How to Use OpenClaw for Video Editing — Automate Your

Video editing is one of the biggest time sinks for content creators. OpenClaw can automate 80% of the repetitive work: removing silences, generating subtitles, resizing for platforms, and batching export jobs. Make sure ffmpeg is installed: brew install ffmpeg on Mac or sudo apt install ffmpeg on Linux.

Auto-Remove Silences

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 \
  -af "silenceremove=stop_periods=-1:stop_duration=0.5:stop_threshold=-40dB" \
  -c:v copy output_no_silence.mp4

Your agent can wrap this in a workflow: take a folder of raw recordings, process each one, and output clean versions.

Auto-Generate Subtitles

const form = new FormData();
form.append('file', fs.createReadStream(videoPath));
form.append('model', 'whisper-1');
form.append('response_format', 'srt');

const response = await fetch('https://api.openai.com/v1/audio/transcriptions', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Authorization': `Bearer ${process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY}` },
  body: form
});
const srt = await response.text();

Then burn subtitles into the video:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 \
  -vf "subtitles=subtitles.srt:force_style='FontSize=24'" \
  -c:a copy output_subtitled.mp4

Platform Resize Automation

{
  "name": "video-resize-batch",
  "trigger": "file-added:/videos/raw/",
  "task": "When a new video is added: create a 16:9 YouTube version (1920x1080), a 9:16 TikTok version (1080x1920 center-crop), and a 1:1 Instagram version (1080x1080). Save each to the appropriate platform folder."
}

Batch Processing

@agent Process all videos in /recordings/raw/:
1. Remove silences longer than 1 second
2. Add subtitles via Whisper
3. Add intro/outro from /templates/
4. Export to /recordings/processed/
Log each file's status as you go.

YouTube Upload Automation

After processing, your agent preps the metadata: generate a title, description, and tags from the transcript, save to a queue file for review, or auto-upload via the YouTube Data API.

Want the complete setup? The OpenClaw Playbook ($9.99) covers everything from first install to production deployment.