what is good price for video editing?

[Joshua White]

Hi all,
I'm entry level, producing a series of short 3-5 minute video clips to distribute on the web. I need to hire a video editing specialist to edit raw footage & music into clips for me. Editing video myself is giving me amateur day results. I'm gonna start posting a job opportunity on job boards & craigslist to edit my footage for me on their own computer system. It would be a good part time opportunity for a film student in the New York City area.

What would be a good price to offer a video editing job such as this? I would like to produce up to a couple hundred short clips, in batches of a few dozen a time over several months. Also how long does it take to capture, edit & encode a 5 minute clip for someone that knows what they're doing?

thanks in advance for any thoughts.

[Glenn Chan]

If the editor wants to make a decent living, he/she would need to charge around $40/hr for their billable hours. When you factor in the cost of equipment, non-billable hours, etc. their effective hourly wage would be somewhere around half that. Of course, those factors can range widely. i.e. their equipment may be more expensive. On longer jobs, the ratio between billable:unbillable hours will likely be different.

There are editors who will work at a wide range of rates (from free to $200/hr; incl. the suite, it can go up to $1000/hr). And at a particular rate, they will vary in talent and in how well they work with people and how professional they are.

The $40/hr figure is fairly arbitrary.

2- As the person paying, you generally want to charge a flat rate. Which is, in a way, lower.

Also how long does it take to capture, edit & encode a 5 minute clip for someone that knows what they're doing?

That depends on the project, and how many client revisions there are.

One rule of thumb is 1 hour editing for every finished minute.