Video Editing Terms for Clients: A Plain Glossary for Better Notes
A plain glossary of video editing terms for clients, sorted by the notes they already try to give, and why pointing at the frame often beats learning any jargon at all.
Video editing terms for clients get explained to the wrong person, to be very honest, because most write-ups assume the client secretly wants to become a junior editor. So you get these giant glossaries explaining codecs and keyframes and seventy other things, right, and the marketing manager reads two lines and goes back to typing "can we make it pop a bit more" into WhatsApp at eleven at night.
I run a video editing agency alongside PlayPause, and after onboarding a lot of founders and brand managers I can tell you the vocabulary gap is really really real, but the fix is much smaller than those glossaries suggest. A client needs around thirty words, grouped by the kind of note they're already trying to give, plus permission to skip the words completely and just point at the screen.
So this is the list I actually hand over, sorted the way clients think about a video rather than the way editors think about a timeline, along with how I share it so it doesn't die in an inbox.
Why shared vocabulary cuts revision rounds
Almost every revision round in my agency that goes sideways starts the same way, right, the client writes a note that means one thing to them and something quite different to the editor. For instance, "the ending feels slow" could mean the last shot holds too long, or the music fades out forever, or the call to action arrives late, and each of those is a different fix.
The catch here is that nobody is doing anything wrong, because describing a feeling is the client's job and turning it into an edit decision is the editor's, and the round only gets wasted when that translation happens silently inside the editor's head.
I've written before about feedback from non-editor brand managers and about vague feedback that stalls approvals, and a glossary is the cheap, boring piece that sits upstream of both, right. I hand it over in the same week as the creative brief, because the brief says how the video should feel and the glossary gives the client words for when it doesn't.
Clients describe feelings and editors make decisions, and a shared handful of words lets one turn into the other without a wasted round.
Terms for timing and pacing
Pacing is the thing clients feel first, so most of their notes land here, right, usually about where one shot ends or how long another one stays.
A cut is the point where one shot ends and the next begins. When a client says a section feels jumpy, they're usually reacting to a cut that lands a beat early or late, so "the cut at 0:42 feels early" is already a massive upgrade over "this part is weird".
A hold is how long a shot stays on screen before the next cut, and "hold longer on the product" is one of the most useful notes a client can give, because it says exactly what to change.
A jump cut is a cut between two shots with nearly the same framing, so the person seems to skip forward. On a talking head YouTube video it's a deliberate style, while in a polished brand film it usually reads as a mistake.
In a J-cut you hear the next shot before you see it, and in an L-cut the sound of the current shot carries over the next picture. Clients never ask for these by name, right, but they describe them constantly as "the change feels abrupt".
B-roll is the supporting footage over an interview or voiceover, like product close-ups, the team at work, hands on a keyboard and so on. "More B-roll here, this is just a talking face" is the note I'd teach first if I could only teach one.
A frame is a single still image, and video plays at a frame rate like 24 or 30 frames per second, which is why "one frame early" is a genuine note. SMPTE timecode is the hours, minutes, seconds and frames clock labelling each of those frames, and quoting a timestamp makes a note almost impossible to misread.
Terms for sound and music
Sound is where clients struggle the most, right, because they can hear that something is off but have almost no words for it, so every sound note arrives as "the audio is weird".
The mix is the overall balance of everything you hear, and levels are how loud each piece is inside it. "The music is too loud under the voice" is a levels note, and it's by far the most common sound note I get.
Ducking is the music dipping whenever someone speaks and coming back up in the gaps, so if a client says the music "fights" the speaker, they're usually asking for more of it.
VO is voiceover, the narration recorded separately from the picture, and SFX are sound effects like whooshes and clicks, so a client who wants a sound on a transition can ask for one.
The music bed is the track running quietly under the whole piece, and a sting is a short musical hit that punctuates one moment, often the logo at the end.
Room tone is the natural background hum of the space where something was recorded. When it's missing after a cut, clients hear a dead gap and say "the sound drops out", which is a quick fix once you know what they mean.
Terms for colour and look
Colour notes come in two flavours, technically wrong and simply not to taste, and it helps a lot when clients know which one they're giving.
Colour correction is fixing problems so footage looks natural and consistent, like matching two cameras or rescuing a shot that came out too dark. The colour grade is the creative look on top of that, warm and golden or cool and moody, and when a client says a video "feels cheap", I'm pretty sure they're usually reacting to the grade rather than the edit.
Exposure is how bright the image is overall, and contrast is the gap between the darkest and brightest parts. "Crushed blacks" means the shadows have gone solid black and lost detail, which clients notice on dark hair or a black product.
White balance is whether whites actually look white or drift towards blue or orange, so "everyone looks a bit orange" and "the office looks cold" are both white balance notes, right, even though they sound unrelated.
Skin tones get their own word because viewers judge them fastest, so "skin looks off" is a completely valid note even when the rest of the grade looks gorgeous.
A LUT is a preset colour transform an editor applies to reach a look quickly, so if it shows up in our replies, read it as a starting look that still gets adjusted.
Terms for text, graphics and captions
Text is where clients are usually at their most precise, because it's their brand and their wording on the screen.
A lower third is the name and title graphic in the bottom portion of the frame when someone appears on screen, and "the lower third is on too short to read" is a perfect note. Supers cover any other text laid over the footage, like a stat or a key line from the interview.
A title card is a full-screen text moment, usually at the start, and an end card is the closing frame with the logo and call to action.
Burned-in captions are part of the picture and always visible, while closed captions sit in a separate file, usually an SRT, that viewers switch on or off. On the Agency plan and up, PlayPause gives you AI transcription with a clickable transcript and SRT export, so the client can click a line and flag a misspelt name before anything gets burned in.
The safe zone is the part of the frame that won't be covered by platform buttons, and on vertical video the bottom and right edges are basically taken by the app's own interface, right, so text has to sit inside it.
- Cut and hold for timing notes
- B-roll for any section that feels like a talking face
- Ducking and levels for music fighting the voice
- Colour grade for anything that feels cheap
- Lower third and safe zone for text
How clients describe video changes, translated
Here's a typical round, and to be clear it's a composite I wrote for this post, not one client's email. Say it's a sixty-second launch video for a skincare brand and the first note arrives in chat as "intro is slow, music is a lot, colours feel off and I can't read the name", right, four complaints and no timestamps.
With the glossary open, the same client splits that into four notes that each point at one fix. The slow intro becomes "hold less on the opening wide shot, cut at 0:06 instead of 0:09", and the music becomes "duck the music bed under the VO from 0:10 to 0:45". The colour line turns into "white balance on the interview reads orange and skin tones look flushed", while the name turns into "keep the lower third on for three seconds and lift it inside the safe zone".
Each of those lands in one part of the timeline with one clear direction, so the editor fixes all four in a single pass instead of discovering three of them after the second version.
When pointing at the frame beats any glossary
All of that is useful and I still hand it over, but to be very honest the biggest improvement in my agency came from letting clients point at the thing instead of describing it, because a founder who can't tell a lower third from a super can still circle the text they hate.
That's why I lean so hard on drawing and markup on the frame in PlayPause. The client opens one link in their browser, with no account and nothing to install, pauses where something bothers them and leaves a comment that sticks to that exact frame, with an arrow at the logo or a circle around the wrong product.
Range comments do the same job for timing, so instead of explaining that the intro drags, the client selects 0:08 to 0:15 and writes "this part feels long". You see what I mean here, right, the glossary gives clients better words and the frame lets them skip the words, and both routes end at the same precise note.
It matters even more on a phone, as I cover in reviewing client videos on mobile, and the whole video feedback and review flow keeps the note on the frame instead of in a message thread.
a note saying make the ending punchier sent over chat with no timestamp and three possible meanings
a range comment on the last seven seconds plus a circle drawn around the logo that should hold longer
Sharing a video editing glossary with every new client
A glossary only works if the client has it open while writing notes, and my mistake for years was attaching it to the kickoff email as a PDF, right, where it got buried under invoices.
These days I put it in a Playbook, which on the Agency plan and up is a per-client document of creative style and direction. The glossary goes in the brand playbook, because vocabulary is a permanent rule for that client, while folder playbooks hold the direction for each project. The part I really really like is that a playbook can be shared as a no-login page, so the client gets one clean link they can open anytime, does that make sense, right.
I send that link in the kickoff email and again with the first cut, alongside the framing I describe in presenting a rough cut to clients. Before chasing anyone, I check whether the client watched the cut, because who-watched analytics on Creator and up shows who opened it, when and from which city.
For onboarding, pair this with the review workflow behind a good brief and, for the internal team, the media workflow glossary I wrote for editors. At the end of the day it's only about thirty words, and trust me on any level, those words save more time across a year than they have any right to.
Frequently asked questions
How many editing terms should a client actually learn?
Around thirty is plenty for most clients, right, and even fewer do most of the work. A client who knows cut, hold, B-roll, ducking, colour grade, lower third and safe zone can already describe most changes precisely, and when the word isn't there they can fall back on drawing on the frame.
Should I send the glossary before or after the first cut?
I send it at both points, once in the kickoff email and again with the first cut. Sending it only at kickoff means it's forgotten by review time, and sending it only with the cut makes it feel like homework. As a no-login Playbook page, the same link works both times and nobody hunts for an old attachment.
What if a client uses a term the wrong way?
Gently translate it back without making a thing of it. If a client asks for a jump cut and clearly means a faster cut, reply with something like "got it, tightening that cut so it moves quicker". People pick up the vocabulary by seeing it used on their own project, while formal correction just makes them hesitant to leave notes.
Do clients need an account to leave notes in PlayPause?
No, the client opens one link in a browser, with no account and no install, and can leave frame-accurate comments, range comments and drawings straight away. That's on every plan, including Creator, so even your smallest client can give precise notes without falling back on WhatsApp.
If you want to try this with your next client, write your glossary into a brand playbook and share the first cut through one link. Every plan on the PlayPause pricing page comes with a 7-day free trial, so you can run a real project before deciding, and since Playbooks live on Agency and up, that's the plan I'd start on.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
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