In 2021, I was an assistant editor for a growing video agency, and my task for the day was simple: copy and paste timecodes into Adobe Premiere, enter a complicated combination of keystrokes in the correct order, then repeat it 300 times in a row.

I was doing this because our brilliant writer was the creative fuel behind a lot of the agency’s successful videos. They’d use a Google Doc to assemble the best moments from a video shoot into a transcript with timecodes. The work I was doing was a necessary, tedious step in applying a creative’s vision to the raw materials in the editing software.

It did not escape me that what I was doing was robotic, though, that a robot should be doing this. I had more to offer — I could be spending this time doing something harder, something more creative.

Rethinking the "paper edit"

There’s a good reason that this process — the “Paper edit” — is common practice. It’s an intuitive way to give creative control to non-editors. Visionaries aren’t always video editors. Producers, writers, and your clients need tools to clarify their vision. For traditional paper editing to work, though, someone had to be mindlessly plugging in timecodes so the creative could be translated to the timeline.

On the other side of the Paper Edit Conundrum™ was the writer. Their work consisted of pulling out and arranging individual moments to form a new cohesive story. This requires a little leap of faith — will that line actually work as a cold open? They had no way to know — it’s just words on a transcript.

From transcript to timeline

I empathized with both parties involved in paper editing and their respective frictions, and the idea started to take shape: What if a writer could edit & rearrange text to get a clearer idea of the edits they’re prescribing? What if assistant editors could focus on more impactful tasks, and editors weren’t stuck trying to interpret confusing notes?

So that’s exactly what Proof does.

It allows your team to edit video with text, and the choices are brought safely to the editing timeline. Editorial decisions are no longer gated behind years of video editing experience — everyone on the team now has storytelling power. When they’re done — they share their work back to the primary editor, who can continue to refine, improve, and deliver the work that only they can do.

Every time a version is ready for more eyes on it, it’s an opportunity to use Proof to keep things moving.

The convenience vacuum

Increasingly, video tools for newcomers are full of automated, one-click solutions. Professional teams are often left out — forced to compromise between quality and convenience. As AI tools provide more black-box solutions lacking the control and safety that professionals demand, there’s a greater need to bring simplicity back into the professional sphere. That’s what Proof is all about.

I didn’t invent the concept of text-based video editing. In fact it seemed to be skyrocketing in popularity. After my work as an assistant editor, I began leading post-production practices and workflow. Every now and then I’d check in on the state of popular editing tools — could they save us time and money? The disappointing answer was usually “Not really!”

Using a popular text-based editor like Descript is great for small-scale productions. But if you’re dealing with multi-camera projects that need a professional tool like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, there’s always a dead-end point.

Some acknowledgement is due to those robust tools:

• Some of them can do multicam! You have to upload all your raw footage and audio files, and use their alignment features and their editing surfaces. If you don’t fully design your production around their workflows, you’re likely boxed out. Will your industry-veteran editor work in that environment without complaint? Not a shot.
• Doesn’t Adobe Premiere have text-based editing? Yeah! It’s frankly weird and clunky. Will the creative writer or producer on your team download 100GB of footage, open Premiere, and use that surface to imprint their vision on the timeline? I really doubt it!

A higher technical bar

So enough posturing about professional standards — what kind of simplified text-based editor could ever actually meet that need? To allow a non-editor to effect changes on the timeline, there’s a big qualification that has to be met:

• The timeline is sacred. You can’t lose multicam, effects, positioning. Nothing can be reset.

On the other hand, if you’re asking a non-editor to craft your video production:

• It has to be easy. Someone who's never touched a video editor should be able to pick it up in a matter of minutes.

This is what’s on offer with Proof: a simple way to craft video, and an industry-first timeline sync that respects your project files.

Putting it to the test: Proof vs. Frame.io

The video agency that inspired Proof helped me run a test: run a real video project through two workflows — one with Frame.io and only comments, and one with Proof and collaborative editing.

• Frame.io: Limited to comments only to influence the next version.
• Proof: Comments + realtime editing/rearranging content.

We timed each round — how long did it take for the person in charge to leave feedback, and how long did it take for their feedback to get applied + exported.

At the fine-polish stage, feedback got more nuanced and comments proved more efficient than editing, so the time savings became less dramatic.

But the results confirmed what we suspected: empowering the whole team saves a lot of time — which means lower costs and a better use of editor time.

Converting friction to energy

Proof is powerful because it doesn’t try to be the all-in-one editor of the future — it knows that professionals want professional tools — so it transmits feedback and cuts directly back to where they live: the Premiere Pro timeline (with DaVinci Resolve coming soon).

As a problem solver and tinkerer, I love eliminating the little frictions that slow people down. Looking back, my days of copy… paste… insert… rinse… repeat weren’t just wasted time — they were the starting point of Proof.

Now I’m watching Proof transform workflows. I’m seeing people’s eyes light up when they realize they’re not locked out of the creative. From “The most boring work in the world” to “Empowering creative storytelling” — is a pretty good glow-up. It’s a good reminder to take a beat during frustrating moments; there’s usually an opportunity hiding in there.