It is an athletic instructional video, so there will be quite a bit of titling and cuts.

As Ulf said, it really depends on the complexity of the edits. However, keep in mind, that however many hours you shoot, it will take that many hours (at least) to get it into your computer before you can even think about editing.

I'd be pricing the shoot separately from the editing. As a rough guide, if I am pressed, I will tell my clients to budget at least $2K per finished minute of video. That's all up - capture, edit, deliver whatever medium. At least that's a starting point.
Tom

Two or three hours per hour of tape is way low. That will barely cover your capturing and first rough cut (deletion of bad takes etc.).

Separate the project and quotation into phases with advances/staged payments and approvals to protect you along the way.

A typical quote of mine might include 5 hours for "capture and rough cut" from a 1-day shoot in the first phase, then 10 hours of detailed video editing in the next phase, plus say 3 hours' audio editing, 3 hours' re-editing to customer's wishes etc. etc..

When you actually do the project be disciplined and time yourself, so you know next time.

if the video is of paint peeling, then 1 hour.

if the video is of a talking head with a stutter the producer wants removed, well, your guess is as good as mine...

leslie

The short answer: it depends.

On what?

1. Ratio of original footage to final cut time.

2. How many cameras.

3. Need for "significant" fX. Dissolves and transitions: no big deal. Green screen, masks, compositing: huge deal.

4. Deadline. Work expands to fill the available time. Always true, but especially when editing. Deadlines, whether real or artificially imposed, can drastically affect how long you spend editing.

5. Seen your shrink lately? How compulsive are you? Kubrick took years to do what others did in months. He was awfully good, but not that much better than other directors/editors.

6. How "tight" must it be, and who is the audience? Mark Twain, when asked to give a speech, once said,"If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready today." "If you want me to speak for just a few minutes, it will take me a few weeks to prepare." Short, snappy stuff takes a LOT of work per minute.

Wow! I thought I was just slow because I'm not all that experienced. I'm so glad to see that it takes others a lot of time to get to a finished "product".

One suggestion on the capture to computer time... I picked up an external firewire harddrive for my video camera. It captures direct to the drive and to the tape simultaneously. I pull from the drive by drag/drop to computer, and it's really fast. The tape is there for backup.

Here are some rough times for a few projects I've done.

1. 22 minute finished video of a ground breaking ceremony, which includes a few minutes of slide show at the end. Filming on site with 3 cameras and a still camera was about 30 minutes. Done "news style" with lots of cut aways, split screens, etc. Took about 15 hours to get the first solid draft. Then another 5 or so hours for minor tweaks and edits.

2. 45 minute lecture. One fixed camera. Simple cut/dry with a header, trailer and credits. Also includes color corrections. Takes about 3-4 hours to set up the first one in a series. The rest go quickly.

3. 23 minute finished wedding ceremony with integrated stills, flash backs, etc. For this one, I created a story board and planned the whole thing out. Filming on site with 2 video cameras and one still and took hours. I probably had at least 6 hours of footage on each camera. Speakers were not wearing microphones, so sound corrections took a bit of work. I don't know for sure, but I think the first solid draft was between 40-60 hours. Then there were tweaks and edits over the course of about two weeks, maybe totaling another 5-6 hours. It was a labor of love, since it was my brother's wedding, and I really wanted to do it right. That was my gift to them.

Thanks for all the good info. You all really helped me out.

"That will barely cover your capturing ..."

And you charge the customer for that time? Do you really sit at the workstation and watch the paint dry or are you working on another project and billing THAT client for the same time?

I've never considered charging a customer for time that doesn't need my immediate attention, especially when I could go tapeless and eliminate the download time altogether.

I'm like you Steve - I charge for my actual work time - capturing is something the computer does on its own, and I "pay" for that by charging an hourly rate that over twelve months covers the thousands I spend on equipment and software, and other costs and overheads, every year.
I do charge for my labour for the time it takes to organise, start and stop capture/acquisition, but this is usually minutes rather than hours, especially nowadays with file transfer rather than capture.

Another HUGE factor in how long an edit takes is the nature of the project. If it's something sequential - a conference presentation or maybe a wedding - then the material is mostly already in the order in which it finishes. Most of my jobs involve maybe half a dozen shoots, sometimes over weeks or months, then that footage needs splitting up and placing "all over the place" to go with a scripted voice over. This takes a lot longer, and is therefore more expensive.

In my specialty of theater and stage performance video, editing is pretty straightforward involving synching three or four cameras the transition between them. SFX is rarely called for. The credit roll and DVD label design takes me much longer. These are almost always spec products and I do figure the time spent in the editing in my break-even calculation. (I like to know when a project is not worth doing again.)

> "(I like to know when a project is not worth doing again.)"

I've had some of those too!

Man, Utah is the spec and "portfolio building" capital of the world. Too many people want everything done for next to nothing.

goodtimej,

First of all - I never bid editing on how much I shoot, it's always based on what the final project requires to completion. Granted you have ingestion time (which I bill for because the computer is running for the client, usually 20 bucks an hour which pays $10 an hour for someone to babysit and the machine makes a little ;) ) - then you have editing and like what everyone else has said. It's a project to project basis for the most part. Agencies used to have a per minute flat fee which was typically quite high for commercial work just to cover their backsides. Corporate video is a bit different but in some cases requires no less work to complete than some commercials.

Most corporate work I do runs $500 - $2k per finished minute (on average) - commercial work can be much more than that in the tens of thousands.

When I first started editing and was learning my way through programs and mainly just learning how to build projects and make them look good, I broke even in most cases or lost money. It was a learning curve. In this market editorial runs at (a very low) $50 up to $250 per hour. With most of the work I do, I bid 2 days of editing to every shoot day. That will vary from project to project still but can be considered average for what I do.

I did just finish two projects that consisted of about 5 days of shooting that ended up taking about a month to post just because of the graphic requirements of the videos. So consider a day for rough editing, time to build graphics, experiment if necessary, finalize the cut, record VO, hunt down any assets you may need such as graphics, stills, music, animation... You may not always be "editing" but you're working to produce the project. There needs to be compensation for that. If I'm producing and editing, once the hard costs are finalized, ad 10 - 15 percent for the production / business. Gotta to keep the lights on even after you've been paid for your labor.

Again, lots of variables. Keep asking around and experiment a bit. If you bid low, you'll know it for next time. If you bid to high, you may not get the gig. Don't whore yourself out though whatever the costs unless you want to be known as the guy who gives good "discount" - If you feel you're worth a certain price to edit per hour, throw that in the bid knowing that nothing is for certain in this day and age. Death and taxes, I guess still but you get my point.

cheno

>> "That will barely cover your capturing ..."

I always sit and watch the footage on TV during the capture process and make written and mental notes about how I will edit the material.

I generally quote a "Capture and rough cut" item at the end of my first "Production and rough cut" phase. The description of it reads:

"Capture footage. Downsample to DV if necessary. Delete bad takes. Arrange in approximate order. No music, voiceover, effects or titles. Write clips to DV tape or DVD-ROM."

The customer has already paid 50% of the first "Production and rough cut" phase up front. When they inspect the rough cut they can in theory walk away without it and pay nothing more if they don't like what I've shot (and I keep the 50%). Or they can pay the 50% balance of the first phase and keep a full-quality copy of the rough cut. If they want me to continue with the post-production then they pay a further advance for that work before I start.

Because they could walk away with the rough cut footage and find another editor to finish the job, I'm certainly going to charge for that bit of post-production to get us to that point.

I expect some will say you should protect what you've shot and never get into a situation where they could use another editor, but this is Thailand and it's difficult enough to even get an advance here, let alone further staged payments without handing over the rough cut footage as their insurance.

"I always sit and watch the footage on TV during the capture process and make written and mental notes about how I will edit the material."

This is part of the editing process. I do the QC while I am editing because my material is quite linear. No need to watch it during capture.

I typically don't watch during capture either. I prefer to do a full review of my footage after capture so I can cut bad footage as soon as I find it and just skip over it. Since I do my own captures, I already know much of what is there and I don't like wasting time rewatching footageI have no intention on using. But that's the way I like to work. Others' mileage may vary. Now, if someone else did the capture and just handed me tapes, then I might work differently.

For editing, my general rule is simply 3x the amount of footage. So 1 hour of footage will take 3 hours to edit. Certain factors may make this quicker or longer.

The video part of the editing takes about 4 or 5 hours.. not TOO long. It's the audio that takes the time.

Most of my stuff is in DD5.1..... balance all of the tracks.... fading in/out the back ground music at the right time.... filtering the LFE track.... etc. When all is said and done, the audio can take at least 4 times longer than the video.

I typically don't watch during capture either. Here's a tip for those that don't want to watch during capture, but are pretty sure they'll only be using a relatively small percentage of what was shot (which is the only reason I can think of for why you'd want to watch during capture):

Use Scenalyzer.

This capture application has the ability to "capture" a full one-hour DV tape in about five minutes. It does this by playing the tape in fast forward search mode and then capturing the low-res video that results. You can then quickly go through this, select the portions you want, and then Scenalyzer will go back and capture, in full-res mode, just those portions of the tape.

I seldom use this, but once in awhile it is great. Saves having to either wait an hour to capture the whole tape, or grind back and forth through a tape looking for just the one or two scenes I need.

Scenalyzer only works with DV (not HDV) and the times when I only need 10% of what's on a tape, and it's scattered all over the place is not frequent, but once in awhile, this is useful.

Working by the hour is a sad business.

I have taught many people to increase their income substantially by charging per project.

Client: "$XXX, YIKES! How many hours of work are you putting into that?"

Provider: "As many as are needed to do an outstanding job for you! Look, if you can't afford me, I recommend my school buddy Sam, he normally flips burgers but does video shoots on the side, and he is quite talented for a guy who doesn't do this as a full time job. His number is xxx-xxxx, I suggest you call him to see what he can do for you. Usually he can cover a wedding/whatever project for half of what I need to charge, and the quality isn't all that bad really. You won't get the polish or the high quality sound that costs me money to set up, but you'll save real good up front!"

Client: "Uh, umm, maybe your quote is within our range after all. Where do I sign?"

It's all about perceived value, and the perceived value of "an hour" is pretty low, but the perceived value of a good end result is priceless (and you should take that literally!).