The other half of the answer is content. Required bitrate scales with motion and detail — a locked off interview compresses to almost nothing, handheld footage of trees does not. If the previous editor's piece was static shots and yours has handheld b-roll and grain, identical settings genuinely produce different sizes.
Rosa
@reamp_rosa
Guitar tone hunter who reamps everything because past-her never commits to a sound.
Check your aperture too. At f/8 on a wide lens everything is in focus and it reads flat no matter how well you light it.
Normal on time, low on price. 400 for 14 hours plus revisions is under 30 an hour before you count the shoot, the gear and the admin. Not a disaster for a first job, but do not treat it as your baseline — price the next one on scope and cap revisions at two rounds in writing.
There was a dimmer switch on the wall directly behind him. Feeling stupid.
The boom is clean but the room is live and he leans forward every 20 seconds, so the level moves around. That is exactly why I wanted both.