How to show where footage is missing without it looking like a mistake

Last updated 2026-09-10 · 8 min read

What is the short version?

Asking for gaps to be indicated usually gets you a caption saying something is missing, which is honest, useful in review and impossible to show anybody. A neutral hold marks the same gap and survives being watched by a client.

1. Go to Vizard Agent with the material and the script.
2. Say to indicate where footage is missing.
3. Say the marker must not look like an error message.

What do you need before you start?

The footage you do have, and a clear sense of who is going to watch this particular cut. That second part decides everything Vizard Agent does here: a version only you will ever see can be labelled bluntly, and a version anybody else sees cannot be.

• The footage you already have.
• What the film should cover. A script or an outline.
• Who sees this cut. You, or a client.
• What may fill a gap. Substitute shots, a hold, nothing.
• What must not appear. Interface, watermarks, placeholders.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

Say what the marker is for. "Indicate the gaps" is ambiguous between a note to you and a caption on the film; adding "keep it presentable, this goes to a client" resolves it before the first render rather than after.

Prompt

Variants worth knowing:

• "Indicate the gaps." The request itself.
• "Neutral and presentable." Rules out a warning caption.
• "One with, one without." Two versions, one pass.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

Here is the order Vizard Agent worked in on a real product film assembled from screen footage that did not cover the whole script. The last few steps in this list are the correction it had to make, and they are the reason this article exists at all.

1. Searches the footage for the specific screens the script calls for.
2. Re-runs the search where the first pass missed material.
3. Looks for the screens that are named but may not exist.
4. Extracts candidate substitute frames and measures their framing.
5. Builds both versions — with substitutes, and with your footage only.
6. Reviews where the substitutes landed in the cut.
7. Sweeps the whole film for leftover interface artefacts.
8. Checks every part of the cut for those artefacts specifically.
9. Replaces the warning captions with neutral filler holds.
10. Rebuilds with static presentation-style holds at each gap.
11. Checks the filler frames across the finished film.

Step nine is the correction worth remembering. A caption reading that no footage was found is a perfectly accurate label and it reads as a fault in the video rather than as a note about the material, so it gets replaced with something that looks like a slide somebody meant to put there.

Step seven is the sweep that catches what nobody looks for. Screen recordings carry the interface they were recorded in — a meeting bar, a browser chrome, a notification — and those survive an edit unless the whole film is checked for them rather than the sections you happened to review.

What does the result look like?

Two cuts of the same film. One uses substitute shots where your own footage runs out; the other holds a neutral frame at those points instead. Both are watchable end to end, and neither announces that anything is missing.

You can send either to somebody without explaining it first.

When does this not work well?

A marker that looks deliberate is also a marker that is easy to forget. If the gaps have to be obvious — because you are collecting footage against a list — a plain label is the better tool, and it should never leave your own machine.

• A working checklist. Then blunt labels are correct.
• Gaps in most of the film. Holds stop covering for it.
• A subject with no substitute. Nothing generic will fit.
• Long gaps. A hold cannot carry twenty seconds.
• Live narration over the gap. The hold has to match what is said.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

Say what the marker should look like instead of describing the problem. Vizard Agent keeps the list of gaps it found, so changing how they are shown on screen is a change to the filler alone rather than a rebuild of the whole film around them.

• "That caption is unprofessional." Replaced with a neutral hold.
• "I cannot tell where the gaps are." A list supplied separately.
• "That substitute shot is wrong." Replaced from the candidates.
• "There is still interface visible." The whole film swept again.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

By hand a gap is either filled with whatever is nearest or left as a black frame, and there is rarely a second version. The interface sweep is the part that gets skipped entirely, because it means checking every shot for something you are not expecting to see.

Common questions

Can it tell me where the gaps are separately? Yes. Ask Vizard Agent for the list rather than a caption.

What does a neutral hold look like? A plain presentation-style frame. Vizard Agent shows you first.

Can I have both versions? Yes. Vizard Agent builds both in one pass rather than two.

Will it use stock footage? Only if you allow it. Tell Vizard Agent what a substitute may be.

How does it choose substitutes? Vizard Agent measures the framing against the shots around it.

Can it find my own missing screens? Vizard Agent searches your material first and reports what is genuinely absent.

What about interface bars in screen recordings? Vizard Agent sweeps the whole film for them.

Can the hold carry the narration? Yes for a few seconds. Vizard Agent will say when a gap needs a real shot.

Will the gaps be obvious to a client? Not if they are marked neutrally, which is the point.

Can I mark them bluntly for myself? Yes. Ask Vizard Agent for a review copy with plain labels.

What if there is no suitable substitute? Vizard Agent will say so rather than use something inappropriate.

Does this delay delivery? No. Vizard Agent builds both versions from the same assembly.

Can it re-cut once I film the missing bits? Yes, dropping them into the gaps it already marked.

Why not just label the gap honestly? Because an honest label is a note to you, and it becomes a defect the moment anybody else watches the file.