Ask what they actually need before optimising. If it is going onto a web player they will re-encode it anyway and your huge file only wastes their upload. If it is going to broadcast or archive, your file is correct and the previous editor undercooked it. Deliverable spec first, settings second.
Half the size and a meaningful number of clients cannot open it in whatever they use to review. Great for archive, risky as a client deliverable.
Shadowing helps for the same reason. You are forced to produce at native speed with no planning window.
It depends entirely on what you changed, and splitting it this way stopped my product churn:
- Shampoo or conditioner swap: 2 to 3 washes. You are judging how it feels, and that is knowable fast.
- Scalp treatments: 4 to 6 weeks, because you are waiting on the skin cycle.
- Anything about shedding or growth: 3 months minimum and honestly 6.
- Damage repair on existing length: never really, because damaged keratin does not heal. You are only ever judging how it behaves.
Change one thing at a time or the whole exercise is wasted.
Write the date and the single change in a note on your phone. It sounds excessive, takes four seconds, and it is the only reason I know which product caused what.
The revisions are where my time went, not the edit. Get a rough cut approved before you colour, mix or add graphics, otherwise you do all the fun parts twice.
Oil on protein-stiff hair makes it feel coated and it still snaps. The test is easy: overloaded hair is rough and rigid when wet, genuinely dry hair is limp and stretchy when wet.
Read your whole shelf for hydrolyzed anything, plus keratin, collagen, amino acids and wheat or soy protein. They hide in shampoo, conditioner and leave-ins, so people who add a treatment are often quadrupling their protein without realising it. My routine had it in four products while I thought I was avoiding it.
The glycerin thing took me years to notice. Same product, gorgeous in April, unusable in August.