YouTube, TikTok, Reels: edit your videos in minutes with AI (Montia)

Filming a video takes ten minutes. A talking head, a vlog, a tutorial: set up your phone or camera, talk, done.

The trouble starts afterwards. Cutting the silences and the “umms”, removing bad takes, doing the jump cuts, adding animated captions, titles, some sound design, music that won’t get claimed, the thumbnail, the title, the description, the chapters… then doing it all over again in vertical for TikTok and Shorts. For ten minutes of footage, you can easily spend three hours.

The result: you publish less often than you’d like, even though consistency is exactly what the algorithms reward.

In this article, I’ll show you how to hand all that editing over to AI with Montia, an online video editor built for creators.

Editing: every creator’s bottleneck

Whether you make long-form YouTube, TikTok or Reels, the equation is the same:

• Editing drives retention. A tight video with no dead air, with captions and titles that keep re-engaging viewers, gets watched to the end. And watch time weighs heavily in recommendations.
• Captions are no longer optional. On mobile, a large share of viewers watch with the sound off: without burned-in captions, they drop off.
• Every video needs repurposing. One YouTube video is also three or four potential Shorts, TikToks or Reels. More editing.
• Outsourcing is expensive. A freelance editor costs tens of euros per video, with back-and-forth lasting several days.

AI-automated editing changes that equation.

Montia in 3 steps

No software to install, no timeline to handle:

1. Drop your footage: one or more files (MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM…), up to 20 clips and 30 minutes in total, edited in order. Silences and bad takes are removed automatically.
2. Pick your options: animated captions, motion design, transitions, sound design, background music, “studio” voice, thumbnail.
3. Get your edited video, ready to publish.

Under the hood, the AI reads the word-level timestamped transcript of what you say, decides what to cut, highlight and animate, then a rendering engine produces the animations frame by frame, synced to your voice.

Everything an editor would do, one click away

Feature	What it brings
Automatic editing	Jump cuts on dead air, hesitations and bad takes
Animated captions	Readable with the sound off, SRT file included
Motion design	Animated titles, lists, key figures, quotes and chapters
Sound design & music	Sound effects, royalty-free background music, “studio voice” processing
YouTube thumbnail	1280×720, best frame cut out, title and badge
Vertical formats	9:16 versions for Shorts, TikTok and Reels
Metadata	YouTube title, description and chapters

Audio is normalized to −16 LUFS, the level platforms aim for: no more videos that are too quiet or clip from one segment to the next.

One upload, four ready-to-publish files

This is where you save the most time. For each video, you get:

1. The video as a 1080p MP4, in 16:9 or 9:16;
2. The YouTube thumbnail at 1280×720;
3. The captions as an SRT file, to upload to YouTube for accessibility and SEO;
4. The YouTube title, description and chapters.

Chapters are a real bonus: YouTube shows them in the progress bar, and Google shows them in its results as “key moments”. One more way into your channel.

One long video, several short formats

For multi-platform creators, this is the highlight: from the same footage, Montia produces a vertical 9:16 version for YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels. With the Pro plan, Shorts versions are generated automatically from your long videos.

A single filming session feeds your YouTube channel and your TikTok and Instagram accounts.

My tips for filming “for AI editing”

Montia edits from what you say. A few habits make all the difference:

1. Talk continuously. The richer your speech, the better the AI understands your video’s structure and places titles and animations.
2. Don’t stop when you mess up. Pause, then restart the sentence from the beginning. The bad take will be detected and removed.
3. Prioritize sound over image. A €20 lavalier mic does more for your video than a new camera, and makes the transcript more accurate.
4. Split into several files if it’s easier: intro, part 1, part 2… up to 20 files, edited in order.
5. Use the Instructions field to set the tone. For example:

YouTube talking-head video, energetic tone. Keep the opening anecdote as the hook.
Highlight figures and steps as animated lists.
Light music, no sound effect on every cut.

Montia, CapCut or a video editor: which to choose?

	Montia	CapCut, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve	Freelance editor
Who edits?	AI, automatically	You, on a timeline	A human
Turnaround	A few minutes	However long you spend	Several days
Thumbnail + title, description, chapters	Included	Do it yourself	Often extra
Cost	First video free, then from €15/month	Free to subscription	Tens of euros per video

Timeline editors remain unbeatable for highly creative videos edited frame by frame. But to publish consistently videos where you talk (talking heads, tutorials, vlogs, video podcasts, interviews), handing the whole edit to AI gives you back hours every week. And nothing stops you from touching up the Montia video in your usual editor.

How much does it cost?

• Free: 1 video, no credit card, with an “Edited with Montia” banner.
• Creator: €15/month (€12.50/month billed yearly), 30 minutes of footage per month, no banner.
• Pro: €39/month (€32.50/month billed yearly), 120 minutes, brand kit, priority queue, automatic Shorts.
• Studio: €129/month, 500 minutes, 5 seats, white label, API: for agencies and teams.
• Pay-as-you-go: €0.60 per minute (20-minute pack for €12).

Everything is commitment-free and can be cancelled online. Simple rule of thumb: one 10-minute video a week is about 40 minutes of footage per month, so Pro is the best fit; Creator is enough for one video every two weeks.

What happens to my videos?

• You own your videos, ready to publish and monetize.
• The bundled music and sound effects are royalty-free: no bad surprises with Content ID.
• Files are automatically deleted 72 hours after editing and are never used to train a model.
• Editing works in French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch.

Conclusion

Your next video is probably already filmed, somewhere on your drive or your phone. What stands between it and publication is editing.

Since the first video is free, the easiest way is to try with that very footage: edit my first video for free with Montia.