RoughCut, a 2016-17 Magic Grant led by MacKenzie Leake, has been featured in Wired, as an editing tool that will “turn us all into filmmakers”. Now years in development, RoughCut seeks to develop a system to support the process of making a rough cut, a primary task in editing a video.
Video production is a complex, slow task. The quality of the final edited video relies on having good footage, which is characterized by having adequate coverage, i.e., multiple camera angles, and relevant audio recordings that the editor can use to craft the narrative. Editing a single minute of a rough cut can take even a skilled editor around 90 minutes. If there are large amounts of footage, it can take an editor several days to organize the content. RoughCut is an AI-driven approach to editing video, helping editors (and novices) do the dirty work in assembling a first pass at a video edit.