The Viode manual

Getting started

Install Viode

macOS: download Viode (the .dmg), open the downloaded file, and drag Viode into your Applications folder. The app carries its complete video engine inside, so there is nothing else to install — it is signed and notarized, so it opens without warnings.

Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora: download the .deb or .rpm from the same downloads page and open it — your system's software installer brings the video engine in with it. Viode appears in your app launcher, and .viode project files open with it when double-clicked.

Arch Linux: the downloads page describes the Viode package and how to install it.

The welcome screen

Opening Viode without a project shows the welcome screen. It holds your recent projects (every project you open is added automatically), a New Project button, an Open Project button, and a Connect your AI card (see Connecting your AI). If Viode detects a gap in its engine, a banner appears here and in the editor — see The engine checkup.

Projects

Click New Project, choose a name, a frame rate, a resolution, and a location. A Viode project is a normal folder on disk. Footage you add is copied into the project's media folder, so the project stays complete if you move or back up the folder. Double-clicking the project file inside it reopens the project.

Editing journeys

Five common jobs, start to finish. Every journey can be done two ways: with the mouse, following the steps — or by asking your connected AI, with the sentence given at the end of each journey. Both drive the same editor; everything is undoable either way.

A podcast episode

1. Create a project and drag your main recording onto the window.
2. Run Cut the silences from the command palette — the dead air disappears, with breathing room kept around speech.
3. Second camera? Add camera angle (auto-sync) and pick its file — it aligns itself by audio. Then cut on the angle wall: mark a range with [ and ], press the angle's number key.
4. Music: Add music track, right-click its track header to add the song, then run Duck music under dialogue — the music lowers itself wherever anyone speaks.
5. Select the speech clip and tick Clean in the inspector to take out hum and room noise.
6. Export (R): the YouTube preset for the video version, then again with the Podcast preset for the audio-only file. Both come out at the right loudness.

Or ask your AI: "Open my podcast project, cut the silences, cut between the two cameras so it stays visually alive, duck the music under our voices, clean the vocal noise, then render the YouTube version and the audio-only episode."

A Short from a long video

1. Create a project and add the long video.
2. Find the moment: use the transcript panel to jump by what was said, or scrub the ruler. Split (S) at the start and end of the segment and delete (D) everything else.
3. Add a hook title (T) and style it in the inspector.
4. Export (R) with the Shorts preset and turn on follow the subject — the vertical crop keeps the speaker's face in frame, scene by scene.
5. Watch the latest render (palette) to review it before posting.

Or ask your AI: "Find the best 45 seconds in this interview — the part about pricing — and turn it into a Short with a hook title."

A two-camera interview

1. Create a project and add camera A — the interviewer's or the wide shot.
2. Add camera angle (auto-sync) for camera B. No clap slate needed; the audio aligns them to the millisecond.
3. Cut the silences to tighten the conversation.
4. Cut between the cameras on the angle wall: mark ranges with [ ], press 1 or 2 — cut to whoever is talking, cut away for reactions.
5. If the cameras disagree on color, right-click the later clip and choose Match look to previous clip; check with the scopes toggle.
6. Export a master, or the YouTube preset if it goes straight up.

Or ask your AI: "Sync my two interview cameras, tighten the silences, cut between the cameras at natural moments in the conversation, match the color between the cameras, and render a master."

A screen-recording tutorial

1. Record your screen with the system recorder (⌘⇧5 on a Mac, your screen recording shortcut on Linux), then create a project and add the recording.
2. Cut the silences — the pauses while you typed and thought vanish.
3. For long stretches of routine work, select the clip and raise its speed in the inspector (2× reads fine for setup steps).
4. Drop markers (M) at each section — they become player chapters in the render review — and add section titles (T).
5. Generate captions so the tutorial works with the sound off.
6. Export with the YouTube preset.

Or ask your AI: "Cut the dead air out of my screen recording, speed up the installation section to double speed, add captions, and render it for YouTube."

A captioned social clip

1. Create a project and add the clip.
2. Trim to the moment: drag the clip's edges, or park the playhead and use I / O.
3. Generate captions and choose burned-in — every caption becomes a title you can restyle in the inspector.
4. Music under it? Add music track, add the song, Duck music under dialogue.
5. Export with the Shorts preset for vertical platforms (with follow the subject if you are on camera), or a master for square/landscape.

Or ask your AI: "Trim this to the 30 seconds around the launch announcement, burn in captions, put music under it kept quiet below the speech, and give me the vertical version."

The editor

The window

The preview occupies the top of the window; the timeline docks below it with a large timecode. Track headers sit on the left edge of the timeline: video overlay tracks stack above the main track, audio tracks below it. Clips are drawn with filmstrips and audio waveforms. Titles appear as markers above the ruler. The left panel holds the angle list and the transcript panel; the inspector opens on the right when a clip is selected.

Playback and navigation

The preview plays the real timeline — cuts, transitions, titles, transforms, and keyframes appear exactly as they will export. 4K projects preview at 720p automatically; your source files are never modified.

• space plays and pauses.
• J / K / L shuttle backward / pause / forward. Repeated presses increase the rate up to 8× in either direction.
• ← / → seek in small steps; shift+← / shift+→ jump a full second.
• , / . step one frame back / forward.
• ↑ / ↓ jump to the previous / next cut.
• home / end jump to the start / end of the timeline.
• Click or drag on the ruler above the timeline to scrub.

Finding commands

Every command is reachable in four places, so nothing has to be memorized:

• The command palette — press ctrl+K or click the ⌘ cmds toolbar button, then type what you are looking for ("split", "captions", "export"). Each entry shows its keyboard shortcut.
• Right-click menus — clips, titles, markers, the ruler, and the track headers each offer their own actions.
• The inspector — every adjustable property of the selected clip: speed, volume, pan, fades, transforms, color, stabilization, cleanup, masks, and more. Each slider gesture is a single undo step.
• The toolbar — add, split, delete, undo, redo, save, and render.

Press ? at any time for the keyboard reference; Q quits (Viode asks first if there is unsaved work — closing the window does the same).

Keyboard reference

Automation and AI

Scene detection

Split at scene changes (palette) analyzes the clip under the playhead and splits it at every shot boundary. Useful for dissecting screen recordings, long takes, or footage from other edits before reworking them.

Connecting your AI

One click, from any of three places: the Connect your AI card on the welcome screen, the 🤖 row in the editor's left panel, or Connect your AI in the command palette. Viode finds every AI application installed on this machine, registers itself with each one, and teaches it about itself — so right after connecting you can ask "what do I do with Viode now?" and it knows. The results appear under the click, one line per app. Then restart the AI app once — fully quit it, not just its window — and start talking.

Per app, after that restart:

• Claude Desktop — any new conversation can edit with Viode; just mention your video or project.
• Claude Code — same, and it also learns a Viode skill, so it answers Viode questions even before touching a project.
• Cursor and Windsurf — Viode is available to their AI side panels; ask there, in any window.
• Gemini CLI and opencode — the next session knows Viode and can edit with it.
• Codex (GPT) — the next session knows Viode and can edit with it. Note: the ChatGPT app itself cannot be connected — OpenAI only allows cloud-hosted connections, and Viode never routes your editing through the cloud. Codex is the way to use GPT with Viode.

The 🤖 row in the editor never disappears: it shows who is connected, and clicking it again reconnects everyone — do that after installing a new AI app.

First things to say once connected: "What can you do with Viode?" · "Create a project from the clips in my footage folder and open the UI so I can watch." · "Cut the silences out of clip one." You should see the answer name Viode's tools, and — with the UI open — the timeline change as the AI works.

If something is off: "No compatible AI app found" means none of the supported apps is installed yet — install one and click again. If the AI doesn't seem to know Viode after connecting, quit the AI app completely and reopen it, then start a fresh conversation. If it knew Viode yesterday but a new chat doesn't, click the 🤖 row once more and restart the app — an update may have moved its settings.

Editing with the AI

Ask in plain language: "cut the silences out of my podcast", "build a Short from the best minute", "duck the music". The AI holds the same editing capabilities this manual documents, plus the ability to look at frames, waveforms, and scopes to judge its own work. Everything it does lands in the same undo history and the same readable project file, so its work can be reviewed, adjusted, or reverted like your own.

Editing without a window

You never need to open the editor. A complete edit can happen entirely in the conversation with your AI:

1. Tell it where the footage is. "Make a project from the clips in my interviews folder." The AI creates the project and brings the files in.
2. Say what you want done. Any of the editing journeys — the "ask your AI" sentence on each one works exactly like this, no window involved. The AI looks at frames and listens to waveforms as it works, so it judges the cut, not just the timestamps.
3. Ask to watch. "Show me the result." The finished video opens in a player with a chapter at every cut and marker — jump edit to edit with the chapter keys, step frames, and judge it.
4. Adjust in words. "The intro drags — tighten it." Repeat until it is right; everything is undoable.

And whenever you do want eyes on the timeline, say "open the UI": the editor window appears, following every change the AI makes, live. Close it and the conversation continues unaffected.

Repeatable edits

Automation is not only AI. Every editing operation in Viode is also a plain command, so a journey you repeat — the same podcast edit every week, the same clip format every day — can be written down once as a script and replayed on each new recording. If scripts aren't your thing, the AI route does the same job: because the timeline is a readable file, you can point at a finished project and say "edit this week's episode the same way" — and ask the AI to write the reusable script for you if you want one.

Editing

Adding footage

Drag video or audio files from your file manager onto the Viode window, or click add in the toolbar and pick files in the dialog. Each file is copied into the project, probed, and appended to the main track. To place a clip on an overlay track instead, see Overlay clips.

Selection

Viode has two complementary selection mechanisms. The playhead selects for the keyboard: verbs like split, trim, delete, and freeze act on the clip under the playhead. Clicking a clip selects it for the mouse and opens it in the inspector. esc clears the selection.

Splitting

Place the playhead where the cut belongs and press S, use the toolbar's split button, or right-click the clip and choose Split at playhead. The clip becomes two clips that play back seamlessly until you change one of them.

Trimming

Drag a clip's left or right edge to change its in- or out-point. On the main track the timeline stays gapless — later clips follow the edit. On overlay tracks, dragging the left edge keeps the right edge anchored. I and O trim the start or end of the clip under the playhead to the playhead position.

Three further trims preserve the total duration of the timeline. All of them refuse an impossible trim (one that would run out of source material) rather than guessing:

• Roll — hold alt and drag the edge between two clips. The cut point moves; both clips adjust.
• Slip — hold alt and drag the middle of a clip. The clip's window into its source shifts; its position and length stay.
• Slide — hold shift+alt and drag the middle of a clip. The clip moves along the timeline; its neighbors absorb the change.

Moving and deleting

Drag a clip's body to move it: main-track clips reorder when the drag crosses a neighbor's midpoint, overlay clips reposition freely. shift+, and shift+. move the clip under the playhead one position earlier or later. D or right-click → Delete removes the clip; the main track closes the gap automatically.

Transitions

Select a clip and set a fade duration in the inspector to crossfade it with the previous clip. The transition kind can be changed from a plain crossfade to a wipe (several directions are available) in the same inspector section. Setting the duration to zero removes the transition.

Freeze frame

Press F (or use the palette or the clip's right-click menu) to hold the frame under the playhead. Viode inserts a real still clip, two seconds long by default, at that point; trim it like any other clip.

Mending a jump cut

When two takes of the same shot meet, the cut jumps. Right-click the clip after the cut and choose Mend cut with a morph: Viode synthesizes a short motion-interpolated bridge between the two frames so the join reads as continuous movement. Best on interview footage where the subject moved slightly between takes.

Markers

Press M to drop a marker at the playhead. Markers appear as diamonds on the ruler: click one to jump to it, right-click to remove it. Use them for notes, chapter points, and to-dos.

Marking a range

[ and ] set a range in-point and out-point at the playhead, shown on the ruler. The range drives multicam takes (see The angle wall). esc clears it.

Undo and saving

U undoes, shift+U redoes; the history covers every edit since the project was opened, and each inspector slider gesture counts as one step. W or the toolbar's save button writes the project file. Closing with unsaved work always asks first. Edits made outside the window — by an AI session or any other program — appear live, and never overwrite unsaved changes of yours.

Tracks and multicam

Tracks

The main track is the spine of the edit: clips on it play back to back, and edits keep it gapless. Above and below it you can add overlay tracks: Add video overlay track and Add music track live in the palette and in the track header's right-click menu. The same menu enables or disables a track — a disabled track stays in the project but is excluded from playback and export.

Overlay clips

Clips on overlay tracks are positioned freely in time — drag them where they belong. A video overlay plays over the main track (use the inspector's transform controls for picture-in-picture, see Position, scale, rotation, opacity); an audio overlay mixes under it (music, ambience). To add footage directly to an overlay track, right-click the track header and choose the add option there.

Camera angles

Add camera angle (palette or the left panel's angle section) imports a second camera's recording of the same scene and synchronizes it automatically by matching its audio against the main track — no slate or manual alignment. The angle arrives as a disabled track, ready for cutting.

The angle wall

Every angle appears in the left panel with a live thumbnail showing that camera's frame at the playhead. To cut to an angle: mark a range with [ and ] (or leave the range empty to use the clip under the playhead), then click the angle or press its number key 1–9. The angle's footage replaces that span of the main track; total duration never changes.

Sound

Volume and pan

Select a clip; the inspector's audio section holds its volume (1.0 is unity gain) and stereo pan (−1 is full left, +1 full right). Waveforms are drawn on every audio clip, so levels are visible directly in the timeline.

Volume keyframes

Volume can change over time: add keyframes in the inspector's keyframe section, each with a time and a value, and Viode interpolates between them. This is how fades in and out of a clip's audio are made, and it is the mechanism ducking writes to (below), so automated and manual keyframes can be mixed freely.

Ducking music

Duck music under dialogue (palette) analyzes where speech occurs on the main track and writes volume keyframes onto the selected music track so the music drops during speech and returns between passages. The keyframes are ordinary, visible, and editable afterwards. Running the command again replans the ducking from scratch.

Voice cleanup

The inspector's Clean checkbox removes broadband noise, hum, and rumble from a clip's audio. The cleanup is computed once for the source file and cached, so playback and later edits are not slowed down. The strength can be adjusted; turning the checkbox off restores the original audio.

Refitting music

To make a music clip fit an exact duration, select it on its overlay track and use the inspector's Refit row: enter the target length and Viode finds the least audible seam in the track, then shortens or extends it there, hiding the join in a crossfade. Works from roughly half to double the original length.

Removing silences

Cut the silences (palette) scans the clip under the playhead and removes every silent stretch, keeping a padding around speech so the result still breathes. The analysis runs in the background and the cuts appear as ordinary edits — review them, adjust them, or undo the whole pass in one step.

Picture

Position, scale, rotation, opacity

The inspector's transform section moves and sizes the selected clip: horizontal and vertical position, scale, rotation, and opacity. Picture-in-picture is an overlay clip scaled down and positioned in a corner. Values are fractions of the frame, so a layout survives a change of project resolution.

Keyframes

Volume, opacity, position, and scale accept keyframes: each keyframe pairs a time with a value, and Viode interpolates linearly between them. Use them for fades, moves, and size animations. Keyframes are anchored in the source footage, so they stay in place through later trims and speed changes. Add and remove them in the inspector's keyframe section.

Speed and ramps

The inspector's speed row sets a clip's playback rate — 2 plays twice as fast, 0.5 is half-speed slow motion; audio pitch is preserved. A ramp transitions between two rates across the clip: set the starting and ending rate and Viode splits the clip into stepped segments that glide from one to the other. For very slow footage, the export dialog offers optical-flow frame interpolation so slow motion stays smooth.

Stabilization

The inspector's Steady checkbox stabilizes handheld footage. The analysis and smoothing run once for the source file and are cached; afterwards the stabilized clip plays and edits at full speed. The smoothing strength is adjustable, and unchecking restores the original.

Color

The inspector's color section grades the selected clip: brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, and gamma. Neutral values leave the footage untouched; the grade applies in both preview and export.

LUTs

The same section holds a LUT picker: choose a .cube file and it is applied to the clip with proper tetrahedral color math. The look is baked once per source file and cached, so playback stays fluid. Camera-vendor conversion LUTs and creative looks both work; clearing the picker removes the LUT.

Matching shots

When two adjacent shots disagree in exposure or saturation, right-click the later clip and choose Match look to previous clip. Viode measures both shots and adjusts the selected clip's grade to close the gap. The result is an ordinary grade you can refine in the inspector.

Scopes

The scopes toggle (palette, or the left panel) overlays a luma waveform and a vectorscope on the paused preview frame, measuring the image the way a broadcast monitor would. Use them to judge exposure and color objectively while grading.

Green and blue screen

For a clip on a video overlay track, the inspector's matte control keys out a green or blue background so the main track shows through. Choose the screen color, and switch it off to restore the full frame.

Masks and tracking

The inspector's mask section blurs or pixelates a region of the clip — a face, a license plate, a screen. Set the region's position and size, choose blur or pixelation, and optionally enable follow: Viode then tracks the region's content through the shot and the mask moves with it. The masked version is computed once per source and cached.

Titles and captions

Titles

T adds a title at the playhead. Titles appear as markers above the ruler — click one to select it and edit its text, font, size, color, position, and duration in the inspector. Titles render above all video tracks. D or the right-click menu deletes a selected title.

The transcript panel

The left panel's transcript section transcribes the clip under the playhead — the speech recognition runs on your machine, and nothing is uploaded. When the transcript appears, each sentence is clickable: click to jump the playhead there, or click the ✕ next to a sentence to cut that span out of the video. Editing the video by reading is often faster than scrubbing.

Captions

Generate captions (palette) turns the local transcription into captions: a subtitles file saved next to your export, burned-in captions rendered as lower-third titles, or both. Burned-in captions become ordinary titles — restyle or edit any of them individually afterwards.

Media and projects

Proxies

Build proxies (palette) creates lightweight 540p copies of all project media, in the background, once. Playback, filmstrips, and previews then use the proxies automatically while exports always use the originals. Recommended for 4K footage and long projects; on a laptop it is the difference between smooth and stuttering.

Missing media

If footage files are moved or renamed outside Viode, a banner lists the clips that went offline. Click it, point the dialog at the folder where the files live now, and clips reconnect by filename — subfolders are searched too.

Projects inside projects

Bundle a project as a clip (palette or clip menu) inserts another Viode project into this one as a single clip. The nested project is rendered once and cached; re-rendering happens automatically when the nested project changes. Use it to assemble episodes from separately edited segments, or to reuse a standard intro.

The project file

The timeline is stored as a single readable text file, project.viode, in the project folder. Every edit — yours or an AI's — is a change to that file, which is why edits can be compared, reviewed, and reverted with ordinary tools, and why other programs can safely collaborate with a running Viode window. You never need to open it to use Viode.

Delivery

Exporting

Press R or click render in the toolbar. The export dialog renders a full-quality master by default. Exports run in the background — editing continues while they render — and finished files land in the project's renders folder.

Destination presets

Three presets finish the export for a destination, each with two-pass loudness normalization to the platform's standard, so exports sound right without any audio configuration:

• YouTube — the master at −14 LUFS.
• Shorts — 1080×1920 vertical at −14 LUFS, center-cropped, with the option below.
• Podcast — audio only (m4a) at −16 LUFS.

Vertical video that follows the subject

The Shorts preset offers follow the subject: Viode detects scene changes, finds the subject's face in each scene, and moves the vertical crop to keep them in frame — holding the previous framing through moments when no face is visible. Face detection runs on your machine.

Codecs and hand-off

The export dialog's custom section selects the codec — H.264, HEVC, AV1 for delivery; ProRes or DNxHR for hand-off to other post-production tools — and a target bitrate where the codec takes one.

The render queue

Instead of rendering immediately, exports can be added to the render queue from the export dialog. Queue several deliverables — the master, a Short, the podcast audio — and run the queue once; it works through the list in order. The queue is shared with AI sessions, so an AI can fill it and you can run it, or the reverse.

Reviewing a render

Watch the latest render (palette) opens the newest export in a video player built for review: , and . step single frames, the arrow keys seek, [ and ] change speed, and — because Viode hands the player a chapter list built from your markers and cuts — the chapter keys jump edit to edit through your own timeline. An AI session can open the same player for you: ask to watch the result after a render.

Help

The engine checkup

Viode's engine is made of named pieces, and the checkup (left panel banner, or Engine checkup in the palette) probes every one: each row names the feature it powers, whether it works on this machine, and — when something is missing — the exact fix. The official Mac and Linux packages ship with every check green; the checkup matters mainly for unusual setups.

Your license key

Viode is free to use for now; a paid subscription comes later. When it does, the key from your purchase unlocks the app you already have — no reinstall. To enter it, open the command palette and choose Enter license key….

Getting help

Viode is in active development. If something behaves unexpectedly, write to the author with what you expected and what happened instead; answers come from the person who wrote the code.