Comparison
You are not buying an edit. You are buying a round trip.
A briefed editor brings judgement, taste and a fix for the brief you cannot describe. On a piece that matters, hire one. What comes attached is a queue, a handover and two revision rounds. Here is what that round trip costs, what a version costs here, and how Cutroom removes the handover.
- revision rounds in a typical brief
- 2
- attention per export in Cutroom
- 4 min
- cost of another version of the same take
- 20 CR
Judgement is the thing you are paying for, and no automated cut has it
An editor watches your take and knows the second where it drags, the joke that will not land, the claim that needs proof on screen.
They handle briefs nobody can specify: make it feel more like the brand, make the middle less flat, make it look expensive.
They also cover formats a narrow tool refuses. Horizontal, square, longer pieces, multiple cameras, complex graphics.
For a launch film, a brand piece, or anything with a shelf life longer than a fortnight, that judgement is worth every penny.
There is a second thing you buy that nobody lists. Somebody else now owns the deadline, which is worth real money in a busy week.
On any single important video, an editor beats a compiler. That is not in dispute anywhere on this page.
Here is what comes attached. Brief, upload, wait, watch, note, wait again, approve.
Two revision rounds is normal, and each one has a handover with a clock you do not control.
Cutroom removes the handover. One take of up to three minutes goes in, and a finished 9:16 MP4 comes out.
Captions burned in, coverage sitting on the words you marked, about four minutes from upload to file.
The invoice is the small number. The calendar is where it actually costs you.
The round trip is why an idea on Monday becomes an ad the following week.
It is also why an idea on Friday sometimes never becomes anything at all.
It also changes what you attempt. Nobody sends a maybe to a queue. The uncertain idea quietly gets dropped before the brief is written.
That is the real cost and it never appears on an invoice: the ads you decided not to commission.
A four-minute loop changes that behaviour, which is a different claim from being cheaper.
Count the handovers rather than the fees. Brief, delivery, note, revision, approval is five for one thirty-second file.
Five handovers is where a week goes, and it goes the same way on the next ad.
Idea to live ad, by route
Days, not hours. The revision rounds are where a briefed edit spends most of its calendar time.
- Brief, edit, two revision roundsAbout 7 days
- Same, with the editor free immediatelyAbout 3 days
- Upload, mark, exportSame day
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Direction happens on the words, so there is nobody to hand anything to
Upload one take of up to three minutes. It returns transcribed, drafted into a full cut, and captioned as a 9:16 MP4.
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands over exactly those words. Swap it, or search millions of free ones.
Delete the line that dragged and the cut rebuilds around the gap. Change the pace and the whole piece re-cuts.
Emphasise the word your claim turns on so it pops in the captions. Fix a mis-heard word and the text follows.
The revision loop is you, reading a transcript, making a mark. No brief, no handover, no waiting.
Export at 20 credits a finished minute, and a second version of the same take never re-charges the batch.
Coverage is capped by pace: 40 percent on chill, 45 on normal, 52 on fast. A person stays at the centre of the ad.
- Batch 100 credits covers transcript, director pass and b-roll search
- Six caption packs, coverage capped at 40, 45 or 52 percent by pace
- One take in, one vertical MP4 out, no project file to manage
- Somebody has to film, or own a photo the avatar module can drive
One take in, one file out, nobody in between: the specification
One talking-head take of up to three minutes goes in. One 9:16 MP4 comes out, captions burned in.
Nothing here tells you the take is weak. A flat read exports as a flat read with captions on it.
There is no horizontal, no square, no multi-camera and no motion graphics.
There is no timeline underneath, so an edit needing frame-level attention cannot get it.
There is no rescue of difficult footage. Bad audio, harsh light and a wandering take survive into the export.
There is no approval flow, so client sign-off happens somewhere else.
Those are the facts to plan around. The number they do not touch is creatives tested, which is next.
Nobody sends a maybe into a queue, and the maybes are where winners hide
Winners run at 5 to 8 percent of creatives, per Motion's analysis of 550,000+ Meta ads. One in thirteen to one in twenty.
Six a month draws under one winner regardless of who cut them. The count decides the account.
A second version of a take already transcribed is 20 credits a minute and about four minutes.
At that price the uncertain idea gets made. At a brief and two rounds, it never gets written down.
One finished minute from a fresh take is about 120 credits. Seven days and 300 credits with no card covers two.
Keep hiring for the launch film, the brand piece and the case study. Those are worth waiting for.
Clear two takes sitting in a folder here and see how many creatives the month actually produces.
A briefed editor and Cutroom, row by row
The top two rows go to the editor, and a piece that has to be right should weigh them heavily. The rest is the round trip.
| A briefed editor | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| Judgement on a weak take | Tells you what is wrong | Cuts what you gave it |
| Any format, graphics, footage rescue | Full toolkit, any brief | 3 min in, 9:16 out |
| Coverage on a marked phrase | You brief it, they place it | Highlight, clip lands |
| Cut rebuilds when a line goes | Another revision round | Delete, and it recompiles |
| Turnaround on one version | Days, plus revision rounds | About four minutes |
| Cost of the tenth variant | Another brief, another round | 20 CR a minute |
Questions people ask
- Is an automated cut as good as an edited one?
- On a single video, no. An editor makes judgement calls a compiler cannot. What changes at volume is that thirty automated cuts exist and six briefed ones do, and the account is decided by how many creatives were tested.
- Can I use both without waste?
- Yes, and most people should. Send the pieces with a long shelf life to an editor. Run the disposable vertical creative through a short loop. They are different jobs with different economics.
- What if my footage has bad audio or harsh lighting?
- Nothing here fixes it. There is no grading, no audio repair and no restructuring of a wandering take. Poor source produces a poor export with captions on it, which is a good reason to reshoot rather than to buy software.
- Who should walk away from Cutroom?
- Anyone whose next video has to be right rather than tested. Hire the editor for that one. Send the thirty that run a fortnight and get switched off through a four-minute loop instead.
Nobody sends a maybe into a queue. Cutroom makes the maybes anyway, as finished 9:16 files with coverage on the claim, for 20 credits a minute.