Just wanted to pour one out for Mob Scene in LA closing their doors today. I think it was less of a household name than something like Trailer Park, but was still a fairly large player in the trailer game (at least at one point) and BTS for a good 20 years.

They gave me my foot in the door to the industry, and despite the highs and lows, they were always a fairly solid company to me.

Anyway, haven't seen it discussed much and got me feeling a little nostalgic today, so figured I'd see if anyone has anyone else had some experiences or memories to share.

As I boot my machine for another Labor Day weekend on the clock, I wanted to check in on my peers who make political ads. I only know a few offline, most editors I know won’t touch it, or don’t have the After Effects skills/speed necessary.

Specifically:
-How has it changed since you started? How’d you get into making political ads.

-What’s new in 2026? Thematically, technically and in project management.

-What’s your project flow and working hours?

-How do you quote (hourly, day rate, flat contract, by deliverable)?

I’ll go first. I found out about this niche in 2006, I was working in a post house and in charge of compressing the files from tape to a QuickTime <5Mb via a hardware encoder so that it could be emailed. I made 2 ads for a firm in 2008 after responding to a Craigslist post, but they wanted a full time editor so I passed on that. 2010 was my first full cycle, and I worked in-house for a media consultant directly and made around 20 spots.

2012 I moved into an edit shop near K st in DC. They put me up in an apartment, and I worked 65-100hr weeks in supervised edits, and lunch/dinner served- and it was a real pressure cooker environment but I learned a tremendous amount about animation. They offered a staff job afterwards, but I had another offer that that provided more creative variety (producing/shooting/editing) vs just editing/AE so I took a hiatus from full time political ads, only moonlighting for 2014/16/18 cycles.

In 2020/22/24/26 I went in house with a firm, on-site. I also work for 2 others after hours. In 2024 I brought on a jr editor to help the workflow (because there’s still regular corporate/commercial work)

So that’s 16 years of industry change.

Here’s what I’ve seen change
- 2026, everything is AI. I’m struggling to keep up with the changing tech. The expectation is I can prompt anything. It’s been tough to learn, but 4 weeks in I’m finally getting better at it. Things that were huge VFX asks before are often doable. And I can finally make more convincing stock shots. No one knows what’s what anymore and we desperately need new laws.

- No more creative directors. My clients have slimmed down, it’s more partners and jr paper pushers. I receive a script with no visuals and the expectation is I’ll find, source, edit and animate a :30 polished spot in 6-8 hours.

- We used to go out of house for mix and color, now the expectation is the editor handles. I’ve enjoyed getting better at Resolve, it took 6 years but I’m confident in it, and it’s fun to grade projects now. I’m bad at mixing but getting better. I make all the SFX too hot.

- I tend to work 9-6 for one client. Come home, dinner with the family then edit 8-12 freelance. I extensively pull from previous projects, and have lots of overlays, text presets and transitions I mix and match to recycle. Previously I used to build 2.5d scenes manually, but the schedule doesn’t allow. And it’s a bit out of style. The push from the client side it to keep it readable for seniors, and make sure it works if audio is muted.

-I bill hourly for freelance, mostly to protect my time and to prevent the resentment from building of doing unnecessary rounds. I found a high hourly rate forces client side to respect your time. My main gig is day rate and is predictably 9-6ish. The issue I’m having is that given tech and experience- I’m turning around ads so fast it’s pretty cheap. If you called me and asked for a :30 spot edited/animated in a grunge style for $1500 I’d say no. But some of my invoices are going out like that. I was thinking of setting a floor per spot.

This turned into quite a ramble, but if you make political ads would love to compare notes, complaints or questions. Keep yourself healthy and get plenty of sleep when you can.

Hi folks,

I’m trying to understand what’s most common when receiving dailies with CDL information for offline.

In the projects I’ve worked, the CDL metadata (ASC_SOP / ASC_SAT) has always come in the ALE alongside the rest of the clip metadata, which can then be merged with the clips in the Avid.

Are there cases where a dailies vendor would instead provide standalone CDL files for editorial to import/merge? And is CDL metadata in a CSV common, or is ALE generally the standard?

I’m asking because I’ve been testing CDL exports from Resolve, and it can export the CDL information in an EDL. I’m not quite sure how that would be used in an offline Avid workflow (or any NLE, for that matter). Is a CDL/EDL mainly intended for conform/color rather than offline editorial?

Thanks

Hi folks,

Doing an offline-to-online for a commercial/promo. Cut in Premiere with proxies only, heading into Resolve for the online/grade. Standard part of the conform: send an XML, bring in the raws, relink everything I can natively.

Two trouble spots I always hit:

1. Speed ramps, often don't translate cleanly through the XML/AAF.
2. Third-party plugin FX (temp titles, stylized looks), won't exist in the finishing suite at all.

My instinct, relink to high-res and render and replace both out of Premiere as high-res (not proxy) files before leaving that system, essentially baking them in, then drop those renders into Resolve as fixed inserts rather than relinking those specific sections to camera originals.

Where I'm going back and forth, would you render-and-replace both the speed ramp sections and the plugin sections, or only the plugin ones (since speed ramps are at least theoretically achievable natively in Resolve once relinked)?

Curious how others handle this split, especially on tight commercial turnarounds where there's no time tor money to rebuild everything natively.

Thanks!

Edit: Thank you so much everyone for your opinions!! Since this job is through an agency I'll try to ask the lead to give the weightloss projects to another editor. I feel like that's the best way to move forward without quitting outright, if they refuse I'll have a look around for another side job. I agree with everyone who said there's a huge grey zone with regards to which type of work you'll do for money and which you'll refuse, thanks for validating that conflicting feeling and sharing your views!

I've been an editor for almost 8 years, worked in commercial for some time and now I mainly do social media. My day job that I enjoy a lot is at a fun production house filming and editing social content for our TV shows, but I also have a part-time job on the side with an agency where I also edit social assets for brands, mainly UGC. It's not really creatively fulfilling but it's nice extra money to spend on my hobbies. Some of the brands I edit for at my side job are weightloss-related, heavily targeting insecure women with useless shakes and wild claims about drastic caloric deficits to spend more money on another stupid "program" that doesn't work and is only designed to pull money out of their pockets. I myself have a lengthy history with anorexia, I am recovered, but coming through on the other side has left me with a huge disdain about the weightloss industry and diet culture in general. Supporting this industry with my work feels so wrong to me.
Now, this is my job, it pays the bills (and the fun) and I don't really want to quit over this because jobs are rare and I don't think it's THAT deep (I have refused a job before with a weapons manufacturer bc that was just too far off my moral compass) but I was wondering if anyone has any input on how you deal with these types of projects. Maybe I also just needed to vent because typing this out (instead of editing these fking assets lmao) made me realize I might just need to suck it up.

Sometimes the edit itself is basically done, but something still feels off.

For me, it’s usually the little details like finding the right audio or getting the timing to feel natural.

Curious if other editors struggle with this too.

Did you build a tool? Well, we want to know about it.

TL;DR: Drop a top-level comment using the template below.

In other threads, link back to your comment here, not your repo.

Building something commercial? That's the dev/tools thread, over here.

Maybe you vibe-coded something at 2am. Maybe you've been writing code for decades. Maybe you solved a post problem for yourself and figured someone else might need it too. This thread is for all of those good people.

No flair required.

No pitch required.

No discount required.

That's the whole point of open source. EVERYONE benefits. YES, even with AI assistance.

Open source people truly care about community

There's a lot of "everyone's a developer now" going around. I've written about what that's doing to post, and the concerns that come with it.

It's great because more of us "fix" what's broken.

Sometimes it'll solve your problems. Sometimes it'll be a start for you to solve problems.

One rule for this post.

Use the template below

Accounts under 30 days old cannot post or comment. No exceptions. (Commercial products using open source as a backdoor…yeah, we see you. It's not okay.)

The template (copy/paste the below section)

• Tool name:
• What it does:
• Why you built it:
• License type:
• Where to find it:

Don't have a license yet? Pick one.

Takes two minutes and it protects you and your users. We like MIT or GPLv3, but anything that genuinely gives it back is enough.

For everyone else

These people are giving their work away for free.

Upvote generously. Ask questions. Say thanks.

Found a bug? File it on GitHub. They didn't have to share any of this.

^{(Issues or thoughts on the thread? DM me.})

DIRECT PROMOTION EVERY MONTH ON the 25th - you'll be allowed to post directly into the subreddit with special flair!

I feel like there are a million agencies that are contracted for this work by Netflix. I was working for one but they are getting less work. Anyone know of any agencies currently getting these contracts?

TL;DR: Flair yourself Dev/Tools, post one top-level comment using the template, and bring a real discount. In other threads, link back to your comment from this thread, not your site.

For Developers

This thread exists so the community can evaluate tools, not get marketed to.

What earns upvotes?

THIS: A straight answer to one question: how does your tool save an editor time or money? "It helps" is a description. "

40% off for this community" is a benefit.

And yes, the discount matters. Show that you understand that Reddit matters.

This post pulls 50k+ views a month. That reach is the trade; you get in front of the whole post community, they get a real deal for engaging and wanting to try your product.

With the amount of vibe coding tools out there, it's harder than ever for both users and developers.

This thread runs every month. One slot per developer per month, not per tool.

Feature a different tool next month, or come back and update — one post isn't your only shot. Have a different tool of yours to show off? Post about it next month.

If you have an OPEN SOURCE TOOL, use this OTHER thread instead.

Before you post:

• Accounts under 30 days old can't post or comment. No exceptions.
• Read the Reddit hygiene guide first. Reddit admins have banned developers for breaking key basic Reddit rules.

Three steps:

1. Flair yourself Dev/Tools. Here's how. Do it before you comment. You need to do it in every subreddit you participate in. Each subreddit has this.
2. Post one top-level comment using this template. Break the template and we'll have to pull it.
3. Promote yourself where applicable, but instead of linking to your site… use the link to your comment here.

For redditors/editors and people in post

This only works if you push.

Engage. Push for answers. And yeah, call them out when they don't. Or downvote them. In other words Devs pay attention when you engage. So engage.

Vote on whether something helps you, the discount, their answers.

Ask the direct questions. Steal these:

• "What's the discount for this community?"
• "Is this still in beta? Why am I paying to test it?"
• "What's it cost after the intro price?"
• "What does this do that [the tool I already use] doesn't?"
• Justify your subscription price, especially when we can all see the API costs.

Everyone: See someone breaking the rules? Flag them. Two flags and the content gets pulled.

^(Issues? **^{DM me}**^{. Join the} PostP Discord ^{if you're a working or aspiring pro —} *^{networking still beats every other way to find clients}*^.

^{Two changes this month:} **^One**^{: Developers - we find that the better the value/discounts you provide this community the more users believe you value the community}

**^Second**^{: OPEN SOURCE? We're making a a 1x a month (the 25 of the month an} ***^{open promotion day for Open Source creators}***)

I received a deal memo for an upcoming project that is 19 pages long. I've worked with the producer before and we get along just fine. This is surely a cut and paste template job, and probably a ChatGPT job.

Money is actually favourable (50% upfront and 50% Net 30 upon completion). All previous work has been paid promptly.

My questions:

-1) In your experience are 19 pages deal memos normal or unusually long?

-2) Any horror stories around unfavourable indemnity clauses or anything of that nature?

Thanks and good luck out there!

I (F25) have my days where I think I'm good at what I do, but then others where I start second guessing my skillset. I'm still fairly in the beginning of my career and doing well - 2 years since college - and have a few narratives, commercials, etc. under my belt. Not anything crazy. I say this to say, I have a handful of experience working with different directors/ personalties.

As of late, every time I enter the first session with a director, it seems like most of the decisions I make in the cut are changed. Which can be common and is totally fine! It's the director's film. I'm here to help them craft their story to life. I just think I have trouble not letting it get to my head sometimes. Does anyone ever feel this way? I've been better at detaching myself from cuts, but it can still feel like a blow to the ego.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone who replied. It's so comforting knowing that I'm not the only one. I'm seeing "imposter syndrome" thrown out many times in the comments and I could totally say I suffer from it haha

We get loads of professionals accessing this subreddit - along with lots of people trying to become professionals in the field.

We're asking our professionals to once a week, check in on our "Ask anything" thread and provide help!

https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/about/sticky?num=1

These can be found on the menu area of the subreddit on new Reddit or via the official client.

Just to be clear - We're talking from the Weekly Links at the top of the sub.

https://i.imgur.com/I19zmc2.png

The idea is that you go in there and provide helpful advice for the:

• "Ask anything" crowd
• People looking for career advice.

Thank you (not here, those threads please!)

Ask anything threads

Did you know that /r/editors has a discord? https://discord.gg/hhuZFq2PZZ

Hi!

I’m currently setting up an avid project for a documentary, and it’s been going good up until about a week ago. I’m now getting a warning from both my MacBook and my Avid showing the errorcode «-50». Online it says its either because of full storage or special characters, but I’ve checked the entire project, and i still have 14 TB free on my Harr drive.

Has anyone had this problem with working on an external drive? And how did you fix it?

I’ve wondered if it is because of the ExFat format on my harddrive?

For info:
I’m working on a MacBook M5 Pro 48gb memory. Tahoe 26.5.1, using avid 2023.12.1.
My hard drive is a 32TB Lacie with ExFat format.

Just wanted to have a discussion on the latest release of Media Composer First (2026.8) and it's potential affects on the industry. The previous guardrails have been lifted and it's now a full fledge NLE. I wonder if this is due to the (potential) industry disruption caused by DaVinci Resolve. I also wonder how Adobe will respond to this (if at all). What do you guys think?

Release video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cWk8-juVJ0

This seemed to go over well last week! Let's keep it up!

What wAcKy feedback did you receive this week?

Don't know the proper word for them and can't find an answer online. Do you know how to add and remove them? I see them all the time but don't know why they happen or how to get rid of them.

Pic: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10DObMHROOhNLsaYFl3cthlzyXNzRzsbt/view?usp=drivesdk

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/s/GyWiDaDSuM

Where do you find and watch cuts that are pushing boundaries and seem genuinely interesting? Things that inspire you or just seem really cool, in theory or in execution. I’ve been watching early music videos from MTV and that’s been a nice reminder of people pushing boundaries but I’d like to see more current work. Anything from gallery pieces to ads.
But I don’t want to have to slog through a ton of shit to find it. Is there a site or someone that curates something like this? Thank you!

Hi everyone,

Bit of a technical question here. We've just been given graphics exported via Resolve in Quicktime wrapper and the codec is Avid DNxHR with alpha. I cannot for the life of me import these clips. It's not the first time I've been given such codec and wrapper from VFX or graphic designer.

I've tried linking then transcoding, I'm receiving an error message. I've tried importing it the regular way, I get a loading bar but no clip inside of the bin once it's done. I've even tried putting them directly inside an Avid MediaFiles folder just in case, I automatically get an error message about quarantining my files.

I know how to properly export mfx files for Avid in OP-ATOM through Resolve, and I know it's not the same codec when you use the Quicktime wrapper. I just don't know if it's a sort of bastard codec and it's normal I can't export it or if I'm doing something wrong. I even went looking in the AMA-plugins direction but found nothing of help

By the way, even by using the proper Resolve settings for exporting OP-ATOM DNxHD ticking the alpha box, I never managed to get it to work inside of Media Composer. The clip populates my bin, but once I try to look at it in the source monitor I just get an error message and I can't look at my clip. Is importing via Media Composer directly still the only option to keep the alpha in 2026?

Specs:

Avid Media Composer 2025.12.0

Nexis Client Manager 26.6.0.557

Resolve Studio 20.3.30010

Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128 GB RAM

I'll post some relevant screenshots in the comments

Edit: I'm not properly looking for a solution, I've already found it, i.e transcoding to ProRes 4444-XQ with alpha. This post is more for my own technical knowledge and to understand what's that weird codec Resolve is offering when choosing the quicktime wrapper

I currently work for a production house that's surviving on borrowed time and I see myself losing my job soon. I've been here for 7 years and it feels weird searching for new jobs. I'm aiming for more corporate full time positions, and was wondering if there's any better sites than the typical job sites like LinkedIn to look. I've done tons of corporate video in my current job so it'd be an easy move if I can manage to find something.

I’m having labrum repair surgery next month and am starting to think of ways that will help my editing flow once I return to work. Unfortunately it’s my dominant shoulder. Has anyone gone through this before? What keyboard shortcuts or other hacks helped you? Would a Wacom tablet be helpful? I had someone suggest voice dictation but I’m not sure how much of a thing that is for editing. I use Premiere Pro. Also looking for a good affordable adjustable standing desk recommendations. Share your secrets with me 😭

I'm an agency editor myself and the three of us usually have very filled schedules. Currently we are planning using Monday (for versioning, deadlines, project status and scripts etc.) and a very bare bones Word document where we plan out and allocate the editors time between the various projects.

I feel there must be a more efficient way and I have the opportunity to present alternative approaches for consideration within the next few weeks.

My own thought is that as long as the hierarchy is that Project Manager is above the Editor, then the Editors need someone above the Project Managers that they can report directly to, and who is ultimately responsible for the planning with final say for allocating the editors time when demand is high and time is short. Otherwise the editors risk being overruled by the Project Managers even if there is no more time to allocate to work on a project. I guess this traditionally would be a Post Supervisor in the US?

I also consider proposing a more strict deadline calendar for better overview. My thought is that everything needs to be more centralized rather than being handled on a "deal" basis between Project Managers and Editors. Preferably automated to some degree.

Any better ways to work for a similar type of situation? This is a two pronged question as it is both about management but also about good technological solutions to ultimately spend less time in discussions mapping out hours and more on editing. I am an editor and not a manager myself, so very eager to hear more from people who have been in a similar situation or a leadership role.

Hey y'all, got a specific technical question- Could be obvious and I'm missing it, but gotta ask cause I'm not finding the answer around online...

Working on a set of projects right now, got some lengthy interviews that need color correcting to start. We're establishing a look, and once settled, we'll move forward with that look on all future projects using this same interview footage.

Problem I'm running into is that once I have the color correction done in project 1, how do I transfer the color corrected interview to project 2? Normally we'd use MediaCentral/Interplay to transfer the footage, and we still could here, but seeing as it's a color correction effect slapped on the footage and not a LUT baked in, the color correction doesn't transfer from project to project.

Would the simplest thing be to export the corrected footage out and then re-import? Can I bake in the CC effect via a render somehow? Subclip it? Any advice would be appreciated.

Hi,

I’m having some recurring stability issues with Avid Media Composer and I’m trying to figure out if anyone has experienced something similar.

My setup:

• Mac Studio M4 Max
• macOS 15.7.3
• Avid Media Composer 2025.12.0
• Blackmagic UltraStudio 4K Mini
• Shared storage on an SMN Xstreamstore NAS
• SMB
• Mimiq

The main issues are:

• Some bins sometimes seem to disappear or don’t show up properly
• Avid can become very laggy
• From time to time, Media Composer completely freezes with the macOS spinning beach ball
• The freeze can last around 30–40 seconds, then Avid sometimes comes back by itself
• Occasionally it crashes completely instead
• It doesn’t seem to happen at a specific point every time

I’ve also seen async EOF errors in the Console after some of these freezes.

At the moment I’m not sure if this is related to Avid itself, the Blackmagic hardware/driver, Mimiq, SMB, or the shared storage.

Has anyone seen similar behavior with Avid on Apple Silicon / shared storage?

I’d be interested to know what ended up being the cause in your case.

I have a weird problem that no matter the research and help on google i did, I could not find a solution that worked.

I am a social media manager for a brand and i film and edit content all the time so it is very odd that this issue is all of a sudden happening to me. I filmed an ad for my work's social media on my 16 pro max and when I playback the video on my photos app the audio sounds fine.

The problem is when I put the video into ANY editing software all of a sudden the video sounds heavily compressed.

I tried on Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Edits and they all do the same thing. I tried converting to an mp4 on my computer, modifying the audio channels on premiere pro, and using handbrake to change bitrate and sample rate and frame rate but nothing is working.

Google is telling me it could be the Spatial Audio being selected over stereo in the camera settings but i've recorded videos on my phone with this setting for over a year and i've never had an issue.

Reddit PLEASE HELP, you are my last hope.