How to choose the best take of every line in a video

How do editors choose the best take?

Editors choose the best take by watching every take of a line against the script, keeping the one that says it right, sounds right and looks right, and then checking that it still cuts with the lines around it. On a film set, the script supervisor marks the takes the director liked so the editor starts from those. On a solo shoot, you are the director, the supervisor and the editor, and the job is the same.

How to pick the best take comes down to three habits:

• Judge the line, not the take. A take where the first half sings and the second half stumbles is often worth using for the first half.
• Watch with the sound on. A perfect face over a muddy word is not a perfect take.
• Choose the join, not only the line. The best reading of line 12 is no use if the cut into it lands on a blink or a jump in the light.

The last habit is the one people skip, because checking every join by hand is slow. A 34-line script read six times has more combinations than anyone could ever audition.

What makes a good take?

A good take says the whole line as written, without stumbles, clearly, with your face in frame and your eyes open, and it fits the takes beside it. This is what Sharpy reads in every attempt:

Emphasis is the subtle one. A reading that leans on "the", "of" or "is" sounds sing-song, so Sharpy counts it against that take. It does not decide which word you should stress; that is the writer's and the editor's call. Pointing words such as "this" are left alone, because "do this instead" is stressed on purpose.

How does Sharpy choose the best take?

Record multiple takes of each line, three or six, or read the whole piece back to back several times, in one file or several. Then:

1. Give Sharpy the script and every recording. Ask the agent, which can run every Sharpy command, or use the command line.
2. Let it read every attempt. It reads the words, faces, eyes, movement, levels and sounds of each recording, on your Mac.
3. Let it choose the whole path. It picks one take per line so that the piece works as a whole, then cuts it.
4. Judge the cuts first. The first render is picture and sound only, with no captions, cards or grade, so you can answer "are the cuts right?" before anything else.
5. Read the reasons. The Why tab (⇧⌘Y) lists every cut with the basis it was made on and how strong that basis is.

On a test reel, a 34-line script spread across two recordings, Sharpy found 170 attempts. Reading them all and choosing took 13 minutes 32 seconds on the base Mac mini M4 with 16 GB, and the render itself 13.1 seconds. All 34 clips landed within 16 milliseconds of their chosen cut points, half a frame.

Inside one recording, the words view does the same for a line said more than once. Each attempt gets a numbered chip: click one to play it and keep it, then choose Cut the others. The agent chooses with review_words. How to edit video by editing text covers that list in full.

Why choose for the whole piece, not line by line?

Because the cuts are what the viewer notices. The best reading of each line, taken alone, can put a jump in the light, a change of room tone or a different shirt collar at every join. Sharpy keeps the room, the microphone, the light and what you are wearing continuous across recordings, and prefers joins hidden by movement, so a cut lands while you turn or gesture.

On that reel, 11 of the 34 lines in the finished cut were not the best reading of that line alone. Each was given up for a cleaner join. When one take of a line has a real problem, such as a missing word or a blink nothing can cut around, no amount of smoothness elsewhere outweighs it. If every take has the problem, the line is still used and the report names it.

Why does Sharpy never cut on a blink?

Because a cut that lands on shut eyes looks like a mistake even when nobody can say why. A blink's shut phase lasts about 100 to 150 milliseconds and people blink 15 to 20 times a minute, so ordinary blinking fills about 6% of a take. That is plenty of chances for a cut point to land on one.

Sharpy reads your eyes many times a second, measured against your own open eye rather than a typical one, and every render checks every join frame by frame. A cut point may move a little into the spare frames either side, never into a word, to find an open eye. If it cannot, another take is chosen. On a test recording, all 33 joins landed on an open eye, with no eyes-shut stretch anywhere.

The same care goes into the sound at each join. A breath is cleared from the head of a clip, the last consonant of a line is kept, and a clip never ends on a word that is just starting. Nothing is invented either: a word missing from every take is one you chose not to say, and Sharpy never puts words in your mouth.

What should you check before you export?

• Play every join. Watch the cut points at full speed, listening as much as looking.
• Read any named fault. If the report names a problem nothing could edit around, decide whether to keep that line or record it again.
• Overrule what you disagree with. Pick another attempt on its chip, or ask the agent. When you undo a step the agent made, it keeps that as a correction and reads it before proposing again.

Next, editing by hand in Sharpy covers the timeline, the keys and the trims for the cuts you want to make yourself.