Introducing Video Editor in Manus 2.0: Anyone Can Now Make A Video Worth Posting
Manus 2.0 is out. For the past month, I’be been making videos with Manus almost every day.
Launch films for new features, game trailers, news explainers, beat-synced animations, a last minute launch film for Cue that was requested the night before it went live. I even handed Manus the footage from a trip and let it do the editing, and was tempted to set up a scheduled task and have it make a new video every day on its own.
Now that we’ve launched, I’d like to explain what I've learned in the past month while it’s still fresh. I will focus on two things: what Manus can do with video, and why, on top of that, we built Video Editor.
The 52-second film below introduces the new video features. It was made by Manus, too.
Manus video launch film, 52 seconds. Notion plays a compressed 1080p preview; the original is 4K at 60 fps
A Great Shot Is Not A Video Yet
Video models are already remarkably good. Write one sentence and a few minutes later you have a beautiful shot.
But the more videos I made, the clearer it became how far a great shot is from a video you can actually publish. First, you have to figure out what the video is really about. Then come the questions: How do you get people to stop scrolling in the first two seconds? Where should the joke land? What music fits, and should it dip when someone is talking? Which font should the caption use? Which beat should each cut hit? And on top of all that, everything has to match the brand’s tone. Making a video means hundreds of small decisions, and every one of them depends on context.
The second challenge comes after the first version is generated. There’s always something you want to change: a more upbeat song, a reworded caption, a shot trimmed by half a second. If all you have is a chat box, small tweaks like these often mean regenerating the entire video, and the parts you liked in the previous version may change along with them.
So we set ourselves one question:
How can someone who has never learned video editing make a video they want to share?
Our answer has two halves. The first is Manus makes the whole video for you. The second is Video Editor, which hands the final cut back to you.
Part 1: Manus Makes the Whole Video, Not Just the Shots.
For creators: it searches the web for ideas
Most of my videos start with a single sentence. Once I typed only this: "Search recent news, pick any topic, English, YouTube style, lots of memes (you can search for them), keep it fast."
Manus picked Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park in Alaska, where people vote for the brown bear that got fattest before hibernation. It read that week's news, wrote a script, remade classic memes like Drake, Distracted Boyfriend and This Is Fine with bears, added real photos of the contestants, and turned it all into a 100-second explainer. Every fact on screen cites its source.
Fat Bear Week explainer, 102 seconds, from the Manus website
At the end, it warned me that one vote count had appeared only on a fan Facebook page and wasn't officially confirmed, so I should check it before posting.
Search is what gives Manus a feel for the internet. It reads what people are posting, not just the news. It can check Reddit for the memes going around, break down how a trending YouTube video is cut, or take a reference link, pull apart its pacing and shots, and make its own version. I once gave it an Instagram link and said only "recreate this video." About an hour later I had the finished video, and a colleague's first reaction was: how is that app UI so real?
For everyone: it makes every piece, and writes code for the rest
Manus can make everything a video needs on the spot: shots from video models like Seedance 2.5, plus images, music, voiceover and sound effects.
But what's special is the code. Manus has its own computer, enabling it to write code for motion graphics, layouts, charts and map routes, render them, screenshot the result to check it, and keep fixing what it doesn't like. I've watched it draw a grid over a frame in Python to locate pixels, and use FFmpeg to turn 24 fps footage into 120 fps so a 5x slow-motion shot stays smooth. I never taught it that. It worked these tricks out to make the video better.
Generated shots and code-made visuals can share one video. For BEAT RUSH, Manus generated a dancing anime character with Seedance, then built the rhythm-game interface and beat effects in code.
BEAT RUSH, 20 seconds, from the Manus website
For marketing teams: it already knows your brand
The best example is the launch film for Cue.
At 9 PM the night before Cue launched, I got the brief: we need a launch film tomorrow. Before, that would have been close to impossible.
This time I made it in Manus Studio. It read our meeting notes, Notion, Slack, Figma and code repos, plus the preferences it remembers about me. It helped me sharpen the idea, then drew the storyboard, then made the film.
Cue launch film storyboard. 76 minutes in, Manus proposed three directions and I replied only "A. Make it." Then it drew these 16 panels.
After a few hours of polishing, the film was done before launch. Once @CueAgents posted it, it passed 1.7 million views on X.
What I took from it: the hardest part of a video is usually not the visuals. It's matching the brand's tone and this campaign's exact requirements. That takes countless details and context, and they already sit scattered across your everyday work.
One sentence can make any kind of video
Manus made far more kinds of video this month than I expected.
Left to right, top to bottom: product launch film, game trailer, news explainer, AI UGC ad, music video, short drama, code-only animation, viral physics animation, knowledge explainer
The functionality I'd recommend most for small teams is the AI UGC ad: the TikTok product recommendation that looks casually filmed by a real person, like this ad for a collapsible coffee cup. A small brand with no budget for creators can make a version with Manus first and see how people react.
AI UGC style TikTok ad for a collapsible cup, 20 seconds, vertical
Most of these videos started from a prompt of one or two sentences.
Part 2: Video Editor gives you the final cut
Manus usually gets the first version 80 to 90 percent there. But the last 10 to 20 percent is often what you care about most: the music a bit lower, a caption reworded, a shot half a second shorter, your own product photo instead of a generated one.
These edits are small, but doing them only through chat is awkward. "Move it half a second earlier" is hard to say precisely, and fixing one thing can shift another. So we built Video Editor. It lives in Manus Studio, the Manus desktop app.
Every layer is its own track
Every ingredient Manus uses, from generated shots and images to captions, motion graphics, voiceover, music and sound effects, sits on its own layer of the Video Editor timeline. You don't get a flattened MP4. You get a video you can take apart and change.
A vlog clip split into eight layers, 30 seconds
For everyone: drag it yourself, or just ask Manus
You can drag, trim, rewrite captions and set volume with your mouse, like in any editor. Or tell Manus "turn the music down" or "tighten this part." Both change the same project. When you hand it back, Manus picks up from your edits instead of starting over.
Edit it yourself, or just ask Manus. Frames from the launch film above
You don't need editing experience to use Video Editor. You only need to know the feel you want.
For creators: start from your own footage
Because Video Editor runs on your desktop, it can start from the footage already on your computer. Drag videos into the chat, or tell Manus which folder they're in, and it imports them and lays them on the timeline.
From the official 2.0 tutorial: drag three local clips into Manus, say "Make a 15-second seaside film," then trim in Video Editor. 14 seconds
I tried the whole workflow with footage from a trip: 125 camera clips, almost two hours in total, on an external drive. Manus imported everything into the editor, transcribed and sampled frames from every clip, and worked out what happened over the three days.
Then it picked the good moments and arranged them into a story that follows the itinerary. The first cut ran 12:48, longer than planned, so it listed each segment's length and lines, cut more than twenty repetitive or slow spots, and brought it to 10:50 with 195 cuts.
When I asked for some variety-show energy, it made over a hundred text effects, stickers and chapter cards and placed each on a track. It split the music into seven cues by mood and dimmed it whenever someone speaks.
Here is the final timeline. Every caption, text effect and music cue is still on its own track, so you can change anything.
The travel film's final timeline: 325 captions, 112 text effects and stickers, 195 video segments, 7 music cues, 118 sound effects. Drawn from the project data, not a screenshot
Marketing teams can use the same workflow to turn long videos into short ones: a meeting recording or an interview can become several clips ready for social.
Final thoughts
This month made me believe one thing more than anything: AI keeps making it easier to make a video, but whether it's "good" still depends on what you want the video to say and how you want it to look.
AI won't replace human creativity. It multiplies it. Manus can find the idea, write the script and make the first version, but the final cut is always yours.
Some of what I made with Manus this month, 16 seconds, music from the launch film. Notion plays a compressed preview
How to start yours?
Choose Video in Manus and describe the video you want in one sentence, on web or desktop. Video Editor is in Manus Studio, the desktop app for macOS and Windows. On the web, click "Edit in Video Editor" and you'll be guided to download the desktop app and edit on the full timeline.
