00:00:46:00Feature · Agents
Edit video with text prompts.
In OpenVids you edit video by describing the change in words. One of four AI agents takes the prompt and, depending on the mode, answers it, proposes a plan, or makes the edit. The result lands on your timeline as a change you can review.
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Four agents, one project
Each agent has its own lane. All four work in the same project, on the same timeline.
- Main
- The editor’s chair. In the demo project it shapes the rough cut, prepares the caption pass, and matches the interview angles.
- Motion Designer
- Titles, lower thirds, logo stings, and caption styles from a sentence. Motion Designer in detail.
- Audio
- Dialogue and music: evening out interview levels, trimming the music bed to the cut.
- Research
- Finds footage and sources and keeps track of their licenses and credits. Research and licenses.
Ask, Plan, Edit
The mode sets how far an agent goes with a prompt, so the same request can be a question, a proposal, or a change.
- Ask
- Answers. Find something out without touching the cut. In the demo, Research answers a b-roll request in Ask mode with six selects to choose from, each result marked “Reveal in Media”.
- Plan
- Proposes a plan. Use it when a pass needs your judgment before it lands. The demo’s caption pass comes back as 148 cues with three speaker labels to review.
- Edit
- Changes the timeline. Use it when you know what you want. The rough cut, title sting, dialogue cleanup, and music trim in the demo are all Edit prompts, each with a “Reveal in timeline” link.
Seven prompts from the demo
These are the tasks in the OpenVids Trailer, the demo project you can scroll through on the landing page. Each card shows the agent, the mode, the prompt as typed, and what came back.
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Rough cut from Mara interview
“Shape the rough cut around Mara’s strongest answer and keep it under two minutes.”
Rough cut v1 · 24 clips · 01:48
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Intro title animation
“Build a restrained title sting for the trailer, under six seconds.”
Title sting · 6s · 24 fps
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Dialogue loudness cleanup
“Even out the interview dialogue and keep the music bed underneath.”
Integrated −16 LUFS · peaks −1 dBTP
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Caption pass
“Prepare a readable caption pass and flag any uncertain speaker labels.”
148 captions · 3 speaker labels to review
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B-roll research
“Find B-roll that can cover the interview transitions without changing the story.”
6 selects · city night / workshop
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Colour match — interview angles
“Match the interview angles while keeping Mara’s skin tone natural.”
Colour pass stopped · 6 of 8 shots
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Music bed trim
“Trim the instrumental bed to the rough cut and keep the ending clean.”
Instrumental cue · 01:48
What makes a prompt work
Look at what those prompts have in common. Each one names the material (“the interview dialogue”), the goal (“even out”), and a limit the agent has to respect (“keep the music bed underneath”, “under two minutes”, “keeping Mara’s skin tone natural”). The limit is the part people skip, and it’s the part that stops an edit from fixing one thing by breaking another.
Write the way you would brief an assistant editor: one job per prompt, in the words you would use in the room.
Review every change
Nothing an agent does is buried in a render. Every result lands in the project as a change you can review, with a status you can read at a glance: Done, Needs input, or Stopped. The colour match above stopped on purpose, after six of eight shots, so the skin-tone balance could be checked before the last two.
In the landing demo, each chat turn has its own “Revert this turn”, and ⌘Z undoes the last edit. You can also take over the timeline at any point. Prompting and hand editing happen on the same cut.
After the edit: render QA
When the cut is ready, an agent watches the render the way a viewer would. In the demo it caught a caption sitting on top of a lower third for four seconds and raised it, found a dissolve that started mid-pan and moved the edit ten frames earlier, and filled a one-second audio drop by starting the room tone sooner.
Pacing and shot choice are marked “Your call”. Render QA fixes what it can and leaves the editorial calls to you.
00:01:28:00Outro
Say it in words. It lands on the timeline.
OpenVids is free and open source, for macOS and Windows.