Transcription
Here are the top five most important SOPs for video editors in 2024, coming from an agency owner that works with Mr. Beast's producer and a Fortune 500 marketing agency.
Hi, my name is Calvin. I'm the founder and CEO of Co Creatives and Producti Path. And in this video, I'm going to break down the five top SOPs that you need to implement for your video editors to make sure they can work with maximum efficiency and actually create high-quality videos fast.
Let's start with number one: Subtitling. Now, subtitling is a big thing because now on social media, all you can see are subtitles. This poses a big problem if your editor is not a native English speaker, and if you're actually cost-savvy, he probably is not. But there's a way to go around this. So, this SOP is very, very important to make sure your subtitles are mistakes and typo-free, according to how you want the overall look and feel of the subtitle to be. Do you want it to be all caps? Do you want it to be all lower caps, like an artistic movie? Or do you just want it to be proper grammar structures? And also, also, you want to decrease the number of revisions.
Here's the SOP. Step one: Look at the reference or look at how you want the subtitles to look like. So, clearly define from the beginning to your editor: Do you want it to be all caps? Do you want it to be uppercase, lowercase? Or do you want it to be all just lowercase, like a narcissistic movie? How big are the fonts compared to the speaker's face? What is the ratio? How many words per line do you want the subtitle to pop? I recommend one to two words in 2024 because these are what seems to be captivating audience's attention on social media the most. And what is the color of the font? Are you going with Hero's yellow and white? Are you going with just white, artistic white, Apple white? Be very clear about this. And if you don't want to do this all by your own, feel free to go to cocreatives.com, and we'll set up a post-production team just for you, a 24/7 post-production team, by the way.
Step two is autocaptioning and formatting. So, you can use autocaptions on CapCut Pro or Premiere Pro and have subtitles actually autogenerated for your videos. But the main problem is they can't hear everything that you're saying or your clients are saying, and sometimes there needs to be revisions, and you need to actually fix it yourselves. Now, this comes down to hiring as well. So, be sure you hire a video editor that at least knows English to an intermediate level, so they can pick up on sentences that don't make sense or typos that they can fix themselves. But it's good if you can check them yourself, or you have an agency like us doing it for you.
Don't forget to tell your editor to delete all the "uhs," the "ums," the "ahs," and make sure that the subtitles are actually just one word, two words, or three words per line. This way, you can captivate your audience by having the subtitles move quickly. Don't forget, when a speaker is telling a story from a third-person point of view, use quotes because not a lot of editors know this in the English language.
Step three is the final caption check. So, here are some tips for your editors so that they can actually check the captions themselves: one, understanding the context and fixing the words based on context. Two, when dealing with locations that they cannot decipher or they heard before, try Googling a word that they think they heard, and usually Google will give you the actual suggestion. For example, if the video says "Mamb Beek," but your editor doesn't know what Mozambique is and they hear "Mozam beak" like a bird beak, then they can just put that in, and then Google will correct it. And three, when dealing with clients' specific menus and names, and maybe a client's client or a testimonial, it's best to just ask the client rather than you just assuming, and they give you revisions.
And number four, if all else fails and there's a deadline, and you don't think you know what that word is, you can put it in an animation to kind of cover up for that word and actually make the subtitles disappear for one or two seconds. That's the final resort, and that's SOP number one.
Now, SOP number two is pretty simple: using Frame.io to give revisions for your video editors. I see a lot of my clients didn't use this before actually working with me. So, use Frame.io because you can pinpoint at the exact timestamp where you want to give revisions for your videos. Not only can you pinpoint into the exact timestamp, you can also divide your videos into folders. So, you can divide your content and the videos for each content or each week or each month, however you want to divide it into folders in Frame.io, and this will help your video editors organize the videos that needs to be revised, and you to actually upload those videos once they have been revised and re-uploaded to Frame.io. Very easy to use. If you're not using a high volume of videos, it's also free, obviously. I pay because my agency edits hundreds of videos every month. But if you're just one brand or one agency with two or three clients, this is something that you definitely need to utilize. Use Frame.io to give revisions instead of giving vague feedback, not really time-based specific, not timestamp specific, to your video editors. This will help reduce the amount of revisions it takes from the first draft to the final product, and that's SOP number two.
Now, SOP number three is actually using safe zones for your short-form videos. Now, let me explain. When you post, post on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, you see those buttons on the right and on the bottom of your screen that can actually cut into the content that you post on those platforms. Now, what you want to do for your video editor, you actually give them safe zones. So, these safe zones are drag-and-drop based on the help center on each of these platforms to avoid the buttons. And then what your editor will do is literally take the safe zones, overlay them on the Premiere Pro app, CapCut, whatever your editor uses, and make sure all the animations and subtitles are only made within the safe zones. This will make sure whatever the final product is is not going to get cut up by the buttons or the subtitles, and you can get these safe zones by downloading it in the link in the description below.
Now, SOP number four is using the script to structure and cut up your long-form videos into short-form videos. Now, as you know, a lot of the YouTubers and big business YouTubers out there, they use their long-form videos and chop them up into short-form videos. Some use AI. I've tried Opus.dog, Pro, those type of softwares. Honestly, they're still so-so. What I still do for me and my clients is we use the long-form videos, upload them to Descript. Now, Descript is an AI video editing app that lets you edit the videos by the words and the transcription of the videos. It's so intuitive. Me myself, I don't know how to edit videos. I have a productized agency. I hire the best video editing talent from Indonesia and let them do the client work for Mr. Beast's producers, you name it, right? So, Descript is an AI app that lets you do this, and it can actually fix some sound issues as well using AI, which is awesome.
So, what you do is you get the long-form video, you upload it into Descript, and then you would want to enable multiple compositions. Once these multiple compositions are done, what you want to do is simple. From the main folder, you would want to pick out the parts and you structure them into a new short-form video by simply copy-pasting the words and structuring them as if it was a puzzle in the new composition. Once in the new composition, you simply just need to paste the text, and then it's going to form a video based on the structure of the text that you copy and paste it from the main video. It's absolutely awesome. It's very intuitive. No need for video editing skills at all. Once you are done structuring this content, you can either do this by training your video editor, or you do the actual structuring, and your video editor will do the animations and cleaning up the audio and all the other "ums," "ahs." You can also clean up the "ums" and "ahs" by removing the filler words automatically using Descript's AI feature. You can do so by right-clicking on the words that are dotted lined, right-click, remove filler words, remove all, done. This is a powerful tool for you to not only make your long-form videos into short-form videos, but actually polish your long-form videos as well. So that's SOP number four.
Now, SOP number five is something that a lot of people with the video editing team overlooks, but actually is very, very important. So, after hiring over 50 video editors in this agency's lifetime, one thing I realized: video editors are very creative people. So, they tend to move around a lot, trying to find inspiration to create videos. So, what you need to do before they start their shift is actually make sure they record, they screenshot, and send to you what their current internet speed at their place of work is. So, they can travel around, not at the house, or if you don't have an office, not at the office. Maybe they go to a cafe, maybe they go to like a tourist spot, whatever it is, it's fine as long as they can screenshot and confirm their internet speed with you before they actually start working.
And how you do this is very simple. Every day, have them go to speedtest.net, click the go button, and then you can see the upload and download speed of their internet. Take a screenshot and then send it to you. Be sure they have sufficient internet, and the fact that they were remote working doesn't hamper your delivery to your clients or to your ads or whatever you need the videos for. I will suggest at least, at least, at least 20 to 30 megabytes per second, at least. It should be at least 50 in my opinion, but 20-30 is pretty doable. And make sure they have that before they start working, so there won't be any excuses or any part of the working day that's actually hampered just because of the internet speed, not because of the speed of how fast they actually edit the video. And that's about it, my friends. Those are the five SOPs in 2024 for video editors.
And if you want to build your own video editing team now, if you don't want to work with freelancers, or you're sick of working with freelancers that go missing, or they say, "Oh, it's another three-day delay," or you don't want to deal with in-house people, you don't want to hire, pay their benefits, pay their health insurance, etc., etc., then feel free to subscribe to one of Co Creatives' unlimited 24/7 video editing subscription. We start at $1,500 per month, and it's for unlimited videos, unlimited requests for unlimited brands. We've worked with Mr. Beast's producers and many, many other clients. So, if that's you, feel free to go in the link in the description below to cocreatives.com.
Or if you want to learn how to build and create your own productized agency using resources from third-world countries like Indonesia, where I train you to make the offer, do the lead gen, and actually place the employees in your companies as well, feel free to go to productipath.com/masterclass to watch how I scaled mine from $0 to $113,000 per month in 90 days using the methods I show in that masterclass. Other than that, feel free and don't forget to like and subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video. Ciao guys.