Source footage

The term is editing shorthand for everything that exists before a cut is made. In a studio it means camera originals and audio stems. For a clipper it usually means a long video file, often horizontal, with the complete conversation or broadcast intact, from which short vertical moments are selected, reframed, and captioned.

It matters because it sets the ceiling on every clip. A source recorded at high resolution with clean audio and, ideally, separate camera angles can be reframed tightly and still look sharp, while a compressed download of someone else's upload softens every time it is recut. It also matters for eligibility: campaign briefs typically require clips to be cut from the footage they provide, not from clips already posted elsewhere.

The nuance is rights. Owning a copy of a file is not the same as having permission to use it. Campaign supplied footage comes with the brief's terms, a creator's published clipping policy grants a limited permission, and anything else needs a licence. Broadcast footage, music, and other creators' edits are the usual places where clippers get into trouble by treating availability as permission.

In a workflow the source is imported once, scanned for moments, and then cut many times. Tools that work from the full recording let one import produce a whole week of clips, and keeping the original file means every clip can be recut at full quality when a different opening or framing is needed later.