AI Summary
The video documents a creator's experiment to find a quality YouTube editor within two hours, testing three freelancers at different price points. The creator evaluates their work based on specific criteria, including problem-solving skills, and reveals surprising results about cost versus performance.
Chapters
The creator hired an editing company that claimed to work with big YouTubers but delivered poor work, wasting hours and thousands of dollars.
The creator sets a two-hour timer to find an editor, using a freelance platform. Initially invites five editors, but only one replies unprofessionally.
To get more responses, the creator posts the job publicly, receiving many applications but most are irrelevant.
After waiting another day, four more responses come in from the originally invited editors, who understand the brief well.
With 20 minutes left, the creator picks three editors. They submit videos on time.
The creator looks for show of skills, understanding of shorts editing, and problem-solving ability. A sabotaged section tests the latter.
The first editor (cost: £25) uses purple text that is hard to read, has sloppy logo cutout, and leaves screenshots on screen too briefly. However, pacing is good.
The second editor (cost: £145) has music too loud, boring subtitles, random b-roll, and a slow zoom. The sabotaged section reuses old b-roll.
The third editor (cost: £65) nails all criteria: good pacing, effective subtitles, creative masking and animation, and solves the sabotaged section well.
After a week, the £25 and £145 videos get zero views, while the £65 video gets two views. The creator concludes that understanding editing basics is crucial.
Finding a good editor in under two hours is possible, but price doesn't guarantee quality. The best editor (£65) outperformed the cheapest and most expensive ones, emphasizing the importance of clear criteria and feedback.
Clickbait Check
90% Legit"The title promises a two-hour editor hunt and delivers exactly that, with real results and actionable insights."
Mentioned in this Video
Study Flashcards (5)
What three key things did the creator look for in an editor?
easy
Click to reveal answer
What three key things did the creator look for in an editor?
Show of skills to make a message more interesting, understanding of what works for editing shorts, and the ability to problem solve.
03:45
How much did the best-performing editor cost?
easy
Click to reveal answer
How much did the best-performing editor cost?
£65
08:30
What was the sabotaged section in the video?
medium
Click to reveal answer
What was the sabotaged section in the video?
A part where the creator intentionally didn't provide footage for the voiceover to test if editors would solve it themselves.
04:00
What was a common mistake in the first editor's video?
medium
Click to reveal answer
What was a common mistake in the first editor's video?
Using purple text that was hard to read and leaving screenshots on screen too briefly.
04:30
How many views did the £25 and £145 videos get after a week?
easy
Click to reveal answer
How many views did the £25 and £145 videos get after a week?
Zero views each.
09:00
💡 Key Takeaways
Bad Hiring Experience
Highlights the common pain point of hiring freelancers who overpromise and underdeliver.
Key Evaluation Criteria
Provides a clear framework for assessing video editors: skills, shorts understanding, and problem-solving.
03:45Best Editor's Techniques
Demonstrates effective editing: masking, animation, creative subtitles, and proper pacing.
07:30Price vs Performance
Shows that higher cost doesn't guarantee better results; the mid-priced editor outperformed.
09:00Full Transcript
i recently hired an editing company who claimed they've worked for some massive youtubers but when i got my first video back i felt embarrassed for them the worst thing wasn't their diabolical work though it was the hours i'd lost in onboarding and the thousands i'd spent for the privilege and it made me wonder could i actually find good youtube editors out there who could get work done fast well and affordably and is it possible to find
them without weeks of searching when realistically you only have two hours spare so i set off to find out and ended up discovering something that really surprised me that was not what i expected to get at that price and i'm gonna start the two hour countdown timer this that's the chair not me it's the chair where is it yeah okay so now i need to find some editors and because i don't know any i'm just gonna
use yes i beat the name because this isn't about the platform anyway when i've tried to hire on this website before a massive problem hit me about 30 seconds into posting the job because what i did was i put my application out to everyone on the platform which meant hundreds of people applied and most hadn't read the description at all so i gave myself one hell of an admin task to sort through all of the rubbish
that came back so this time i'm only going to invite the people who i think look good based on their profiles to avoid that headache so i invited five that looked great and awaited their response okay so one person has replied and our conversation didn't exactly fill me with confidence [Music] so [Music] the problem with sites like this is you don't actually know if the people you message are active so i could be waiting days for
them to reply they could have quit editing by now and joined the circus to spin plates on their head for all i know so what i'm going to do is revert back to my original strategy and just blast the job application out to anyone who wants to apply oh you're kidding i mean it's certainly an active platform what it means is i'm gonna have to go through and speed read all of these now it's just not
what i wanted and it's gonna waste a ton of time so let's just start the clock but i didn't instead i remembered some words of wisdom from my life coach patience daniel which meant i decided not to restart the two-hour timer and just to wait another day which was smart because when i returned i had four more responses from the people i'd originally messaged and they seemed to totally get what i was looking for in an
editor in fact after brief conversations with them i still had 20 minutes on my clock to pick three and it was actually a lot tougher than i expected the videos are now ready to watch and they were all sent in on time so let's have a look to find out if you can get quality speed and affordability from an editing hunt that took only 121 minutes try to guess which one was the cheapest or the most
expensive but i also want you to think about if they hit three of the key things i really cared about hidden within my extensive job brief and they were a show of skills to make a message more interesting an understanding of what works when it comes to editing shorts and the ability to problem solve now let me explain that last one because there's something i didn't tell you you see i've sabotaged a small section of this
video because i wanted to see how the editors dealt with problems when they were thrown at them would they work it out for themselves or would they come back and need me to spoon feed them the answers okay so here's the first one we're going to watch it then i'm going to give the feedback that i would have given the editor which can get pretty flippin gritty the reason that your youtube videos could be getting less
views that you might not expect google cloud vision is an ai that reads every piece of text on your thumbnail no matter how small it is tries to work out what your image is what category of content it might be in and it can even establish where photos were taken and who the person in them is it does this to help push the right content to the right people and to protect viewers why is that stopping
your videos getting views and can it impact any creator even mr beast well it's because of the last thing it looks at which you can see right here the ai tries to work out if content is safe and if it doesn't think it is it shuts it down so if it thinks your image is unsafe or that it's so cluttered the ai finds it impossible to work out what's going on in there it's potentially damaging your
videos performance and did you know all right poker face this purple text what they've done is they've gone and looked at my site and they've seen i used purple and green and they've tried to use it for branding but look it makes it really hard to read it and really sometimes you just need to keep it simple like white text just pops out more i think in this section here i'd like to have seen something way
more creative it feels a little like they got to the end and ran out of steam in the edit but that was the part i sabotaged and didn't give them any footage for the voice over so they didn't do a bad job there now this text doesn't work that great either because it gets lost in the screenshot it doesn't stick out what i do think work was the pace it kept going and it wasn't too fast
but at the same time wasn't too slow and then we've got this logo here can you see around the edge there it's like they tried to cut it out in photoshop and it's looking sloppy and this bit's important so when you're using screenshots there's often a tough balance between leaving it on the screen just enough for people to understand what it is versus slowing the video down with something quite boring and i think they just didn't
leave it on screen long enough there i think one round of feedback on this would have seen the video working really well it's a great start okay so the next video the reason that your youtube videos could be getting less views that you might not expect google cloud vision is an ai that reads every piece of text on your thumbnail no matter how small it is tries to work out what your image is what category of
content it might be in and it can even establish where photos were taken and who the person in them is it does this to help push the right content to the right people and to protect viewers but why is that stopping your videos getting views and can it impact any creator even mr beast well it's because of the last thing it looks at which you can see right here the ai tries to work out if content
is safe and if it doesn't think it is it shuts it down so if it thinks your image is unsafe or that it's so cluttered the ai finds it impossible to work out what's going on in it it's potentially damaging your videos performance and did you know the music's too loud it's competing with the voice a little bit so it has to come down subtitles it's just boring you just can't use subtitles like that on a
short so they just sort of appear and move in one line and it's lazy editing for shorts you really want to use them not just to help people read them but actually integrate them with part of your content and have some fun with them and then this bit here it's like just a still image and then text scrolling over the top of this image which kind of gets in the way and then this b-roll here was
a little bit random i like the playful nature but this is kind of the payoff moment so i really want to see more drama here oh and then this moment here so that was a really long zoom just speed it up a ton or just use a regular cut to go from a wide to a close because it just takes so long for that movement and whilst it's moving the viewer's not really going to be able
to read what it says so it's harder to understand and then the problem is the second it lands and stops it moves on so no one really has any idea what's just happened and people just can't digest that so now the bit that i sabotaged and the problem i have with this is they just reused some b-roll from a few seconds before and it wouldn't have taken very long to find something that worked better than that
that would have made the video less repetitive also i really want to see some sound effects here like as the brain fires up so for me i think this one feels rushed okay and now the third one the reason that your youtube videos could be getting less views that you might not expect google cloud vision is an ai that reads every piece of text on your phone now no matter how small it is tries to work
out what your image is what category of content it might be in and it can even establish where photos were taken and who the person in them is it does this to help push the right content to the right people and to protect viewers why is that stopping your videos getting views and can it impact any creator even mr beast well it's because of the last thing it looks at which you can see right here the
ai tries to work out if content is safe and if it doesn't think it is it shuts it down so if it thinks your image is unsafe or that it's so cluttered the ai finds it impossible to work out what's going on in it it's potentially damaging your video's performance and did you know yes all of those things i've just given feedback on the other two were solved in this video this person nailed it people often
edit screenshots badly because they just leave it on a wide like the viewer should just know where to look but when you edit you need to focus on the most important information to help make sense of the story they did a great job of drawing your eyes to the right place at the right time and the pacing was spot on so the viewer could digest the content too also i think the subtitles worked well they'd move
them slightly higher up the shot too now this is important if you want to repurpose shorts for tick-tock because the tiktok interface covers up any text it's lower down the screen so it shows me they got experience with this sort of thing and also they brought in the branding a little bit with the purple but they didn't let it get in the way of readability and then this subtle motion on things just brings them to life
a little bit and this part here tells me the editor is willing to go above and beyond because what they've done here is they've masked an image and then animated it behind me to give the shot depth and that takes time and then they've got creative emojis too and swiftly by switching between them and subtitles has made it a way more interesting watch and now the final test that i didn't tell you about so i've made
three three new youtube channels and i've just uploaded each short to a different one so i'm gonna give them a week and then i'm gonna come back and see which one performs the best but you're probably wondering which one cost what so let's have a look at that now the first video we checked out which i'm gonna give second place came in at a whopping 25 i mean that is incredible value the second which i'm going
to give last place was 145 and it definitely needed the most work doing on it and then the last video we watched which i'm gonna rate first place was 65 so can you find a good editor in under two hours yes you can but which one would get more views all right let's see how many views my investments got starting with the first one that came in at 25 pounds and that got zero views what about
the next one the 145 one that got zero views okay the 65 one two views that's what you're paying for baby am i surprised no if you want to hire an editor or even if you don't you really have to understand the basics of editing so you can get the right kind of feedback or you can just cut out all the common mistakes from your own content and that's why you should watch this video next where
i re-edit some of the viewers of this channel's content and transform all of the little mistakes that they make