Is editing "the old way" gone forever? ... yeah

As someone who has been editing with Final Cut Pro since 1999 (yes I'm one of the "older people" you mentioned lol), as well as having working with Resolve, Motion, After Effects, and Cinema4D and making a living as an editor and a teacher, I 100% relate to everything you said here I feel you just spoke my mind. I do think, and I believe you said this as well, that at least in the short term, editors who are fluent in their NLE of choice (FCP in my case) who embrace AI (as I have) will have an advantage over folks editing with AI "headlessly" as they will know how to quickly tweak AI-generated results to get to what they want to express faster and easier than the AI back and forth dance. Having an understanding of film language is also very helpful. Thanks for posting this we are living in very strange times indeed.

Straight spitting ^ ty for letting me know you relate and I also relate with yours

Absolutely. But most people outside of X don’t seem to know it yet. I’m telling everyone I can about AI editing and it’s funny - they’re all “interested” but hardly any of them are actually trying it yet. For right now I’m most comfortable with a hybrid - having Claude build everything for me inside Davinci instead of headless gives me that last bit of control I need to satisfy my inner boomer.

and it's SO "try"able!!!! Like literally everyone can edit immediately

AND train it to their personal workflow 🤯

That was super well said. Thanks for taking the time to put this out

Very appreciated Eric

Great video. I still want to see the timeline It’s annoying to not be able to talk through and zoom in. I mostly give my agents feedback at a high level

I believe that what you're describing is still technically ideal for people who love editing and are good at it

@PaulSolt #selfroast

@PaulSolt Why the hell do I subscribe to you

Yeah it's over over

This isn’t my main Twitter account, but I’ve been doing video production and editing since I was a junior in college. Call me a boomer, but I’ve never understood the mentality of being able to ask a computer to do anything for you and then assuming that the person hiring you isn’t going to just realize they can ask that computer themselves instead. As someone that’s also worked from home for the majority of the last decade and a half, I also don’t know what you or I or anyone else could possibly do with all that free time that is supposedly freed up by your computer working in the background on something besides just scrolling Twitter or whatever, which it seems like you’re doing instead. Again, the future is coming regardless, but you don’t find me sitting on Twitter “bragging” (I use that term very lightly) about how easy my job is now. ❤️🫡

Mad respect for this!!! Point taken on all fronts!! I've increased twitter scrolling but even that has turned out to be very valuable for me. But I can absolutely back up being able to do more work and produce more value beyond that. I've gotten to make more sites, make more games, and make videos for myself AT ALL because of this process. I've been with matt for 10 months now and my output has gone waaaaaayyy higher - I didn't make any videos before! That's just visible evidence. But you're right about being able to be automated away dude. I think that's coming whether or not I scream about it, sadly, and it sucks to think about

How much extra revenue are you generating from those extra games, sites, and videos you’re seemingly making for yourself now?

So far 6 bucks a month for an android game serving 1 opt-in ad on Google play only. Kind of excited for the potential there and im enjoying building it. My sites have no revenue and didnt mean for any. Link to that in my bio. But lots of internal sites for my company and that's not extra revenue, just awesome to provide value that way

Generating content simply for the point of generating content doesn’t seem like a worthwhile endeavor to me, but Godspeed. I prefer billing clients, cheers. 🫡

I have a w2 job!

That tracks from our discussions. 🫡

Jesus 🤣

wow unsubscribing from Adobe is crazy. AI is actually good now and changing the game.

YEAH

not to make it sad but i wish my dad was here to see all this. He would have loved playing with this.

Ai is too good

We are in the regenerative production era.

This reminds me of the switch from flat bed to digital. The basics became so much easier but expectations went through the roof.

Dude. expectation inflation. I feel it too, and it's awesome to lean into.......... but at the end of the day its inflation and changes everything. I want to hear more about your flat bed experience

Freshman - Flat Bed. Senior - FCP v1. With flat bed everything has to be well thought out to be efficient. It’s why older films feel so much more deliberate. With digital editing people adopted “Fix it” in post at scale. People who use the flat bed approach often do better work.

YES. I love and fear hearing that. I think the exact same thing happens again

Think… AGENTIC EDITING - “Fix it in post” CRAFT EDITING - “Flat Bed” It’s backwards which to me translates to a traditional approach. The more you plan the front end, the less iteration (time) is required. Editors that sell their front end ability well, are invaluable.

So how did you set up your AI accounts to get it to edit the way you want or are you literally just dropping raw footage in a folder, pointing claude to it, and it edits what you need without specific skills and plug ins attached to claude (like the capcupt mcp you mentioned)?

make lots of skills and keep updating them

Wait, you don't seem like you're far off my age and you said "when you get to my age" WTF ARE YOU SAYING BRO

LLLLLOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL. 32 here

26, so not too far off

I had a parallel with Music. I also video edit and have for decades. I think once simulation and replication get cheaper and faster the novelty dies. The moment the friction between idea and output drops to near-zero, the craft itself stops being the interesting part, and a lot of what felt special about editing evaporates for me (the proprietary creative skillset I've been investing my own time in developing for decades). Another comment said we’ve seen versions of it before with digital tools. I lived that analog to digital transition... once you could cut, color, and composite without film stock and a bay, a bunch of the old gatekeeping and “hands-on” satisfaction disappeared for people who lived for the process. AI just accelerates that compression harder. I was also talking to another commentor Dustin S above about if the machines can already deliver a competent version of what you had in your head, the “let’s figure this out together” loop with other people shrinks. Direction and iteration become more solitary or more high-level as the job. Only "managers" "decisions makers" and "Directors" with "good taste" will prevail. Until the AI copies them too.😂

The future's gonna be interesting

Great video man, this is certainly the gestalt that I'm feeling as well in the video space. We felt it at the start of this year with coding, but now it's video editing's turn. I think the important thing for me, whether it comes to coding or video editing or any similar kind of thing that AI is going to demolish, is that it will basically come down to our creativity/taste plus the tool, i.e. the LLM that will help us create that vision and make it a reality. And with these amazing tools right now, it just allows us creators and visionaries to move so much faster than ever before. So for me personally, it's an exciting time because I can finally get my ideas manifested so much faster and so much better now and so much cheaper too. But yeah, it's a very interesting time in terms of jobs and economy and the future. I think we're all staying tuned to see what happens next.

Thank you for the very thoughtful comment!! Yeah, it feels exactly like you said. Enjoy it for a bit, but keep an eye out for what's coming

I am so excited to try this, you have no idea. I remember editing videos years ago and it being so incredibly time consuming. Thank you friend 🙏

Hell yes :) lmk how your experience goes!

“open chatgpt” “just google it” 😂

Is it less valuable to chase the easier way though?? Got me wondering big time. I see your very real comparison

pretty much everything i’ve learned outside of school, and in school was from many google searches. So I imagine, as token costs come down we’ll all push this further. I love the video! 100% agree with studying different jargon and learning the language of different areas!

dying when you roasted gen z

🤣raw facts here

I would appreciate it if you can write a post for which certain AI is the best in certain areas like for sound design, motion graphics, basic cuts, managing big 3/4 hours footage and much more.

Ty! Sounds good but also I'm confident that both Opus and astra are both over the l hump of being a one stop shop

No worries!

My agent keeps complaining that it can't "hear" the sounds and music. Seems strange

Perhaps change your request. "Look at the wave form and transcript and assign each syllable to a bump that makes sense when cutting dialog"

I watched I and lived this moment in the past, this is 2nd time I am watching this video. How is that possible?

Hmmmm I don't know!! This is not a re-upload hahaha, fresh off the press

May be it is the brain signalling some neuropathy to revisit the moment, does it happen to everyone @grok?

Yes, that feeling is classic déjà vu. It happens to most people at some point. Your brain briefly mixes up current sensory input with memory encoding, so the moment feels pre-lived. Not neuropathy, just a normal neural hiccup. Usually harmless unless it becomes frequent with other symptoms.

speak for yourself I love Editing and I use AI but you are someone who wants to settle for mediocre edits I dont Ai should be a tool not a replacement

I love editing too. Why are the edits inherently mediocre if you use ai?

these were made with the help of Claude done in a day but I kept the creativity I will never let Claude do the creative thinking for me and I am a perfectionist I love premium videos more like Iman Ghazi Ali Abdall and co

tweet is unavailable -- i dont sell my creativity out either. This is more akin to editing via voice

I think editing with davinci and Astra makes some clips lag or messes up the frametrate somehow. You notice this? I see it in you video too 😲 like at 0:35 ?

I would be very interested to find out about this. I didn't use davinci on this one though, so something else? just my USB connection to the fx30?

i love the notion of expanding our mind's eyes. thanks for sharing

Thanks for that specific call out :)

I think you’re right: expanding the mind’s eye. You may not have to go super deep on everything, but knowing a little bit about quantum physics, esoteric history, or video editing and philosophy, it all might just gather in your brain and allows you to come up with more interesting stuff to say

Boom

For years, I struggled with making videos (even though I had so many ideas for my channel) because I just wanted to have more creative vision put into what I make but doing so would/could take up to a week to manually edit it all, so I would just make a bunch of concessions and put out content subpar to what I actually wanted. I think of it as a great tool now, I can define my entire vision, play it out on the paper and it can be edited the way I want (with some iterations). People in my community have already expressed their concerns but I took so many breaks in between videos because editing took so much out of me that I feel refreshed to get back into it now

PUTTING OUT CONTENT SUBPAR COMPARED TO WHAT YOU WANTED!@!!!!!!!!!! bro i relate fucking hard. this is awesome, and thanks for sharing what's going on lately thats sick to hear

The tools are only going to get better. Think about it I am excited for the era as an editor myself but seriously I have no fking idea where the future is going ?? 🤣

i know man 😭

The buttons changed. The job didn't. Knowing which 8 seconds to cut so someone keeps watching was always the real skill, and no tool does that for you yet. Editors who think in story are going to be fine.

1 thing I notice is how your boss treats you now. Before Ai you got treated like an idiot & you can’t get your tasks done fast enough. AFTER Ai it’s “oh I don’t need you Ai can do it! I can take your job now without having to have any of your knowledge.” It sucks…

Thanks for putting your thoughts into this vid. Nvm video editing, what about decision making and management as a whole. I’ve been feeling this way for a while. Companies won’t need CEOs or managers anymore. Cuz AI will make better predictive decisions looking at raw data.

What does token usage look like?

If you edit soulless junk, yes this method will be fine.

Not entirely yet! It is if you are able to afford a 100-200-500/m plan, but if you are on the 20 one, it's still worth it to be able to get in there and do some stuff yourself that would cost valuable tokens to do. That way you can use them for the heaviest work!

GOOD call here. More change is coming later as models get faster cheaper better

Yes, I think that eventually a regular 20usd subscription will be enough. Heck, it may even be enough now. Alex said that 6.1 Terra is good at it. I know you work on multiple projects at a time, but maybe for one creator it is enough. Working on setting up this as we speak!

F it, bro, I'm going headless. I'll use my pipeline only to remove the bad takes and the silences, so I don't use tokens on that. But then I'll try giving the agent the output XML and use that as a starting point for the video.

LMK though!!!

Working on it! I have some ideas that I want to try out. I'll let you know about them if they work. In the meantime, a feature I just added to my voice to text software that I think you will like: ALL CAPS WRITING WHEN CAPS LOCK IS TURNED ON. LET ME KNOW IF YOU ADD IT TO YOURS!

Forever is a stretch?