Export Overview

Exporting turns work produced inside VizChat into artifacts you can hand off, archive, and reopen elsewhere. Today there are two export paths for boards (.vizpkg and video) and one for chat history.

Storyboard → .vizpkg

A .vizpkg is a portable archive holding a storyboard together with every file it references, so whoever opens it finds nothing missing.

Export: open a storyboard and use Export .vizpkg in the property panel. VizChat first lists everything the board references and flags blockers (red): the board references a widget that no longer exists, or one that is unpublished or taken down. Export stays disabled until those references are removed, because the recipient would not be able to resolve them. A package that is simply too large lands here as well (see below).

The package then downloads as a single file. It is assembled in your browser: files come straight from storage, and narration audio and the widgets the board uses travel with it.

Exporting a whole workspace

On My workspaces (/me), each workspace card has Export workspace. It packages every file in the workspace — including files no board references yet and empty folders — into one .vizpkg you can import again later. It has no cover image.

In the desktop app

When the workspace is connected to a local folder, export saves straight to a file you choose, and reuses the copies already on your computer instead of downloading them again. Before exporting it checks whether this computer has changes that haven't reached the cloud yet — the export is made from the cloud copy, so it lists those files and lets you either review them or export the cloud copy anyway. If the app can't reach the server, Export local files only still exports the whole workspace from this computer; that package has no narration audio or widget files (widgets still show when you import it into the same account, and narration is regenerated the next time it plays).

Publishing from the desktop app runs the same check, without the "cloud copy" option: publishing shows the cloud copy to other people, so the files have to be synced first.

Size limit

A .vizpkg can hold up to 128 MB, and no single file inside it may exceed that either. If a board exceeds it, the export dialog says so up front rather than failing halfway through the download. The limit keeps every exported package importable: import opens the whole package in your browser.

The usual reason a deck approaches the limit is narration audio: text-to-speech is stored per slide and travels with the package. A storyboard without generated narration stays far below it.

Import: use Import .vizpkg to restore a package into a workspace — the storyboard and its files come back together. You see what is inside (name, origin, file count, which widgets won't resolve here) the moment you pick the file, and nothing is uploaded at that point — close the dialog and no bytes were sent. If a board in the package uses a widget version this instance no longer has, import fixes it afterwards: when the board's data fits the latest version it switches to that version, otherwise it is listed in the board's widget update panel for you to handle, and the import dialog says which happened for each widget.

Exporting a published board

A board's detail page has Export .vizpkg next to Use this template. What you get is the published version — the package prepared when that version was published, not whatever the author's draft looks like right now. It downloads directly as <slug>.vizpkg; nothing is assembled in your browser. The button follows the same rule as applying a template: authors can always export their own boards; for everyone else the board has to be published, listed, and marked remixable.

Storyboard → video (desktop app)

In the desktop app, Export video in the properties panel plays the storyboard from start to end and exports it, narration included, as an MP4. You can pick the resolution (720p / 1080p / 1440p / 4K; 4K takes about 2.5× as long as 1080p), the frame rate (24 / 30 / 60), and whether to start from the current slide; after you click export and choose where to save, the dialog shows which slide it has reached, and you can cancel at any time.

• The video matches what you see in the editor: it is rendered and encoded on your computer, not on a server. Export speed depends on the content — still passages take almost no time, while widgets with continuous animation slow it down; the resulting video does not depend on how fast your computer is.
• Nothing extra to download: the ffmpeg used for encoding is installed with the app, so you can export offline too; it is updated along with the app.
• A hardware video encoder is required: every Mac has one; most Windows PCs do; on Linux, a working VAAPI is needed. Without one, the dialog tells you this device doesn't support video export.
• Animations and timers: when the storyboard has widgets that keep running on their own (physics simulations, countdown timers and the like), choose Wait for content (the default — like continuous playback online, the slide turns once they finish) or Follow the narration (turns as soon as the narration ends; animations may be cut off). With Wait for content you can set Wait at most per page (10 / 30 / 60 / 120 seconds), and the dialog shows how much longer the video may get; that is an upper bound, and the real video is only shorter.
• Page transitions appear in the video too: each page turn adds the transition's duration, and the narration shifts with it (Page transitions).
• If some resources (fonts, images) failed to load, the video is still saved, with a note that it may look different from the editor.

Export video also appears on the web, where clicking it guides you to download the desktop app — or, if you already have it, to open this storyboard in the app.

Chat sessions → JSON

Settings → Data Management → Export All Sessions downloads your conversation history as a JSON file.

Not available yet

PNG, SVG, and PDF export are not currently available. Widget-level image export and storyboard PDF output remain open work. Until they land, use full-screen playback or a video for live delivery and .vizpkg for handoff.

Next step

• Storyboard — Polish content before packaging it up
• Sharing — How work reaches other people today