Blog
Notes on cutting short video.
What we have learned building a video editor, written down: the decisions behind a good cut, and the ones people most often get wrong. No news, no roundups, nothing written to fill a schedule.
What clip farming is, and why you cannot prove it
Streamers accused of manufacturing moments for TikTok, and an audience policing them for it. Where the practice comes from, and why the accusation is unprovable.
6 min read
How the paid clipping economy works
Brands pay per thousand views, so clippers post volume and hope one lands. What that pricing rewards, and the two jobs now sharing one word.
7 min read
What makes a moment clippable
The montage takes minutes; the choice takes seconds and is the whole product. What Le Parisien's investigation shows about how clips get picked, and what that does to the original.
7 min read
How long should a short-form clip be?
Length is an output, not a setting. What actually decides it, the ranges that work, and why trimming the top and tail is the worst possible cut.
6 min read
Burned-in captions or a subtitle file?
Two different things are called subtitles. Picking the wrong one is why a clip that read perfectly in the editor is unreadable in the feed.
5 min read
Where the platform's UI covers your video
Captions look perfect in the editor and collide with the account name in the feed. How to decide what each band of the frame is actually for.
8 min read
Why auto-reframe loses the subject
It follows the loudest thing in the frame, which is not always the relevant one. Where that fails, and what to do instead of turning a dial.
8 min read
Editing by transcript, not by waveform
Finding becomes searching and cutting becomes deleting. The real argument is not speed: it is that it changes which clips exist.
7 min read
What scene detection actually detects
Forty scenes in a podcast that has none, and the obvious transition missed. What frame differencing can and cannot know about your footage.
7 min read