Video editing is priced by three things, and finished runtime is not one of them. What drives the number is how much footage has to be watched, how many rounds are included, and how many deliverables come out the other end. A 60-second video cut from twenty minutes of footage with two rounds and nine format versions is a different job from a 60-second video cut from three clean takes with one deliverable, and quotes that differ tenfold usually differ on exactly that.
We are not publishing editor day rates. They vary by market, seniority, and format, and no checkable average exists. What follows is the structure, so you can read a quote and know what you are buying.
The three cost drivers
Footage volume. Editing time scales with material reviewed, not with output length. Ten hours of interview for a two-minute film is a large job; the two minutes is the small part. This is the number to state when asking for a quote, and the one clients most often omit.
Revision rounds. Where editing budgets actually die. Two rounds is standard, each additional round is a re-cut, and unbounded revision turns a fixed price into an hourly job with no hourly rate. See how to scope a creative project.
Deliverable count. "One video" arrives as nine files once aspect ratios, cutdowns, captioned and silent versions are counted. Versioning is priced per version because it is per-version work, and reframing 16:9 to 9:16 by hand is not free. See what is a deliverables list.
Secondary drivers that appear as line items: colour grading, sound design and mix, motion graphics and titles, music licensing, and subtitling.
What AI now absorbs
The parts that are mechanical rather than judgmental.
Missing shots. The gap found at rough cut used to mean a reshoot, a compromise, or a stock purchase. If the gap is context or atmosphere, it is now a generation: an 8-second Veo 3.1 Lite clip silent is 33 credits, about $0.33 at pack rate.
Scratch narration for timing. ElevenLabs TTS at 13 credits per 1,000 characters, so a full 60-second read is about $0.13 and the edit can be timed on day one rather than after a voice session. See what is a scratch track.
Temp and final music beds. Lyria 2 at 13 credits, MiniMax Music v2 at 5, so auditioning ten beds against the actual cut costs about a dollar.
Upscaling and finishing. An image upscale is 13 credits; Topaz precision work runs 11 credits per 24-megapixel block.
Total generation spend on a typical short-form edit lands in the tens of credits, meaning under a dollar. It is not a meaningful budget line any more, which is exactly why it does not reduce the quote much.
What still bills by the hour
Watching the footage. Unchanged, and it is the largest block on most jobs.
Structure. Deciding the order, what to cut, and where the piece breathes. This is the craft and it is not automatable in any way that produces work worth paying for.
Rounds. Client feedback still takes a human to interpret, reconcile, and apply.
Sound. A real mix is skilled work and the difference between amateur and professional video is more often audio than picture.
So the honest expectation when asking for a discount because "you can use AI": the production gaps got cheap, the editing did not. A quote that dropped by 60% is a quote for a different job.
How to get a comparable quote
Give the editor four numbers up front: hours of footage, finished runtime, number of deliverables with their formats, and rounds included. Ask for the price broken into edit, versioning, colour, sound, and music. Single-number quotes cannot be compared to each other, and the cheapest one is usually the one that assumed one deliverable and one round.
FAQ
How much does it cost to edit a 60-second video? Depends almost entirely on footage volume, rounds, and deliverable count rather than on the 60 seconds. Ask for a quote against those four numbers.
Is AI video editing cheaper? It absorbs the gaps, the scratch audio, and the temp music, which are small line items. The large line item is the editor's time watching and structuring, and that is unchanged.
Should I supply my own footage organised? Yes, and it genuinely reduces the quote. Labelled, synced, and pre-selected footage removes hours of the most expensive block. See how to organize creative assets.
Cheap generation fills the gaps; it does not cut the piece. The 8frame canvas is free and unlimited, and generation is paid from $19/month.