12 - Removing Time

About this video

This is a hands-on editing session in which the editor tightens footage of a presenter making a banana split, demonstrating how to ‘remove time’ and fix mistakes purely in the edit. Working clip by clip, he cuts out a sniffle, repeated phrasing (‘we’ve got, oh, we’ve got’), and stumbles around introducing the unicorn cotton candy ice cream, using cuts he marks with Control+Shift+B and Control+B. Because the presenter’s mouth isn’t visible in an out-of-focus ice cream shot, he explains the clip doesn’t need perfect sync, so he can shift and repurpose footage — even letting the sound of an ice cream lid hitting the counter stand in for the presenter setting the tub down — and he trims around the line to keep the fun ‘Woo! There’s some color for you’ reaction. He repeatedly splices phrases to rewrite what the presenter appears to say, combining fragments into ‘I’m going to go ahead and put a couple of scoops into our bowl here’ rather than keeping every repeated take, and he notes you can rewrite what people are saying just with the edit and that it happens all the time. To hide the removed time, he cuts to the second camera whenever a large chunk is removed, resets that clip’s position and size to fill the screen, disables a second-camera clip with V when it isn’t needed, and uses an L cut so audio bridges the picture change — ‘magic what you can do with an L cut.’ He also cuts whole actions the audience can infer, such as extra ice cream scooping, because everyone understands what happened. Throughout he advises not spending too much time on any one fix — ‘don’t spend your entire day working on 3 seconds of the project’ — to keep it loose and keep moving, and notes you can ‘pretty mercilessly cut things out’ to make a shorter, punchier video.

Key takeaways

• Remove sniffles, repeated phrases, and stumbles with cuts (marked here with Control+Shift+B and Control+B) and splice fragments together to rewrite what the presenter appears to say
• Hide large time removals by cutting to the second camera, resetting the clip’s position and size to fill the screen, and toggling that camera clip on or off with V
• Use an L cut so the audio carries across the picture change, making bridged phrases like ‘a couple of scoops into our bowl here’ sound continuous
• When the speaker’s mouth isn’t visible, sync can be loosened — out-of-focus footage can be shifted or repurposed, and an incidental sound like a lid hitting the counter can cover an action
• Cut actions the audience can infer, like extra scooping, and keep moving: spending too long on a few seconds is a trap, and merciless cutting makes the video shorter and punchier

Episode details: published January 7, 2026 · 12:05 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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