Editing and exporting

Edit for the buyer, not for yourself

Editing a clip for sale is mostly removing. Cut the setup before the clip begins, the pauses where you check the camera, and the tail after the moment is over. Buyers paid for the premise; get to it and stay in it.

Keep the edit simple. Hard cuts, a short fade at the start and end, and maybe a title card are plenty. Effects, filters and music draw attention to the editing and away from you, and music you do not own can create rights problems if the clip is ever shared outside your store.

Watch the whole clip through once at normal speed before exporting. You are checking for dead stretches, audio problems, and anything in frame that should not be there.

Resolution and quality in plain terms

Three settings determine how a clip looks and how big the file is:

• Resolution is the pixel dimensions. 1080p (1920 by 1080) is the practical standard for clips and looks good on phones and laptops. 4K files are much larger and most buyers cannot tell the difference on a phone. Export 4K only if you shot in it and your buyers have asked for it.
• Bitrate is how much data per second the file uses. Too low and movement looks blocky; too high and the file balloons for no visible gain. Most editing apps offer a quality preset; "high" is normally right for 1080p.
• Frame rate should match what you filmed. Do not convert 30 to 60 or back; it adds nothing and can introduce stutter.

Export in the format your editor calls MP4 with the common H.264 codec unless you have a reason not to. It plays almost everywhere and is what buyers expect to download. Newer codecs make smaller files but some devices still cannot play them.

File size

A buyer who downloads a clip wants it to finish. A ten-minute 1080p clip at a sensible bitrate usually lands somewhere in the low hundreds of megabytes. If your export is several gigabytes for a short clip, the bitrate is set far too high. Check the current upload limits on VestaVids before exporting long pieces, and split a very long session into parts if it makes sense as a series.

Keep your originals

Store the raw footage and the project file for every clip you sell, separately from the exported file, ideally on a drive that is not the one you edit from. You will want them for:

• Re-exporting if a file is corrupted or a buyer reports a playback problem.
• Cutting new previews, thumbnails or a trailer later.
• Proving the work is yours if a clip is leaked and you need to file a takedown.

Name files consistently (date, series, number) so you can find them a year from now.