Rewriting Video: Text-Driven Reauthoring of Video Footage
This addresses the problem for video creators by enabling easier editing through text, though it is incremental as it builds on generative AI advances and highlights tensions in the new paradigm.
The paper tackles the challenge of reauthoring video footage by proposing a text-driven approach, where a generative reconstruction algorithm reverse-engineers video into editable text prompts and an interactive tool (Rewrite Kit) allows creators to manipulate them, with a study of 12 creators revealing novel use cases like virtual reshooting and aesthetic restyling.
Video is a powerful medium for communication and storytelling, yet reauthoring existing footage remains challenging. Even simple edits often demand expertise, time, and careful planning, constraining how creators envision and shape their narratives. Recent advances in generative AI suggest a new paradigm: what if editing a video were as straightforward as rewriting text? To investigate this, we present a tech probe and a study on text-driven video reauthoring. Our approach involves two technical contributions: (1) a generative reconstruction algorithm that reverse-engineers video into an editable text prompt, and (2) an interactive probe, Rewrite Kit, that allows creators to manipulate these prompts. A technical evaluation of the algorithm reveals a critical human-AI perceptual gap. A probe study with 12 creators surfaced novel use cases such as virtual reshooting, synthetic continuity, and aesthetic restyling. It also highlighted key tensions around coherence, control, and creative alignment in this new paradigm. Our work contributes empirical insights into the opportunities and challenges of text-driven video reauthoring, offering design implications for future co-creative video tools.