Using AI tools to help with video editing (subtitles, effects, colour balancing)

There was a time when “post-production” meant tea, biscuits, and the slow realisation that you’d filmed everything… except the bit where you explain the thing. These days, AI has barged into the edit suite like an over-helpful assistant: occasionally brilliant, occasionally confident-and-wrong, but almost always faster than doing it all by hand.

Used sensibly, AI can take the boring, repetitive bits of editing (transcribing, syncing, rough selects, basic colour matching) and give you more time for the bits that actually matter: storytelling, pacing, and making your video look like you planned it that way.

1) Extracting subtitles: the fastest “instant upgrade”

Subtitles are no longer just for accessibility (although that’s reason enough). They’re also for:

• viewers watching on mute,

• short-form platforms that love on-screen text,

• anyone trying to follow a technical explanation at speed.

Typical AI workflow (10–20 minutes instead of 2 hours):

1. Auto-transcribe your timeline or selected clips.

2. Clean up names, jargon, and units (AI always butchers “DaVinci”, “spectrophotometer”, and any student’s surname).

3. Turn transcript into captions and choose a readable style.

4. Export SRT for YouTube, or burn captions in for socials.

If you’re using Adobe Premiere Pro, Speech-to-Text will generate a transcript and create captions directly from it.

If you’re using DaVinci Resolve Studio, the Neural Engine features cover a lot of AI-assisted workflow (and Blackmagic explicitly positions AI as part of Resolve’s toolset).

And if you want a very “edit by typing” approach (especially for talking-head, tuition, or voiceover-heavy videos), Descript is built around transcription-first editing and quick caption creation.

My rule: subtitles from AI are draft subtitles. Always do a quick skim before publishing. One wrong word can turn GCSE chemistry into interpretive poetry.

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2) Graphical effects: letting AI do the donkey work

This is where AI can feel like magic—particularly for tasks that used to mean frame-by-frame misery:

• Smart reframing (turn wide shots into vertical without chopping heads off),

• Object tracking / region tracking (so text or blur sticks to the right thing),

• Background removal / masking assistance (especially for quick explainers),

• Auto “rough cut” helpers (finding pauses, removing silences, assembling selects).

Resolve’s AI tooling (Neural Engine) includes features like object detection, smart reframing, and more—useful for turning one master video into multiple platform-friendly versions.

For more experimental or generative workflows (and the “how on earth did you do that?” factor), platforms like Runway lean hard into AI-powered video creation and manipulation tools.

Practical tip: use AI effects to get you 80% of the way quickly, then finish manually. That last 20% is where “professional” lives.

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3) Colour balancing: AI as your first pass, not your final grade

Colour is the sneaky time thief. AI can help you:

• balance exposure and white balance,

• match shots from different cameras,

• get a consistent “base look” before you do your creative grade.

Resolve’s Neural Engine includes auto colour and colour matching among its AI-driven features.
That’s ideal when you’ve got (say) a Canon on a tripod, a 360 camera doing its own thing, and a phone clip your son grabbed at exactly the wrong colour temperature.

A sensible grading approach:

1. AI auto-colour / shot match to normalise clips.

2. Check with scopes (waveform/vectorscope) because your eyes lie.

3. Then apply your creative grade (warmth, contrast, “sunny day optimism”, etc.).

AI gets you to “not embarrassing” fast. You get yourself to “that looks lovely”.

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The “don’t let AI ruin your life” checklist

• Check proper nouns (people, places, boat names, science terms).

• Watch for confident hallucinations in captions (“jib” becoming “gym”, “gnav” becoming “navy”…).

• Keep a house style: caption fonts, sizes, safe margins, brand colours.

• Don’t overdo effects: if the AI effect is the most interesting part, your story has a problem.

• Archive your transcript: it becomes blog material, revision notes, worksheet text, and searchable video metadata.