Script Editor: Cut Filler, Make Shorts, Render Verticals — All in One Place

Most "AI video editors" are clip pickers wrapped in a chat interface. You upload a video, you get back something that's 80% of what you wanted, and the remaining 20% is locked behind a UI that won't let you fix it. The result is a clip you accept because it's tolerable — not because it's right.

The Script Editor takes the opposite approach. AI does the parts it's actually good at — transcribing, finding standalone moments, marking filler — and then it gets out of the way. You see every word. You can cut anything. You can refine cuts on a waveform timeline that behaves like a real editor. You render when you're ready.

It's available now in Beta on Pro and up. Here's how it works.

Three modes, one editor

When you upload a recording, you pick one of three modes:

You can also flip between Source mode and Shorts mode after the fact. Same edit, two views — Source is your full long-form recording with cuts, Shorts is the picked moments rendered separately.

The editor itself

Three columns:

• Left rail — your transcript (Source mode) or your shorts cards (Shorts mode). Click any word to seek the video to that timestamp. Select a range and hit X to cut it.
• Center frame — the video preview, a live caption overlay so you see exactly what the rendered output will look like, and a waveform timeline below. Drag the keep-region edges to trim.
• Right drawer — caption settings: style, position, size, highlight color, frame mode. Every change updates the preview overlay live.

Caption controls

Ten presets, all properly typeset and rendered server-side via FFmpeg + ASS subtitles:

• Hormozi, Highlight, Bold Yellow, Gradient Pop — punchy, high-contrast, social-feed-friendly
• Bounce, Neon, Typewriter, Glitch — animated styles with motion built in
• MrBeast, Subtitle, Karaoke, Default, Minimal — variations for different aesthetics

Layered on top of the preset:

• Position — Top, Center, Bottom, or Off
• Size — 0.7× to 2.0× scale slider
• Highlight color — preset default, any color from your Brand Brain palette, or a custom hex via the picker. Save your custom hex back to your brand kit so it appears as a swatch next time.
• Frame mode (Shorts only) — Fill (center-crop, best for talking heads) or Fit (letterbox, best for multi-speaker grids and slides)

How a typical session goes

1. Upload your recording. MP4, MOV, or WebM up to 2GB. Drop it in or click to pick from your files.
2. Pick a mode. Filler cleanup is the default — it's the cheapest and the result is pretty good out of the box.
3. Wait for the transcript. Usually 15–60 seconds depending on length. AssemblyAI does the work; we get word-level timestamps so you can scrub by word later.
4. Refine. Cut anything else you don't want — single words by clicking, ranges by selecting + X. Hit ⌘Z if you cut something you didn't mean to. Drag the timeline edges to fine-tune trim points.
5. Style your captions. Pick a preset, drop your brand color, scale up or down. The live preview updates as you go.
6. Render. 30–90 seconds per short, 1–4 minutes for a long-form. Download the MP4 when it's ready.

Per-short refinement (Shorts mode)

This is where the editor stops being a clip-picker and starts being an editor. When AI picks 4 shorts from your long video, you get 4 cards in the rail. Click any card and the timeline below scopes to that single short's window. Drag the keep-region handles to trim. The cuts persist on that short alone — refining short #2 doesn't touch shorts #1, #3, or #4.

You can also skip individual shorts (the Include toggle on each card) so you only render the ones worth rendering. The Render button shows the count: "Render 3" if you skipped one of four.

If a render fails, you can re-render just that short — not the whole batch. Cuts you made earlier are preserved.

Pricing

The Script Editor is available on every paid tier. Each edit costs 5 credits. Shorts mode also has a per-month run cap on top of credits:

Tier	Monthly Credits	Edits / month	Shorts runs / month
Pro ($10/mo)	100	20	3
Studio Pro ($39/mo)	200	40	10
Team Studio Pro ($49/mo)	500	100	50

Hit the cap on a busy month? You can buy a one-time credit pack from your account page — Small (25 credits / $5), Medium (100 / $15), or Large (300 / $40). Top-up credits don't expire and stack on top of your monthly bucket; we use them only after your monthly credits run out, so they don't go to waste on slow months.

Note that the shorts cap is feature-gated, not credit-gated — top-ups give you more total edits but don't unlock more shorts runs. To do more shorts per month, upgrade tier.

Things you'll notice that we like

• Keyboard everywhere. Space plays/pauses, X cuts a selected range, ⌘Z undoes the last cut, ⌘K toggles the drawer.
• Inline rename. Click "Untitled recording" in the rail header to rename it. Logbook entries pull from this.
• Refresh-safe. Hard-refresh mid-session and you come back where you left off — source video, transcript, cuts, and caption settings all persist.
• Brand-aware highlights. If your Brand Brain has a color palette, those colors show up as one-click swatches in the Highlight section.
• Honest progress. No fake progress bars. The render shows a pulsing bar with a real time estimate based on what mode you're in, not a percentage that lies.

What's coming next

We're working on:

• Smart-crop with face tracking for shorts (so the speaker stays centered when they move)
• Auto-resume the render poller when you hard-refresh during a render
• Per-platform variants — TikTok / Reels / Shorts pacing optimized separately
• A Logbook section that lets you re-download past renders without digging through job IDs
• Browser-native recording (so you can hit record without leaving the app)

Some of these are weeks out, others are further. The Beta tag stays until we close the gaps.

- The ScriptHooks Team
Building tools for creators who take their content seriously.