A-roll
Also known as: A roll, primary footage, main footage
The primary footage that carries a video's story. In action sports it is usually the main runs and tricks that everything else in the edit supports.
Updated
What it means
A-roll is the footage your video cannot exist without. In a documentary or vlog it is traditionally the interview or the person talking to camera, because that audio drives the story. In action sports the definition shifts: the A-roll is the run itself - the full line down the trail, the wave you rode, the jump you landed - usually captured as POV or from a follow cam.
Everything else is support material. B-roll covers gear prep, scenery, the drive to the spot and cutaway angles. A useful test: if you removed a clip and the viewer would no longer understand what happened, that clip was A-roll.
How it works in practice
On a typical day of riding you might shoot 90 minutes on a helmet camera and only 10 of it qualifies as A-roll: the runs where something actually happened. Editors often tag those clips first, either with a color label in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve or by moving them into a bin named A-ROLL, before touching anything else.
The A-roll then becomes the spine of the timeline. You lay the best runs in order, trim the dead time at the start and end of each, and only then cut B-roll over the gaps to vary the pace. For a vlog, the talking clips go down first and the action footage is layered over them as cutaways.
What to watch out for
The classic mistake is ending up with almost no A-roll by accident: a battery that died before the best run, or a mount angle that only shows sky. Check framing on the first run of the day and carry a spare battery for the session that matters.
The opposite problem is treating every clip as A-roll. A three-minute edit built only from full-length POV runs feels monotonous, because nothing breaks the rhythm. Pick the strongest moments, cut them tight - jump cuts work well inside a long run - and let B-roll give the viewer a breather between them.
How RawClip handles it
RawClip effectively does the A-roll pass for you. The AI scans every uploaded clip for motion, jumps, faces and peak action, keeps the moments that carry the story, drops the dull and duplicate footage, and cuts the result to the length you chose for your highlight.