Introduction:
Editing videos the old way is dead. If you’re still spending hours in After Effects or Premiere, you’re already behind. Right now, content is everything. Doesn’t matter if you’re a solo creator trying to grow an audience or a business owner who knows content brings in customers. You need it fast, and AI video editing tools are changing the game completely. The people who are using these revolutionary editing tools are producing way more content, reaching way more people, and passing everyone else who’s still stuck in the old ways.
But the problem is, you’ve only got two options. Either do it yourself and waste weeks stuck in editing instead of growing your brand or outsource it and get videos that are either cheap and bad or expensive and slow. That’s why so many creators and business owners hit this bottleneck. Editing doesn’t just cost money. It costs time and opportunities.
Right now, the entire world is changing thanks to AI, and editing is no exception. A new wave of tools has completely changed how fast and how good your edits can be. The best part is these tools aren’t the same complicated software you need weeks to learn. They’re AI editors. They handle the hard stuff of editing for you, leaving a simple workspace with shockingly good results. I’ve personally gone through dozens of different AI video editors, and I picked out the four best tools out there. I’ll put them head-to-head, show you what each one gets right and wrong, and by the end, you’ll know which tool is best for you.
How We Test AI Video Editing Software:
For the actual categories, here’s how I’m going to break it down. First, we’re going to test how easy each tool is to use and what features it offers. Second, we’ll look at repurposing content. Third, we’ll cover editing itself. And finally, we’ll talk about price, whether the tool is really worth it or not. All the tools in our rating card will receive a score from one to five stars.
Captions AI Review: Interface and Features:
First up is Captions.ai. When you log in, you’ll see a clean setup where you can describe your topic or upload your video. Then on the left, you have all the features. The ones at the top are Mirage Studio and AI Creator for making avatars. We are not focusing on that today, so we’ll skip past them. And then there is the AI editing tool. Here you can upload videos and the AI will edit them for you. We’ll come back to that later.
The next feature is AI shorts and this one is pretty cool. Here you upload a video or drop in a link and it automatically creates short clips and we’ll come back to this one as well. Overall, captions has a very simple and easy to navigate tool. It is pretty limited though, but for ease of use specifically, I’ll give it five out of five just because of how intuitive it is.
Vit AI Editor Overview:
When you first log on the left side, you have your templates, your brand kits, and your asset libraries. Then in the middle, you’ve got this workflow with different AI apps. Now, the AI auto editor is also pretty straightforward. You just give it some quick information about the video you wanted to autoedit, and then it takes that information and automatically edits your video.
When it comes down to the AI clips, this one is a little bit different. This one actually lets you customize a bit more of the short form clips themselves. That’s also something we’ll be taking a closer look at later. Vit is definitely a more complicated tool than captions because it just has more things inside of it. But when it comes down to editing and clipping, it’s still a pretty straightforward tool to use. For Vit, I give this one a four out of five because while it’s not as smooth as some other tools in today’s lineup, it’s still very usable and has a lot more depth than captions.
Submagic Platform Analysis:
Then there’s Submagic. It’s built mainly for clipping and repurposing content. So when you log in here, you’ll see that you can generate captions, create multiple short clips, or use magic clips that allows you to automatically pull shorts from longer videos. It also lets you generate B-roll, fix eye contact, clean audio, and even translate captions, which are the main editing tools here.
And that’s it for Submagic’s interface. Pretty easy to figure out. And so that’s why it gets a full score of five out of five.
Opus Clip Complete Breakdown:
And for our final tool, we’ve got Opus Clip. Right when you log in, you’re met with this nice minimalistic window. You’ve got shortcuts you can click on right away. AI captions, video editing, speech enhancement, reframing, B-roll, and AI hook, which is a pretty cool feature that we’ll be looking at later. And then in the middle, you can drop in a link for your video.
What’s great here is that Opus Clip actually supports a lot of different links, YouTube, Rumble, Twitch, and even Zoom. On the left side, you’ve got your brand templates, just like the other tools, and your asset library where all your fonts and images and videos live.
Standout Analytics and Scheduling Features:
But here’s where Opus really stands out. You’ve got analytics, so you can actually connect your accounts and see how your clips are performing. That means you’re not just making content blindly. You can check what’s working and adjust. And then you’ve got the calendar. You can just upload a clip you made with Opus, pick a date, and it’ll automatically post it for you. That’s a big time saver, especially if you’re posting across multiple platforms.
It’s incredibly easy to understand, and it’s got some standout features that really put it on top. For Opus Clip, I’m giving this one a four out of five for ease of use, just because it has a lot more features, which can make it a bit harder to figure out. That will definitely make it much more powerful when you know how to use them.
Looking back at our report card, we can see that both Submagic and Captions are the winners for this category just because they are a bit simpler and therefore easier to navigate, which can be a plus when you’re first learning them, but can easily turn into a problem if you do want to do something a little bit more advanced.
AI Video Editing Capabilities Deep Dive:
Now, let’s move to the actual editing capabilities each tool has starting with captions.
Captions AI Editing Process:
To access the editing feature, I’ll head over to the AI edit tool. Here, I’ll be able to upload a video. Now, mind you, this only accepts vertical style videos. So, if you have a horizontal one, you’ll need to use one of the other tools in today’s lineup. But once you’ve done that, you have the ability to choose between various different templates. I’ll just go with this one right here. Select a custom color. I’ll go with green. And then I’ll create the project.
Once it’s done generating, to access the other editing capabilities, you need to click on this button right here. And as you can see, it drops you into the editor. Now, for the AI side of things, you only have the possibility to either generate sounds, music, or images by prompting. As you can see right here, you can also add a voice over with AI.
Now, on the left side under the automatic tools, you can remove the noise from the audio and correct the eye contact. But besides that, the only kind of editing you can really do is to cut or change out the captions. So instead of thinking of this like a tool that edits your videos with AI, you should rather think of it as a tool that templatizes your videos and then lets you tailor them according to what you like.
So I’ll just export my video and let’s take a look at how it was edited. Every week there’s a new AI tool making headlines. And right now there are more AI video generators than ever, but most of them don’t work as well as you’d expect. Some generate great videos, but only if you stay within their style limits. If you try to get more creative like detailed anime or wild fantasy worlds, they often mess up and most of the time they’re too expensive or just confusing to use.
I do really have to say it doesn’t come out looking bad at all. Even though you don’t really have a lot of editing access, I’d still say this is all around an okay result for what it is. So just because of how limited the editing aspect of captions is, I’d have to go with a two stars out of five for this one.
Vit AI Editing Workflow:
With that being said, let’s check out our next tool. Now, Vit offers you a lot more capabilities with editing. Here, you access editing by clicking on the edit icon and creating a new project. Here, you’ll be able to upload your files for the video. Vit accepts both vertical and horizontal style videos. And from now on, you can basically edit it however you like.
To access the AI editing tools, you want to click on magic tools right here, where you can clean up the audio, remove filler words, remove silences, and add magic B-rolls. This lets you automatically add images related to your spoken topics, creating some nice visual assets for your video. You can also touch up face appearance if needed. Use the eye contact feature, remove the background, add a green screen, or magic cut it, which automatically removes your ums, o’s, and bad takes.
Okay, now let’s edit. First, I’ll add some magic B-roll. So, I’ll just click on magic b-roll in the magic tool section. And as you can see, it adds super tailored images to your video. I’ll also clean up the audio and make sure my eye contact is on the camera. Then I’ll head over to the subtitle settings and turn on my auto subtitles. And as you can see, our video is already starting to look great. I’m pretty happy with it as it is right now. So, I’ll just export it.
And let’s take a look at the final result. After spending days looking for the right AI editing tool, I finally found one that removes the entire manual editing process completely. I’ll show you exactly how to edit your photos using nothing but a couple of sentences and how to instantly turn them into anything you want from Pixar style posters to clean professional edits without knowing a single thing about photo editing.
And it definitely came out looking quite decent. All in all, I’d say Vit is a very solid way to edit your videos. So, for this result, I definitely rate it a four out of five simply because even though the tools that are already included are pretty good. There’s definitely room for more and better features, which some of the other tools we’ll look at today will cover better.
Submagic Editing Experience:
Next up is Submagic, and this one also allows you to import horizontal style videos. So, I’ll just click on create a new project. And as you can see, it adds my video right here. On the left side, we have the transcription that the tool automatically generates. Here, you can already access some of the AI features. You can remove silences and remove bad takes if you have any. I don’t have any in this one, so for me, I’ll just leave it as it is.
Then, if you switch over to brand, you can add images and text, but text is already included in the caption settings. So, let’s head over there. Here, you can choose the style of your caption. I’m going to go with Horoszi, and I’m pretty happy with the default settings, so I won’t change the positioning or colors at the bottom, but you can if you want to.
Next up is B-roll. And this is probably the coolest feature among all the AI features Submagic offers. Here you can add magic B-rolls and magic zooms. Now magic B-rolls are just normal secondary B-roll, both images or videos, while magic zooms are those dynamic zoom in effects. So I’ll add both of them, wait for everything to reload, and then I’ll fine-tune it with some final AI settings by clicking the AI button right here. I’ll again correct the eye contact, clean up the audio, and that’s pretty much it. So I’ll just export my video, and let’s take a look at this one as well.
After spending days looking for the right AI editing tool, I finally found one that removes the entire manual editing process completely. I’ll show you exactly how to edit your photos using nothing but a couple of sentences and how to instantly turn them into anything you want from Pixar style posters to clean professional edits without knowing a single thing about photo editing.
And man, it really cleaned it up. The video came out looking much better than the original one I started with. It has all the most important things you need with no weird silences, some nice visual effects in the video, and of course, the subtitles. All in all, I’d say this one is pretty good. The only thing I’d say I’m having an issue with is that the interface feels a bit weirdly formatted. It’s just not as intuitive in the editing workflow compared to V. So, for this one, I’ll give it a three and a half stars out of five.
Opus Clip Editing Features:
And with that being said, let’s move over to OpusClip. To edit your videos inside Opus Clip, you’ll want to click on this scissors button right here. You’ll be prompted to either upload your video via a link or just upload it directly from your computer. I already have mine downloaded, so I’ll just upload it as a normal video.
As you can see, it opens up this workflow right here. On the left side, you have your transcribe text, which you can change up however you want. Then you can turn on or off the tracker, which is a really cool feature that tracks your face and makes sure that even if you move outside the frame in a horizontal video, it still keeps you centered on screen.
Now, for the AI settings under the AI enhancement section, you’ve got a lot of options to choose from. You can remove filler words, remove pauses, and even add sensoring if you’re someone who swears a lot. Then there’s speech enhancement, which improves the vocal clarity and just makes your overall sound richer and more professional.
Now, we’ve got two settings that are probably the coolest ones here. These are autogenerate stock broll and autogenerate AI B-roll. The difference between them is that the first one gives you AI generated B-roll while the second one uses clips from their stock library. For this test, I’m going to go with the AI B-roll since it’s going to give us a more accurate and personalized result.
Then you can also autogenerate AI hooks, which adds a natural voice over in whatever language you prefer at the beginning of your video. That’s a super useful feature if your clip doesn’t already have a catchy hook. This way, you can easily add one. You can also add auto emojis, which add a little extra visual appeal. And then there are auto transitions and speaker colors. Speaker colors basically highlight whoever’s talking if you have multiple people in the video. I don’t have that here, so I’ll just move on to the next setting, captions.
Here you can choose between a bunch of different caption styles. I’m going to go with this style right here. And as you can see, it automatically adds all the captions to the video. You can select different fonts, add effects, or even change the position of the captions, but I’m going to leave everything as it is. Then if you have any transitions in your video, you can very easily swap them out or add your own. If you don’t like the ones AI picks, you can choose from things like crossfade, cross zoom, or zoom in. I’m going to select the fade in one right here, and you can preview it instantly, which is super handy.
Finally, you can add music. Once you’re done, you just click export here. You can actually export it as an XML file if you want to continue editing it in a professional editor, but I’ll just export mine as a normal HD video. And let’s take a look at the result.
There are three things you want to know about prompting in photo. First, you have to be specific with your edits. That means telling the AI exactly what you want change. So, instead of just writing, make me smile, write something like change the facial expression to a soft closed smile with no teeth.
This came out looking really, really good. I love how the subtitles turned out. It looks like a professionally edited video you’d see on YouTube. The AI B-roll fits in really well, too. I think Opus Clip’s AI did a great job finding the right clips, and those transitions really elevate the overall look of the video, making it look super clean.
Combining how easy Opus Clip is to use with just how many cool and useful AI features it offers, like transitions, B-roll, speech enhancement, I’d have to give it a four and a half stars out of five for editing.
Now, let’s take a look at our report card so far. You can see that Opus Clip just takes the victory over Vit with half a star more, mainly for its more advanced editing features.
Content Repurposing and Short Form Video Creation:
But now let’s move over to the next category. One that’s really important, especially today with how popular short form content and repurposing content has become. Before we jump in, I quickly want to mention that every tool allows you to edit the short form clips that you generate and it works the same as the way we edit it right now. So we will only be taking a look at the base results each tool gives us.
Captions AI Short Form Generation:
Starting off with captions. Now in captions, you have the option to repurpose your long-form video into short form by clicking on AI shorts. You can either upload your video or paste in a link directly from YouTube. Captions only supports YouTube. So if you’ve got anything other than that, you’d have to either use something else or download the video first.
Once you upload your video, you can select your original language, which for me is English. And then you can pick your template with the colors. You’ll see different options here. I’m just going to go with the million option since I think it fits my brand the best. You can also select the maximum length. I’m going for 30 seconds here since I want something super short form. Then it starts generating.
And now that our video is done generating, let’s take a look. Real quick before that, I just want you to note that captions takes quite a bit of time to generate these videos. Definitely something worth keeping in mind. So captions generated five different clips. All about 30 seconds each. Let’s check them out.
At this point, one thing should be clear. There isn’t a single AI video tool that outshines the others. They all are great at what they do. But the biggest problem we still haven’t solved is the large amount of AI. Something that looks like a real person that is moving naturally without needing motion capture or a studio setup. That’s where cling comes in. If you’re building talking head content, personalled video, if you want to take that realism to a full cinematic level where the lighting, camera movement, and scene composition feel like a movie, this is where Google VO really shows its strength. But this comes at a cost.
The first thing I’m noticing is that the font is pretty decent. It’s not bad, but besides the first clip, I don’t really see a lot of strong hooks that the AI filtered out. And I also don’t see a way to easily sort between these videos, which as we’ll see later, other tools in today’s lineup are actually really good at. Now, you do have the option to quickly edit them by clicking on this button right here, but the editor is something we’ll look at more in depth later on.
So, with that, I’m going to give captions a three out of five for the videos. They came out looking okay. Not amazing, but usable enough that I could probably pick a couple and move on.
Vit AI Clips Analysis:
To create a clip with V, you’d want to click on AI clips. Right here, you can paste in your video. So, I’m going to drop in a video I have ready. The next thing you want to do is select the goal of the video. For us, it’s going to be viral short. Then, you’ve got the size in the original language, which for me is already correct, so I’ll leave it. Then, you can select the maximum length of the clip. I’m going to go for 15 seconds this time.
Finally, you can pick between various fonts. A lot of them aren’t really that good or practical to actually use. Some I just don’t see any point in, but still, it’s a pretty nice selection overall. Then, you click continue, and V starts generating your clips. And in just a couple of seconds, they’re done.
Now, Vit also gives you this little section where it rates your clips for flow, hook, interest, and engagement, and it lists them accordingly, which is exactly what I mentioned was missing from captions. So, let’s take a look at some of the clips.
That is so much better than I expected, especially for just $15. As you can see, this video is getting recommended on this video right here. As you can see, it’s in the next up section on this video right here. Let me tell you, one video is actually doing very well right now organically. Starting off with the cheapest promotion. This one is actually performing really well. The most horrible graph I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve been doing YouTube for 3 years. I have many successful channels. This doesn’t happen. As you can see, the audience retention is basically just zero.
And all in all, I’d say the selection is okay. I wouldn’t say I agree with how they rated them, though. Honestly, I wouldn’t give some of these clips as high a score as they did. So, to close up V, I’m also going to give it a three out of five. The only real difference from captions is that extra rating section, which in my opinion isn’t super accurate. It makes you feel like some clips are really strong, but I just don’t buy enough to bump it higher.
Submagic Magic Clips Feature:
And now, let’s move over to Submagic to generate your clips in Submagic. You click on get magic clips, and then you can insert your video or paste in a link. I’m going to paste in a link from one of my videos. Then, as you can see, we’re prompted to select the language, the clip duration, and the caption theme. You’ve got a bunch of different ones here. I’m going with the first Hormosi style option. After that, you click generate and Submagic gives you a bunch of different clips. Let’s take a look at some of them.
I’ve tested every major tool that’s come out recently and I’ve seen where they shine and where they completely fall apart. So, I’ll show you the AI video tools that actually deliver. I get that for a beginner this can be challenging. So, I’ve come up with a simple solution to help you out. To create a very in-depth prompt, I head to chat gpt and paste in this prompt. Create point. One thing should be clear. There isn’t a single AI video tool that outshines the others. They all are great at what they do. But the biggest problem we still haven’t solved is the large amount of.
And as you can see, some of them are pretty decent, but if you scroll through, you’ll notice a lot of clips are basically the same thing, just slightly trimmed differently. That kind of kills the whole point of generating a lot of different options. On the plus side though, I actually find Submagic’s rating system to be more accurate than VITs. It feels more real in terms of how it judges the clips.
So yeah, I put Sub Magic at a four out of five. It’s better than the others in terms of accuracy and clip variety, but it’s still a bit too simple and repetitive at times.
Opus Clip Viral Score System:
And finally, let’s take a look at Opus. If you want to generate a clip with Opus, it’s really simple. On the homepage, you’ve already got a space to paste your YouTube link, and you don’t even need to click anything. It just automatically starts generating.
Once the video is done, it shows up down here. And what’s great is that Opus doesn’t just spit out a ton of clips randomly. It actually checks how many good clips it can realistically pull from your video without filling it with duplicates. That’s a big plus.
Once you’ve got your clips, you can enter your workflow and easily switch between them. And then there’s the viral score. This isn’t just a random metric. It’s based on actual performance data from other videos through their analytics tool. So, it’s way more trustworthy than what we saw on Vit.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the top rated clips. First, number two, I will do professional video promotion in the USA. So, where the other one was supposed to be worldwide, we’ll find out soon. This one is just based in the US. This one is All right. Now, it’s time to spend some more money. So, this one right there is going to cost us €9. I will do super fast organic YouTube promotion to go viral. Last time I swipe my credit card on Fiverr, this happened. So, this time I’m thinking of buying some promotions on Fiverr to go YouTube viral and get rich. I’m going to take the videos that I received last time, upload them to my.
And yeah, even just in terms of hooks, Opus is a lot better at grabbing those quick moments that can actually go viral. Another bonus is that you can instantly download and edit your clips or even post them automatically to your platform of choice. You can also schedule posts with one click, which is huge.
So, when it comes down to Opus, simply because of the extra features like the trending topics and the more accurate scoring and just because the clips themselves came out way better, I’ve got to give this one a five out of five.
So, to summarize, we have captions scoring a three. V also got a three, Submagic came in at four, and Opus clip is at five. And once again, as you can see, Opus Clip is taking this category because it’s just better overall in terms of clip quality, in terms of the little extra features, and in terms of the overall user experience.
AI Video Editor Pricing Comparison:
Finally, let’s talk about the price of each tool.
Captions AI Pricing Structure:
Starting off with Captions. Now, Captions does offer a cheap subscription at first. The lowest option is $10 a month, but honestly, you don’t really get much with it. Pretty much the only thing you get is access to viral caption styles, and I don’t think that’s worth paying just for that. So, realistically, you almost have to jump up to their Mac subscription at $25 a month.
But, as we saw, this tool isn’t really built around editing in the first place. So, the pricing feels off compared to what you’re actually getting. So, for the price, I’d give captions a 2 out of five. It’s just asking too much for features that don’t really deliver or that we are after.
Vit Subscription Plans:
Next up is V. Here you’ve basically got two subscriptions. The light plan is $20 a month with no extra credits. You do get rid of the watermark and get more flexibility with upload size, which is almost required if you actually want to use the tool properly, but honestly, for most people, you’d end up needing to upgrade to the pro plan anyway.
That’s around $50 a month and that’s where you get better export resolution, more languages for captions and access to the AI clips feature. So yeah, it does give you more, but you’re paying quite a lot for it. For me, Vit also comes in at a 2 out of five on pricing. It’s just a little too steep for what you actually need to make the most out of it.
Submagic Value Proposition:
Now, Submagic is a little bit better with pricing. Their starter plan is $19, and with that, you get no watermark, API integrations, trimming, and the magic clips we tested. But here’s the catch. The Magic Clips add-on is another $19 on top. So once you include that, you’re looking at about $38 a month.
Because Submagic gave us better quality clips than the other two tools and a pretty decent AI editing, I’d say it’s closer to being worth it, but it’s still a bit pricey for what you’re getting overall. So I give Submagic a 3 and 1 half out of five on pricing.
Opus Clip Best Value:
And finally, let’s look at Opus. This one actually surprised me with the price. The starter plan at $15 is already solid, and I think for most people that would be more than enough. But if you do want to upgrade, the pro plan is $29, which is basically the same price that most of these other tools charge for their starter plan.
With Pro, you get about 300 minutes of video each month, which is plenty. And if you need more, you can just double the plan with extra credits. So, it’s flexible and you’re not forced into overpaying for features you don’t use.
So, for pricing, Opus Clip is easily one of the best options. Not only does it give you the best results, but it also gives you the best deal. For me, that’s a four and a half out of five.
Conclusion:
So now let’s actually take a look at the results. And when you put all of this side by side, it’s pretty clear that Opus just comes out on top. No matter what we tested, it didn’t just win by a little. It clearly came out on top.
And the reason knowing what tool to use matters so much is because right now content is everything. And the people who are winning are the ones who can put out more content faster without burning out or getting stuck waiting for an editor to turn things around.
Imagine you’ve got someone editing the old way, manually cutting clips, fixing captions, syncing audio, and they might give you a couple of videos in a week. But with Opus, you could have 20 videos done in minutes. You have 20 pieces of content scheduled and ready to hit different platforms, filtered by what’s trending and sorted by quality, while that other guy is still waiting for his editor to export the first draft.
That’s the difference between missing out on more views and revenue and actually keeping up with the pace of how fast things move online right now. And that’s why Opus isn’t just another editor. It’s not just about saving time. With Opus, you can post way more content a lot faster without paying editors or spending hours stuck in software. That means more videos, more reach, and quicker growth.
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