Free beat-synced video editor in a DAW — DonutStudio
A full video editor, free, on the beat grid
DonutStudio's video editor is free, and it's as generous as DaVinci Resolve's free tier. Import footage, cut and trim on a beat-synced timeline, grade with scopes and LUTs, retime with frame interpolation, add transitions and text, and export at any resolution with no watermark on your own work. Everything in the timeline lives in beats, so a tempo change re-times the whole edit. DonutStudio Pro adds the part nobody else has: the score-reactive Media Machine, where the picture is generated from your composition.
- A real NLE on the beat grid: import, cut, trim, transitions, fades, text, JKL shuttle
- Color grading with scopes and LUTs, stabilization, speed ramps, and geometry effects
- All frame interpolation included, up to RIFE motion-interpolated retiming
- Export at any resolution and framerate, H.264 or HEVC, no watermark, commercially usable
- Beat-warp footage to tempo with pitch-preserved audio through Signalsmith
A real video editor, on the beat grid
The editor is in the box. Everything in the timeline lives in beats. Change the tempo and the whole edit re-times. Cuts, transitions, fades, automation, and text move with the music. It's a real NLE underneath: a media pool with relink and proxies, JKL shuttle, and a live preview viewport, locked to the score.
Beat-domain timeline
Placement, transitions, fades, automation, text, and export range all live in beats. A BPM change re-times the entire edit. Footage warps onto the grid by detected beat markers or a uniform manual BPM.
Import & warp footage
Bring in any clip and stretch it to tempo: tap-tempo warp from detected markers, or uniform manual-BPM. Audio re-renders pitch-preserved through Signalsmith. Choose how the picture retimes: Nearest, Frame-Blend, or RIFE motion-interpolated Speed-Warp.
Grade, effects, LUTs & transitions
Per-clip color grading with video scopes and stabilization, an effects rack with 9 geometry effects, 3D LUTs, transitions, speed ramps, and styled text overlays, all automatable on beat-locked lanes.
Export equals preview
Deterministic export renders the exact frames you previewed, at any canvas from 720p to 4K, horizontal or vertical. Offline render must equal online render, a standing principle here.
DonutStudio Pro · The Media Machine
Visuals that read the music
This is the part you pay for, and the one thing no other editor has at any price. Author a GLSL shader clip in a built-in code editor, or import one from ISF or Shadertoy with a click, and it receives the DonutStudio uniform contract every frame: a 128-voice note texture with pitch and cents, velocity, age, resolved frequency, JI ratio against the root, and prime-exponent lattice coordinates, plus the root path, chord aggregates, and about a bar of lookahead. Multipass and feedback buffers are first-class. That lookahead lets DonutStudio's visuals anticipate a note before it sounds.
The flagship, Harmonic Strings: notes appear as they play, and the link graph's strings vibrate as the a:b standing waves of their ratios. Pure just intonation stands perfectly still; temperament shimmers. The picture is literally a readout of the tuning.
The timeline takes many more clip types. Generator clips paint solids, gradients, and images; GPU particle clips are seeded by the notes themselves; SDF raymarch clips put 3D geometry in the timeline; adjustment clips grade everything beneath them; and HDR bloom finishes the composite. When a knob isn't enough, write the frame: per-clip Lua or JavaScript runs every frame with the full musical context in scope, including JI cents, the prime lattice, and note and chord state. A clip's parameters can be a function of the harmony.
The modulation matrix
The mod matrix is part of DonutStudio Pro. Automation lanes are absolute curves; the mod matrix makes the relationship the authored object, so the visuals re-follow the music when the music changes. One routing is {source → any visual parameter, depth, curve, mode}. Every knob in the machine speaks the same address: effect params, transforms, text, shader inputs.
Music drives image
Kick velocity → kaleidoscope segments. Bass pitch → spiral rotation speed. Lead ADSR → bloom. Root change → scene wipe. Prime-7 energy → shimmer. Wire any musical signal to any visual parameter and it holds in export.
Ratio-native sources
The harmonic ratio itself modulates: integer numerator/denominator as discrete symmetry drivers (3/2 → 3-against-2 geometry), beating rate, Tenney-height consonance. This is math no FFT can recover.
Envelopes & LFOs
Per-track ADSR retriggered by that track's note-ons, plus BPM-synced LFOs. It's the same modulation math as DonutStudio's Sybil-16 synth, written as pure functions of beat time.
Geometric & feedback effects
The visualizer staple kit as ordered passes: kaleidoscope, mirror, tile, warp, displace, and persistent feedback trails. "Spiral shader → kaleidoscope on the result" is a two-liner.
For developers & toolmakers
Shaders, edit decisions, mod routings, and motion graphics are all text, which makes them writable by AI. DonutStudio exposes the whole video engine over MCP, so an agent can author, apply, verify, and export in a closed loop. The machine is built for two users at once: the human with panels, the agent with RPC.
Author over MCP
Create generator and shader clips, set effects, wire mod routings, and drive the timeline from a chat prompt. Every feature ships with its tool.
Verify the result
Frame hashes, scopes, viewport info, and deterministic export let an agent confirm what it made, the same verification the humans use.
Skills & free content
Installable agent skills plus a free content tier of house shaders, MIT-licensed ISF packs, LUTs, and mod-matrix presets, all through the in-app content store. The bundled 327-shader Vidvox pack ships in the box. Nothing soft-licensed is baked into the binary.
Bring footage in without leaving DonutStudio
Search openly-licensed footage, pull a clip from a URL, or install video packs from the content store.
Footage browser & URL download
Search and import free, openly-licensed footage from NASA, the Internet Archive, and Wikimedia straight from the footage browser, or paste a URL and pull a clip down via system yt-dlp.
Media pool & shuttle
A media pool with relink and proxies, plus JKL shuttle in the live preview viewport.
In-app content store
Shader packs, LUTs, and video clips also install from the in-app content store, including the bundled 327-shader Vidvox pack.
Bring your music to the screen
The video editor ships with DonutStudio. The score-reactive Media Machine is part of DonutStudio Pro — so your tuning can drive the picture.