A video editor's portfolio should open with a short reel, around a minute to a minute and a half, that leads with your best cutting, then give each major piece its own page with the full video, the brief, and a precise line on what you did. Credit the director, DP, colorist and sound team. Load video players only when someone presses play, so the site stays fast on a phone.
The reel gets you a look; the project pages get you hired, because they answer the question every producer has: which part of this was actually yours? Below is how to structure both, plus the technical side of embedding video without a slow site. If you want the pages drafted for you, the video editor portfolio builder starts from a prompt written for editors.
The reel: short, front-loaded, about the cut
Length
Keep a general reel to roughly 60 to 90 seconds. Producers and post supervisors watch a lot of reels, and the opening seconds often decide whether they watch the rest. A reel that's too short rarely costs anyone a job; one that drags often does. A specialty reel (trailers, music videos, social cut-downs) can be shorter still.
Structure
- Open on your strongest ten seconds. No logo animation, no five-second title card with your name. Your name can sit in a corner or come at the end.
- Vary the pace. A reel that's all fast cuts to a driving track shows one skill. Include a held moment, a dialogue exchange that breathes, a match cut, a stretch where sound carries the edit.
- Group by feel, not by project. Clips from the same job don't need to sit together. Cut for rhythm.
- End on a card with your name, what you do ("Editor, commercials and documentary"), your email and your site address, held long enough to read.
Show editing, not footage
Reviewers know you didn't fly the drone. Beautiful footage cut well and cut badly can look similar in a reel. What separates editors is timing, story and sound: a joke landed on the right frame, an interview assembled into a clear argument, a montage that builds. Pick moments where the edit is visible to someone who knows what to look for.
Music
Use a track you have the right to use. A reel that gets muted or blocked by a copyright claim on the video host helps nobody, and the people hiring you know what licensing involves. Licensed and royalty-free music libraries exist for exactly this.
One reel or several
If you cut across very different genres, make separate reels. A commercial producer and a documentary director want different evidence, and a reel that jumps from a beer ad to a grief interview to a gaming montage reads as unfocused. Common splits:
- Commercial and branded content
- Documentary and interview-led work
- Narrative (shorts, features, series)
- Music videos
- Social and vertical short-form
Put your main reel on the homepage and the specialty reels at the top of their category pages.
Project pages: the piece, the brief, your part
Every featured project gets a page. This is where you prove the reel wasn't luck.
What each page needs
- Title and client or production, if you're allowed to name them.
- The finished piece, embedded in full.
- Format and delivery: running time, platform, aspect ratios delivered.
- Your role, precisely. This is the most important line on the page.
- The brief and constraints: turnaround, amount of footage, what the client needed.
- A breakdown, if you have one: rough cut against final, a color before-and-after, or a short note on how one sequence came together.
- Credits for the rest of the team.
Write your role so nobody has to guess
Vague: "Edited this spot."
Precise: "Editor, offline and online. Cut a 2:30 hero film plus 30- and 15-second cut-downs and 9:16 versions for social, from two days of interviews and b-roll. Color by the production's colorist; mix by a separate sound studio."
The precise version tells a producer the size of the job, the deliverables you can handle and where your work ends. If you did the color or the sound yourself, say so, because editors are often hired partly for those extras.
Credit everyone
Credit the director, DP, colorist, composer and sound team where you can. It's normal practice, it shows you work well with others, and it lets anyone check. Don't overclaim: the people who hire editors often know the people who worked on the piece.
NDA and unreleased work
Ask before posting unreleased work, and check your contract. If you can't show something publicly, a password-protected or private link that you send on request is a common compromise. You can also list confidential projects by type and scale, without footage, with "available on request."
Organize the work the way clients search for it
Once you have more than a handful of pieces, group them by what clients hire for: commercials, documentary, music videos, social. Use the same categories as your specialty reels.
Thumbnails matter more than editors tend to think. Choose each still frame yourself instead of using the host's automatic pick, which is often a soft or mid-blink frame. Keep thumbnails at a consistent aspect ratio in the grid, and show vertical work in vertical frames rather than letterboxed into 16:9.
If you shoot as well as cut, decide which you're selling first. Shooter-editors can borrow from the videographer portfolio page, and editors moving toward directing should look at the filmmaker portfolio page, where authorship matters more than craft credits.
Embeds and page speed
This is the technical part many video portfolios get wrong.
Use a video host
Upload to a video host such as Vimeo or YouTube and embed its player. Hosts stream at different qualities for different connections, which a plain video file on a static host doesn't. Check what your host's player shows when the video ends; some players suggest other channels' videos, and you don't want a producer's last impression to be someone else's reel.
Don't load twelve players at once
Every embedded player loads its own scripts before anyone presses play. One player is fine. A work page with twelve embeds can be slow, especially on a phone over a mobile connection.
The fix is to show a poster image (your chosen still with a play button) and load the real player only when someone clicks. This pattern is often called a facade. Adding loading="lazy" to embed iframes also helps, because players further down the page then wait until the visitor scrolls near them. The web.dev guide to third-party embed best practices covers both techniques.
Autoplay sparingly
A short, muted, looping clip in the homepage hero can work if it's well compressed. Never autoplay with sound, and don't autoplay on project pages; let people choose what to watch.
Test on a real phone
Open your site on your phone with Wi-Fi off. If you notice the wait, a producer checking your site between meetings will too.
About and contact
Your about page should cover what you cut and for whom, the editing software you work in (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro), whether you work remotely or on site, your city and time zone, and anything practical a producer needs to know, such as your typical turnaround on cut-downs.
On the contact page, make email the easiest option. If you prefer a form, link one from a hosted form tool. Say how quickly you reply and when you're next available, and include your reel's address so someone forwarding your details to a colleague has one link to paste.
A pre-launch checklist
- Reel under about 90 seconds, opening on your best moment
- Name and contact details on the reel's end card
- Every featured project has a role line, a brief and credits
- Thumbnails chosen by hand
- Players load on click or lazily, not all at once
- Site tested on a phone over mobile data
- Email address visible without hunting
Building the site around your reel
To save time on the pages themselves, you can build a video editor portfolio with FNJ's AI builder, which designs the home, work and project pages at desktop, tablet and phone widths from a reference site or screenshot whose look you like. It lays out styled image spaces that you fill with your own stills and thumbnails; it doesn't embed YouTube or Vimeo players, so you paste your host's embed code into the exported HTML (or into the Next.js project, with the attributes rewritten for JSX), which is yours to edit and host. It's a paid tool and it doesn't build contact forms, so link your email or a form service instead.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a video editing reel be?
Aim for roughly 60 to 90 seconds for a general reel, and shorter for a specialty reel. Open with your strongest moment, because the first few seconds often decide whether a producer keeps watching.
Should a video editor have more than one reel?
Yes, if you work across genres that hire differently, such as commercials and documentary. Put a main reel on the homepage and specialty reels on category pages, so each viewer sees the most relevant work first.
Should I host my portfolio videos on Vimeo or YouTube?
Either works; what matters most is using a video host rather than serving large video files from your own site. Check how each player looks when your video ends, and pick the one that keeps attention on your work.
Can I put work under NDA in my portfolio?
Only with permission, and check your contract first. A common compromise is a password-protected or private link you share on request, or a description of the project's type and scale without footage.
What should a video editor's project page include?
The full finished piece, the client or production if you can name it, the deliverables, a precise line on your role, the brief and constraints, and credits for the rest of the team. A rough-cut-versus-final breakdown is a strong addition when you have one.