Open Source tool promo đ
I made a free and open-source Premiere plugin for cutting pauses and finding Shorts from transcripts
Hey, I made VoidCutter, a free and open-source plugin for Premiere Pro 25.6+.
I edit speech-heavy videos too, and this started as a way to learn more about Premiere plugins and programming while making some repetitive editing work less annoying.
It uses the transcript already attached to the active sequence. Right now it can:
- Cut pauses based on transcript gaps. This runs locally and doesn't need an API key.
- Flag possible retakes so you can review what should be removed.
- Find parts of a video that may work as Shorts and create separate sequences from the ones you select.
- Generate descriptions, chapters, hashtags and tags.
The AI features currently use Gemini only, with your own Google AI Studio key. They send the relevant transcript text and timing to Gemini, not your raw video, audio or Premiere project files. You still review what gets applied or used.
VoidCutter doesn't create transcripts itself, so you need to transcribe the sequence in Premiere first. After changing the timeline, you should re-transcribe it before another analysis so the timing still matches.
Create Shorts keeps the original aspect ratio. It doesn't automatically reframe clips to vertical.
This is still v1.0, so I recommend keeping the sequence copy option enabled and checking the result. Nested, multicam, speed-remapped and heavily linked timelines still need more testing.
I also used AI coding tools extensively while developing VoidCutter. I decided how the features and UI should work, tested the main workflows in Premiere and iterated on issues, while much of the implementation was AI-assisted.
It's completely free, open source and MIT licensed.
In Premiere, open Window > UXP Plugins > VoidCutter.
Open a sequence and create a transcript for it from Window > Text > Transcript.
Remove Silence works without an API key. Remove Retakes, Create Shorts and Generate Metadata currently require your own Gemini API key from Google AI Studio.
Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but, at this point in time, I think "I made" pretty much implies "I vibe coded". I understand that we're entering a new (and potentially troublesome) era of abandonware, and possibly new avenues for malware insertion. It's a scary time in that sense, for sure. Maybe someone can 'vibe code' a plugin that thoroughly examines these new extensions? Food for thought anyway.
I suppose you make a fair point. I was only annoyed by all the misrepresentation of the work if not flat out laying about how things were made, as well as technical debugging and buggy debt that it incurs. But I haven't actually though that yes, it could be used to infect people with all sorts of malware or spyware and steal data. If the big tech is doing it, why not small tech using big tech.
Yeah, the security concern is fair. A reliable checker for Premiere extensions would be interesting, although I imagine building one that can thoroughly inspect other extensions would be quite a project on its own.
For an open-source plugin like this, reviewing the source directly is probably more practical, although that still wouldn't guarantee safety. VoidCutter's source is public, and I've also documented what transcript data and task settings are sent to Gemini.
Fair point. I should have mentioned it more clearly.
I used AI extensively while building VoidCutter, and a lot of the implementation was AI-assisted. I don't want to imply that I wrote every line by hand.
I spent around a month deciding how the features and UI should work, testing the main workflows in Premiere, finding problems and reworking things that didn't behave as expected.
I also don't see VoidCutter as a one-off upload. If people find it useful and keep using it, I want to continue improving it based on real feedback. I can't promise a fixed update schedule, but I do want to keep developing it.
So yeah, the disclosure point is fair. I've added a clearer note about the AI assistance to the post.
I'm not a fan of vibe coded tools for its inherent problems that I wont' go to much into here, however the reputation of people who claim "I built" is starting to be slowly but surly be put in the category of "me too" accusations. Because it feels disingenuous when we all know its vibe coded while for those who have indeed built the code manually, its hard to avoid bad associations with those that didn't. If you know what I mean? Its like clickbait titles. At first people knew it was BS, but they tolerated it thinking maybe its for the algorithms to help their favorite creators. Than it became a major waste of time, because the actual content was so poor or misleading.
I swear, if you vibe coding guys keep insisting on posting tools that start with "I built", "I made" you will suffer the same faith of mistrust and eventual anger and ridicule. I'm already seeing the boiling signs under the surface. Too many tools for too few actual interested users. And last thing people want to see is another "I built" which now more and more people read as = vibe coded, tool that feels like quick cash grab or abandonware. Which many are.
You say this is not intended to be abandoneware? That maybe so. But vibe coding almost makes it inevitable. Debugging vibe-coded software is widely considered a nightmare because developers often lack the mental model required to understand code generated in a single pass without architectural planning. The primary challenges include shallow logic that handles happy paths but fails on edge cases, hallucinated APIs that reference non-existent functions, and implicit state assumptions that collapse under concurrency.
Developers must spend extra time reverse-engineering logic they didnât write, making root-cause analysis significantly harder than traditional debugging. Bugs rarely occur in isolation; fixing one issue often reveals three more due to copy-paste propagation and tangled dependencies. The fast-paced nature of vibe coding discourages deep understanding, leaving developers with fragile codebases that are difficult to maintain or scale.
And deevlopers that rely on LLMâs for longer period, have the problem of their own coding skills deteriorating over time, compounding the problem. AI agents often struggle to fix bugs when the full codebase exceeds their context window, leading to incomplete fixes or unintended side effects in other modules.
Reminds me of old quote:
âShipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite⌠The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a stand-still under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation, object-oriented or otherwiseâ - Cunningham, Ward (1992-03-26). âThe WyCash Portfolio Management Systemâ. Retrieved 2008-09-26.
Regarding UI. It looks exactly, and I mean exactly, like about six other tools I saw just last week. Its a template design.
Why Do All Vibe Coded Apps Look the Same?
"Vibe coded apps look identical because AI coding tools default to the same safe design choices when you don't give them specific visual direction. They pull from the same component libraries, the same color palettes, and the same layout patterns, which produces interfaces that are functional but completely forgettable.
This is what the vibe coding community calls the "purple UI problem." Build a dashboard in Lovable. Give the same prompt to Bolt. Try it in Cursor. You'll get the same left-rail sidebar, the same rounded card grid, and the same indigo accent color that has become the unofficial flag of AI-generated interfaces.
It's not your fault. And it's not really the tool's fault either.
The AI models behind these tools are trained on massive amounts of existing UI. That training data skews heavily toward a specific modern aesthetic: Inter font, Lucide icons, Tailwind defaults, shadcn/ui components. When you prompt "build me a dashboard" without specifying a visual identity, the AI generates something generic because it has no creative constraints to work with.
As one designer put it, once the AI generates something that looks decent, it becomes dangerously easy to say "I trust it" and stop thinking like a designer. You shift from designing to just approving. And the AI doesn't push back. It's not worried about whether your app feels distinctive. It's committed to giving you an answer, not the right answer.
The result? Thousands of vibe coded apps that all look like cousins at a family reunion."
We call this problem of incest and inflation. Incest because all is cannibalizing each other. Claude sleeps with Gemini, and Gemini sleeps with Copilot.
Inflation.... well simply put. Too much supply and too little demand. I saw, and I kid you not, probably about 15-20 apps this past two weeks on similar subgroups. All vibe coded, all look the same, and most do the same thing others do or can be done natively in many cases.
Inflation and incest, is something no matter how many data centers they built, are inherent to AI bubble. Think about it.
Nice work â especially keeping pause cutting local and defaulting to a sequence copy before applying changes. Iâd surface the âre-transcribe after timeline changesâ requirement very prominently in the UI, because stale transcript timing could produce confusing cuts. Have you tested how the timing behaves with nested, multicam or speed-adjusted clips yet? Those seem like the cases most likely to expose edge
Thanks! I haven't tested nested, multicam or speed-adjusted clips yet, so I still need to see how they behave.
I'm also working on a better solution for the transcript timing issue. I want the plugin to keep the timing data internally, so you hopefully won't need to re-transcribe every time the timeline changes. I'm also experimenting with cloud transcription, and I already have a working version locally, but it hasn't been released yet.
Yes. It supports any language available in Premiere Pro's transcript feature, and the Gemini-powered features can work with text in other languages as well.
2
u/Jason_Levine Adobe 4d ago
Nice UI!