Handover spec
Corporate video delivery to a marketing team.
One page, not four transfer emails.
A marketing team does not need a file. It needs the master, the cutdowns, the captions and an embed that carries no host logo, all hanging off one link, with a name against every asset. Here is the spec a production company can follow, what each person on the client side actually touches, and the job you should still leave to a marketing video platform.
Video hosting for filmmakers · 5 GB free · Paid plans from USD 9/month
By uncompressed.io · Updated September 2026
What goes wrong
Four emails, three file services,
and nobody can find the captions.
The film is approved. Then the handover starts, and it is four separate sends: a master in one transfer, six cutdowns in another, a caption folder in a third, and an embed code pasted into the body of an email. Three weeks later the social manager asks for the vertical cut again, the link has expired, and the agency uploads a re-compressed copy it found in a shared drive. None of that is a file-size problem. It is an addressing problem: the assets arrived as attachments instead of as one page with a name against every item.
5 GB
Free to start
Starter is free and keeps 5 GB hot, one film at a time. Enough to run one real handover before anyone signs.
0
Views metered
Plans have storage, seat and caption allowances; streaming has no extra charge here. Views, viewers and uploads are not counted on any plan, including the free one.
.srt .vtt
Caption exports
Captions are generated on the film by a speech-to-text model and export in either format, per cut.
No logo
On the embed
An embedded player carries no host branding on any plan, so the film reads as part of the client site.
The spec
Five things you hand over,
and what each one is for.
A corporate handover is five assets, not one. Write them into the deliverables clause by name. The point of listing them is that each one has a different owner on the client side, and each one fails differently when it goes missing.
The player streams the exact bytes uploaded, with no transcode anywhere. Browser playback covers H.264, HEVC and AV1; ProRes and DNxHR are hosted for client download only. 8K plays when the viewer's hardware decodes it.
Name the people
Four roles on the client side,
not one shared login.
The single biggest cause of a lost asset is a shared account nobody owns. Distribution roles let you decide per audience what each group sees, so the same page serves four different people without four different links. Ask for these four names in the kickoff, before a frame is shot.
The brand or marketing lead
Signs off. Needs versions and timecoded comments during the cut, and the finished web film after. This is the person whose approval you keep as the record, so give them the review link on day one and never move it.
The social or content manager
Takes the cutdowns and the caption files and publishes them on platforms you do not control. They need downloads, not embeds, and they need the captions to match the cut exactly. Deliver one caption file per cut, named the same as the cut.
The web developer or site agency
Takes one embed code and nothing else. They care that the player carries no host logo, that it does not pull a competing brand onto the page, and that the code does not change three months later.
The legal or compliance reviewer
Appears late, asks for a specific frame, and is not in your project tool. Give them a view of the review trail rather than a new file. Timecoded comments are the difference between a change request and a fresh round of exports.
The process
Build the handover
the same way every time.
Set the page up before the first cut
Create the film, invite the brand lead, and put v1 on it. The review link you send in week one is the same link the client opens at delivery, so it earns its place in the email thread instead of competing with three others.
Stack versions, never re-send files
Each round goes on as a version on the same film. Comments land on timecode. When the fourth reviewer arrives in week six, the whole argument is already on the page, and you are not reconstructing which export they watched.
Generate captions once, export per cut
Run captions on the approved film, correct the names and product terms, then export .srt or .vtt for each cut. Identical wording across the site, the ad platforms and the social apps is a compliance point, not a nicety.
Deliver the master and the embed together
The master goes up as a download. The web film goes up as the embed. Both hang off the same page, so the deliverables clause is satisfied by one link and the site agency does not need to be in the email at all.
Set the retention question at kickoff, not at invoice time
The honest part
If the goal is leads,
you should stay with Wistia.
This is a delivery tool, not a marketing video platform. Wistia is built for the job a marketing team is actually measured on: turnstiles and forms on the video, lead scoring, CRM handoff and per-viewer analytics. If your client’s brief says the video has to capture and score leads on the company site, hand them to Wistia and say so plainly. Nothing on this page competes for that work, and pretending otherwise would cost you the relationship six weeks later.
Wistia figures from wistia.com/pricing fetched 11 September 2026, plus its support articles on storage limits and bandwidth; the pricing page prints Business as both $79/month and $79/mo billed annually, and prints no separate month-to-month figure, so the billing toggle is ambiguous from the page text and no month-to-month rate is quoted here. Frame.io figures from frame.io/pricing fetched 11 September 2026; the page advertises Save 13% for annual billing but prints no annual dollar amount, so none is quoted here. Wistia meters storage rather than video count on current plans, and warns by email when an account is on track to exceed its monthly bandwidth.
Frame.io deserves the same honesty in the other direction. It is the strongest per-seat review and approval workflow in the business and it is wired into Adobe’s ecosystem. If the bottleneck is frame-accurate comments inside Premiere with an editorial team, that is the tool, and the storage it includes is generous. The catch for a corporate handover is the shape of the pricing: it bills per member, so a marketing department that wants eleven people looking at a film pays for eleven people. Here, a viewer is not a seat and is never metered, which is the whole reason a handover page can be forwarded inside a client company without a budget conversation.
Vimeo will come up in the client’s meeting, and the case against it is about ceilings rather than price. Its help centre puts 4K playback at a maximum of 22 Mbps, and HDR or above-4K content lower still at 16 Mbps. It documents a 2 TB monthly bandwidth threshold on self-serve plans, enforced by escalation rather than by stopping playback: Vimeo says it generally does not cut off streaming at the threshold, and acts after an account exceeds 2 TB twice in twelve months or 10 TB once. Studio is metered differently, at 36 TB of yearly bandwidth with no monthly cap, and it is the one Vimeo tier with a price printed on an official page: $400 a month, billed annually, with 10 seats.
And if the film is a public launch piece where reach matters more than fidelity, put it on YouTube and stop reading. YouTube accepts uploads up to 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less, and costs the client nothing. The case for a delivery page is the private half of the job: the master, the cutdowns before they publish, the reviewer who needs a specific frame, and an embed on the company site that does not carry someone else’s brand.
Read this before you promise it
Two limits to name,
say so in the kickoff.
Protection is per video. Each film can carry its own password; there is no multi-video hub sitting behind one gate. For most corporate handovers that is the right shape, because the social manager and the site agency should not hold the same key as the legal reviewer. If the brief genuinely calls for one password over an entire brand library, it is not this tool, and finding that out in week one is cheaper than finding it out at delivery.
Captions are generated by a speech-to-text model, which means they need a human pass for product names, executive names and anything the brand spells unusually. Budget fifteen minutes per cut for that correction, once, on the approved film. Everything downstream inherits it, which is exactly why the caption pass belongs to you and not to a marketing coordinator working from a transcript at nine at night.
One clause worth putting in the proposal: files here are never sold and never used to train AI, and that is a term in the contract with a 30-day notice rule, not a setting. Corporate clients with a legal department increasingly ask the question before they hand over unreleased product footage, and having the answer in writing shortens the conversation to a sentence.
Questions
Frequently asked
What should the deliverable list say in the contract?
Name the assets, not the transfer method: one graded master, one web film in a browser-playable codec, one export per social placement, a caption file per cut in .srt or .vtt, and one review link with versions kept. Then name the retention period and who holds the account after the project closes.
Can the whole marketing team log in?
Viewing never requires a login and is never metered, so the wider team watches and shares with no seat at all. Seats are only for people who upload, manage or review inside the account. Max includes 3 seats and Studio includes 5; extra seats are $25 a month or $300 a year, and a seat carries no storage of its own.
Can I put the whole campaign behind one password for the client?
No. Protection is per video, so each film carries its own password. There is no multi-video hub with a single gate. If the brief calls for one password over a whole library, say so early and plan for a different tool.
Who generates the captions, us or the client?
Generate them yourself before handover. Captions are produced on the film by a speech-to-text model and export as .srt or .vtt. A marketing team can then upload the same file wherever the cut goes next, so the wording stays identical across the site, the ad platforms and the social apps.
Will the player show a hosting brand on the client site?
No. An embedded player carries no host branding on any plan, so the film on the client page reads as the client page. That matters most when the same embed sits on a product page next to the brand's own design system.
Does the master stream in the browser?
No. The player streams the exact bytes you uploaded with no transcode anywhere, and browsers decode H.264, HEVC and AV1. ProRes 422, ProRes 4444 and DNxHR are hosted for download, not for playback, so the master is the thing the client downloads and the web film is the thing the client plays.
What does this cost to keep a campaign online?
Plans have storage, seat and caption allowances; streaming has no extra charge. Lite is $9 a month or $90 a year for 100 GB hot, Pro is $25 or $250 for 500 GB, Max is $75 or $750 for 1.5 TB hot plus 1 TB cold, and Studio is $250 or $2,500 for 2 TB hot plus 2 TB cold. Past the plan, blocks are $40 per TB hot and $20 per TB cold, a month.
Hand over one campaign, then decide
Starter is free and keeps 5 GB hot, one film at a time. That is enough to run a real handover end to end before anyone signs anything. Paid plans add room, seats and cold storage.
Sources
- 1.Wistia pricing: plan tiers, printed prices, storage, bandwidth, users and price per additional user (fetched 11 September 2026)
- 2.Wistia support: Understanding Storage Limits (storage metering and add-on storage blocks) (page last updated 29 July 2026)
- 3.Wistia support: Account Usage and Bandwidth (what counts as bandwidth, overage handling) (page last updated 15 July 2026)
- 4.Frame.io pricing: Free, Pro and Team per-member monthly prices, member caps and included storage (fetched 11 September 2026)
- 5.Vimeo Help Center: Guidelines for determining playback resolution (4K maximum 22 Mbps, HDR and above-4K 16 Mbps) (article updated 25 November 2025)
- 6.Vimeo Help Center: Bandwidth on Vimeo (2 TB monthly threshold and how it is enforced) (article updated 29 June 2026)
- 7.Vimeo Help Center: About the Vimeo Studio plan (36 TB yearly bandwidth with no monthly cap, 10 seats, $400 a month billed annually) (article updated 10 September 2026)
- 8.YouTube Help: Upload videos (maximum file size 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less) (fetched 11 September 2026)
- 9.uncompressed.io pricing: plans, seats and storage blocks