Sending footage to be edited: what a Dubai post house actually needs from you
Most guides to handing over footage are about files. In practice the footage is rarely the problem. What delays an edit is a brief nobody locked, and what turns three days into three weeks is direction changing after the work has started.
The footage is usually fine. The thinking is what arrives missing
Search for how to hand footage to an editor and you will find a great deal about codecs, proxies, card structures and transcoding. All of it matters and most of it is solvable in an afternoon. It is not what goes wrong. When footage shot by someone else arrives at J-Cut for edit, grade and sound, the thing most often missing is not a file. It is a brief. No script, no running order, no agreed sense of what the film is for. Just a drive, a deadline and a reasonable hope that an editor will find the film inside it. Sometimes an editor can. It takes longer, it costs more, and the result is a compromise that nobody set out to make. This is worth saying plainly because it reverses the usual advice. The handover that decides your timeline is not the technical one. It is the one where somebody writes down what the film is supposed to do and who gets to say it is finished. Everything below is about getting that right first, because the file questions are the easy half. If what you have is a recorded podcast rather than a shoot, the specifics of that are covered separately in our guide to podcast editing in Dubai.
What a locked brief actually contains
A brief does not need to be long. It needs to be decided. Six lines are enough and they take twenty minutes. What the film is for, in one sentence, and where it will be seen. How long the finished film runs, as a number rather than a range, because a ninety second film and a three minute film are different edits of the same footage and you cannot discover which one you want halfway through. What aspect ratios and how many versions, including whether you need vertical social cut-downs and roughly how many. Whether there is a voice-over or on-screen text, and in which languages. Who supplies music and graphics, or whether the post house is sourcing them. And the one most often left blank: who approves the film. Not who is interested in it. Who signs it off. Write those six down before you send a single file and you have removed most of what makes post production slow.
The handover itself, and the state to send it in
Now the file side, which is straightforward once the brief is settled. Send the camera originals rather than proxies or exports, because a graded or compressed export has already thrown away the latitude a grade needs. Send the full card structure if you have it, not loose clips pulled out of folders, since camera metadata and audio sync live in that structure. Send separate audio recordings if sound was captured on a recorder rather than into the camera, and say which takes they belong to. Send any logo files, fonts, brand guidelines and existing graphics as working files rather than screenshots. And send the music licence, or say that you need music sourced.
What post cannot fix: footage shot at too low a resolution
The expectation we most often have to correct is not about the brief or the files. It is footage recorded at very low resolution, arriving with the hope that post production will make it sharper. It will not. Detail the camera never recorded cannot be put back in the edit, and footage pushed past what it holds looks processed rather than sharp, which shows the moment it goes on a large screen or a website. Resolution is a decision that belongs before the shoot, not after it. If phone footage, screen recordings or old archive are part of the plan, tell the post house before anything is filmed. The edit can then be designed around what the material can carry: smaller frames, motion graphics doing more of the work, archive used as texture rather than as the hero shot. Told afterwards, the same footage becomes a limit rather than a choice.
Direction changing mid-edit is what turns three days into three weeks
J-Cut delivers most post production in three to five business days. When a job instead takes three weeks, there is almost always one cause, and it is not the editing. It is direction changing after the edit has started. This is worth understanding mechanically, because it is not simply a matter of extra hours. An edit is a structure. Shots are chosen because of what comes before and after them, the music is cut to that structure, the sound is built on it, graphics are timed to it and the grade is matched across it. Change the structure in week two and much of that work is not adjusted, it is redone. A note like make it thirty seconds shorter or lead with the product instead of the founder sounds small from the outside and is a rebuild from the inside. The same note before the first cut costs nothing at all. That is the entire argument for locking a brief: not bureaucracy, but the fact that a decision is cheap before the edit and expensive after it.
How many people are approving this, and who holds the pen
The practical version of the point above is a question about your own organisation rather than about footage. How many people will see the cut, and which one of them decides. Three is manageable. Three who have not spoken to each other is not, because their notes will contradict and the editor will be asked to satisfy all of them, which is impossible, so a second round becomes a third. Two things fix this and both are free. First, collect notes into one document from one person, timecoded where possible, rather than forwarding three email threads. Second, agree who breaks a tie before the first cut goes out. If marketing wants it shorter and the founder wants his section kept, somebody has to say which, and it should not be the editor guessing. Agencies commissioning post on behalf of their own clients have a third layer of this to manage, and the same discipline applies with one addition: agree whether the end client sees the first cut or the second, because the answer changes how many rounds the budget needs.
Post-only work, and why it is priced per project
J-Cut takes on edit, grade and sound on footage it did not shoot. It is a standard service rather than a favour, and it is quoted per project rather than off a day rate. That is a deliberate choice, because a day rate looks more transparent and is usually less honest. Two jobs with the same quantity of footage can carry very different amounts of work. A clean shoot with a locked brief, a voice-over script and one approver is a different job from the same footage with no structure, four approvers and music still to be sourced. Pricing the project means the scope is visible before anyone starts: how many finished films, which ratios, grade and sound to what standard, and what is excluded. Our post-only quotes include three rounds of revisions. We also keep client footage after delivery rather than clearing it on a fixed window, so a cut-down, a language version or a re-edit months later starts from the originals instead of a search for the drive. The re-edit is quoted as new work; the footage is simply still there. Podcast series are the one format where we publish a range, set out in the podcast editing guide, and what a colour grade contributes is covered separately. Whoever you commission, ask for the scope in writing. A number with no scope attached is not a price.
The one reason we turn post-only work down
It is not difficult footage. That is a scoping conversation, and we will tell you honestly what it can and cannot support. It is not a missing brief either, because we will help you write one. The one reason we decline post-only work is a deadline that cannot be met to a standard we would put our name to. We would rather say that on the first call than deliver something rushed on the last day, and it is worth asking any post house the same question before you commit: what would make you say no. The answer tells you what they are protecting.
One page before you send a single file
Everything above fits on one page, and it is the difference between an edit back this week and an edit still going next month. What the film is for, in one sentence, and where it will run. The finished duration as a number rather than a range. Which ratios and how many versions, including vertical cut-downs. Whether there is a voice-over or on-screen text and in which languages. Who supplies music and graphics, and who holds the licence. Who signs the film off, and who breaks a tie when notes contradict. And on the technical side, camera originals with the full card structure, any separately recorded audio and which takes it belongs to, plus a note if any of the material is low resolution. Only that last line is about files. The rest decide your timeline. If there is a drive on your desk already, spend twenty minutes on that page and send it with the footage through our contact page. You will get back a scope and a price for the work as it actually stands, including an honest answer if the footage will not support the film you have in mind. You can see how similar projects were put together in our case studies.
