Apexedit

Native desktop video editor — multi-track timeline, real-time preview, FFmpeg export.

Built with Tauri 2 + Rust + React (Next.js). Runs as a real Windows app — no browser limits.

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Features

Timeline

• Multi-track — video + audio tracks, add/remove/mute/reorder freely
• Clip trimming — drag left/right trim handles to resize clips
• Drag & drop — drag media from library onto timeline, reorder clips between tracks
• Automatic ripple — clips shift when neighbours are moved
• Snap to grid — smart snapping at configurable intervals
• Zoom — scroll to zoom in/out on the timeline (pixels per second)

Preview

• Real-time canvas — WebGL compositing via HTML5 video elements
• Scrub — click anywhere on the progress bar to seek
• Playback controls — play/pause, rewind, timecode display
• Zoom — scale preview from 25% to 400%
• Fullscreen — one-click fullscreen mode

Media Import

• Native file picker — powered by @tauri-apps/plugin-dialog
• Supported formats: MP4, WebM, MKV, MOV, AVI, WMV, FLV, MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, AAC, M4A
• Thumbnails — auto-generated from each media file on import
• Waveform — audio waveform extracted and displayed on clips

Effects & Transitions

• Filters — brightness, contrast, saturation, blur (per-clip)
• Fades — fade in / fade out per clip (configurable duration)
• Transitions — dissolve, wipe-left, wipe-right between adjacent clips
• Keyframes — animate volume, opacity, position over time
• Text overlays — custom text with font, size, color, opacity

Export

Mode	Description	Formats
Quick	Real-time canvas capture via MediaRecorder	WebM (VP8, VP9)
FFmpeg	Frame-by-frame rendering + FFmpeg encoding	H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9, AV1

• Resolution: 480p / 720p / 1080p / 4K
• Bitrate: 4 / 8 / 16 / 40 Mbps
• Frame rate: 24 / 30 / 60 / 120 fps

Audio

• Multi-clip mixing via rodio (symphonia under the hood)
• Play / pause / seek / stop
• Per-clip volume control
• Speed control (0.25× – 4×)
• Trim in/out points per clip

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Space	Play / Pause
J	Rewind 5s
K	Pause
L	Forward 5s
I	Set in point
O	Set out point
C	Split clip at playhead
Delete / Backspace	Remove selected clip(s)
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z	Redo
Escape	Clear in/out points

Other

• Frameless window — custom titlebar with drag region, min/max/close buttons
• Undo / Redo — 50-step history stack
• Auto-save — project state saved to %APPDATA%/Apexedit/ every 30 seconds
• Hotkeys — full keyboard-driven workflow

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Desktop shell	Tauri 2
Backend	Rust (tokio, serde, rodio, image 0.25, symphonia 0.5)
Frontend	Next.js 16 (React 19, TypeScript)
State management	Zustand 5 + Rust IPC
Video encoding	ffmpeg CLI (optional, detected in PATH)

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• Rust (latest stable)
• pnpm (npm i -g pnpm)
• ffmpeg (optional — for FFmpeg export mode)

Install dependencies

pnpm install

Run in development mode

pnpm tauri dev

Build for production

pnpm tauri build

Output will be in src-tauri/target/release/:

• apexedit.exe — standalone portable binary
• bundle/msi/Apexedit_*_x64_en-US.msi — MSI installer
• bundle/nsis/Apexedit_*_x64-setup.exe — NSIS installer

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Project Structure

apexedit/
├── app/                    # Next.js app router (pages, layout)
├── components/
│   └── video-editor/       # React components: Timeline, PreviewPlayer, MediaLibrary, ExportPanel, ClipInspector
├── lib/
│   ├── video-editor/       # Types, utilities
│   ├── editor-store.ts     # Web proxy to Rust store
│   └── tauri.ts            # Tauri IPC wrappers
├── src-tauri/
│   └── src/
│       ├── main.rs         # Entry point
│       ├── lib.rs          # Tauri app setup, command registration
│       ├── models.rs       # Shared data types (Clip, Track, TimelineState, etc.)
│       ├── store.rs        # EditorStore — in-memory state + undo/redo
│       ├── render.rs       # Software frame compositing
│       ├── media.rs        # Media parsing via ffmpeg (thumbnails, waveform, frame extraction)
│       ├── audio.rs        # Audio mixer using rodio
│       ├── export.rs       # Video export via ffmpeg pipe
│       └── commands.rs     # 30+ Tauri commands
├── public/                 # Static assets
├── package.json
└── Cargo.toml

Architecture Overview

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           Frontend (React)              │
│  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────────────────┐ │
│  │ Timeline │  │   PreviewPlayer      │ │
│  │ (clips,  │  │   (canvas compositing│ │
│  │  tracks) │  │    + playback loop)  │ │
│  └────┬─────┘  └──────────┬───────────┘ │
│       └────────┬──────────┘              │
│         editor-store.ts                   │
│        (useSyncExternalStore)            │
└───────────────┬─────────────────────────┘
                │ invoke()
┌───────────────┴─────────────────────────┐
│           Backend (Rust)                │
│  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────┐  ┌──────────┐  │
│  │  store   │  │media │  │  export  │  │
│  │ (state + │  │(ffmpeg│  │(ffmpeg  │  │
│  │  undo)   │  │ parse)│  │  pipe)  │  │
│  └────┬─────┘  └──────┘  └──────────┘  │
│       │                                   │
│  ┌────┴─────┐  ┌──────────────────────┐  │
│  │  render  │  │     audio (rodio)    │  │
│  │composite │  │   multi-clip mixer   │  │
│  └──────────┘  └──────────────────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

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License

MIT