Video Collaboration Roles and Permissions: Who Can See, Edit and Approve
How I set up Owner, Admin, Manager and Editor roles, guest links, passwords, instant revoking and link expiry so the wrong person never opens the wrong cut.
Permissions in my video editing agency used to work like this, right: one shared login for the review tool, a Google Drive folder that I'm pretty sure half the internet could have opened, and a WhatsApp group where clients, editors and a freelancer I had stopped working with months earlier were all still getting every cut we posted.
Now it looks very very different, and the thing that changed it was one slow afternoon spent setting up video collaboration roles and permissions properly. Every member of the team has the access their job needs, clients come in through a link with no account, sensitive cuts carry a password, and when a freelancer's contract ends I revoke their link in seconds.
So this is the setup guide I wish someone had handed me back then, covering the four roles in PlayPause, how clients comment, passwords and revoking, link expiry by plan, SSO, which is coming in February 2027 and isn't available yet, and a worked example for a twenty five person agency you can copy.
Why video review user permissions matter more as the team grows
When you are three people in a room, permissions are basically just trust, right, everybody knows which client is which and nobody touches the folder with the product launch in it. The catch here is that this stops working somewhere around the tenth person, and it stops quietly, so you only notice on the day a junior editor archives the wrong folder or a client spots another client's thumbnail next to their own video.
In my agency, to be very honest, the scary moments came from our own people, well meaning and busy, clicking whatever was in front of them because nothing stopped them. I wrote about the wider version of this in scaling a video editing agency, and permissions are the unglamorous half of that story.
There is also a pricing angle people underrate. When a tool charges per user, and Frame.io for instance starts at $15 per user per month, a lot of teams quietly share one login, and then the tool can't tell your intern from your creative director. PlayPause is priced flat per workspace, with 10 members on Creator at $9 a month, 50 on Agency at $19 and 150 on Enterprise at $27, so every person gets their own login and their own role.
nobody can tell who opened or changed a cut
each person gets only the access their job needs
The four roles: Owner, Admin, Manager and Editor
Every PlayPause plan has the same four roles, Owner, Admin, Manager and Editor, and the way I read the ladder is that access narrows as you go down it, right. The exact switches live in your workspace settings, so read them once before inviting anyone, especially who can delete or archive, because that is the click you want behind the fewest people. Here is how I assign the roles in my own agency.
Owner
The Owner is one person, and in my case that's me, the account the workspace belongs to. I keep it to a single human on purpose, because the day two people both think they own the thing is the day nobody is responsible for it. If you are co-founders, pick one Owner and make the other an Admin, and trust me on any level, it saves a strange conversation later.
Admin
Admins are the people I would trust to run the workspace if I was on a fourteen hour flight, so right now that's my operations lead and my head of post. I keep this list really really short, two or three names even at fifty members, because every Admin is someone who can make a big mistake at full speed.
Manager
Managers are my project leads, the people who own a client relationship day to day, which means organising that client's folders, sending review links, moving custom statuses from "in edit" to "approved" and chasing the sign-off. This maps onto the stage owners I describe in who owns each review stage, and the idea is that one Manager owns one client end to end.
Editor
Most of your team should sit at Editor, right, the people who upload cuts, push new versions onto the same card so MV1 becomes MV2 and reply to the client's frame-accurate comments. A new hire starts here even if they were senior at their last job, because promoting someone next month is far easier than explaining to a client why a person in their second week could reach everything.
Promoting a trusted editor to Manager next month is easy, while explaining to a client why a new hire could open their launch folder is not.
Guest reviewer permissions: clients comment without an account
Now the people outside your team, which is where most of the anxiety actually lives. Your clients are not members at all, right, they open one link in a browser with no account and no install, leave comments that stick to the exact frame, draw on the frame when they want the logo moved, and reply in threads without ever logging in.
Because they come in through a share link and not through the workspace, a client reviewing a rough cut of their brand film sees the review you shared and not the rest of your workspace, and they don't count against your 10, 50 or 150 either. I went deeper on this in feedback without full access, the setup I use when a client's in-house agency needs to weigh in.
Two more things matter for guests. On Agency and up, guest version upload lets an outside freelancer push a new version onto the card by leaving a name and email, without their hands on your workspace. And on Creator and up, who-watched analytics show who opened the link, when and from which city, which I explain in who watched your video link, and it is the quiet way of noticing that a link has been forwarded around a whole marketing department.
Share link permissions: passwords and instant revoking
A plain link is fine for a lot of work, but the moment footage is unreleased or confidential I put a password on it, and every PlayPause plan has password-protected links, so you don't need to upgrade for this. My routine is that the link goes by email and the password by WhatsApp or a quick call, so one forwarded email doesn't hand over both halves, and the click by click version is in how to password-protect a review link.
The second half of share link permissions is taking access away. You can revoke a link instantly and it simply stops working for whoever has it, which is exactly what you want the day a contract ends or the day you paste the wrong link into the wrong chat. In my agency revoking is part of closing a project, right, the same way the final invoice is, and the whole model is on our sharing and security page. For ad work before launch there is a specific setup in password-protected links for ad agencies, because a campaign leaking a week early is the kind of thing that ends a retainer.
Permissions feel boring right up until the day the wrong person opens the wrong cut.
Frame-accurate note, everyone sees the exact same thing.
Link expiry by plan and what it means for old projects
Links also age, and how long they live depends on your plan. On Creator share links last 30 days and the files expire, on Agency links last 90 days, and on Enterprise links never expire.
A creator is usually shipping fast, and a link that quietly dies after 30 days is good hygiene because you are not leaving live links to old footage all over the internet. Agencies have longer approval chains, legal, brand, the regional team and so on, and 90 days covers even the slow ones, while a large company often wants one approved link that still works next year. There is more on expiring share links if you are deciding between plans.
For old projects, I revoke the external links once a project is approved, whatever the plan, and when a client comes back six months later I send a fresh link to the final version. The versions stay stacked on the card, MV1 through MV4, which is basically version control for people who never want to hear the word Git, and downgrading never deletes your content, you see what I mean here.
SSO for larger teams, coming in February 2027
Once you are past fifty people, or once IT gets involved, the question moves from who has which role to how people log in at all. For now PlayPause doesn't have SAML single sign-on, right, SSO and SAML are coming in February 2027 and aren't available yet, so until then your team signs in with their own PlayPause logins and access comes down to the four roles, password-protected links and instant revoking.
What Enterprise gives you today is 150 members, 1 TB of storage, white-label and a custom share domain such as review.yourbrand.com, so clients see your brand on the link. If you are running a proper security review first, our enterprise security checklist lists the questions I would ask any vendor, us included. To be very honest, most teams of ten or twenty don't need SSO yet, so get roles and links right first.
A role based access video review setup checklist
A worked example: twenty five people, eight clients
Here is the shape I would use for a twenty five person agency running eight retainer clients. I am the Owner, the operations lead and the head of post are the two Admins, five account leads are Managers with one or two clients each, and the other seventeen people, editors, motion designers and a colourist, are all Editors. That is twenty five members inside Agency at $19 a month flat, and as purely illustrative math, the same headcount at Frame.io's starting price of $15 per user would be $375 a month.
Then the outside world, which never gets a role at all, right. Each client has three to six stakeholders, the brand manager, someone from legal, the founder who appears out of nowhere at MV3 and so on, and every one of them reviews through a share link, with a password on anything unreleased. A freelance sound designer sends the mix back through guest version upload, and when the client's legal team needs to watch the final cut without touching anything, they get the same kind of link, which I cover in legal and procurement review.
Approval is the part people get wrong, so here is our house rule: the client approves in the comments on the final version, the Manager who owns that client moves the custom status to "approved", and an Editor never marks their own cut approved. That last bit is our rule rather than something the tool forces, but it means one named person stands behind every sign-off, does that make sense, right.
The order I set it up in
I'm pretty sure all of this fits into one afternoon. Write the org chart down with every person and the one job they actually do, then assign the roles, and set up one folder per client so links are always created from inside one client's space. After that, agree a password rule, connect Slack so every comment lands in a channel your leads watch, which is on Creator and up, and make revoking links part of closing a project. Once a quarter, check who has left or changed jobs and which links are still live that shouldn't be.
- One Owner and no more than three Admins
- Client leads set as Managers for their own accounts
- Everyone else starts as an Editor
- Passwords on every unreleased or confidential cut
- Links revoked when a project closes
- Roles reviewed every quarter
Frequently asked questions
Do clients need an account to comment on a review link?
Not at all, clients open the link in any browser with no account and no install, and they can leave frame-accurate comments, draw on the frame and reply in threads straight away. In my agency this is the biggest reason feedback arrives on time, because nobody gets stuck on a sign up screen, and it also means clients never become members of your workspace, so they only see what you shared through that link.
Do guest reviewers count toward my member limit?
They don't, because guests who comment through a link are not members. Your member limit, 10 on Creator, 50 on Agency and 150 on Enterprise, is for your own team, the people who get a role like Manager or Editor. That is why flat workspace pricing works so well for agencies, right, because you can send a link to as many client stakeholders as you like, which I cover in review links for unlimited clients.
How fast can I cut off someone's access?
For share links, revoking is instant, the link stops working the moment you revoke it, and you can create a fresh one for whoever should still have access. For team members, you change their role or remove them from the workspace, and SSO, which would put sign in behind your company identity provider as well, is coming in February 2027 and isn't available yet. I do both on the day someone leaves, basically as one line on the offboarding list.
Does PlayPause have SSO/SAML yet?
Not yet, right, SSO and SAML are coming to PlayPause in February 2027 and aren't available today. When you compare tools on single sign-on, check that it works with the identity provider your IT team already runs and that removing someone there really does cut off their access, because that is the whole point of it. In the meantime, access control in PlayPause comes from the four roles, password-protected links and instant revoking on every plan, who-watched analytics on Creator and up, and a custom share domain on Enterprise, so a smaller team can get permissions right on Creator or Agency today.
Where I would start
If you are setting this up for the first time, start small, right, pick the plan that matches your headcount, invite the team with the four roles, and send one password-protected link to your friendliest client to see how it feels on their side. Every plan comes with a 7-day free trial, and you can compare Creator, Agency and Enterprise on our pricing page. At the end of the day, permissions are just the decision about who can see what, made once and on purpose instead of every day by accident.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
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