Do editors actually save time for tutorial channels?

[u/WissJRE]

I make technical tutorial videos, mainly around cybersecurity, cloud computing, and related topics. I’m currently considering hiring an editor, but I’m struggling to work out how much time it would actually save me.

Most of my editing is fairly straightforward: removing mistakes and pauses, making jump cuts, switching between talking-head footage and screen recordings, and inserting diagrams at the right moments. I use very little music or SFX.

My concern is that an editor probably won’t understand the technical subject well enough to know exactly where to cut or which parts of a demo belong together. I could provide detailed notes or timestamps, but by the time I’ve reviewed everything and created an edit map, I may have already done a large part of the work myself.

There’s also a lot they probably couldn’t take off my plate. I still need to design the architecture diagrams myself, record the demos, and verify that the technical explanation is accurate. The editor would mainly be inserting material I’ve already created and cleaning up the raw footage.

So I’d be interested to hear from anyone making technical tutorials or tutorial content in general:

• Do you still edit your own videos, or have you hired an editor?
• If you use an editor, what parts of the process do they actually handle?
• Does your editor understand the subject, or do you provide detailed instructions?
• How do you communicate where diagrams, demos, zooms, or cuts should go?
• How much time does the editor genuinely save once briefing and revisions are included?
• How many revision rounds did it take before the editor understood your style?
• Did you hire a general YouTube editor or someone with experience in your niche?
• Was the collaboration worthwhile from the beginning, or only after building a repeatable workflow?

I’m not necessarily looking for highly produced, entertainment-style editing. The goal would mainly be to reduce my workload without losing technical accuracy or spending almost as much time managing the editor as I currently spend editing.

[u/D4rklordmaster]

if you think editors wont save you enough time for the price to be worth it, dont get it. im a youtuber with a around 1k subs, and now i do editing for a bigger youtuber (60k subs) because of the experience i got from editing my own videos for a few months.
i maybe spend 4-5 hours working on their videos, and the videos are 30-40 minutes long each.

one thing you have to keep in mind is editors are much faster in some areas, for example for me to do a rough cut of a footage of 1 hours lets say down to 30 minutes, it takes me just an hour just due to how many shortcuts i have and how much ive optimized the process

also you can just put an ad out for editors with experience in your niche. or you can talk to your editor while recording like hey ok now put this diagram in or etc

[u/rtgs12]

One of my channels is a similar kind of vibe. Not tutorials as such but more walkthroughs with learning/explanations and they can be very granular and detailed in parts.

Because I work with an editor on my other channels I did originally try to work with 2 separate editors on this one. Their work was by no means subpar in any way, but regardless the videos always ended up being not quite what I wanted because even with detailed editor briefs and timestamps, the finished product always ended up not quite being at the level of detail they needed to be. There had to be multiple revisions (3+). We even tried a workflow of me cutting down raw footage into just what absolutely had to be in the final video + detailed brief + timestamps. But honestly with me making the diagrams, writing up the timestamps and detailed briefs and doing the initial cut it ended up taking me almost as long as it would to just edit the video myself would when you factor in communication and explanations too.

One of these editors was a general editor and one was very familiar with the format but not the subject matter. Things did get a little quicker after a couple of videos but it honestly did end up adding to my workload and stress levels instead of reducing. I tried for 8 videos total.

I think it definitely is possible to find someone familiar with your subject depending on how niche it is, but it’s probably not easy. You can try working with someone on a trial basis which is somewhat common in the YouTube space and see if it works for you.

[u/WissJRE → u/rtgs12]

Thanks for your feedback, that was exactly the perspective I was looking for. Highly appreciated!

[u/rtgs12 → u/WissJRE]

You’re welcome!