Dry eyes for video editors

Video editors get dry eyes because the job means hours of locked-in focus on a timeline and a viewer, usually in a dim room with bright screens and steady airflow from computers and HVAC. Blink deliberately at cut points, put a bias light behind the monitor, step away during renders and exports, and use a lubricating drop as its label directs.

What the edit suite does to your eyes

Editing is a concentration job. Scrubbing a timeline frame by frame, matching action across cuts, or watching a grade on a reference monitor all hold the eyes on one spot, and eyes blink less when they’re fixed like that. Every skipped blink leaves the surface of the eye exposed a little longer before a fresh layer of tears spreads across it.

The room adds to it. Edit suites and color bays are often kept dark so picture can be judged accurately, cooled for the people and the machines, and full of fans from workstations and drive arrays. A bright screen in a dark room makes the eyes work harder, and the air never stops moving.

Light the room, not just the screen

• Put a bias light behind the main monitor: a dim, neutral light on the wall that lowers the contrast between screen and room.
• Keep a low lamp on so the room isn’t pitch black outside of critical grading.
• Turn down interface brightness, and use a darker theme if your editing app offers one.
• Position monitors so lamps and windows don’t reflect off the glass.

Monitor setup for long timelines

Many editors run two or three displays: a timeline, a program viewer, sometimes scopes or a reference monitor. Turning your head across a wide desk isn’t the trouble; looking up at screens is. Keep the top edge of each display at or a little below eye level so your gaze drops slightly, which leaves less of the eye exposed. Dry eyes with multiple monitors covers arrangement in more detail.

Use renders and exports as breaks

Every edit has dead time built in: rendering previews, exporting drafts, uploading to a review platform, waiting on a proxy transcode. Instead of watching the progress bar, give those minutes to your eyes.

• Look across the room or out a window for 20 seconds or more.
• Close your eyes and blink slowly several times.
• Stand up and walk to refill your water.
• On long exports, leave the room for a few minutes.

A habit that costs nothing: blink fully twice every time you make a cut or jump to the next scene. Across an hour of editing, that adds dozens of complete blinks.

Late nights before delivery

Deadlines push edits late. At 2 a.m. in a dark bay, eyes are tired and the room is quiet enough to forget to blink at all. Close your eyes for a minute between review passes, run a humidifier in the bedroom when you get home during heating season, and don’t sleep with a fan blowing on your face. Screens and your tear film explains why screen work and blinking are so closely tied.

Using Quell between sessions

Quell is a lubricating eye drop designed to reinforce the tear film’s oil layer to help reduce moisture loss. Its label gives the directions as Apply 1 drop 3 times per day in each eye, and the stated Uses are “For use as a protectant against further irritation or to relieve dryness of the eye.” A drop before you sit down, one around the middle of the day and one before a late session spreads the label’s dose across a long edit day.

Wash your hands first; keyboards, mice and control surfaces aren’t clean. Then follow the handling line: Do not touch tip of bottle to any surface to avoid contamination. Keep the bottle in a drawer away from workstation exhaust, since the label’s storage line is Store between 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F). The warnings are on the Drug Facts page.

The label doesn’t give directions for contact lens wearers or for use with other eye drops. If either applies to you, ask your eye doctor or pharmacist.

When it’s more than a long day

Gritty eyes after a twelve-hour edit are one thing. Pain, blurred vision that doesn’t clear, or dryness that comes back every day is a reason to see an eye doctor, and the label agrees: Stop use and ask a doctor if you feel eye pain or changes in your vision, if irritation or redness continues, or if the condition worsens or persists for 72 hours.

Ordering Quell for the edit bay

Ship it to the office or home with guest checkout, from Brentwood, Tennessee. Shipping is $10.00, free on 3 or more bottles. If you shoot as well as cut, one bottle for the edit bay and one for the camera bag makes sense. Buy Quell, or read about dry eyes for photographers.