Target duration
Also known as: target length, runtime target
The length an edit is being built to, decided in advance because it quietly sets the standard that every clip then has to meet.
Updated
What it means
A target is a constraint rather than a wish. Ninety seconds means the strongest clips fit and everything else does not, which is the decision actually being made. Length is a quality standard under another name.
It is the practical form of an Inclusion threshold. Setting a length sets the line without anybody having to argue about a number, because the duration settles it before anyone starts.
The alternative is cutting until it feels finished, which produces the length the material happens to supply rather than the one an audience wants. Those two lengths rarely coincide with one another.
How it works in practice
The platform supplies it. A vertical feed wants under a minute, a shared session edit one to three, and a Long-form edit only when the material justifies it. The number comes from outside the footage.
Deciding first changes the work. Selection against a known length is faster than selecting everything and trimming later, because the comparison has a stopping point built into it.
Music frequently fixes it in practice. A track is a fixed length, and cutting to it is easier than editing the track, which makes the Music cue structure the real target that the edit is built against.
What to watch out for
A target that is too long forces padding. Reaching three minutes from one session means including weaker clips, and Dead time arrives to fill the gap. The target was wrong, not the footage.
Too short throws away variety. Compressing a varied session into thirty seconds loses the range that made it worth watching, and what remains reads as one long clip of an event.
Hitting the number exactly is not the point. A target is a bracket rather than a figure, and an edit eight seconds under it is finished rather than short of its target.
How RawClip handles it
The requested length is the main lever over what comes back: a shorter target raises the standard and a longer one admits more of the middling material. Where nothing is specified, the length follows what the session actually supports without padding.