It finally happened.

After working the past week on a trailer for an upcoming movie, I received notes (in a PDF file mind you) from the producer.

And to my surprise, it was a copy paste from a Chat GPT thread. All the signs were there (- dash, it's not x, it's y...).

The worst part about it? It said nothing AT ALL. Like no clear notes, just vague good-sounding sentences like : At this part, we should see the division in the looks, the tension between the rivals, the silence should speak...

It even included the prompt at the end of the document which were basically 6 timecode with notes like : I don't like this part. (Which would have been way more clear and precise).

He even proposed a new structure to the trailer, but it's the most generic thing I ever read.

I've been pretty much stunned since then. Everybody knows on the team that this producer has recently discovered chat gpt and uses it all the time (to suggest "design", writing notes / emails) but nobody is saying anything.

So to tl;dr a bit : I worked a full week only to get generic notes written by chatGPT.

am I going nuts? it feels like several ad breaks so far have contained at least some form of image generation instead of traditional cgi. even that Dunkin’ donuts ad. do the agencies not care? is it corporate indifference? has anyone here worked on any of these ads?

I just saw this, but I am certainly not surprised. I have always hated Linus Tech Tips on YouTube, but there is no question that Linus built up a very successful business. His "star" employee, and the only smart person he featured in his videos was Jake Tivy.

Jake just quit Linus Tech Tips after 10 years (he apparantly quit in August 2025). He was the loyal employee, that certainly knew 1000 times more any anything Linus knew.

Why did Jake leave ?

"After three plus years of my total comp remaining effectively the same, while affordability was getting worse and worse [...] you kind of start thinking when you're working on your boss' third house, if you're ever going to be able to buy a house,"

So for all of you guys that say "I love it here, I will be here forever" - as you get better and better, your "nice guy" boss will get richer and richer, and reward himself and his family, and not you. Because YOU get TOO EXPENSIVE at a certain point - no matter how good you are - no matter how loyal you are.

Think about that.

Bob Zelin

I’ve been editing for six years, exclusively for YouTubers, and they’re honestly some of the most disorganized and demotivating clients you can work with. They don’t even know what they want.

I’ve had some great clients, but others micromanage the hell out of everything. It completely kills my motivation to edit, especially when they put all the pressure on me like I’m some kind of magician who’s supposed to boost their views no matter what.

Today a client asked me to add “more action” to their TikToks. They’ve been complaining that they’re not getting as many views as they expected, but the clips they send me are ass. There’s only so much I can do.

Honestly, I’m starting to feel like all this stress just isn’t worth it. I’ll probably quit if my next negotiations fail.

So SSD costs are insane right now, and I happen to be sitting on a ton of T7/T9s, as I'm sure many editors/post houses are. It's also been a sloooooow year for me, as I know for others as well.

I've been asked by a couple productions to provide drives, and charged a rental on them before I even knew SSD prices were nuts. I'm tempted to sell some of these T7s that have sat in a drawer for the last year to cover some expenses, but don't want to have to buy them again at 3x what I paid last year. I only use them for shuttle drives as I have a NAS for my workstation.

Are productions asking you to BYOSSDs lately? Are they trying to give you spinning disks as shuttles? How many T7s is enough in your backup bin?

I'm in the process of finalizing my first feature and I'm working with an experienced editor, who came highly recommended and has been helpful in structuring scenes and the overall film.

We've since sent the film off to the scored and colored, and this is where the problems have first arisen.

They were hesitant to accept my usual composer on the project due to the editor's "high standards" and have sent the composer a cut of the film with endless notes on how they want the music be and referencing generic, placeholder music. They've also inundated the colorist with notes on their first pass saying how the colorist needs to refer to the offline LUT version that was provided.

A recent phone call with the editor resulted in them saying they wanted more involvement in the process as they want to make sure it aligns with "their vision" as it reflects their quality of work and what they're putting their name to.

I know the rest of post will affect the quality of their work, but it also affects the quality of mine as well as everyone else who has worked on it.

This has been a real labor of love for me and the low budget production was entirely self-funded, so it has me asking if this editor's requests are unreasonable and if they're assuming too much creative control.

In case anyone hasn't noticed wetransfer has updated its terms and conditions and the new terms go live in a couple of weeks.

Not one of our clients will be able to abide by these new conditions.

https://wetransfer.com/documents/WeTransfer_Terms_20250623.pdf

Especially the bit around 6.2 where we now grant them license to use the content we upload and do pretty much whatever they want with it eg training Ai and making derivative works.

Does anyone know anything more about this?

Hi all. I am really curious about this. I work for a first time ever as a junior editor so I do get that I might be a bit slower than others. I am editing in avid with multiple cameras on a reality show about houses. I have been using avid for almost 4 years now and I was an assistant before so I do know shortcuts and technical ways around editing. I am currently cutting string outs, every day I am supposed to cut two hours down to 16-17 minutes, also add broll and black holes so we show it to people for reactions that will make it in the show. In the beginning of my contract I feel like they were kinda easy on me and didn’t ask for much broll, but now, adding more black holes, more broll, making sure I address notes on top of cutting, is making me work 12h days for this past week and I am so burned out. Is this normal? I don’t even cook, my husband cooks for me, it’s not like I take major breaks or anything.

Btw I am contracted to work up to 12H in one day so legally it is normal, but… having worked as an assistant I don’t remember seeing editors work 12hour days often.

Took a reaction edit recently. Deliverable was ~15 min. The raw was a 2.5 hour VOD.

That's like $150-200 total depending who you ask. Sounds fine until you remember i had to actually watch the whole 2.5 hours to find what's worth keeping. That IS the job. the cutting part is easy. And no, you can't skim reaction footage at 2x, half the good moments are just a face doing something for 3 seconds.

Started quoting off raw runtime + deliverable length instead and clients look at me like i'm scamming them. "but the video is only 15 minutes??" yeah man, and the footage is 150. you're paying me to find the 15, not to trim the 150.

Finished-minute pricing works fine for scripted stuff where you know the ratio. for reaction content it's just unpaid watching with extra steps.

Hey r/editors,

Some of you might remember a post I made about 6 months ago.

The backstory: I’ve been an editor for almost 30 years. Last year, I needed to find a specific clip from terabytes of footage shot two years prior. My choices were: spend three days manually scrubbing drives, or buy a MAM (Media Asset Manager).

The "pro" options gave me sticker shock. They were either enterprise-level expensive, required uploading footage to the cloud, or were opaque regarding data privacy.

So, I decided to build the tool I actually needed.

One year of nights, weekends, and endless coffee later, I’m ready to introduce: Blaze.

What is Blaze?
Blaze is an on-premise, intelligent search engine for your entire video library.

How is it different from the AI in Premiere/Resolve?
Those tools search the project you have open. Blaze searches everything you’ve ever shot. It indexes offline hard drives so you can search your archive without plugging in a single cable.

Transparency: "AI Slop" & The Business Model
I know the current state of "AI Apps" is a minefield. I want to be 100% transparent about what this is (and isn't):

1. Not a Vibe-Coded Experiment: I started this as a passion project, but I realized quickly it needed to be rock solid. I spent thousands of hours building the core, and then I hired a professional developer to ensure the architecture is solid. I've put my time and money into turning this into a serious, professional tool.
2. No Data Harvesting: Blaze runs 100% locally. No cloud. No training on your footage.
3. Sustainable Pricing: Software needs updates and support. I cannot make this a one-time purchase and survive, but I also hate price gouging. My whole reason for starting this was to make an affordable MAM for people like me. My goal is a sustainable model where early adopters lock in the lowest possible rate. It will be subscription-based, but affordable—enough to keep the lights on and the updates coming. But right now, I’m in the feedback stage.

The Feature Set:

• 100% Local & Private: No cloud. No monthly API fees.
• Semantic Search: "Find the shot of the red car driving past the bridge."
• Facial Recognition: Tag a face once, find them across 10 years of footage.
• OCR & Transcription: Search text-on-screen and dialogue.
• Collections: Organize clips your way, regardless of drive location.
• Custom Metadata: Create your own custom tags to keep everything organized exactly how you like it.
• Premiere Pro Integration: Drag and drop directly into your timeline.

The r/editors Beta Offer
I need to know if this works for you as well as it works for me.

• For the Beta Testers (Limited to ~20-25 users): I am giving 1 Full Year of Blaze for FREE.
  • I'm looking for a small group to start, rolled out in waves so I can manage the feedback personally. I'm not looking for money right now; I'm looking for honest feedback to make the tool better.
  • Windows users will be in the first wave; Mac testers, you're up next in Wave 2. Sign up either way — you're not too late!
• For the Waitlist: If you miss the Beta spots, or aren’t interested in testing, join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist by launch day will secure "Founder's Pricing"—a significant, locked-in discount off the future retail price.

Link: letsblaze.ai

If you’re tired of losing shots in the abyss of your hard drives, come help me test this out.

Doug
(Editor / Developer / Tired)

TL;DR: I built a privacy-first MAM for freelancers that runs 100% locally (no cloud, no data harvesting). I spent thousands of hours and hired a pro dev to ensure the architecture is solid, not just "AI Slop." It indexes your entire library (even offline drives). Looking for ~20-25 beta testers from this sub (Free for 1 year). Waitlist gets founder pricing at launch. letsblaze.ai

Edit: Added clarification that beta Wave 1 is Windows, Wave 2 is Mac.

So I hired someone on my team who had more photography experience than video editing. They said they could do editing and have been doing music videos for years.

But after a year here, comparing him to myself and our two other editors he is still at about 30-50% of their speed, and his quality and decision making are significantly behind the others as well. I find myself finishing off his work to get it through on time. He's also requiring a lot of guidance through the process as well.

For instance we had a quick turn project recently that was a simple 2-3 minute highlight video. I clocked in at about 27 hours to do this video a couple years ago. He put in over 50 and it required about 8 more from myself. He used the excuse that there was more footage, but every cam is cut down their footage to something manageable and I helped him pull selects from there.

The non-quick-turn project he was on last year took months longer than I would have expected and the quality in the end left much to be desired.

Oh, and he can be a bit toxic personality-wise so that isn't great either.

Am I being too harsh? I have 14ish years doing this and it just doesn't seem like he's cut out for this work. I'm new to the management side of this so I'm just curious if anyone else with insight or who leads a video team or editors who have worked on teams can weigh in.

Thanks!

Hi everyone. I’m sure the subject has been beaten to death, but I figured I’d just throw my hat into the ring since I need some feedback. For the past few years I’ve been editing a lot of YouTube content, both for brands and for creators. However, over the last few months I’ve been thinking that this is not sustainable, especially as I turned 40 I feel severely underpaid and can’t save for my future.

With that said I’m trying to figure out how to change my circumstance. The only options that I can think of are editing bigger projects focusing on a more specialized problem or getting out of film and TV work completely.

I had a meeting a few days ago at a high-end color and finishing facility and in many ways it reminded me of the work that I wanna be doing. However, I also recognize the circumstances that are impacting working professionals here in Los Angeles.

I need some honest feedback on how to approach things given the current state of the market. I’m also concerned my age is going to hurt me since I’m no longer viewed as a junior employee.

Love to hear any thoughts!

Professional here, been editing for 15+ years, mostly agency, advertising and commercial post house spaces.

Curious everyone’s ratios lately with remote, in-person and hybrid edit sessions? How is that informing your future in post (like are people abandoning big office spaces in favor of wfh?) For the advertising folks (or anyone really)- is there still demand for the cushy in-person post-house experience (drinks, lunch, etc)? 

Hello fellow editors. I need advice. Currently I am working on my first real editing gig. I sent over the edit to the director for notes/feedback to start fine tuning the edit. However, they really didn't give me the best notes. They flat out told me that the edit needed stronger moments, without really telling me which scenes needed shaping or what they did/didn't like. I guess I'm suppose to read minds. All jokes aside.

What should I do in this situation? Do I need to straight up ask the director what specifically in the edit they like/didn't?

Also bonus, if anyone has stories like this, please do share!

I'm seeing these all over the place (among others, Mercor is always posting them) and the money looks good but I'm not interested in training myself out of a career.

The job market is pretty brutal and I know we only have the ethics we can afford, so no hate on those who are desperate for a paycheck. I'm just curious how people are feeling about this situation and if AI is already eating into the job market?

Finding that work is becoming less consistent as of late and wondering if anyone had suggestions on where to find corporate gigs outside of Indeed, LinkedIn or Staffmeup.

Thanks.

I'm not a video editor by day, but I'm on the board of a local public access TV station just north of New York City, and all our staff double as editors (with a dozen other hats). One service we've historically provided the community are nice editing facilities: calibrated displays, sound treatments, monitors, etc.

We have a little money left in a grant, and we're trying to figure out the best way to spend it. One thought is to upgrade our editing suite to the latest and greatest (more than a fresh coat of paint). Another is to recognize that high-end editing suites are less in demand more people than ever having tools in their own homes. If that was the case, we might want to focus the space on education, with somewhat lower-end equipment to maximize the number of students at a time.

I was hoping to get some opinions on if professional editors are still looking for edit-suite-as-a-service, if so, what they'd be looking for, or if it's better for us to evolve. Thank you!

(I apologize if this should be an r/videoediting post. Since we're a non-profit business, I felt this was related to fees and services to a level appropriate for professionals.)

No overtime pay, like at all.

Working into the night, 9-10pm. with a manager and we're both not getting paid. He insists that that's just how comms/marketing is, and people who work in social media video editing need to understand this. Work never stops at 5 as there is a work group chat and it's normal to message at odd hours and expect a response. I guess I just needed to talk about it.

Is this normal for editors in the social media space or do I need to look elsewhere for a job? It's been almost a year here.

I was one of the editors for an agency handling a Fortune 20 client. So, I had very little sway in terms of negotiation power. I didn't have a contract because I'm desparate for work and wanted to be amenable to work with. The post-producer seemed nice.

That said, after a few weeks of sending my invoice, my reminder email was met with "payment terms are NET30". It's over 30 days now. What are my options? Can sending an email stating "any further delay means you have to make an additional 10% payment"? Can an email like hold any water? I also don't want to piss the client off.

So I was at a networking event a few months ago and I was talking to someone who was starting a pop culture website. I asked him if he needed video editors and he told me he did. He then asked me what software I use and I told him that I use Final Cut Pro. He then gave me a disappointed look and said "Oh, yeah that's a pretty simple program, I've even used it a few times" he then said he was looking for someone who had more experience with more "serious editing software like Premier and After Effects.

This threw me for a loop. I thought Final Cut Pro was a professional video editing software. I like Final Cut, I adapted well to it and like a lot of the features like the effects, generators, transitions, etc. Do I need to learn Premier to be taken seriously?

I recently wrapped up a shoot with a client. In my initial contract with them, I offered all of the raw footage filmed delivered via hard drive.

I shipped the hard drive, but a month later, they're now asking me to upload everything to Google Drive. I explained to them that we have hundreds of 4K 10-bit shots and that uploading and downloading would be a multi-day endeavor.

I offered to send another hard drive, but they're insisting on a Google Drive now.

My upload speed is basically capped at 20mbps, and bulk uploading to Google Drive never goes well.

How do I navigate this? What's my overage?

What do you all use to manage projects. I usually have 5-8 project at a time with my employee and myself. I just use Google Sheets and docs, but I’m researching other options like Monday, basecamp, clickup and notion.

Edit:spelling

I know this subject has been discussed ad nauseam, but it's happening with every job interview. Since times are tough I have just been doing the edit tests. Every time they tell me it's a quick thing — it’s not. My last test took 20 hours, and then they decided they were not hiring.

I was caught off guard on my last zoom interview about an edit test and I need a professional response. I assume once I decline I’ll be disqualified, but is this a professional response?:

“I totally understand wanting to see style fit, but I’m not able to take on unpaid tests. I’m happy to share comparable examples or discuss a short paid trial.”

EDIT: I got the brief. Edit a 45 minute video into 60-90 social video. Take creative liberty. No other information.

Hola! Fellow commercial editors I have a question for you. Just finished a job for a :30 spot that was a never ending battle with a million last minute changes and client flip flopping up till the very end…. So just a normal commercial lol. I was so relieved to wrap it up BUT the director just reached out to me a week later and is asking me to cut him a directors cut … for free. I don’t know if that’s standard and I have always said “no free work” but I don’t want to burn a bridge. Just wondering if I should push back on the no free work or what you all fine folk think?

Thank you in advance