CUDA Video Editor

The CUDA Video Editor turns uploaded clips, generated video, narration, slides, subtitles, music, and transitions into finished MP4 deliverables. You steer it from chat, and the finished timeline appears in Live -> Video Studio so you can preview, trim, reorder, and rebuild without starting over.

What It Is For

Use Video Editor when the job is about assembling or changing video:

• trim a long recording into a highlight reel
• add subtitles or voice-over
• convert landscape video into vertical short-form format
• stitch several generated clips into one story
• mix music, narration, and original audio
• add title cards, explainers, transitions, and watermarks
• finalize a polished deliverable for download or sharing

Use Video Lab when you need to generate new short clips from text or images. Use Video Editor when you need to arrange, polish, combine, or reformat media.

How The Workflow Feels

1. Upload or generate the source media.
2. Ask Alfrada for the edit you want.
3. Alfrada runs the editing steps on the CUDA sidecar.
4. The session's Live -> Video Studio panel shows the build steps while work is running.
5. After finalize, Video Studio unlocks preview plus a horizontal timeline.
6. You can trim, reorder, adjust transitions, move audio blocks, and click Update preview to rebuild.

You do not need to name internal operations in normal use. Describe the result and constraints, and Alfrada will choose the right editing path.

Main Capabilities

Ingest and inspect

Alfrada can probe uploaded videos for duration, resolution, frame rate, codecs, and audio. It can also ingest a recording into a timeline-style canvas so later edits refer to scenes rather than raw timestamps.

Trim and reformat

Use this for cutdowns, clips, social formats, and aspect-ratio conversion. Common resize modes include contain, cover, contain-blur, and stretch.

Stitch and transition

Video Editor can concatenate clips with transitions such as fade, crossfade, slide, zoom, wipe, dissolve, pixelize, radial, and circle.

Subtitles

It can burn subtitles into the video using ASS styling, with control over font size, background opacity, and position.

Audio mixing

Layer narration, music, and source audio into one video. If a generated video already has audio, Alfrada checks before overlaying new narration so you do not accidentally bury dialogue or sound effects.

Slides and explainers

The editor can render title cards, chart cards, simple animated explainers, and Manim-style interstitials, then stitch them between live clips.

Finalize

finalize is the last step. It applies final polish, marks the MP4 as a deliverable, and makes the timeline editable in Live Video Studio.

Live Video Studio

Live Video Studio is the visual editing surface inside the Work panel. It has two phases:

• Phase 1: a live step list while Alfrada builds the video
• Phase 2: preview plus timeline after finalize

In Phase 2 you can:

• drag clips into a new order
• trim clip start and end points
• set transitions between clips
• apply a color look per clip
• move or trim audio blocks
• rebuild with Update preview

If Alfrada adds more clips or audio in a follow-up message, Video Studio syncs the timeline automatically unless you have unsaved manual edits.

Good Prompt Patterns

Highlight reel

I uploaded a long recording. Find the strongest 3-4 moments, cut them into a 60-second highlight reel, add clean subtitles, smooth crossfades, and finalize it for download.

This gives Alfrada the source, duration, editorial goal, subtitle requirement, transition style, and final deliverable request.

Vertical social cut

Turn this landscape demo video into a 9:16 Reel under 45 seconds. Use contain-blur so nothing important is cropped, add burned-in subtitles, and keep the pacing fast.

The prompt names the target format and avoids accidental cropping.

Narrated explainer

Create a 60-second narrated explainer from these six images. Write the script, generate voice-over, add soft background music, use crossfades between sections, then finalize. I will tweak the timeline in Live Video Studio after.

This chains script, speech, music, image timing, transitions, and the Live editing handoff.

Generated clips into one story

Use the three Video Lab clips we just generated. Stitch them into one 20-second product teaser with a title card, consistent color look, background music, and a final logo watermark.

Video Editor is the right follow-up once Video Lab has produced separate clips.

Best Practices

• Upload source files before asking for edits.
• Name the target format: horizontal, square, vertical, GIF, or MP4.
• State the duration limit up front.
• Say whether original audio should be kept, lowered, removed, or replaced.
• Ask for finalize when you want the output to appear as an editable Live Video Studio timeline.
• After finalize, make small visual timing changes in Video Studio instead of re-prompting the whole edit.

Heads Up

• Video generation and video editing are separate tools. Generate new scenes with Video Lab, then assemble and polish them with Video Editor.
• Some AI-generated clips include native audio. Alfrada checks for that before mixing narration or music, but you should say whether to preserve, lower, or replace the source audio.
• Timeline durations can be approximate until Alfrada probes or trims the source file.
• The CUDA sidecar does the heavy rendering. Very large videos can take longer than text or document workflows.

For the launch note, see Live Video Studio. For all tool capabilities, see the Tool Library.