What is text-based video editing?
Text-based video editing means using a transcript of your footage to find and choose what goes into the cut. Instead of scrubbing through hours of video, you read the conversation and select the words you want. Some editors cut the video when you delete text, and others mark the phrase you select so you can cut it in yourself.
Interviews, podcasts and documentaries live on what people say. Text-based editing treats that literally. The recording becomes a page you can read, and the words become the handles you edit with.
Two ways it works
Edit the text, and the video follows. Delete a sentence from the transcript and it disappears from the video. This is quick for talking-head videos and podcasts where the words are the whole story. It is less suited to work where the picture matters as much as the words, because the cut is decided by the text.
Read to find, then cut on the timeline. The transcript is a way to find and mark moments. Select the words and the phrase is marked on the clip. Then you cut it in with the same tools as any other shot. This suits work where you want the speed of reading and the control of a timeline.
Where it saves the most time
- Long interviews. Finding one sentence in an hour of conversation.
- Paper edits. A producer writes the story from transcripts, and the editor builds it.
- Shorts from long recordings. Reading for the best forty seconds of a podcast.
- Several takes of a line. Comparing how it was said each time.
What to check in a tool
- Accuracy and speaker labels. You want different voices told apart, so you know who said what.
- Whether every word has an exact frame. A selected phrase should not lose its first syllable.
- What it costs per hour, and whether you can choose which clips to transcribe.
- Whether it works with several cameras, so a multicam conversation is transcribed once, not once per camera.
How B/side handles it
In B/side you transcribe the clips you choose. Paid plans include hours each month, then it is $0.60 an hour of footage. Every word comes back on its own frame, and different voices are told apart. Select words and that phrase is marked in the Source monitor, ready to splice or overwrite into the cut with the keys you know. The marked range always contains every word you selected. A multicam group is transcribed from its sound once.
When something else is better
If you want to cut a talking-head video by deleting words in a document, choose an editor built around editing the text. B/side uses the transcript to find and mark, and leaves the cutting to the timeline.
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