongs to the frame under it, so it’s worth stepping frame by frame to the moment the boom actually enters the shot. A drawing on the wrong frame points at something that isn’t there yet.
Make one mark per note. If the logo is too big and there’s a reflection in the window on the same frame, leave two comments with a drawing each. The editor fixes and resolves them one at a time, and nobody has to work out which scribble goes with which sentence.
Use a circle, a box or an arrow rather than a scribble:
- A circle says “this”.
- A box says “this area”, which suits crops and the space for a graphic.
- An arrow says “from here to there”, which covers anything that has to change place.
Keep freehand for shapes none of these fit, like the edge of a mask cutting into someone’s hair. Draw around the thing so the editor can still see it, and pick a color that stands out: red disappears on a stage lit in red.
Then write one sentence with the action. The drawing says where, and the sentence says what:
Remove the exit sign (circled). It’s on screen until the cut.
Move the logo to where the arrow points, same size.
Vertical version: keep what’s inside the box, with her face in the top third.
Without that sentence, a circle could mean remove it, fix it, brighten it or “I love this”, and the editor has to guess.
The sentence also matters further down the line. A marker in Premiere or Resolve holds text, so an editor working from markers never sees the drawing, only what you wrote. A circle with “here” becomes a marker that says “here”.
Our post on importing comments as markers covers that side.
For a problem that lasts a few seconds, like a boom that dips in and out, mark the start and end of the range and draw on the first frame. The note opens where the range starts, so that’s the frame your drawing has to match.
Screenshots in an email vs a drawing in the review tool
Plenty of clients still pause the video, take a screenshot, scribble on it in the phone’s photo editor and paste it into an email. It beats a vague sentence, but a lot gets lost.
The screenshot has no timecode unless someone typed one, so the editor scrubs through the cut looking for a frame that matches by eye. It’s been compressed and resized, and it may come from v2 while the editor is already on v3. It also sits in an email thread, away from the other notes.
A drawing made in the review tool belongs to a comment on a specific version and frame. The editor clicks the note, the player goes to that frame and the drawing appears over the picture.
Questions go in a reply, and once the fix is in, the note gets resolved with the rest of the round.
Screenshots still make sense for things that aren’t in the video, such as a page of the brand guide or a frame from last year’s campaign. Attach those to the comment as references.
How drawing works in RecReview
In RecReview, the Draw button sits in the comment box. It opens a pen, an arrow, a rectangle and a circle in five colors (red, green, blue, yellow and white), with undo.
There’s no text tool, so the spelling and the instruction go in the comment. The video pauses when you start a comment, the arrow keys move one frame at a time, and the comment box shows the timecode the note will land on.
The drawing is saved with the comment, at its frame, and the video file is never touched. In the comment list, a note with a drawing shows a small preview of the strokes and “Click to show annotation”. Clicking it takes the player to that frame and lays the drawing over the picture for a few seconds.
For a stretch, press I and O to set the range. The comment starts at the in point, so that’s the frame to draw on.
You can send a drawing with no text, but then the comment goes out with a generic label where the instruction should be.
Clients and visitors on the review link get the same tools as your team without creating an account, and they can draw with a finger or a stylus on a phone or tablet.
For reframes, the Guides button on the player (on a computer) shows title and action safe areas and crops for 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9. Turn on the 9:16 crop, draw a box where the vertical frame should sit and write “vertical version” in the comment, because the guide itself isn’t saved with the note.
When the editor exports comments as XML markers for Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, each marker carries the author, the timecode and the text. The drawing stays in RecReview, and on the Pro and Studio plans the Premiere panel can show it over the panel’s own player.
Photo galleries use the same four tools on each photo. More on time-coded comments.
