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AI Video Story Editor: 500GB of Footage to 16 Films

OpenClaw orchestrates Gemini, Mistral, and Claude to turn raw travel footage into story-edited films with narrative arcs, editor notes, and FCPXML timelines -- ready for Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve.

AI Video Story Editor

What it does

As Xitij Ritesh Patel shared: "Last night, my OpenClaw assistant Vanessa turned all of it into 16 story-edited films. Narrative arcs, emotional beats, editor notes on every clip. Took about 90 minutes."

The agent takes a massive library of raw video footage and produces complete story edits:

  • Timeline per day (10-15 minutes each) with actual story structure
  • Story treatment for each day describing the narrative arc
  • Editor notes on every clip explaining why it's included
  • Highlight markers for trailer-worthy shots
  • Full transcripts of every conversation
  • Quality and story scores for every clip

All output as FCPXML, which opens directly in Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve. No proprietary format lock-in.

The multi-agent architecture

This is a true multi-model orchestration. OpenClaw coordinates 16 parallel agents, each independently building a narrative arc for one day of the trip:

  1. Gemini Flash analyzes the video content -- scenes, subjects, composition, visual quality
  2. Mistral Voxtral transcribes all audio and conversations
  3. Claude Opus 4.6 handles the narrative story editing -- assembling clips into coherent arcs with emotional beats

OpenClaw acts as the orchestrator, routing tasks to the right model and merging results into final FCPXML output.

Setup overview

  1. Install OpenClaw with the relevant skills for video file access
  2. Set up model access: Gemini Flash, Mistral Voxtral, and Claude Opus
  3. Write a SOUL.md prompt describing your editing style, story preferences, and output format
  4. Point the agent at your footage directory
  5. The agent spawns parallel workers per day/segment and assembles the results

The tech stack: Python + FFmpeg for video processing, FCPXML for NLE-compatible output.

The economics

Approach Cost Time
Hire an editor $3,000 - $5,000 Days to weeks
Do it yourself Your sanity 40 - 80 hours
OpenClaw multi-agent ~$25 in API costs ~90 minutes

As Xitij puts it: "I'm not replacing editors. I'm replacing the assembly edit. The part nobody wants to do."

The agent handles the tedious first pass -- logging, selecting, assembling, scoring. A human editor can then take the FCPXML timeline and refine it into a polished final cut in a fraction of the usual time.

Tips

  • Use the right model for each job: vision models for video analysis, speech models for transcription, reasoning models for narrative editing -- don't try to do everything with one LLM
  • Parallelize by segment: splitting footage into independent chunks (days, scenes, locations) lets you run agents in parallel for massive speed gains
  • FCPXML is the key: outputting to an open timeline format means editors can pick up exactly where the AI left off in their preferred NLE
  • Keep humans in the loop: the AI does the assembly edit, but the creative polish still benefits from a human touch

Source

Based on @xitijpatel thread on X (Feb 23, 2026)