Adobe is launching a new Firefly tool that helps video editors to focus on storytelling by creating a first cut to refine and build around. The Quick Cut feature is launching in beta today for Firefly’s video editor, allowing users to automatically assemble clips together based on text prompts and simple creator inputs.
“Quick Cut empowers creators to upload their own b-roll or generate new footage and instantly turn it into a structured first cut. Goodbye empty timeline. Hello momentum,” Adobe’s head of product marketing for creators, Mike Polner, said in the announcement. “It’s a fast way to get from ‘I have clips’ to ‘I have an edit I can work with.’”
The goal is to remove some of the manual labor that’s required to stitch together rough editing drafts, freeing up time that can be spent on improving narrative and more technical audio/visual refinements. Users can upload footage or generate AI clips, and describe how they want to assemble them, such as asking Firefly to cut together podcasts, interviews, and product reviews that specifically highlight key moments. The tool also allows users to make edits using a transcription timeline and control the specific aspect ratio and video length of the assembled draft.
“There are some parts of video editing that really are tedious; they’re not the creative part. We’re interested in using generative AI and assistive AI to get you to the point where you can let your creativity shine,” Mike Folgner, Adobe’s senior director of product management told The Verge. “Our goal is remove tedium and give you something to react to, but give you full control from there.”
Adobe demonstrated the feature for me by piecing together clips of a gaming console controller review. The resulting Quick Cut video needed obvious refinement — with Adobe stressing that this is not designed to spit out polished, finalized edits — but it was surprisingly fast. What took the tool mere seconds would have likely taken far longer to piece together manually.
