“Hey, can you cut that two-hour conference presentation down to a two-minute video for LinkedIn?”

Two years ago, that request would have sent someone deep into video editing software, scrubbing through footage, setting careful cut points, and wrestling with export settings. Now you can simply tell an AI bot what you want and watch it begin to assemble your video.

For the full newsletter post, visit: https://wondertools.substack.com/p/eddie-ai-video-editing

Eddie AI is the first tool I’ve tried that effectively lets anyone edit a video with natural language. Explain what you want in your own words — whether you’re cutting together highlights for social media or a rough draft of a video edit to share with colleagues. It’s free for now, with pricing to follow in 2025.

Eddie aims to supplement — not replace — other video editing tools. You can’t yet use it for advanced video edits like color or audio corrections or adding transitions, titles, or special effects. It works only with talking videos because it relies on transcript text to perform edits.

Even so, Eddie offers a glimpse of where video editing is heading. It’s already handy for quick preliminary edits to share with colleagues, or for beginners who just want to trim lengthy interviews.

Traditional video editing software can drown beginners in complex menus, keyboard shortcuts, and software details. Eddie makes it more accessible. Video editing — like coding and image generation — is opening up to those without technical skills. Read on for how it works, why it’s worth trying, and a few limitations and alternatives.

How Eddie works: A quick start guide

The basic workflow

* Go to HeyEddie.ai and sign in with a Google account.

* Upload a video from your computer or Dropbox/Google Drive.

* Type what you want, e.g. “make a five-minute highlight reel.”

* Review, and revise with additional prompts.

* Download the video to share it. Or export a draft formatted for Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Da Vinci Resolve, or Avid.

What’s special about Eddie

* Beginner-friendly. Just describe what you’re aiming for and get a good working draft, even if you’ve never edited a video before.

* Prioritizes content over technical details. Instead of mastering menu commands, you can focus on the story you’re trying to tell.

* Iterative refinement. Easily request changes, like “Make the opening snappier,” or “Focus more on the Q&A section."

* No file or project limits. Upload video files of any size — even 100gb — and create as many individual projects as you want.

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Eddie’s Limitations

* ⚠️ Talking heads only. Only works for interview videos. Eddie analyzes the transcript, so it won’t work for silent footage of scenery or abstract video.

* 🎬 Limited editing capabilities. No color correction, audio leveling, titles or transitions yet.

* 🗣️ English-only for now. Footage and prompting aren’t yet tuned for other languages.

* ✂ Can’t yet make word-level edits. Ask it to remove sentences, but it can’t yet cut individual words or phrases, e.g. “like” or “sort of.”

* 💻 Desktop only. Doesn’t work on mobile.

Alternative tools to consider

* 🎯 Convert articles into videos

* Hypernatural is my AI tool of choice for converting written or audio content into short social videos. I use it to create drafts of videos out of the text of newsletter posts or presentations I’m working on.

* ⚒️ Edit online with advanced features

* Kapwing is a versatile Web-based video editing tool. I use it to edit footage manually, as with traditional software. You can also use Kapwing’s AI to add captions, dub a video into another language, or prep social media highlights. Unlike Eddie, Kapwing won’t yet let you edit a video with natural language prompts. See my review and a demo of Kapwing.

* ✂️ Edit like you’re revising a document

* Descript lets you edit a video or audio file like a Google Doc. You can delete words to edit out sections of your video or audio. Unlike Eddie, Descript lets add transitions, titles, and music. I like its AI capabilities for removing background noise, filler words, and silences, none of which Eddie can do. But Descript doesn’t let you edit a video with natural language prompts. Read my take on its 7 best features.

* 📲 Edit video on your phone

* Captions is the best AI-powered mobile video editing app I’ve tested. It makes it easy to quickly make engaging, shareable, social videos. It now also works on a Mac and the Web. Read my review.

Pricing, platforms and privacy

* Free during beta (2024).

* Works on desktop browsers, not on mobile devices.

* Eddie doesn’t train its models on your footage, and your footage remains your intellectual property.

Videos you can edit with Eddie

* Specific cut: Delete the opening interview banter.

* Specific subject: Find me the clip when someone talks about X.

* Multiple clips: Create 5 clips for TikTok focusing on Y.

* Shareable clip: Create a self-contained short version of an internal presentation or panel.

* Trailer: Cut a preview for a course, event, or conference.

* Vertical: Create a vertical Instagram Reel cut from a video interview.

* Welcome: Make a launch video for your site or training program.

* Multicam: Eddie recently added multicam capabilities, so you can upload footage of multiple camera angles and cut together particular angles.

Eddie’s 2.5 minute demo video shows it in action. The help pages offer lots of useful ideas, from which the following prompts are drawn.

Find important moments or soundbites; or create summaries.

• “Find me the best quotes about our new program.”

• “Create a two-minute summary of the main points from this interview.”

• “Show me the moment where the speaker talks about his leadership vision.”

Highlight engaging moments for social media.

• “Find the most dramatic part of the video for a one-minute YouTube clip.”

• “Show me the segment where they talk about their biggest mistake.”

• “Give me a short clip that captures the essence of this presentation.”

How video editors are already using Eddie

* An independent filmmaker uses Eddie to more efficiently edit his video podcast focused on elite athletes.

* An in-house video producer for a start-up outside of Boston uses Eddie to create corporate videos.

* A boutique video agency uses Eddie to cut video for clients. They do six videos a week for about 100 customers. They say Eddie saves them 10-20 hours a week on editing their one to three-minute videos.

Eddie’s CEO on the AHA moment

I recently spoke to founding CEO Shamir Allibhai about Eddie’s purpose and direction.

“The Aha moment for many people is when they realize the edit they receive from Eddie is not the end, but the beginning,” Allibhai told me.

“They can iterate. They can ask Eddie, ‘Hey, can you make this edit punchier? Can you swap out the last topic for the first one? Can you try a different story line? Can you make the hook stronger?” That’s really the core thing.”

Allibhai’s pro-tip: Instead of using it like Google with a few keywords (“Best vegetarian restaurants in NYC”), provide more detailed guidance to Eddie in your prompts. “More context is better,” Allibhai says. “Tell Eddie this is an internal keynote video for our end-of-year Christmas party, a version may go on YouTube. We don’t take ourselves too seriously... and then you can iterate with Eddie to get to a great cut.”

The Bottom line

* Eddie is the easiest video editing tool I’ve tried.

* As with other AI tools, it can be frustrating when you don’t quickly get the results you want, because using natural language creates an expectation of immediate understanding.

* Given how complicated it can be to learn Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, or other video editing software, Eddie AI and other natural language editing tools seem poised to disrupt how amateurs edit.

At the City University of New York’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where I teach, students spend hours mastering professional editing software. And for the foreseeable future, we’ll still need pro video editors who master the technical details of visual storytelling. But for many everyday situations — trimming a meeting recording, pulling social media clips, or gathering quick highlights — natural language editing may soon be a widely-adopted accelerator of the process. It’s not mature yet, but it’s poised to make video editing accessible to everyone who can describe what they want. AI is beginning to democratize creative work that used to require technical expertise.

Who should try Eddie now:

* Creators who want quick rough cuts before final manual editing

* Anyone intimidated by traditional video editing software

* Marketers who need frequent social media clips

* Schools or other budget-strapped organizations in need of quick video edits

* Teams who need quick video highlights from meetings or presentations

Who should skip it:

* Anyone working with non-interview or non-English footage

* Anyone who needs to edit video on a mobile device

* Anyone who needs to know specific future pricing

* Teams who don’t want to add a new tool to their workflow and prefer the use of a single do-it-all video editing tool