Edit audio or video recordings
Little of this can be handed to software today.
Software can assemble the case and recommend an answer, and that is genuinely useful. The decision stays with a person because someone has to be accountable for it. Treating the recommendation as the decision is how automation projects fail.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Judgment, authorisation and strategy |
| Jobs that do it | 7 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Models and routing |
| O*NET activity | Making Decisions and Solving Problems (4.A.2.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 7 occupations that perform it.
- Cut and edit film or tape to integrate component parts into desired sequences.
- Prepare copy and edit tape so that material is ready for broadcasting.
- Mix, cut, or sample recorded music using DJ controllers, CDJs, or DJ mixers.
- Record and edit audio material, such as movie soundtracks, using audio recording and editing equipment.
- Edit broadcast material electronically, using computers.
- Edit video for broadcast productions, including non-linear editing.
- Cut shot sequences to different angles at specific points in scenes, making each individual cut as fluid and seamless as possible.
- Edit videotapes by erasing and removing portions of programs and adding video or sound as required.
- Edit films and videotapes to insert music, dialogue, and sound effects, to arrange films into sequences, and to correct errors, using editing equipment.
- Select and combine the most effective shots of each scene to form a logical and smoothly running story.
- Organize and string together raw footage into a continuous whole according to scripts or the instructions of directors and producers.
- Set up and operate computer editing systems, electronic titling systems, video switching equipment, and digital video effects units to produce a final product.
- Manipulate plot, score, sound, and graphics to make the parts into a continuous whole, working closely with people in audio, visual, music, optical, or special effects departments.
- Trim film segments to specified lengths and reassemble segments in sequences that present stories with maximum effect.
- Piece sounds together to develop film soundtracks.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for judgment, authorisation and strategy, and what it costs.
There is nothing here worth buying beyond a good assistant. Software assembles the case and recommends an answer, which any $20 assistant already does; the decision is yours, and no product on this page changes that.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
7 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Alter audio or video recordings”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Mix sound inputs | 3 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.