Shooting is the part everyone budgets for. Post-production is the part that decides whether the footage becomes a film or stays a folder of clips — and it is where most Malaysian video projects quietly lose time, money and goodwill.
This is a working guide to what post-production actually involves in 2026, what editors and post houses in the Klang Valley charge, how long each stage really takes, and the specifics — revision rounds, subtitle languages, deliverable specs — that belong in the quotation before anyone opens a timeline.
Clients often use "editing" to mean the whole back half of a project. It is worth separating the stages, because they are priced differently and some of them are genuinely optional.
Backing up cards, transcoding proxies, syncing external audio, logging takes. Unglamorous, unskippable, and the reason a big shoot takes a day before any cutting starts.
The story. Selects, assembly, rough cut, fine cut. This is where 70% of the creative value and most of the hours live.
Two layers: correction (making every shot match and look neutral) and grade (giving it a look). Correction is necessary; grade is where a film starts to feel expensive.
Dialogue cleanup, level balancing, music, ambience, effects, and mastering to a consistent loudness. The most underrated line in any post quotation.
Lower thirds, titles, logo animation, data visualisation, subtitles-as-design. Priced per element or per second, not per minute.
16:9 master, 9:16 and 1:1 cuts, subtitled and clean versions, platform-specific compression. Often the largest hidden cost on a social campaign.
Two pricing models exist side by side in the Klang Valley. Freelancers and small studios usually quote per finished minute or per day; larger post houses quote per stage with an hourly suite rate. Both are legitimate; they just make different projects cheaper.
| Service | Rate (RM) | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance editor, mid-level | 450 – 800 | Per day |
| Freelance editor, senior / story-led | 800 – 1,500 | Per day |
| Corporate edit, straightforward | 800 – 1,600 | Per finished minute |
| Brand film / TVC edit | 2,000 – 3,500 | Per finished minute |
| Colour correction only | 600 – 1,200 | Per finished minute |
| Full grade in a calibrated suite | 1,500 – 3,000 | Per hour of suite time |
| Sound design & mix | 500 – 1,500 | Per finished minute |
| Motion graphics package | 1,200 – 6,000 | Per project |
| Subtitling, single language | 15 – 40 | Per minute of runtime |
| Transcription (BM / EN / 中文) | 8 – 25 | Per minute of runtime |
| Social versioning (9:16, 1:1) | 150 – 400 | Per additional cut |
| Licensed music track | 150 – 900 | Per track, per licence term |
Reading a per-minute quote correctly. "RM 1,200 per finished minute" is not the cost of one minute of work — it is an average that absorbs the ingest, the story-finding, the revisions and the delivery. A three-minute corporate film at RM 1,200/min is roughly a five to seven working-day engagement for one editor. If a quote implies the same output in a day and a half, it is not the same job.
The single most common source of friction on Malaysian video projects is a delivery date set before anyone counted the footage. Here is a realistic schedule for a three-minute corporate film shot over two days.
That is roughly two and a half working weeks for three finished minutes — and it assumes client feedback comes back within 24 hours. In practice, review latency is the biggest variable in any post schedule. A project with a two-day feedback turnaround per round adds a full week without a single extra hour of editing.
Malaysia is one of the few markets where subtitling is a strategic decision rather than an accessibility afterthought. Most brands here end up needing English, Bahasa Malaysia and Simplified Chinese — sometimes Tamil — and how you deliver them matters more than people expect.
Burned-in subtitles are rendered permanently into the picture. They are essential for social feeds, where autoplay is silent and platform captions are unreliable. Each language requires a separate export.
Sidecar files (.SRT or .VTT) sit alongside the video and can be toggled. These are right for YouTube, corporate LMS platforms and anywhere the viewer chooses. One master video, multiple subtitle files, far cheaper to update.
"Send us the final video" is where files get delivered in the wrong codec, the wrong loudness and the wrong aspect ratio. Specify these six things and the handover becomes uneventful.
| Spec | Sensible default | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Master codec | ProRes 422 HQ or H.264 at 50 Mbps | The archival copy you re-version from later without generation loss |
| Web delivery | H.264, 1080p or 4K, 10–20 Mbps | Small enough to upload, clean enough to survive platform re-encoding |
| Audio loudness | −14 LUFS for social, −23 LUFS for broadcast | Stops your film playing noticeably quieter or louder than everything around it |
| Frame rate | 25fps (matches Malaysian broadcast and mains) | Mixed frame rates cause judder on LED walls and broadcast playout |
| Aspect versions | 16:9 master, 9:16, 1:1 | Cheaper to brief upfront than to re-frame after picture lock |
| Clean version | No graphics, no subtitles | Lets you re-version for another market or event without a re-edit |
Two rounds is the Malaysian industry norm, and a round should be defined as one consolidated set of feedback from all stakeholders. The failure mode is predictable: three people send three separate WhatsApp voice notes over five days, the editor works through them sequentially, and what should have been one round becomes three.
Protect the schedule with three rules:
The most expensive four words in post: "can we see alternatives?" Exploring a second direction after picture lock is effectively a second edit. If there is genuine internal disagreement about direction, surface it at the treatment stage — before a single frame is shot.
Plenty of Malaysian post work is edit-only — a brand hands over archive footage, event coverage or material shot by someone else. Before quoting or accepting a timeline, confirm:
| Project | Post-only budget (RM) | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Event highlight, 90 sec | 1,800 – 3,500 | Edit, correction, music licence, one social cut |
| Corporate profile, 3 min | 5,000 – 9,000 | Edit, grade, mix, lower thirds, EN + BM subtitles, two aspect versions |
| Brand film, 2 min | 9,000 – 18,000 | Senior edit, full grade, sound design, custom titles, multiple versions |
| Social campaign, 6 × 20 sec | 4,500 – 9,500 | Six cuts from a shared shoot, burned-in captions, 9:16 and 1:1 each |
| TVC, 30 sec | 15,000 – 40,000 | Suite grade, professional mix, VO record, broadcast-spec delivery |
As a planning heuristic, post-production is typically 30% to 45% of a video project's total cost — and on anything driven by story rather than spectacle, it is the half that determines whether the film works.
Send us the runtime, the format and what you need it to do. We will come back with a realistic post schedule, a fixed scope and deliverable specs you can sign off on.
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