What do you need from us?

A folder in Drive or Dropbox and the raw files, unedited. Long recordings are fine and often better — a twenty-minute conversation usually contains six or eight genuinely good moments, and finding them is part of what you are paying for. Also tell us any names, brands or technical terms that appear, because those are exactly what automatic captions get wrong.

Where does the hook come from?

Usually the middle of the recording, not the start. Almost nobody says their best line in the first ten seconds — they warm up, and the sharp sentence arrives four minutes in. Lifting that moment to the front is the single most important edit decision in short-form, and it is why an editor who only trims the ends is not doing this job.

Can AI not just do this now?

It does part of it. It will transcribe, suggest clip boundaries, draft captions and propose hooks, and that genuinely saves hours. What it does not have is rhythm — knowing which frame to cut on so a line lands, or which pause to keep because it is doing work. That judgement is the reason the video holds and the reason this is not a free service.

How many revisions are included?

Two rounds per video as standard, with further rounds priced separately. Fast turnaround is also priced separately — a twenty-four hour or weekend request reorganises a week, and pretending otherwise just means the cost lands somewhere invisible.

Do you deliver different versions per platform?

Yes where it matters. The master is 1080x1920, and safe areas differ between Reels, Shorts and TikTok, so text placed comfortably in one can sit under an interface element in another. Where you want captions burned in for one platform and off for another, that is a version too.

Should we buy per video or as a package?

A monthly package almost always works out better for both sides. Batching means one intake, one style pass and one export run rather than repeating setup for every clip, and it gives you a predictable number to plan a calendar around instead of a per-item decision each week.

Content, Social & Communications

Short-form video editing

Raw footage cut into vertical video that holds attention — with the hook lifted from wherever it actually happened, and captions proofread rather than trusted.

From: $15–$120/video
Typical time: ongoing
Usually bought by: Creators, brands

What this actually solves

Short video has become the main way strangers find a business, and editing is the part of it that nobody wants to do. A coach, founder or creator can record twenty minutes of genuinely good material in one sitting without much friction. Turning that into six clips takes them another three hours, in software they half know, and those three hours are the most expensive hours they own. So the recording sits in a folder, and the account goes quiet for a fortnight, and the thing that was working stops working.

The second buyer is a brand that needs volume. Direct-to-consumer businesses running paid social burn through creative faster than they can make it — the same ad stops performing, and the fix is new variations rather than a better one. That is a steady, repeatable brief with a known style, which suits this work well, and it is a very different job from the first one even though the export settings are identical.

Both are really buying two things. Judgement about which thirty seconds out of twenty minutes deserve to exist, and finish — captions that are correct, audio that is level, text that is readable at arm's length on a phone in daylight. Neither is glamorous and both are why the clip either holds or gets scrolled past in the first second.

What we do, and in what order

Intake and a full watch. The whole recording, marked as it plays, flagging the moments where something real actually happened rather than where the speaker sounded confident. On a long recording an AI transcript with timestamps does the first pass and we correct it, which is where the time saving genuinely is. Thirty to sixty minutes per twenty minutes of footage.
Choose the hook and rebuild the opening. For each clip, the best three seconds are identified wherever they occurred and moved to the front, with the surrounding sentence restructured so it still makes sense out of order. Ten to fifteen minutes per clip.
The cut. Dead air, the ums, the repeated version of a point already made, and the run-up where the speaker was finding the thought. This is where the pacing is decided and where most of the craft lives. Thirty to sixty minutes per clip.
Captions, then a proofreading pass. Auto-captions are generated and then read through against the names, brands and technical terms you supplied, because those are precisely the words the model gets wrong. Fifteen to twenty minutes per clip.
Audio. Levels matched so one clip is not twice as loud as the last, and a light bed underneath where it suits the piece. Ten minutes per clip.
B-roll, on-screen text and motion. Only where each element is doing a job. Varies with the brief — this is the item that separates the ends of the price range.
Export and delivery. 1080x1920 master plus per-platform versions where safe areas or caption preferences differ, delivered to your folder with filenames you can actually sort. Fifteen minutes per batch.

Tools — CapCut on desktop for the large majority of the work, Opus Clip or Vizard for pulling candidate clips out of long recordings, Descript for transcript-style editing, Auphonic for audio cleanup, and DaVinci Resolve where your own policy rules CapCut out.

What moves the price

How much is being built rather than trimmed. At the bottom of the range the footage is clean, framed properly, and needs cuts and captions. At the top there is sourced b-roll, sound design, motion graphics and a brand style to match frame by frame. Same duration, very different job.

Turnaround. A twenty-four hour or weekend request is not the same product as a three-day one, because it displaces everything else scheduled that week. It is priced separately rather than absorbed quietly.

Revision volume. Two rounds are included. Beyond that the cost is real, and it is usually a symptom of an unstated style preference — which is why a short reference brief at the start is worth more than any number of rounds afterwards.

What usually goes wrong

Effects get used to make the work look like work. A transition, a zoom and a whoosh every two seconds, plus captions that bounce and change colour, because effort should be visible. The clip becomes exhausting and people leave earlier than they would have from a plain cut. The rule is that every effect must have a stated reason — if nobody can say why that zoom is there, it comes out.

Automatic captions go out unread. The transcription model has never heard your company's name, your product name, or the technical term your whole clip is about, and it will confidently produce something adjacent. You will not send a second batch after seeing your own name misspelled across your own face, and quite reasonably so.

Whatever was said first is treated as the hook. The editor trims the top and tail, exports, and the clip opens on the speaker clearing their throat about what they are going to talk about. The good line was at four minutes twelve. Short-form is unforgiving in a way long-form is not — the opening second decides everything downstream, so it gets chosen rather than inherited.

See where the site stands before you brief anyone.

If the site is already live, start from what it scores rather than from a guess. The audit reports what it checked, what it found, and — the part most tools leave out — what it could not check, and why.

See the website audit Talk about this work

Questions people ask before they commit.

What do you need from us?: A folder in Drive or Dropbox and the raw files, unedited. Long recordings are fine and often better — a twenty-minute conversation usually contains six or eight genuinely good moments, and finding them is part of what you are paying for. Also tell us any names, brands or technical terms that appear, because those are exactly what automatic captions get wrong.
Where does the hook come from?: Usually the middle of the recording, not the start. Almost nobody says their best line in the first ten seconds — they warm up, and the sharp sentence arrives four minutes in. Lifting that moment to the front is the single most important edit decision in short-form, and it is why an editor who only trims the ends is not doing this job.
Can AI not just do this now?: It does part of it. It will transcribe, suggest clip boundaries, draft captions and propose hooks, and that genuinely saves hours. What it does not have is rhythm — knowing which frame to cut on so a line lands, or which pause to keep because it is doing work. That judgement is the reason the video holds and the reason this is not a free service.
How many revisions are included?: Two rounds per video as standard, with further rounds priced separately. Fast turnaround is also priced separately — a twenty-four hour or weekend request reorganises a week, and pretending otherwise just means the cost lands somewhere invisible.
Do you deliver different versions per platform?: Yes where it matters. The master is 1080x1920, and safe areas differ between Reels, Shorts and TikTok, so text placed comfortably in one can sit under an interface element in another. Where you want captions burned in for one platform and off for another, that is a version too.
Should we buy per video or as a package?: A monthly package almost always works out better for both sides. Batching means one intake, one style pass and one export run rather than repeating setup for every clip, and it gives you a predictable number to plan a calendar around instead of a per-item decision each week.

Often taken together.

Start with the brief, not the invoice.

Send what you are trying to achieve. You get a written scope, a price and a date — or an honest “this is not the right service for that”.

Talk about Short-form video editing All Content, Social & Communications services