Mark recordings as required or optional in guided submissions

The challenge
In guided submissions today, there's no way to tell contributors which recordings they must provide and which are optional — for example, supporting B-roll. Teams work around this by verbally telling contributors they can skip certain parts, and then manually deleting the leftover empty placeholders in the project so the automated video generation can start. It's manual, easy to get wrong, and contributors can't tell what's actually required of them.

Our approach
Let you mark each requested recording in a guided submission as required or optional. Optional recordings would be clearly labeled for contributors, and any optional recording left unfilled would no longer create a blocking placeholder or hold up automated video generation — so there's nothing to clean up by hand afterwards.
(Works hand in hand with an inactivity timeout that lets automated generation proceed when no further material arrives.)

Expected impact

• Contributors clearly see which recordings are required and which they can skip.
• No more manually deleting empty placeholders before automation can start.
• Fewer stalled projects and cleaner, more complete submissions.
• Faster, more reliable automated video generation.