“Three business day turnaround” is a phrase that shows up on a lot of editing services, and it means something different on each one. On unlimited video editing it means this: you send a request, we send back a finished 9:16 cut within three business days, and the next one in your line starts. As many requests as you want for $229/wk, pause or cancel any week. This post is about what that cadence actually produces on a feed, because the arithmetic surprises people in both directions.
What a business day is
Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. A request that lands Monday morning is back by Thursday. A request that lands Thursday afternoon is back the following Tuesday. Weekends do not count, which is the same rule every editor you have worked with uses, whether they say so or not.
Three days is the outside edge, not the target. Most short pieces come back sooner. But the promise is three, and the promise is what you can plan around.
How the request lane works
One request is one finished piece: a single short vertical video, cut from footage you send or footage we shot. It is not a batch of ten clips from the same shoot, and it is not an open-ended “do something with this folder.”
The queue works like a lane with one car in it. You can line up as many requests as you want behind the active one, in the order you want them done. When the active one is delivered, the next one starts. You can reorder the line any time. What you cannot do is have three editors working on three of your pieces at once, because that is a different product at a different price.
“Unlimited” means the number of requests you can line up, not the number of editors on them. Your editor works the lane in order, as many weeks as you want it, and sends ideas for what to film next so the lane never runs dry.
The arithmetic for a month
Take a month with 22 business days. If every request takes the full three days and the next one starts the moment the last one lands, that is seven pieces in a month. If pieces come back in two days on average, it is closer to eleven. A reasonable planning number is eight to ten finished 9:16 videos a month from one lane.
That is two posts a week, every week, from footage your crews already filmed, for about $992 a month at the weekly rate. For most contractors, two posts a week is more than they have ever sustained, and it is enough to make the account look like a company that works every day.
What slows the lane down
Footage that has not arrived. The clock starts when we have everything, not when you send the request. A request with “footage coming Thursday” starts Thursday.
Requests that are really three requests. “Cut the kitchen reveal, the client interview, and the drone pass” is three pieces. Send them as three and they will come back as three, in order.
Revisions. A revision is a request. Send notes on a delivered cut through your portal and it takes the next slot in the lane like any other piece, with the same three business day turnaround. Keep them specific (the timestamp, the change) and they go fast.
Pausing. Pause any week you have nothing to cut and the lane simply stops. It starts again the week you turn it back on.
What speeds it up
A shot list on the request. “Open on the before shot, cut to the tear-off, end on the finished roof with the truck leaving” takes an editor straight to the cut. “Make something good from these” takes a day of guessing.
Vertical footage. Phone footage filmed in 9:16 drops straight onto the timeline. Horizontal footage has to be reframed shot by shot, and some shots do not survive it.
A standing format. Once we have cut four or five pieces for you, the style is set: your captions, your end card, your pacing. Later pieces go faster because nobody is deciding anything.
A shoot day in the bank. A local shoot day at $1,100/day produces enough raw footage to feed the lane for a month or more. The owner interview alone usually cuts into five or six short pieces.
When a single edit is the better fit
The lane is for a feed: planned, recurring, short. It is not the right tool for a three-minute brand film, a TV spot, or a one-off that needs a week of attention. Those are single edits, flat rate by runtime from $299, never hourly, with the same two revision rounds. A lot of clients run both: the single edit for the big piece, unlimited video editing for the twenty short pieces it turns into afterward.
A month on the lane, as a composite
A pool builder in the Austin metro, let’s say, sends a folder of phone clips from two installs on the first of the month, with a shot list for each. Request one, the first reveal, is back on the fourth. Request two, the second reveal, on the eighth. Then a crew clip, a financing explainer the owner recorded on his phone, a client answer to “what were you worried about,” and two more reveals from a shoot day the month before. By the thirtieth there are eight finished pieces, two a week, and the folder for next month is already half full.
That is the product. Not a number of edits. A cadence.
What to do next
If you have footage sitting on phones and nothing going out, the lane is the cheapest way to fix it, and the pricing page has it alongside everything else. If you are not sure whether your footage is usable, book a call and send us a few clips first. We will tell you what they would cut into.