I Tried Learning AI Video Editing in One Day
Ali Abdaal spends one day learning AI video editing to make a launch video for his platform Creator Grid, testing how close Claude-driven tools can get to his team's skilled human editor.
The gist
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Abdaal tested DaVinci Resolve, HyperFrames and Remotion side by side in Claude Code, first rating them 3, 7 and 2 out of 10.
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Resolve botched the basic A cut from about 5 minutes of footage, so Abdaal says to brief AI like a human and film a short script.
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He says learning pro terms like "motion plate" and getting a storyboard or contact sheet before rendering made fixes much faster.
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He cut the A-roll himself in Resolve with his team's in-house cutting tool, then layered AI motion plates, music and sound effects.
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Because the videos were code, a mid-project logo change reskinned everything, and he reached about 97% in roughly 6 hours and about 20 rounds.
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Nice. That is really good. Its background music is a little bit egregious. A few of the sound effects are a little bit like... there's a couple of flash frames where I got things a little bit wrong, but like holy moly, this is like 97% there. Okay, now this was HyperFrames."
▶ Play at 43:124 creators recommend it, including Peter Yang, Becky Harry, and Greg Isenberg.
See all on the HyperFrames page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Your campaigns run end to end. That is remarkably good. Well done, Remotion. That's solid. Look at that. Wow. Okay. I mean, we can definitely make a nicer graph, but this is really solid. Okay, I now like Remotion again."
▶ Play at 30:035 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Austin Tedesco, and How I AI.
See all on the Remotion page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Wow, we're about half an hour in. So far, we've managed to buy and download DaVinci Resolve Studio and Claude Code is cooking away on trying to do the HyperFrames method."
▶ Play at 10:57108 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Liam Ottley, and Peter Yang.
See all on the Claude Code page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"It took about 6 hours from start to finish, and it didn't cost anything on top of my Claude subscription. And now that I've done this once, I've firstly got all of the code that Claude generated, and so it'd be easier to do it again."
▶ Play at 45:51250 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Chris Koerner, and This Week in Startups.
See all on the Claude page
Ali Abdaal recommends it
"Learning number three, get the AI to show you the plan before it builds anything. If you have a storyboard or a contact sheet, that takes seconds to go through and fix stuff. But if you get it to one-shot the render all the way at the end, then like you have to spend a lot mor..."
▶ Play at 29:26
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Conveniently, Epidemic Sound has a bunch of that stuff in it. They've got swooshes, ambience, water, vehicles, whoosh. Can I just give the AI access to Epidemic Sound?"
▶ Play at 34:182 creators recommend it, including Jonathan Courtney.
See all on the Epidemic Sound pageWhat they recommend · 6 picks
"Learning number three, get the AI to show you the plan before it builds anything. If you have a storyboard or a contact sheet, that takes seconds to go through and fix stuff. Bu..."
"Nice. That is really good. Its background music is a little bit egregious. A few of the sound effects are a little bit like... there's a couple of flash frames where I got thing..."
"Wow, we're about half an hour in. So far, we've managed to buy and download DaVinci Resolve Studio and Claude Code is cooking away on trying to do the HyperFrames method."
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