A 60-second target is the tightest of the three lengths ReelWorkshop supports (60, 75 or 90 seconds). At 60 seconds, the hook, build, escalation, peak and payoff beats each get a smaller slice of total time, so weak or redundant clips have less room to hide.
Curate before you import everything
You can import up to 100 clips, but a 60-second edit plan is only going to use a fraction of that footage. Bringing in your ten strongest clips rather than sixty mediocre ones makes it easier to trim and order deliberately instead of relying entirely on quality scoring to sort through a large pile.
Trim tighter than you would for 90 seconds
Since less total runtime is available, trim each clip down to its single strongest moment rather than leaving a generous range. A clip trimmed to its best three seconds gives a 60-second plan a cleaner scene to pull than a clip left at fifteen seconds with only part of it worth using.
Steps
- Import your strongest clips
Prioritize fewer, better clips over your full library.
- Trim each one tightly
Cut down to the strongest few seconds of each clip.
- Set target length to 60 seconds
This is the shortest of the three available targets.
- Generate multiple plans
Generate several of the 1 to 20 available plans since a 60-second cut is sensitive to which scenes get chosen.
- Preview each candidate
At 60 seconds, pacing problems are more noticeable, so compare plans before picking one.
- Render your chosen plan
Export as 1080x1920 or 720x1280 MP4, with audio kept or muted as you prefer.
Why generate several plans at this length
With more content squeezed into less time, small differences in which clips get picked for each beat are more visible in a 60-second cut than in a 90-second one. Comparing a handful of generated plans side by side before committing is worth the extra minute at this length.
The Starter plan includes 60 exported minutes per calendar month. A 60-second export uses one minute of that allowance, so generating and previewing plans (which is free) before rendering is the cheaper way to iterate.
Mistakes to avoid
- Importing a large, uncurated batch of clips and expecting a tight 60-second edit to sort itself out.
- Leaving clips untrimmed and letting the plan generation do all the selection work at the least forgiving length.
- Rendering the first generated plan without comparing it to at least one alternative.
When 60 seconds is the wrong target
If you have a lot of strong footage and a 60-second cut keeps feeling rushed with beats you don't want to lose, move up to 75 or 90 seconds rather than forcing everything into the shortest option.