I Tested FilmCraft, the Free Premiere Pro Clone, Then Had Claude Fix It

I've been editing in Premiere for years, and I've spent thousands of hours in it. So when a free, open-source clone of Premiere Pro called FilmCraft came out, I tested it live to see if it could replace Premiere for me.

Then I forked it and had Claude fix the bugs I hit, build in the one Premiere feature my workflow can't live without (text-based editing), and set up an MCP server so Claude can do the editing itself.

Below is how to download it, what works, what broke, the prompts I gave Claude, and what it changed.

What FilmCraft is

FilmCraft is a video editor built to look and work like Premiere Pro. Same panels, same tools, almost exactly the same interface.

The keyboard shortcuts carry over too. These all worked the first time I tried them:

• L to speed up playback
• D to select a clip
• Cmd+K to cut
• Q to ripple trim
• Cmd+T to add a text layer

The team is upfront about where it stands. Their own estimate: about 87% of Premiere's features, but only 50 to 60% ready for real work.

How to download it

The team commits to GitHub constantly, so the newest build shows up there before it reaches their website.

1. Go to github.com/storytold/filmcraft.
2. Click Releases on the right.
3. Scroll to Assets.
4. Pick your file (below).
5. Open it and drag FilmCraft into Applications.

If you prefer a normal download page, the same app is on getartcraft.com.

If your Mac says the file is damaged, the download was cut off. Delete it and download it again. The Mac app is about 68 MB.

What works

Playback surprised me. I expected it to be slow. I dropped in a 4K 60fps, 10-bit clip and it played back smoothly, and new sequences loaded fast.

These worked like Premiere:

• Track select, ripple edit, rolling edit and razor tools
• Rate stretch with R
• Slip tool
• Pen tool masks
• Effect Controls with Shift+5
• Scale keyframes
• Blend modes (Multiply over a lens burn)
• Rendering previews
• Time remapping and Essential Graphics

What broke

Most of the misses were a couple of button clicks off from Premiere. Here's what you'll hit:

Arrow keys.

Up and down didn't reliably jump between clips. At one point, pressing right moved the playhead left.

Gaps.

Pressing D didn't highlight the gap between two clips, and Delete didn't close it.

Dragging after a track select.

After selecting everything to the right with A, I couldn't drag it. I had to switch back to V first.

Hand tool and zoom.

The hand tool didn't move the view, and I couldn't zoom the timeline in and out.

Easing.

Keyframes work, but I couldn't shape the velocity graph the way Premiere lets you, and there's no right-click ease in or ease out.

Audio.

Playback audio came back garbled. I also couldn't make the audio track taller with Option.

Text-based editing.

The transcript panel is there, but transcription is switched off in the release build.

Fixing it with Claude

Because FilmCraft is open source, you don't have to wait for the team to fix things. I forked the repo, opened it with Claude on Opus 5.5 at extra high effort, and listed the bugs, with two screenshots from Premiere showing what I wanted.

I dictated my prompts, and the start of this one and the next got cut off before they reached Claude. The cards show exactly what Claude received.

It should, the playback head should be at the very end, but it's like, it, this might just be in their UI, but it looks like, at the very end, it makes it look like there's still, some more at the, It's telling me that the playhead is at the very end. However, there's still one. However, the playback is still. However, the playback is not at the end of the clip, like within the sequence. I don't know what's going on there here. I'll just give you the screenshot. And then I want, like I said, an ability when I press D, it should just highlight in between clips. I'll give you another screenshot here. That screenshot two. I want just that little white line between, I just I want just that little white line in premiere. I watches that white box to indicate that. to indicate the separation between the 2 clips and then why hit delete, it should just close that gap. It doesn't do that. I think that's the biggest. I think that's the biggest issues for now. Let's just do that and see how close we can get. Because that's just navigating the sequence and I think that's the biggest issues for now. So let's just make those changes and see how close we can get. Do a bunch of research and just kind of spec and plan this out 1st and understand what needs to be done, then find a way to test this yourself. I don't want to, I don't want to keep going around in circles and say, I don't want to, like, like set up a way to QA this. And use your vision and make sure that these changes are made before you come back to me and say they are done.

It should, the playback head should be at the very end, but it's like, it, this might just be in their UI, but it looks like, at the very end, it makes it look like there's still, some more at the, It's telling me that the playhead is at the very end. However, there's still one. However, the playback is still. However, the playback is not at the end of the clip, like within the sequence. I don't know what's going on there here. I'll just give you the screenshot. And then I want, like I said, an ability when I press D, it should just highlight in between clips. I'll give you another screenshot here. That screenshot two. I want just that little white line between, I just I want just that little white line in premiere. I watches that white box to indicate that. to indicate the separation between the 2 clips and then why hit delete, it should just close that gap. It doesn't do that. I think that's the biggest. I think that's the biggest issues for now. Let's just do that and see how close we can get. Because that's just navigating the sequence and I think that's the biggest issues for now. So let's just make those changes and see how close we can get. Do a bunch of research and just kind of spec and plan this out 1st and understand what needs to be done, then find a way to test this yourself. I don't want to, I don't want to keep going around in circles and say, I don't want to, like, like set up a way to QA this. And use your vision and make sure that these changes are made before you come back to me and say they are done.

Claude found the cause of the gap problem quickly. FilmCraft's select-clip-at-playhead command only selected clips and ignored gaps. A close-gap function already existed, but nothing connected a selected gap to the Delete key.

It tested its own fixes inside the running app. FilmCraft has a control channel built in, so Claude sent real key presses and took screenshots to check the result, without using computer use.

It took about 30 minutes. After that:

• The playhead goes to the very end of a clip
• D selects the gap between clips
• Delete closes the gap
• Cmd+K no longer leaves a one-frame sliver clip
• The arrow keys step one frame at a time

All of these fixes are in my fork: per-simmons/filmcraft.

Claude also found that the one-frame slivers weren't FilmCraft's fault. My OBS recording was dropping frames. I'd guess that was behind the garbled audio too: on a new recording, the audio played back clean.

Adding text-based editing

Text-based editing is a huge part of my workflow, so this was the next round.

panel, and then you can just hit transcribe, and then it transcribes all of the text, and then it shows little gaps and stuff, and then you can actually filter by pauses by, I don't even remember what else is in premiere. It's you can filter by... Let's see, actually, what it is in premiere transcript, text, filler words, pauses, speakers. We don't need diarization in there right now with the speakers, but everything else I want it to mimic premiere exactly. And I don't know what their transcription engine is. It's pretty good. Um, so I'm wondering if what our options are. We could technically use opening I whisper, I'm assuming Whisper is the best. We also have native whisper on Max via MLX, but I don't think that's very good. And then there's also a couple open source models like parakeet. Can you test all of those or just get an agent to test all of those? I don't really want to use open AI whisper. I don't want to use an open AI API key is what I'm saying, but I wonder if, but I know, I know also that opening AI has an open source version of that. So I think it's like V2 turbo or something. Um, so can we test all of these and see which one is the best, and then that will be our transcription. Ideally, it's locally, and ideally it's very nimble. I don't want it to be too beefy. Um, and yeah, so we can just have this like local, so anyone that is, so anyone that's doing text-based editing can just have this as a part of the build where it will just transcribe it, um, via a local transcription engine on their, uh, computer.

  so get multiple agents workign on that

panel, and then you can just hit transcribe, and then it transcribes all of the text, and then it shows little gaps and stuff, and then you can actually filter by pauses by, I don't even remember what else is in premiere. It's you can filter by... Let's see, actually, what it is in premiere transcript, text, filler words, pauses, speakers. We don't need diarization in there right now with the speakers, but everything else I want it to mimic premiere exactly. And I don't know what their transcription engine is. It's pretty good. Um, so I'm wondering if what our options are. We could technically use opening I whisper, I'm assuming Whisper is the best. We also have native whisper on Max via MLX, but I don't think that's very good. And then there's also a couple open source models like parakeet. Can you test all of those or just get an agent to test all of those? I don't really want to use open AI whisper. I don't want to use an open AI API key is what I'm saying, but I wonder if, but I know, I know also that opening AI has an open source version of that. So I think it's like V2 turbo or something. Um, so can we test all of these and see which one is the best, and then that will be our transcription. Ideally, it's locally, and ideally it's very nimble. I don't want it to be too beefy. Um, and yeah, so we can just have this like local, so anyone that is, so anyone that's doing text-based editing can just have this as a part of the build where it will just transcribe it, um, via a local transcription engine on their, uh, computer.

  so get multiple agents workign on that

FilmCraft already has Whisper transcription built in, with word timestamps and filler-word and pause removal. It's switched off in the release build, so the job was finishing it rather than starting from zero.

Claude researched the local transcription models. All of them run on your own computer, with no API and nothing to pay for:

I went with Parakeet v3 as the main engine, with Apple SpeechTranscriber as the fallback. Then we ran into issues with Parakeet and moved to Whisper large v3 turbo, which has been working well. The whole build took about an hour.

How it works

• Right-click a clip and make a new sequence from it
• Open the Text panel, then Transcript, then Transcribe
• Pick English and hit Transcribe

Transcribing my clip took about 10 seconds. The panel looks like Premiere's: pauses show up as dots in the transcript, and clicking one jumps to that spot in the clip.

Switch the search filter to Pauses and hit Delete all, and every pause comes out. Zooming in on the waveform, the cuts were clean. A couple of short pauses were left, which take a few seconds to fix by hand. Premiere's own text-based editing leaves pauses like that too.

Letting Claude do the editing

The last step is giving Claude complete access to FilmCraft, so it can do entire edits on its own and I only review the timeline. For that, Claude builds an MCP server: a connection that lets it press any button in the app without touching the screen.

Build an MCP server, Claude, where you can access every single button in the UI, and I want future agents to access all of this completely programmatically. Like every single button, the goal here is for future agents to do all of the editing here, and all I needed. And all I need to do is review the timeline, but it should be done perfectly every single time. So I don't even need to touch this UI.

Build an MCP server, Claude, where you can access every single button in the UI, and I want future agents to access all of this completely programmatically. Like every single button, the goal here is for future agents to do all of the editing here, and all I needed. And all I need to do is review the timeline, but it should be done perfectly every single time. So I don't even need to touch this UI.

I spent months trying to get Claude to edit inside Premiere Pro. It got close, but Claude had to take over my screen with computer use and click some buttons itself. That was slow, and it burned through my usage.

With an MCP server, Claude reaches every command through the app itself, with no clicking, so it's faster and uses far fewer tokens. FilmCraft already shipped an MCP server with around 17 tools. The job was making it complete and reliable, so every button in the app is reachable.

What Claude can do through it

Once the server was built, I asked Claude what we could test just by talking to it. Its list:

• Text-based editing: transcribe, filter the pauses, delete them
• Regular cuts by timecode
• Adding and updating text layers
• Color grading in Lumetri: exposure, temperature, anything in the panel
• Exporting

Test 1: color grading

I opened a new chat, set the effort to medium, made a new sequence from a talking-head clip, and sent this:

use the filmcraft mcp server and edit the color scopes use lumteri color panel bring dow nthe exposure - make it also look suuuuper cinematic

use the filmcraft mcp server and edit the color scopes use lumteri color panel bring dow nthe exposure - make it also look suuuuper cinematic

Claude took a screenshot of the app, pulled up the baseline scopes, then added a Lumetri Color effect to the clip. It took about a minute.

It leaned a little too far into a Matrix-green look. If you already have color presets or a look you like, put them in a Claude skill and it will grade to your taste.

Test 2: cutting every pause

text based edit this now cut out all the puases

text based edit this now cut out all the puases

Claude duplicated the sequence, transcribed it, and found 21 pauses in 28 seconds. About 40 seconds later every pause was cut, and Claude checked its own work. Scrolling through the sequence, all of them were gone.

My verdict

Most videos about Claude editing a whole video are exaggerated, or they use the method I used before: Claude looking at the screen and clicking with computer use. I made one of those myself. It worked, but it was slow and burned a lot of tokens.

This is the first time Claude editing my videos feels realistic. Once I squash a few more bugs in my fork, I don't see myself going back to Premiere.

I still like Premiere. If Adobe gave agents full access to it through an MCP server, I'd come back.

Editors, you're not cooked

Your clients aren't going to fork an open-source repo, build an MCP server, and tell Claude to edit their videos. This works for rough cuts, and it fits my editing style, which is basic. Anything creative and polished still needs a good editor.

My fork of FilmCraft, with every change from this post: per-simmons/filmcraft. The original: storytold/filmcraft.