Footage-to-highlight ratio
Also known as: shooting ratio, keeper ratio
How much raw material it takes to produce a minute of finished edit, a figure that is brutal in action sports and useful to know.
Updated
What it means
The ratio describes the yield. Two hours of riding commonly produces ninety seconds worth keeping, which is a figure nobody quotes when they buy a camera. It improves with discipline and never becomes flattering.
It varies enormously by discipline. A surf session with long waits produces far less per hour than a park lap, where something happens more or less continuously for the whole run.
The figure is also a planning tool. Knowing your own ratio tells you how long to film for a given Edit length, which is more useful than filming everything and deciding later.
How it works in practice
Measuring it once is worth the effort. One session counted honestly gives a figure that applies to the next twenty, because conditions change more than habits do. The ratio is a property of the person.
Filming less is the lever people resist. Stopping the camera between attempts rather than leaving it running changes the ratio directly and improves Keeper rate at the same time.
A mounted camera and a handheld one have different ratios. A Chest mount left running produces volume; a filmer choosing when to record produces yield. Only one of those is quick to review.
What to watch out for
A bad ratio is usually diagnosed as a camera problem. Buying a second body doubles the material and leaves the yield unchanged, which makes Editing time worse rather than better.
Loop recording hides it. Loop recording keeps the card from filling and does nothing about how much has to be reviewed, so the ratio is unchanged and invisible.
The figure also tempts people to pad. An edit stretched to use more of the card is an edit with a worse ratio of watchable material, which is the opposite of what the figure is for.
How RawClip handles it
The analysis is what absorbs a poor ratio: hours of material are scored and reduced to the moments that hold, so a low yield becomes a processing question rather than an evening of reviewing. What was filmed still sets the ceiling on what can be chosen.