Select complete moments
Start with a candidate window that includes generous handles. Review the setup, action, and payoff. A transcript can reveal quotable lines, but the picture may contain the evidence, reaction, or qualifier that makes the excerpt understandable.
Use source-relative timecodes and a stable asset ID. Mark why the moment matters, who selected it, and which review is still required. Candidates and approved clips should not share the same public feed.
Create one clean master
Approve the editorial boundaries before producing several aspect ratios. The master should contain accurate audio, corrected captions, and minimal source-agnostic graphics. It should not be locked to one social destination or covered in platform-specific labels.
From that master, create vertical, square, and landscape variants with explicit roles. Review every crop. Automated face tracking can miss a second speaker, product, chart, ball, or demonstration.
Package the text and media together
Publish the rendered file with title, summary, transcript excerpt, duration, dimensions, thumbnail, language, caption asset, source timing, and stable GUID. Keep suggested social hooks separate from the canonical description.
Record a checksum and render profile for reproducibility. A future editor should be able to correct a name or produce a new format without reverse-engineering a downloaded post.
Validate the real output
Watch the exact exported files on desktop and phone-sized previews. Confirm the first and last frames, captions, audio, crop, graphics, and color. Then fetch the hosted assets as an unauthenticated consumer and verify headers, byte lengths, and seeking.
A technically successful export is not automatically a publishable clip. Final approval should include context, rights, privacy, and destination fit.
