As we’ve covered before on the site, artificial intelligence is most likely here to stay in the film and video industry. While there might be some areas in which AI might not completely take over (hopefully), the craft of video editing seems to be squarely in the crosshairs of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
But, again, this new tech might simply be what you make of it as some of these new apps do promise to make video editing easier and more streamlined, rather than just one-click replacements to entire careers.
One area in which AI is revolutionizing video editing is in cut-downs and repurposing of longer videos with the goal of creating shorter form video content. And in that vein, let’s take a look at an app called Opus Clip and their new V2.0 which is aimed squarely at repurposing your long videos into viral shorts.
What is Opus Clip
Built with a mission to “democratize video content creation” as a way to make it accessible to “anyone with a story to tell or a passion to share,” Opus Clip is a new generative AI video editing tool aimed at giving inexperienced video editors the ability to repurpose their long videos into viral (and shareable) short-form clips.
Using a proprietary curation model powered by OpenAI's GPT-4, Opus Clip analyzes long-form footage and is programmed to pick out the gold nuggets from different parts of the video, then seamlessly rearrange them into shareable viral short clips which creators can then send out on their own.
Founded by Young Zhao and Grace Wang, Opus Clip is geared toward content creators looking to turn things like podcasts or webinars (or any other long-form videos) into clips that can be easily shareable on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
The AI Art of Repurposing Video
A look at Opus Clip's AI powered features
Credit: Opus Clip
From a purely technical standpoint, this is a fascinating piece of tech innovation that has been coming to video editing for quite some time. And in fact, it isn’t that dissimilar to what Adobe has been doing with its Sensei AI-powered scene detection tool for several years now.
While the majority of the marketing around this Opus Clip app appears to be at empowering non-editors with slogans about turning one video into ten clips ten times faster, it actually could be marketed towards both amateur and pro video editors as it could help quite a bit in streamlining the editing process for anyone.
Let’s face it: editing long-form videos has never been fun for anyone. It takes so much time to review footage, transcribe the content (either by hand or by AI—thankfully), then make the cuts needed to create new bite-sized versions.
Opus Clip v2.0 and its AI Tools
Powered by GPT-4, Opus Clip is just one of what might eventually be many AI repurposing tools on the market, all designed to automizing laborious editing work which isn’t that fun to do by hand. The biggest questions about this new AI technology really shouldn’t be why they do what they do, but rather more focused on how well they can perform.
When you look at some of the AI tools that Open Clip v2.0 is offering, it does sound like these features could help a video editor streamline their workflow with curation tools, auto reframe options, active speaker detection, keyword highlighters and even an emoji generator all powered by AI.
Still, we’ll leave it up to you and your comfort level for any of these new AI innovations and tools to see if they might be something you’re interested in exploring or staying away from for now. That being said, if you’d like to check out Opus Clip, it’s available for a free trial here (or a purchase plan for $13 a month).
