Every week I get emails from companies promising me revolutionary new AI tool that will “save me hours of editing”.
I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of all these AI tools trying to take our money, acting like they just invented the wheel but in fact they’re mostly useless wrappers trying to sell you features Premiere Pro has already built-in for years. But I digress.
In this blog, I am testing and exposing 8 tools, investigating which ones are a complete scam, which ones are okay and which ones completely useless. Don’t worry I got the receipts.
I’ll also explain affiliate marketing, because it’s the reason why so many creators are promoting these platforms and tools. I know, we all have to pay the bills but …no. Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen—let’s look at how ridiculous this market has become.
Me and AI
First things first, let me just say: I’m not saying progress and AI tools are bad. I’m saying you need to realize that sometimes what you’ve got is better than what is offered. Ive been a professional videographer for over 15 years and I’d rather trust Adobe to give me the best tools than a no-name company trying to pitch me what Premiere can do since 2020.
And to think Adobe doesn’t want to accept me into their affiliate program…
These new AI tools are basically another platform you need to register for and figure out how to use. Most of them just base everything around existing OpenAI tools, but they just make a different packaging.
I’m going to give you my review of the tools I’ve personally tried or did a deep investigation on, and at the end I’ll tell you which tools may be worth your time and money. (maybe)
This is not another affiliate marketing video, I will not try to sell you anything! Don’t even subscribe to my channel, it’s fine.
1. Batchedits
Let’s start with the most recent email I got. The company is called Batchedits, and they wanted me to promote this AI tool for 30% commission. A tool that promises to save me hours of editing work. A long sceptical look into the camera.
By the way, back in 2020 I used to get paid flat fees for these kind of videos, now it’s just 30% commission if you make a sale. More on that later.
I’m also making a video on how the videography industry changed and where it’s headed so from a standpoint of the business i built in london from scratch, surviving the pandemic and the future with ai but you dont have to subscribe, its fine. You will just not see that video.
The tool automatically captions your raw video and removes the silences, making it ready to be published on social media. Oh sounds familiar?? You’ve heard that before.
Before trying to test it, I replied to this email: “Hello, how is that different from Adobe Premiere Pro which can automatically remove silences and auto-caption my videos? Thank you.” It’s been a week and I got no reply whatsoever. Go figure.
Anyway, for the sake of this video, I did try the tool because what Premiere Pro can’t do is caption my videos in Slovak language. So I thought, well, maybe I could use it for this then. On their website, They claim they have over 45 languages available to caption. I could not click on it to see the list, so I took my chances. I dropped my only 6-minute raw footage taken on an iPhone into the browser just like the instructions said and waited.
It’s been 5 minutes and I’m at 5%. There’s a weird window pop-up showing someone from Pakistan saved 1 minute, then Brazil, and it goes as a loop. Red flag.
After 10 minutes I went to 16% processing cuts. After 17 minutes I’m at 50%. After 20 minutes it’s done.
So, the pauses are removed very well, i’m impressed but the captions have grammar mistakes. Also, it did not cut out when I repeated something and i started over. So this is definitely not ready to go and it’s not usable at all. A 6-minute video, 20 minutes waiting, and the end result with mistakes. I did not try the English one because for me it makes no sense to use a browser and pay $20 for something Premiere Pro can do very well for the same price and offers me much more functions. For me and any professional video editor, this is simply a waste of time. If you tried it with a different language, let me know in the comments how that worked for you.
I will show you reviews of some of these tools when they are available, but for the first tools I can’t, because it’s all similar names and never the exact name, so it would be misleading.
$20 a month.
2. Batchbot
Creating AI product videos.
I have not tried it myself, but it’s worth mentioning that after digging, I found something super sketchy. YouTubers who are promoting this tool and waiting for their paycheck for commissions have comments from people telling them they got a violation on TikTok shop when using these videos. These comments are always ignored in the comment section. Red flag.
Quick reality check on TikTok Shop policies: Automated AI video generators often trigger TikTok’s strict anti-spam, low-quality, and unoriginal content filters. Using synthetic tools to mass-produce repetitive product videos can get your videos removed, your reach slashed, or your account hit with severe Trust & Safety violations.
SaaS tools like BatchBot profit off your signup, not your shop’s long-term health. If your account gets banned, the software company doesn’t care.
Every time you take a shortcut to something, it’s most probably going to backfire on you. It seems like this tool’s content gets flagged and you’re getting into trouble with TikTok or potentially other platforms too.
$14 – $74 a month
3. Thumbs.ai
Admittedly, a couple of months back I even did make a video on it because I liked it. However, as time went on, ChatGPT Plus can generate equally good thumbnails, so I definitely won’t be using or paying for Thumbs.ai, and I won’t recommend it anymore.
For the sake of this video, I did try it again to see how they progressed, but I just can’t get the result I want with my thumbnails. Also it’s creepy… it can change my face, this is so wrong… I look like Bugs Bunny.
So this tool, I guess if you fully learn how to use it best, it’s useful, but it seems to me now you can easily achieve the same result with ChatGPT Plus. At the time when I made a video about Thumbs.ai, ChatGPT was not very good at thumbnails, so I did see the appeal back then, but not anymore.
Between $8 – $64 a month
4. DocuCut
A plugin for Premiere pro that organizes your raw interview, splits it into important parts, and basically gives you the skeleton for your edit.
I made a whole video about that, but I’m just going to include it in this one. I fully tested it and while it’s decent, I just can’t imagine using this tool when I’m editing an interview. The important parts of the video are what I say are the important parts of the video. Because i am the filmmaker, the storyteller. You can take a sentence which seems useless for the AI and put it at the end, or you simply have to go through the footage and live it to create an incredible video in the end.
So I will be against these kinds of tools in the future too—not because I’m against progress, quite the opposite, tools like auto-captioning are amazing, I can’t imagine spending hours just typing the captions like I used to 10 years ago. But going through the interview using AI instead of me listening and creating a story in my head is not only dishonest to the person I interviewed, it’s also dishonest to my work and people watching the video. The result of this tool had me starting from scratch on that interview anyway because I didn’t like what AI left out of those “important selected parts.”
If you’re beginner editor or intermediate and it takes you forever to go through your 30, 40 minute interview footage, the solution is learning the right shortcuts and workflow. I have a video on that and i also have a pdf guide on that don’t go to the description of this video, im not telling you to check it out it’s fine.
The solution is getting better at your craft rather than using AI to tell you the important parts of the video you filmed. AI tools should help us with tasks which don’t require making decisions. Contact me if you want me to train you for editing.
$9.99 a month
5. Runway AI
I’m saving a literal scam as a bonus so keep watching, but first let’s talk about Runway. I actually made quite a few video tutorials on this and I also did a full training on it back in London, online as well. I think this is the most useful tool for video editors if you need to fix something tiny which can’t be otherwise fixed—for example, removing something from the video, like a tiny logo in the background which you did not notice during the filming. This tool works really well, I also have a video tutorial on it, but they keep changing stuff so that it’s also obsolete, they just turn everything into a prompt rather than including tools. Another tool, Blur the background, just film it, jesus christ, even a phone can blur the background now. If you film everything with the idea of “we’ll fix in post” thats not only stupid, unprofessional but also ridiculous.
Super slow motion was pretty decent compared to Premiere interpolation. The generative AI is also impressive, but it’s just all so expensive and unnecessary for daily use.
I’d only use Runway if I’m really desperate to do a tiny thing in my edit which essentially could save my paid project or something like that.
$12 – $76 a month
6. Veed
Generating text-to-video, mostly focused around generating ads. I did not try it because I have a headache… Every big company on this planet has bad reviews, but 15% 1-star reviews is not good. people report that it’s not working as it should, even on paid version. They seem to have a lot of issues.
I could assume 5-star reviews are from affiliates who hope they get paid. It’s called a pyramid scheme, lol. Also, on their website they claim they have 1,946 reviews with 4.6 stars, but it’s not clickable and I googled it and couldn’t find anything like this. Red flag. Yes, they claim Amazon and Google are using them. Maybe one of their employees.
My problem apart from this is they offer tools like: Convert video from mp4 to mp3, gif maker, transcribe your videos, add text to video, add audio, captions, im sorry again you can do all this and more in Premiere pro for 20 bucks a month and it’s so easy to learn. I can teach you, go to my website and contact me.
It’s just all comes down to the idea that the more ads you generate, the more content you generate, the more you sell. That’s not true and will not because of the oversaturation of the entire world with UGC and ads. Crazy editing, effects popping here and there is over. People are sick of it. We all look for storytelling and authenticity and these tools are not it. If your is shit, fancy editing will not save it.
$14 – $40 a month
7. Music creator
I also made a video on this tool actually. I still use it mostly for instrumentals because it’s different than other royalty free. But the more i use the more it seems to kinda repeat the songs in a way. Its difficult for me to always write prompts that the platform fully understands. It also takes time to generate the song, instead i could just quickly go through youtube library for example. But because i am such a useless musician the idea of being able to create my own song is intriguing but also im not bothered because i have not created it anway. Writing a prompt is not any form of creation okay?
I use it because i got for free. Im not sure i would pay for it but on the other hand for client work if i need a song thats definitely an option.
$10 – $90 a month
The Bonus Section! You’re Gonna Love This!
8. Audiio
I got approached by this company. It’s a platform with royalty-free music and the songs are really, really good. I was impressed. They promised me a commission and a free subscription. I thought, where’s the catch? It all looks good. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
I tried to google the reviews and the results were horrific. You should always google reviews before you put the credit card in…
Angry people complaining about not being able to cancel their membership. I checked my account and yes, I had a free subscription, but I did enter my details and there was no cancel button. I know, stupid. I found more horrific reviews, also from artists who claimed they didn’t get paid for their songs, and people having issues with copyright.
I contacted them saying I wanna cancel everything and I do not want them to ever charge me. They replied thankfully and cancelled, but they did it right away—okay. I wanted to download licenses for the songs I used, so I emailed them nicely but I never got a reply.
I understand that subscription if you dont cancel, they have the right to charge you but its unethical to not even receive a warning if it’s annual subscription and also after signed up, there was no option to cancel the subscription anyhow on the website. Which many bad reviews confirmed. So you had to literally email technical support, beg them to cancel your sub and pray that they reply.
I’m just so paranoid of these websites and the songs because imagine making a million view video with their song and all of a sudden you get a copyright strike or take down request.
$199 annually discounted to $99
$360 now discounted to $216
Seriously, who is even running these businesses???
Affiliate marketing and UGC
The whole UGC and affiliate marketing thing is becoming now free advertising and a complete win for the companies, even with a shitty product. In and before 2020 I would earn decent money for any promotional video and ask for an affiliate on top of that. Now they not only don’t pay you ($35), but you have to beg them to pay you the affiliate money you earned.
But of course not all affiliated products and services are bad.
There is one tool that i recommended as an affiliate and it that made me over $1,000 passively from one video tutorial and a blog in a year, and that is Autopod. Why? Because this product is actually amazing and unique and works really well.
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