5 ms·

Show HN: AutoEditor – Edit your video in just a few clicks

71 points by nihey 2y ago

I wanted to show the first version of my new project, its main goal is to let users edit short engaging videos in just a few clicks. Upload your video (or take a link from YouTube), cut your video, crop it, subtitle it, add overlay layers and much more.

juliushuijnk 2y ago
> We can detect which parts of your video do not include any speech, and could be cut off your video, saving you hours of editing to cut off silence and non-relevant content. Please don't (over)do this. My brain can't handle a literal constant stream of speech. I've had to stop watching quite a number of videos about topics I was interested in because of this. For example the 'Wired' YouTube channel. The 'tech support' videos look really fun, but I can't watch and listen to that for more than 30 seconds. So I just do 'never recommend this channel again' on those. Are more people like me in this regard, or is it just my brain?
- emzo 2y ago
  Totally agree, this annoys me to. The gaps between sentences make speech easier to listen to and digest.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    Yes. Sometimes I need a longer pause to let an idea properly lay down in my brain, so I gravitate towards content with a natural cadence.
- nihey 2y ago
  I get what you're saying, personally, I prefer more slowly-paced videos. This fast-paced editing with no breathing in between sentences is a trend that I believe will shift sometime in the future. My tool allows the user to choose whether he would like to remove the silence and how much time between each cut. Hopefully, this will work for both kinds of editing styles.
  - codetrotter 2y ago
    What I’d like to see is an algorithmically controlled middle-ground that cuts out most of the pauses but also leaves natural pauses every now and then to give breathing room. Basically a kind of auto-edit that helps give natural flow with breaks for the audience to absorb the material. Think of fluent public speakers. Some of them speak in a way that their words are confident and coherent while not being just a constant stream of words. For example Steve Jobs. If my memory of watching him speak on video, he speaks but he also takes plenty of pauses in between. (Presentations that he had rehearsed over and over before walking on stage and giving them.) That kind of thing would be magic to have automatically done by the editor.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      Creator AI: removes pauses Viewer AI: inserts pauses for synthetic viewer or speaker Sci-Fi Viewer AI: modifies speed/pitch/pause by live neural feedback
  - juliushuijnk 2y ago
    I get this is a tool, and it's up to the creator on how to use it. I was mostly curious if I was the only one who had this experience. I agree with codetrotter on the middle ground part. It would be nice if the tool could smartly add/keep certain pauses. My assumption is this trend started with YouTubers looking at their stats on when people leave their video. Presumably when a video has a pause, it is a moment someone can think, and thus also think about perhaps not watching the video. People like me who stop watching because of the lack of pause, stop at a seemingly random moment, so there is no clear signal in the stats.
- grugagag 2y ago
  Yes, the way I’d describe it is just like very very sugary food, such extreme sweetness that produces nausea instead of the desired effect. My brain gets irritated by this and I have no choice but to avoid it. I’m somewhat alergic to advertising as well, a related affliction.
  - juliushuijnk 2y ago
    I have that same related affliction. It's not easy if I visit my parents and they have the TV on and then they'll just keep the advertisements on with full audio. Don't want to fully high-jack the AutoEditor post comments. So to bring it back to feedback; that video on the top of the site is also too flashy and quick for me. I do like that it shows the feature of using text as a way to scroll through the video. On the marketing side, I think the site works well, but I would focus even more on that it saves time. From the website: > Why use AutoEditor instead of other solutions? > Some of our key advantages are: > Direct access to the C-Level of the company - meaning you can request features and we'll tend to it > Good free tier so you can get started without having to commit > The best request/price ratio in this market > Our editor provides a flexible way to edit the videos exactly how you want them to be I wouldn't do it like that. I would say something like "Save hours on every video you edit using our features like text-based editing and quick import and export." and if you want to show you are open to feedback, I would again talk about speed along the lines of "If you know of ways how we can save you even more time creating great video content, you can directly discuss these feature request... etc"
sebastiennight 2y ago
Hi, congrats on launching! We've been in this field (AI-based online video editing) for 2+ years now with https://www.onetake.ai https://www.onetake.ai ; so I have a hard-earned lesson I'd like to share as a suggestion. While your landing page is very clear about your features, it is a bit lacking as to the use cases / specific avatar (persona) you are targeting. You do have a "why Us?" question in your FAQ, but it's not clear who is the "who" you're targeting. Once we started talking about our user and their needs rather than talking about the technology, that's when MRR shot up. I think this market is tremendously huge - from hobbyists on Reels, to enterprise creating employee trainings, to SMBs needing TikTok content, to information businesses working with mostly long-form video (which is the niche we are after). But because the market is so big, you need to be clear who can make the most from your tool, so that they can find you. This will also guide your feature set and your UX (e.g. we decided to never ever have a timeline, which is the opposite of everything else that was in the market at the time). There are a bunch of counter-intuitive contrarian moves ahead of you if you want to reach PMF, and I believe you can't figure those out without talking to a narrow type of user. Just my two cents. I wish you a super successful launch!
- nihey 2y ago
  Thank you! Landing Page / Marketing has always been my weakness in the business. We indeed need the "who" more clear in our landing page and it should be a top priority here. Video editing is indeed a huge market and one I've struggled with in the past with other products that did not reach their PMF due to targeting the wrong user type. This product is my first take in an AI-based product, united with something I have some year of experience in (Programming + Video Production Automation) Loved your product too! English not being my primary language I have some of these hesitation problems when recording in a single take.
  - Redster 2y ago
    I actually think that your landing page is on the right track. At least, if I'm your target customer. As someone who has hours and hours of long-form video, this page looks like I can take the videos that I have recorded and mince them into smaller self-contained pieces very easily. For perspective, I am a paid user of Descript and have played with Riverside.fm. This tool intrigues me (I've already signed up and am experimenting) because it looks like it can even auto-detect where B-Roll should go. If this is true, then no other tool really does this that I'm aware and is kind of a killer feature. You also seem adjacent to [AutoPod](https://www.autopod.fm/ https://www.autopod.fm/)
voltaireodactyl 2y ago
Impressive work! One thing that would make this exponentially more useful immediately: if it could export the cut list as an FCP or Adobe XML, for import into a real editing program. Being able to use this as a very basic rough draft automator is a real potential niche.
- nihey 2y ago
  Thanks! This could be a nice future feature. It might be a bit challenging to support many editing software, as each one has proprietary formats that need to me implemented from scratch (as far as I know), but would be nice to get professional editors as customers too.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
codetrotter 2y ago
> You will not even have to worry about going to YouTube downloading websites, we can process videos straight from it. I assume you use yt-dlp for this? In that case, look out for suddenly having your server IP banned by YouTube. I was running yt-dlp on a server for a long time (many months) and then one day it stopped working. And I wasn’t even auto-downloading videos. They were all manually triggered by me, to save copies of videos that I liked. So in total I was downloading far fewer videos on the server than the number of videos I was watching on my phone via the YouTube app on the phone.
- wanderingmind 2y ago
  Might be a good reason to use proxy to connect to YT servers.
- nihey 2y ago
  Thanks for the warning, I'm using yt-dlp so there is this risk that someday it will simply stop working. I'm currently always caching downloaded videos so that I will not have to download the same video more than once. If we come to that, I'll definitely need to use a proxy service to work around it. I've used ProxyMesh in the past for some WebScraping products (https://proxymesh.com/ https://proxymesh.com/) and have been able to keep everything working for years so it may be a good workaround.
jedbrooke 2y ago
is this built using https://github.com/WyattBlue/auto-editor https://github.com/WyattBlue/auto-editor?
- nihey 2y ago
  No, I did not previously know about this project. But it is quite neat. I'm currently using a combination of these technologies: - Whisper - FFMPEG - Remotion To make the video generation.
  - jedbrooke 2y ago
    it has the export to premier/FCP function that another commenter mentioned, so definitely worth looking in to to not have to rewrite those functionality from scratch Hey and congrats on the launch! I actually tried to make a product similar to this (basically a cloud wrapper for the github repo I linked). I used auto-editor a lot as a student to condense lecture videos to be able to get through them faster.
35mm 2y ago
Is there a way to export just the text/captions with an alpha channel? I’d like to quickly create some stylised captions (the kind that are centred and 1-2 words at a time) and then add as a layer in Davinci Resolve.
- nihey 2y ago
  Not currently, but this is my roadmap. If you would like, I can contact you as soon as it is implemented, just email me at contact@autoeditor.video and I'll let you know. It should not take long to be implemented.
wishpal 2y ago
Congrats on launching this! Website looks good and I like the "Create your video (Free)" CTA right there. I tried working on a youtube video, but its taking way too long right now. If I can get a feedback as to how much time it would take for the video to process and for me to start editing - that would be great. I often use tools like biteable for video creation and editing and I like the feedback messaging while they process etc.
- nihey 2y ago
  Thanks! The YouTube video download is something I indeed need to improve, it can take some time, especially for long 4K Videos. I'll definitely work on better feedback on how much estimated time it would take. For some really long and heavy videos, maybe some feedback after they're finished processed would be nice.
  - wishpal 2y ago
    Yes - it would be cool to know how much time I should wait while I do something else on other tabs.
nsiradze 2y ago
This is very impressive. I remember how time-consuming it was to edit the video manually. Good luck!
stard 2y ago
[flagged]
tubeChannel 2y ago
I just played with it. Looks cool. A few questions - 1. Who are you targeting? Influencers, YouTubers, Instagramers? 2. What happens if video is in foreign language? E.g. German, Urdu. Does it still work? 3. How are using Remotion for building video? You might just not need it.
- nihey 2y ago
  Thanks! 1 - I'm targeting Influencers, Shorts YouTubers and TikTokers, mostly people who produce short content, anyone who has to make short videos from a long one. 2 - It works with about 40+ Languages, our transcription engine, German and Urdu are included. 3 - I'm using it to add some final styling to the subtitles and preview the main video. All of the effects are achievable through other methods like After Effects automation and ffmpeg too, but Remotion helps to make it quicker, it also was the best (and most reliable) browser preview method I've found so far.
8mobile 2y ago
Hi, This is exactly what I was looking for, a great audio editor for shorts. I'll try it right away. What technology did you use? I'll try the basic version and give you some feedback. Thanks Otto
- nihey 2y ago
  Thanks! I'm excited to hear your feedback! I'm currently using a combination of Remotion (https://www.remotion.dev/ https://www.remotion.dev/) and ffmpeg (https://www.ffmpeg.org/ https://www.ffmpeg.org/) Basically, ffmpeg helps with simple operations like cutting, cropping, compressing and resizing and most of the more complex animation are done with remotion.

71 points by nihey 2y ago

juliushuijnk 2y ago

> We can detect which parts of your video do not include any speech, and could be cut off your video, saving you hours of editing to cut off silence and non-relevant content. Please don't (over)do this. My brain can't handle a literal constant stream of speech. I've had to stop watching quite a number of videos about topics I was interested in because of this. For example the 'Wired' YouTube channel. The 'tech support' videos look really fun, but I can't watch and listen to that for more than 30 seconds. So I just do 'never recommend this channel again' on those. Are more people like me in this regard, or is it just my brain?

emzo 2y ago
Totally agree, this annoys me to. The gaps between sentences make speech easier to listen to and digest.
- grugagag 2y ago
  Yes. Sometimes I need a longer pause to let an idea properly lay down in my brain, so I gravitate towards content with a natural cadence.
nihey 2y ago
I get what you're saying, personally, I prefer more slowly-paced videos. This fast-paced editing with no breathing in between sentences is a trend that I believe will shift sometime in the future. My tool allows the user to choose whether he would like to remove the silence and how much time between each cut. Hopefully, this will work for both kinds of editing styles.
- codetrotter 2y ago
  What I’d like to see is an algorithmically controlled middle-ground that cuts out most of the pauses but also leaves natural pauses every now and then to give breathing room. Basically a kind of auto-edit that helps give natural flow with breaks for the audience to absorb the material. Think of fluent public speakers. Some of them speak in a way that their words are confident and coherent while not being just a constant stream of words. For example Steve Jobs. If my memory of watching him speak on video, he speaks but he also takes plenty of pauses in between. (Presentations that he had rehearsed over and over before walking on stage and giving them.) That kind of thing would be magic to have automatically done by the editor.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Creator AI: removes pauses Viewer AI: inserts pauses for synthetic viewer or speaker Sci-Fi Viewer AI: modifies speed/pitch/pause by live neural feedback
- juliushuijnk 2y ago
  I get this is a tool, and it's up to the creator on how to use it. I was mostly curious if I was the only one who had this experience. I agree with codetrotter on the middle ground part. It would be nice if the tool could smartly add/keep certain pauses. My assumption is this trend started with YouTubers looking at their stats on when people leave their video. Presumably when a video has a pause, it is a moment someone can think, and thus also think about perhaps not watching the video. People like me who stop watching because of the lack of pause, stop at a seemingly random moment, so there is no clear signal in the stats.
grugagag 2y ago
Yes, the way I’d describe it is just like very very sugary food, such extreme sweetness that produces nausea instead of the desired effect. My brain gets irritated by this and I have no choice but to avoid it. I’m somewhat alergic to advertising as well, a related affliction.
- juliushuijnk 2y ago
  I have that same related affliction. It's not easy if I visit my parents and they have the TV on and then they'll just keep the advertisements on with full audio. Don't want to fully high-jack the AutoEditor post comments. So to bring it back to feedback; that video on the top of the site is also too flashy and quick for me. I do like that it shows the feature of using text as a way to scroll through the video. On the marketing side, I think the site works well, but I would focus even more on that it saves time. From the website: > Why use AutoEditor instead of other solutions? > Some of our key advantages are: > Direct access to the C-Level of the company - meaning you can request features and we'll tend to it > Good free tier so you can get started without having to commit > The best request/price ratio in this market > Our editor provides a flexible way to edit the videos exactly how you want them to be I wouldn't do it like that. I would say something like "Save hours on every video you edit using our features like text-based editing and quick import and export." and if you want to show you are open to feedback, I would again talk about speed along the lines of "If you know of ways how we can save you even more time creating great video content, you can directly discuss these feature request... etc"

sebastiennight 2y ago

Hi, congrats on launching! We've been in this field (AI-based online video editing) for 2+ years now with https://www.onetake.ai https://www.onetake.ai ; so I have a hard-earned lesson I'd like to share as a suggestion. While your landing page is very clear about your features, it is a bit lacking as to the use cases / specific avatar (persona) you are targeting. You do have a "why Us?" question in your FAQ, but it's not clear who is the "who" you're targeting. Once we started talking about our user and their needs rather than talking about the technology, that's when MRR shot up. I think this market is tremendously huge - from hobbyists on Reels, to enterprise creating employee trainings, to SMBs needing TikTok content, to information businesses working with mostly long-form video (which is the niche we are after). But because the market is so big, you need to be clear who can make the most from your tool, so that they can find you. This will also guide your feature set and your UX (e.g. we decided to never ever have a timeline, which is the opposite of everything else that was in the market at the time). There are a bunch of counter-intuitive contrarian moves ahead of you if you want to reach PMF, and I believe you can't figure those out without talking to a narrow type of user. Just my two cents. I wish you a super successful launch!

nihey 2y ago
Thank you! Landing Page / Marketing has always been my weakness in the business. We indeed need the "who" more clear in our landing page and it should be a top priority here. Video editing is indeed a huge market and one I've struggled with in the past with other products that did not reach their PMF due to targeting the wrong user type. This product is my first take in an AI-based product, united with something I have some year of experience in (Programming + Video Production Automation) Loved your product too! English not being my primary language I have some of these hesitation problems when recording in a single take.
- Redster 2y ago
  I actually think that your landing page is on the right track. At least, if I'm your target customer. As someone who has hours and hours of long-form video, this page looks like I can take the videos that I have recorded and mince them into smaller self-contained pieces very easily. For perspective, I am a paid user of Descript and have played with Riverside.fm. This tool intrigues me (I've already signed up and am experimenting) because it looks like it can even auto-detect where B-Roll should go. If this is true, then no other tool really does this that I'm aware and is kind of a killer feature. You also seem adjacent to [AutoPod](https://www.autopod.fm/ https://www.autopod.fm/)

voltaireodactyl 2y ago

Impressive work! One thing that would make this exponentially more useful immediately: if it could export the cut list as an FCP or Adobe XML, for import into a real editing program. Being able to use this as a very basic rough draft automator is a real potential niche.

nihey 2y ago
Thanks! This could be a nice future feature. It might be a bit challenging to support many editing software, as each one has proprietary formats that need to me implemented from scratch (as far as I know), but would be nice to get professional editors as customers too.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

codetrotter 2y ago

> You will not even have to worry about going to YouTube downloading websites, we can process videos straight from it. I assume you use yt-dlp for this? In that case, look out for suddenly having your server IP banned by YouTube. I was running yt-dlp on a server for a long time (many months) and then one day it stopped working. And I wasn’t even auto-downloading videos. They were all manually triggered by me, to save copies of videos that I liked. So in total I was downloading far fewer videos on the server than the number of videos I was watching on my phone via the YouTube app on the phone.

wanderingmind 2y ago
Might be a good reason to use proxy to connect to YT servers.
nihey 2y ago
Thanks for the warning, I'm using yt-dlp so there is this risk that someday it will simply stop working. I'm currently always caching downloaded videos so that I will not have to download the same video more than once. If we come to that, I'll definitely need to use a proxy service to work around it. I've used ProxyMesh in the past for some WebScraping products (https://proxymesh.com/ https://proxymesh.com/) and have been able to keep everything working for years so it may be a good workaround.

jedbrooke 2y ago

is this built using https://github.com/WyattBlue/auto-editor https://github.com/WyattBlue/auto-editor?

nihey 2y ago
No, I did not previously know about this project. But it is quite neat. I'm currently using a combination of these technologies: - Whisper - FFMPEG - Remotion To make the video generation.
- jedbrooke 2y ago
  it has the export to premier/FCP function that another commenter mentioned, so definitely worth looking in to to not have to rewrite those functionality from scratch Hey and congrats on the launch! I actually tried to make a product similar to this (basically a cloud wrapper for the github repo I linked). I used auto-editor a lot as a student to condense lecture videos to be able to get through them faster.

35mm 2y ago

Is there a way to export just the text/captions with an alpha channel? I’d like to quickly create some stylised captions (the kind that are centred and 1-2 words at a time) and then add as a layer in Davinci Resolve.

nihey 2y ago
Not currently, but this is my roadmap. If you would like, I can contact you as soon as it is implemented, just email me at contact@autoeditor.video and I'll let you know. It should not take long to be implemented.

wishpal 2y ago

Congrats on launching this! Website looks good and I like the "Create your video (Free)" CTA right there. I tried working on a youtube video, but its taking way too long right now. If I can get a feedback as to how much time it would take for the video to process and for me to start editing - that would be great. I often use tools like biteable for video creation and editing and I like the feedback messaging while they process etc.

nihey 2y ago
Thanks! The YouTube video download is something I indeed need to improve, it can take some time, especially for long 4K Videos. I'll definitely work on better feedback on how much estimated time it would take. For some really long and heavy videos, maybe some feedback after they're finished processed would be nice.
- wishpal 2y ago
  Yes - it would be cool to know how much time I should wait while I do something else on other tabs.

nsiradze 2y ago

This is very impressive. I remember how time-consuming it was to edit the video manually. Good luck!

stard 2y ago

[flagged]

tubeChannel 2y ago

I just played with it. Looks cool. A few questions - 1. Who are you targeting? Influencers, YouTubers, Instagramers? 2. What happens if video is in foreign language? E.g. German, Urdu. Does it still work? 3. How are using Remotion for building video? You might just not need it.

nihey 2y ago
Thanks! 1 - I'm targeting Influencers, Shorts YouTubers and TikTokers, mostly people who produce short content, anyone who has to make short videos from a long one. 2 - It works with about 40+ Languages, our transcription engine, German and Urdu are included. 3 - I'm using it to add some final styling to the subtitles and preview the main video. All of the effects are achievable through other methods like After Effects automation and ffmpeg too, but Remotion helps to make it quicker, it also was the best (and most reliable) browser preview method I've found so far.

8mobile 2y ago

Hi, This is exactly what I was looking for, a great audio editor for shorts. I'll try it right away. What technology did you use? I'll try the basic version and give you some feedback. Thanks Otto

nihey 2y ago
Thanks! I'm excited to hear your feedback! I'm currently using a combination of Remotion (https://www.remotion.dev/ https://www.remotion.dev/) and ffmpeg (https://www.ffmpeg.org/ https://www.ffmpeg.org/) Basically, ffmpeg helps with simple operations like cutting, cropping, compressing and resizing and most of the more complex animation are done with remotion.