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FilmCraft, the free Premiere Pro clone, tested

I tested the free, open-source Premiere Pro clone live, then had Claude fix it and edit video in it.

25 min video

0

I've edited in Premiere for years. FilmCraft copies Premiere's panels, tools and keyboard shortcuts, and it runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. In my test, a 4K 60fps clip played back smoothly, and the ripple, rolling, razor, slip and rate stretch tools, pen masks, keyframes and blend modes all worked like Premiere's. The arrow keys, gap selection, the hand tool and timeline zoom misbehaved, and transcription is switched off in the release build.

Because the code is open source, I forked it and had Claude, running Opus 5.5, fix the bugs I hit. Then it built Premiere-style text-based editing with a transcription model that runs on your own computer, and set up an MCP server, a connection Claude uses to run FilmCraft's commands. Through it, Claude color graded a clip and found and cut 21 pauses in about 40 seconds.

Chapters

  1. 0:00Intro
  2. 1:01How to download FilmCraft
  3. 2:06First impressions
  4. 3:05Testing 4K playback
  5. 4:42Testing the editing tools
  6. 6:14Effect controls, keyframes and blend modes
  7. 8:40How close it is to Premiere
  8. 9:05Forking it and fixing bugs with Claude
  9. 12:00Bugs fixed (and what caused them)
  10. 13:38Testing text-based editing
  11. 16:23Choosing a local transcription model
  12. 17:15Text-based editing in FilmCraft
  13. 18:39Recap
  14. 19:08Building an MCP server for Claude
  15. 20:25What Claude can do through MCP
  16. 21:06Test 1: Claude color grades
  17. 22:13Test 2: Claude cuts every pause
  18. 23:09My verdict

The full write-up

I Tested FilmCraft, the Free Premiere Pro Clone, Then Had Claude Fix ItHow to download it, every prompt I gave Claude, and my fork with all the fixes.Read the write-up

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