Reviewing a Twitch VOD: the method to find the best moments of a live

What reviewing means

In film, the rushes are the raw footage out of the camera. Reviewing them, in French "dérusher", means watching them to note what is usable, with a timecode, before editing. The editor does not watch everything a second time: they work from those notes.

On Twitch, the rush is the VOD, the replay of your live. Reviewing a Twitch VOD means placing markers on it, with the exact time, to know where the moments that will become a clip, a short or a compilation are. Editing comes afterwards, and it goes fast once the review is done.

Why a Twitch VOD is hard to review

Three reasons, and they add up. Length first: a live often runs several hours, and the moment you are after runs thirty seconds. No structure next: a VOD has no chapters, only a counter that moves forward. Time last: Twitch keeps a past broadcast for 7 days with no status, 14 days for an Affiliate, 60 days for a Partner or with Prime or Turbo. After that, the video is deleted and Twitch support cannot recover it.

The usual outcome: you know something funny happened around the second hour of Tuesday, you open the VOD, you skip forward ten minutes at a time, you miss it, you go back. Half an hour later you have found the moment or given up. Reviewing exists so you never do that again.

The four objects of a review

Everything rests on telling four things apart, and mixing them up empties the word of its meaning.

• The note comes from you or your team. It carries a title, a reason, tags and the exact time in the VOD. It is the reliable landmark, the one that structures the review.
• The marker comes from the chat or from a viewer. It is a signal: someone found this moment interesting. It is unverified, plentiful, and it tells you where to look.
• The segment is a range: a start, an end, a title. The whole boss fight, the whole 1v4. It is what you open in the editor without searching.
• The clip is the Twitch clip, created by a viewer during the live: a single passage of at most 60 seconds, in one block. Useful as a landmark, rarely enough as a final video.

A review timeline gathers all four in one place, at their time. That is what the derush.tv review panel does: the VOD on top, the timeline below, and the notes, markers, clips and chat tabs on the side.

During the live: placing markers without stopping

The best time to review is the live itself, because that is when the moments happen. The problem is that you are playing. Several hands can place markers for you.

Twitch's own stream markers

Twitch has its own stream markers. You and your editors place them from the dashboard, or with the /marker command in chat, followed by a description. They then show up on the Highlighter timeline, Twitch's tool for creating highlights. Useful, but reserved for the streamer and their editors, and the markers carry neither tags nor a detailed author.

The chat, with a command

On derush.tv, once chat capture is enabled on your channel, any viewer types !marker followed by a reason, and the marker lands on the VOD timeline with its author and time. The command is configured per channel, and the chat itself is captured to be replayed later. See chat markers.

One tap, one note

On your phone next to the keyboard, a grid of buttons places a prepared note at the current time, with a few seconds of offset to catch the moment. Title, icon and tags are the ones you prepared. See the mobile deck.

Someone from your team

A moderator, a friend, a trusted viewer: with a role on your channel, that person opens the panel during the live and places notes and segments, signed with their name, with the Twitch chat next to it. The next day, the markers are there. See live review.

After the live: read the timeline, not the video

The next day, you do not open the video, you open the timeline. Every note, marker and clip sits at its time. One click takes you to the moment. Three tools cover what nobody noted.

1. 1Chat replay follows playback: you read what viewers were saying, to the second. See chat replay.
2. 2Chat spikes flag the excitement: when the chat goes wild, the curve rises, even if nobody noted anything. See chat spikes.
3. 3The automatic review goes through the VOD and proposes passages with a score and their reasons: game audio, chat excitement, volume peak. Usually between fifteen and thirty per VOD, even with no note and no captured chat. See VOD analysis.

And when you are looking for a precise moment from a past night, search goes through the notes, segments, markers and captured chat of all your VODs.

From the landmark to the clip

A landmark is not a video. Two paths lead to the video. The Twitch clip, created by a viewer, takes a passage of at most 60 seconds, in one block, with no reframing. The segment goes to the Studio: you reframe the 16:9 source to vertical while keeping the camera and the gameplay, you add subtitles and a title, you assemble several passages of the same VOD if the moment does not fit in one go, and the render comes out as a video.

A routine that fits in a week

Reviewing does not take an extra evening. It takes five habits, three of which you set up once.

1. 1On Twitch, check that past broadcast storage is on, from the Creator Dashboard on the web. Without it, there is no VOD.
2. 2On derush.tv, enable chat capture on your channel and pick the command. It is off by default.
3. 3Prepare three or four note templates: laugh, clutch, fail, whatever keeps happening on your stream. A template is placed with one tap.
4. 4The day after the live, open the timeline, not the video. Keep or discard the proposed passages, open a segment on what deserves an edit.
5. 5Before the VOD expires, get out what matters: a segment to the Studio, or a downloaded cut.