21:57Tella · Tutorial
I Use Claude to Edit Videos: Here's My Exact Process
A working agentic workflow that handles rough cuts, overlays, sound effects, memes, zooms, short-form repurposing, and thumbnail selection — all from Claude.
May 18thThe argument in one line.
Training Claude on your own editing methodology transforms it from a generic AI into a skilled collaborator that compresses 10-16 hours of video production into under four hours without sacrificing quality.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You edit long-form YouTube videos and spend 6-12 hours per video on animations alone.
- You are a freelance video editor who wants to take on more clients without working more hours.
- You run a YouTube channel and want production-quality custom animations without hiring a full-time editor.
- You have tried AI editing tools and got low-quality results and want to understand why the training step changes everything.
SKIP IF…
- You edit short-form or social content; the four-phase workflow is specifically designed for long-form YouTube essays.
- You want a free, zero-setup solution; this requires Claude Projects, Remotion, and Premiere Pro integration.
The full version, fast.
The video demonstrates a four-phase AI editing pipeline: automated silence removal (Gling), Claude-powered animation planning, Claude-plus-Remotion animation generation, and manual sound design. The key insight is that Claude needs to be trained on your actual editorial logic before it produces usable output. Feed it real scripts with real animation plans as PDFs, then give it a timestamped transcript and it builds the entire plan in 15 minutes. Remotion handles rendering, Claude handles the code. The result: 55 professional animations in 25 minutes, and a complete 10-minute YouTube video produced in under four hours versus the standard 10-16 hour manual turnaround.
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00:00 – 01:39
01 · Cold open + promise
Hook with finished AI-edited video, dismissal of low-quality AI tutorials, promise to reveal the four-phase workflow.
01:39 – 03:39
02 · Phase 1: Cutting
Why raw footage needs silence-removal first; demo of Gling cutting a full video in 2 minutes vs the manual 20min-2hr process.
03:39 – 04:38
03 · Phase 2: How editors plan
Three-step editor planning framework: analyze script, plan animations, define branding. The methodology Claude will be trained on.
04:38 – 05:28
04 · Course promo
Mid-roll promo for the $97 Ultimate Editors course with an A-to-Z AI editing module in development.
05:28 – 09:28
05 · Training Claude to plan like an editor
Feeding Claude real scripts and plans as PDFs, using the Premiere timestamped transcript, getting animation plans in 15 min and branded mockups in 10 more.
09:28 – 11:34
06 · Phase 3: Animations with Claude + Remotion
55 animations in 25 minutes; Claude writes to Remotion, which renders to video; Claude outputs a timestamp table for Premiere import; manual placement took 20 min.
11:34 – 13:15
07 · Phase 4: Sound design + time comparison
Sound design remains manual; full time comparison (10-16 hrs manual vs ~4 hrs AI); the computers-in-the-1990s analogy for urgency.
13:15 – 13:31
08 · Close + CTA
Final call to join Ultimate Editors before the AI module launches.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Claude on its own cannot replace editors; Claude trained by a good editor produces professional results in a fraction of the time.
- The training materials are the leverage: feed Claude real scripts with their actual animation plans, not generic prompts.
- Feeding the timestamped Premiere transcript lets Claude calculate exactly how long each animation needs to run, not just what the animation should show.
- Getting Claude to produce mockups before full animation generation eliminates the risk of scrapping 25 minutes of heavy rendering because the branding was wrong.
- Remotion is the missing piece most AI-editing tutorials skip: Claude writes the animation code, Remotion renders it.
- The gap between editors who know AI and those who do not will compound the same way the computer gap did in the 1990s: the slow ones stop getting hired.
- 55 custom animations for a 10-minute video took Claude 25 minutes to generate, a task that takes a human editor 6-12 hours.
- The three steps a high-level editor does before touching Premiere (analyze script, plan animations, define branding) are exactly what you teach Claude before it can replicate your work.
The training step is what makes AI editing actually work.
WHAT TO LEARN
Generic prompts produce generic results; the editors getting real leverage from Claude are the ones who feed it their actual editorial methodology before asking it to do anything.
02Phase 1: Cutting
- Silence removal is the first bottleneck to eliminate: AI tools like Gling cut a full raw recording in under two minutes, handling a task that manually takes 20 minutes to two hours.
03Phase 2: How editors plan
- Claude cannot plan animations for a video it has never been taught to think about; the training step means uploading real scripts with their actual animation plans so the model learns your specific editorial logic.
- The timestamped text export from Premiere (not just the script words) is what lets Claude calculate animation duration automatically; giving it both the words and the timing is what separates a useful output from a generic one.
05Training Claude to plan like an editor
- Getting mockup sign-off before full animation rendering is standard risk management: confirm the design direction visually before committing 20-25 minutes of generation time to the wrong branding.
06Phase 3: Animations with Claude + Remotion
- Remotion is the render layer Claude writes to; understanding that Claude produces animation code rather than video files directly explains why the workflow requires a separate rendering step and why output quality is controllable.
07Phase 4: Sound design + time comparison
- The time math changes the business case completely: a three-day turnaround per video becomes four hours, which means the same editor can take on three times the client workload without working more hours.
- Sound design remains the one phase without a proven AI shortcut; acknowledging that gap honestly is what makes the rest of the workflow credible.
Terms worth knowing.
- Remotion
- A React-based framework for generating videos programmatically. Claude writes the animation logic as code; Remotion renders it to actual video files that can be imported into Premiere Pro.
- Gling
- An AI-powered silence-removal tool that automatically cuts pauses, fillers, and bad takes from raw footage in a fraction of the time of manual editing.
- Claude Project
- A persistent Claude workspace where uploaded PDFs and files remain in context across sessions, allowing you to train it on your editing methodology once and reuse that context across many videos.
- Animation plan
- A pre-production document that maps each moment in a script to the specific visual or animation that should appear on screen at that point, created before any editing begins.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
13:00
“Claude on its own isn't gonna replace editors, but Claude trained by a good editor can create stunning results in just a fraction of the time.”
05:50
“You need to train it to think like an editor before it actually becomes one.”
12:50
“The gap between editors who know AI and editors who don't is only gonna get wider.”
Word for word.
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00:00This entire YouTube video, the animations, the cuts, the motion graphics was edited by Claude. Now over the last few months, my entire feed has been flooded with videos saying Claude just killed video editors. And every time I watch one of those tutorials, I saw the same thing.
00:13Trashy low quality AI slop that honestly looked embarrassing. But then I stumbled across a secret workflow made up of four phases where I trained Claude with actual editing skills my team uses and turned it into a professional long form editor. And using this four phase workflow, I was then able to take this raw footage here and turn it into a high quality premium YouTube video and it only took a few hours.
00:35So if you're an editor and you want to learn how to edit high quality YouTube videos that look impressive using nothing but Claude, this video is for you. I'll be revealing the exact tech stack that I used, how I trained Claude to become a long form editor, and the full process going from raw video to high quality YouTube edit.
00:50And it all starts with phase one cutting. If you're editing a long form video, first thing you're gonna start out with is raw footage. Raw footage contains a lot of silences and bad takes baked into it, which means the first thing that we need to do is cut those out so that we can have a clean-cut video that's then ready to be edited.
01:04Now traditionally, the way to do this would be to bring your footage into Premiere Pro and using your razor tool cut out every silence for the entire video. This can take anywhere between twenty minutes to two hours depending on how long the footage is. But now with AI, you can do it all within a few clicks.
01:17There are multiple programs that can cut your YouTube video for you. Time bolt, Wisecut, Autopod, Riverside FM.
01:23Personally, the one I like to use is called Glink. Let's actually use it to cut our YouTube video. This is my raw footage here.
01:29All I have to do is launch Gling and drag it into this box. Now optionally, I can click the add script button and even add my script for better cutting. Then I click on continue, select cut silences, and click on enhance and edit.
01:41Gling now processes through the video, removes the silences, removes the bad takes, and in just two minutes, this is what I have. A clean-cut video that's ready to be edited. Now personally, I still end up going through it one more time just to make sure that all the cuts are alright and the pacing feels natural.
01:55But now that the video is cut up it's time to discover how Claude is going to edit it. With phase one complete we move into phase two which is planning. Before I explain how we created stunning animations using Claude you first have to understand how a normal YouTube video is edited.
02:07We understand that the visuals on the screen are the most important part of a YouTube video. They do two very important things. First, they help explain whatever you're saying.
02:16When a viewer sees an animation, they visually understand the concept you're explaining a lot better than when you only use words. Second, they actually really help with viewer retention. Having high production animations in a video helps keep the video feeling fresh.
02:28This is why when we go to edit a YouTube video, we actually sit down and plan out what needs to be shown on screen in order to make the video as easy as possible for the viewer and as fun to watch. Alright. Now that you understand why we plan our videos, let's talk about how a high level editor would do this so that you can understand how we can actually train Claude to edit long form videos for us.
02:46As video editors, this is how we plan a video for maximum engagement and premium quality. First, this is the script of my video. It shows everything that we say in the video.
02:54The plan has to be built on this specifically. The first thing we need to do is analyze, look through the script, pick out the sections where we want to have animations. Simply ask yourself, is this sentence I say here crucial for the viewer to understand?
03:06If the answer is yes, then highlight it because we're gonna need to explain it visually. Now when you do this to the entire script, you should end up with this, a bunch of highlighted sections where you know you're gonna need to create animations. That's when you move into the second step, which is planning.
03:19For each specific section, you wanna create an animation plan that will explain the highlighted section. If this is a new concept, create an animation plan where you introduce a new concept. If this is an explanation, create a visual representation of the concept so that it could be understood easier.
03:32When you plan the animations for the entire video, that's when you create a road map for your viewer to understand every single piece of value that you're about to deliver in the video. Finally, you finish off with the third step, which is the branding. To make sure that the video feels consistent and not pieced together, every animation has to follow the same branding guidelines.
03:48A certain color palette for the background, secondary objects and accents, a specific font, and even a certain theme. So you take some time to determine those so that you can ensure that each animation is consistent. And you can even source some inspiration from Pinterest to make sure that the visual direction is clear.
04:02Now by doing these three, analyzing the script, planning the animations, and branding them correctly, you will create a YouTube video so easy to understand and so engaging that it will actually blow up. Now whenever I explain how editors actually plan their videos, I'm always surprised by how many editors have never even thought about this.
04:16And that's the real problem with learning editing on YouTube. Every tutorial teaches you how to replicate an animation, but no one really teaches you how to think like an editor. That's exactly why we built Ultimate Editors two point o, where we take editors from not knowing the editing programs to editing viral videos and making $2,000 a month step by step.
04:33Inside, you're gonna get access to the Premiere Pro and After Effects master classes, all four viral editing styles of 2026, and the $2,000 per month editor blueprint. And right now, we're building a complete a to z AI editing module inside Ultimate Editors so you can master exactly what we're covering in this video with me walking you through it step by step.
04:50We used to charge $497 for all 300 plus editing courses, but right now, you can actually get access for only $97. It's an absolute steal.
04:59Click the link down below. Let's make you a viral editor. But to go back to the first point, using these three steps, analyzing, planning, and branding, video editors plan out high quality YouTube videos.
05:08So now the real question is if this is how a high level editor thinks, how did we automate this entire process with AI? This is how I trained Claude to become a high level long form editor. Claude is really just a very smart brain that you could throw things at and tell it to study and it's gonna learn patterns and be able to recreate.
05:24And since my planning workflow consisted of three simple steps analyzing, planning, and branding, my idea was what if I could teach Claude all three of these skills at a high level so that it could think like an editor. And let me tell you now, the results here blew my mind.
05:36The first thing I needed to teach it was how to read the script and turn that into animation. So I fed Claude a full PDF where I had seven video scripts and their exact animation plans. And I fed it some more PDFs that I had made for ultimate editors to teach editors how to plan out their own animations.
05:50Then I gave it this prompt. I want to teach you how to think like an editor. Here are scripts I planned animations for.
05:56Study each one, understand why I chose each animation, and learn how an editor thinks when given a script. Claude processed everything and studied how I analyzed scripts and turned them into animations and taught itself to do the same. Now Claude built a skill where it can study any script that we give it and turn it into a full animation plan that keeps retention and adds value to the video.
06:15This is the secret to getting Claude to be your editor. You need to train it to think like an editor before it actually becomes one. Then the final thing I had to teach it was our final step branding.
06:24How to create a branding plan for each video depending on the client. To do this, I sent it my own videos branding guidelines and some of my clients and asked it to study them and learn how we create branding for our videos. After some processing, it created a new skill where it was now able to create the branding for a video simply based on what I tell it.
06:40Which means now Claude can be given a script and it knows how to study it and turn it into an animation plan that keeps retention and adds value to the video and on top of this we can now tell it who our client is and what they want their branding to be and it can create animations in that exact style. Claude now officially became an editor.
06:56It can create animations based off of a script and make them look amazing. So now it was just time to put it to the test. Since we already had a video that was cut and ready, it was time to see if Claude could create the animations for us.
07:06So first, I gave Claude the script of the video. To do this, I brought my footage into Premiere Pro and actually transcribed the whole sequence and exported it as a text file. A text file shows what I say in the video and the exact time stamp I say it.
07:18Feeding this text file into Claude will not only tell it what I say, but will even show it for how long I say it. So it now knows how long each animation needs to be. With this script in Claude, I prompted it to use the content psychology skills we just taught it to study the script and create a plan of animations that will explain the video clearly to the viewer and even keep our viewer hooked throughout the entire video, just like I would do if I was editing the video myself.
07:40After about fifteen minutes of studying and processing, it sent me this, a full plan of what Claude was going to animate on screen for each and every line in the script. And this was mind blowing. Claude just went through the script and in just fifteen minutes, it now knows what animations need to be on screen in order for this video to be understood and feel really engaging.
07:58Once we confirmed these animations look good, Claude had completed the analyzing of the script and the planning of the animations, which meant there was one thing left and it was giving Claude the branding of the video and how we want these animations to look. I prompted Claude this. The branding of the video is gonna be a light theme, modern apple style with orange accent colors, clean UI, modern look, light white and orange theme.
08:17And then the most important part was I actually pulled up Pinterest and searched up white modern UI orange accent, and I spent around five minutes uploading a bunch of references into Claude of how I wanted the designs to look. So Claude processed this data and now understood the full animation plan for the video and what the branding needed to look like.
08:34Now with all this, I asked Claude to create mock ups for the animations based on the branding guidelines I just sent it. Why did I do this? Because I didn't want Claude to start creating animations which is a heavy complex process before we confirmed if we liked the designs or not.
08:47After another ten minutes, it came back with a bunch of mock ups of the animations it was gonna create and they all fit the branding perfectly and looked amazing which now meant that Claude had created a full plan of animations that all looked well branded and was ready to start animating. So now that our video had a complete plan ready, it was time to move into phase three creating the animations.
09:06It was time to get Claude to turn these plans into full animations for our video. Here's exactly how. You gotta understand something.
09:11Claude in and of itself cannot actually generate animations. This is why we use a plugin called Remotion that generates really high quality animations. All we have to do is since Claude has our animation plan and branding down, we just need to tell Claude to communicate with Remotion and tell it to create these animations based on everything Claude knows, which is exactly what we did.
09:30I just prompted Claude to use the animation plan and the branding to create all of the animations inside of Remotion, keeping everything consistent. And this is the process that takes the most time because it's the heaviest process of them all, but it's still surprisingly fast. In just twenty five minutes, Claude created all 55 of the animations that were required for the video.
09:48So I launched Remotion and just look at how amazing these animations were. What blows my mind is the fact that in just twenty five minutes, Claude could create 55 stunning high quality animations. But now that the animations have been made, you might be wondering, well, Joseph, how do we add these into the video?
10:04Since all these animations were built inside of Remotion, you can just click this rocket button here to render them. And so I rendered all the animations first and saved them. Then I simply look at this table that Claude made for me.
10:14It shows me the name of each animation and the timestamp at which it should be placed and to which part of the script it corresponds. And now I just imported all my animations into Premiere Pro. And following this table, I added all of these animations to their designated timestamp in the video, which was a tedious process to do for 55 animations, but altogether, it took around twenty minutes.
10:32Now looking back at this for Claude to plan out animations for the video, it took approximately fifteen minutes and then another ten minutes to create the mock ups for us to see. Then for Claude to create the animations, it took twenty five minutes and around twenty minutes to add them into the video. Meaning in just over an hour and a half, we created a fully animated high quality ten minute YouTube video.
10:51And this is the real secret guys. Claude on its own isn't gonna replace editors, but Claude trained by a good editor can create stunning results in just a fraction of the time. And that officially wrapped up phase three for us creating the animations, which finally led us into phase four sound design and music.
11:06Unfortunately, I haven't yet explored an AI that can do the sound design for an entire video, so for now, I did this process manually. I'm not gonna cover this process in this video, but if you guys want a dedicated sound design video, let just me know in the comments down below. But with all this in mind, this is how Claude learned high end long form editing and edited a YouTube video for me.
11:23As I mentioned before, this doesn't replace an editor, but an editor that knows Claude is going to be way faster and more advanced than the editor that doesn't. The craziest part is just how fast this process now is. Manually cutting a ten minute video takes around an hour, planning takes at least an hour, creating the animations can take anywhere between six to twelve hours, and sound design and music can take around two hours.
11:43Now with AI, cutting was done in ten minutes using Link, planning was complete in twenty minutes using Claude, creating the animations and applying them all in total took forty five minutes using Remotion and Premiere Pro, and sound design and music still took around an hour and a half manually. Which meant that in just over two hours an entire ten minute fully animated YouTube video was created using nothing but Clot.
12:04Now here's what I know some of you guys are thinking right now AI won't replace editors. I'm fine and I thought the same thing but think about the video that we just built together. Manually the cutting and planning and animating and sound design that's a three day turnaround for most editors.
12:18With the AI workflow I just showed you you could do it in just four hours without knowing advanced editing. It's the same video with the same client with the same payment except now you can take on three times more work. And this is just the beginning.
12:31Every month new AI tools come out that handle more of the process and the gap between editors who know AI and editors who don't is only gonna get wider. Think about what happened with computers when they first came out. They didn't replace the human mind but the people who didn't learn to use them got left behind and nobody wanted to hire the slow ones.
12:48It's the same thing here. You don't have to learn AI. But the editors who do are gonna be way faster and way better than you and they're probably going to take your clients eventually.
12:56The best move that you can make right now is learning this before it's too late. We're building a complete a to z AI editing course inside Ultimate Editors And when it drops, you're gonna wanna already be inside. So on top of the viral editing styles, the viral animation breakdowns, and the $2,000 per month editor blueprint, we're even gonna keep you up to date with AI video editing courses.
13:14It's only $97. Make sure to click the link down below and join now. And thanks a lot for watching all the way to the end of the video it really does mean a lot to me that you guys can make it all the way to the end of this tutorial.
13:23If you did find it useful please let me know down below and if you guys have any videos that you would like me to create please comment them down below I'll be more than happy to make them.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Every AI-edited-my-video tutorial showed the same thing: trashy slop that looked embarrassing. This one starts differently, with the finished product already on screen and a four-phase workflow that explains exactly how the result got there.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:45list
Three-Step Editor Planning Framework
- Analyze: highlight every script sentence that needs a visual
- Plan: create an animation concept for each highlighted section
- Brand: define color palette, font, theme, and source Pinterest references
The editorial planning process a high-level editor runs before touching any editing software. This is what gets taught to Claude so it can replicate the workflow.
Steal forTraining any AI on a domain-specific creative workflow; onboarding junior editors on editorial thinking
00:00model
Four-Phase AI Editing Pipeline
- Phase 1: Cutting (Gling for silence removal)
- Phase 2: Planning (Claude trained on scripts + animation plans)
- Phase 3: Creating animations (Claude + Remotion)
- Phase 4: Sound design (manual for now)
End-to-end framework for producing a long-form YouTube video using AI for three of the four main production phases, reducing a 10-16 hour process to roughly 4 hours.
Steal forAny repeatable video production operation; builds a hiring pitch around being 3-4x faster than competitors
How they asked for the click.
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PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
