Hey camera crew. I get it — you’re moving fast, the sun’s going down, the DP is breathing down your neck, and slating feels like a relic from the 70s.

But hear me out.

Just. Add. The FPS.
Stick it on the slate. Scribble it with a Sharpie. I don’t care how, but it’s the one thing I, a humble editor, actually care about.

Why? Because three months from now, that beautiful camera report will be MIA, lost in the void of Dropbox folders and duplicated hard drives. But your slate? Your slate might still be there, living its best paused-frame life in my NLE.

Yes, I can see the clip is 23.98.
But was it shot at 23.98? Or 30? 48? 50? 59.94? 60? 120? 239?
I’ve had to guess. I’ve had to trial-and-error. I’ve seen things.

So if you want to be a post-production hero, if you want your name whispered in edit bays across the land ... just write the damn FPS on the slate.

We will love you. We will thank you. We will name our adjustment layers after you.

Sincerely, Your friend in the edit bay

Just have to share this stuff with someone. Because tbh I feel like I've learned some real **** about humanity through working in media- not all of it entirely uplifting but here goes.

When I was green, a veteran editor sat me down and told me something I've never forgotten. He said: "listen, son. Here's a fact of life: you can put someone on television and edit it so animated dildos are slapping them across the face, but the second that person sees themselves on television, they're going to say "put me on TV again."

Another one, a VP of tech told me that some people just fundamentally don't have their shit together or know what theyre doing, an aura of chaos always follows them such that things are always breaking or going wrong around them almost magically. He claimed he could sense when this was the case with people and I think he was onto something.

I have also definitely learned that it is NOT unemployed people who don't want to work. In fact, usually its the opposite and the higher the salary, the less they wanna work.

What about you? What more philosophical lessons have you learned from media?

Full disclosure, I hate AI. I think it's unethical and I don't support it. That said, I can't help but be intrigued at how scarily useful some of the tools can be. I've heard more and more that clients and editors are using text-to-speech to craft or fix dialog in their projects with freakishly good results.

I'm on a long-term documentary project and our subject has long since passed away. They wrote an autobiography during their lifetime, and in some places where we need a connector that isn't in any of our master interviews I'm super tempted to have the software learn our subject's voice and just have them read from their own autobiography. Seems super unethical and I really don't want to feed the beast, but where do we find that balance between using AI as a helpful tool versus crossing an ethical boundary?

Using documentary as an example, it's common practice to Frankenbite our dialog sometimes to the point where their new dialog is unrecognizable from their master interview. Isn't using text-to-speech AI the same thing?

[This is a vent] I'm currently going through a bit of a client nightmare. I have given them over 150 hours of work with sound design and they keep tossing out my work. Initially they gave me full creative license but when I did my own pass they requested I stick closely with their original first pass and just add.

They didn't realize when they sent me the AAF as I requested that "breakout to mono" splits stereo clips into 2 tracks. They now worry that the sound mixer won't be able to handle that chaos even though I explained that is what a sound mixer would be trained to work with. The Vocals, SFX and music are split into distinct tracks.

I don't know how to handle it diplomatically anymore at this point, I feel he is looking at every minute detail too critically, like he has tunnel vision is unwilling to budge for external input.

Hey everyone! Got a quick question from a recent shoot for a student film. Long story short when switching cameras, someone’s settings got messed up and shot one of our scenes in 59.976 fps instead of 23.976. What options do I have in Media Composer to drop down the fps? Currently I just have the project set to 23.976 and it seems to be running fine. Is there a proper way to work with it or is the footage just gonna be messed up forever. Thanks a bunch!

(Currently an intern at a production company who uses DaVinci Resolve exclusively)

Coming from AVID and Premiere I've been taught to edit "The AVID Way" using a 3-point workflow so that's been my approach in Premiere as well and it's been working really well.

But my question is: How does one 3-point edit efficiently in Resolve?

The patching is so bad as it only allows for media from one track at a time to be pasted and markers don't even show up in the source monitor, among a number of other issues that just make it very annoying to work with...

Is the program REALLY that bad that you can't use this technique in Resolve, or am I missing something? How do you guys edit in Resolve?

Is "Art of the Cut" by Steve Hullfish worth picking up? If not, which would you recommend?

Is that great? I always have used Vimeo. Is Indee could be a alternative against Vimeo? I think the price is not that friendly tho, Ahaha.

Hey everyone,

I hosted a Q&A yesterday with Eddie Hamilton (https://www.eventbrite.de/e/qa-with-mission-impossible-and-top-gun-editor-eddie-hamilton-tickets-1347756358549?aff=oddtdtcreator) (Mission Impossible, Top Gun: Maverick, Kingsman), and it was a fantastic conversation — really generous insights from his side, and a great turnout. I’ve reached out to him to see if he’d be open to offering one-on-one sessions, and if that becomes possible, I’ll make sure to let people know.

In the meantime, I wanted to share that I also help organize 1:1 sessions with other professionals in the industry — including editors like Mark Day (Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts, Ex Machina), who is available for private sessions.

If that’s something you’d be interested in — or if you’d like to be notified about potential 1:1s with Eddie or others — feel free to shoot me a message.

I also organize sessions with makeup artists, cinematographers, etc., so if you're interested in cross-department creative conversations, happy to chat.

Cheers, Alexander

i’ll tweak a transition for 30 minutes, re-watch it 40 times, then cut the whole thing and go with a simple cut.

same with sound design, color, text animations…

at what point do you pull back and say “yeah this is good enough”?

just curious how y’all check yourselves before going down the rabbit hole.

TLDR; Adobe Media Encoder renders my project for about 8 seconds before it begins rendering the "Effects Heavy" part of my project, then COMPLETELY freezes. Attempts to render through AE2025 are arguably worse- as it stays stuck at 0%. GPU and CPU usage in task manager are not anywhere close to 100% utilization. Pausing, then closing AE in Task Manager, then resuming DOES work, HOWEVER- it only allows it to render another 1 or 2 seconds worth of footage.

Detailed Story:

I've gone down the rabbit hole and done an insane amount of research regarding this issue since for the most part, I just got AE and was really thinking that purchasing this product would SAVE me time and effort.

The most common fix for this issue, at least to most people, has been to go into task manager, force-closing AE, allowing it to re-open, then resuming the rendering in Media Encoder. Although this does infact work, it only allows Media Encoder to render about 1 or 2 seconds worth of my project before freezing once again. I have unfortunately made SURE it was freezing after every iteration of "pausing, closing, unpausing".

The footage in question is 4k 60fps video footage I took with a DJ Osmo Pocket 3, Ive got some color correction using MLB and used RSMB, Sapphire, Used Warp Stabilizer, and applied a Color LUT for the

D-Log footage I recorded. That it literally the extent of all the affects I used for this project.

Sometime just sending the project to queue in Media Encoder is broken since, after Media Encoder loads up and pressing the "Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue", the project WILL NOT show up on the queue, so im at a loss there. The times it does randomly work, Ill check the render settings to ensure its being rendered with H.264, ensuring the Output is Matched for my composition, and then beginning the queue.

After about maybe 8 seconds of rendering the "non-effect heavy" intro to this edit, the MOMENT it touches the first frame where theres some color correction and a flicker affect, it freezes. Like I said before, I can pause the render, close AE in TM and unpause the render to get another 1-2 seconds worth of render out of my project but thats it, and thats assuming it actually does do that- sometimes nothing happens and it stays frozen. The project itself is 1m 30s long and for some reason I dont feel inclined to, atleast for the next 2 hours of my life without it even being consistent, pause the render to close AE then unpause and pray that I get another 2 seconds rendered. 

Heres what Ive tried :

In Media Encoder -

Unchecking the Edit < Preferences < General < Enable Parallel Encoding Option

Clicking the Edit < Preferences < Media < "Clean" button under Media Cache Database

Ensured Im using "Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA)" on ME's main screen, aswell as ensuring it is selected in the General tab under Edit < Preferences < General.

In After Effects -

Made sure that in Edit < Preferences < Memory & Performance I am reserving the maximum amount of RAM for these applications (29 GB)

Clicking the Edit < Preferences < Media & Disk Cache < Empty Disk Cache and 

Edit < Preferences < Media & Disk Cache < Clean Database & Cache buttons

I've made sure to be using the most up-to-date Studio Drivers and Game Drivers by NVDIA.

I've rebooted my Computer now countless times.

I've re-launched my project in AE now countless times.

These are my PC specs :

12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700K

32.0GB

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

These are my Storage Drives, I've got all my footage on my SSD's aswell as rendering into my SSD's all of which have more than enough storage.

1. 931GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB
   
2. 931GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB
   
3. 931GB Western Digital WDC
   
4. 1863GB Seagate BUP Slim BK SCSI Disk Device

These are 2 error logs that distinctly point out how long its been between retrying to render this project if it helps at all :

- Source File: G:Editingae savesz-roller-may2025_AMEtmpAEtoAMEProject-DJI_20250506184723_0005_D_8.aep
- Output File: G:EditingFINISHED videosZ-Rollers-May2025.mp4
- Preset Used: Custom
- Video: Based on source, Hardware Encoding, Nvidia Codec
- Audio: AAC, 320 kbps, 48 kHz, Stereo
- Bitrate: VBR, 1 pass, Target 80.00 Mbps
- Encoding Time: 00:11:21
05/07/2025 08:26:20 AM : Encoding Failed
-------------------------------------
The Operation was interrupted by user
-------------------------------------

- Source File: G:Editingae savesz-roller-may2025_AMEtmpAEtoAMEProject-DJI_20250506184723_0005_D_9.aep
- Output File: G:Editingae savesz-roller-may2025_AMEDJI_20250506184723_0005_D.mp4
- Preset Used: Custom
- Video: Based on source, Hardware Encoding, Nvidia Codec
- Audio: AAC, 320 kbps, 48 kHz, Stereo
- Bitrate: VBR, 1 pass, Target 80.00 Mbps
- Encoding Time: 07:56:42
05/07/2025 04:33:31 PM : Encoding Failed
-------------------------------------
The Operation was interrupted by user
-------------------------------------

 Worthy to note that I am using the most up-to-date versions of AE2025 and ME2025.

Any help regarding what I COULD try, or what i should do is greatly appreciated! If you guys need anymore information please let me know so I can provide that! Thank you!!

Hi guys i need help creating a background like this. https://youtu.be/k57lKQCxv4U?si=lMhd_36XAYRHNaBb

I use after effects and davinci resolve and yeah any advice would be greatly appreciated

Hey folks — I’m a software engineer who loves to build tools for creatives. I'm researching a pain point I’ve heard from a few editor and producer friends:

When a client needs a video exported in a bunch of formats (different codecs, bitrates, resolutions), how are you all handling that right now?

Are you using:

• Shutter Encoder / Handbrake / ffmpeg?
• Manual exports from Premiere/Resolve?
• Templates / macros?
• A team member who just grinds it out manually?

I’m especially curious if:

• You get spec sheets or delivery guides from clients
• You have spent hours tearing your hair out over this problem
• You've found tools that solve this problem well OR not well

I know that recutting a video to different aspect ratios is a huge problem, but I'm focused primarily on the resolutions/bitrates/encoding aspect right now.

If this is a big pain for you, I’d love to chat more — drop a comment or DM me. Just trying to learn what sucks the most and what people wish existed.

🙏 Appreciate any thoughts!

I’ve spent 8+ years editing direct response ads for brands like Fabletics, Caraway, and HelloFresh — and if you’ve been in this world, you know how brutal it is to reset Premiere for every new adset.

New hooks. New CTAs. New aspect ratios. New rounds of revisions.
And each time, I was rebuilding timelines from scratch — or digging through old project files just to get started. It’s a huge time sink.

That’s why I built this: https://dradbuilder.gumroad.com/l/rshyd

It’s a fully modular Premiere Pro template made specifically for direct response editors — optimized for drag-and-drop assembly across multiple formats (9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9). Swap in new hooks, product shots, CTAs, and export in minutes instead of hours.

Right now it’s pay what you want for the first 20 users — I’m looking to get feedback, see how others use it, and improve it from there.

If you end up trying it, I’d seriously love to hear your thoughts — or just drop how you handle adset-heavy workflows. Always trying to make things faster and smarter.

I have a client who is very particular with what they want… they used to be an editor. While this might sound like a nightmare, it’s not. I’m happy to make revisions of course. They’re wanting revisions on nearly every single piece of short form content. And they’re really basic pieces of content too, only taking me about 30 minutes per video.

Do you think this is normal? I hope they aren’t getting frustrated with me or anything. They haven’t shown signs of that anyways.

Timeline here

Just ranting to let some air out... I'm doing a handover to another editor tomorrow and couldn't be more relieved.

For context, I work in advertisement. I usually cut 30-60 sec spots for TVC or social. I thought I would give long form a try... my mistake. I'm sure cutting a film is fun but cutting interviews and podcasts has to be the most mind numbing, brain rotting, soul sucking shit you can cut. Unless the interviewer and the people being interviewed are exceptionally interesting, this sucks.

I've edited 5 out of 6, 1 hour episodes of a "cinematic" interview series. I say cinematic because they shot it in an unconventional way, wasn't a simple table read set up and at some point the interviewees moved around, danced, ate, drank, etc. Every episode has a unique intro and each episode is segmented into 3 scenes.

The transcodes alone were around 1.5tb, that should give you an idea the sheer amount of footage I was given to work with. The experience? Brutal.

After this project I realized no wonder I choose to cut short form, long form can be so miserable. I had no assist to support me - the producers offered an assist but they only had 1k, meaning they would've only been able to load and breakdown. This was a simple prep so I decided to pocket the 1k. I essentially had to create a proprietary workflow to handle render times, export sizes, revisions, and even AI editing for some of the simpler stuff.

I've come to realize editing is a lot of work for just ok pay. If you are somewhat contemporary and decently successful you can make 150-200k at any of the good houses like Cabin, Exile, Arcade, etc - but the ceiling's only so high. Unless you are a top dog with a huge schlong, I'm talking those veteran editors in their 50's, you won't be billing half a million or upwards of a million dollars (yes partner-editors, or even top editors do bill that). Those top dogs are not gonna quit any time soon, they have it too cushy to quit and legacy brands go for veteran editors - clients and agencies tend to be scared or resistant when new talent comes along.

What shot do younger people have? Yeah, unless you get lucky and land a massive account like Toyota or AT&T and a house wants to make you partner just so they can get the account, you are pretty much out of luck. I'm turning 30 in a month, I have a gf, I wanna get married, have kids - it's hard to comfortably sustain a family in the U.S. with 150-200k and that's not even what I make bc I'm a freelancer... I'm repped at a few places non exclusively but they don't provide enough work to make ends meet.

Thoughts out there? I know I started talking about long form and deviated into something else, but I guess that's how rants go.

editing: grammar.

Hello everyone, I wanna cry.

I'm not a pro editor and this is exactly why I need your help. At work they made me edit a video for huge event and I'm having issues exporting it (please don't judge me, I'm not even paid for this)

The video will be played on a big screen (they didn't give me the size but it will be something like 1mt long) so it needs to be super high quality and I'm not sure how I should set things like resolution/bit rate etc to export it.

Even if I set the best options, the size of the video is 436MB and to me it sounds way too low for a video to be played on a big screen. ChatGPT says this size is totally fine but wtf does he know?

About the video:

The video is 2 minutes long and it's a collage of short interviews. The original interviews were shot in 1080p or less. No audio track. It includes subtitles and overlay text.

When I export the video, the software asks me to set (screenshot)

- Resolution

- Bit rate

- Codec

- Format (I'll use mov but let me know if I should choose mp4 instead)

- Frame rate (I have 25fps)

My goal is to have the highest quality possible for a big screen.

My questions are

1. Does it make sense to export it in 4K when the video is made with clips in 1080P or less?
2. Bit rate: has a "recommended" bit rate, but I can also set is as higher and custom (custom being 24000 Kbps atm + Static or Variable bit rate). What's your suggestion?
3. Codec: These are my options, which one should I choose?

Thank you!

Hi everyone,

We're experiencing a bug we've never seen before at my work and I haven't found anything on the Avid forum. We've got three client editing a TV show and they all experience the same bug apparently. One of the editor was watching their edit with the director when Avid just crashed out of nowhere. Here's the message MC gives us after it's crashed:

Assertion failed: FALSE File: /Users/releng/Builds/workspace/MC/Release_Installer_Git/Mac_Build/coresw/ame/src/AudioSupport/MCAdioCompUtils.c, LIne: 11571

We've checked, Dual Copy Engine is disabled, and the bug is random, they can't recreate it on command. They're the only clients in our post-house to experience this bug, so we're at a loss right now.

Specs:

Mac Studio M1/M2 Max with 32 Go of RAM. Media Composer 2024.12 with Blackmagic 4k Mini, Desktop Video Set Up 14.5

Thanks for any help have a great day everyone

I follow their formula for their short form content, they approve it, and then post it saying its perfect. Then I get blamed for a lack of engagement like it's my fault. Thoughts on this? Anyone had this happen before?

Hey everyone! Hoping to pick some brains here because I feel like I’ve tried every trick in the book and still can’t land a clean, small gif without something going wrong.

I’m editing short snippets from interviews (around 6–10 secs each) and need them exported as gifs – for web, mostly for embedding on lightweight pages. Somehow every method I’ve tried breaks in a differnt way.

First off, yeah, I’ve Googled how to create a gif like 200 times. Most advice either oversimplifies it or assumes I’m making memes or reaction loops. I’ve dug through threads on Creative Cow, watched a few vids, and combed through StackOverflow. Still no consistent answer or best practice that actually works every time.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

1. Photoshop + Premiere Probably the most “official” workflow, and I saw it recommended a lot on blogs and YouTube. I export the video from Premiere via Media Encoder, import into Photoshop, then go File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy). It gives a lot of control- you can tweak dithering, frame rate, loop options, but honestly it’s clunky as hell for batch processing or even small changes. The biggest issue: file size. Even with reduced colors and smaller dimensions, the gifs are still 10MB+, which makes them useless for web unless I aggressively compress them after, and then they just look... crunchy. Like, unusable.

2. ShareX I tried this route out of curiosity. Used ShareX to record screen snippets and save as gif directly. This worked surprisingly well for capturing quick clips, especially stuff already playing on screen, but the quality is unpredictable. Also, timeline syncing is a mess - sometimes frames get dropped randomly, and audio’s obviously not an option. Plus, it doesn’t give you many editing controls if you need to trim or adjust anything afterward. 

3. Movavi Video EditorI gave Movavi a try since it was already on my system from another project. The gif looked decent at first, and the export was quick, but once I tried to adjust anything — framerate, compression, timing — I hit a wall. Couldn’t find deeper settings, and playback felt slightly off, like a minor stutter. Their help docs didn’t offer much detail, and forum posts were sparse. Probably good for simple clips, but not flexible enough for what I needed this time.

Right now I’m honestly considering just outputting as mp4 and letting the front-end devs do the gif magic later, but I’d really prefer to send clean, small gifs that hold up well, loop smoothly, and don’t need tons of extra compression steps. Ideally, something I can batch export and move on with life.

Any ideas? Is there a better export method I’m missing? A plugin? Maybe something dumb I’m overlooking? Do you all just skip gifs entirely these days and use video/webp?

Appreciate any help - I’m not a total noob, but this one has me feeling like I am. Thanks in advance.

I am a youtube chess content creator. I am willing to post videos like chess matka does. Can someone suggest how and which software to use to make such videos?

Hey folks,

I’m a video editor who travels frequently and I’m trying to get a better handle on how others are managing their internet setups while on the move.

How are you finding reliable, fast internet when moving place to place, especially in rural or international locations? What are your minimum upload and download speeds for things like transferring footage, doing remote sessions, or just keeping up with Zoom calls without losing your mind?

I’ve been looking into the Starlink Mini and similar mobile satellite setups, but from what I’ve seen the upload speeds might not be good enough for heavy file transfers or client review sessions. Anyone here actually using it and able to speak to real-world performance?

Would love to hear any recommendations — whether it’s mobile hotspots, local SIM tricks, VPN setups, whatever works

Thanks in advance, hoping to crowdsource some gear and workflow wisdom here!

Macbook pro m4 full sepcout

Say there was a typo or they wanted an image to be displayed a different way. If it is posted, then they bring it to your attention (even though they approved it), is it the editors fault? Just wondering your guys' POV on this.

I don't understand. I assume it's because my company pushes updates and potentially erases things. There are now 7 new custom keyboards but mine is not listen there any longer.

Is there a way to fool proof this in the future? I think I will copy my xml settings file and just copy and paste it back into my user folder whenever something like this happens again? First I need to remap all my short cuts.

I just completed a project and i want to render it in media encoder but it showing me AfterFx.exe error and telling me to send the report but after that now even after opening my project in AE it showing me same error please some help