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Old October 4th, 2009, 11:19 AM   #1
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How fast is your editing?

Okay, here's on given the silly expectations of some clients.

What is the fastest time that you have edited an hour long (or thereabouts) video?
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Old October 4th, 2009, 12:16 PM   #2
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Uhhmmmm....I guess it would take me about ten seconds if I had a long enough clip with no cuts needed.

Jokes aside, this is an impossible question. Any titling, graphics work needed? How many sources, camera angles? Colour correction or grading? Effects, yes or no? Animation? Etc, etc...

It completely depends on so many factors.
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Old October 4th, 2009, 12:29 PM   #3
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Vito, I realise it depends on many factors. But it's just a question to humour me. Tell me what the fastest time you have edited such a long programme in, and let us all know what else (titles graphics etc) you had to deal with.

For example, have you ever been given a long running time spec and been asked to do it double quick time? How long did it take you to get it done compared to other similar specced projects in the past?

I'm just interested, not asking about any specific project spec.
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Old October 4th, 2009, 12:33 PM   #4
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Well, I do a fair number of weddings, and the fastest I can do one is about 20 hours for a 90 minute video. This is with full colour correction, sound mix, some basic titling and effects.

Corporate videos take longer for me, because the material is not shot chronologically, and I'm much more nit picky.
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Old October 4th, 2009, 12:50 PM   #5
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I usually get 5 days to cut a one hour show.
It, of course, depends on the show and the elements involved.
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Old October 4th, 2009, 01:09 PM   #6
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I am very glad that I stumbled across this topic as I have always felt my editing is sloth-like.

OK, granted, I am very much a hobbyist but I would like to think that I could speed things up in order to reach some sort of standard throughput level.

Grinner, am I correct in assuming that you are talking about 5 X standard 8(ish) hour days?
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Old October 4th, 2009, 01:27 PM   #7
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For my AVERAGE 30 or 60 minute program, I EXPECT to take 5-ish hours per finished minute BUT that oftimes includes 30-40 hours of tape that needs to be screened by me (assuming the producer hasn't done a paper edit OR that I'm producing) and includes client revisions.

Some programs are faster, some are MUCH more time consuming. I work mostly with documentary stuff so our shoot-to-keep ratio is quite high, often as high as 50 or 60:1.

On the off chance that I shot to a script (and edited to the SAME script), those numbers drop significantly.
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Old October 4th, 2009, 02:09 PM   #8
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[QUOTE=Grinner, am I correct in assuming that you are talking about 5 X standard 8(ish) hour days?[/QUOTE]

Sometimes. Of course there is no such thing as a standard day in this industry. Sometimes it's 8 hours, sometimes it's 18.
A typical one hour show should take less than 40 hours though.
...again, depending on elements. I do outdoor shows, CMT Showcase, ESPN Classics... all of these documentary type of shows can be done well under 40 hours of editing. Sometimes it depends on the producer. Having a producer in the room will always slow you down... never speed things up. It's much quicker to just make a show than to discuss every edit. My original programs take me a fraction of the time to edit than a show with a producer over my shoulder or an unsupervised session. I don't do paper cuts or offlines for my shows. I capture every bit of the footage I shot, lay the good stuff on a timeline, look how long at is, go through it subractively to get it to time, then go from the top with music, then go from the top with b-roll, then go from the top with layers of love... that process revolves around budget and how much time is left. Color correction, custom transitions, effects, ect. If I had to meet a deadline before that, I could.
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Old October 4th, 2009, 03:35 PM   #9
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FWIW, the consensus in another forum dedicated to newspaper web video sites recently was that editing and output (not counting actual shooting time) averages an hour per minute of finished video. These are typically about 3 minute news pieces with 20-30 minutes of tape, with generally no fancy effects, but in practice I found that was pretty much on target for that particular type of work.... I assume a hour-long piece would have many times more footage to assimilate than the average 10:1 ratio we found, plus more-extensive color tweaking than an under-the-daily-deadline news piece, of course.../ Battle Vaughan
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Old October 7th, 2009, 02:25 AM   #10
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For what I do, generally three to four hours per finished minute. That's from raw camera footage all the way to delivery.

I did a rotoscope job for a commercial that took five hours to finish three to four seconds.
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Old October 9th, 2009, 10:07 AM   #11
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For programming, the shows I've cut for usually budget five or six 8+ hour days of offline editing for a 30-minute show. (which is usually about 23 minutes of actual video) This includes revisions after the network sees the rough cut, with another day to conform in HD and add all the full rez graphics. We're generally dealing with 20-30 field tapes at a minimum per show.

This does NOT include the time for media-logging, transcription and digitizing. That adds several more days into the mix.

That being said, I've DP'd on a PBS show where most of the material was SOT tabletop 2-camera demonstrations, with one or two takes for the entire segment, and very little cutting to audio track. With a good script and timecodes, I could probably rough cut that half hour program together in a day fairly easily.

So, your mileage may vary, wildly, depending on the project.
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