[HN Gopher] Show HN: Open-source AI video editor
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       Show HN: Open-source AI video editor
        
       Hey HN community! I'm one of the lead devs of this project at
       fal.ai and we created an open source lightweight video editor
       powered by the latest media AI models. The main goal was to tackle
       some challenges when dealing with complex media handling and
       encoding on the browser.  It all started as an internal experiment
       but as we tackled some of the issues it was clear there could be
       some value sharing it with the open source community.  Some of the
       key points and tech stack details:  - It uses IndexedDb, so all
       data is local (i.e. no auth, no cloud db)  - Multiple AI models for
       video, image, music and voice-over. APIs are provided by fal.ai  -
       Built with the typical React+Next.js, Shadcn front-end  - Used
       remotion.dev for the realtime video preview (this is such a great
       project, without it the codebase would be twice as large)  - File
       uploads so you can bring your own media by uploadthing.com  -
       ffmpeg for encoding the final video and also some ui tricks, like
       the audio waveform  We deployed a version of it and for now it's
       free to use. We do plan to add some rate limiting and a bring your
       own API Key next, but it's open source and I'm curious about what
       the community will build on top of it, or derive from it. Customize
       your own video app and if you do, please share.  If you have any
       questions, hit me up!
        
       Author : drochetti
       Score  : 96 points
       Date   : 2025-01-23 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | oldgradstudent wrote:
       | Cool project, I played with it a bit a few hours ago.
       | 
       | A small bug report: if you have both a still image and a video in
       | the timeline, the video does not play in the preview.
        
         | aykutkardas wrote:
         | Glad you liked it. And thanks for reporting, I'll look into the
         | issue.
        
       | asadm wrote:
       | this looks great! I would like standard timeline scrup, drag-drop
       | etc.
       | 
       | Some eta on how long a generation will likely take.
        
         | drochetti wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback, eta would be great indeed. I'll look
         | into it.
        
         | kfarr wrote:
         | Second on timeline scrub (move timeline position depending on x
         | position of click on timeline) and drag and drop asset from
         | media into timeline. Also spacebar is usually a basic universal
         | shortcut to play/pause
        
           | drochetti wrote:
           | Drag and drop the media to the timeline, and drag the media
           | along the timeline track is already supported.
           | 
           | We will keep improving the UI, including shortcuts. Thanks a
           | lot for the feedback.
        
       | voiper1 wrote:
       | Wow, that's so fun. Just upload and generate assets super
       | easily... queue the next one while it's working.
        
       | peppertree wrote:
       | Open source part is just a thin layer of UI. Built to peddle
       | their closed backend, which is built on others' open source work.
       | Nice.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | Fal wants to sell compute, and since they're straggling behind
         | the compute-as-an-API leaders they've attached their cart to
         | the art, image, and video subset of the market.
         | 
         | They think they've got a leg up on their model partners. That
         | the foundation model companies will mostly become generic
         | copies of one another, servants of the compute layer. There are
         | so many foundation video models now, and they'll battle it out
         | over dwindling margins. Pika, Runway, Kling - they're all the
         | same. And there's also growing open source foundation models.
         | 
         | The thing that stands in Fal's way is that the future of AI
         | video for artists is local. Hunyuan and Comfy can run on
         | desktop machines, and real artists hate the SaaS model and non
         | local stuff. It doesn't look like we'll even need A100s to
         | reach Pixar levels of quality.
         | 
         | The ones to watch in the art space are Comfy and Invoke. And
         | Adobe.
         | 
         | Fal probably has a future in powering the API-driven YouTube
         | Shorts slop, though there's probably an upper limit to the
         | number of talking head startups.
         | 
         | But there's no way they win artists over to cloud.
         | Sophisticated tools are going to be local. Any SaaS art tools
         | that do achieve escape velocity will buy and manage their own
         | compute and won't go through Fal as a reseller.
        
         | drochetti wrote:
         | That's fair. But I know a lot of smart folks out there that
         | have trouble building that "thin layer of UI". So if that helps
         | them, mission accomplished.
         | 
         | Anyone can replace the AI layer with their own local models,
         | other services... whatever suits your use case and preferences
         | is fair game.
        
       | lastdong wrote:
       | Thank you for open sourcing the project, the UI looks fantastic.
       | I noticed that several comments have mentioned the potential to
       | improve functionality by allowing users to replace the backend
       | with local models, such as Hunyuan. Would you be open to
       | considering this feature in the future? Additionally, if other
       | developers were to contribute, do you think this could be a
       | possibility?
        
         | drochetti wrote:
         | Absolutely. The idea of being open source with a permissive
         | license is that we're encouraging anyone to do whatever fits
         | their use case.
         | 
         | You can replace anything, deploy on your own server, port it to
         | other stacks... whatever brings value to you.
         | 
         | We're also open to PRs, cut an issue in the repo and we can get
         | the conversation going.
        
       | Jayakumark wrote:
       | Great release , where is the source code for FFMPEG library used?
        
       | SrslyJosh wrote:
       | Cool, I'd love to see more slop on YouTube.
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-23 23:00 UTC)