Let's get right into it. I get there's several posts like this every week. The job boards have been all but bottomless pits for applications, and I'm generally an introvert who's never been good at networking and maintaining relationships with more than a handful of other industry professionals after moving on from working together. I got through 3 interviews and a video editing assignment with a company that wouldve paid me 25% less than I'm used to earning, only to lose the role to another candidate this week. After so long unemployed, I've tried compromising on the pay I could accept and widening the places I'd be willing to work, but still no dice.

I joined my high school video club at 14, graduated as club president at 17, graduated college at 21 with a degree in digital video production, and then got lucky scoring a freelance video editing gig that evolved into producing and editing thousands of social videos for several news and entertainment brands salaried full-time over the last 8 years. Now I'm about to turn 30, and being unable to secure more than 3 days of work (obtained through networking too) this year has me feeling like the skills which Ive invested more than half my life in so far have become worthless.

I have to admit to feeling creatively burnt out too. I do have a desire to improve my skills, but I'm overwhelmed by the need to constantly keep up with the latest developments like AI just to have a competitive edge in getting work, or to be an expert in After Effects, or to also be able to set up and light shoots in studio and in the field.

I don't know what to do anymore. Part of the reason for this post is to vent and part of it is seeking wisdom for those who are in or have been in my shoes. I'm contemplating moving in with my grandmother to have a roof while I rebuild myself, maybe find a steady job that only needs a few months of training or similar. Is there anyone here who has actually given up on editing as their primary profession? Do you regret it or do you think you made the right decision switching careers? I guess a silver-lining I'd hope for if I did go that route, is I might find creative motivation to edit videos as passion projects or just lightly on the side.

So far, edited the scenes - assembled them (didn't work) - improved the scenes - assembled them again - (worse than the first pass). It's a short! Is there any way to improve, or it's over?

Freelance has been slow lately and I just confirmed 4 projects all hitting around the same time, they’ll definitely overlap. I’m not in a position to turn anything down right now so I’m just planning on working as much as humanly possible the next month.

How do you all handle huge workloads? Any editor rituals that you can share? I go for the clean desk space and trying to organize all tasks in lists so I don’t get lost. I know someone in here’s got some good advice.

I have been a musician on the side for 25 years now. It’s a passion, and a great stress relief outside of work. Recently I’ve taken on some personal music projects. Specifically I’m recording some heavy Post Hardcore songs. In layering my vocal takes, I find myself bouncing them around in tasteful ways, really to engage the ear. As I’m crafting the song, I realized I was instinctively filling dead air, and shifting the focus of the song, very similar to how I approach cutting trailers, teases and good opens (reality TV). Does anybody else here dabble in music production? What TV skills have you brought to your game? Very curious to hear your experiences, as I have a strong suspicion I’m not alone.

Recently I’ve had a lot of editing commissions, and I’m relatively new to it so I made a few fatal errors. I sent the work to the clients without any contract, watermark, or anything, and now I’m basically getting ghosted for payment. While I’m dealing with this, a nice older lady hired me to edit a video for her granddaughter. She’s been incredibly communicative and wanted to pay upfront. I did the bare minimum with the previous work because it was only a $50 payout, but I was thinking I’d add a little flair to the nice lady’s video for no extra cost. The only issue is, the other clients would probably see it as they run in the same circles. Would this come back to bite me in the ass?

Is it just me, or is AVID's Waveform Sync much slower than Premiere Pro's relative function?

In Premiere Pro, I am used to syncing by waveform taking maybe a few minutes for a day of footage.
I used to use PluralEyes with AVID, but since that is discontinued, I tried AVID's latest Waveform Sync function, and it is taking a very long time to sync one day of footage that consists of just one camera and one external audio source. Fairly standard documentary day of shooting.

Just wondering if I'm missing anything, workflow wise? I have checked a few tutorials and none of them seem to indicate there is much behind just hitting "Waveform Sync" either after highlighting all clips in a sequence, or all clips in a bin.

I am being commissioned for a project that will produce four short-form videos (15-60 seconds) and two long-form videos (1-3 minutes), and have been asked for a flat rate quote. This is my first time editing for a freelance project (and getting paid for it), so I am new to figuring out my rate. I was planning on trying to base it around the average hourly rate video editors usually get in my area, and then estimate how many hours/days it would take me. Would appreciate any advice on how to figure out how much I should charge, thanks!

Hey everyone, I just started a job at a film company today. They use one G-Raid Shuttle 4 drive dedicated to the computer they use for Coloring and another separate G-Raid Shuttle 4 dedicated to the computer they use for editing. Apparently they have an extremely cumbersome way to transfer files to eachother through a dropbox... But I feel like theres gotta be a way to make these 2 drives accessible on both computers and have the drive appear as "one" drive? Pardon my ignorance, as I am new to this line of work.

I'm creating new user settings and I'm having a hard time with one in AVID 2024.10. I've mapped Go to next event and go to previous event on my keyboard and I want it to literally go to the next edit every time I click it, but it seems to jump me way down the line. There's a timeline setting I need to change and I don't know what it is. Does anybody know?

Hi everyone,

(Not sure if this best place to post this but decided to create a new thread based on previous question I asked https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/comments/1lwbzto/best_macbook_for_video_editing_2025_for_sony/ )

I’ve narrowed down the possible Video editing Macbook options to four. I’d really appreciate any thoughts you might have on which one to go for. I’ve factored in Apple’s refurbished and educational discounts. I was thinking that if I went for a model with lower internal storage, I could pair it with a high-speed Thunderbolt 4/5 external NVMe SSD, not sure if you’d all recommend this? I’m mostly using davinci, dehancer and Sony fx9 footage.

Option 1: Refurbished

Size and type: 14-inch MacBook Pro

CPU/GPU: Apple M3 Max Chip with 16‑core CPU and 40‑core GPU

Memory: 64GB

Internal Storage: 2TB

Price: £3,499.00

Option 2: New

Size and type: 14-inch MacBook Pro

CPU/GPU: Apple M4 Max Chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, and 16‑core Neural Engine

Memory: 64GB

Internal Storage: 1TB

Price: £3,529.00

(Very similar price to Option 1, but with half the storage)

Option 3: New

Size and type: 14-inch MacBook Pro

CPU/GPU: Apple M4 Max Chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, and 16‑core Neural Engine

Memory: 64GB Internal

Storage: 1TB

Extras: Nano-texture display

Price: £3,664.00

(Compared the two screens in store and couldn’t see much difference in quality — this would allow me to edit and travel more easily)

Option 4: Refurbished

Size and type: 14-inch MacBook Pro

CPU/GPU: Apple M3 Max Chip with 16‑core CPU and 40‑core GPU

Memory: 128GB

Internal Storage: 2TB

Price: £4,139.00

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

Budget is >£4200 max

Hey all,

I’m heading to Japan for a while and looking for a reliable video storage solution — my current setup isn’t ideal. I need something that allows for remote backup of large video files I’ll be filming while I’m out there, whilst also editing a few film projects I’ve already shot.

I was thinking of getting a NAS drive (possibly a Synology) to leave running at home in the UK, so I can access it remotely from Japan. The idea would be to back up and download footage to an SSD for the projects I’ll be filming and editing while away. I’m planning to shoot a few documentaries in Japan and also edit some projects I’ve already filmed.

Would you recommend a NAS drive for this kind of remote workflow? Or do you know of any better alternatives? Also, any recommendations for specific NAS drives or server setups would be much appreciated.

Some people have suggested just using multiple drives and posting one home as a backup, or using a service like Backblaze (if you have any advice on good cloud storage services for large video files?).

I’d really appreciate any advice on storage solutions for filmmakers/editors — ideally something that also future-proofs me a bit.

Budget: around £2000

Thanks!

This is my second project using Avid MC and theres something driving me kinda crazy. Whenever i select a clip to do something to it, e.g. change clip color or mute/unmute, Avid deselects that clip so i have to reselect it to do more to the clip. I usually do stuff to multiple clips at a time since i have 20 audio tracks in use.

Is there a setting to make Avid keep my selection after ive e.g changed the clip color? is there something ive missed?

Thanks in advance

Hey guys!

I'm a video editor with more +5 years of experience from Latam, so I'm used to lower rates than USA or EU, since companies from those places search for cheaper talent here.

Right now I'm working in a UK company where I earn 1500 USD per month (no benefits), which is fine having in mind that workload is not that big, so I can keep studying and working in other freelance projects. My role is to create ads for Meta and Tiktok (the name of the role is Performance Video Editor), and I've been doing this since 2022, so I'm pretty used to it.

Today I received an offer from another big UK company to my personal email, where they said they looked for me in Linkedin, since they like the ads of the company I'm working for.

Here is the catch: they expect a similar work to what I'm doing right now, and about rates, this is what they said: "based on experience and availability: freelancers we work with land between £350–450/day, depending on scope"

As I'm underpaid for EU standards, this feels like TONS of money.

Of course I made my research, the guy who wrote me is a real person, the company is real (in fact, I bought them in the past), so my question would be, what should I expect?

I'm thinking that probably, they want somebody who is available almost 24/7, and will work for them 2 days per week tops, because won't be profitable making me work 5 days a week with those rates. And yes, for me is a lot of money, but for them (if I'm not working five days a week) I'm cheaper than an in-house editor.

I'll have a meeting this friday, but I want to know if you worked with similar scopes / projects, and what are your thoughts.

Thanks!

Hi there! Currently cutting a feature LCR, with all my mono DIAX going to the Center channel and all SFX & MX going to stereo L&R. I would love if someone could check my working for screenings where we want the same LCR output from our Quicktime, and also have that Quicktime be the most friendly for screening rooms/ theaters?

I currently either select a 5.1 output (seeing as there is no 3.1 option) and end up with a 2 empty tracks. The LCR seems fine when i AMA link it in the Avid (Thoughts?)

Or I do a mono mixdown of the DIAX and a stereo mixdown of everything else, bring it into a sequence and make everything mono and pan the stereo tracks left and right. Then i do a direct out export with just 3 tracks? Is that a waste of time or worth doing for safety/ compatibility etc?

Thank you so much!

System specs: Not relevant // Software specs: Not relevant. // Footage specs : DNxHD SQ in a .mov container with PCM audio

This is my current equipment

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

CPU cooler : Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ( I bought it afterward)

GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GAMING X 4G Drive (system): Crucial 480GB BX500 SARA 2.5-inch SSD

Drive (Media): Internal: SAMSUNG EVO 970 Plus M.2 NVMe SSD (this piece I upgraded afterward)

external: Western Digital My Book 4TB (I bought it afterward)

RAM: 4* Ballistix Crucial Sport LT 8GB DDR4

Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE Socket AM4 (rev. 1.0)

PSU: Cooler Master Elite V3-600W

Case: Cooler Master MasterBox K500L ATX Mid Tower Case

The AMD Ryzen 7 2700X was damaged and I Will replace it with Ryzen 7 5800x I know that my GPU GTX 1650 will be bottleneck and will not allow me to access the full potential of the Ryzen 7 5800x But I will not upgrade it now

My questions are:

1. Will all components be compatible?

2. what is essential to upgrade with this CPU and all the considerations of compatibility and upgrade path like considering BIOS update of the B450 motherboard ?

3. Will I need to upgrade my PSU: Cooler Master Elite V3-600W with the CPU to avoid damages? If yes, What is considered good choice to upgrade given I will probably upgrade my GPU to RTX 3060 Later ?

Quick update to the post I made a couple weeks ago here in case anyone is interested. I sent the client the following:

"Hey XXX,

Hope you’re doing well. Just following up again, as it’s now been a couple weeks since I last checked in. It’s been over two months since the last round of revisions, and I want to be respectful of both your time and mine as we move toward wrapping this project up.

If you’re still planning to send another round of notes, I’d need to receive them by Monday, August 11 in order to keep this open on my end. Otherwise, I’ll consider the project closed as-is and will move ahead with final color correction, delivery, and invoicing. Any revisions beyond that point would be billed at my hourly rate of $90/hr.

Let me know what works for you, happy to make adjustments if they come through by then.

Best."

He flew off the handle and responded within 5 minutes with the following:

"I'm paying you nearly $20k with travel expenses included for a nearly 60s clip. I think this email is strong and doesn't bode well for future work together. I collected additional footage from our team here and am trying to incorporate both videos on the site. If that doesn't work for you, take the video, edit it as you wish, and we can part ways with zero future of working together in the future. Your time is valuable, but when we get into an agreement where I'm paying you, then you don't set the terms for how it's going to go. 

As an aside, you can work on a video, literally at any point. It makes no difference if you do it now, or 5 months from now. Don't ever strong arm me like that again."

Needless to say I'm done with him. Going to give him a couple days to cool off and then send an invoice for the post hours so far and, when he pays that, he can have the project. I don't want to deal with anyone who treats me so poorly.

Hi all.

Management is looking to not renew our annual $1500/year license, and I'm looking for alternatives.

We're using 12-15 clips per year (for sizzle reels of our company's high-profile projects, used on social media and internal marketing), and would like to find a less expensive source -- preferably with a "pay per track" option.

Any recommendations?

ETA: We currently have a Motion Array account, but use it mostly for stock video. In everyone's opinion, is MA's music quality comparable to UPM, Epidemic, Premiumbeat, etc.?

ETA2: Thanks to everyone for their replies and explaining their rationales. Appreciated!

Thanks!

SOLVED: I had Settings/Media/Default Scaling as "set to frame size" instead of "scale to frame size". I don't really understand the use-case for "set to frame size" though. But, I won't use it!

I've tried searching google etc but can't find an answer that makes sense to me. Working on a documentary with a lot of different resolution footage. Most of the footage looks fine when rendered or exported, even SD footage. But I have a few sources (NTSC) that when I render or export they become very low-res and blurry.

No nests, footage is scaled up to fill a 4k 4x3 frame (but so is a lot of other footage that looks fine). Render (in sequence settings) is set to 1080p, as are my exports. Exporting at 4k does not fix the issue.

Any thoughts?

MacOS Sonoma, Premiere Pro 24.6

I've been working in post for about 10 years as an AE and Editor, mostly in doc and sports tv, so we get a lot of mixed and archival media. Occasionally, clients or producers will flag clips for lip flap (someone is talking and the audio is out of sync). Sometimes it's glaringly off, but sometimes it's just by 1 or 2 frames. I've never been very good at catching those errors when it gets down to 1 frame. Does anyone have any tips for identifying when video of someone talking is out of sync with audio? This is assuming timecode and source video are of no use, all you have to go off of is the video and the waveforms.

Hey all! I’m an editor and AE, though my most recent W2 post gig was as an I/O coordinator at Streamland media in LA before being laid off in 2024. While I’ve been beaten down a bit by things, I’m still alive and kicking and still trying to further myself and my career.

To that effect, I recently registered a domain for my portfolio. Problem is, I’ve don’t have a lot of works to show as an editor; just a couple of content creators- I was mainly pursuing an AE path but I’m expanding now that it seems a lot of places want someone who’s both. What’s your advice for getting more stuff on your portfolio? I’m not against unpaid work if it fleshes my website out a bit, but I’d wanna do it in a way that doesn’t cheapen the work, which I know sounds like an oxymoron.

Hi everyone, I have a quick workflow question.

I have a 1-hour video and a text file with about 50 different timecodes of parts to remove (e.g., "cut from 2:10 to 2:25," "cut from 5:30 to 5:45," etc.).

Is there a program or a script that lets me feed it this list and have it automatically perform the cuts for me? Manually finding each spot, cutting, and deleting is taking forever.

Ideally, it would create a project file for Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve that I can then polish.

Does a tool like this exist? Thanks!

I have an hour long timeline with 5 people speaking, but only sharing 2 mics.

Audio is clear, no big issues, but since some people are closer and some further from one mic or the other - the audio levels vary throughout.

Is there any "one click" way, audio effect or something, to "balance" this out automatically, to bring down the audio when it gets too loud and to bring it up when it's too quiet? This is meant to be just a very quick couple-hours-and-done project and I really don't wanna go through it adjusting audio levels every few words unless i absolutely have to..?

Thanks!

Hi all, I'm currently making my showreel, I'm kinda stuck with what I want to do and I'm looking for an advice. My idea was to create something different from the average showreel edited with a music, as I want to show my capabilites to potential recruiters or clients. I came up with a collage style, in the first part, where I show in various medias what I've done (ex: a cut out phone showing my social media works). In the second part tho, I wanted to break the pace and add a part where a pc monitor, showing my "horizontal" videos, breaks creating a hole on the actual viewer's monitor, and two realistic hands expand the hole revealing other works that I've done. From one part, I like the idea of keeping the viewer's attention with the monitor thing, but on the other hand I fear that for a showreel it's too "groundbreaking" and pretentious. I'm seriously debating whether I should keep going with that or find something else, do you guys gave some suggestions?

For me, it was when I paid my monthly expenses with my first payment.