Hard cuts and declared effects

Cut hard, in real time [proven]. Any effect is declared, and appears only when the treatment wants it [best available, not yet validated].

• Declared effects: comic or sport speed ramps, designed slow motion generated in the shot, clean reverses, modest punch-ins, stylistic dissolves. Write each into the timeline as a real effect on the clip; the generated file is never altered. A declared speed below 0.8 gets a second look.

• Never retime inside lip-synced speech.

• No undeclared speed changes, zooms or rotation. A take that doesn't fit is regenerated or re-planned, never forced.

• A planned join keeps its fallback cut (see Video with Seedance → Joins, endings, extension and the video edit).

• An edit made by a video tool or plug-in becomes a new take in the timeline, never an effect on the approved clip.

• The exact agreed length, in whole frames. Titles, signs and claims hold about 1.5–2 s to read. If a text can't be read within the agreed length, the length question goes to the client: timings are a core element of the brief.

• The one movement added in finishing is a gate weave, only for a film-era treatment (see The grade and texture → Gate weave, glow and halation). A fade that a channel's sheet requires goes only on that channel's export (see Graphics, captions, versions and delivery → Exports and the delivery check).

Why: one edit carried a 392% speed-up, digital zooms and rotation, and all of it had to come out.

Sources

• From editors' practice: hard cuts in real time, effects only by design.