Auto-Editor

Auto-Editor is a command line application for automatically editing video and audio by analyzing a variety of methods, most notably audio loudness.

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Before doing the real editing, you first cut out the "dead space" which is typically silence. This is known as a "first pass". Cutting these is a boring task, especially if the video is very long.

auto-editor path/to/your/video.mp4

Installing

See Installing for more information.

Skills

npx skills add WyattBlue/auto-editor

Cutting

Change the pace of the edited video by using --margin.

--margin adds in some "silent" sections to make the editing feel nicer.

# Add 0.2 seconds of padding before and after to make the edit nicer.
# `0.2s` is the default value for `--margin`
auto-editor example.mp4 --margin 0.2sec

# Add 0.3 seconds of padding before, 1.5 seconds after
auto-editor example.mp4 --margin 0.3s,1.5sec

Methods for Making Automatic Cuts

The --edit option is how auto-editor makes automated cuts.

For example, edit out motionlessness in a video by setting --edit motion.

# cut out sections where the total motion is less than 2%.
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit motion:threshold=0.02

# `--edit audio:threshold=0.04,stream=all` is used by defaut.
auto-editor example.mp4

# Different tracks can be set with different attribute.
auto-editor multi-track.mov --edit "(or audio:stream=0 audio:threshold=10%,stream=1)"

Different editing methods can be used together.

# 'threshold' is always the first argument for edit-method objects
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit "(or audio:0.03 motion:0.06)"

You can also use dB unit, a volume unit familiar to video-editors (case-sensitive):

auto-editor example.mp4 --edit audio:-19dB
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit audio:-7dB
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit motion:-19dB

Labels

Every moment gets an integer label: 0 is silent (cut by default), 1 is active (kept). --edit sets what's label 1; -w:0/-w:1 set each one's action. Add more classes with --edit:N and --when:N (N up to 255); where they overlap, the higher label wins.

# Cut silence, keep speech, and additionally speed up the loud parts
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit:2 audio:-12dB --when:2 speed:1.5

As a value (not a label), --edit 1 keeps everything and --edit 0 cuts everything. See the actions docs for more.

See What Auto-Editor Cuts Out

To export what auto-editor normally cuts out. Set --when-active to cut and --when-inactive to nil (leave as is). This is the reverse of the usual default values.

auto-editor example.mp4 --when-active cut --when-inactive nil

Exporting to Editors

Create an XML file that can be imported to Adobe Premiere Pro using this command:

auto-editor example.mp4 --export premiere

Auto-Editor can also export to:

• DaVinci Resolve with --export resolve
• Final Cut Pro with --export final-cut-pro
• ShotCut with --export shotcut
• Kdenlive with --export kdenlive
• Individual media clips with --export clip-sequence

More Options

List all available options:

auto-editor --help

Articles

• How to Install Auto-Editor
• All the Options (And What They Do)
• Docs
• Blog

Run Online and as an Application

You can run auto-editor online or download the application. They use assets from this repository (Unlicense); their own unique assets are under a separate proprietary license.

Copyright

Everything in this repository is under the Public Domain. Binary artifacts in the "Releases" section may be under various open source licenses.