A client has asked me to replace their video editor for a video podcast. It’s the standard quick-cut style, zooms, loud transitions, and big bubble-letter subtitles throughout.

They recommended using Descript, which looks to be an AI platform that does all the work for you. Throw your video/audio into the site, and it transcribes the video, allowing you to edit based on the transcription. It then makes AI recommendations and inserts zooms and transitions.

There’s no getting around using AI for some of this, like subtitle generation, but I’d rather not buy a sub to an AI platform, nor would I like to use one, so I’m looking for alternatives. The pay certainly isn’t worth the time it would take without cutting corners unfortunately.

Unfortunately, Davinci Resolve isn’t playing well with my system and the nvidia driver I use (580, it worked on 550 but that’s not an option in Additional Drivers anymore for some reason) results in a black screen for the video timeline (not ideal for a video editor haha). I’ve been playing around with Kdenlive and Blender’s video editor.

I found an add-on for both programs that transcribes speech-to-text, which I finally got mostly working with Kdenlive (using whisper) but not with Blender. I also found a FOSS app called audapolis which does well pulling a transciption into an exportable file.

Anyone have any experience making these mass-produced-style videos without going full AI? My client mentioned the old VE spent 1-2 hours with Descript for a 15ish min video and 2 shorts. I’m ok doubling that timeframe at first if it means not using Descript.

  • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
    1·
    3 hours ago

    You may already have the answer from the other comments - but specifically for subtitle transcription, I’ve used whisper and set it to output directly into SRT, which I could then import directly into kdenlive or VLC or whatever, with timecodes and everything. It seemed accurate enough that the editing of the subs afterwards was almost non-existant.

    I can’t remember how I installed Whisper in the first place, but I know (from pressing the up arrow in terminal 50 times) that the command I used was:

    whisper FILENAME.MP3 --model medium.en --language English --output_format srt

    I was surprised/terrified how accurate the output was - and this was a variety of accents from Northern England and rural Scotland. A few minutes of correcting mistakes only.