Text-based editing: definition and examples

What is Text-based editing?

Text-based editing is a video editing approach where the software generates a transcript of the video and lets the editor work on that transcript like a document. Deleting, trimming, or rearranging words in the text applies the matching changes to the video automatically.

When you'd use it

1. 1When you want to cut a recorded interview by deleting lines from a transcript.
2. 2When the speaker's content is strong but the delivery needs selective trimming.
3. 3When multiple editors need to review footage and mark cuts without touching a timeline.
4. 4When you want to rearrange the order of spoken points without scrubbing through video.
5. 5When captions need to match the final edit and you want both to update from the same source.

Example

An interviewer records a 30-minute conversation and uses text-based editing to cut it to 8 minutes by deleting paragraphs from the transcript, then exports the cut to a timeline editor to add B-roll and titles. The structural edit takes about 25 minutes, compared to an estimated 90 minutes on a traditional timeline.

Use cases

1. 1Cutting a long interview down to its strongest answers by deleting transcript lines.
2. 2Reordering a talking-head explanation so the most important point leads, by rearranging text.
3. 3Trimming a product demo by highlighting and removing sections of the auto-generated transcript.

Related terms