What is Live Editing?

Live Editing is a service we offer which allows clients to join video editors via a video screen share to make changes in real time to a project. The benefit of this service is mostly the opportunity for quick feedback, as well as a more clear space for clients to discuss changes. By opting in for live edits, you can avoid tedious back and forth emails and calls.

What should I know beforehand?

There are a few essentials to know before a live editing session:

The pace is slow and laid back: Video editing is a fine point and ultra detail oriented process. Often small changes can take a few minutes at a time. Be prepared to get comfortable on the video chat.

Some changes are not realistic during a live session: Some suggestions are larger scope and thus take more time to address. In situations like these, we’ll take note of the request and square up after the call.

The editor may turn away certain suggestions w/ reasoning: Video Editing has a lot of complexity, and certain suggestions may be counter productive without clients knowing it. Editors will let you know when and why these suggestions might not be in the best interest of the project.

Do I need to know anything about video editing?

Not necessarily, but a few pointers are a good place to start.

The role of time: Time often plays an important role in the editing, and some editing suggestions may interfere with time. For example, if a video is 60 seconds long, but you would like 10 seconds removed from the video. In that case, you’d either need to find 10 seconds to replace that time, or reconstruct the edit to fit into a 50 second time frame. This could include choosing a new song, or re-timing other clips.

The role of asset sizes: Often, clients will send over assets from their end, such as pictures or previously produced content. In some cases these assets do not work in the new project due to their size or format.

How the timeline works: The “timeline” is the project file for THE video. It contains all the content that makes up the video, such as music, pictures, video, graphics, and text. Moving content from left to right in the timeline pushes that content back later in the time, while moving content upwards moves that content closer to the foreground of the image.

Joseph Moyles