this has been bugging me for a while. i shoot maybe 20-30 minutes of footage on a good session and by the time i cull it, sync it, color grade it, add music, do all the masking and whatever else, im spending like 6-7 hours minimum to put out a 2 minute video. i know some of that is just the nature of it but it feels like too long and my motivation dies halfway through.

using resolve mostly, which i actually really like but i feel like im not using it efficiently. i keep bouncing between the cut page and the edit page and i dont have a consistent process, sometimes i rough cut first, sometimes i start trying to grade things before the edit is locked which is a nightmare. anyone got a workflow they actually stick to that doesnt make you hate yourself by hour four

also the music thing, i never know when to pick the music. do you pick it first and cut to it or do you cut the visuals first

music first, always, at least for me. i know some people do it the other way but when i pick the track first everything else just falls into place faster. you can feel where the cuts want to go, where the energy builds, it kind of guides the whole thing. i wasted so much time cutting something together and then trying to find music that matched and it never quite worked.

for resolve specifically i stoped second guessing the cut page and just use it for the rough assembly now, its actually really good for fast culling if you use the keyboard shortcuts. then i move to edit page once i have something close to locked. and i do NOT touch the color page until the cut is done and ive watched it through at least twice. grading is the fun part so its kind of a reward for getting the boring stuff done first

6-7 hours for a 2 minute video is pretty normal depending on the complexity, i wouldnt beat yourself up too much. that said the thing that helped me most was just having a folder structure that i dont deviate from, raw footage in one place, selects in another, and i rate clips in resolve before i do anything else so im only working with the good stuff. saves a ton of time not having to skip over garbage clips during the edit. also if youre not using proxy files for 4k footage that could be slowing you down too, resolve makes it pretty easy to generate them