- Install Lens and what the one number means
Lens · 4 steps — VideoCore Lens is a free Chrome extension. It puts one measured number on every YouTube video: how it did against what that channel's comparable uploads actually did. No account needed.
- Read a video's real numbers on YouTube with Lens
Lens · 4 steps — VideoCore Lens is a free Chrome extension. It puts one measured number on every video: how it did against what that channel's comparable uploads actually did. No account needed.
- The watch panel, lower half: the top fix, tags, and the title decoded
Lens · 5 steps — Below the live numbers, the Lens panel tells you the one change to make first, hands you the video's own tags, and decodes the title against what wins in this field.
- The channel page: health, pillars and the biggest lever
Lens · 4 steps — On any channel page Lens adds a bar above the tabs: the channel's health out of 100, its four pillars, typical views, the openings that win here, and the one lever to pull first.
- Search, channel grids and Shorts: what the badges mean
Lens · 4 steps — Lens puts its number wherever YouTube lists videos: search results, channel grids, the Shorts shelf and the Shorts player. Here is how to read each one.
- The Tools tile: transcript, thumbnail, comments, swipe file
Lens · 4 steps — One button, bottom right of every watch page, opens the tools Lens offers on that video: downloads that read the page, and the AI tools that need a VideoCore account.
- The free channel health check
Lens · 3 steps — From the Lens popup, the channel bar or the VideoCore homepage: paste any channel and get an A to F health grade from its public numbers. No sign-up.
- The Lens popup and settings
Lens · 3 steps — The toolbar popup is where you sign in, see what Lens offers on the page you are on, and choose where Lens shows.
- From Lens to VideoCore: what an account adds
Lens · 3 steps — Lens shows you the numbers on YouTube. A VideoCore account turns them into the next video: ideas with evidence, scripts in your voice, packaging, publishing and the fixes to your catalogue.
- Sign up with Google or email, and verify
VideoCore · 3 steps — An account is free to start. The 14-day Pro trial begins when you connect a channel, not when you sign up, so take your time.
- Connect your channel
VideoCore · 4 steps — One Google consent, about twenty seconds, read-only until you say otherwise. A new account opens on this page and nothing else until a channel is connected; connecting starts your 14-day Pro trial and gives every tool your real numbers.
- Pick your competitors, and say which channels are the same person
VideoCore · 5 steps — Three competitors switch on the field measurement and the climb email. One person often runs several channels, a Shorts channel, a second subject, a personal brand, so you can say which belong together: a brand counts as one competitor, and your own second channel is never treated as a rival.
- Tell VideoCore who you are
VideoCore · 3 steps — The first time the full app opens, it asks where you are at. Four answers, or skip. The answer changes how much of the product you see.
- The Feed: one next step
VideoCore · 4 steps — The Feed is home. It shows your channel strip, a conveyor with the one thing to do next, an ask bar, your milestones and projects, and the latest from YouTube Creators.
- Finding your way around
VideoCore · 4 steps — The left menu is numbered in the order you work. Ctrl K jumps anywhere. The top bar holds your channel, notifications, workspaces and your account.
- Help inside the product
VideoCore · 5 steps — Four places to get unstuck without leaving the page: the Mentor, the how-tos it carries, the Academy, and two buttons that reach us directly.
- Your trial, plans and billing
VideoCore · 2 steps — Settings, Plan and Billing: the current plan, what this month used, the features each plan includes, the upgrade, the billing portal, and cancelling in one click.
- Your instant audit: what the grades mean, Diagnose, Open
VideoCore · 4 steps — The moment the channel connects, Optimise pulls your real videos and scores every one against your own average. No setup: the grid, the grades and the quick wins are there on the first visit.
- No channel yet? Start one now
VideoCore · 3 steps — Tell VideoCore what you know or love, read what videos on that subject actually did, measured from real channels, pick a lane, create the channel on YouTube in a minute and connect it. The channels that won your subject become your first competitors before your first upload.
- Find your next video idea from evidence, not guesswork
VideoCore · 5 steps — The Idea Engine starts from things people actually said and watched: your comments, your own hits that never got a sequel, and the videos that beat their channel's normal in your field. Every idea it gives you carries the evidence it came from.
- Find Ideas: one question, then one idea at a time
VideoCore · 3 steps — Type what you want to make videos about and press the button. The ideas arrive one at a time, each with who it is for, the promise, the hooks and the angle; save it, pass, next. The eleven research tabs are still here, folded under one line until you want them.
- Outlier Playbook and Score Topics: measure first, then score
VideoCore · 3 steps — The Outlier Playbook pulls the real top performers for a niche or your competitors straight from YouTube and scores one channel's uploads against its own baseline. Score Topics rates a list of topics across seven dimensions so you only make what scores well.
- What's Working: how much evidence, the patterns, and two reads of your field
VideoCore · 4 steps — What's Working reads your sector scans, the niche map and adjacent niches for the subject, thumbnail, title and hook patterns that are winning, says how much evidence each rests on before it says anything, and then shows who in your field owns which subject and what wins outside the field that nobody inside it has tried.
- Search Demand, winning thumbnails, Remix a winner, and Series
VideoCore · 4 steps — Four tools on the same page: is this topic worth it, what do winning thumbnails look like, ten fresh angles on a measured winner, and grouping saved ideas into series.
- The first 10 videos, and your Saved ideas
VideoCore · 2 steps — The first ten videos are what the algorithm learns a channel from. First 10 builds ten briefs off the Blueprint so they pull in one direction; Saved is your prioritised backlog, ready to become briefs.
- Swipe File: your niche's winners decoded
VideoCore · 3 steps — Enter a niche keyword or a competitor and Build: the winners are pulled, each hook transcribed, the top comments read, and everything decoded into a library of hook patterns, a problem bank in the audience's own words, and the sponsors funding the niche.
- Length Lab: how long should your videos be, from your own numbers
VideoCore · 3 steps — Long-form or Shorts, any period, recalculated on demand: which length bracket pulls the best numbers on your channel, with the confidence it deserves and the reasons it is not a rule.
- Make a Video: one line in, a measured plan out
VideoCore · 4 steps — Type one idea and Build the plan: keywords with their demand, measured targets for length, words and pace counted from your field, the title and its promise, the thumbnail concepts, tags and an outline. Everything measured says what it was counted from.
- From the canvas: the script in your voice, three thumbnails, the shelf
VideoCore · 2 steps — Below the plan: Write the script in my voice drafts a full script read from your own winning videos; the thumbnail concepts render to real images; Preview on the shelf shows your title and thumbnail in a YouTube feed next to your field.
- Projects: every video as one hub
VideoCore · 2 steps — A project is one video from idea to results. The list shows status, versions and dates; the project page is the hub every tool feeds: script, analysis, packaging, launch, Shorts, exports, monetisation, results and learnings.
- Plan Your Video: the briefs list
VideoCore · 2 steps — Every video is planned before it is made. The briefs list holds them by status: draft, approved, in production, published, archived. New Brief starts one; Send ideas pack shares a set with the numbers attached.
- The brief, tabs 1 to 3: the idea, opening hooks, video structure
VideoCore · 4 steps — Six tabs plan one video. The first three say what the viewer gets and who they are, write several opening hooks and pick the strongest, and lay out the beats. Quick Build fills a draft of all six from the title. Then the acceptance criteria: what has to be true by the end for the title to be true.
- The brief, tabs 4 to 6: evidence, the title and thumbnail gate, the money plan
VideoCore · 3 steps — The last three tabs make the video show rather than tell, stop it until the title scores, and say how it earns: the call to action, where it leads, and the end-screen goal.
- Script Studio: Hook Lab, and Interview to Script
VideoCore · 2 steps — Script Studio is seven tabs from hooks to transcript. Hook Lab generates scored hooks from a brief or a topic and turns the strongest into a full script; Interview to Script writes one from your answers to a few questions.
- Script Studio: beat map, proof moments, analysis and version compare
VideoCore · 4 steps — Build the structure as a beat map with open loops, find every place the script should show rather than tell, run the analysis for grades on hook, retention and pacing, and compare versions before filming. And the acceptance check: does the script make every condition of the title true?
- Script Studio: Transcribe audio or video, SRT and import
VideoCore · 1 steps — Drop an audio or video file and get a transcript with timestamps, through OpenAI Whisper. Use it to bring a recorded talk into the studio, to subtitle, or to turn an old video into a script to revise.
- Send to Production: film it, hand it over, track it to the cut
VideoCore · 2 steps — Pick a project with a finished script. The production brief travels with it: Film Mode is a teleprompter, Copy Full Brief hands everything to an editor, and the status bar tracks scripted, filming, review and ready.
- Package and Publish: title, description, tags, chapters, the checks, and the push
VideoCore · 2 steps — For a project: the title with A/B test, the description with your tracked link inserted, tags and chapters generated, three pre-publish checks, a publish score, and Publish to YouTube or Copy All.
- Launch Centre: the 7-day sequence, the Hype strategy, the war room
VideoCore · 3 steps — The last step. A day-by-day launch plan with tasks and templates, community posts, the Hype module; the eligibility check and best posting times; and the war room for the first sixty minutes with early numbers typed in from Studio.
- Advanced: Serendipity Engine, Greenlight Boards and the Packaging Lab
VideoCore · 4 steps — Three tools under Show all tools: unexpected ideas through six creative lenses, a go or no-go board that gathers the evidence before production, and the Packaging Lab with title variants, thumbnail critique and A/B test plans.
- Advanced: the Thumbnail Lab and Video Preflight
VideoCore · 2 steps — Build a thumbnail on a real 1280 by 720 canvas, check it at every screen size, read pattern memory and style warnings; and run a rough cut through Preflight for audio, visual and pacing problems before upload.
- Advanced: Publish Kit and Publish Score
VideoCore · 2 steps — Publish Kit generates chapters, description, pinned comment, cards and end screens, the first-hour checklist and the session chain, with TikTok and Instagram cross-posts, then pushes to YouTube. Publish Score grades the metadata before upload and rewrites it for discovery.
- Optimise: the grid, the grades, Diagnose and the video drawer
VideoCore · 3 steps — Every video on your channel scored against your own median. The grid shows each video's score and its title grade, the multiple against your average, and when it was last optimised. Diagnose opens the full teardown; Open the drawer with the fixes.
- Optimise several at once: tick, draft, test or apply, and undo a whole run
VideoCore · 2 steps — Pick up to ten videos, choose title, description or tags, decide whether the new versions are tested against the originals or applied straight away, and draft the fixes. Every run is kept so one click undoes it.
- Optimise: thumbnails, the comment plan, why did views stop, and feed readiness
VideoCore · 2 steps — Inside a video: push a new thumbnail, A/B it or revert; a comment plan for the pinned comment and replies; Why did views stop, the revival diagnosis; and feed readiness, how the video sits in a feed next to your field.
- Video Analyzer: upload a file, get timestamped findings, markers and an EDL
VideoCore · 2 steps — Quality control for a cut: upload the file or link a project version, run the analysis across audio, visual and retention risks, and export the findings as CSV markers or an EDL with notes for the editor.
- Lens History, and the Post-Publish Diagnosis
VideoCore · 2 steps — Every video you analyse with the Lens extension lands in your history with its score and multiple, and a path to a full diagnosis. The Post-Publish Diagnosis grades every published video on retention and revenue against your own baseline, and the channel learns from it.
- A/B Test Lab: live tests, the planner, the manual log and the one-variable rules
VideoCore · 2 steps — Real title tests running on YouTube, each variant pushed live in turn, and the winner yours to push permanently. What your changes did sits at the top; the planner, the manual log and the history keep every test honest.
- Thumbnail Concepts, and the Packaging Hub memory
VideoCore · 2 steps — Three click-worthy concepts designed for mobile from a title or topic, rendered to real 1280 by 720 images, with your face when you want it. The Packaging Hub keeps the memory: scan my channel, the patterns, the learnings.
- Content Quality, the Authenticity Check and AI Disclosure
VideoCore · 3 steps — Three pre-publish checks: does the packaging deliver what it promises, does the script read as machine-made, and does the video need an altered-content disclosure.
- Readiness Checks: growth readiness and sponsor readiness
VideoCore · 2 steps — Two assessments of the channel: whether it is ready for growth support and where the bottleneck is, and whether it is ready to pitch sponsors. Each reads the Blueprint, the project history and the packaging scores, and keeps a dated history.
- Growth Coach Hub: the health check, account health, the coach and the interpreter
VideoCore · 2 steps — One place to ask how the channel is doing, four lenses on the same question. The health check grades six dimensions from your connected numbers; Account Health, Coach and Interpreter are the other three doors on the same bar.
- Prompt-Feed Optimiser, and Platform Watch
VideoCore · 2 steps — Two tools for a platform that keeps changing. Prompt-Feed maps the prompts viewers will type into YouTube's custom feed and rewrites a video to match. Platform Watch turns a YouTube announcement into the opportunities it opens, kept in a pipeline.
- Retention Predictor, and Creator Benchmarks
VideoCore · 2 steps — Predict where viewers will drop off before you film, segment by segment, with re-hook scripts for each drop. Then see how your numbers compare with creators at your stage in your niche, and which metric to fix first.
- Growth Strategy, and your Personal Playbook
VideoCore · 2 steps — The niche playbook: your weekly briefing, the niche overview, content topics, video structure, tone, engagement tactics and key metrics. The Personal Playbook reads your own project history for the patterns that won, and gives quick advice on any idea.
- Clip Factory and the Shorts Engine: the Shorts inside your long videos
VideoCore · 2 steps — Clip Factory is the front door to every clip and repurpose engine. Pick one of your videos or paste any YouTube link with captions, and the highest-retention moments come back cut-ready with hooks and captions. The Shorts Engine ranks candidates from a project transcript and exports them.
- Clip to Everywhere: record once, cut it for every platform
VideoCore · 1 steps — For a podcast or interview: paste the timestamped transcript, pick the platforms, and get a cut list with exact in and out points and a native hook, caption and hashtags for each of Shorts, Reels, TikTok and X. The YouTube Post Pack turns a video into teasers, polls and quizzes.
- Repurpose Engine: one video into seven pieces, in your voice
VideoCore · 1 steps — Select a project or paste a script, tick the platforms, and the engine writes LinkedIn posts, tweet threads, blog articles, newsletter editions, carousels, TikTok scripts and podcast talking points, adapted to each format in your voice. Past outputs are kept.
- Podcast Hub: audio out of a video, episode prep, publish to Buzzsprout
VideoCore · 1 steps — Extract the audio track from any video as a podcast-ready MP3, build the episode metadata from the Repurpose Engine's script or write it, and publish through Buzzsprout to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and the rest.
- Global Growth: target languages, the brand glossary, localised metadata and dubbing
VideoCore · 1 steps — Prioritise target languages from your audience data, keep a glossary of terms that must never be translated, generate localised titles and descriptions for each market, and track what is published. Per-language view and revenue comparison appears once multi-language analytics is connected.
- Series Architect: split a long video into a series, or plan one from scratch
VideoCore · 1 steps — YouTube rewards session time, and a planned series keeps viewers watching far longer than standalone videos. Create a series with an arc, episode promises, open loops and cliffhangers, and map the end-screen routing so each episode leads to the next.
- Community Posts, and the Livestream Planner
VideoCore · 2 steps — Community posts that prime subscribers for what is coming: quick posts by type and tone, a launch sequence, engagement boosters and a post calendar. The Livestream Planner plans a stream, converts members mid-stream, and extracts the Shorts highlights afterwards.
- Your Strategist and Do This Next: one voice that tells you what to do
VideoCore · 2 steps — The strategist reads your channel and directs the tools: channel health, the situation report, this week's directive, each move handed to the right teammate. Do This Next is the prioritised action feed: the Daily 5 and the action checklist from a scan of your whole workspace.
- Ask Your Channel: a chat that actually knows your numbers
VideoCore · 1 steps — Every other page is a dashboard to read; this one you talk to. It has your blueprint, every video's views, retention and revenue, your health and pipeline, so it answers why did last week's video tank with your data, not generic advice. Growth coaching mode sits beside it.
- The Content Calendar: every deadline, launch and livestream in one view
VideoCore · 1 steps — The editorial calendar fills itself from projects, briefs, livestreams and sponsor deals, takes manual events, grows a ten-step roadmap when a project is marked published, and syncs both ways with Google Calendar.
- Smart Triggers: alerts that say what to do, with a confidence and a window
VideoCore · 1 steps — Run a trigger scan and the alert feed fills with prescribed moves: each with its type, a confidence level, an urgency window and a link to the module that does it. Windows shows the timing; Configure sets what fires.
- History: everything you made, newest first
VideoCore · 1 steps — Every plan, script and conversation you made, newest first. A plan or script opens back into its document; a conversation expands in place.
- The Video Library: your whole catalogue with its numbers
VideoCore · 1 steps — Every video YouTube returned for the channel, with views, CTR where YouTube gives it, average view duration and likes, the scores once analysed, and Open project. Import All as Projects brings the catalogue into the pipeline; Refresh Library pulls the latest.
- The Comments Desk: what the room feels, asks and agrees with
VideoCore · 1 steps — Sync the comments, run the AI analysis, and read the room: the share of positive, questions, neutral and negative, the themes, which videos start conversations, the most-liked comments and the conversation over time. Questions are your audience telling you what to make next.
- Team Manager, editor mode and the review queue
VideoCore · 2 steps — Invite members with a role, owner, admin, editor, reviewer or viewer; set workspace settings; turn on editor mode for a hand-off; read the activity log. Awaiting Review is the queue of finished cuts waiting for sign-off against their brief.
- Governance and Risk, the Rights Center, and Brand Protection
VideoCore · 3 steps — Three pages that protect revenue: a governance check for ad-friendliness, copyright and guideline risk per project, a rights ledger of every licence with Content ID risk and expiry alerts, and a fair read on whether a suspected copycat is a real problem.
- The Asset Library: intros, outros, b-roll and overlays, with overuse warnings
VideoCore · 1 steps — Upload the reusable pieces, intros, outros, b-roll, overlays, sound beds and call-to-action templates, categorise and tag them, and see how often each has been used across projects before you reach for it again.
- Settings: profile and experience level, workspace, integrations
VideoCore · 2 steps — Your name and experience level, which sets how much of VideoCore shows by default; the workspace; and the integrations: Slack alerts, Discord, Kit, Buffer and Google Calendar.
- Settings: API keys and the connector, export your data, delete the account
VideoCore · 2 steps — Generate a key for the Copilot extension or the connector, export every piece of workspace data as a ZIP of JSON files, and delete the account from the Danger Zone, which also cancels the subscription.
- Why a new video gets no verdict yet
VideoCore · 3 steps — A video under two days old shows no multiple in Lens, and for its first fourteen days only a provisional pace. That is deliberate: a count that is still moving cannot be compared with counts that have stopped.
- Where the channel health score comes from
VideoCore · 4 steps — The health score out of 100 is four fundamentals scored out of 25 each from the channel's most recent uploads, every one measured against that channel's own history.
- Why every idea must cite its evidence
VideoCore · 3 steps — The Idea Engine shows its raw signals before any AI touches them, and every idea it produces names the measured facts it was built from. Here is why that order matters.
- The ledgers: forecasts logged before the outcome, learnings tested, so you can check our record
VideoCore · 2 steps — Two ledgers keep VideoCore honest. The Learning Ledger logs a hypothesis before the test and moves it to testing and concluded. The Forecasting Engine projects growth, revenue and milestones from your own numbers and says what moves the needle.
- Which numbers are YouTube's, and which VideoCore calculates
VideoCore · 3 steps — Two kinds of number sit in every panel. YouTube's own live stats, and the rates and ranks VideoCore calculates from them. The panel says which is which, every time.
- Why 1x is the median of the ten nearest uploads, not the lifetime average
VideoCore · 4 steps — Every multiple in VideoCore and Lens compares a video with the median of that channel's ten nearest uploads of the same kind, five before and five after. Here is why that, and not an average.
- What we refuse to show
VideoCore · 3 steps — No number we did not measure. No estimate dressed as a fact. When a comparison is weaker than it looks, the panel says so. Three examples.