Auto-Editor Documentation

If your media file does not have an embedded subtitle stream, auto-editor will automatically look for a sidecar file with the same name as the input but with a subtitle extension (e.g., talk.srt or talk.ass for talk.mp4).

Workflow Example:

1. Generate the subtitle file: auto-editor whisper talk.mp4 ggml-medium.en.bin --format srt -o talk.srt
2. Edit the video using that file: auto-editor talk.mp4 --edit word:question

You can use timeline files (.v1, .v2, .v3) or FCP7 XML files as inputs to auto-editor. The tool detects the format by the file extension and renders them like any other media file.

Supported Importers:

• auto-editor timeline files (.v1, .v2, .v3)
• FCP7 XML (experimental)

Instead of rendering a final video, you can export a project file for use in professional editing software using the --export flag.

Supported formats include:

• premiere
• resolve
• final-cut-pro
• shotcut
• kdenlive

To export each kept section as an individual file, use --export clip-sequence.

You can deploy the Auto-Editor website using a systemd service. Create a service file at /etc/systemd/system/ae.service with the following configuration. Note that ExecStart must point to your specific bun binary path and WorkingDirectory should match your deployment directory.

[Unit]
Description=AutoEditor Website
After=network.target

[Service]
User=root
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/auto-editor
ExecStart=/root/.bun/bin/bun run server.js

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To manually remove or preserve specific segments at the start or end of a video, use the start and end variables or negative indexes.

• Cut the first and last 30 seconds: --cut start,30sec -30sec,end
• Keep the first and last 30 seconds (overriding automatic edits): --keep start,30sec -30sec,end
• Select the last 60 frames using negative indexes: -60,end
• Select from the first second to the last 30 seconds: 1sec,-30secs

auto-editor video.mp4 --cut start,30sec -30sec,end

EBU (EBU R128) normalization analyzes perceived loudness over time to meet broadcast and streaming standards. It uses a two-pass process: an analysis pass to measure loudness, range, and true peak, followed by a normalization pass using the FFmpeg loudnorm filter.

You can use default values, set a specific integrated loudness target, or provide a full string of parameters.

auto-editor --audio-normalize ebu  # use default values
auto-editor --audio-normalize ebu:i=-16  # set integrated loudness target
auto-editor --audio-normalize "ebu:i=-5,lra=20,gain=5,tp=-1"  # customize all parameters

The v3 format is a nonlinear timeline format (JSON-based with .v3 extension) that supports multiple overlapping video and audio layers. You can use Auto-Editor to:

1. Generate a v3 timeline from media files using the --export v3 flag.
2. Render media files from an existing v3 timeline.
3. Translate other timeline formats (like Final Cut Pro 7 XML) into the v3 format.

If yt-dlp is installed on your system, you can pass a direct URL (such as a YouTube link) as the input to auto-editor.

auto-editor "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcs82HnguGc"

The recommended installation method is to use the official binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

1. Download the binary for your platform from the GitHub Releases page.
2. Rename the downloaded file to auto-editor (or auto-editor.exe on Windows).
3. On macOS or Linux, ensure the binary is executable by running chmod +x ./auto-editor.
4. Move the binary to a directory in your PATH to make it accessible from any working directory.

To verify the installation, run ./auto-editor --help.

To transcribe live audio from a microphone, pass :mic as the file argument. This streams the microphone directly to the transcription engine without saving a media recording. To retain and edit the captured audio, use auto-editor :mic instead, which saves a sibling lossless-FLAC _RECORDING.mka file by default.

Platform Support:

• macOS: Uses AVFoundation (prefers USB, then system default).
• Windows: Uses DirectShow (prefers USB, then first audio capture device).
• Linux: Uses default ALSA input device.

Use auto-editor to analyze a media file and automatically cut out inactive (e.g., silent) sections. By default, active sections are kept unchanged and inactive sections are cut.

To run a basic edit, provide the input file path. To specify a custom output name, use the -o flag. Use --preview to see what would be cut without actually rendering the file.

auto-editor path/to/video.mp4          # writes video_ALTERED.mp4
auto-editor video.mp4 -o out.mp4       # choose the output name
auto-editor --preview video.mp4        # sanity-check without rendering