How do I QC a video before publishing?
QC is just a quality-control pass: the same gates, in the same order, every time, so you stop shipping problems you stopped being able to see. Here is the full pre-publish QC, and three honest ways to run it.
By Thomas, founder of CutScore · Updated June 2026
QC sounds like factory language because that is exactly the point. A quality-control pass is structured. You are not asking "does this feel good," you are asking a fixed list of questions and recording pass or fail for each. The difference matters because, by the time you export, you are the worst possible person to judge the file. You have watched it fifty times. Your brain has filed the quiet audio under "normal" and the slightly green skin tone under "fine."
I have published videos I was proud of that turned out to be quietly broken. One had the music sitting two decibels over my own voice for a full minute, and I never heard it, because I knew every word already. QC would have caught it in ten seconds. Watching it again did not, because watching is a vibe and QC has targets.
Your gear lies to you too. Laptop speakers flatter bass you never recorded. A bright phone in a dark room makes an underexposed shot look beautifully lit. So a real QC pass tests against numbers and against the worst playback you own, not the comfortable setup you edited on. The gates below are short, boring, and almost entirely in your control. That is what makes them useful.
The pre-publish QC gates, one by one.
A gate is a pass-or-fail check with a fixed target. Run them in this order, fix anything that fails, then re-check before you publish. Screenshot this and keep it next to your export button.
| Gate | Pass condition | What a fail costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Loudness | ≈ −14 LUFS | Too quiet and the video feels weak the moment it follows a louder one. |
| True peak | ≤ −1 dBTP | Hot peaks crackle and distort once the platform re-encodes the file. |
| Voice vs music | voice on top | Music burying the speech is the single most common amateur tell. |
| Background noise | low, steady | Hiss, hum and room tone read as "cheap" before a word lands. |
| Exposure + white balance | neutral, not clipped | Dark or green footage looks unfinished, like a raw clip nobody graded. |
| Focus + stability | sharp, no drift | Soft or shaky shots read as mistakes, not as a style choice. |
| Pacing · shot length | fits the genre | Too slow and the scroll wins; too frantic and the viewer tires out. |
| First 3 seconds | one reason to stay | Most of your drop-off happens right here, at the very start. |
| Captions + safe zones | readable, in-frame | Roughly half your audience watches on mute, so text is the video. |
Nine gates on every video adds up fast. CutScore runs the whole QC pass automatically and hands back the fixes, so you spend the time editing instead of inspecting.
Five passes, in order.
1. Sound first: the gate viewers judge fastest
I put sound at the top of any QC pass because people forgive a soft shot and never forgive bad audio. Two numbers carry most of the weight. Loudness, which you want near −14 LUFS for YouTube so your video does not feel timid next to the next one in the feed, and true peak, which stays at or below −1 dBTP so nothing crackles once the platform squashes your file. Then play it on the worst speaker you own. If you can still hear every word over the music, the gate passes. If the music is winning, pull it down four or five decibels and move on without feeling precious about it.
2. Picture: is it really exposed, sharp and neutral?
Drop your screen brightness to something normal, not the heroic level you edit at. Look for shadows crushed to solid black with no detail, and highlights (a window, a white shirt) blown out to pure white. Then check that your whites read white, not blue or orange. If skin looks like it belongs to a different species, your white balance drifted. Last, confirm the subject is sharp and the frame is not wobbling. This whole family of image gates is half of what we analyze, because the picture is the first thing a viewer reads before a single word has been heard.
3. Edit: pace and the first three seconds
You have seen this cut so many times it feels fast to you. It probably is not. The clearest single number for pace is average shot length: how long a shot holds, on average, before you cut. A tutorial can breathe; a short cannot. Then watch your first three seconds as if you were thumbing past it. Is there one reason to stay, or do you open with a logo sting and a throat-clear? If a section drags, it is usually one shot held three seconds too long, repeated twenty times. A clean jump cut removes the dead air without a reshoot. The honest QC question: would you keep watching this if it were not yours?
4. On-screen text: captions and delivery
Read your captions on a phone, held at arm's length, the way most people will actually see them. If you squint, the font is too small or the contrast is too low, and the gate fails. Confirm the text sits inside the safe zone and is not drifting under the platform's interface. While you are listening, count the filler words too. A few "ums" are human. A dozen a minute quietly tells people you are not sure of yourself, and that is a QC note worth acting on.
5. Export: QC the upload, not the file
This is the gate nobody screenshots and everybody regrets. Export at the platform's preferred resolution and a healthy bitrate, upload, and then watch the published version on the actual app, not the file on your drive. Platforms re-compress everything, and a clip that looked crisp on disk can arrive soft and blocky. If it looks worse after upload, your export settings are the suspect, not your camera. A QC pass is not finished until you have checked the version your audience will see.
Here is a real CutScore QC report for an everyday vlog: every gate above, scored, with timestamps and the exact fixes.
If you only QC three things.
A full QC pass is best, but most of the jump from "homemade" to "this person knows what they are doing" comes from these three gates. Clear them first.
By eye, by meter, or in one pass.
By eye and ear
Free, and better than no QC at all. The catch is the one we opened with: your senses adapt and your gear flatters. It works best on someone else's video, or yours after a day away from it. Use the gate list above so you are testing against targets, not vibes.
With scopes and meters
Accurate and honest. A loudness meter, a waveform, a scope for exposure. The cost is time and knowledge: you need the targets memorised, three tools open, and the discipline to read them on every single video. Great if you enjoy this. Most people do not.
With a coach in one pass
Hand the file (or a link) to CutScore. It runs every gate and then some, against the right standard for your genre, and returns a 0 to 100 score with timestamped evidence and the fixes. No scopes to read. See a sample report.
Frequently asked.
QC every video before it goes out.
CutScore runs the whole QC pass for you and tells you exactly which gate failed and how to fix it, with the evidence to back it up. Join the waitlist for early access.
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