What is Cardboard?
Cardboard is an AI video editor that combines a traditional timeline with a conversational AI agent. Users describe edits in plain language, and the agent executes them directly on the timeline. It handles the full editing process — from raw footage to exported video — without requiring manual clip-by-clip work. The AI video editor suits creators, marketers, and teams who need fast, polished results from unedited footage.
Features & Benefits
- AI chat editor (Director) – Describe edits in plain language and have them executed directly on the timeline. Includes an improve prompt tool, inline clickable suggestions, multi-model support with intelligent routing, and chat checkpoints to roll back the timeline to any previous state.
- Agent-first dashboard – Start new projects directly from a prompt without opening a blank timeline.
- Voiceover generation – Generate voiceovers from a library of hundreds of voices filterable by gender, age, accent, and language. Preview voices before generating, clone any voice by uploading or recording a sample, and remove filler words and pauses automatically after generation.
- Caption generation – Auto-generate multilingual captions with timestamped, depth-aware placement. Choose from animated styles including stacked and line-by-line reveals.
- Text overlays – Add styled text with motion presets, rotation, padding, letter spacing, and line height controls. Style and place elements via chat prompt.
- Transitions – Add fade, scale, fly, and other transitions between clips with inline controls at the cut point.
- Background removal and styling – Remove or replace video and image backgrounds in one click. Add solid color, gradient, or wallpaper backgrounds to compositions.
- Keyframe animations – Animate position, scale, rotation, and opacity of timeline items on the canvas.
- Playback speed control – Adjust clip speed to produce slow-motion or time-lapse effects.
- Beat sync – Cut footage to the beat using AI percussion detection.
- Auto-reframe – Automatically adjust clip scale and position so subjects stay centered across any aspect ratio.
- Color grading – Apply color grades and preview LUTs on hover before committing. Includes HDR color correction.
- Music and SFX library – Browse and add royalty-free music and sound effects by genre and mood. An interactive picker activates when multiple tracks match.
- Timeline editing – Multi-track timeline with ripple delete, copy/paste, undo/redo, keyframes, audio waveforms, and smooth clip dragging. Toggle visibility for a cleaner viewer state.
- Canvas-based editing – Drag, scale, and position clips visually with real-time preview, guides, and snapping.
- Semantic media search – Find clips using natural language descriptions of footage content. Shot-level search returns timestamped thumbnails.
- Auto-transcription and cleanup – Transcribe video and audio in 10+ languages with searchable, timestamped output. Remove silence and filler words using transcript-based take selection.
- Layout presets – Apply drag-and-drop layout compositions with custom previews to jumpstart edits.
- Export – Output projects as MP4, GIF, or Premiere Pro XML. GIF exports include frame-level thumbnail selection. Exports run at full speed in the background, including hour-long videos, with HDR color correction and hardware-accelerated rendering via WebGL2 and WebCodecs.
- Cloud storage and sync – Projects back up to the cloud automatically. Chat history and media sync across devices. Alerts trigger when local browser storage runs low.
- Large file support – Upload files up to 2.5GB on Creator and up to 10GB on Pro. Supports HDR, HEIC, HEIF, and other formats with automatic codec handling.
Real-World Applications
Content creators editing short-form video for social platforms can use Cardboard to go from raw footage to a publish-ready cut without touching every clip manually. A creator might describe the pacing and tone they want, let the AI video editor handle the rough cut, then use beat sync and auto-captions to finalize a vertical video in one session. Auto-reframe makes it practical to produce 16:9 and 9:16 versions of the same project without recutting by hand.
Marketing teams producing product demos or explainer videos may find the Director agent useful for iterating quickly. A team member can describe a change in plain language — adjusting pacing, swapping music, or adding branded text — and see results on the timeline without back-and-forth file handoffs. Premiere Pro XML export means finished timelines can move into existing post-production workflows without starting over.
Podcasters and interview editors dealing with long recordings can use auto-cleanup to strip filler words and silence before any manual review. Transcription with 10+ language support and sentence-level search makes it possible to locate specific moments by describing what was said, rather than scrubbing through footage. This cuts down editing time on long-form audio-heavy content significantly.
Businesses creating training videos, tutorials, or internal content might use voice cloning and multilingual captions to localize material without re-recording. A single source video with an AI-generated voiceover can be adapted for different audiences by swapping voice profiles and caption languages. The cloud sync and multi-device chat history make it practical for small teams to review and refine edits collaboratively.
