Stop Opening Five Apps to Edit One Video

There's a free, open-source editor called Palmier that puts AI right inside your timeline. It won't replace your taste. It replaces the boring hour of dragging clips around, so you get to the part that actually needs you. Here's an honest setup guide, caveats and all.

Takes 20 minutes to set up, then minutes per video. You need: a Mac and some raw footage. You end with: a rough cut you can react to instead of build.

Read this first (honest caveats)

It's free and open source.
It's early, so expect a few rough edges.
Right now it's Mac only.

If those are dealbreakers, the CLIPS guide does a lighter version with tools you already have.

Two more worth knowing before you invest an afternoon: early tools change fast, so what you set up today may look different in three months. And don't make it the only place a project exists — keep your raw footage where it's always been.

Step 1. Install it

Download Palmier from its official page and open it. No account or subscription needed.

Step 2. Drop in your raw material

Add your footage and your script. Give it both so it knows what you were trying to say.

This is the step people rush, and it decides everything downstream. If your clips are named IMG_4471, it has no idea what's in them. Two minutes of naming — intro-take3, story-dad, cta — turns a vague first cut into a near-usable one.

Step 3. Let it make the first cut

It reviews the project, places clips where they belong, and builds a rough first pass. Treat this as a starting point, not a finished video.

Step 4. Talk to it in plain English

This is the part that saves the time.

Trim the intro so it starts on the first sentence.
Reorder these two sections so the story point comes first.
Speed up the middle by 20 percent.

Step 5. Export

When the rough cut is close, export it and do any final polish wherever you normally finish.

The power move: cut from the transcript, not the timeline

The real shift isn't AI arranging clips. It's editing your video by editing words.

If your editor supports transcript-based editing — Palmier, Descript, and the text-based editing in most modern editors — get the transcript up and work there:

Here's the transcript of my raw take. Mark every filler word and false start for removal. Then find the three places where I said the same thing twice and tell me which version is stronger. Finally, show me where the video actually starts - the first sentence that would make someone stay.

Deleting a sentence from the transcript deletes it from the video. No scrubbing, no waveform hunting.

That last question is worth the whole exercise. Almost everyone's real opening is 20 to 40 seconds into the take, after they've warmed up — and no amount of timeline fiddling finds that as fast as reading it does.

What a good first cut looks like

Not finished. Judge it on this:

GOOD          Clips in roughly the right order, obvious
              dead air gone, your script's structure
              visible. You'd say "yes, but the middle
              drags."

NOT GOOD      Clips in file-name order, best take
              buried, nothing trimmed. That's a sorting
              job, not an edit - go back and name your
              clips.

If you can watch it once and know exactly what you'd change, it did its job. That's the point where your taste takes over.

When it goes sideways

"It cut my best take." It's optimizing for tidy, and your best take is often the messy one with the real laugh in it. Keep the raws, and tell it which take to build around rather than letting it choose.

"The pacing feels robotic." It cuts pauses evenly. Pauses are where meaning lands, so put a few back by hand — especially before the line you most want people to hear.

"It doesn't match my style." It hasn't seen your style. Show it: "Here's a video of mine that worked. Match its pacing, cut rhythm and how long I hold on a face."

"Export looked different from the preview." Common in early tools. Export a 20-second test before you export a 20-minute video, every time.

"It crashed and I lost work." Early software. Save versions as you go and keep the originals somewhere else. Nothing here should ever be the only copy.

Make it yours

Talking-head content: name your clips by what you say, not by take number. Transcript editing then does most of the work.
Client work: never let a first cut go out unwatched. The whole value is speed to a draft, not skipping the review.
Weekly posting: build one project structure and reuse it — same intro slot, same story slot, same CTA slot. Consistency is what makes AI cuts good.
Not on a Mac: skip this one. The CLIPS guide gets you 80% of the way with what you already have.

Do this next

Take a video you already published, drop the raw footage in, and see how close the first cut gets to what you built by hand. That's the honest test, and it takes ten minutes.

How to use this: Don't expect magic. Expect a solid first draft in minutes instead of an hour. Your job shifts from doing the labor to making the calls, which is the whole point.

Next guide: Record Once, Post All Week — turning one long recording into a week of clips, no special software required.