Client walkthrough videos: what to record for a handoff, training, or report

What a client walkthrough video must contain, by type

The four types look alike on the timeline and differ in what the client does afterwards. Decide the type before you record, because it sets the length and the last sentence.

A handoff is a set, not one long take: an 8–12 minute overview plus a short training video for each task the client will do alone. Five to eight tasks is a normal count for a small business site.

Client walkthrough script: 5 minutes, with timings

Log in as the client’s role, not as an administrator, so your screen has the same menus as theirs. Open the starting screen, close everything else, and say the parts in this order. For a handoff, repeat the 0:50–3:50 block once per area and stay under 12 minutes.

1. 0:00–0:20 · What this is and for whom. “This is the handoff for the new clinic site, recorded on October 2. It is for whoever updates the site.”
2. 0:20–0:50 · What you will be able to do. “After this you can change opening hours, add a team member, and publish a news post.”
3. 0:50–1:10 · Where to start. Show the login address and the first screen after login. Say the menu name exactly as it is written.
4. 1:10–3:50 · The tasks. One action per sentence: name the control, click it, pause two seconds on the result. Finish each task on the saved state.
5. 3:50–4:20 · What to leave alone. “Do not edit anything under Settings or Templates. A change there affects every page.”
6. 4:20–4:45 · What is covered. “Fixes are included for 30 days. After that, new requests are quoted separately.”
7. 4:45–5:00 · Where to ask. One address or one thread, and how fast you answer.

Worked example: handing off a clinic website

A two-person studio finishes a 14-page site for a dental clinic. The office manager will update it. The studio records one overview of 9:40 and three task videos: “Change opening hours” (2:50), “Add a team member” (4:10), and “Publish a news post” (3:30). Total: about 20 minutes of video in four files.

The overview is recorded in the editor role the office manager has. It runs: what the site is and who the video is for (0:00), logging in (0:40), the page list and which pages are safe to edit (1:20), the Team page and its menu item (2:10), the booking form and where requests arrive (4:30), images and the size to upload (6:15), what not to touch (8:00), support terms and contact (9:00).

The booking inbox is the risky part: it holds real patient names. The studio submits three test requests under invented names, records only the browser window, and filters the list to those three before pressing record.

Three months later the clinic renames the menu item “Team” to “Our dentists”. The overview now says and shows the old label at 2:10–2:30. The studio opens the saved project, re-records those 20 seconds on the current site, exports, and sends the new file. The other 9:20 is the take the client already approved.

What to send with the walkthrough video

A video with no text around it gets watched once and lost. Paste this block into the email or the handoff document. The timestamp list matters most: it turns a ten-minute file into something the client can use as a reference.

• What this is: “Handoff for the clinic site, recorded October 2, 2026, for the editor role.”
• Files: the name and length of each video, for example “01 Overview (9:40)”, “02 Change opening hours (2:50)”.
• Timestamps: “Logging in 0:40 · Safe pages 1:20 · Team page 2:10 · Booking form 4:30 · Images 6:15 · Do not touch 8:00.”
• Links: the login address, the live site, and the folder where the videos are stored.
• Access: which account the client uses, its role, and who can reset the password.
• Written steps for each task, with menu names spelled as on screen. Paste the transcript and tidy it.
• Covered and not covered: the support period, the response time, and what counts as a new request.
• Contact: one address or thread. Ask the client to quote the file name and the timestamp when they write.

Recording client walkthroughs on a Mac with Qreata

Client walkthroughs live for years, and the thing they show keeps changing. That is where Qreata earns its place. The project stays editable after export, so when the client’s site or system changes you open it, pick Replace Take (the Rerecord tool in the editor), Shift-drag across the outdated range, and record that range again: screen, camera, microphone, and system audio together. In the clinic example that is 2:10–2:30 of a 9:40 video. The range has to sit inside one segment and cannot cross a cut, and the retake has to fill it: a shorter one is rejected, a longer one is trimmed. The same tool fixes a slip while you are still recording the first version, such as the wrong menu name at minute seven.

A client’s admin area shows orders, customer emails, and revenue. Qreata records, edits, and transcribes on your Mac, with no account, and nothing uploads unless you press an upload button. Choose Window as the source so only the browser is captured, and use Blur · select elements for what is still in it: click up to 8 interface elements, such as the customer email column, and the blur follows them as the page scrolls. What the client gets is a plain MP4 (H.264). You hand over the file, or press the Google Drive button for a link anyone with the link can open. The client needs no account and no seat, and the file in their folder does not depend on any subscription of yours.

Clients watch at a front desk with the sound off. Captions in video burns word-highlighted captions into the MP4, so they show in any player. Remove silences, Remove filler words, and word-level cuts in the transcript take a rambling 14 minutes down to 10 without dragging trim handles, and you can copy the transcript text as the first draft of the written steps.

The limits that matter for client work: nothing detects sensitive data for you, so test records come first and the Blur tool in the editor covers what slipped through; no chapters, so the timestamp list in your message does that job; no viewer analytics or comments, so replies come by email; no SRT or VTT export; and it runs only on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later. Hosted links on qreata.cc exist only through Qreata Cloud, a separate paid add-on you do not need for any of this.

On cost: Qreata is $49 once for 3 Macs with future updates included, and a studio can take the Team license at $149 once for up to 50 Macs. There is no per-seat subscription to carry between projects or through a slow quarter. A fair ten-minute test in the 7-day trial: record the first two minutes of your next handoff with the script above, then replace a 15-second range as if the client had renamed a menu item, and watch both joins.

Mistakes that bring the support emails back

If the client still writes to ask how to change a phone number, the video usually failed in one of these ways.

• One 40-minute recording of everything. The client cannot find the two minutes they need.
• Recording as an administrator, so the client’s screen has fewer menus than yours.
• Showing a staging site whose labels differ from the live one.
• Real customer names, orders, or emails in the frame.
• No date in the video or the file name, so nobody knows whether it is still true.
• Sending only a link that sits in your own account, with no file in the client’s folder.
• No “do not touch” part. The client edits a template and breaks every page.
• Leaving the old video in place after the site changed.
• A proof-of-work video that lists hours instead of showing the result on screen.