How to write a prompt to edit a video.

The editor asks for your video, a brief and, if you want, photos. There’s no timeline, no trim handle and no ratio or style setting, so what you want goes into a sentence. The first two parts belong in nearly every brief; the other three earn their place when the shot calls for them.

Open with a plain verb, like change, remove, replace or make. Describe the thing as it looks in your clip, then what it becomes. “Change his navy plaid shirt to a red-and-black plaid shirt” tells Aisma which shirt to find and which to leave behind. “Make his shirt red” leaves more to guess when there are two people in the frame.

Be as specific about the new thing as you’d be in a shop. Our denim jacket brief asked for a “light-wash denim trucker jacket with metal buttons and chest pockets,” and all of it came back. Whatever you leave open, Aisma fills in: the home office brief listed a bookshelf, a plant and a desk lamp, and the room also arrived with a second lamp, a wall clock and gray curtains.

Your framing, length and original audio stay on every edit, so they never need a sentence. The keep list is for what’s near the change. Write it from the closest thing outward: the thing’s own details, like “Keep the same curls, volume and the way it moves in the wind,” then the person, the place, the light and the camera.

With two people in the frame, give the other one a sentence of their own: “Keep her dark shirt and necklace exactly as they are” is what kept her out of the plaid edit.

Be exact. In our kitchen clip, the first runs of two face swaps asked to keep the blue T-shirt and still changed its color; named as a “bright royal-blue crew-neck T-shirt,” it held. A keep also binds you: one earlier outfit brief kept her sneakers, so even the emerald gown came back with white sneakers under the hem.

Where is how you say which one. “The white SUV with the bike rack parked at the curb in front of the house” leaves one candidate on a street full of cars. Point the way you’d point something out to a friend.

Leave the time out and the change applies across the whole clip. To limit it, put the time in the brief. We ran this on the same clip you see at the top: “From 0:04 to the end, change his white T-shirt to a deep forest-green T-shirt with the same fabric, fit and folds. Before 0:04, keep it white. Keep his face, earring, movement, the wall, lighting and camera.”

In that run he’s in white at 1.5 seconds and in green at 6, and the switch falls while the white pillar covers him, so it reads as a wipe. The pillar did that, not the brief, so look for a moment like it in your own clip.

Clock times like 0:04 work, and so do counts back from the end, like “5 seconds before the end.” A single starting point runs to the end of the clip.

Most briefs on this page used no photo. Words handled the T-shirt, the jacket, the hair, the parked SUV, the home office and even a whole astronaut. Add a photo when one exact thing has to match, like a product you sell.

Name what it shows as well as its number: “the amber glass candle with a cork lid and a plain black label shown in Photo 1.” Aisma takes the shape from the photo, so if the size has to match the original, say so: that jar came back taller than the white candle it replaced.

An edit takes up to 10 photos. Tap a photo’s label in the editor to drop it into your brief, and say which photo goes where. A specific, real person takes two photos of someone who agreed to it.

Naming one of two. Aisma edits what you name. On the street clip from our denim jacket example we also ran this brief: “Remove the orange construction sign on the left. Reconstruct the grass, low wall and road behind it. Keep the man in the red jacket, his walk, the railing, the house, lighting and camera.” The named sign was gone in every frame, but a sliver of a second orange sign at the far-left edge, from about six seconds on, stayed, because nothing asked for it to go. Scan your clip for a second one before you write.

Writing how instead of what. Mask, keyframe and track are words for other tools. Describe what the viewer should see.

Stacking changes. One clear change is the most predictable. Run the one that matters most, then start the next edit from the finished clip in your Library.

Asking the prompt to cut or crop. Your result keeps the clip’s length and framing, so trim and crop in your usual editor, before or after Aisma.

Asking for new sound. Your original audio stays as recorded. Editing voices or music is on our roadmap; tell us at support@aisma.ai how you’d use it.

Watch the result full screen and go through your brief line by line: each change, then each keep. Then look for what you never mentioned, like the earrings on the copper hair edit. Small details can come out differently from one run to the next.

If one part missed, open Clips under the finished video, pick the clip and say what should change there, like “keep his T-shirt blue.” To rethink the whole edit, use Recreate in your Library: it brings back your original video, photos and brief, ready to reword.