# How to brief an editor with clips from existing footage

> A brief an editor can work from names the source file and the time range for every clip you want, with a line on what each moment is doing in the cut.

Canonical URL: https://vivu.ai/guide/how-to-brief-an-editor-with-clips-from-existing

A brief an editor can work from names the source file and the time range for every clip you want, with a line on what each moment is doing in the cut. That is the whole format. Everything difficult about this task is upstream of the document: somebody has to go through existing footage and decide which moments those are, and how you do that determines whether the brief takes an hour or a week. The methods below cover the finding, and then what to hand over.

## Scrub and write timecodes

Open the files, drag, note the range, write a sentence. This is the baseline and it is not a bad one. Whoever does it ends up knowing the footage, which pays off in the revision rounds, and it catches moments you could not have described in advance.

It scales with hours of footage rather than with the length of the cut, so a thirty-second spot built from two days of shooting costs the same to brief as a three-minute one. That is the whole problem with it.

## Send a rough stringout instead

Cut the selects together in order and send that as the brief. It removes all ambiguity, because the editor can see exactly which moments and in what sequence.

The cost is that you have now done a chunk of the edit. It also over-specifies: an editor handed a stringout tends to protect your ordering rather than improve it, and the pacing decisions you made while dragging clips around become invisible constraints. Use it when the sequence genuinely matters and not as a default.

## Hand over the project file with markers

If you and the editor use the same software and can both reach the media, markers and a labelled bin are the cleanest handoff there is. The information lives next to the footage instead of in a separate document that goes stale.

This breaks the moment either half is untrue, which with freelance editors is most of the time. Different software, different machine, media that has to be shipped on a drive, and now the markers are the least of your problems.

## Reference links and description

"Open on something like the first shot of that Nike spot, then our product." Fast to write, and it communicates intent better than a timecode ever will.

It also transfers the finding work to the editor, which is sometimes right and sometimes expensive, since they will search your footage with less knowledge of it than you have. Pair it with actual selects rather than using it alone.

## Search the footage by description

The other route is to make the footage answerable: video goes into a layer that indexes it once, and you ask for moments in plain language instead of scrubbing for them. The queries that work are descriptions of what is visible or said, like the moment the product first enters frame, or the point where pricing appears on screen.

A search in [Vivu](https://vivu.ai/platform) comes back as time ranges you can open, each with a sentence saying why it matched, which is close to the shape a brief line needs already. It finds and nothing else, so you export the segments you picked and the editor cuts from those.

Two things to know before it goes into a workflow. The reasoning attached to a result is a description of what the search saw, so if it paraphrases text on screen you still open the original to confirm the wording, especially when that text is a price or a claim. And picking between three candidate takes of the same beat stays a human decision, because nothing here knows which performance is better. Choosing between spoken moments has its own approach, worked through in [picking clips from a transcript](https://vivu.ai/guide/how-do-i-use-a-transcript-to-find-good-video).

## What belongs in the brief itself

Source file and time range per clip, a line on purpose, and the aspect ratio and duration target. Then the part most briefs skip: what to do when a clip does not work. Naming a fallback for each select, or saying plainly that the editor can substitute, saves a revision round. The handoff problems that outlive any single brief are the subject of [keeping the process intact across handoffs](https://vivu.ai/guide/content-marketing-workflow-for-video).

If the footage itself is scattered across drives and project folders, fix that before writing anything, because a brief that points at files nobody can locate is not a brief. That is a separate job, covered in [getting the media in order first](https://vivu.ai/guide/how-do-i-organize-video-files-for-editing).

## When you don't need any of this

If the editor was on the shoot, skip most of it. They know what exists and the conversation can be three sentences. Same if the footage is one day from one camera, where scrubbing is faster than any system you could set up. Tooling for finding clips earns its place when the library is large, when the person briefing did not shoot the material, or when the same footage gets mined repeatedly for new cuts across a year.

The line runs roughly here: if you can picture every usable moment in the footage, write the timecodes yourself and spend the saved effort on the purpose lines, which is the part editors actually need. If you are briefing from a library you have not watched end to end, then finding the moments is the real work and the document is a formality, and it is worth putting the effort into search rather than into formatting.

## FAQ

### How detailed should a clip brief be?

Detailed on what and where, loose on how. Every clip needs a file and a time range, because guessing costs the editor more than writing it costs you. The reason each clip is in the cut matters as much as the clip, since an editor who knows a shot is there for the product reveal can find a better one two minutes later in the same file. Shot-by-shot instructions on cuts, transitions, and pacing usually cost you the thing you hired an editor for.

### Should I send the whole source files or just the selects?

Send the selects for the cut and keep the sources reachable. Editors work faster with a small set of clips, and they still need access to the surrounding footage when a select turns out to be a second too short or the take has a problem you did not notice. Sending only trimmed clips with no path back to the originals is the most common way a brief creates a second revision round.

### What if the editor disagrees with my selects?

Good, usually. Selects are a starting hypothesis, and an editor who watched the footage in context often has a better one. Build that into the brief by saying which clips are locked and which are open to substitution. Briefs that treat every select as final get compliance rather than editing.

### Can I brief an editor without watching the footage first?

You can, but somebody has to look at it before the cut starts, and if that person is the editor, budget for it. The middle path is to have the footage searched rather than watched, so you pull the candidate moments and confirm those, which is a fraction of the runtime. What you lose either way is the incidental knowledge that comes from sitting through the material, which is where unexpected shots come from.