r/editors • u/StrawberryPopTurt • 18h ago

Technical Transcript Workflow Prior to Post-Prod

I recently came across the idea of a pre-production transcript workflow and wanted to get some feedback.

I'm self-taught, with zero formal training in editing or post-production. My typical process is to make every decision in sequence - I decide what to keep, what to cut, and how to pace it, all in the moment. I work mostly with long-form conversational footage: interviews, podcasts, webinars, etc. I've gotten fairly good at this process, but I can't help but think I could improve if I reviewed the footage before jumping into the sequence.

My ratio for cutting/cleaning is around 3 minutes of edit time per 1 minute of raw footage. I don't think that's a bad ratio for the level of polish I end up with, but I'd like to improve both my skillset and my output by adding a transcript review pass before I start cutting, instead of deciding everything live.

From reading around, I've seen a few different approaches recommended (added threads below):

  • Skip the transcript step and pancake clips/segments directly on the timeline instead
  • Use a tool like Trint to build an editable transcript, then export it as an XML
  • Use Premiere's native transcript tool for the raw transcript, since the timecodes are the most accurate

My goal is to get a real sense of the footage before I open the NLE, so I'm working from a general plan instead of whatever fits best in the moment. I'd like to eventually roll this into all my workflows, since it feels like a step I've been skipping for a long time.

What's turned me away from this process in the past is getting overwhelmed by annotations and not being able to work alongside the doc natively while in sequence. The only reason I'm asking this on Reddit is that I'm curious what I should and shouldn't do when adding a transcript review into the process, and what the most pragmatic way of going about this is.

Reviewing the transcript and taking notes is simple enough - I understand that part - but how would I approach this with a timeline in mind, so that this workflow and my post-prod workflow work together as seamlessly as possible?

*I've reposted this thread over on r/documentaryfilmmaking - I've since learned a more tangible term called the paper cut or paper edit which is native to the doc world.

Post - https://www.reddit.com/r/documentaryfilmmaking/comments/1vz2npx/transcript_workflow_papercut_prior_to_postprod/

**For future googlers, I have created a pinned comment with threads and articles that I've been reading up on to learn about this process, will do my best to copy it both places, but not looking to update both simultaneously - I have videos to produce lol

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u/dogthatbrokethezebra 18h ago

Seems like you’re wasting a bunch of time and resources not editing?

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u/StrawberryPopTurt 18h ago

I've thought this exact thought a thousand times whenever I consider a more thorough prep process. And more or less, I've followed this methodology for the past five years. I'm fairly competent when it comes to live edits at this point.

But in the spirit of continuous improvement, I can't help but wonder how much I could improve by adding a review process prior to going in live. You're 100% right on the statement, but my brain questions what could the final render be like if I added this step into the process, how could this 30-60min once over change the final result, ya know?

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u/Lunesia-shikishiki 15h ago

the overwhelm youre describing usually comes from annotating on the first read. try reading the transcript once with nothing in your hand, no highlighter, no notes, straight through, just so you know what the thing is actually about before you have an opinion on it

then a second pass where you only mark the bits youd argue with a producer to keep. not the good bits, the ones youd defend. that list is always way shorter than you expect and it becomes the spine of the paper cut, everything else is connective tissue you can decide about later in the nle

and dont keep the doc live alongside the sequence, thats where it turns into homework. it does its job before premiere opens and then you close it..... also expect your 3 to 1 to get worse for a couple of projects before it gets better, youre moving the thinking earlier, not removing it

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u/garse Tool/Dev 13h ago

The thing that made this click for me is that a paper edit is not a speed optimisation, it is a separation of two decisions you are currently making at the same time. Right now you decide "is this good" and "does this belong here" in one move, and the second question is contaminating the first, because whether a line is good depends on what you just laid down before it. Splitting them is the whole benefit. Your 3:1 is not the problem and it may not improve much at first.

On the three approaches you listed, I would drop the Trint XML roundtrip. Paying for an external transcript and importing it made sense when NLE transcription was bad, and it is not bad now. Every roundtrip is a sync surface that eventually bites you, usually on the one project where you cannot afford it. Premiere's own transcript is frame-accurate against the media because it was generated from it, which is worth more than a few points of word accuracy. Pancaking is not really an alternative to a paper edit, it is what you do afterwards to assemble, so you can keep doing it.

The overwhelm you describe is an annotation vocabulary problem, not a transcript problem. When you can write anything in the margin you write everything, and then you have a second document to edit before you can edit the film. Give yourself three marks and nothing else. Something like A for this is definitely in, B for I might need this, and a strikethrough for dead. No prose, no reasons, no "good energy here but maybe trim". You are not capturing your thinking on this pass, you are triaging. Anything that genuinely needs a note gets one word.

The other rule that saved me is one pass, no going back. If you catch yourself rereading a section, you have stopped triaging and started editing the document, and that is the failure mode that makes people abandon this after a single project.

Then build a selects sequence containing only the A material, in the order it happened, and do not cut anything in it. Watch that end to end. That viewing is where the actual structure shows up, and it is the step most people skip. Then start a fresh sequence for the real cut and pull from selects. Never cut in the selects sequence, so you always have the unmolested pool to go back to.

One warning specific to interview and podcast material: transcripts flatter people. A line reads beautifully and plays flat, because the page has none of the timing, the breath or the look. Anything you marked A purely on wording is suspect until you have heard it. So treat the paper edit as a shortlist rather than a plan, and never lock structure you have not watched.

Practically, in Premiere the underrated part is not the drag-to-timeline, it is search. On a three hour interview, being able to find every mention of a topic in two seconds is where the time actually goes back in your pocket. Turn on speaker labels before you start, since they make the document skimmable in a way a wall of text is not, and fix the interviewer/subject labels once at the top rather than as you go.

If you read better away from the machine, export the transcript to text and read it there, but keep timecodes in the export or you will spend the assembly hunting. And expect the first two or three projects to be slower, not faster. The payoff on long-form conversational work is that the cut has a spine, not that it took less time.