How Much Does In-House Video Editing Cost?
The real cost of in-house editing is not the editor's salary. It is the hours, the rate, and everyone in the approval chain. Here is the formula.
How much does it cost to edit a video in-house?
Cost per video is the fully loaded hourly rate, times the average hours to edit one video, times the number of people in the editing and approval workflow. A team with a $50 loaded rate, two hours of editing, and five people in the workflow spends roughly $100 in direct labor per video before revisions. Multiply by annual volume and you have your direct cost.
What goes into the loaded hourly rate?
Not just salary. A fully loaded rate includes benefits, payroll costs, software, hardware, and overhead. For most enterprises the loaded rate is well above the headline salary divided by hours, which is why back-of-envelope estimates understate the true cost.
Why the review chain is the hidden cost
The single most underestimated input is the number of people in the workflow. Each editor, reviewer, and approver adds time, and that time repeats on every video. A five-person review chain does not just add five sets of opinions. It multiplies the labor cost of every single video you produce. You can model this directly in the enterprise video ROI calculator.
What about revisions?
Open-ended revision cycles are where the real money goes. The first cut is predictable. Rounds three, four, and five are not, and they extend turnaround as well as cost. Defining revision rounds up front is one of the cheapest ways to cut both.
In-house, agency, or subscription?
In-house editing makes sense at low volume, but cost scales with output and an in-house team caps out as demand rises. Above a certain volume, a subscription or partner model is cheaper per video because the fixed setup is reused. The trade-off is the same one in how to calculate the cost of video delays, and the upside side is in the video ROI calculator.
Where to start
Calculate your true cost per video using the formula above, including everyone in the chain. Then run the enterprise video ROI calculator to see how it compounds across a year, and read what a good turnaround time looks like.
