Free beat-synced video editor in a DAW
A full video editor, free, on the beat grid
DonutStudio's conventional video editor is Free. Import footage, cut and trim, grade with scopes and LUTs, use speed ramps and interpolation, add transitions and text, automatically match footage to beats, then export common formats at any resolution without a watermark. Pro adds manual beat-warp marker editing, mastering formats, and custom Media Machine authoring.
- NLE tools on the beat grid: import, cut, trim, transitions, fades, text, and 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
- Automatically match footage to detected beats with pitch-preserved audio through Signalsmith; Pro adds manual warp-marker editing
A real video editor, on the beat grid
Every timeline position lives in beats. Change the tempo and cuts, transitions, fades, automation, and text move with the music. The editor also has a media pool with relinking and proxies, JKL shuttle, and a live preview viewport.
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.
Media Machine · Free visualizers + Pro authoring
Visuals that read the music
Free includes bundled music- and harmony-reactive visualizers such as Harmonic Strings, with practical appearance controls and normal export. Links vibrate at the a:b standing waves of their ratios, so pure just intonation stands still while tempered intervals shimmer.
Pro unlocks custom GLSL/ISF shader authoring, Shadertoy imports, GPU particle and SDF raymarch scenes, cross-domain modulation routing, and per-clip Lua or JavaScript that sets visual parameters from notes, ratios, and chord state.
Route music into the picture
The Pro modulation matrix connects a musical source to a visual parameter with depth, curve, and mode controls. Change the music and the routing follows it. Sources can drive effects, transforms, text, and 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, modulation routes, and motion graphics are represented as text. An agent can create them through MCP, inspect the result, and export. The same project remains editable from the normal panels.
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 complete conventional editor and bundled score-reactive visualizers ship with Free. Pro adds manual warp authorship, mastering formats, and custom visual systems.