New AI-powered services are popping up every day with promises to repurpose your long form video by turning it into a bunch of viral videos “with one click.” Don’t count on it. But AI editors can speed up the work of human editors. Here are some ways AI video editors can help you share more repurposed video clips.

Transcriptions and captions

AI video editors are text-based, so they begin by quickly transcribing the spoken words. They’ll take a stab a generating captions, too. This will help you locate the best segments to re-use. Transcriptions and captions are important for SEO and accessibility in any case.

Clip selection

AIs can also choose stop-points and start-points from the text, using keywords you supply. But you’ll still need to adjust them by hand.

Rearranging clips

Some tools allow the editor to move the visuals around by moving text around. This is a really helpful time-saver.

Eliminating long pauses and other distractions

AI editing software can automatically remove a speaker’s pauses — even whole sentences — and generate new video to cover the resulting “jump cut.” Another useful (and pretty awesome) time-saver.

Audio and video enhancements

AIs can handle routine audio improvements like speech normalization and ducking background music under speech. Video capabilities may include merging clips, zooming in on the speaker, reframing for different aspect ratios, and even eye-contact correction.

What next?

For technology providers, repurposing video isn’t slicing and dicing with one click. It’s making new videos from existing ones, with new material added to contextualize the subject for the viewer. This requires the skill and judgement of video editors and subject matter experts. But AI editing tools can speed up the process for these video creators, which will make repurposing videos much more cost-effective for businesses.

ICYMI

GIFs are rarely used to explain technology solution concepts — which may be a good reason to make some. It’s cheap and easy to turn any interesting video snippet — a step-by-step process, for example — into a GIF and insert it into an email. Here are some tips and best practices from ConstantContact and MailChimp.

That’s all for now.

Bruce McKenzie & Lorna Pautzke