Quality scoring
Also known as: technical scoring, clip quality rating
Rating each clip on measurable technical merit, such as sharpness, exposure and steadiness, separately from whether anything interesting happens.
Updated
What it means
Quality scoring answers a different question from interest. A clip can be technically flawless and completely dull, or soft and badly exposed while holding the only moment that mattered.
Keeping the two apart is what lets a pipeline make sensible trades. A slightly soft shot of the one good run should beat a pristine shot of an empty slope, and that requires two separate numbers.
The inputs are all measurable rather than learned. Sharpness, clipped highlights, steadiness and Audio levels can each be computed directly, which makes the score explainable when somebody asks why a clip was dropped.
How it works in practice
Components are combined with weights rather than averaged. Sharpness usually dominates, because Blur detection catches the failure a viewer notices first, while mild exposure error is recoverable in grading.
Scores work best as weights, not gates. Marking a clip down leaves it available when nothing better exists; discarding it makes a cheap measurement final.
Thresholds need per activity tuning. Powder and water legitimately push brightness, so a bar set on forest footage quietly condemns a whole snow session. Running the measurement on stretches rather than whole files is the other half of getting it right, because a single clip rarely holds one consistent level of quality.
What to watch out for
Technical merit and intent are easily confused. A deliberate silhouette, a motion blurred pan or a Film grain look all score badly while being exactly what the shot was for.
Scoring whole files hides the variation that matters. One clip can swing from unusable to excellent inside ten seconds, so the measurement belongs on stretches rather than on files.
Over weighting steadiness punishes the genre. Action footage is shaky by nature, and a score that prizes stillness ranks a tripod shot of nothing above a Hot lap that happens to bounce. Steadiness is worth measuring and worth weighting lightly.
How RawClip handles it
Technical quality and how interesting a moment is are scored separately, so a slightly soft shot of the one good run still wins against a clean shot of nothing happening, which is the trade a person would make. Low technical scores weight a clip down rather than removing it from consideration.