Freelance editor's 3 revision rounds on a 30-second ad: $0.96-$1.26
A 30-second client ad costs $0.36 to build on Sume and $0.20 to $0.30 per revision round, so three rounds end at $0.96 to $1.26 depending on what changes.
A freelance editor who builds a 30-second client ad from three source clips pays $0.36 for the first cut on Sume and $0.20 to $0.30 for each revision round, so three rounds land between $0.96 and $1.26. The range depends on one choice: whether you keep the clean, uncaptioned render and burn captions as the last step.
Q4 is when client revisions pile up before holiday campaigns lock, so it helps to know what a change costs before you quote a revision allowance. The point is not the dollar figure, which is small. It is that the order of operations decides whether a typo fix costs 20 cents or 30.
The first cut
Three video trims at $0.02 each are $0.06. One timeline render of the 30-second sequence is $0.10, since renders bill per output minute rounded up. One caption job on the clean render is $0.20 for a video up to 60 seconds. Total: $0.36. If the source clips are already the right length, the trims drop out and the first cut is $0.30.
Keep two files for every version: the clean render and the captioned output. The caption job takes the clean render's URL and produces a new captioned video, so the clean file stays available for later changes.
| Change requested | What you re-run | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Caption wording or timing | Caption job on the clean render | $0.20 |
| Reorder or swap a shot | Timeline render + caption job | $0.30 |
| Re-cut a shot's length | Trim + render + caption job | $0.32 |
| Three rounds, all caption text | 3 caption jobs | $0.60 (total $0.96) |
| Three rounds, all shot changes | 3 renders + 3 caption jobs | $0.90 (total $1.26) |
Policies that save the margin
Put approvals in the right order. Get sign-off on the picture cut before you burn captions, and sign-off on the caption text before you export. A client who approves the wording in a document first makes caption revisions rare. Use the unbilled timeline plan endpoint to check durations and the minute count before you submit a render.
Use a distinct idempotency key per revision, for example the client, the ad name and a version suffix. Reusing a key with the same body replays the previous result at no new charge, which is what you want for a network retry; reusing it for a real change returns the old video and confuses the client call. A key per revision also gives you a clean line in your cost ledger.
Whether you charge for revisions is a business decision, not a pricing one. The media cost of a revision is cents; the editor's time is the price. Say what a round includes in the quote, because clients tend to treat a revision that costs you 30 cents as free.
Sources
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