Before you export

What Hound does with it

1. Goal: find what a viewer would catch before a viewer does. This is the one pass that watches the whole video from start to end, not only what changed last. Fix what is safe, add nothing new, and name the rest.
2. Read their notes, then the timeline. List every card, clip, picture and sound with when it starts and how long it stays. Leave alone what they placed or changed by hand, and every cut made on purpose.
3. From the list, find anything shown twice: the same line as a card twice, or the same clip or picture twice when they are not talking about it again. Keep the first and take the second off. A recap that sums up the points is not a repeat.
4. Find every card that leaves before it can be read. A card needs about 2 seconds and a fifth of a second for each word on it, and half a second past the last word said on it. Lengthen it where there is room. Where there is none, take the weaker of the two things off.
5. Find every flash: the speaker alone for under 3 seconds between two things on screen. Close the gap or move one of the two, so there is a clean cut or a real pause between them.
6. Now watch the whole video in order, in stretches of 10 minutes at most. Ask the same of each: Is any word clipped or doubled, or any line said twice? Does anything cover the face or the hands? Does any card show its words before they are said, or long after? Does anything come and go too fast to follow? Is any sound or music louder than the voice?
7. Look yourself at every moment the watch names before changing anything, and fix only what you saw: put back a clipped word, cut the first of two copies of a line, move a card to the other side or onto its words, lower a sound or take it off.
8. If captions are on, read the names in them. Never guess a spelling. List each name you cannot confirm from what they told you, with its moment, and ask how it is spelled.
9. Leave bare stretches bare in this pass, and list the ones over 30 seconds with the line you would look at first.
10. Check: watch again every stretch you changed, and only then call it fixed. If a fix of yours is undone twice for the same reason, stop and ask.
11. Say what you watched, from when to when, what you fixed and where, and under Worth a look everything you found and left, each with its moment. Say what this pass cannot judge: whether lips and voice stay together to the end. If the sound was recorded apart from the camera, ask them to watch the last minute themselves.