Video Editing Trends In 2025

Video has become a crucial element in the majority of marketing campaigns.

Video continues to dominate brand communication, with algorithms on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram placing even greater emphasis on high-retention edits, vertical formats, and personalized content delivery.

It serves as an excellent tool to enhance engagement on your digital and social platforms, providing fresh avenues to connect with your audience.

In delving into the current trends in video editing for this year, I will cover a spectrum ranging from short-form videos to full-length features.

These trends are shaped not only by creative innovation but also by new AI-assisted editing tools, evolving audience behavior, and the rising demand for faster content production cycles.

Here are the top video editing trends I’ve seen while working with clients in different niches through my video editing agency.

Prepare for the upcoming video editing landscape by familiarizing yourself with these top 10 trends:

1. Short videos

Content creators, influencers, and businesses use short-form videos as impactful brand materials, enabling them to reach a broader audience within a concise timeframe.

Usually, these videos are between 30 and 90 seconds long and they are super prominent on all social media platforms. However, it’s essential to note that different platforms impose varying restrictions on video length. So keep that in mind.

For instance, X permits 2.2-minute videos, while TikTok allows up to three minutes for video recording and up to ten minutes for uploading within the app.

Short-form content remains the fastest-growing format across all major platforms, largely due to higher watch-through rates and algorithmic prioritization.

YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok are now pushing even stronger toward 15–60 second clips, as these formats generate the highest engagement, retention, and shareability.

Brands are increasingly repurposing longer videos into multiple micro-clips to maximize reach, reduce production costs, and maintain a consistent posting cadence — a strategy now considered essential for growth

2. Vertical videos

This is not necessarily a new trend, because vertical videos gained popularity even before 2020 and continue to be relevant in the foreseeable future.

This style of video content is prominently featured on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

Vertical videos, characterized by a 9:16 aspect ratio, effectively utilize the entire vertical screen when viewed on smartphones.

Sometimes clients ask us to edit in 4:5 or even 1:1 aspect ratios, so make sure to test different video assets and see which ones perform better for you.

Be aware of the different aspect ratios you’ll edit your videos in the production stage. Make sure the framing allows the video content to be re-purposed to all different aspect ratios.

Be mindful of the safe margins or safe areas for each platform when you edit vertical videos.

Here are some examples of the places you need to keep clear of text or logos for the best user experience.

Vertical video has become the dominant format for social media algorithms, with YouTube also heavily prioritizing 9:16 Shorts in search and recommendations.

Brands that fail to produce vertical-first content now see significantly lower reach compared to creators who design with mobile screens in mind.

Many editors now adopt a “Master Canvas” workflow — shooting wide (e.g., 4K landscape) but framing intentionally for multiple crops (9:16, 4:5, 1:1). This ensures every piece of content can be repurposed seamlessly across platforms without losing key subjects or text.

Safe zones have become even more crucial as platforms introduce additional overlays, interactive buttons, and shopping features that can cover up text.

Always keep captions, logos, and call-to-actions within the inner 60–70% of the frame for maximum clarity and accessibility.

TikTok

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Instagram

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3. A.I. technologies

I started using AI more and more in our video editing business in 2023 and it has become the norm in 2024.

One of the highlight AI features was Eye Contact, there are a handful of tools that offer it. It uses AI to subtly adjust your gaze in the video so it appears you’re looking directly into the camera — even when you’re reading something off-camera.

It’s been super helpful with more and more of the videos I produce.

Works great for talking head videos.

Another very useful AI tool in video editing that I used a lot was Adobe Enhance which does an amazing job at cleaning up bad audio and making it sound like it was recorded in a studio.

Adobe Enhance is now a feature inside Premiere Pro Beta! Yay!

And of course, you have AI tools that help you create short vertical clips on the fly. I tested a couple of them, but the production level is not quite there yet. Maybe they’ll get better next year.

AI has evolved from a “helpful tool” to an essential part of professional editing workflows. Tools like Eye Contact, Auto-Framing, and AI Re-Light have become standard features in major editors, dramatically reducing manual correction time for talking-head videos.

Adobe has now fully integrated its Enhance Speech, Noise Removal, and Reverb Control into Premiere Pro’s stable release — making studio-quality audio cleanup a one-click process even for smartphone recordings.

AI-driven clip generators (for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok) have improved significantly, now offering automatic punch-in cuts, keyword-based captions, silence removal, and even basic storytelling structures.

While still not perfect, they’re now reliable enough for first drafts and bulk content repurposing.

The biggest change is the rise of AI copilots inside editing software.

These assistants can now suggest cuts, remove filler words, identify highlight moments, and even produce alternate versions optimized for each platform’s algorithm — something that used to take hours of manual work.

4. Content Repurposing

Embracing content repurposing and cross-posting remains pivotal in video editing trends for the future, providing significant benefits for businesses.

You just produce more content at minimal costs.

Video content repurposing involves taking existing video content and adapting it for use in different formats, platforms, or contexts.

If you’re working with recorded webinars, check out this guide on how to edit a Zoom recording to optimize your content for various platforms.

Instead of creating entirely new videos from scratch, content creators can repurpose their existing material to reach new audiences or reinforce key messages.

This may include video editing, reformatting, or extracting specific segments from an original video to create shorter clips, compilations, or variations tailored for various platforms such as social media, websites, or presentations.

Repurposing allows creators to maximize the value of their content, increase visibility, and maintain a consistent message across diverse channels.

Many businesses now produce a single “pillar video” each week and repurpose it into 20–40 micro-assets across YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even podcast format.

AI-powered repurposing tools can now detect highlights, generate hook variations, auto-caption clips, and even rewrite titles and descriptions optimized for each platform’s algorithm.

Multi-platform editing templates have also risen in popularity, allowing editors to maintain consistent branding across all vertical and horizontal formats without rebuilding assets from scratch.

Repurposing has shifted from a productivity trick to a core growth strategy, especially for brands competing in saturated niches where consistency and omnipresence lead to higher engagement and faster audience growth.

5. Text-based video editing

In this past year, text-based video editing has become more powerful than ever.

Even inside Premiere Pro, for each clip in your timeline, if I check out the text tab, you’ll see that it automatically transcribes everything.

But here is the cool part. You can edit a talking head video by selecting and deleting any repeated takes or unwanted text, and all the changes will reflect inside of the timeline as well. Like a regular cut. Now this is extremely convenient.

Trust me as a video editing agency owner and working with a lot of video editors, I know that firsthand.

But it gets even more convenient because now inside Premiere Pro, you can also automatically detect filler words like “uhm”, so you can easily select all of them and delete them.

And the same with the long pauses. You can detect the pauses from the settings and it’s just a quick way to delete all of them and easily tighten up your videos.

It still needs a human touch here and there, but it does save a lot of video editing time.

Text-based editing has matured into one of the fastest-growing workflows in professional video production.

Tools like Premiere Pro, Descript, and DaVinci Resolve now include near-perfect AI transcription with speaker labeling, auto-punctuation, and multi-language support built directly into the timeline.

Editors can now generate rough cuts entirely from the transcript, including auto-removing rambling segments, repetitive phrasing, false starts, and dead air.

These systems have become so accurate that many agencies now use text-first editing to produce first drafts within minutes.

AI “Smart Cut” features can detect topic shifts, emotional tone, and pacing issues, recommending where to shorten or restructure talking-head segments to improve viewer retention.

While a human editor is still essential for storytelling and polish, text-based workflows now eliminate 50–70% of manual timeline scrubbing — making them a must-have for high-volume content creators, YouTubers, and businesses producing weekly videos.

6. Animated captions

Let’s delve into the current exploding trend, particularly in the realm of social video, vertical reels, and TikToks – the integration of animated captions.

While adding captions to videos has been crucial for about a decade, their stylization and stabilization have gained significant traction this year.

As you may be aware, Premiere Pro facilitates automatic transcription and caption generation within your timeline. Although you can stylize these captions, Premiere Pro lacks built-in animation presets.

This is where plugins become invaluable. SubMachine is a great example, it utilizes Premiere’s Text panel to initially transcribe the footage.

Once your sequence is transcribed, click on the three dots at the top right, select “Create Captions,” and this is where Sub Machine requires more involvement.

Under preferences, adjust the caption length and duration to the lowest, opt for single lines with the captions created, and meticulously proofread the captions for accuracy. Ensure each line contains only one word, and the text timing aligns with the video.

This meticulous preparation is essential because SubMachine utilizes this data to animate each word individually. Export all captions to an SRT file by clicking on the three dots again.

The benefit here is that Premiere Pro allows offline transcription, eliminating the need for an internet connection.

Now, within the SubMachine plugin panel, after installation, you’ll notice two boxes.\

Drag the SRT captions file into the first box and import a motion file with the desired animation into the second box.

SubMachine offers various animation styles and frame rates to match your sequence frame rates. Customize your animations based on your preferences or branding.

For a simpler option, Auto Cut can be a suitable alternative.

It performs tasks like removing silences and zooming in, and recently, it added auto-captions.

Unlike Sub Machine, you need an internet connection for transcription, but it happens automatically.

Export your entire edit as one video clip, place it in the timeline, open the Auto Cut panel, select auto-captions, choose your language, and customize as needed.

Auto Cut streamlines the process as it eliminates dealing with SRT files, making it a preferred option for those seeking a straightforward approach.

However, SubMachine offers more animation controls and customization options, especially if you want to create custom looks in After Effects.

If you prefer not to caption directly in Premiere Pro, consider exporting your video and using a tool like “The Script” for animated captions.

Additionally, the app mentioned earlier that aligns iSight directly to the camera offers a convenient option to caption directly on your phone, with unique styles to choose from.

Animated captions remain one of the strongest retention boosters for TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts.

Premiere Pro added a few basic caption animation presets, but most editors still rely on tools like SubMachine, AutoCut, Captions.ai, and Descript for faster, AI-powered kinetic text.

These tools now auto-style key phrases, sync animations to speech, and apply brand colors, making captioned vertical content perform significantly better across platforms.

7. AI-Powered Auto-Editing Workflows

AI has evolved from simple assistance to full workflow automation.

Editors now use tools that automatically generate rough cuts, remove mistakes, add B-roll, and even create versions for multiple platforms.

Human editors still polish the final cut, but AI now handles 40–70% of the time-consuming tasks.

AI tools can also:

• Auto-create short-form versions of long videos for TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts
• Reframe footage for multiple aspect ratios (9:16, 1:1, 16:9)
• Generate missing B-roll using AI video models
• Detect filler words, bad takes, and awkward pauses
• Identify and tag key moments (hooks, emotions, transitions, highlights)
• Apply consistent branding such as intros, lower thirds, captions, and color profiles
• Suggest pacing improvements based on viewer retention patterns
• Sync music automatically to cuts and beats

AI doesn’t replace editors — but it has become the ultimate assistant. It reduces project timelines dramatically.

Closing thoughts

Video editing continues to evolve rapidly, and staying ahead of the latest trends is essential if you want your content to stand out. While classic editing principles still matter, the tools, formats, and viewer expectations are changing faster than ever.

Short-form videos, vertical formats, AI-powered workflows, animated captions, and content repurposing are no longer “nice to have” — they’re becoming the foundation of modern digital content strategy. Whether you’re an editor, creator, brand, or business, adapting to these shifts will help you produce more engaging, accessible, and scalable video content.