What you should get back when you leave a clipping agency

The clipping contract you signed almost certainly says who owns the clips.

It almost certainly says nothing about the project files, the caption data, the tracking sheet or the posting history. That silence is the switching cost, and you find out its size on the day you try to leave.

VALORAE Arc has published 500 plus videos across client accounts, and the handovers that went badly were never about ownership. They were about the working layer underneath it.

1. The thing the contract already covers

Ownership of the finished clip is the part everyone negotiates, and it is usually fine.

We covered the detail of that separately in who owns your podcast clips, and if you have not read a clipping contract closely, start there rather than here.

Assume for this post that you own the exported videos. Now ask what else you would need to keep going without the agency, and the list gets uncomfortable.

2. The complication: the exports are not enough

A founder left an agency with every clip they had paid for, in full resolution, properly organised.

Their new clipper still had to start from the raw episodes.

No caption files, so every clip needed resubtitling to match the new ones. No record of which moments had already been used, so the new clipper recut two moments that had run four months earlier. No project files, so nothing could be re-exported at a different aspect ratio without redoing it.

They owned everything the contract promised and had to pay for a month of work twice.

3. Ask for the caption files by name

Subtitle and caption data is the highest value per megabyte item in a handover and almost nobody asks for it.

An SRT or VTT per clip gives your next clipper the transcript, the timing and a matching style reference. It also gives you searchable text for every clip you have ever published, which turns out to matter for more than editing.

It is a tiny file. Agencies rarely object. It just has to be requested, because it is not a deliverable anyone thinks to list.

4. The tracking sheet saves the most money

If you get one thing from this post, get this one.

Ask for the sheet that maps each published clip to its source episode, the timecode it came from, the hook used and where it was posted.

We keep one for every Arc client because it is how we avoid recutting a moment, and the clients who value it most are the ones who left another agency without one.

Without it, a new clipper either watches your entire back catalogue or repeats you. Both cost you money, and the second one costs you credibility with an audience that notices.

5. Project files, and the honest expectation

Ask for them. Expect a qualified answer.

Project files are large, they reference media paths that will not exist on another machine, and they depend on the agency's own templates, fonts and plugins. Handing you a folder of them can produce something that opens to a screen of offline media and nothing else.

That is a genuine technical limitation rather than an excuse, most of the time.

What is reasonable to agree in advance: project files delivered with media collected, in a named format, at an agreed cost if it takes real work. What is not reasonable is discovering at the end that the question was never asked.

6. The posting history, if they ran the accounts

If the agency posted for you, the performance data is yours to want.

Views, retention where available, which hooks performed, which platform each clip ran on. Exported to a sheet, not screenshotted into a slide deck.

This is the difference between your next clipper guessing at your audience and knowing what has already worked with it. Across the 10M plus views Arc accounts have produced, the pattern of what works for a specific show is the most valuable asset in the relationship, and it is the one most easily lost in a transition.

Also change the passwords on the way out, or better, never have shared them. The access question has its own answer and it is not this post.

7. Put the clause in before you need it

All of this costs nothing during a friendly negotiation and is close to impossible afterwards.

One paragraph. On termination, the agency provides exported clips in delivery resolution, caption files per clip, the clip tracking sheet, the posting and performance history, and project files with collected media at an agreed rate.

Say when. Thirty days from the end of the notice period is normal and specific enough to be enforceable.

We put a version of this in Arc contracts because a handover we handled badly in our first year taught us what its absence feels like from the client's side. It was not a dispute. It was just slow, and it was avoidable.

The short version

• Assume your contract covers the finished clips and nothing underneath them.
• Ask for caption files per clip. They are tiny and nobody offers them.
• Get the tracking sheet mapping clips to episodes and timecodes. This is the one that saves real money.
• Request project files with media collected, and accept a cost and a format for it.
• Take the posting and performance history as a sheet, not screenshots.
• Write the handover clause in before you sign, with a deadline attached.
• Reuse it at the next agency, because they will not offer it either.

Arc writes the handover terms in at the start, which is the cheapest moment to be generous about them.