I’m Alex. I've been editing for 15+ years and I currently edit for @MatthewBerman
I’ve been using Astra to edit directly in DaVinci Resolve through MCP and in just a few days, it’s completely changed everything about how I edit. And I mean everything.
First let's clear some things up:
No, it’s not a one-button “edit my entire video perfectly” solution. And no, it’s not quite as good at editing as I am. But that difference mostly comes down to decision making, not the actual task of editing itself.
Instead of being a video editor, now I’m a creative director (coined by @chefbrent). I manage Astra while Astra does a lot of the actual editing for me. It still takes time, but there’s significantly less grunt work, and the whole process is much more efficient.
The first thing that stands out is just how fast Astra is.
I'm using Astra on 'Light' reasoning, giving it a huge prompt describing everything I want it to do. It thinks, plans, and then it just starts flying through the edit.
GIF
Astra placing clips in real time
Watching it work on the timeline is genuinely fun. I've never seen anything like it before.
I can speak the things I want in my video into existence and watch Astra make them happen. And most of the time, it gets pretty close to what I want. But it’s not perfect. There are definitely micro adjustments I still have to make, but the starting point it gives me is extremely good.
My current workflow looks something like this:
First, I have a setup skill I made. It takes all of my footage, finds the sync points, and syncs everything together on the timeline.
Then I have a first-cut skill (big thanks to @ForwardEditor for the base skill). This skill has Astra goes through the video, makes the cuts where it thinks they need to be, and generally cleans up the timeline.
After that, I run a custom cleanup cut skill as a second pass. It tries to catch places where Astra trimmed a word too short or left too much space at the beginning of a clip. It does an okay job at this, but dialogue editing is probably one of the biggest areas where Astra still isn’t perfect. It’ll frequently cut off the last few letters of a word at the end of a cut, or leave slightly too much dead space at the beginning of the next clip. I’ve even made a skill specifically to help with this, and it still isn’t completely reliable. Sometimes I’ll even have it analyze the audio waveforms, which helps, but it’s still not perfect.
So after the automated passes, I usually do a live watch where I play through the video and dictate corrections as I notice them to Astra. This usually looks like:
“You trimmed this word too short at one minute and twenty-seven seconds.” or "Add a photo of the guy being talked about here where my playhead is."
Just raw thoughts dumped into a prompt.
Astra goes back in, makes the adjustments, and the result is usually near flawless. If its not? I just prompt again.
Another thing I love is being able to give Astra editing tips that I use all the time. You can turn them into skills or just have it remember what you want. For example, whenever I have a full-screen face cam, I’ll tell Astra to add punch-ins and zooms to make the video feel more dynamic. It nails them every time. They feel natural, they look good, and it’s something I would normally be doing manually anyway. Now I just have Astra do it.
Same thing with audio transitions. When I’m editing by hand, I normally add a two-frame audio crossfade at cuts. It helps smoothly blend the audio together, especially when a cut is a frame too short or a frame too long. So I just have Astra do that too.
Those little things make the AI edits feel much more natural.
The 2 frame audio transitions applied by Astra
Now let's talk about the MCP.
The DaVinci MCP itself is also really good but Astra will occasionally mix in computer use when something isn’t available through the MCP, which is fine, but I definitely prefer when it can stay entirely inside the MCP so it doesn't take over my computer.
Though the MCP feels incredibly smooth and tightly integrated, you can tell it's still in its early stages. Not everything is available. Things like editing your settings, applying certain audio effects, changing clip durations and clicking around some of the menus in DaVinci aren't supported by the MCP. But computer use can handle all of these without issue.
One of the coolest parts of this whole workflow is that since it works through the MCP, Astra can be editing while I’m working on something else. I can be creating thumbnails, planning videos or keep up with the news while my video is being edited. It's crazy!
Now although Astra has been pretty life changing, there are still some annoying behaviors.
Sometimes I’ll explicitly tell Astra to do something, and instead of actually doing it, it’ll think through whether it can do it, check with DaVinci Resolve, and then basically respond with, “Yep, I could do that.”
But then it doesn’t actually do it.
It’s especially frustrating when my prompt specifically told it to go perform the action.
Dialogue editing still needs work. Sometimes Astra needs to be pushed to actually take action. And I still need to watch through the video and make corrections.
In addition to this, the actual time spent editing or directing is still similar to editing by hand. So don't expect to just push a button and the video be perfect. It's not quite there yet.
But overall the experience is absolutely surreal.
I can describe how I want an edit to look, watch Astra rip through the timeline, and then spend my time directing and correcting it instead of manually performing every tiny edit myself.
After 15 years of editing, it's a very different, exciting way of working and I'm very excited to see what the future holds.
The first full video I've edited with Astra is live here. Matt watched it and didn't notice... The world has watched it and didn't notice...
In fact someone even pointed out how much they liked it!
