Software » Video Editors » FilmCraft 0.5.0

FilmCraft v0.5.0

What's Changed
fix: filmcraft-cli exits quietly on broken pipe (#285) by @mjohnson7cd in #297
#341: CLI export message names the file written, not the requested path by @JordyUSA in #362
chore(lints): satisfy strict workspace Clippy on Rust 1.95 by @WavJaby in #252
#379: preset export and import go through the host, so the web build no longer traps by @MarekSpodBiedry in #393
#340: FCP7 XML clip source span always matches its record span by @txiki739 in #392
#318: a reversed clip shows exactly its source range by @txiki739 in #394
fix: frame stepping broken for non-standard frame rates (#301) by @mjohnson7cd in #324
#382: File > Export entries work from the menus by @txiki739 in #391
#259: the edge you press is the edge you trim by @ItzBloxy in #399
macOS DMG: branded window background and icon layout by @XusBadia in #263
HW5: Linux VA-API hardware decoding for H.264 and HEVC (Main / Main 10) by @JordyUSA in #358
#214: install script for the Linux tarball by @txiki739 in #387
Desktop: write log records to standard error and a rotating log file by @switch87 in #249
M10: keep combining marks in one vertical text cell by @midasdf in #289
M10: use Japanese vertical forms and origins for titles by @midasdf in #277
Issue #139: portable.txt next to the exe keeps the data directory beside it by @MarekSpodBiedry in #303
Go to In / Go to Out move to the sequence start / end without marks (#208) by @carlitosteso3 in #221
Program monitor: the picture follows a value that is dragged by @justjohn12345 in #304
Keyframes: Properties gets Premiere's navigator, Effect Controls a time ruler by @justjohn12345 in #307
#220: Unlink leaves only the right-clicked clip selected by @MrCloudy2 in #250
shortcuts: Delete clears the selected timeline clips (#243) by @wstock in #261
engine: project.delete takes explicit bin ids without a Project-panel selection (#244) by @wstock in #253
fix(import): use the open Project bin as destination by @WavJaby in #241
Decode caches: navigation bursts no longer keep every clip's decoder and frames (#55) by @SaymonMaster14 in #381
Thumbnails decode with small decoders that are not kept (#55) by @SaymonMaster14 in #385
fix(gpu): normalize YUV code ranges independently of texture scaling by @WavJaby in #319
Embedding: set_context on the web app, header and status bar flags, status bar colour token by @rossaai in #349
Windows: export paths expand ~, accept trailing \ and verbatim paths by @Tom1tk in #282
#296: Auto-Match measures a mono clip as one channel by @Pathos0925 in #305
mixer: report only the audio gains actually applied by @storybored379 in #373
graphics: keep duration separate from timeline placement by @storybored379 in #372
MCP: cancelling a movie export keeps numbered files beside it by @storybored379 in #369
export: keep alpha in PNG/TIFF sequences (Include Alpha Channel) (#160) by @wstock in #242
#230: jobs time themselves with web_time, so Create Proxies and mask tracking don't panic on the web by @wstock in #237
#197, #193: web recovery retries failed snapshot writes and keeps skipped snapshots dirty by @carlitosteso3 in #264
Windows: platform modifier names in status-bar and mask hints by @Tom1tk in #270
platform: ask for the hardware HEVC encoder in the background at startup by @dcarnelutti in #300
#236: audio in MKV and OBS-remuxed MP4 plays without crackling by @IppSec in #359
fix(web): preserve distinct same-name media imports by @WavJaby in #240
Sequence Sequence Settings… opens Premiere's dialog (#172, #287) by @swillunderscore in #355
control: Ctrl+ chords through ui.key fire shortcuts off macOS (#245) by @wstock in #256
CI: gpu test uses as_chunks (clippy on Rust 1.99) by @echelon in #417
Fix #179: leave OpenGL out of the Windows wgpu instance (Vulkan | DX12 by default) by @DWAA1660 in #365
Windows: NVENC H.265 (HEVC) Main hardware encoding for Export by @SaymonMaster14 in #328
README: install on Gentoo from the ::snakebyte overlay by @switch87 in #247
export: free the frame pool when an export ends by @dcarnelutti in #299
LINUX.VALIDATION: honor preset shortcuts and retain every MPEG oracle timestamp by @sanyamsingh001 in #368
perf(web): feed WebCodecs YUV planes to the shared compositor by @WavJaby in #375
GPU.EFFECT_SOURCE: preserve exact texel centers for effect inputs by @sanyamsingh001 in #376
i18n: Spanish for the whole interface, catalog files and a remembered language by @txiki739 in #238
perf(gpu): composite Push transitions on the shared GPU path by @WavJaby in #308
WINCI: Fix Windows paths and portable validation (#337 by @cshapiro) by @echelon in #418
WINCI: Fix Windows paths and portable validation by @cshapiro in #337
Windows: NVENC H.265 Main 10 HDR (PQ / HLG) export by @SaymonMaster14 in #360
Export: stage timings in perf.stats, and render the next batch while encoding by @SaymonMaster14 in #370
M3.12: Source playback, clip dragging and monitor range editing (#338 by @cshapiro) by @echelon in #423
M3.12: Source playback, clip dragging and monitor range editing by @cshapiro in #338
platform: enable existing NVENC H.264 export on Linux by @storybored379 in #386
M3.12: Export frames from Source and Program monitors (#353 by @cshapiro) by @echelon in #425
M3.12: Export frames from Source and Program monitors by @cshapiro in #353
New Sequence… opens the Sequence Settings dialog as New Sequence (stacked on #422) by @carlitosteso3 in #269
Sequence Settings: Sequence Name on the General tab (follow-up to #355) by @carlitosteso3 in #422
CI: gpu Push test uses as_chunks (clippy on Rust 1.99) by @echelon in #428
feat(media, engine): implement multi-stream container audio support and schema v13 by @wisegamesyt-droid in #361
Fix Chinese glyph rendering in native timeline and UI labels by @jerrykimo in #363

Edit
Assembly workspace: bins of film thumbnails, Carnival of Souls in the Source monitor, a Night of the Living Dead cemetery shot in the Program monitor, and the trailer on a three-track timeline with a Chopin score on A2 and loudness meters

The Assembly workspace, cutting a trailer for Night of the Living Dead (1968) with an insert from Carnival of Souls (1962).

A timeline you already know. Source and Program monitors, bins with thumbnails, a multi-track timeline with patch and target buttons, sync locks and linked selection. The Editing, Assembly, Color, Effects and Audio workspaces are all there, and every panel docks wherever you want it.

Three-point editing. Mark In and Out in the Source monitor, then insert (,) or overwrite (.) onto the patched tracks. Lift (;) and extract (') take ranges back out.
Every trim. Ripple, roll, slip, slide, rate stretch and razor tools. Trim mode selects edit points as ripple, roll or trim, nudges them a frame at a time ( , ×5 with ), toggles the trim type with T and extends them to the playhead with E. Q and W ripple-trim to the playhead. The Trim Monitor shows both sides of the edit, and dynamic trimming trims live while it plays: L forward, J back, K to stop and commit as one undo step.
Exact time. Every edit is computed on integer ticks: 254,016,000,000 per second, which divides evenly by every common frame rate and sample rate. 23.976, 29.97 drop-frame and 59.94 are exact, not approximate.
The details pros rely on. Markers with colours, names and durations; add edit ( K) on one or all tracks; nesting; copy, paste and paste insert; ripple delete and close gap; snapping; unlimited undo with a History panel.
Your keys. A Keyboard Shortcuts editor ( K) with a drawn keyboard, panel-specific shortcuts, conflict warnings and presets for FilmCraft, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and Avid key layouts.
Never lose work. Saves are atomic, auto-save keeps a rolling set of versions, and a crash-recovery journal written about a second after each edit brings back unsaved changes after a crash or power cut.
Timeline close-up: Night of the Living Dead shots with dissolves on V1, a Carnival of Souls insert on V2, the Chopin nocturne as a green waveform on A2, coloured markers along the ruler, and the loudness meter reading momentary, short-term, integrated and true-peak values

Up close: dissolves, an insert on V2, the score on A2, coloured markers, and the loudness meters on the right.


Color
Color workspace on Charade (1963): Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in the Program monitor, the waveform and vectorscope on the left, and the trailer bins and timeline below

The Color workspace on Charade (1963), with live scopes beside the Program monitor.

A complete Lumetri-style grading panel, in the order a colourist works:

Basic Correction: temperature and tint, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, saturation.
Creative: eight built-in looks with an intensity control, plus faded film, sharpen and vibrance. The looks are colour transforms written in code, not LUT files.
Curves: an RGB curve editor with monotone-cubic interpolation (no overshoot), and hue vs saturation, hue vs hue, hue vs luma, luma vs saturation and saturation vs saturation.
Color Wheels: shadow, midtone and highlight wheels, each with its own lightness control.
HSL Secondary: key a colour by hue, saturation and luma, view the key as a matte, and correct only what you selected.
Vignette: amount, midpoint, roundness and feather.
The Lumetri Color panel on Charade (1963): Basic Correction sliders with coloured temperature and tint tracks, collapsed Creative and Curves sections, shadow, midtone and highlight colour wheels, and HSL Secondary and Vignette toggles
The Lumetri Color panel. Basic Correction, Color Wheels and every other section, each with its own on/off switch. Lumetri Scopes: a green luma waveform and a vectorscope of a Charade (1963) frame
Scopes that tell the truth. The waveform and vectorscope are computed from the graded frame. All grading happens in linear light, in 32-bit float.

Effects and motion
Effects workspace: Effect Controls with Motion, Opacity, Time Remapping and Lumetri Color, NASA's Earth Views from the ISS in the Program monitor, and the Effects browser open on the Dissolve transitions

NASA's Earth Views from the ISS with a look applied, and the Effects browser open on the dissolves.

Premiere 26's full Video Effects bin (93 effects in 16 folders), the Legacy bin and the obsolete effects old projects use, plus around 30 transitions. Blurs (Bokeh, Focus, Compound), keys (Ultra Key, Track Matte), distortions (Corner Pin, Turbulent Displace, Warp Stabilizer), Lights & Glows, Immersive Video (VR) effects on equirectangular footage, Posterize Time, Echo and more. Cross dissolve, dip to black or white, film dissolve, wipes, irises, pushes, slides, zooms, page peel, cube spin and more.
Motion and opacity on every clip: position, scale, rotation, anchor point and anti-flicker, plus 26 blend modes.
Keyframes like Premiere's: linear, Bezier, auto and continuous Bezier, hold, ease in and ease out. Effect Controls shows a keyframe lane for every parameter, and each animated parameter opens into value and velocity graphs with draggable influence handles.
A GPU compositor built on wgpu (Metal, Vulkan, DirectX 12, WebGPU). It samples YUV straight from the decoder with footprint supersampling and blends in linear light. A CPU path renders the same frames, and the two are tested against each other.
Effect Controls with the value and velocity graphs of an eased Scale push-in on the Night of the Living Dead title card, the Program monitor showing the title over a country road, and the Properties panel with Transform and Crop

An eased push-in on the title card: the value graph, the velocity graph and the Bezier influence handle.


Audio
Loudness meters to broadcast standards. Momentary, short-term and integrated loudness and true peak to ITU-R BS.1770 and EBU R128, alongside the peak meters. Our integrated reading matches ffmpeg's ebur128 filter to the tenth of a LU.
Clip effects on our own DSP library: parametric EQ, high-pass, low-pass and band-pass filters, dynamics, a true-peak limiter, delay, reverb, DeNoise, DeHummer, invert and pitch shift. Parameters can be keyframed. Effects stay continuous across scrubbing, playback and export, with latency compensated.
Audio Track Mixer and Audio Clip Mixer: faders, pan, mute, solo, five insert slots per track (pre- or post-fader), sends, submixes and a Mix track, all sample-accurate and latency-compensated. 24 tracks with three effects each mix about six times faster than real time on one core.
Automation like a console: Read, Latch, Touch and Write modes recorded live from the mixer during playback, shown and edited as track keyframes on the timeline. Plus the Audio Gain dialog (set, adjust, normalize) and constant-power crossfades.
Audio-clock playback. The sound card is the master clock, so picture follows sound and never the other way round.

Titles and captions
A real text engine: OpenType shaping with kerning and ligatures, bidirectional text, line breaking, tracking and leading, drawn in linear light and sharp at any scale or rotation.
Type, Shape and Pen tools on the Program monitor: click to type, edit with a caret and selection, drag out rectangles, ellipses and paths. Graphic clips hold text and shape layers with fill, strokes, background and shadow, all keyframable, and edited in the Properties panel.
Captions: caption tracks in Subtitle, CEA-608, CEA-708 and Teletext formats; import and export SRT, WebVTT and SCC with frame-exact timing; edit captions in the Text panel and burn them into exports.

Formats and codecs
No FFmpeg inside. The video codecs, AAC, Opus and the containers are our own Rust code, implemented from the public ITU-T, ISO and IETF specifications and tested frame by frame against ffmpeg as an external oracle.

Decode Encode Notes
H.264 / AVC Decoder bit-exact on 37+ streams, 500–600 fps at 1080p. Encoder: High, Main and Baseline profiles, CABAC, B-frames, CRF/CBR/VBR/2-pass
HEVC / H.265 Main and Main 10, bit-exact on 41 streams (tiles, WPP, PCM, long-term references), about 225 fps at 1080p
Apple ProRes Decodes 422 Proxy to 4444 XQ; export writes 422 HQ
AAC-LC
VP9 Profiles 0–3, 8/10/12-bit, 4:2:0 to 4:4:4, tiles and superframes; bit-exact on 50+ streams; in WebM/Matroska and MP4
Opus SILK, CELT, hybrid and multistream surround; range-exact on every RFC 8251 conformance vector; in WebM/Matroska and MP4
AV1 Main profile, 8/10-bit 4:2:0 and monochrome, every coding tool incl. film grain, superres and spatial layers; bit-exact with libdav1d on the libaom vectors tested; in MP4 and WebM/Matroska
Avid DNxHD / DNxHR All SMPTE ST 2019-1 CIDs (LB to 444, 8/10/12-bit); export writes DNxHR in MOV
MJPEG, PCM
MP3, FLAC, ALAC, Vorbis Via the symphonia crate (MPL-2.0) for now, to be replaced by our own
MP4 / MOV Fragmented MP4, edit lists, timecode tracks
Matroska / WebM Lacing, Cues, header stripping, HDR colour metadata
Stills Import PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, TIFF and BMP; export PNG sequences and animated GIF
Also imported: MPEG-2 / MPEG-1 video, AC-3, MP2, MXF (OP1a / OP-Atom), MPEG transport and program streams (AVCHD, broadcast, DVD), Ogg and image sequences. Not yet: HEVC and AV1 export, camera RAW, E-AC-3. Hardware decoding works on macOS (VideoToolbox) and Windows (Media Foundation), with Linux to follow; H.264 export can use NVIDIA's encoder on Windows (opt-in) (#30).


Export
Export mode: destinations for Media File, YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Instagram and FTP on the left, a Night of the Living Dead frame in the preview, and H.264 settings on the right (1440x1080 at 23.976 fps, 48000 Hz stereo, entire sequence)

Export mode, set to write the trailer as H.264 MP4.

H.264 MP4 with AAC, using our own encoders. A 6-second 960×540 render takes 1.3 seconds and decodes in ffmpeg without a single warning, with strict error detection on.
Also: Apple ProRes 422 HQ and Motion JPEG in QuickTime, MXF OP1a and Avid-style OP-Atom (DNxHR, ProRes or H.264 with PCM and start timecode), PNG sequences, animated GIF and WAV.
Background jobs with progress and cancel, so you keep editing while it renders.
Render previews: the render bar marks segments green, yellow or red; rendered previews are cached by content, so an edit only invalidates what it touches and undo brings the green back.

Interchange
Move timelines between FilmCraft and every other editor:

Final Cut Pro 7 XML (xmeml): the format Premiere and DaVinci Resolve exchange. It carries nested sequences, transitions, generators, Motion, Opacity, Time Remap and audio levels, with keyframes.
FCPXML 1.9–1.11: the spine, connected clips as lanes, transitions, retiming and compound clips.
OpenTimelineIO: the open interchange format of the film industry, round-tripping every FilmCraft detail through metadata.filmcraft.
CMX 3600 EDL: the oldest format still in use, with drop-frame timecode, dissolves, wipes, speed changes (M2) and one EDL per track.
AAF (Edit Protocol): for Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools. Video and audio tracks, dissolves and dips, clip volume with keyframes, markers and source timecode; audio embedded or as separate WAV / AIFF files, trimmed with handles, with clip effects rendered in and broken out to mono, plus an optional video mixdown. Import reads AAF back, extracting embedded audio.
OMF 2.0: the audio-post handoff: the audio tracks with crossfades and gain, sample-accurate, with the audio encapsulated or alongside.
Import merges the document's bins, media and sequences into your project as one undoable step, and links each media file it finds on disk.


Built for agents
Every menu item, button, slider and drag in FilmCraft is a command with an id, typed parameters and an enabled state. There are more than 650 engine commands (filmcraft-cli commands lists them), with the rest of Premiere's catalogue on the way. The UI, the CLI, a JSON control channel and an MCP server all dispatch the same commands, so Claude or any agent can cut, trim, grade, mix and export exactly the way a person does. The UI can also be driven at the level of mouse and keyboard: every widget has an automation id, and agents can click, drag, type and take screenshots.

// over the control channel (JSON lines on TCP) or as MCP tool calls
{"method": "engine.execute", "params": {"command": "timeline.place",
"params": {"item": 1, "track": "V1", "seconds": 0, "sourceIn": 284298240000000, "duration": 1270080000000}}}
{"method": "engine.execute", "params": {"command": "effects.setParam",
"params": {"clip": 87, "effect": "lumetri", "param": "curve_luma", "value": [[0,0],[0.25,0.21],[0.75,0.82],[1,1]]}}}
{"method": "ui.screenshot", "params": {"path": "frame.png"}}
The trailer and the grades in these screenshots were built exactly this way, by an agent driving the running app.


Everywhere
Native on macOS, Windows and Linux, with a native macOS menu bar.
The web: the same engine and UI run in the browser via WebAssembly (apps/filmcraft-web, see docs/web.md); every release ships it as filmcraft-web-.zip.
Swappable UI. The interface is one crate (ui-egui) over the engine, so a different front end can replace it without touching editing logic.

Get started
cargo run --release -p filmcraft # the desktop app, with a demo project
cargo run --release -p filmcraft -- --control 9876 # plus the JSON-lines control server
cargo run --release -p filmcraft-cli -- commands # list every engine command
cargo run --release -p filmcraft-cli -- mcp # MCP server (headless)
Japanese text in the interface and in titles comes from craft-fonts, an optional build input (release builds always include it; without it FilmCraft uses its own and the system's fonts):

git clone https://github.com/storytold/craft-fonts ../craft-fonts
CRAFT_FONTS_DIR="$PWD/../craft-fonts" cargo run --release -p filmcraft
The control protocol is documented in docs/control-protocol.md. Stuck, or want to show what you made? Ask in Discord.

Documentation
CONTRIBUTING.md · docs/contributing.md Setup, quality gates, commit conventions, how to add commands, effects, codecs, panels and assets
AGENTS.md The rules every contributor must follow: assets, clean room, licences
docs/architecture.md Layers, data model, time base, command system, render and export pipeline
docs/testing.md Unit, property and ffmpeg-oracle tests, accuracy criteria, benchmarks
docs/agents.md Driving FilmCraft over MCP and the control channel; how agents develop it
docs/control-protocol.md Control-channel and MCP reference
docs/project-files.md .fcproj format, schema migrations, auto-save and crash recovery
docs/graphics.md · docs/captions.md Text engine, graphic clips and tools; caption tracks and formats
ROADMAP.md Honest assessment, what's missing, milestones and estimates
Status
FilmCraft is young and moving fast. Editing, trimming, multicam, colour, keyframes, effects, titles, captions, mixing, codecs and export work today.

We track two numbers (ROADMAP.md):

Feature checklist: ~87%. Premiere Pro's menu items, effects, transitions, panels and formats that exist in FilmCraft.
Ready for real work: ~50–60%. Our honest estimate of how close FilmCraft is to replacing Premiere on real projects.
The biggest gaps today:

Speed on big footage. Hardware decoding works on macOS and Windows; Linux has no hardware path yet. Blend modes and the most common effects run on the GPU, but Lumetri, keys and export rendering still run on the CPU; H.264 encoding can use the hardware encoder on macOS and on Windows with an NVIDIA GPU (opt-in, Export Hardware encoding), and H.265 export is hardware-only there (#30).
No plugins. No VST3 / Audio Units or OpenFX hosting.
Delivery codecs. H.264 is our only delivery-codec export; no HEVC or AV1 export yet.
Real-world media and platforms. Our decoders are bit-exact on conformance streams, but camera and phone files in the wild are less tested. Windows and Linux get far less testing than macOS.
AI features. Few so far; speech to text is optional and off by default.
Bug reports with real footage are the most useful thing you can send us: open an issue or tell us in Discord.

Architecture
A layered Cargo workspace:

Layer Crates
Codecs and containers h264, h264enc, hevc, vp9, prores, aac, opus, isobmff, matroska, bitstream
Foundations time, geom, color, frame, media, text, project, audio-dsp
Editing and interchange edit, codecs, captions, format (project files), interchange
Rendering and output render, gpu, export
Engine engine: command registry, session, undo, jobs
Front ends ui-egui, automation (MCP), apps/filmcraft, apps/filmcraft-cli
Test support testkit (ffmpeg oracles, fixtures), golden (golden-image tests)
Nothing below the front ends depends on a UI toolkit or OS API. cargo xtask ci checks formatting, lints, tests, the layering rules, asset attribution and the wasm build.