Contented Manager

27 services

Content Repurposing, Video and Audio

One recording, a dozen useful things.

Illustrated character Nora Kerrigan“I know where every piece is.”

What is video, audio and repurposing?

Video, audio and repurposing is the work of turning what a business says out loud, on camera or into a microphone, into words that are planned before recording and reused after it. It covers the script that is written before anyone presses record, the captions and transcripts that make the recording usable, and the articles, posts and guides that are cut from it afterwards. The camera and the microphone are not the hard part. The words are.

In practice it answers four questions. What should this video or episode say, in what order, and how long should it run? How does a person who cannot hear it, or is watching it silently on a phone, still get the point? What written page sits under the recording so that someone can find it, skim it and decide to press play? And once an hour has been recorded, how many other useful things can be made from it without recording again?

The output for the buyer is a set of files they own: scripts they can shoot, caption and subtitle files they can upload anywhere, transcripts they can quote from, and a plan that turns one recording into a month of published material. Nothing sits on my drive; it all goes into yours.

Sounds familiar?

  • “We recorded four webinars and did nothing with any of them.”
  • “The video looks great and nobody can tell what it is selling.”
  • “Producing enough material for every channel is impossible.”

What I do in video, audio and repurposing

Most businesses record something once, post it once, and move on. Everything in this group either makes that morning produce a better recording or makes the recording produce more than one thing.

Video writing

Video scripts are written for the ear and for a clock, with every sentence read aloud against a timer before you see it. Explainer video scripts take a complicated offer and make it plain in about ninety seconds. Promotional video scripts are shorter still and built around the one thing you want a viewer to remember. Product demo scripts show the product working in the order a buyer cares about, not the order the menu is laid out in. Training video scripts survive being watched at speed by someone who wants the answer, not the tour. Titles and descriptions are the text around the video, which is what most people read before deciding whether to watch. On-screen text and lower thirds carry the meaning for the majority who watch with the sound off. Interview questions and outlines are why one recorded conversation is usable and another is forty minutes of pleasantries.

Working with the footage

Video editing is coordinated through editors I have worked with for years; I write the brief, check the cut against the script and manage the revisions. Short-form cuts take a long recording and pull out the thirty-second moments worth posting on their own. Webinar and interview clips do the same for a sixty-minute session, finding the five minutes anyone will watch. Highlight reels are the showreel version for the top of a page or the start of a pitch. Captions are burned into the picture because most feeds play silently by default, and subtitles are proper timed files, checked by a person, so that a viewer who cannot hear still gets every word.

Podcast and audio

Podcast strategy starts with whether to begin a show at all, and I will say no when the honest answer is no: a show costs a morning a week for a year before it earns anything. If the answer is yes, episode outlines give an hour of conversation a shape so it goes somewhere. Show notes are the written page under each episode that makes it skimmable and findable. Episode titles and descriptions are the only text most listeners see before deciding to play. Transcripts are edited to be readable rather than dumped raw, and they are the raw material for everything in the next group. Podcast promotion copy is the set of posts and emails that gets an episode heard by someone beyond your existing listeners.

Repurposing

Content repurposing is the whole idea in one service: a single recording becomes a transcript, an article, a series of posts, a newsletter section and a page of answered questions. The narrower versions take one input and produce one output. Video to article turns a talk you have already given into a page people can find and read. Podcast to article rewrites an episode as a readable piece rather than a pasted transcript. Webinar to guide turns an hour of slides into a document people keep. Article to social series splits one article into a fortnight of posts that each stand alone. Interview to case study takes a recorded customer call and turns it into your most persuasive page. Report to executive summary cuts forty pages down to two without losing the finding.

How it is delivered

Every job is a fixed price, agreed in writing before anything is recorded or cut. A script or a set of show notes typically takes a week; a full repurposing programme from one recording runs two to three weeks; editing timescales are stated in the quote. You keep every file: scripts, caption files, transcripts, articles and the cut footage, in formats you can upload anywhere. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works. When the repurposing becomes a monthly routine, the publishing side of it is content operations, and that is priced separately.

What I do not sell here

Filming, sound recording, studio hire, animation and motion graphics. I write for the camera and manage the editor; I do not own a camera you would want to use. I also do not sell auto-generated captions passed off as checked ones, podcast launches for businesses that have not yet published ten written pages, or a "viral" short-form strategy. Most business video is watched by a few hundred people who matter, and it is written for them.

Everything under Video, Audio and Repurposing

27 services in 4 groups. Most people need three or four of them, not all 27 — part of the job is working out which.

On this page

  1. What it is
  2. What I do
  3. Video writing (8)
  4. Working with the footage (6)
  5. Podcast and audio (6)
  6. Repurposing (7)
  7. Vocabulary (26)
  8. Word game

Ask about repurposing & video

Video writing

8 services

Working with the footage

6 services

Podcast and audio

6 services

Repurposing

7 services

Video, Audio and Repurposing vocabulary

The 26 terms you will meet in a proposal, a report or a meeting about video, audio and repurposing, each in one or two plain sentences. Link to any of them.

Script
The words a presenter will say, written out in full and timed, so that the recording is short, in order, and can be captioned from the text.
Explainer video
A short video, usually under two minutes, that makes one offer or one process obvious to someone meeting it for the first time.
Demo video also: product demo
A recording of a product doing its job, ordered around what a buyer wants to check rather than around the menu structure.
Run time also: duration
How long a finished video or episode lasts. Set in the brief before the script is written, because every extra minute costs viewers.
Words per minute
The speaking pace a script is timed against. I read every draft aloud with a stopwatch rather than trusting a formula, because presenters differ and a rushed read loses the viewer.
Voiceover also: VO
Narration recorded separately and laid over pictures, as opposed to a presenter speaking on camera. Scripted more tightly because there is no face to carry it.
Talking head
A video of one person speaking to the camera. Cheap to make and easy to caption, and it lives or dies on the script.
B-roll
Supporting footage cut over the main recording: hands working, the premises, the product in use. It hides edits and stops a talking head becoming tiring.
Lower third
The text band in the bottom third of the picture that names the speaker, their role or the point being made. Written, not improvised at the edit.
On-screen text
Words placed in the picture so that a viewer with the sound off still follows. Most feeds play muted, so it often carries the whole message.
Hook
The first three to five seconds of a video, written to give a reason to keep watching before the viewer scrolls past.
Captions also: closed captions
The spoken words shown as text in the picture, in time with the speech. Burned in when they cannot be turned off, which is the usual choice for social feeds.
Subtitles
A separate timed text file uploaded alongside a video, which the viewer can switch on or off. Also the file used for a translated version.
SRT file
The common plain-text subtitle format: numbered blocks, each with a start time, an end time and the words. Accepted by nearly every video platform and player.
Transcript
The full written text of a recording. Edited for readability it becomes a quotable document and the starting point for articles and posts.
Clean verbatim
A transcript style that keeps every meaning but removes the ums, false starts and repetitions. The usual choice for anything a reader will see.
Timestamps also: chapter markers
Time markers in a transcript or show notes that let a reader jump to the part they want. Written as minutes and seconds beside each topic change.
Show notes
The written page published with a podcast episode: what it covers, who is on it, the main points, links mentioned and where each topic starts.
Episode outline
The one-page structure a host records against: the opening, the three or four segments, the questions in each, and how the episode ends.
Cold open
Starting an episode or video with a strong moment from later in the recording, before any introduction, so the listener hears the best part first.
Highlight reel also: showreel
A short cut of the best moments from one or more recordings, made for the top of a web page, a pitch or a trade-show screen.
Short-form cut also: clip
A clip of under a minute lifted from a longer recording and finished so it makes sense on its own, usually with captions and a title card.
Webinar
A presentation delivered online to a live audience, usually with slides. Recorded, it is one of the richest sources for repurposed material.
Repurposing also: atomisation
Making several published pieces from one recording or document: transcript, article, posts, newsletter and answered questions, each finished for its own place.
Pull quote
A short, quotable sentence lifted from a recording or article and set apart, used as a post, a graphic or a heading in the repurposed version.
Aspect ratio
The shape of the picture: wide for a web page, tall for a phone feed, square for some social placements. Decided before filming, because a crop later loses the framing.

Test yourself on video, audio and repurposing

Four short games built from the vocabulary above. Nothing is recorded, nobody is watching, and the glossary is right there if you get stuck.

The word games need JavaScript. The glossary above has every term they use.

How it actually runs

The same four steps whatever the work is.

  1. A conversation

    Half an hour. What you sell, who buys it, and what is not working. No charge and no deck.

  2. A fixed number

    Scope and price in writing before anything starts. It does not change without you agreeing first.

  3. The work

    I do it, or I coach your person through it, or I bring in and manage the specialist it needs.

  4. Something you keep

    Every engagement ends with a document, a system or a trained person — not a dependency on me.

What usually comes with this

Three things that sit next to video, audio and repurposing often enough to be worth a look.

Talk about repurposing & video See what it costs