A checklist for reviewing your own edit before you publish

You know what your video is supposed to say, so your eyes fill in whatever is missing. A fixed checklist makes you look at what the video shows. Run these checks in order every time, and keep the list next to the editor.

Check the opening and the cuts

Click the skip-back button to the left of Play (its accessible name is Back to start), then press Space to play. Watch the first moment on its own and ask whether it shows or says the point.

Use the keyboard to move through the cuts:

• The Down arrow jumps to the next clip edge and the Up arrow to the previous one, counting the start and end of every video and audio clip.
• The Left and Right arrow keys step one frame while paused. Hold Shift to step one second.
• S splits and Ctrl+Z or ⌘Z undoes, so a fix takes a few seconds.

At each cut, look for a flash of the wrong frame, a word clipped at the edge, or a gap you meant to close. Right-click an empty space in a row and choose Remove empty space to close a gap.

Check the words

Open Subtitles and the Content tab, and read the transcript from top to bottom. Click a timestamp to jump to a line you doubt, then play it. Fix a wrong word by clicking it and typing. Names and product terms are the usual trouble.

Then open Options and confirm Show subtitles is on. Check that the captions sit clear of the areas the platform covers, which the post preview in a later step makes visible.

Check the sound

Play the video start to finish with your eyes on the timeline. Is the voice clear over the music? Select the music clip and use Volume and Fade out in the right panel until it sits under speech. If a voiceover is on the soundtrack, Duck others in its Duck tab lowers everything else while it plays. Listen once on headphones and once on a phone speaker.

Check it as a post

Press Ctrl+E or ⌘E, or click Export. Choose Draft for a check, which the dialog labels the fastest render, and click Export video. When the file lands in the Exports list under Media, click it to open Preview as a post.

• It starts muted, so you see the sound-off version first. Use the speaker button at the top left to listen.
• The TikTok, Instagram and YouTube tabs draw a mock-up of each app's buttons, names and captions over your video.
• Original plays the file at its own frame shape.
• The preview loops, so you can see how the end hands back to the start.

Look for titles under a button, captions under the caption block, and faces behind overlays. Fix them in the project and export again.

Check the post text

Open Details. Read the Caption with the first line in mind: it should carry the hook. Check the Tags and the Sound title. The counter under Copy caption + tags shows how much of the caption limit you have used, and it counts the tags too.

Try it on your own footage

Open DepCut, take a finished edit, and run all five checks once. Keep the list for the next video.