> "Specifically, I’m looking for tools that can handle the tedious, repetitive tasks that usually take up most of my time... detect and cut out 'dead air' or all those annoying 'ums' and 'ahs'..."

yo, i feel that soul-crushing grind... honestly, 10 hours is way too much for a five min vid! For the silence and "ums", you highkey need Gling.ai. It basically does the heavy lifting for you by scanning the transcript and cutting the junk automatically. I use it all the time and it cut my rough-cut time by like half. iirc they have a "pay as you go" thing for like $5 which is awesome for beginners.

For the audio cleanup and color grading, DaVinci Resolve 19 is the absolute GOAT. It’s free and has NO watermarks. While the AI "Voice Isolation" is technically in the paid version, the free noise reduction tools are still pro-grade. If you want a cheaper alternative to the big monthly suites, check out Descript Creator Plan too—it’s about $12/mo and lets you edit video by just deleting text. Honestly, Resolve + Gling is the winning combo for me. gl!

hey! i feel u, the editing grind is actually soul-crushing... i'm pretty new to this too, so i usually stick to tools that are safe and easy to use. I've looked at 3 things that might help u out.

Option A is Adobe Podcast AI Enhance Speech. It’s free and great for fixing background hum, but you might want to consider that it can make your voice sound a bit artificial. Option B is Gling AI Video Editor, which specifically handles cutting 'ums' and dead air. It’s a huge time-saver, but be careful because the free version is pretty limited. Option C is CapCut Desktop for those captions. It’s honestly the most straightforward free tool for subtitles right now.

In my experience, CapCut Desktop is probably the best choice for you. It’s safe, easy to use, and wont break your budget. Just make sure to double-check those AI captions before u post cuz they aren't always perfect! gl!

Honestly, I totally get the burnout. I'm pretty new to this too and I was honestly terrified of using AI at first because I didn't want it to mess up my original files or do something weird to my privacy. I tried one "all-in-one" tool recently that promised the world for free, but it was so glitchy... it actually crashed my computer twice and the captions were just straight up wrong. What I learned is that "cheap" can sometimes mean "unreliable," which ends up costing more time in the long run. Now, my current setup is much simpler. I focus on using one tool that does a single task really reliably rather than something that claims to do everything. It’s not as fast as I’d like, but at least I’m not worried about my project file getting corrupted anymore? It’s a bit of a learning curve figuring out which ones won't just disappear overnight or sell your info, so I usually look for ones with good reviews from actual people first. Is it even worth the risk for the super cheap ones? I'm still not 100% sure but for me, having something that works every single time is way more important than having 50 features that might break.

I spent a ton of time recently doing some market research because I was honestly tired of being nickel-and-dimed by every new "AI" tool that popped up on my feed. What I learned from my own trial-and-error is that there's a massive divide between the "pro" suites and the newer startups. The big brands usually gate the best features behind a hefty paywall pretty quickly, which just doesn't work when you're starting out. In my experience, the "all-in-one" platforms often have the worst value-to-cost ratio for us solo creators. I eventually pivoted my strategy to finding smaller, niche tools that do just one thing really well—like only handling the audio or only doing the captions. My current setup is basically a mix of a few different standalone apps that are still in their early growth phase, so they offer way more for free than the established names. It’s a bit more work to jump between them, but it beats paying a monthly premium for features I barely use (at least that's what worked for me). Honestly, it's pretty eye-opening how much the "brand tax" affects your workflow speed.