Shoot phone footage that is easy to edit later

A clean edit usually starts before you open the editor. Footage with shaky framing, clipped starts or a noisy room takes far longer to fix than it takes to shoot well. These habits work on any phone and make every clip easier to cut.

Lock your settings before you press record

Pick one orientation for the whole shoot. Hold the phone vertically for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, and horizontally for YouTube or a website. Mixing the two means cropping or adding bars later.

Set the same frame rate and resolution for every clip in a project. 30 frames per second suits most talking and social video. If you plan to slow a moment down, shoot that clip at 60 and keep the rest at 30.

Tap and hold on your subject to lock focus and exposure, so the picture does not pulse brighter and darker as people move.

Leave handles at both ends

Start recording two or three seconds before the action, and keep rolling two or three seconds after it ends. Editors call these spare seconds handles.

Handles give you room for a transition, a fade or a cut on action. A clip that starts on the first word leaves nothing to trim, and a crossfade will eat into the speech.

Keep the camera steady

• Hold the phone with both hands and tuck your elbows against your body.
• Lean on a wall, a table or a door frame when you can.
• Walk with bent knees and small steps if you need to move.
• Use a cheap tripod or a stack of books for anything longer than a few seconds.

Steady footage looks more polished, and it lets you cut between shots without the jump feeling rough.

Get good sound first

Viewers forgive soft video more than bad audio. Get close to whoever is speaking, since the phone's mic picks up the room as much as the voice. Shoot away from fans, traffic and fridges. Soft furnishings such as curtains and sofas cut echo.

Record ten seconds of silence in each location before you leave. That room tone fills gaps when you cut out a pause, so the background does not drop to dead silence.

Shoot more angles than you think you need

For every main shot, grab a wide, a medium and a close-up. Then film a few seconds of hands, objects and surroundings to use as B-roll. Extra shots let you cover a jump cut, hide a mistake or show what someone is describing.

When you change angles, change them clearly. Two framings that are almost the same look like a mistake when cut together.

Watch the light

Face the light source, not away from it. A window in front of your subject gives soft, even light. A window behind them turns them into a silhouette. Avoid mixing daylight with warm indoor bulbs in one scene, because the colors will not match from shot to shot. If they still drift, the Color tab in DepCut lets you bring shots closer together.

Label clips as you go

Delete obvious bad takes on the phone straight away. Say the shot name out loud at the start of a clip, or clap once in front of the lens. The spike in the waveform makes it easy to find the start of each take on the timeline.

Put it into practice

Next time you shoot, add handles, record room tone and grab one extra angle per scene. Then bring the clips into DepCut and notice how much less trimming and fixing the edit needs.