How many video versions you actually need for a campaign

One film is never one file. This is the arithmetic that sits underneath every motion quote, and it is almost never done at the briefing stage, which is why motion budgets blow up in the edit rather than in the estimate. It takes two minutes. Here it is.

List every placement

Where will the film play? Instagram Reels, Stories, TikTok, the Meta feed, LinkedIn, YouTube pre-roll, YouTube organic, a website hero, an in-app surface, a digital screen in a venue, cinema, broadcast. Write them all down, including the ones that feel like afterthoughts. The afterthoughts are the ones that turn out to have different rules.

Group them by aspect ratio

Reels, Stories and TikTok are 9:16. The Meta feed is 4:5. LinkedIn, YouTube, a website hero and broadcast are 16:9. Cinema is wider again. Each group is one master cut, because a 9:16 film and a 16:9 film are composed differently: what sits in the middle of a phone screen sits at the edge of a television. Three groups is three cuts, before anything else is counted.

Count the languages

Each language version means a separate text layer, separate subtitles and, if there is a voice, a separate voice track. Two languages doubles the work on every cut that has words in it. It also means the edit has to be built with the text layers kept separate from the start, which is cheap if the animator knows and expensive if they find out afterwards.

Multiply, then add the master

Aspect-ratio groups times languages, plus one master. Three ratios in two languages is seven deliverables. That number is what the producer prices, and it is the number most briefs never state, because the client said "a video" and meant all seven. Writing it down in the brief is the difference between a quote that holds and one that does not.

Name the hero cut

When there is more than one ratio, one of them is made first and the others are adapted from it. Which one is a real decision: a 9:16 hero re-framed to 16:9 is a different film from a 16:9 hero cropped to 9:16, and the difference is usually a shoot decision about how the frame is composed. Name the hero in the brief and the shoot is planned for it.

What follows for free

Once the placements are listed, the rest is lookup. Each placement carries its own duration ceiling, codec, sound default and safe areas. The feed and LinkedIn play silent by default, so captions are required. Broadcast wants ProRes at 25 frames and a loudness of minus 23 LUFS. Cinema wants a DCP at 24 frames and its own grade. None of this needs the briefer to know it, and none of it should be asked; it should be derived from the list, which is what HereBriefly's motion brief does while you tap.