quick start an episode, and a question mark on every choice

some days you know exactly what you want to film, and it is not an interview. you want to talk to camera for two minutes about the thing that went wrong. you want to record your screen while you work and talk over it later. until today, setting up either of those still started by asking what the episode was about, with a list of topics to read and a box to type in, before you got anywhere near the kind of episode you had already decided on.

now the first screen of setting up an episode starts with quick start.

quick start: straight to the kind you want

at the top of what's this episode about? there is a row of quick starts. just chat: no questions, press record and talk, and the only thing it asks is portrait or landscape. watch me work: your screen recorded while you work, then you talk over the time-lapse. co-host: a live conversation that talks back, when you have co-host time. podcast: just your voice, with the host asking. press one and it skips everything you do not need. nothing to pick, nothing to type.

next to them sit same as last time, which sets everything up the way your last episode was, and up to three shortcuts you saved yourself, each with a cross to remove it. save one from the last screen of any setup with save this setup as a shortcut. they used to live on the second screen, which meant you had already answered the first question before you could skip it. now they are the first thing you see.

everything else starts folded

under or set it up, the three sections that help you choose a topic, what to film, today's context and ask the vault, now start folded every time you open the setup. a quick start is one press, and a normal interview is a short scroll, rather than a long page of lists you have to get past either way. open the one you want; the others stay out of the way.

what to film, sorted and in colour

what to film can hold a lot of ideas, fourteen or more on a busy week, and they used to arrive as one long list. now a row of filters sits above them: all, new, left open, kept, story needs next and walk-throughs, each with how many it holds. a filter with nothing in it does not show. press one and the list is only those.

the tags and buttons have their colours back. new ideas are tagged green, threads left open a soft red, kept ones purple and walk-throughs blue. more like this is green, fewer like this is red and remind me later is blue, so each button reads as what it does before you read the words. remove stays plain.

an idea that is better shown than talked about is tagged best as a walk-through, and its button is set up the walk-through. press it and the episode becomes a walk-through about that idea, with what you are showing already filled in, straight to the last choices before you record.

today's context you can actually read

today's context is everything underway collected since your last episode: commits, meetings, voice notes, screenshots, lines in the tray. the director ticks the lines that matter to your season, with why. the lines used to be one row of small grey text, so what you saw was the word shipped and not much else. now the line itself leads, large enough to read and up to two lines long. under it, a coloured label says where it came from, green for shipped work, blue for meetings and email, purple for what you captured, then when, then the director's reason. the switches beside each line are easier to see on the dark.

it also stopped making you wait. the section used to stay empty while the director read the day, and opened empty again every time you came back. now it says it is reading while it reads, and the second time you open it the lines are there at once while it checks for anything new underneath. choose what it uses is now see everything collected, which says what it opens: the tray, with every line, ticked or not.

a question mark wherever something needs explaining

the setup screen has words that mean something particular in underway: the director, today's context, the vault. instead of a paragraph under each, there is a small question mark beside it. hover over it on a computer, or tap it, and a short box says what it is and why you would choose it. it never opens a new page.

the one people asked about most is who ticks the day. the director means underway reads everything collected and ticks what matters to your season, with the reason under each line: good on a busy day. me means nothing is ticked until you tick it: for when you would rather choose every line yourself. either way your own tick or untick always wins. what to film, today's context, ask the vault and quick start each have one too.

on the phone

the phone has the same quick starts on the same first screen, the same filters and colours on what to film, and the same question marks. watch me work is left off the phone's quick starts, because the screen is recorded on a computer; the take in front of it can still be recorded on the phone.

start a series and film episode zero for free. start free.