Multi-Platform Delivery
A finished video is rarely one file. A single campaign usually ships in three aspect ratios, at two or three durations, with and without burned-in captions, and to platforms whose specifications quietly disagree with each other.
Frame for the crop from the start
Reframing a finished 16:9 edit into 9:16 is a salvage operation. Shooting with a centre-safe area in mind, and keeping the important action inside it, means the vertical cut is a decision rather than a rescue.
Captions are a deliverable, not a favour
Some platforms burn captions in, some read a sidecar file, and some do both badly. Produce a clean SRT as part of the edit and treat the burned-in version as a separate render, so a copy change does not mean a re-export of everything.
“The specification is not the hard part. Keeping track of which of the nineteen files is the approved one is the hard part.”
Name files so a stranger can use them
- Project, then cut, then ratio, then version
- Dates in ISO order so they sort correctly
- No spaces, no client initials, no 'final-final'
- One folder per delivery round, never per person
Export once, transcode many
Render a single high-bitrate master and derive every platform file from it. Re-exporting from the timeline for each destination multiplies the chance that one of them quietly carries an older grade or an unmuted scratch track.