Social-first video editor in Rust. Native Windows .exe, built for short-form creators.
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Not another Electron wrapper. Native binary, starts in under 500 ms. No cloud, no telemetry, MIT licensed.
I started building it in my free time with AI assistance while playing with AI-generated videos (Minimax H3) — I wanted an editor that's fully customizable and works my way. If you like it, enjoy and use it. :)
📖 Full documentation: full_readme.md with every feature, architecture, status table, testing and contributing.
Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit. Grab the latest installer from the Releases page:
- Run
CapRust-0.9.20-win64-setup.exe. - The wizard installs per-user by default (no UAC prompt). Pick "Install for all users" if you prefer Program Files.
- Launch CapRust from the Start Menu.
On first run CapRust offers to download a static FFmpeg build
(~110 MB) if neither ffmpeg nor ffprobe is on your PATH.
AI models (Whisper, Piper, ONNX) download on demand from
Settings → AI Models.
A modern video editor focused on short-form social content (9:16, Reels, Shorts, TikTok). Rust + egui UI, ffmpeg under the hood, local AI (Whisper captions, Piper narration, face detection, background removal). Preview and export share the same filtergraph, so what you see is what renders.
- 🆓 No watermarks. No payments. MIT licensed, no telemetry, no account.
- 📴 Local-first, works offline. AI runs on your machine, cloud sync is just a folder.
- 🗨️ Auto-captions. Local Whisper (tiny→medium), styled + progressive-reveal captions, SRT export.
- 🎙️ Text-to-speech. Free local Piper voices, straight onto the timeline.
- 🪄 Background removal. One click per clip, cached masks, preview = export.
- 🎬 59 transitions, 40 effects, blend modes, film LUTs. Live preview, same graph renders export.
- ⚡ Cut fast. Split, trim, ripple, freeze frame, 0.1x–10x speed ramps, magnetic timeline, auto-cut to beats.
- 🎛️ Multi-track audio. Volume keyframes, auto-ducking, beat detection, one-switch cleanup (denoise/boost/normalize) + voice FX.
- 🎨 Fully customizable UI. Window colors, accents, UI + font size, fonts, layouts, clip borders, waveform and overlap colors, plus dark/light/custom themes.
- ✍️ Titles. 15 text styles, stroke, shadow, boxes, captions translation.
- 🎨 Stickers. 108 bundled PNGs you place, size and turn on the frame, with four animations and keyframed movement.
- 🚀 Export. H.264, HEVC, AV1 (CPU or hardware: NVENC/AMF). Up to 4K 60.
- 🦀 Native Rust engine. Sub-500 ms startup, ffmpeg subprocess (never linked), full undo/redo.
- 🧠 Scriptable. MCP server (JSON-RPC over stdio), so AI agents can drive the editor.
- 💻 Windows + Linux. 5 UI languages. EN, HR, ES, IT, DE with runtime switching, no restart.
Modern: fixed zones for the media bin, the preview, the asset browser and the timeline.
Default layout — the rearrangeable dock
Default: a rearrangeable dock. Media bin, preview, magnetic timeline, clip properties.
More screenshots (start screen, captions, properties, effects, transitions, filters, master chain, settings)
- Magnetic multi-track timeline: V1/V2, audio, text, overlay, captions; snap, ripple, trim, split, auto-cut to beats
- Stickers and keyframed movement: 108 bundled PNGs placed and turned on the frame, and a Trajectory tab that moves text or a sticker over time
- 59 transitions, 40 effects, 23 filters, 15 text styles, plus blend modes and per-clip color LUTs (
.cubeupload) - Local AI: Whisper captions + SRT, Piper narration, auto-reframe, background removal
- Pro audio: volume automation, auto-ducking, beat detection, fade handles, CLAP plugins
- Chroma key, multicam with audio sync, screen recording, hardware encode (NVENC/AMF)
- Fully customizable UI (window colors, accents, UI + font size, fonts, layouts, clip borders, waveform and overlap colors)
Note
🌍 Want CapRust in your language? See TRANSLATING.md: copy en.ftl, translate the values, open a PR. Untranslated keys render as raw keys, so even partial translations help.
Prerequisites: Rust 1.91+, FFmpeg 5.1+ in PATH, Visual Studio Build Tools (Windows) / GTK+X11+ALSA (Linux).
git clone https://github.com/Domica/CapRust
cd CapRust
cargo build --release -p caprust-app --no-default-features
./target/release/caprust-app
FFmpeg is called as a subprocess, never linked. See full_readme.md for architecture, testing (cargo nextest), and contributing (read DIRECTIVES.md first).
Each item is its own issue, so it can be picked up and closed on its own.
| Issue | What it is | |
|---|---|---|
| 🖥 | #79 | Auto-update inside the app, instead of a toast that opens a browser |
| 📷 | #81 | Google Photos: watch a local folder instead of the API |
| 🕳 | #83 | A clip with a missing source file is invisible on the timeline |
| 🎚 | #84 | The keyframe curve editor |
| 📈 | #85 | Easing between keyframes |
| 🎛 | #86 | One keyframe track per property |
| ✨ | #87 | Keyframing a clip's size and an effect's amount |
| 🔏 | #39 | AI Enhance (Real-ESRGAN): needs a runtime that can run it |
| 🔐 | #78 | Code signing, so SmartScreen stops saying "unknown publisher" |
The binary is 26.1 MB, and that is the number. The AI runtime -- the
face detection and the background removal -- is 7.8 MB of it, and it
is why the 20 MB target is out of reach: getting under it means
dropping the offline AI, or panic = "abort", which would let a
panic in a background thread take the whole app down instead of only
that thread. Both were decided against.
cargo-bloat says where every byte is
(.github/workflows/size-audit.yml).
See CHANGELOG.md for full per-release notes.
| Version | Date | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| 0.9.20 | 2026-10-21 | A first-run welcome and three guided tips; the Enhance effect (denoise + deband, measured); a smaller binary -- the icon and the built-in LUTs travel packed; the release is built in CI, ready for code signing. |
| 0.9.19 | 2026-10-19 | Stickers (108 bundled PNGs) placed, sized and turned on the frame; keyframed movement for text and stickers; 14 more effects and filters; every ffmpeg transition reachable. |
| 0.9.18 | 2026-10-18 | A second editor (Modern) with dock-style zones, stacked containers and S/M/L timeline sizes; importer plugins as separate programs, with an OTIO importer and Import plugin to load any of them from disk. Plus nine Modern-layout defects, preview and thumbnail fixes for still images, and remote-reply routing. |
| 0.9.17 | 2026-10-12 | Crash-recovery autosave, custom autosave interval, caption size proportional to frame height, one-click face anonymize; plus fixes for custom spinner persistence, preset click confirmation, Custom row visibility. |
| 0.9.16 | 2026-10-12 | Face anonymize per clip, caption segment editing, color grading panel, built-in sound-effects library. |
| 0.9.15 | 2026-10-11 | Timeline templates (bundled + save/import/apply), theme save/load files, export 32K command-line fix, preview A/V restart on seek. |
| 0.9.14 | 2026-10-10 | Spanish, Italian, German UI; slim README + full_readme; landing screenshot carousel; LUT + CLAP folder pickers in Settings; models rescan fix. |
| 0.9.13 | 2026-10-09 | Text effects, blend modes, clip rename, refresh imports, split display, border options. |
| 0.9.12 | 2026-10-09 | Save Frame fix, 27 transitions, 10 effects, LUT pipeline, beat snap + auto-cut. |
| 0.9.11 | 2026-10-08 | Three-color waveform, media bin sidebar, 8 text styles, waveform pickers. |
MIT - see LICENSE. Icons: Phosphor. ONNX: tract. Face: YuNet. BG removal: u2netp. CLAP: clack-host.
Made with Rust + AI assistance.