We're Rewriting Auto-Editor in Nim!

Today, I’m announcing that we’re rewriting Auto-Editor from scratch in Nim! This is a major shift for the project, and I wanted to share why we’re making this change and what it means for users.

Why Nim?

After years of maintaining Auto-Editor in Python, we’ve hit some fundamental limitations. While Python has served us well for rapid prototyping and development, performance bottlenecks have increasingly become a barrier for interesting new features.

Nim offers the perfect balance for our needs: it compiles to efficient native code like C or Rust, but maintains a Python-like syntax that’s approachable. The language’s focus on performance without sacrificing developer ergonomics makes it ideal for a tool that needs to process large media files quickly while remaining maintainable.

Some key advantages we’re seeing:

• Performance: We’re observing a 2-10x speed improvement compared to the Python version.
• Cross-platform compilation: Easier distribution of native binaries
• Safety: Safer than C or Cython, but still allows escape hatches if better performance is needed
• Maintainability: Clean syntax that’s easier to reason about than the equivalent C/C++

What This Means for Users

The core functionality and command-line interface will remain largely the same. Our goal is to maintain backward compatibility wherever possible, so your existing workflows and scripts should continue to work.

Roadmap

Once 1.0 is complete, all Nim code will be moved over to the main repository, and the Python version will be deprecated. Here’s our planned timeline:

Phase 1 (Current - v0.5): Core audio processing and silence detection

• Implementing the info and desc commands (completed)
• audio and motion analysis functionality
• Implementing the levels subdump commands
• Basic support for manipulating timelines

Phase 2 (v0.6 - v0.8): Video processing and advanced features

• Supporting all XML timeline exports
• Supporting media rendering

Phase 3 (v0.9 - v1.0): Polish and compatibility

• Performance optimizations
• Comprehensive testing
• Documentation updates

Post-1.0: The Nim version becomes the primary Auto-Editor - All Nim code will be moved to WyattBlue/auto-editor

Getting Involved

You can download nim-auto-editor now, although it’s still in alpha.

If you’re interested in contributing to the Nim rewrite, we’d love your help! The codebase is still small enough to understand quickly, making it a great time to get involved. We’re particularly looking for:

• Nim developers familiar with multimedia processing
• Testers willing to try the alpha builds on different platforms

You can find the nim-auto-editor repository at WyattBlue/nim-auto-editor.

The Future

This rewrite represents more than just a performance improvement—it’s a chance to rebuild Auto-Editor’s architecture with everything we’ve learned over the years. We’re excited about the possibilities this opens up, from interesting new analysis methods to more sophisticated rendering algorithms.

While change can be risky, we believe this transition will position Auto-Editor for years of continued growth and improvement. The combination of Nim’s characteristics and our accumulated experience should result in a tool that’s both more powerful and more pleasant to use.

Stay tuned for more updates as we progress through the roadmap.

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