ClipForge v0.5.3

All-in-one video editor — Trim, Crop, Upscale, Interpolate, Convert, Filter, Audio, Streams, Batch — one tool, zero hassle.

Web Editor:sysadmindoc.github.io/ClipForge — browser-based timeline editor with a pinned, self-hosted FFmpeg WASM runtime, undo/redo, and multi-clip export.

Features

Trim

• Dual-handle range slider for precise in/out point selection
• Set in/out points from video player position
• Smart Cut — re-encodes only at cut boundaries, stream-copies the middle (near-lossless + frame-accurate)
• Lossless mode (stream copy, no re-encode) for instant keyframe-aligned trims
• Full re-encode mode for exact frame accuracy
• Output format selection

Crop & Rotate

• Interactive visual crop overlay on video frame
• Aspect ratio presets: 16:9, 9:16, 4:3, 1:1, 21:9
• Manual X/Y/W/H input with live preview
• Rotate: 90 CW, 90 CCW, 180
• Horizontal and vertical flip

AI Enhance

• Real-ESRGAN integration for AI-powered super resolution (quality mode)
• SPAN integration for fast AI upscaling (~7x faster than Real-ESRGAN)
• Engine selector: choose Real-ESRGAN (quality) or SPAN (fast)
• Scale options: 2x, 3x, 4x
• Models: realesrgan-x4plus, anime-specific, animevideo, spanx2_ch48, spanx4_ch48
• RIFE v4.25 frame interpolation for frame rate boosting (upgraded from v4.6)
• Model selector: v4.25, v4.22, v4.6, v4
• Multiplier options: 2x, 4x, 8x — converts 30fps to 60/120/240fps
• Frame extraction -> AI processing -> reassembly pipeline
• Preserves original audio
• Checksum-pinned Windows tool manager with resumable official-package downloads, safe extraction, license/version/path/capability status, and post-install executable verification
• Source-keyed reusable lossless frame cache shared by upscale and interpolation, with conservative storage preflight and invalidation when source metadata changes

Convert

• Containers: MP4, MKV, WebM, MOV, AVI, GIF
• Video codecs: H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1 (SVT-AV1 + libaom), stream copy
• Audio codecs: AAC, Opus, MP3, FLAC, stream copy, remove
• Resolution presets: 4K, 2K, 1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p
• FPS control, CRF quality slider with codec-aware hints (H.264/H.265 and AV1 ranges)
• Speed adjustment (0.1x - 10x) with proper atempo chaining
• Optimized single-pass GIF generation with palette
• Two-pass encoding toggle for higher quality output
• Hardware encoder auto-detection (NVENC, QSV, AMF)
• Built-in presets: YouTube 1080p/4K, Instagram Reel, TikTok, Discord 8MB/50MB, Twitter/X, Archive Lossless, Web Optimized, Web AV1, AV1 High Quality
• Custom preset save/load/delete with filesystem-safe naming
• Editable FFmpeg command preview with "Run Custom" button
• Estimated output file size
• User-friendly error messages for common FFmpeg failures

Filters

• Color correction: brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, gamma (combined into single eq filter)
• Video stabilization (vidstab two-pass, runs in background worker)
• Noise reduction (nlmeans)
• Sharpening (unsharp)
• Deinterlacing (yadif)
• Subtitle burn-in (.srt, .ass)
• LUT import (.cube files)
• Auto-captions via Whisper — model/language selection, generates .srt files
• Hardsub OCR via optional local Tesseract — cancellable frame sampling, TSV line grouping, and atomic export to .srt
• Audio normalization with loudness target presets (YouTube -14 LUFS, Podcast -16, Broadcast -23, Spotify, Apple Music)
• Silence detection — adjustable threshold/duration with editable, selectable review markers showing segment count and total duration
• Motion-tracked redaction — linearly tracked, keyframe-editable blur regions for faces, plates, or other private content
• Scene-change review markers — FFmpeg scene scores become editable, jumpable markers; no cuts or keyframe placements change without user action
• Silence auto-removal — one-click removal of detected silent segments
• Before/after filter preview — side-by-side comparison (runs in background)

Audio

• Extract audio to MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, or original codec
• Replace audio track with external audio file
• Mix replacement audio with original
• Remove all audio tracks (strip audio)

Streams

• Full media info display (format, codecs, bitrate, resolution, duration)
• Stream list with checkboxes for selective remux
• Container remux without re-encoding
• Frame snapshot export at current player position (PNG/JPG)
• ffprobe metadata cache for instant re-open
• Cancellable VMAF / PSNR / SSIM comparison with sync offsets and JSON/CSV reports

Batch Processing

• Add multiple files via browser or drag & drop
• Add entire folders of video files
• Operations: convert (MP4/MKV/WebM), downscale (1080p/720p), extract audio, remove audio, trim
• Custom output directory option
• Output filename template system with variables
• Per-file progress tracking with status indicators
• Durable queue processing with restart recovery, reorder/move controls, per-job priority, pause/resume, cancellation, and retry-failed support
• Configurable concurrent encodes with a CPU-safe effective cap reduced by usable hardware-encoder capability probes
• Explicit batch stream mapping, metadata/chapter policy, timestamp handling, and semantic multistream output validation
• Release-gated desktop/browser media contract matrix with VFR, multistream, relink, cancellation, recovery, and invalid-output coverage
• Post-completion actions (do nothing, open folder, notification sound)
• Pre-flight disk-space check with per-file size estimation
• Overwrite confirmation dialog

Video Player

• Built-in video playback with play/pause, seek, volume
• Optional experimental libmpv backend with exact seek/frame-step and broader codec coverage; native libmpv versions below 0.41.0 fall back to Qt Multimedia, which remains the dependency-free default
• Frame-accurate stepping using actual video fps (not hardcoded 30fps)
• Playback speed control (0.25x - 2x)
• A-B loop for segment preview
• Thumbnail filmstrip with click-to-seek
• Detachable preview pane from the View menu for multi-monitor editing
• Cancellable 720p preview proxies with metadata-keyed atomic cache, source-change invalidation, size estimates, and original/proxy switching; exports always use the original
• Timecode display (current / total)

General

• Catppuccin Mocha dark theme with premium UI polish
• High-contrast theme option (via high_contrast setting)
• Toast notifications with slide-in/slide-out animations
• Drag & drop file loading (single file or batch)
• Optional one-video URL import through local yt-dlp with destination-folder validation
• Recent files list in sidebar with double-click to reload
• Embedded console with full FFmpeg output and placeholder guidance
• Bounded severity-filtered console with redacted JSON diagnostics export
• Enhanced progress tracking with ETA, speed, and file size
• Schema-versioned transactional settings, recents, and presets with atomic writes, backup recovery, corrupt-data quarantine, and legacy migration
• Capability-aware hardware encoding — advertised FFmpeg encoders run bounded real encode probes off the GUI thread; unsupported devices are disabled with the driver error, and results are cached per FFmpeg binary/device signature
• Accessible controls — screen reader labels, keyboard focus states
• Localization-ready UI — strict English-default catalogs with named-placeholder validation and an en-XA pseudo-locale for long-string layout checks; set CLIPFORGE_LOCALE=en-XA for desktop or window.CLIPFORGE_LOCALE = 'en-XA' before loading the web editor
• All panels wrapped in scroll areas for small screens
• Status bar with current state
• Dependency detection with guidance for missing tools
• Process tree cleanup — cancelling kills child processes
• Owned temp directory cleanup on exit without touching another running instance
• Atomic output safety — validates staged media before replacing the chosen destination
• Runtime security policy — rejects unreviewed FFmpeg branches, keeps NVDEC fail-closed until a reviewed boundary, and requires the patched Qt 6.11.1 runtime
• Cross-surface provenance — release checks record exact versions, SHA-256 hashes, licenses, and lock/source metadata for browser assets, Python distributions, FFmpeg/ffprobe, optional libmpv, and managed AI tools; support diagnostics include the identities used by each desktop job
• Metadata-only GitHub release update checks run after startup when enabled (Help → Enable automatic update checks); release notices require a trusted API response and report whether digest-checked provenance/signature assets are published, without downloading or installing anything
• 228-test suite covering utilities, process safety, semantic media validation, generated media, probing, proxy/AI caching, supply-chain validation, diagnostics, persistence, browser modules/jobs, project sessions, filter graphs, OCR, URL import, scene review, localization, accessibility, batch concurrency, and update-policy contracts

Web Editor

Try it in the browser: sysadmindoc.github.io/ClipForge

• Timeline-based NLE with video, audio, and music tracks
• Import video, audio, and image files via drag & drop
• Full-duration video thumbnail strips with throttled hover scrubbing back to the playhead when the pointer leaves
• Clip splitting, trimming, moving, and snapping
• Transitions (cross dissolve, fade, wipe, zoom)
• Per-clip color correction and rotation
• Audio waveform visualization
• ffmpeg.wasm 0.12.15 with a pinned, self-hosted FFmpeg n5.1.10 core
• Strict same-origin CSP with no executable runtime CDN dependency; the roughly 31 MB core is cached after first load for offline restarts
• Runtime hashes, build provenance, dependency inventory, and license files under vendor/ffmpeg/
• Full undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z, 50-deep history)
• Truthful multi-clip export — contiguous video clips and embedded source audio are rendered; preflight blocks unsupported gaps, overlaps, transitions, unlinked audio/music, or unrendered effects instead of silently dropping them
• Shared browser timeline semantics — preview and export resolve clip boundaries, source in-points, transforms, and track mute/solo state through the same tested timeline plan
• Cancellable MP4, WebM, and GIF export with sanitized filenames, cleanup, and quality/resolution options
• Serialized waveform, proxy, and export jobs with collision-proof virtual paths, shared progress/cancel state, guaranteed cleanup, and reusable-engine recovery
• Versioned .cfproj project save/load with external media references, atomic .bak backups, legacy .clipforge migration, IndexedDB crash recovery, and explicit local-media relinking
• IndexedDB-backed 720p browser proxies with visible estimates, cancellation, original/proxy switching, ten-entry pruning, and project relink restoration
• Quota-aware cache lifecycle — sampled-content identities prevent stale proxy/frame reuse; browser proxies and desktop preview/AI caches show byte usage and limits, prune by LRU, validate incomplete entries, and expose explicit purge controls
• Cross-surface diagnostics — desktop and browser support exports include bounded runtime/capability, storage, job, and error state with local paths, URL credentials/tokens, secret options, and private media metadata redacted by default
• Browser module boundaries — project schema, timeline planning, jobs, storage predicates, preview state, export preflight, and diagnostics redaction are tested without a DOM
• Truthful timeline tools — Edit exposes working undo/redo/clipboard actions; Slip changes source in/out points without moving a clip; Hand pans the scrollable timeline
• Mediabunny evaluation spike — run python scripts/mediabunny_spike.py to benchmark the pinned, evaluation-only Mediabunny 1.53.0 bundle against FFmpeg.wasm on a short MP4; production export remains FFmpeg.wasm
• Keyboard shortcuts: V (select), C (razor), S (split), Space (play/pause), J/K/L (transport)

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• PyQt6 6.11+ (the locked Qt runtime is 6.11.1)
• FFmpeg (required for all operations)

  winget install ffmpeg # Windows
  brew install ffmpeg # macOS
  sudo apt install ffmpeg # Linux
  

• Real-ESRGAN (optional, for AI upscaling — quality mode)
  • Download realesrgan-ncnn-vulkan
  • Place in ClipForge directory or add to PATH
• SPAN (optional, for AI upscaling — fast mode)
  • Download span-ncnn-vulkan
  • Place in ClipForge directory or add to PATH
• RIFE (optional, for frame interpolation)
  • Download rife-ncnn-vulkan (or TNTwise fork for v4.25 models)
  • Place in ClipForge directory or add to PATH
• Whisper (optional, for auto-captions)
  • pip install openai-whisper
• Tesseract OCR (optional, for extracting hardsubs to .srt)
  • Install the native Tesseract executable and its language data locally; ClipForge does not download OCR models
• yt-dlp (optional, for importing one video from an HTTP(S) URL)
  • Install the native yt-dlp executable and keep it on PATH; playlists and embedded URL credentials are rejected
• libmpv (optional, experimental preview backend)
  • Install the wrapper with python -m pip install --require-hashes -r requirements-mpv.lock, then install libmpv separately
  • On Windows, place mpv-2.dll/libmpv-2.dll beside ClipForge or set CLIPFORGE_LIBMPV_DIR
  • This adds a separate LGPL/GPL runtime and distribution footprint; Qt Multimedia remains the default

Install & Run

git clone https://github.com/SysAdminDoc/ClipForge.git
cd ClipForge
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python -m pip install --require-hashes -r requirements.lock
.\.venv\Scripts\python clipforge.py

On Linux or macOS, replace .\.venv\Scripts\python with .venv/bin/python. ClipForge never changes the Python environment at runtime; install dependencies explicitly before launch.

Build and Verify

python -m pip install --require-hashes -r requirements-dev.lock
python -m playwright install chromium
python scripts/sync_version.py --check
python scripts/release_check.py
python scripts/release_check.py --build

Release builds are unsigned and produced locally. clipforge/version.py is the version source of truth; use python scripts/sync_version.py --set X.Y.Z to update desktop, web, README, and Windows executable metadata together. The release check runs the 228-test Python and headless-Chromium suite, then generates disposable FFmpeg fixtures for audio/video, subtitles, chapters, rotation, VFR, odd filenames, and core edit operations; --build creates a fresh hash-locked environment, builds the unsigned PyInstaller executable, opens fixture media in it, runs a tiny packaged transcode, and launch-smokes the GUI.

Usage

1. Open a video via button, drag & drop, or recent files
2. Preview using the built-in video player with frame stepping and speed control
3. Select a tool from the sidebar (8 panels available)
4. Configure options in the tool panel
5. Preview the command (Convert panel shows live editable FFmpeg command)
6. Export with the action button
7. Monitor progress via enhanced progress bar with ETA and speed

For batch processing, drag multiple files onto the window or use the Batch panel's Add Files/Add Folder buttons.

Presets

ClipForge includes built-in presets optimized for popular platforms. You can also create, save, and manage custom presets from the Convert panel.

Preset	Resolution	Codec	Bitrate Target
YouTube 1080p	1920x1080	H.264	CRF 18
YouTube 4K	3840x2160	H.264	CRF 18
Instagram Reel	1080x1920	H.264	CRF 20
TikTok	1080x1920	H.264	CRF 20
Discord 8MB	1280x720	H.264	CRF 28
Discord 50MB	1920x1080	H.264	CRF 22
Twitter/X	1920x1080	H.264	CRF 22
Web AV1	1920x1080	SVT-AV1	CRF 30
AV1 High Quality	Original	SVT-AV1	CRF 24
Archive Lossless	Original	H.264	Lossless
Web Optimized	1280x720	H.264	CRF 23
GIF	480px wide	GIF	Palette-optimized

License

MIT