Clip Yield Decay Curve

Clip Yield Decay Curve is the observation that auto-clipping tools front-load their best output. The first handful of clips pulled from a long-form recording are usually usable with light review; by clip fifteen or twenty, the model is cutting on weak topic boundaries and the human review time per publishable asset climbs faster than the volume gain. Agencies pricing short-form retainers on output count rather than review hours quietly absorb that curve. A practical test: on a 60-minute source, compare editor minutes spent per approved clip at position 1-5 versus 15-20. If the second batch costs three times the first, the retainer is underwater. Tools like Klap and Spikes Studio surface topic scores that help triage, but the scoring ranks engagement potential, not brand fit, so a human still gates the tail. Budget the curve explicitly: quote a fixed number of high-yield clips per source and treat overflow as a separate line item.