Show HN: ClipJS – Edit your videos from a PC or phone

(clipjs.vercel.app)

114 points | by mohyware 12 hours ago ago

44 comments

  • zoogeny 10 hours ago ago

    I got about 30% through making something very similar then moved on to another project. This is very nicely done.

    It is worth noting that I did a lot of research in this space when I was working on my own video editor and there are a lot of these now (I have about 30 in a spreadsheet). Ever since there was a ffmpeg WASM port many people have made these web based editors. It is so cool we live in a time where that kind of powerful technology is freely usable by others to build these tools.

    My angle was to add gen ai video as a first class feature. That might be something you want to investigate now that video gen apis are becoming more common.

    • leptons 8 hours ago ago

      >That might be something you want to investigate now that video gen apis are becoming more common.

      No, it doesn't need that. It just needs to be a good web-based video editor.

      • aio2 8 hours ago ago

        Wrong, depending on his priorities.

        If he just wants a good website to do the job, sure, genai is uselesse

        But if he wants to market it, in this day and age, it's practically a need.

        • leptons 6 hours ago ago

          >But if he wants to market it, in this day and age, it's practically a need.

          No, it isn't. AI content creation is a fundamentally different thing that a video editor. Maybe you can't tell the difference, but I can. AI isn't going to edit the video how I want, it isn't going to create the video I want from a prompt when I've already got the video clips I want to edit. I don't need to edit clips of people with 7 fingers, I need to edit my family vacation video, or whatever it is I need a video editor for. There's nothing about AI that would improve this as a video editor, at all.

          If I could import this project into my existing React-based web app, I will use it to edit clips of content for my specific application, and for that it is useful. AI would just bloat it and be annoying where it isn't needed.

          • fragmede 2 hours ago ago

            > want, it isn't going to create the video I want from a prompt when I've already got the video clips I want to edit.

            You act as if there aren't a bunch of non-AI video editing apps that try to do exactly that, nevermind AI apps that try and do that.

            > I don't need to edit clips of people with 7 fingers

            There's more to AI than image generation (and 7 fingers isn't the same problem it was 6 months ago). Specifically, picking out the important part of the clip, adding appropriate captions and music from the AI processing the video.

            > I need to edit my family vacation video

            Yes. What do you think an AI enhanced video editor would do? Be Photoshop? Editing the family video from hours down to a digestible video for sharing is a time intensive process, and while I'm sure you enjoy it, not everyone does. A "Make vacation video" button for those people for whom that's a chore and not fun, and don't remotely care to be semi-professional video editors is the target market for a program with a feature to find decent photos and snippets of video from a giant pile of stuff, and arrange them into something cromulent.

            As far as state of the art for generated content, a cousin of mine used AI to take a still image of the extended family at dinner with their hands under the table, and turn it into a convincing video where everyone raises their hands and waves (with the correct number of fingers, in case that needed to be stated.)

            Anyway, to answer your question, the react library backing this for building your own to drop in is called Remotion. If you'd rather a different video editor, https://omniclip.app/ was mentioned as being an open source no-upload video editor.

  • shkm 22 minutes ago ago

    Love this, curious to see where it'll go. Would be amazing if we could move text around with the mouse.

  • xnx 12 hours ago ago

    https://omniclip.app/ is another online video editor option that runs entirely in the browser (i.e. no video sent to an unknown server). Also open source.

    • dobladov 10 hours ago ago
      • talkingtab 5 hours ago ago

        I get a message from pikimov.com about Firefox not supported.

      • mohyware 10 hours ago ago

        Wow this is really great! I can't believe this is a one person project I can definitely get inspiration from it.

    • mohyware 11 hours ago ago

      looks cool

  • jony1266 12 hours ago ago

    looks cool, love how there's no sign in required.

    some feedback so far:

    - allow me to drag + drop video clips to add them to the media section

    - allow me to trim the beginning of a clip - right now i can only trim the end of a video clip

    - allow me to drag the playhead (right now i can only click to move the playhead somewhere)

    - make most of the text on the page be select-none - there were many times when i tried to drag something and it selected a bunch of text on the page

    • jacktheturtle 11 hours ago ago

      no sign in IS SO NICE

      • purplecats 11 hours ago ago

        limited time offer (almost certainly only until they get some users) but for the purposes of demonstration in HN i love it

    • mohyware 11 hours ago ago

      Glad you liked it! I’ll add these to the to-do list

  • jasonthorsness 10 hours ago ago

    This is remarkably good for a month-old project. I wish all apps could remain this snappy!

    I don't like the auto-scrolling of the timeline when the red bar reaches the halfway point it's too jumpy.

    Consider hosting some sample clips for people to play with.

    • mohyware 10 hours ago ago

      Thanks! u can disable it with the Track Marker button or the (T) shortcut. I'll also consider this.

  • 90s_dev 8 hours ago ago

    Wow. I didn't know we could make video editors online now. Amazing job. I tried to do this so many times over the past 10 years, and it's a lot harder than it looks. But the "power" apps in this area are disproportionately too hard to use, and capcut and tiktok are easier but have their own major problems. Looking forward to using this! Also to reading the source!

  • mncharity 6 hours ago ago

    Perhaps add a screenshot to the landing page? The current "Ok, what does it look like?" path seems discouragingly long (landing page, Get Started, Add Project, name project, click on project).

  • koakuma-chan 9 hours ago ago

    It looks like I can only edit the first 30 seconds of my video, which is 23 minutes long? https://i.imgur.com/L39MS2r.png

  • indigodaddy 8 hours ago ago

    Haven't even looked at this, but does this or similar webapps (saw some others posted in comments) make it easy to redact passwords or any other sensitive information in videos? I've explored some desktop tools (very cursorily tbf), and it always seems dreadfully complicated so I've never really even attempted beyond a half-assed effort. I really think there should be some tool that makes this point and click so that even a lazy half-asser can do it easily.

    • fragmede 2 hours ago ago

      What sort of videos? For Twitch streaming, the way to do is not have passwords on screen by having OBS only show a portion of the screen, with an extra terminal/whatever outside of the shared section (find a more in depth guide for details on how this works in detail/practice)

      Redacting an area of the screen is easy with a bit of practice, even though the location of the password on screen may move, you just have to trace a path for the black box to move along. However, thattakes a bit of time unlike a hypothetical hide password with AI button.

  • asadm 9 hours ago ago

    It would be good to add a default project to just test it out without uploading our own content.

  • dylanjha 6 hours ago ago

    Ever consider shipping this as an SDK that other apps can embed? This is something I’ve heard many people ask for.

  • aaurelions 9 hours ago ago

    Rendering...

    Aborted() The progress bar is experimental in FFmpeg WASM, so it might appear slow or unresponsive even though the actual processing is not.

  • dested 9 hours ago ago

    Incredible use of remotion.

  • higgins 10 hours ago ago

    incredible. the get started "+" icon and the github icon vectors were AI generated?

  • s09dfhks 9 hours ago ago

    uploaded a clip, pressed play on the timeline, but the preview wouldnt play

  • SkilTrick 9 hours ago ago

    Nice Project !

  • popalchemist 9 hours ago ago

    Is it usable as a react or vue component?

  • steren 9 hours ago ago

    Curious: why not set up a custom domain?

    • edoceo 9 hours ago ago

      Don't domain cost money? Then you have to keep it around for years.

  • eth0up 10 hours ago ago

    I could have used this several weeks ago when all attempts to edit video (OpenShot & everything else I had installed) in Void Linux were temporarily thwarted until I realized an update had introduced incompatibilities with the GPU OpenGL/mesa driver slopstack.

    I was able to wrest back some of my software by starting with

    LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1

    This forces CPU rendering through bypassing the intel GPU shitstack.

    Or that's at least what I think happened. Took a loooong time to figure out.

    Edit: I should include that part of the issue might be hamfisted aspects of the updates that penalize variable frame rates, which phone cameras use, and also comprises 100% of my videos. Still not sure though.

  • SkilTrick 9 hours ago ago

    Nice project !

  • HenryBemis 11 hours ago ago

    I couldn't find your Privacy policy. What do you do with the videos uploaded? How do you store them, process them, 3rd parties? How do you monetize this? How is your approach/compliance to GDPR?

    • mohyware 11 hours ago ago

      No files are uploaded everything is stored locally in the browser using IndexedDB and processed with FFmpeg (WebAssembly port) in the browser.

      • jacktheturtle 11 hours ago ago

        FFmpeg continues to run the world lol

        • dylan604 9 hours ago ago

          there is nothing more useful

    • feznyng 10 hours ago ago

      Assuming this is hosted on Vercel (which the URL indicates) and everything's done/stored locally (as stated) I don't think there's passive cost associated with providing this service (besides dev time).

      • mohyware 10 hours ago ago

        Yep you are right. The only reason was time since I don't have much experience with deployments.