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I Tried Learning AI Video Editing in One Day

2026-10-26 · Vlog or day in the life · Ali · recording, 46:33 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: YouTube, writing online and creators, Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: AI, His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past, Family, Sponsor segment present

Ali gives himself one day to learn AI video editing and make a CreatorGrid launch video: one-shot attempts with Claude Code driving DaVinci Resolve, HyperFrames and Remotion fall short, but splitting the job into a clean A cut plus AI-made motion plates gets him, he reckons, about 97% of a human editor in six hours; he draws five learnings for working with AI.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Can AI really edit? Ali's one-day challenge against a human editor

  • ★★ Ali edited his own videos for about three years (earlier tellings say two) while working as a doctor 10 to 40 hours a week, so he knows what a good edit feels like, but had never properly tried editing with AI. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Every time a new AI model comes out, Ali's Twitter feed fills with people saying it can now edit videos; after months of this he was a little sceptical. — 00:00:00 · Twitter
  • ★★ Never having tried AI video editing, Ali challenges himself to learn it in a day and make a video as close as possible to a world-class human editor's; getting 80% of the way would delight him. — 00:00:49
  • ★★ Video editing, as Ali breaks it down: import the footage, cut out the mistakes for a clean A cut, add B-roll such as screen recordings and screenshots, then animate the B-roll with zooms, the part that takes ages. — 00:01:18

00:01:34 — What video editing is: A cut, B-roll, animation, music, sound design and taste

  • ★★ Nailing the A cut matters most, Ali says, and his course's Final Cut Pro lesson spent a lot of time on it: a good A cut makes everything downstream smoother, a bad one makes the rest feel disjointed. — 00:02:40 · Final Cut Pro
  • ★★ In Ali's experience of AI work, one shot gets a result about 80% good enough, but polishing the final 20% so it has taste applied takes ages and most of the time. — 00:03:09

00:03:46 — Asking Grok for options: editing footage in DaVinci Resolve or writing the video as code with HyperFrames and Remotion

  • ★★ Ali sees two ways AI can make a video: editing filmed footage, as in DaVinci Resolve, a professional editor that recently began letting AI control it directly, or having the AI write the video as code that generates every frame. — 00:04:58

00:05:58 — Round 1: buying DaVinci Resolve Studio and setting up HyperFrames in Claude Code

  • ★★ Controlling DaVinci Resolve through its MCP connector needs DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.1, which Ali buys for $295. — 00:05:59

00:08:03 — Sponsor read for Wispr Flow

00:09:58 — Connecting Claude to DaVinci Resolve, storyboards, and Remotion as a third run

00:15:11 — Round 1 results: DaVinci Resolve gets the A cut wrong; a silent HyperFrames draft

  • ★★ In round one, the DaVinci Resolve version got even the basic A cut wrong, Ali says, leaving in bad pauses. — 00:16:04

00:19:23 — HyperFrames versus Remotion, with ratings

  • ★★★ After round one Ali rates HyperFrames about seven out of 10, DaVinci Resolve three, and Remotion, super buggy but with the right idea, two. (hedged) — 00:22:14

00:22:42 — What went wrong: two work streams, motion plates, learnings one and two

  • ★★★ Asking an AI to pick 45 seconds out of 10 gigabytes of A-roll and cut it with J and L cuts is beyond what Opus 5.5 can do at this stage, Ali says; maybe one day, but not today. — 00:23:06
  • ★★ It is always good to one-shot a task with AI first and see what happens, Ali says, because then you see the holes in your prompting. — 00:23:34
  • ★★ To test a new video editor, Ali's team gives them 10 minutes of footage and asks for an edit of just the first 60 seconds, which gives a feel for how they do. — 00:24:02
  • ★★★ Ali's first learning from editing with AI: treat the AI like a human and give it the task you would give a human, with the same level of instruction. — 00:24:31
  • ★★ AI video work splits into two very different streams, Ali realises: a faceless launch video of text and music that needs no footage, and editing original footage. — 00:24:59
  • ★★★ Ali's hybrid: nail the A cut of real footage, separately generate high-quality motion video of the app's screenshots with zooms and pans, and combine them into a talking-head explainer with all the polish of an animated launch video. — 00:25:28
  • ★★ Working with AI teaches Ali the industry's terms: making thumbnails, he learned what a contact sheet is, a series of thumbnails exploring concept directions, and used the term in later prompts. — 00:26:42
  • ★★★ Ali's second learning: learn the words the professionals use; once he knew the term "motion plate", he could ask the AI for exactly what he wanted. — 00:27:15

00:27:38 — Round 2: motion plates and contact sheets; learning three

  • ★★ In AI video editing, Ali now says, the A cut is the easy part, which he could do manually or in Premiere with Firecut; the hard part is the motion plates. — 00:28:20
  • ★★★ Ali's third learning: get the AI to show you the plan before it builds anything; a storyboard or contact sheet takes seconds to fix, while a one-shot final render takes much longer. — 00:28:59

00:31:28 — Filming a tight script and cutting it with Firecut in DaVinci Resolve; learning four

  • ★★★ Ali's fourth learning: if you want a short video, film a short script; he had been asking the AI to dig a 45-second launch video out of five minutes of talking, a job he would never give a human editor. — 00:31:28
  • ★★ Ali had Claude write a very tight script based on what he said in the original footage, then filmed it again. — 00:31:28 · Claude
  • ★★ Ali had never used Firecut himself before this video: his video editors use it, and his team built it as an in-house tool. — 00:32:25
  • ★★ Firecut gave Ali a very rough first cut that did not quite make it, so he decided to do the cut manually. — 00:32:54

00:34:50 — Watching Parth's human edit

  • ★★ Ali says he has about 8 million followers across social platforms and has been on the creator side of brand deals for the last decade. — 00:35:31
  • ★★ Ali likes the sound design of the launch-video edit by Parth, one of his team's human editors, and sets out to come close to his level of quality. — 00:37:02

00:37:56 — Round 2 results and picture in picture

  • ★★ Ali judges the first full renders from HyperFrames and Remotion about 85% there, needing polish; the Remotion one looks a bit more AI-sloppy with its gradients. — 00:39:28
  • ★★ Pablo, Ali's co-founder on CreatorGrid, sent over a brand new CreatorGrid logo while Ali was making the launch video. — 00:40:24 · Pablo
  • ★★ In normal video editing a rebrand when a video is 90% done means redoing every graphic by hand, Ali says; with videos made as code, he could give Claude the new logo and ask it to update the whole design system. — 00:40:24 · Claude

00:40:36 — A new CreatorGrid logo restyles the video; learning five

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth learning: when your video is basically code, changing your mind is super cheap. — 00:41:27
  • ★★ Ali imagines AI editing dumped footage overnight into at least a rough cut that his editors then finalise, which would be "absolutely freaking bananas". (hypothetical) — 00:41:56

00:42:18 — Boss battle: the final HyperFrames and Remotion launch videos for CreatorGrid

  • ★★★ CreatorGrid started as Ali's team's in-house tool for the hassle of creator marketing; after brands said they loved the idea it was spun out, and it now runs brands' creator campaigns end to end, for UGC ads or organic views. — 00:42:18
  • ★★ CreatorGrid charges brands no retainer and no subscription: they pay only for the content they approve or the organic views it gets. — 00:42:47
  • ★★ CreatorGrid is working with a number of big brands and has over 10,000 creators on the platform, Ali says. — 00:42:47

00:44:20 — The verdict, shown to a colleague

  • ★★ The final launch video was not one-shotted but took about 20 rounds of mostly minor prompts, Ali says. — 00:44:57 · Claude

  • ★★★ Ali thinks human plus AI is the sweet spot for video editing right now. — 00:45:27

    “human plus AI is the sweet spot right now”

  • ★★★ Hoping for 80% of his human editors' quality, Ali reckons he got the AI to about 97%, especially on motion graphics, in about six hours and at no cost beyond his Claude subscription. — 00:45:27 · Claude

  • ★★ Having done it once, Ali has the code Claude generated, which makes it easier to do again, and above all a mental model of how AI video editing works. — 00:45:27 · Claude

00:45:39 — Final thoughts: about 97% in six hours

  • ★★ AI video editing is the worst it is ever going to be, Ali says, and only gets better from here. — 00:46:09

In the description and comments

  • ★ In a comment, Ali calls this a new kind of video for him, picking something he has never done and learning it on camera, and asks viewers what he should learn next. — creator comment
  • ★ Asked in the comments why he seemed surprised by split view in Claude, Ali says he mostly uses it in the terminal. — creator comment · Claude

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: A cut · Claude · CreatorGrid · DaVinci Resolve · HyperFrames · motion plate · Remotion

Also: People: Izzy Sealey · Pablo · Parth

Organizations: Twitter

Concepts: B-roll · contact sheet · how hard can it be? · storyboard

Products: Adobe Premiere Pro · Canva · Claude Opus 5.5 · Epidemic Sound · Final Cut Pro · Firecut · Grok

Also centred on CreatorGrid: 📢 Free for Creators - Make Money & Grow Your Following 🤩

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