the weekly round-up is now highlights, with music and no voiceover

the short version

the weekly round-up, the week of episodes underway cuts into one video for you, now plays like a highlights reel. from each episode it keeps the best moments you said cleanly, in the order they happened, joined with hard cuts and no dead air. nothing is read out between them any more. and every new round-up is made with music under it, low and ducked under your voice, which you can change or switch off.

why it changed

rich, who builds underway, sat down to watch his own round-up 5, the week of 28 september. every time the cut moved to a new episode, a synthetic voice said where it came from: episode 49, wed, 30, sep. it did not even say wednesday. it read the abbreviation out. on friday it said friday, 2nd, oct. his note was that the whole voice telling the day was unnecessary, and that it sounded like a machine, which is the one thing a diary should never sound like.

it was not only the days. the round-up had been built the way an episode is, so the question in front of every answer was spoken too. across eleven episodes that came to minutes of a voice reading things out, and it is why the page said the cut was 2:47 long while the file ran 7:34. the difference was all announcement.

the other half of the note was about what was in it. a round-up should be a well put together piece, the best bits from the whole week, the really good part of each episode. too often it was a sentence here and a sentence there, sometimes one that only made sense with the line before it.

what a round-up is now

• nothing is spoken between moments, in any compilation: the week, a chapter, the week at a company, the trailer or the month in one film. no questions, no episode numbers, no dates read aloud.
• where each moment came from is a small stamp in the corner, written out: episode 47 · wednesday 30 september. the card it opens on gives the days it covers, 28 september to 4 october, not the last day as shorthand.
• from each episode the director keeps one or two runs of consecutive sentences, each one that makes sense to someone arriving straight from the last moment, chosen for something that happened: a decision, a number, a setback, a laugh.
• it is told which lines you stumbled on and prefers the ones you said cleanly, the same rule the clips use. the ums, a sentence begun twice and words said twice come out of the lines it keeps, and pauses longer than half a second are closed.
• the moments meet with hard cuts and a small punch-in, unless you chose a different transition for that round-up on its cards tab.
• a co-host conversation with no word timings is no longer offered as one five-minute line. it played as nothing and threw the page's length out.
• the length at the top of the page is the file's own once a file that matches the cut exists.

music on by default

a new round-up starts with a bed under it: a warm licensed track called inspired, low, and dropping whenever anyone speaks. the music tab shows it at the top on the dark, with a switch to turn it off for your voice only, where in the song it starts, how loud, how far it drops under the voice and the fades beside it. under that is the whole library as a grid you can filter by mood, twelve seconds of each track a press away. on the phone the round-up screen shows the same bed with a switch and the tracks in a sliding row. where a track asks for a credit, the credit line still goes into the posts and the youtube description on its own.

what did not change

chronology. a round-up still plays its moments in the order they happened, and only ever your own words. tidying takes a repeat or a restart out; it never adds a word or moves one. your episodes themselves are untouched, and an episode still never carries music.

round-ups you already have

nothing is re-rendered behind your back. to take the voice out of an existing round-up, open it and press render on the server on its details tab: the new file has no announcements. to have the moments chosen again as highlights, with music on, press cut it again on the same page. lines you struck by hand do not carry over to a fresh cut.

the week in one cut is made for you every sunday on series. start a series.