Create & share a highlight reel
A highlight reel is a shareable collection of highlights, from one or more interviews. Save the ones worth keeping, then share or download them.
How reels work
Every theme in Analysis has an auto-generated reel sitting alongside it. Its clips are the highlights that make up the theme. You don't have to "create" a reel; it's already there.
Saving a reel pins it to Results → Saved Reels so it lives in a stable place and stops auto-refreshing as new interviews come in, which is useful when you want to send a reel to a stakeholder and keep it fixed.
Sharing and saving are separate. Send a reel from the AI chat the moment it's built, without saving it anywhere. Saving is what puts it on the Saved Reels page so you can come back to it.
A reel can pull clips from more than one project. Strella files it in a single project, but its clips can come from interviews in other projects, most often when the AI chat or the Strella connector builds a reel across your studies. Each clip from another project plays in sequence with the rest and carries a chip naming its project. The reel's clip count and shared link include that clip like any other.
Steps
- Find a reel
Three paths:
- From Analysis: open a theme in Analyze → by objective or by question and play the reel attached to it.
- From the AI chat: ask Strella's AI chat to "build a highlight reel of the strongest moments about X." It creates a reel directly.
- From the Strella connector: ask an AI assistant connected through the Strella connector to save clips it found into a project. It lands as a Saved Reel you can play, edit, and share here.
- Save the reel (optional)
Click Save on a reel you want to keep. It appears in Results → Saved Reels and won't auto-refresh as you add more interviews. Skip this step if you only want to send the reel to someone.
- Edit the reel (optional)
Reels are editable: easiest on the Saved Reels page, though you can also edit from the AI chat. You can:
- Trim a clip: drag the handles on a clip to extend or shorten the quote, or reposition it.
- Reorder clips: drag to change the sequence.
- Remove clips: drop ones that aren't representative.
- Add clips: pull in more highlights.
Each clip is built from a highlight. To control whether the moderator's question plays before the participant's response, toggle that on the highlight, and the reel rebuilds from it.
- Share or download
From the reel:
- Share: generates a public link anyone can play without a Strella account.
- Download: Strella builds the reel as an MP4 in the background, cut exactly where the player cuts it. A message shows its progress on every page. When the MP4 is ready, the message offers a Download button, and Strella emails you the link too. The MP4 carries the interview captions as subtitle tracks: English, plus the interview's own language when it was not held in English. The tracks are off until you pick one in your video player (QuickTime: View, then Subtitles; VLC: Subtitle, then Sub Track). Download all reels on a project's Saved Reels page gives every reel in the ZIP the same caption tracks.
In the AI chat both sit in the ⋮ menu on the reel card, as Share reel and Download reel. Strella files a reel whose clips all come from one project there automatically. When its clips span several projects, Strella asks which one the reel belongs to, since that choice sets the branding on the shared page. Either way, Strella does not add the reel to that project's Saved Reels.
A shared link is a snapshot of the clips as they were when you created it, so editing the reel afterwards doesn't change what your recipient sees. Share again to send the newer cut.
A reel saved through your AI assistant (the Strella connector) works differently. It carries one public link you can ask for when saving. Every later save through the assistant refreshes that same link to the reel's current clips. Edits made here in Strella do not refresh it, but the next save through the assistant does.
Teammates who open the shared link while signed in to Strella get a download button on the player itself, so they can pull the MP4 without opening the project. They just need to belong to the workspace the reel came from, and they don't have to be switched into it.
Reels are full-quality video, easy to drop in a Slack thread or a presentation.
The reel is ready to send. The public link stays live until the study is closed.
Tips
- Keep reels under 3 minutes. Stakeholders tune out fast. Pick the 4 to 6 strongest clips, not every clip you have.
- Mix sentiment. A reel of only positive reactions reads as a sales pitch; mixing in one or two negative reactions makes it feel honest.
- Add a one-line context above the reel link when you share it: "Here's what blockers people hit at sign-up" frames what to watch for.