Scale Video Editing with AI — Craft Your Master Prompt for Instant First Cuts

Editing long-form videos from scratch — especially repetitive, formulaic ones — takes time your team doesn’t have. The fix? Create a master prompt and let AI handle the first cut.

With a clear prompt, AI editing tools like ChatCut can produce a nearly finished first cut instantly. Think of your master prompt as the editing instructions you’d normally give a junior editor. It’s a reusable description of exactly how you want the raw footage transformed into your desired video structure.

Best Use Cases for Master Prompts

Master prompts are perfect for video formats that follow a clear pattern, like:

• Customer success stories and testimonials

• Product demos or tutorials

• FAQ/explainer videos

• Social video series (Reels, TikTok, Shorts)

• Corporate interviews and user research videos

• Long-form podcast editing and interview footage

These formats naturally lend themselves to automation because of their predictable structure.

How to Craft Your Master Prompt

1. Define the Structure

Break down your ideal video into chapters or beats. Example:

• Hook (first 10 seconds)

• Speaker intros

• Problem

• Solution

• Results

• CTA

Other types of videos can have different structures, for example:

• Customer Success Stories: Client intro → Problem → Solution → Results → Next steps

• Product Demos & Tutorial: Hook → Problem identification → Step-by-step solution → Recap

2. Write It Like You’d Brief an Editor

The AI reads your prompt like a human editor would. Be clear and detailed:

“Create a 60-second customer testimonial featuring three speakers. Start with name and role, then pain point, then how the product helped. Cut between speakers to maintain a fast pace.”

Why It Works

• No blank timeline — Humans fear the blank. Not only is assembling raw material into shape the most time-consuming part of video editing, but this fear also breeds procrastination and resistance.

• Rapid experimentation — Easily tweak the prompt structure and immediately see results without rewatching hours of footage.

• Repeatable, measurable improvement — If you want to scale long-form content creation, you have to have a repeatable workflow — a system — that you can improve.

Take It Further

Some of our beta users have brought this to the next level by establishing a shorthand with ChatCut’s AI during the shoot. For example, they’ll say, “ChatCut, mark this as director’s favorite,” and then, in the prompt, they’ll add, “Never use the parts addressing ‘ChatCut’ in the final video, but use them as logging notes.”

Real Examples That Work

For Interview Editing: “Extract the best 5-minute highlights from this 90-minute interview. Focus on actionable advice and emotional moments. Start with the most surprising insight as a hook.”

For Course Creation: “Create a 3-minute lesson summary. Include the learning objective, key concepts with examples, and end with the practice exercise.”

For User Research Videos: “Compile user feedback into themes. Show 2–3 quotes per theme, with participant names and backgrounds. Keep individual clips under 15 seconds.”

It’s creative, but it’s actually nothing new. People in the film industry have left “edit notes” in the footage since the invention of film! The beauty of ChatCut’s approach is that you’re editing text, not timelines.

Get creative and start crafting your own master prompt.

Conclusion

Master prompts transform the video editing process from a time-consuming manual task into a scalable, systematic approach. By creating clear, detailed instructions for AI editing tools, you can produce high-quality first cuts instantly and focus your creative energy on refinement and polish.