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We believe video intelligence
should run on your machine.
Not on someone else's server. Not behind a login wall. Not metered by the minute. The silicon in your PC is the most powerful creative tool ever built - and the entire SaaS industry exists to make you forget that.
[01] The Problem
Every year, video editing tools get more powerful - and more dependent on infrastructure you don't own. Your footage travels to a data center. A model on a GPU farm analyzes it. The result is streamed back. You pay per minute, per render, per export.
The pitch is always the same: "Let us handle the hard stuff." But the hard stuff is already sitting in your PC. Your hardware runs the same class of CLIP vision model that cloud tools bill you per-image to use. That NVMe drive? It reads 7 GB/s - faster than any cloud download. The only thing missing is software that respects the hardware you already paid for.
[02] Our Answer
Onset Engine is a kinetic orchestration engine. It analyzes your footage using 768-dimensional CLIP vectors, maps your music track into beats, energy curves, and drop zones, then assembles a mathematically optimal edit using customizable presets and drivers - all locally. No files leave your machine. No internet connection required after activation.
OpenCLIP ViT-L/14 running locally - GPU-accelerated when available, fully functional on CPU. Every frame gets a 768-dim embedding. The engine doesn't guess - it calculates.
librosa decomposes your track into beats, onsets, and energy envelopes. Silent tails are auto-trimmed. Drops are detected. Cuts snap to musical precision within ±200ms.
JSON files define what "intensity" means for your genre. Contrastive scoring ensures tier specificity - not just raw similarity. Content-agnostic by design.
Chunked, memory-safe rendering with hardware encoding when available (NVENC, AMF). 4K footage on standard hardware. No swapping. No crashes. No cloud queue.
[03] What We Believe
Software shouldn't be a landlord.
Onset Engine is a one-time purchase. You own the binary. No monthly fees, no watermark extortion, no "upgrade to keep exporting." Pay once, render forever.
Your footage is not training data.
We never see your files. The AI runs locally. There is no telemetry, no analytics, no "anonymous usage data." The only thing that ever leaves your machine is a license check - it verifies your key (never your footage, projects, or usage) and works fully offline in between.
Your hardware is underutilized.
Your CPU and GPU aren't just for gaming. They run the same transformer architectures that power billion-dollar AI services. We just cut out the middleman.
Composability beats features.
Presets are JSON. Drivers are JSON. The database is SQLite. The timeline exports to OpenTimelineIO. Every piece of Onset Engine is designed to plug into your existing workflow, not replace it.
[04] The Technical Stance
We don't compete with VC-funded cloud platforms on general-purpose editing. We stay in our moat: local-first CLIP vector search + beat-synced compositing. That's where the math is defensible, the user experience is differentiated, and the product can be maintained by a small team building on SQLite and FFmpeg - not Kubernetes and Stripe metering.
OpenCLIP ViT-L/14 Vision embeddings librosa Beat detection + energy mapping MoviePy + FFmpeg Chunked rendering NVENC Hardware encoding MPV Zero-latency DJ playback SQLite Local vector database Decord Fast frame sampling OpenTimelineIO NLE interop [05] Who We Are
Onset Engine is built by Onset SAS, a small indie studio based in France. We're a tight team of engineers and creators who got tired of watching powerful hardware sit idle while cloud platforms charged by the minute. We build professional creative tools that respect your machine, your footage, and your wallet - no VC funding, no growth-at-all-costs roadmap, just software that does exactly what it promises.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Onset Engine?
Onset Engine is a local-first AI video editing tool that automatically syncs your footage to music. It uses OpenCLIP vision AI and librosa beat detection to analyze your clips and audio, then assembles beat-matched edits entirely on your hardware. No cloud processing, no subscriptions - just one app that turns raw footage into polished edits.
Who makes Onset Engine?
Onset Engine is developed by Onset SAS, an independent software company based in France. We're a small team of engineers and creators building professional creative tools. No venture capital, no corporate parent - just an indie studio focused on shipping great software.
Is Onset Engine safe to use?
Yes. Onset Engine is designed with privacy as a core principle. All AI processing runs locally on your machine - your footage never leaves your computer. There is no telemetry, no analytics, and no data collection. The only network activity is license verification - a one-time activation plus a quiet license check on startup (at most once a day, and only when you're online) - which verifies your license status and transmits no personal or project data.
Does Onset Engine work offline?
Yes, Onset Engine works fully offline after activation. The initial license activation requires a brief internet connection, and a quiet license check runs on startup when you're online (at most once a day) - if you're offline it's simply skipped. All video analysis, audio processing, and rendering happen entirely on your local hardware with no cloud dependency.
Ready to Take Control?
One engine. One purchase. Your machine. Your footage. Your rules.