Reviewing Eddie — Your Secret AI-Powered Assistant Video Editor?

Meet Eddie — An AI Assistant Editor

So, from a first look it certainly appears that Eddie is intended to be a personalized AI video editing assistant who can help editors make sense of their interview footage—and then get rough cuts done in seconds. You know, things like getting a summary, finding soundbites, organizing them by topics. Eddie AI is meant to represent a whole new way to look at your video editing workloads.

Having tried this new AI assistant out I can say that Eddie does feature both personality and a surprising amount of sophistication. With your direction, Eddie can create some pretty amazing rough cuts of your longer form videos.

And for editors that work with clients, Eddie can be used to develop a quick rough cut that you can turnaround in blazing-fast speeds. Client doesn’t like the cut? Add their notes to Eddie to get to the perfect rough cut faster. You can then even ask Eddie for additional outputs, such as cutdowns for social media.

Active Editing: Uncomfortable At First, Then Intuitive All at Once

The most unique aspect to Eddie is the conversational interface. When I first uploaded some footage the AI was able to understand the full context of it and was ready to take on its assistant editing tasks.

For one sample in particular, Eddie was able to handle a (quite challenging I’d say) back-and-forth interview about a new camera. I asked Eddie to “find key topics,” and he did. From there I queued him to “Identify the important soundbites talking about the new camera release,” and he did that too.

It was also able to take prompts like “take these soundbites and create a coherent 3-minute edit,” along with more nuanced commands like “can you add in a strong hook that grabs a viewer’s attention,” and Eddie was able to deliver the requests in edited clips each time.

It was definitely a struggle at first. I am not used to ‘verbalizing’ my intentions, so at first I was entering prompts like I do in Google Search—stiff and a staccato of words.

But the unlock for me was realizing that Eddie can iterate on edits. The first result is only just the beginning; continue to prompt him with subjective requests. And the first result is not the only result: you can ask for numerous other storylines and then compare which one you like best.

It's also kind of mind blowing when you realize that Eddie is active video editing. Where NLEs are passive—they can only perform the tasks through the editor’s clicks. Eddie is a layer of abstraction higher and into the realm of helping you think and be more creative. He helps you experiment, understands what you want and helps you get there quicker.

Built for Pros: Communication and Exporting

Ultimately, Eddie offers some of the better AI performance for communication out there with a surprisingly complex understanding of the craft of video editing and the many nuances that go into cutting down longform footage into tight, usable clips.

For example, if you ask Eddie to explain the reasoning behind its cuts, he’ll provide you with examples and context to show you its reasoning, as well as go through your ideas with you in a full conversation.

If you're someone who is open to trying new AI tools to help your workflows, Eddie could definitely be that. My video had non-zero start timecode and Eddie exported the edit as an XML for DaVinci Resolve that seamlessly relinked to the source footage. Eddie also offers options to export to Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro, or as an MP4.

If you’d like to check out Eddie and see if he might be the a helpful tool for speeding up your editing workflows, you check out Eddie AI here.