Agency dev's DIY AI video editor churns out shorts at $2.36 each with GPT Astra directing
Spare-Scallion9578 · reddit · 2026-09-16
An agency developer shares a full retrospective of their DIY AI video editing pipeline: record on a phone, drop it in iCloud Drive, and an iMac-based system auto-generates captions, visuals, and thumbnails, with human review before auto-scheduling posts across platforms. Output: 6-7 shorts per day plus one 17-minute long-form per week, at roughly $2.36 per short ($600 across 255 minutes).
Model pairing was the key: Gemini 3.7 Flash fixed persistent breaths and non-talking segments, while the real breakthrough was switching visual direction from Fable 5.1 to GPT Astra—Fable made terrible animations when unsure, but excels at rendering scenes Astra selects.
The catch: it isn't cheap. Frontier models at Max effort are required (lower tiers failed across 200+ iterations), long-form videos need 5 revision sessions, and overall quality lands at "decent editor" level, improving with a detailed brief.
Related event: Developer Builds AI Video Pipeline at $2.36 per Clip(2 posts)→
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