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Comment by vaughan | Hacker News Reader

I always wanted a markdown-like video editor. I want to chop up my videos and make notes about what is in them.

Text based document would be so much easier for this than big clunky Premiere.

Have you seen https://www.descript.com/ it transcribes video and allows you to edit the transcript. Those edits to the transcript are reflected in the video. You can even train it to voices if you have enough content.

No markdown but have you played with Descript?

I liked that at first but the buggyness and cloud lag killed it for me

Hmm it’s been pretty stable for me but I also have only used it a handful of times. Inconsistency is definitely not a desirable trait in an NLE!

In the social sciences this is actually a common use case, so some CAQDAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_qualitative_... are using that. See a free one here: https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/wiki/09-Coding-audio-an...

Are you talking about EDLs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list

Oh man, this. I want a human readable document (markdown fits the bill) that resembles this:

    ---
    source: <path_to_video>
    ---

    [<timecode>-<timecode>]
    ```json
    { optional metadata }
    ```
    ...notes...

And can target different render outputs:

- Various NLE formats

- Mini web app with playback/live annotations (Maybe even with the capability to edit the underlying file)

- Simple webpage with thumbnails and notes

- An actual annotated supercut(!)

I just might build it!

I mean you can always write an EDL. The issue with most filmic material however is that moving pictures have their own internal timing, movments, directional changes and so on. Ignoring the content of shots is something that you might do with long shots of talking heads, but literally everything else won't let you get away with it in my experience.

This would be particularly useful for speeches or presentations where the content is the important part and the visuals don't change much (or wouldn't create jarring cuts when just editing based on the transcript).

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