Editor

• Open the recording in the Edits app and generate captions right off the bat. The captions aren't for the final video yet — they're a visual map of when speech happens, so dead space shows up as gaps you can physically see.
• Go through the timeline without even watching: find each gap between spoken clips and drag the clip edge to close it. Usually the second (newer) clip carries the most dead space, so grab that one and shorten it.
• Don't cut words off the beginning. If you trim too tight you'll see the caption layer shrink — that means you clipped a word. Push right up to that limit and no further.
• While you're in there, watch for repeats: if the captions show the same phrase twice ("her great-grandfather… her great-grandfather"), listen to both, keep the better take, delete the other.
• Goal after this pass: the lines between spoken clips should all be very small.

• Play it back and listen for anything that isn't clean — a fifth-of-a-second stutter, a pause where a line was being read, a hesitation before a hard Italian word.
• Split the timeline at the stutter and bump the clip so it flows like the pause never happened. Hesitations before difficult words are the most common fix.
• Fumbled the middle of a sentence? Keep the good opening, cut the fumbled part, and drop in the reset take.
• Cut the tails too — the video should jump from the end of one word straight into the next. Most editors under-cut the ends.
• Come back to it with fresh eyes if you can; a second look the next day catches what the first missed.

When you've been stopping and editing, stopping and editing, you lose the feel of the full video. Do one complete run-through without touching anything. If it plays clean, the video is good and you move on to captions.

• Click the captions → Delete all captions. Then save — this is the clean, fully edited copy with no captions that we keep in Drive forever. Make sure it says it's downloading the clean copy.
• Now generate captions again. Known glitch: Edits generates three lines but the screen only fits two. Exit the project and re-enter — that fixes it. Verify it did.
• Open the script (Edit script) and proofread the whole thing. Names are the big one: "Giada" will come out as "Jada" — if the name is wrong on every caption, it's bad. Fix it.
• Hunt for anything AI won't hear cleanly: Italian words, foreign names (Le Cordon Bleu), proper nouns (Wolfgang Puck). Check the beginning and the end — errors hide at both.
• Once the script is clean, publish and save the captioned version.

The pipeline exists because three failures hit in one day: a video recorded for one date posted six days early from a swapped folder, a delivery came back missing captions, and a batch came back with broken audio. One root cause — nothing between "editor uploads" and "posting" verified that the right, finished file was in the right place. Posts are deliberately sequenced, so a wrong post doesn't just look sloppy, it burns a planned moment.

The delivery checklist — every video

• Correct file in the correct date folder, with the content calendar link verified.
• Captions on — the standard for ~90% of videos. Skipping captions is a deliberate choice that gets said out loud in the channel, never assumed.
• Audio checked start to finish, levels balanced across speakers.
• Final filename matches the calendar entry.
• If a video moves folders for any reason, the calendar links get fixed in the same sitting and a note goes in the social channel.

What happens after you deliver

• The Social Media Operations Specialist spot-checks deliveries the day they land — not on posting day — and flags problems back to you same day, so there is time to fix before the post date.
• Before posting each day, the video goes in the group chat for a same-day confirmation ("Posting this today, confirm"). Ten seconds of friction, zero wrong posts.
• Revision etiquette: feedback arrives as one consolidated pass per batch, bulleted per video. Apply the full pass and redeliver — no drip-feeding single fixes. If a note is unclear, ask before editing, not after.

• Best answer first. Lead every video with the strongest or funniest person. When testing someone new up front, note it — we are building a roster of who hooks viewers in the first 3 seconds.
• Cut back and forth between people. Alternating speakers makes thin footage feel full — two answers cut as four beats plays like a complete video.
• Cut the filler. Trim host acknowledgments ("appreciate that") but keep the laugh. Jump straight into the funny part of an answer; cut wind-up lines.
• Zoom on the speaker. When someone other than the CEO lands a line, the cut zooms to them.
• Cut weak segments entirely. If a clip is too short or flat to earn its screen time, it goes. No mercy inclusions.
• Balance audio across speakers — no one noticeably quieter.
• Overlays support, never cover. Pop-up imagery appears only after the person says the name, overlaid partially, never covering the full screen.
• One version per video for now — the two-version A/B test idea is parked.

• From your phone, go to Drive → Media → Green Screen Reels. Every video already has its own pre-made folder — find it.
• Upload two files: the clean no-caption edit and the captioned edit.
• Rename them clearly, with "Captions" in the captioned one: "Five Facts About Giada" and "Five Facts About Giada Captions". Open each to confirm which is which before naming. This is how the social media manager knows what he's grabbing.
• In Slack → Social Media, open the Green Screens canvas. Find the video on the planned list and paste the Drive folder link over it.
• Open the Content Calendar, find the video's row, and check it off. The row highlights — that's the signal it's 100% done and good to go.