# Let Claude edit your video — connecting Claude Desktop / Claude Code to VideoBuff > How to ask Claude, from Claude Desktop or Claude Code, to edit in VideoBuff: cutting, trimming the silence at the start and end of clips, adding text, adjusting color and making animations — with Claude checking the actual frames as it goes. Covers setup, example requests, limits, and what Claude gets to see. _Last updated: 2026-10-11 · First published: 2026-10-11_ ## Edit yourself, or hand it to Claude Once Claude is connected to VideoBuff, you can ask for edits in chat. - **Tedious work in one go** — "trim the silence at the start and end of each clip," "make every title the same size," "lay out the photos at 3 seconds each with dissolves between them" - **Polishing the look** — "warmer colors for this scene," "bring the narration up so it's easy to hear" - **Making animations** — GSAP titles and diagrams, three.js 3D logos. Your own photos, logos (SVG) and [3D models (.glb, from Blender or elsewhere)](/en/guides/blender-3d-models) can go into the animation too — just tell Claude where the files are. To revise a finished animation, ask for it: "change the color," "make it 2 seconds longer." See the ["Animations by Claude" guide](/en/guides/motion-graphics) **Anything you can do in the editor, you can ask Claude to do.** Cutting, trimming and arranging; text; color (including presets and ✨ Auto); volume, EQ and the compressor (including Auto); drop shadows and perspective on images; separating video from its audio; and captions transcribed from speech (karaoke captions too — for captions in another language, such as English, Claude translates the lines and rewrites them). Say "the clip I've selected" or "from here," and Claude knows your selection and playhead. Media you've imported in the editor is available to Claude as is. After each change Claude looks at the result itself, checking that text fits and colors land where intended. If something's off, just say "a bit brighter." Manual editing works the whole time. Your mouse and keyboard keep working while Claude edits, and Undo reverses Claude's changes one step at a time. Claude can only operate VideoBuff while its tab is open. ## Setup: Claude Desktop The Claude Desktop extension works on macOS and Windows. Make sure Claude Desktop is running. 1. Open the VideoBuff editor in Chrome, Edge or Firefox and click "Connect to Claude" at the top (Safari is not supported) 2. In the panel that opens, use "Download .mcpb" to download the extension file 3. Double-click the downloaded file and Claude Desktop installs it as an extension (you can also choose "Install Extension…" in Claude Desktop and select the file) 4. Back in the panel, press "Connect to Claude" under "Start the connection". On the explanation screen, press "Next (go to the browser prompt)", and when your browser asks to "Access other apps and services on this device", choose "Allow". This permission only lets the browser talk to the extension on your computer, and it's remembered for videobuff.app 5. When the Claude dot in the editor turns green, you're connected. Start asking in Claude Desktop's chat When a new version ships, a notice appears in the same panel. Double-click the new .mcpb the same way and it replaces the old one. If the connection doesn't come back, quitting and reopening Claude Desktop usually fixes it. To stop the integration, press "Disconnect" in the panel. ![The panel that opens from the Claude button in the toolbar: before connecting (left) with the two steps, Download .mcpb and Connect to Claude, and after connecting (right) with a green dot on the button and "Connected to Claude"](https://videobuff.app/guides/claude-integration/connect-popover-en.webp) _Left: before connecting — install the extension, then press Connect to Claude. Right: once connected, the dot on the button turns green_ ## Setup: Claude Code Using it from Claude Code requires Node.js 20 or later. A .mcpb file is a zip; unpack it and you'll find `dist/index.js`. Register that with Claude Code: `claude mcp add videobuff -- node /path/to/unpacked/dist/index.js` On the editor side, do the same as for Claude Desktop: press "Connect to Claude" under "Start the connection" in the panel and allow the browser permission. Then, with the VideoBuff tab open, ask Claude Code something like "put every video in this folder on the timeline" and the edit runs from your terminal — handy when you want to combine it with file housekeeping or other commands. Claude Desktop and Claude Code can both be connected and operate the same editor. ## Example requests Ask in everyday words, in English or Japanese. - "Trim the silence at the start and end of every clip" - "Lay out all the photos I imported at 3 seconds each, with 0.5-second dissolves between them" - "Give just this scene a warm, evening look" - "Add captions to this video, karaoke style, so the spoken word changes color" - "Open with a 5-second intro where the logo spins in" Requests for cutting, color, sound, text, images, speed and animation are collected in [What you can ask Claude to do](/en/guides/claude-edit-requests). **Tips** - One step at a time is more reliable than everything at once ("cut first," then "now the titles") - "Make it look good" works, but adding the scene and your taste ("calm colors," "snappy pacing") gets closer to what you want - If something's off, just say so — Undo reverses any change **You do the export**: it needs a resolution and a save location, so Claude opens the export dialog (it can pre-select settings such as the resolution) and you press the final button. Importing works the same way — Claude opens the file picker. Or tell Claude where the files are and it can import them from there. ![A chat asking Claude to "trim the silence at the start and end of this clip," with the timeline before and after. Afterwards the clip is about 1.4 s shorter at the start and 0.9 s shorter at the end, and the flat parts of the audio waveform are gone](https://videobuff.app/guides/claude-integration/silence-trim-en.webp) _An example request. The chat is an example; the timelines on the right are a real result_ ## Limits - **Claude can't watch the video play** — it looks at still frames. Check smoothness and pacing yourself with a final playback - **Sound is judged by level and by text, not by listening** — Claude can tell where audio is silent or too loud, and it can read what's said by transcribing the speech into captions (the first run downloads a model and takes a few minutes). It can't tell how the music feels or the tone of a voice - **Pauses in the middle of speech can't be tightened in bulk** — what Claude trims in one go is the silence at the start and end of a clip. Short pauses in the middle are hard to find from the sound level, so tell it where to cut (around which second) - **It doesn't know your taste unless you say** — "make it cool" alone gets Claude's interpretation. Describing the feel or colors of a video you like gets closer - **Break up long sequences** — asking stage by stage is steadier than cramming "cut → text → color → export" into one request - **Closing the tab stops it** — Claude can only operate VideoBuff while its tab is open; it can't keep editing in the background - **Not in Safari** — Safari blocks web pages from talking to the extension on your computer. Use Chrome, Edge or Firefox. Projects and media are stored per browser, so import your media again in the other browser ## What Claude gets to see Your media files themselves never go to VideoBuff's servers, with or without Claude. All editing happens in your computer's browser. Files you have Claude import by location, and photos or 3D models used in animations, are passed straight from the extension on your computer to the browser — they don't go through your conversation with Claude. What Claude reads to do its work, however, becomes part of your conversation with Claude and is handled under Claude's (Anthropic's) data policies. That means: - The project name, the file names of imported media, and the clip list and durations - Text content, color settings and audio levels - The frames Claude looks at to check its work (normally small, downscaled stills) and small thumbnails of imported videos - The source of the animations Claude makes If there's footage you'd rather not show, edit that part by hand. One exception: when an animation Claude makes uses a font, the font name and the characters used are sent to Google Fonts (fonts for 3D lettering are fetched via VideoBuff's server). See the ["Animations by Claude" guide](/en/guides/motion-graphics) for details. Separately, anonymous usage statistics may be sent for improvement: tool names, success or failure, rough duration, the error message when something fails (with file locations, file names and the like masked), the extension and editor versions, whether the connected editor is the live site, OS type, and an anonymous per-device ID. They never include file contents, project names or text content. You can turn them off at any time with "Send anonymous usage stats" in Settings (the gear icon, top right of the editor). See the privacy policy for details.