So you’ve asked your video production company for the raw footage.
After all, you paid them to make a video for you. You should get access to the real footage, right!?
Sure…!
Then you get a WeTransfer link that’s bigger than anything you’ve ever seen.
After seven hours of downloading, you’re suddenly staring at gigabytes of files like you’ve never seen before. Everything’s in a complicated and confusing folder structure. Every clip has strange names like C0004_HDX1.MXF, and to top it all off, the colours are so washed out you can barely see what’s going on.
You were expecting something to drag and drop into Canva, but what you’ve got is a complete mess and a very late night up ahead…!
In this article, I’ll be your guiding hand through the chaos. Whether you’re trying to repurpose previously shot content for new projects or just build a video library for your business, I’ll walk you through how to organise the raw footage you’ve got, how to categorise it, and how to identify and quickly reuse the clips.
What Is Raw Footage (And Why It’s So Overwhelming)?
Let’s start with a quick definition.
Raw footage is the complete, unedited video from your shoot. It includes every single second of footage the camera captured on the day — whether it was usable or not.
- Full interviews with false starts, awkward pauses, and rambling takes
- Hours of B-roll where not much happens
- Footage that hasn’t been colour graded, trimmed, or cleaned up
- Audio that’s unbalanced or barely audible
- And filenames that make zero sense to anyone but the editor
In short, it’s everything. The good, the bad, and the completely unusable.
Think of it like this: raw footage is a carrier bag full of ingredients — flour, eggs, butter, all with no labels on, maybe a few that have gone a bit off — and certainly no recipe to follow! It’s all technically there, but you’ve no idea how to turn it into a finished meal.
That’s exactly why we rarely hand over raw footage to our clients.
Instead, we provide something far more useful: a set of selects.
Selects are the best bits from the shoot — already trimmed, colour-matched, audio balanced, and properly organised. They’re prepped and ready to go. You can drag them straight into any editing software, even if you’re not a professional video editor.
Selects are like being handed a beautifully sliced portion of a bigger cake!
But if another company has sent you the full set of raw footage — or if you’ve specifically requested it — then you might be feeling a bit lost right now.
Don’t worry. Let’s take you step-by-step through how to turn that raw mess into something manageable.
Step 1: Get Set Up Before You Dive In
Before you even think about opening a video file, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got the right tools — and the right mindset.
These files are large and they don’t play nicely with underpowered laptops. So if you try to skip the setup and dive straight in, you’ll end up wasting more time than you save!
First: the technical basics
Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
A capable computer
Raw footage is heavy going. If your machine struggles with basic video playback, it’s going to really struggle here. Ideally, you’ll want something with a fast processor, a decent graphics card, and plenty of RAM.
The footage itself
You might receive this on a physical hard drive, or as a download link (e.g. (e.g. WeTransfer, Google Drive, Dropbox). Whichever it is, it’s recommended to have a backup of footage just in case. Always work from a fast hard drive, so if your external drive is a bit sluggish, copy them onto a faster USB 3.0 drive or onto your local machine.
Headphones or speakers
Not just for hearing what’s being said, but to catch audio glitches, background noise, or moments where the left and right audio channels are off balance.
Software to view and edit the footage
If you’re just watching clips, free tools like VLC or QuickTime will do the job. But if you’re planning to organise and trim anything, you’ll want professional editing software. We’ll use Adobe Premiere Pro as our example, since it’s industry standard — and it also means anything you prepare can be passed on to an editor later if needed.
Then: the mindset shift
Getting raw footage isn’t like downloading a ready-made promo video. You’re about to open a folder with potentially dozens of hours of content. Some of it will be brilliant. Some of it will be boring. A lot of it will be confusing at first.
So set yourself up for success:
- Block out dedicated time to do this properly
- Accept that the footage won’t be perfect — that’s normal
- Be prepared to do a bit of digging before the gems reveal themselves
You’re building the foundation here. Once you’re set up, everything else becomes much easier.
Step 2: Define What You’re Actually Trying to Do
Before you start scrubbing through footage or dropping clips onto a timeline, take a step back and ask the big question:
What’s the end goal here?
Because the way you work with the raw footage depends entirely on what you want out of it.
Are you…
- Creating one new video?
Maybe a new edit from an existing interview or set of shots. In that case, you only need to find the clips relevant to that one goal. - Repurposing footage for social content?
Then you’ll want to keep an eye out for short, punchy moments — eye contact, soundbites, good visuals — and possibly create multiple smaller edits. - Building a long-term library?
This is more of a cataloguing exercise. You’ll want to go broader, sorting and labelling everything so that you or a future editor can dip into it over time. - Handing this to someone else later?
If a freelancer or agency is going to pick this up, your job is to do the initial prep — so they aren’t starting from scratch.
This isn’t just about cutting video — it’s about setting the direction. So decide that up front, and let your goal guide every step that follows.
Step 3: Import and Organise Your Footage
This is where the real work begins — but it’s also where the chaos starts to make sense…!
Your goal here is simple: get the footage into your editing software and make it easy to navigate. We’re using Adobe Premiere Pro as the example, but the same principles apply to most editing platforms (like Final Cut or DaVinci Resolve).
- Create a new project
Give it a clear name — ideally something related to the shoot or purpose (e.g. “Launch Event Raw Footage”).
2. Set up folders in the software
Sometimes called ‘bins’, these are just digital folders inside your editing software. This is to do the initial broad organisation of what you have. You might create:
- Interviews
- General shots – Inside
- General shots – Outside
- Presentations
- Drone footage
Whatever makes sense for your shoot.
3. Sort your footage into the right folders
Drag and drop each clip into its relevant folder. If you’re not sure where something belongs, make a ‘Misc’ folder for now — you can always sort it later.
You’re not editing yet — you’re just laying the groundwork. Think of it like setting up your tools before starting a DIY job. Get it wrong now, and you’ll be swearing at your computer later.
Step 4: Create Your Own Selects Timeline
Now that everything’s imported and neatly organised, it’s time to start identifying the good stuff.
This is where you create your select sequences — one for each folder or category you set up earlier. In each sequence, you’ll gather all the usable moments from that specific type of footage.
And if you ever hand the project off to a professional editor, they’ll love you for doing this — because you’ve already done the heavy lifting of sorting out the best material!
How to build your selects:
- Start with one bin or folder
2. Open each clip and scrub through it, finding the best shots and avoiding any false starts, out of focus bits etc
3. Keep only the strong, clear, or visually engaging parts
You could always add every clip from one folder onto one timeline and then just remove the bits that you don’t like. You can also add additional markers or labels to these clips on the timeline, such as changing the colour of them. Whatever works for you.
Don’t worry about perfecting anything here. This is all about preparation — creating a tidy pool of footage you can dip into without trawling through everything again.
Step 5: Use, Repurpose, or Hand It Off
Once your selects sequences are in place, congratulations — you’ve turned a mountain of raw footage into something structured, searchable, and usable! From here, you’ve got a few options.
Option 1: Use it yourself
If you’re now much more comfortable with editing software, you can now start pulling clips from your selects timelines to build new content. Whether it’s a social media edit, an internal update, or a fresh promo video, your prepped selects will make the process faster and far less frustrating.
Option 2: Repurpose regularly
Want to get long-term value from your shoot? Keep these selects on hand as your own private clip library. You can revisit them any time to create new edits without needing a fresh shoot. Over time, this becomes a huge time-saver — especially if you regularly post video content.
Option 3: Pass it on to a pro
If editing’s not your thing, no problem. By doing the groundwork — organising the footage and creating selects — you’ve already made life easier for any video editor you bring in. They can jump straight into the best bits without having to sort through hours of unusable footage.
Just make sure you keep everything backed up and stored securely. These selects are now a valuable asset.
Conclusion
Raw footage always starts out as a confusing mess! But with a bit of planning and patience, it becomes one of the most useful things in your businesses video toolkit.
And if all this still feels like more work than you bargained for? You can always go back to your old production company and ask them to edit this for you, or send it to a new video production company like us to make sense of it. Believe it or not, we actually enjoy doing this kind of stuff….!
