Videos, courses, and scenes
The basic VideoQ workflow is to add videos, organize them into a course, and ask questions about that course. Understanding these three steps makes screen and code names easier to follow.
A concrete example
Suppose you add “Preparing the development environment” and “Implementing the API” to a course called “New team member training.”
When you ask “How do I start the API?”, VideoQ searches transcripts of videos in that course. Scenes used in the answer include timestamps so you can return to the original video.
| Name | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Video | One registered video with its title, transcript, and processing state | “Implementing the API” |
| Course | A set of videos grouped for questions and sharing | “New team member training” |
| Scene | A transcript segment with start and end times | Startup instructions from 02:10 to 02:40 |
| Tag | A label for organizing videos | “Introduction”, “Backend” |
| Chat log | A record of a question, answer, citations, and feedback | An answer explaining startup steps |
Course membership has two meanings
Distinguish videos from people when reading the code:
video_course_members: A join table for the videos included in a course and their display order.- Course invitations and participation: Features that manage access for people using a course.
Removing a video from a course and deleting the stored video itself are also separate operations.
Owners, participants, and administrators
Videos and courses have owners. Share links and invitations let others use permitted courses. Available operations depend on access to the data, not just login status.
Administrators manage users, usage limits, reindexing, and related tasks. Hiding a button does not enforce permissions. The API must also check access to the target data. See authentication and access control.
Q&A and study mode
Q&A finds scenes to answer questions. Study mode uses a graph of concepts called PLOG to present questions and hints. They use the same videos but require different prepared data.
Read next: System overview. For table details, see the data dictionary.