After a reviewer has received the File Review invitation email and has opened the file review portal link, the reviewer will first be asked to enter their name. They may enter whatever name they wish, which will be noted in any comments they save on audio files within the portal.
After entering a name and saving, the reviewer will then be able to take actions within the File Review portal.
INSTRUCTIONS
Reviewer instructions are available to help guide the reviewer through the file review process. These instructions are available by clicking the small blue symbol next to the page header.
After selecting the symbol, the instructions will appear on the page for the reviewer to read.
VIEWING AUDIO FILES
On the left side of the portal, there will be a list of all audio files that the reviewer may access. The files carry the same name of the audio files that the studio uploaded to the Project Files section in Sonido. You may consider your naming structure for files in order to make the review process as intuitive as possible for reviewers.
The reviewer may select any of the audio files to load the audio file begin a review of the file in the portal.
FILE STREAMING
Sonido will stream your audio files in whatever audio file format and quality you upload to the Project Files section in a Project. Sonido does not compress or convert the audio files any way, meaning that all audio streaming is performed in a truly lossless format.
Due to the increased size of high-quality files, such as WAV files, the load times for opening each audio file may vary.
ADDING COMMENTS TO AUDIO FILES
The reviewer will press the play button to begin the audio playback.
When the reviewer find an area of the audio where they wish to enter a comment, they may select the area within the time stream by clicking or touching a start point and dragging to a desired end point. Upon selecting this region within the audio time stream, a comment area will then display where the reviewer may select a region color and enter comments to save to the audio time stream.
At any time before saving a comment, the reviewer may select and drag the region to shift the start and end point, or may select "Cancel" to remove the region entirely from the playback stream.
After entering a comment, the reviewer may select "Submit" to save the comment.
The reviewer will continue to add additional comments to this audio file or select other audio files uploaded to the file review portal and repeat these same steps. There is no limit to the number of comments that may be added, but it is recommended to be careful of adding overlapping regions, as this may result in poor understanding of the desired revisions.
All comments are automatically synced back to the studio once saved, and there is no further action required by reviewers once complete. In your Sonido account, you will see system notifications making you aware of any new comments saved, which appear as follows. Each new comment will result in an individual notification, and you can select "Open" to directly open the audio file in the File Review portal for full review.
FILE REVIEW ON MOBILE
Your reviewers may be interested in reviewing their files via mobile, which is fully supported within Sonido. Reviewers can stream the playback of the audio files in lossless audio quality, add comments in the waveform, reply to studio comments, and more.
On mobile devices, the touchscreen may have a challenge in differentiating a touch to select a region or the desire to move forward or backward within the audio (rewind or fast forward). We have made it easy for a user to determine what specific action they are expecting with a quick action toggle.
The Create Region action toggle allows the user to decide whether they are selecting a region in the audio playback to add a comment, or they want to move forward or backward in the audio file to review other sections of the song.
With the Create Region mode enabled, users can select a region within the audio playback to add a comment.
With the Create Region mode disabled, users can scroll forward or backwards in the audio file to review other sections of the song.
EDITING COMMENTS
A reviewer may select the pencil icon within a saved comment to edit the content of the comment. After making any necessary changes, the reviewer will save the updates.
The edit option is not recommended for making major conceptual changes to comments, but is intended for small edits to the existing content. To add major changes or include additional insight, the reviewer may add a reply to their original comment, which helps preserve the full comment stream.
DELETING COMMENTS
If a reviewer wishes to delete a comment, they may do so by selecting the icon that displays to the left of the comment area. This will delete the full region selected and comments associated with the selection. Once deleted, the comments cannot be restored.
COMMENT STATUS
The reviewer will see a Comment Status indicator, which defaults to "New" upon saving a new comment. As the studio manages the file review comments, the reviewer will see any comment status changes the studio makes as they move it from "New" to "Completed" or "Rejected".
VERSIONS
By default, the initial audio file that is added to the file review portal is "Version 1". If the studio wishes, they may uploaded new versions of the audio file within their own file review portal, which will update to "Version 2", "Version 3" and so forth. This is typically used to allow reviewers to reference the differences between audio versions after revisions are complete.
When a new version is uploaded, the reviewer will see the different versions to select from within the Version dropdown. They will continue their review on new versions as necessary through the same process as previously described.
NEW! CLIENT APPROVALS
In the audio file review portal, your client can easily mark a version as Approved by selecting the "Mark as Approved (Final Version)" button. This action will mark the currently selected version of an audio file as approved. This feature allows your clients to indicate approved files in their audio review process. It allows you, as the Engineer or studio owner, to know when the review process is complete for a given audio file.
After marking a version as approved, the button will change to a green color and will display "Version Approved". A stamp will also be added to the bottom of the file review portal under the "Approvals" section that will indicate which version was approved, who approved the version, and the date and time of the approval.
Only one version per audio file can be marked as approved at a time. If a client attempts to mark a different version of the same audio file as approved, the approval on the previous version will be released and the updated version will then show as approved.
Your client may mark one version of each audio file in the review portal as approved.
Once a version has been approved in the audio file review portal, you will see an update to the associated audio file within your Sonido Project record. In the File Review section of a Project record, each audio file that has a version approved will show a greed checkmark icon, and hovering over this icon will indicate which version of that file has been approved.
If there are no approved versions of a file, the icon color will be black and hovering over the icon will indicate that there is no version approved for that audio file.
ADDITIONAL NOTIFICATIONS
The reviewer will receive additional email notifications for any replies the studio saves on reviewer comments. They currently will not be notified of new versions, and it will remain the responsibility of the studio to let the reviewer know when a new version is ready for review.
REVOKED ACCESS
When you revoke access for a user within the File Review portal, the user will no longer have access to the page. If they click on the link in their email to access the portal after their access has been revoked, they will be directed to a page indicating that they no longer have access, which instructs them to contact the studio for assistance.
UP NEXT
READ MORE
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.