How to Edit Videos With Codex (Just Tell It What to Do)

I started testing Codex as a video editor because I wanted to know what it could actually do—not what the feature list suggested it might do.

The answer surprised me. Codex can take a full-length video, edit it into a polished YouTube episode, create shorter clips, add captions and graphics, pull in B-roll, and help distribute the finished content. But there’s a catch: it won’t make creative decisions you haven’t explained.

Codex is capable of much more than basic cleanup. It just needs a clear destination, detailed instructions, the right assets, and feedback. Here’s the five-step process I’m using to move from raw footage to ready-to-publish video.

1. Start With the Finished Video in Mind

Codex will generally do the minimum amount of editing required by your prompt. If you upload a video and say, “Clean this up,” it may remove obvious problems and return the file. It probably won’t add animated captions, transitions, B-roll, music, chapter graphics, or a strong opening.

That isn’t a weakness. It’s a reasonable response to an unclear brief.

A human editor who only heard “clean this up” would have to guess what you meant. Should the video become a ten-minute YouTube episode? A thirty-second short? Five clips from a podcast? Should the pacing feel relaxed or aggressively tight?

Before I ask Codex to edit anything, I define the intended outcome:

• Where will the video be published?
• Who is it for?
• What length should it be?
• What editing style am I trying to emulate?
• What should the viewer feel or understand by the end?
• Which visual elements belong in the edit?

I often look at creators whose work I admire and take notes on the details I want to borrow: the size and movement of their captions, how they open a video, where they use B-roll, how often they cut, or how they use graphics to break up a talking head.

Screenshots can help too. If you like a particular title treatment or animated caption style, show Codex what you mean. You still need to explain what you want, but examples make the explanation more precise.

This is the same principle I’d use with a human editor: clarity is kindness. The more clearly I define the end state, the less guessing the editor—or the AI—has to do.

2. Describe the Edit Clearly

Once I know what I want, I tell Codex. The basic workflow is simple: drag in the video, describe the edit, and let it work.

The difficult part usually isn’t writing the prompt. It’s making the creative decisions before writing the prompt.

I might specify that I want a full YouTube edit with a strong opening, natural pacing, occasional B-roll, a short intro placed after the hook, chapter graphics, screen-recording zooms, and an outro at the end. I might also explain what not to do—for example, avoid cutting so tightly that the speaker sounds unnatural.

That level of direction matters because Codex can technically make many different versions of the same footage. It can produce a clean, understated edit or something much more energetic. It can use captions throughout the video or reserve them for the opening. It can add B-roll constantly or use only a few tasteful inserts.

Those are editorial decisions. Codex can execute them, but I still need to make them.

There’s also a practical reason to be thoughtful up front: repeated revisions use credits. During my first few projects, I had to go back and forth more than I expected because I was discovering what I wanted as I watched the results. That’s normal. I treat those early projects as a learning budget.

Over time, the goal is to turn the lessons into a reusable skill or process. Instead of rediscovering my preferences every time, I can document how I want Codex to approach a video.

If you’re still learning how to communicate with AI systems consistently, this idea connects to the broader STEP framework for getting more consistent results from AI: better inputs create more reliable outputs.

3. Give Codex Every Asset It Needs

A video editor can only use the materials you provide. Codex is no different.

The main footage is the obvious starting point, but I also need to think through the supporting assets:

• The A-roll or primary video file
• Intro and outro footage
• Screen recordings
• Still images
• Brand graphics
• Music or sound effects
• B-roll footage

For my own videos, I can give Codex access to a stock footage library through an API. I’ve used Pixabay for this. With the connection in place, Codex can search for relevant royalty-free footage and place it over the talking-head footage when instructed.

For example, if I’m discussing walking and talking with ChatGPT, Codex might find a short clip of someone walking while using a phone. I don’t want B-roll covering every sentence, but a few well-chosen inserts can keep the video from feeling visually flat.

The key is to specify the frequency and purpose. “Add B-roll” is vague. “Use occasional B-roll when it reinforces the point, but keep the speaker visible for most of the explanation” is much more useful.

The same goes for brand assets. If I want an intro after the opening hook instead of at the very beginning, I need to provide the intro and tell Codex where it belongs. If I have a preferred outro, it should be included from the start rather than added as an afterthought.

This is also where a reliable video studio setup helps. Better source footage gives the editor more to work with, but even basic footage can become much more watchable when the edit has structure and visual variety.

4. Review the First Pass and Give Specific Corrections

The first edit is rarely the final edit. My job at this stage is to watch carefully and explain what feels wrong.

One problem I noticed early was over-tight cutting. I asked Codex to keep the pacing natural instead of making the video sound like a string of jump cuts. The result went too far in the other direction: in a few places, it left too much space and clipped the end of a word. That created strange half-vowel sounds in the audio.

The fix wasn’t complicated. I described the problem and asked for another pass. The important thing was being specific.

“This doesn’t sound right” isn’t very actionable. A better correction would be: “Keep natural pauses between ideas, but don’t leave enough silence for the speaker to sound disconnected. Preserve the full beginning and ending of each word.”

I also review the visual choices. In one edit, Codex:

• Used large animated captions in the opening
• Created a graphic that organized the main sections
• Added subtle movement to the graphic background
• Inserted relevant B-roll from a stock library
• Added slow zooms during screen recordings
• Zoomed in at moments when I leaned toward the camera
• Placed the intro and outro in the right sections of the video

Some of those decisions were things I hadn’t explicitly expected it to do. That’s part of what makes the process interesting. I can set the direction, then evaluate the result and decide which choices are worth keeping.

AI doesn’t remove the need for taste. It gives me more versions to judge and more leverage to turn a rough idea into something publishable.

5. Build the Distribution Bridge

The editing itself is only one part of the content workflow. Once a video is finished, it still needs titles, descriptions, clips, scheduling, and distribution.

This is where Codex becomes more than a video editor.

I’ve created a process that takes a podcast episode, finds several potential clips, creates titles and supporting text, and schedules the clips through my social media system. The current schedule is one clip per day, usually at the next available slot around 8:30 in the morning.

Instead of treating the finished video as the end of the process, I treat it as the input for the next process.

That might include:

1. Identify three to five strong clips from the long-form video.
2. Format each clip for the intended platform.
3. Write a title or accompanying post.
4. Schedule the clips through the connected social media tool.
5. Record the reasoning behind each selection.

This is the kind of workflow that can make AI function like a podcast producer instead of just a transcription or editing utility.

Turn Publishing Into a Learning Loop

The most promising part of this process is the feedback loop.

For every clip, I can ask Codex to record its assumptions about why that clip should perform well for a specific audience—in my case, marketing directors and marketing leaders. Later, when the next batch of content is ready, it can review how previous clips performed and compare the results to those assumptions.

Over time, the strategy document can change.

If clips with a certain opening consistently perform better, the editing process should account for that. If a particular topic gets strong retention but weak clicks, that should influence the title and framing. If a style of caption helps short-form performance but distracts from long-form content, the strategy should distinguish between the two.

Most of us don’t document this nearly as well as we should. We glance at analytics, make a few guesses, and move on to the next piece of content. Codex can keep a running record of the reasoning, results, and adjustments.

That doesn’t mean it teaches itself in some magical, independent way. I still need to provide the metrics, approve the changes, and make sure the strategy is moving in the right direction. But it can maintain the loop far more consistently than I usually do manually.

This is the difference between automating a task and building a system. A task produces one edited video. A system improves the instructions used to produce the next one.

What Codex Still Needs From Me

Codex can edit a full video, but it doesn’t replace the person responsible for the message.

I still need to decide what the video is about, who it serves, what tone fits the audience, and which creative choices support the point. I need to notice when an edit technically works but feels wrong. I need to reject a visual that’s flashy but distracting.

That human layer matters even more as AI-generated editing becomes easier. If everyone can produce clean captions, smooth zooms, and polished graphics, those elements become table stakes. The differentiator is the idea, the judgment behind the edit, and the ability to make the video feel intentional.

Codex gives me leverage. It doesn’t give me taste automatically.

For marketers who want a broader framework for that distinction, I’ve written about the human edge that keeps marketers valuable in an AI-heavy workflow.

A Practical Starting Checklist

If you want to test this workflow, don’t begin with your most important production. Choose one video and work through the following checklist:

• Define the final format, audience, platform, and length.
• Collect examples of editing styles you want to emulate.
• Write the instructions before uploading the footage.
• Provide the A-roll, intro, outro, graphics, and any B-roll sources.
• Ask for a first pass with clear constraints.
• Review the edit for pacing, audio, visual rhythm, and accuracy.
• Give specific corrections rather than general dissatisfaction.
• Document the decisions that worked.
• Connect the finished video to clips, copy, scheduling, and analytics.
• Update the strategy based on actual performance.

My current experiments are still early, but the direction is clear. Codex can take on a much larger part of the video workflow than I initially expected. The strongest results come when I stop treating it like a button that magically edits footage and start treating it like a capable collaborator that needs a well-defined brief.

Start with the destination. Give it the assets. Review the work. Teach the process what good looks like. Then connect the edit to distribution so every published video helps improve the next one.

The conversation explores the process of using OpenAI's Codex for video editing, covering key steps from defining the end goal to executing the editing process and reviewing the final output. It also delves into the potential for Codex to facilitate distribution and create a learning loop for improving editing strategies. Takeaways Codex's video editing capabilities extend from defining the end goal to executing the editing process. Codex can facilitate distribution and create a learning loop for improving editing strategies. Chapters 00:00 Exploring Codex's Video Editing Capabilities 01:23 Starting with the End in Mind 03:13 Describing the Editing Instructions 04:04 Giving Access to Assets 05:33 Making Corrections and Providing Feedback 06:58 Building the Bridge for Distribution 08:25 Learning Loop and Strategy Documentation 10:04 Executing the Editing Process 11:26 Reviewing the Edited Video

Dan Sanchez: OpenAI's Codex is full of tips and features that you probably don't even know about. In fact, one of the ones that I am sure that you haven't tried yet, or are at least underutilizing, is Codex's ability to edit video. Yes, full video. Not just shorts, but long form video and shorts and everything in between. It can do it with you just dragging the file into Codex and telling it what to do. So, in this episode, I want to walk you through my five-step process that I'm using to take files from raw footage into ready to publish videos. Welcome back to the AI Driven Marketer. I'm Dan Sanchez. My friends call me Danchez. And I could probably record a year's worth of content on all the little hidden things that Codex has and things that are yet to be discovered. Even if OpenAI decided to stop developing ⁓ ChatGPT and the Codex harness and everything, yet we know they're gonna continue to develop it. So there's always stuff to talk about when it comes to all the things we can do with this AI tool. So let's jump into it. Step number one is starting with the end in mind. While Codex is actually pretty dang good at editing editing video, it will only do what you ask it to do. So it will always do the minimum amount of editing. Sure, if you give it a video and say, Hey, clean this up, it's not gonna apply any fat fancy captions, it's not gonna add any transitions or audio or b roll. No, it's not gonna do any of that. It's just going to clean it up and give it back to you. Which is kind of fair. Now, if you gave it to a really good video editor who's also kind of like a producer, what my my bro even calls a predator, a producer editor, ⁓ Those guys will take it a much step farther and rearrange it and do all kinds of stuff. And Codex can do that too, but you kind of have to know what you're going for. What's the end state of this video? Where is this video going? What kind of edits do you want to make? Do you want to stra take it way down? Is it going to be a ⁓ a 10-minute YouTube video? Is it gonna be a 30-second short? You need to specify that. Do you want to take this one podcast video and turn it into five shorts? How do you qualify it? You kind of have to know what you want when it comes to codex. So If you don't know already, take some time to find some inspiration. What's a YouTuber you admire, a podcaster? What kinds of clips are you seeing out there? And what kind of styles are they using? Take them. Take down notes about what you want to ha ⁓ emulate from them. Maybe even take some screenshots if you particularly like their captions or their titles or how they're using an animation of some kind. And just know that you're gonna have to explain it all to Codex so that it knows. And that look let's be honest, that's fair, right? If we want if we're delegating this to a human editor, we'd have to do the same thing. Clarity is kindness, they say, and you you need to be kind to your chat GPT assistant here. Step number two, after you have the end in mind and you actually know what you want, you need to describe it. And you just have to tell it. It's that easy. Like you literally just drag and drop the video in there and then just give it the instructions. I haven't even gotten to the point yet where I've developed a skill. Unlike what to watch for as a a AI video editor, that's probably next. I'm next level is me developing a skill so that it always keeps a few editing tricks and best practices in mind. That would be even better. But literally just telling it what you want. You took the notes on the front end. The first step was the harder part of actually figuring out what you want, but the second step is just clearly communicating that to AI. And sure, you could communicate a bit and then let it do all the editing and then go back and give it some more and then let it do the editing again, but that's not ideal because you're gonna blow through a lot of credits. Now, your first couple of times you might have to try and then realize ⁓ what you wanted was actually different and go back and forth with it, and that's fine. The first couple of videos you make with Codex is gonna take quite a few credits as you figure out what you want. It's not because of its lack of capability, it's because you just haven't figured out what you want yet, and that's okay. Spend it. Call it a learning budget if you want. But all you have to do is step one, define what you want. And then step two, clearly communicate it in your prompt. Step three is actually just giving it access to the assets it needs. It's the same thing a video editor would need. You gotta give it the assets. You gotta give it, of course, the A role, the main video file. But you have to ask yourself, like, do I want other things in here? Do I want do I do do I wanna give it some stills? Do I wanna give it a screen recording? Do it does it do I want B-roll in it? Believe it or not, you can actually give it access to To B-roll a whole stock library of video footage to overlap B-roll, and then you could say how much you want of B-roll you want in the video. Do you want it to be often? Do you want them to be long? Do you just want a few tasteful pieces of B-roll where it makes sense, which is what I do? ⁓ You can give it access ⁓ to sites like Pixelbay, which is free. You just go to pixelbay.com, sign up with your free account, and get your API in there. If you don't know how to get the API, just ask Chad, it'll walk you through step by step. It's literally just a little code that's unique to you. You give it to chat and chat can poll using the API to go and search and find the B-roll it needs to add on top of your video. Yes, it's that good. But you got to think about that stuff ahead of time before you commit that prompt. And you gotta give it just drag and drop it into the chat where you're giving it access to all the assets you know it's gonna need. For my own podcast, that's giving it things like the intro and outro video, the main footage, and access to that API for some B-roll. Step number four is to make corrections because Chances are, unless you've done it a few times, you're always gonna have to give some kind of feedback. For example, one of the things I found early on is I was like, hey, edit it without making it sound jump cutty, you know, where it's just like cut, cut, cut, cut, and there's like no pause in between speaking or in between different words because it's been cut too tight. That's something that codex can do. So I said, hey, cut it with good pacing. So there's natural pauses in between. But the first edit I got back, it was it was giving a little bit too much space. So it actually clip the end of one word and you might get this sound because of one word that it clipped wrong. You know, it gave a little bit too much space and caught it wrong. ⁓ and there would be these random little half vowels ⁓ amongst me speaking. So, you know, things like that happen sometimes. That's okay. You just explain it and then let it take another pass. The Ken, the first couple of times you do this, you will have to give it more feedback, and that's okay. But the more you go throughout this process, the more you'll learn the little nuances and And then you can just build a whole document about how you want it to move from you giving it all the assets and what editing process to use in order to give you the final file that you are happy with. Step five is where this really gets fun. So all the things we've talked about will deliver the media. But what's cool about Codex is it can go a step farther and it can actually build the bridge for dis distribution. So what you want to do here is imagine. where this thing's gonna go. You're not just editing this video for funsies. You're not just putting it there so that you can watch it and enjoy it yourself. No, you want other people to watch this, right? So where is it going? What's the end destination? Is there multiple destinations? You want to think about that because Codex can help you do it so that when you approve it, it goes to where it needs to go and you don't have to do a thing. This is what I've done and part of my process ⁓ that I've already created a skill for I just say clips and I will drag and drop my podcast episode. It will go through and make all the clips, usually three to five clips, depending on how long the video is. And it will go through, make the clips, give me all the titles and text to go along with each clip, and then go through my high-level accounts API in order to schedule them on social media according to the schedule that I want to see, which is one a day, ⁓ scheduled around 8 30 in the morning and wherever the next blank spot where there's no clip scheduled that schedules the next one out to push it out. As long as it can go. And that's pretty simple. But it even goes a step farther. I say, hey, every time you edit a clip, log your assumptions about each clip about why the clip will perform well on social media for insert target audience, which is, you know, marketing directors, right? Or marketing leaders. And then when you upload the next batch of content, go back and review how the past ones performed and check it against your assumptions. As you learn what performs and what doesn't perform, go ahead and update the strategy doc that guides each initial set of edits that you make for clips. Imagine that. You can actually build a whole learning loop inside a codex with something like clips. Because with access to high level, which tracks and stores all the analytics and actually can schedule things out. It has a very robust social media tool. Codex can actually teach itself how to edit better, how to find more engaging clips, how to rearrange the clips so that they actually perform better each time. Think about how powerful that is. We're s I'm still in the early stages of the learning cycle for it, but I'm very optimistic about it because I've seen it go learn and then change the strategy doc, which it references every single time that it makes edits now. So I'll report back on how that process is going. But if you think about it in terms of a loop, AI is very capable of leaving notes for itself as it learns. How many of us take the time to log those kind of details when it comes to actually tracking and making the most of our social media? Even as somebody who knows how to grow social media, I was just always glancing at it and kind of guessing. But having a systematic approach is even better. So think about how to build out a loop. It's as simple as telling codecs what you want to do and then maybe turning it into a process. So every time you execute this skill or that skill or say, hey, run this process. We've already documented it, it's going to run through the whole process. And once you approve the video and just tell it, hey, this video is done, it'll actually be able to go through and make the improvements. So you can see I am here in my Codex app. And if you download the ChatGPT Mac for app and want to switch to Codex, just know that there's a little toggle over here on the left-hand side where you can go from ChatGPT to Codex. And I do recommend Codex because Codex is going to be more proactive and go to action mode versus chat's going to be more contemplative and help you brainstorm things. So ⁓ here I'm in Codex and I went through a long process of just giving it the video file. I gave it a long prompt. Telling it what I wanted it to do. And we went back and forth ⁓ when I got to this edit that you see on the right hand side here. ⁓ but I would tell it, it would ask me questions, I'd give it some more answers, I'd watch multiple videos and finally got to the point where I felt really good about it. But let me show you again, if you're listening to this, I'll be talking about what I see. But if you want to see it for yourself, just go to YouTube and watch this video, and then you can actually see what it is. Because there's something about seeing what other people do. That can spark ideas in your own head of what to try. Now now you know what it's possible now. I think that's a big part of what we need to see is there's things that we don't even know is possible with Codex. And that's what I'm trying to report here. Show you give you a taste of what's possible so that you can know and then confidently tell Codex to do it, knowing that it could do it for your video too. If it could do it for mine, it could do it for yours. So I'm gonna go ahead and press play on this video and then kind of talk about what I'm seeing here and why it's so exciting. Can you see the captions just flying across the screen? I've noticed a lot of YouTubers, especially in the intro, are doing these animated captions that are really big and bold and are kind of like flying up with each word, ⁓ kind of pulling from the shorts world, but just for the intro. So I did the same here. It even cut it up and you didn't even notice there was a cut there. And of course it puts in my intro, which I just gave it and said, hey, instead of putting at the beginning, let's put it just past the intro since it's short and sweet and makes a good segue. From the intro into the main body where the text stops and we have something different going on. And there it is. We have it we have a full screen graphic that kind of orients you to the video with the four main I don't know chapter markers. I didn't even have it broken up into four steps. It just kind of created it and then created this nice little background graphic. It even has some subtle motion in the background that's moving a little bit. It's essentially a well-designed ⁓ like slide deck background where it's cutting to. I've noticed lots of YouTubers are using this to kind of break up just the talking head. And c Codex does this really well. If you're looking at it, it's like, man, this looks really good. It does this really easily. It can do it on top the video too. So I've experimented with that but found this full page was actually pretty nice, so I kept that. So I'm gonna go ahead and kind of scrub here and go to where if I can find it. There's actually some ⁓ there it was. I kind of went past it fast, but there was actually some B roll footage it found from Pixel Bay of someone just walking and typing on their cell phone as I talked about walking and talking to Chat GPT. It's just a nice little touch for it to go and add these little B roll pieces and add it from a royalties-free website like Pixel Bay. There's actually multiple sites you can connect it to. I just went with Pixel Bay as the first one that worked. And it was great. Look at this little B-roll inserted here. There's another place in the video where it had the B roll and did a good job there. The other thing I really liked that it did with was like these slow zooms as I was walking through my screen flow, it would know to zoom into certain parts of the screen as I had left other parts of the screen where now had a more focused thing going on. And it did this multiple times and it's slow as I'm scrubbing through. You can see kind of the motion of the the screen share kind of moving in, but it's thoughtful. And that's what I love about it, because there's multiple times where it's zooming in on just these this or that. It even zoomed in on my face a few times as I leaned in and did something a little bit more I don't know, intimate or a little bit more intentional was I leaned in and actually leaned into the camera and it would zoom in to even enhance the effect of me leaning into it. And that's the kind of stuff that I didn't realize it was capable of and starlight until I really started pushing it and trying to make a podcast an actual YouTube video. ⁓ and of course right at the end of the video it added my outro like I usually have it at the end of this episode. So I w just wanted to show you real quick what this can look like. Codex is capable of so much more than just coming up with content or coding. It can actually be a full blown video editor. I will certainly be using Codex to edit this episode. So while I used it as a test to edit last week's episode, that is not what actually got published. This week's episode was edited fully by Codex itself. So I have to ask, how did it do?