HeyGen Bootcamp: How to edit AI videos faster with AI Studio

In this HeyGen Bootcamp session, Leo Rofé and Onee Yekeh from the product team walked through how to go from a rough AI video draft to a polished, on-brand asset using AI Studio, HeyGen’s browser-based video editor.

Instead of complex timelines and layers, AI Studio is built around three simple ideas:

• Your script
• Your avatar and voice
• A scene-by-scene storyboard

Here’s how it all comes together.

Start in AI Studio (and let Video Agent do the heavy lifting)

You can open AI Studio from inside HeyGen by hovering over create → create in AI Studio. You’ll pick your aspect ratio (portrait, square, landscape) and then land in the main layout:

• Left: Script panel – Everything starts here. Your script drives scenes, timing, captions, and more
• Center: Canvas – This is your “slide” or frame for the current scene. You place your avatar, text, media, and design here
• Bottom: Scene timeline / storyboard – Each card is a scene. You can reorder, split, or adjust scenes without fighting a traditional NLE timeline

You can start from a blank project, but Leo shared the way most customers (and his own team) work:

Let Video Agent generate the first version, then refine it in AI Studio.

The flow looks like this:

1. Give Video Agent a prompt (and optionally slides or assets)
2. Let it generate a multi-scene video with script, avatar, layout, music, and pacing
3. Click edit in studio to open that video as a draft in AI Studio
4. Polish everything there: avatar, voice, B-roll, animations, captions, music, and more

Video Agent gets you 80–90% of the way. AI Studio is where you make it feel exactly like you.

Dial in your avatar and voice first

Once your draft is open in AI Studio, the first stop is nearly always your avatar and voice. That’s what viewers pay the most attention to, and it’s where tiny changes make a big difference.

On the right side of the editor you’ll see the avatar and voice panel. This is command central.

Swap avatars in one click

You can:

• Choose from your own digital twins (custom avatars)
• Pick from HeyGen’s public avatar library
• Filter and search based on gender, style, use case, and more

When you choose an avatar, you can:

• Apply to current scene only, or
• Click change all to swap the avatar across every scene in the video

This is handy when Video Agent chooses a default avatar and you want to replace them with your own digital twin or a brand-specific character.

Customize the avatar’s background and layout

Once you’ve chosen your avatar, you can completely change where they appear and how they’re framed:

• Remove background – Cut them out from their original background
• Solid color backgrounds – Clean, simple, great for on-brand layouts
• Stock backgrounds – Pull from HeyGen’s stock image library (offices, studios, beaches, etc.)
• Upload your own image – Drop in your brand backdrop, a set photo, or a custom visual
• Generate with AI – Prompt a new background using HeyGen’s built-in image models

You can also change layout:

• Full-screen avatar
• Circle avatar you can drag around
• Close-up crop for more intimate scenes

And if you go too wild, you can always revert to the original background.

Choose or change the voice

Every avatar comes with a default voice that’s been tuned to fit that character.

But in the voice tab you can:

• Browse the full voice library
• Filter by gender, language, style
• Preview and assign a new voice

Under the hood, voices are already tuned to read your script contextually, so most users never touch advanced settings. If you want more control, though, that’s where the next tools come in.

Control how your avatar speaks: Voice Director, mirroring, pauses, and glossary

The bootcamp earlier in the day covered AI voices in depth, but Leo showed how those tools feel inside AI Studio.

Voice Director: Set the scene-level mood

Sometimes the voice is technically fine, but the vibe isn’t. Too flat, too serious, not hype enough.

Voice Director lets you control the emotion of a scene in one shot. You can:

• Choose presets like:
  • Excited
  • Calm
  • Motivational
• Or give your own instruction, like:
  • “Say this sarcastically”
  • “Speak like a friendly coach”
  • “Deliver this gently and reassuringly”

You can apply it:

• To the current scene, or
• To all scenes if the whole video should share that tone

Voice Mirroring: Your performance, avatar’s voice

When you need exact delivery, such as a tagline, a punchline, a key phrase, Voice Mirroring is your precision tool.

With Voice Mirroring you:

1. Convert a scene to Voice Mirroring mode
2. A mini teleprompter shows your script
3. You record yourself reading the line(s) the way you want:
   • Pacing
   • Emphasis
   • Emotion
4. HeyGen:
   • Transcribes your take
   • Has the avatar mimic your timing and rhythm
   • But uses the avatar’s voice (or whichever voice you chose)

You can even reuse the same mirrored performance with different voices (e.g., swapping from a neutral voice to something deeper like “baritone Bryce”).

If you change your mind, you can:

• Turn mirrored audio back into text and revert to standard text-to-speech

Add pauses where they’re needed

Natural speech has pauses. Scripts often don’t.

In the script panel you can:

• Place your cursor where you want a pause
• Click pause
• Choose the pause length (e.g., short beat, longer dramatic pause)

Pauses appear as tokens in the text and can be deleted with backspace like any other character.

Fix pronunciations once with brand glossary

If your company, product, or URL is getting mangled (“hey-gen” vs “HeyGen”, weird acronym reads, etc.), you can lock in correct pronunciations:

1. Highlight the problem word (e.g., “avatar”)
2. Open the glossary popup
3. Type out how it should sound (phonetically or with standard spelling)
4. Preview the audio
5. Save to glossary

From then on:

• Every instance of that word in the project uses the corrected pronunciation
• The rule persists into your future videos too

Fix it once, keep it forever.

Bring your scenes to life with elements and animations

Once your avatar and voice feel right, it’s time to make the video actually look like something you’d publish.

AI Studio makes this surprisingly simple because animations are tied to your script, not to arbitrary timestamps.

Design your scene on the canvas

On the canvas you can add:

• Text blocks (titles, topic lists, callouts)
• Shapes (boxes, highlights, decorative elements)
• Media (images and videos you upload or from stock)
• Premium motion elements (pre-designed animated components like name lower-thirds)

Each element can be:

• Repositioned and resized
• Styled (font, color, size, shadow, etc.)
• Layered above or below others

Double-clicking an element opens its properties panel for fine-tuning.

Animate elements based on the script (not timestamps)

Here’s where AI Studio feels very different from a normal editor.

Instead of dragging bars on a timeline, you:

1. Click an element on the canvas
2. You’ll see small animation markers appear aligned with your script
3. Click next to the word where you want the element to appear
4. Choose an animation (fade, slide, etc.)

The result: that element animates exactly when the avatar says that word.

You can repeat this for:

• Text (“first”, “second”, “finally” as section headers)
• Images (a product shot when it’s mentioned)
• Shapes (highlight a keyword at the right moment)

This script-based animation system keeps everything in sync without micro-timing adjustments.

Use premium motion elements for quick polish

HeyGen includes motion-designed components you can drop in, like:

• Animated name cards / lower thirds
• Stylish labels and badges
• Pre-animated informational blocks

For example, Leo added a name card on the first scene:

• Dropped a motion element onto the canvas
• Edited the text to “Annie – AI Studio specialist”
• Let the built-in animation handle the entrance and exit

It’s a fast way to get “pro editor” vibes without designing motion graphics yourself.

Transitions, music, and captions: The finishing touches

Once your scenes are structured and animated, it’s time to add the layer that makes everything feel like a cohesive video.

Scene transitions

Between scenes in the storyboard, you can:

• Hover in the gap
• Choose from a library of transitions (cuts, fades, slides, and more)
• Apply them to one transition or all scenes

One especially fun option is magic match:

• If your avatar’s position changes between scenes (center → right, for example)
• Magic match creates a smooth, smart transition that “moves” them into the new position

It makes multi-scene avatar videos feel more continuous and less jumpy.

Music

You can control audio from the music panel:

• Keep the music Video Agent picked
• Or choose another track from HeyGen’s stock music library
• Or upload your own track

For each track you can:

• Adjust volume (background vs. foreground)
• Set fade-in and fade-out

All stock music in HeyGen is licensed for you to use. No extra licensing needed for social, marketing, or client work.

Captions

Captions are now table stakes for good video.

In AI Studio you can:

• Turn captions on with one click
• Choose from preset styles, then fully customize:
  • Font
  • Size
  • Colors
  • Background, stroke, or highlight styles

Captions automatically sync to your avatar’s speech, and you can tweak styles until they match your brand.

Onee’s AI tools: Script writing, looks, motion design, and AI edit

In the second half of the session, Onee showed how AI can speed up some of the more tedious parts of editing.

Script writer: Expand or improve your scenes

If a scene feels too short or flat, you don’t have to rewrite everything from scratch.

You can:

1. Select some script text
2. Switch to the AI tab
3. Use script writer to:
   • Expand it
   • Make it more engaging
   • Rephrase for clarity or tone

You’ll see multiple versions and can copy the one you like back into your script.

Generate look: New outfits and variations

Want your avatar in a different outfit but keep the same face and style?

Use generate look:

1. Click change look on your avatar
2. Choose generate look
3. Prompt something like:
   • “Change outfit to blue blazer”
   • “Wear a casual hoodie”
4. Pick from the generated options and apply it

You can keep multiple looks ready and swap them per scene if needed.

Motion designer: AI-powered motion graphics

For static scenes that feel a bit dead, Motion Designer lets you:

• Take a line of script or a short prompt
• Choose a preset style
• Generate a motion graphic clip that matches the content

You then:

• Add that generated clip to the canvas
• Replace the original static background

The result: a dynamic animated background or visual that stays on-message without hiring a motion designer.

Image and video generation inside AI Studio

You can also:

• Generate images with HeyGen’s latest image models directly in the editor
• Generate video clips to use as B-roll or dynamic backgrounds

No need to jump between tools. Just prompt and place directly in your project.

AI edit: Change parts of an image with a prompt

Finally, Onee showed AI editing for images, which is great for making small targeted visual changes.

For example:

1. Select an image on the canvas (say, someone holding an Apple Watch)
2. Click AI edit
3. The image appears in an edit prompt
4. Type an instruction like:
   • “Change the watch to a different style”
5. Choose a model and click generate

You’ll get new image variants that keep the core layout but tweak the detail you specified. Replace your original image with a single click.

From rough draft to polished video, without traditional editing pain

Put all of this together and you get a very different editing experience:

• Video Agent handles structure, script, scenes, and a first-pass design
• AI Studio lets you polish:
  • Avatars and backgrounds
  • Voices and delivery
  • Timing, animation, and visual elements
  • Captions, music, and transitions
• AI tools like script writer, generate look, motion designer, and AI edit help you iterate fast

You don’t need to be a professional editor to:

• Reuse your digital twin across dozens of videos
• Keep your brand consistent
• Punch up pacing, visuals, and delivery
• Ship video content at a pace that actually matches your ideas

If you’re already using HeyGen avatars and Video Agent, the next step is simple:

1. Open one of your generated videos
2. Click edit in studio
3. Try:
   • Swapping the avatar
   • Adjusting the voice with Voice Director
   • Adding one motion element
   • Animating one bit of text based on the script

Once you’ve felt how fast that loop is, you’ll have a new home base for your AI-native video workflow.

Written byTony Faccenda