Most people cut clips based on vibes. After editing thousands of hours of raw footage at ClipScale Media, we stopped doing that and built a checklist instead.

Before we touch the timeline, a moment has to pass at least one of these:

1. A strong emotional beat — shock, laughter, disbelief, tension

2. A hook in the first 2 seconds — bold statement, visual surprise, or a question

3. Stand-alone context — makes sense with zero prior knowledge of the stream/video

4. A punchline or payoff — something resolves by the end

If a moment doesn't hit at least one of these, it doesn't matter how "cool" it felt live — it won't retain. We scrub raw footage at 1.5-2x speed specifically hunting for these four signals, then only slow down to re-watch the marked timestamps. Turns a 2-hour stream into a 15-20 clip shortlist in under 30 minutes.

We put together a free course walking through our full process (finding clips → editing → packaging) if anyone wants the deeper breakdown — link on our page.