Video

Video is a video editor. Open it at video.cactive.com.au or from the app switcher, or open a clip or a project from Drive or a video from Photos. A project is a Drive file that people edit together, like a document; its media are the Drive files and Photos videos you add, and what you export is saved to Drive as an ordinary video file.

Editing, playback and export run on your own computer: Video decodes, mixes and encodes in the browser, so nothing is uploaded to be rendered. It needs a computer with a recent Chrome, Edge, Safari (18 or later) or Firefox (130 or later); what each can decode and export differs, and Video says plainly when something isn't available. On a small screen it links to the project's latest export instead.

Starting

The start page (the org you're in, or Personal) has:

• New project, at a sequence size: 1080p at 30 or 60 frames a second, 4K at 30 or 24, Vertical (1080 × 1920) or Square. Your organization's own templates are there too.
• Recent projects in the space, newest first, and Open from Drive.

From other apps:

• In Drive, New → Video project makes a project in the folder you're in. Open in Video is in a project's menu, and in a clip's menu and preview (MP4, QuickTime, WebM and Matroska): that makes a new project with the clip, beside it.
• In Photos, Edit in Video (the film button on a video) makes a new project of your own with the video in it. The video in your library stays as it was.

Video opens in a new tab, so Drive and Photos stay where you were.

Media

• Add media from Drive or, in your own projects, from Photos; or drop files from your computer, which are uploaded to a Media folder beside the project first. Adding a Photos video to an organization's project copies it into that folder (Video asks first), so the people you work with can play it.
• Video reads videos, audio files and pictures: MP4, QuickTime, M4A, WebM, Matroska, MP3, WAV, FLAC and AAC, and PNG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF and Photoshop files.
• A media item stays on the version of the file you added. When the file in Drive changes, the item says so, and Update takes the new version. Relink points an item at another file. When a file is moved to the trash or you lose access, its clips show as offline and are left out of exports.
• Organise media in bins, see them as a list or a grid, scrub through a clip by hovering, and add a label, description, comment, scene, shot and take.

Proxies

Large or hard-to-decode clips (4K, HEVC from a phone) can play from a proxy: a smaller copy made on your computer and saved with the project, so everyone who opens it can use it. Turn proxies on and off with the monitors' Proxies button; it's your own setting, remembered per project. Exports always use the original files.

Proxies count against the space's storage (the largest is set by your platform, 4 GB by default) and are deleted with the project. Make a copy of a project leaves its proxies behind.

Editing

• Source and Program monitors, with play, J K L shuttle, frame steps, in and out points, safe margins, zoom and resolution.
• The timeline: sequences as tabs; video and audio tracks with targeting, patching, lock, hide, mute and solo; snapping and linked selection; insert and overwrite, lift and extract; ripple, roll, slip, slide and rate stretch; razor; markers; transitions; keyframes.
• Tools with Premiere's keys: Selection (V), Track Select Forward (A), Ripple (B), Rolling (N), Rate Stretch (R), Razor (C), Slip (Y), Slide (U), Pen (P), Hand (H), Zoom (Z) and Type (T).
• Menus: File, Edit, Clip, Sequence, Markers, Graphics, View, Window and Help. Search the Menus finds any command by name, and Keyboard Shortcuts lists every key.
• Undo steps back through your own changes only, never someone else's. History lists them by name.

Effects, colour and titles

• Effects: transform, crop, blurs, sharpen, keying (chroma, luma and track matte), distort and stylise, and the image adjustments, with masks and keyframes. Transitions: dissolves, dips, wipes, iris, push and slide, and crossfades for sound.
• Colour: basic correction (white balance, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation), curves, colour wheels, a secondary correction, LUTs from Drive and a vignette; with waveform, parade, vectorscope and histogram scopes.
• Graphics: titles, lower thirds and credits from templates, or your own text and shapes drawn on the Program monitor, with in and out animations.

Sound

• A mixer with track and master faders, pan, mute and solo, effects on each track, and meters (peak and loudness).
• Sound tags clips as dialogue, music, effects or ambience and offers fixes for each: loudness matching, noise and hum reduction, de-essing, clarity, and ducking music under speech.

Captions

• Transcribe (Captions panel) turns speech into a caption track: choose the tracks and the language, or let Video identify it, and how many speakers to tell apart. It takes a minute or more; the track appears in the project by itself, and you're notified when it's in. Each person has a daily allowance of minutes.
• Edit cues in the Captions panel (search and replace, split, merge, timing), style each track, and import or export SRT and WebVTT files.
• Exports can burn a caption track into the picture and save SRT or WebVTT files beside the video.

Working together

• Projects are shared like any Drive file. Editors edit, commenters comment, viewers watch. Everyone's changes appear live; co-editors' playheads show on the timeline in their colour.
• Comments pin to a moment of the sequence, and optionally a point on the frame; they show on the timeline ruler and on the Program monitor at that moment. Mention people to notify them.
• Version history keeps the project's versions, which you can name and restore, as in Documents.
• Every change is saved as you make it.

Exporting

Export (File → Export) renders the sequence, or its in to out range, on your computer and saves it to Drive: beside the project by default, or in a folder you choose. Presets cover matching the sequence, 1080p and 4K H.264, 4K HEVC, web VP9, AV1, vertical video for phones, and audio only; you can change size, rate, bitrate, codec and sound, and keep your own presets. Only what your browser can encode is offered.

Exports run while the tab is open (hidden is fine); a queue holds the next ones. Export Frame saves the current frame as a picture.

Share an export with Drive's sharing like any file. Comments on the exported video (on its own review page) pin to moments of it, and show in the project at the matching time.

With Caity

Caity can read a project (its sequences, clips, markers and captions), make a rough cut from Drive files in order, and transcribe a clip into captions. Playing, effects and exporting happen in the app. For MCP clients the tools are video_read, video_create and video_transcribe (MCP tools).

Limits

The platform sets these (Limits): clips per project (20,000), tracks per sequence (99), media items per project (5,000), the largest source file (50 GB) and proxy (4 GB), the largest export side (8,192 pixels) and length (4 hours), the device cache's largest size (50 GB), undo history (200 steps), and transcription minutes per person per day (120) and per job (240). Storage is Drive's: projects, proxies and exports count against your space's storage.

The API is described in Video.