Adobe Project Blink Review | TechRadar
There was a time when video editing software belonged to Hollywood studios and ad agencies.
But very quickly, the technology spread to YouTubers and social media content creators. Today, everyone – from marketing teams to individuals – can cut clips and make movies using editing software.
However, despite the great improvement in their accessibility, it is not always easy to become familiar with video editors, especially if you have never used one.
That’s where Adobe Labs’ AI-powered Blink project comes in.
Project Blink, which is still in beta, is designed to remove all the complexity usually associated with these tools.
Adobe now offers a full range of video editing software – from the standard Premiere Pro software to the consumer software Adobe Premiere Elements and Premiere Rush, which makes it possible to edit movies in all opportunity.
But forget what you think you know about video editing. Project Blink is not like any of Adobe’s regular software, or even anything else.
It’s a whole new approach that lets you cut clips as if you were editing them in a word processor. This makes Blink more accessible than Adobe Express video editor, Adobe’s free and very easy-to-use video editing software.
Adobe Project Blink: The editing process
But what does it mean to edit videos like Word documents? After all, it seems like a strange association.
You start by uploading your video, which the tool processes – although the latter is sometimes a bit slow.
When processing is complete, your video will appear on the left side of the screen. On the right is a fairly accurate transcript of the video (we guess that’s why videos can take a while to process).
The text can be browsed, making it easy to find the right part of your video, and can be fixed by highlighting the error and right-clicking to open the context menu.
Here you can edit your video. In fact, unlike almost all other video editors on the market, there is no timeline view. You edit by assembling words directly from the transcription.
Find and highlight the dialogue, then copy and paste it into your project – or cut it from the transcript. All the tools are at the top of the panel. Standard keyboard shortcuts work here too.
In other words, if you use Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and other similar tools, you will have no problem cutting clips.
For longer videos, the easiest way is to open a blank project in another window and paste your video directly into it. To make it easier for you, the tool can tag people in the video and put a picture next to their word, just like in a messaging app.
This feature is particularly useful if you have a large number of speakers and need to focus on one of them.
But what does the editing process look like for videos without dialogue (or even without audio)?
We tested it with a clip with some sound effects and found that the process was almost the same, although less intuitive, as we had to analyze the video to determine the corresponding sequence.
For silent videos, highlight, copy and paste only the selected part of the video. Again, this is less efficient than cutting, for example, a webinar, but in practice the process works the same.
Adobe Project Blink: Preview and Export
After you’ve trimmed all your clips, you can view the project by clicking the play button at the bottom of the viewer. And if you want to check that a particular passage has been well edited, all you have to do is move your cursor to the relevant word and press the play button.
The preview was a bit confusing for us, as playback pauses as each copied clip loads. Therefore, you’ll get a good idea of how the app works, but it won’t be perfect at first.
However, these minor flaws are fixed once you download the full video. In our tests, the videos were flawless. The edits were seamless, with no jerks or lags of any kind.
At the moment, videos only export in MP4 format – although you can always run them through a free video converter to get the format you need.
Adobe Blink Project: First Opinion
Above all, editing videos in Adobe Project Blink is fun. Maybe because it’s so easy and all you have to do is copy, paste or cut.
It’s fair to say that you don’t have all the control you’ll find in other video editors, and it’s not exactly an Adobe Premiere Pro alternative. It is not possible, for example, to carve out individual letters from words, and the carving of tics and verbal pauses is not as fine.
But what would normally take hours with a full-fledged video editor, Adobe’s Project Blink can do in minutes. And it’s all browser-based, at least for now – so you won’t need a video editing computer to use the software.
If you have never used editing software, this is probably one of the best ways to get started in this field. It’s also great when you need to shoot videos quickly and when titles, transitions, and other visual effects aren’t needed. If you’re a business that wants to deliver a lot of simple video content, the benefits are obvious.
You can request access to Adobe Project Blink and try it yourself via clicking here. (opens in new tab)
