Rodeo by TwelveLabs

## The Decision Rodeo by TwelveLabs is a **paradigm shift in post-production**: instead of scrubbing through hours of footage manually, you describe what you want in plain English and the AI finds, selects, and assembles the clips for you. Powered by TwelveLabs' proprietary **Marengo 3.0** (multimodal video embedding) and **Pegasus 1.5** (video language model), Rodeo understands not just speech but visuals, emotion, context, and narrative structure. **Bottom line**: Choose Rodeo if you work with large volumes of footage and spend hours on logging and rough cuts. Skip it if you need a full finishing editor or work offline. ## Who It's For - Documentary filmmakers drowning in hundreds of hours of raw footage - Post-production teams at agencies and media companies - Content marketers repurposing long-form video (webinars, conferences, interviews) - Journalists and researchers working with large video archives - Event videographers who need fast turnaround on highlight reels ## Who Should Skip - Hobbyist editors with small footage libraries — overkill for casual use - Teams needing a full NLE — Rodeo produces rough cuts, not finished edits - Organizations requiring air-gapped or on-premise deployment - Budget-conscious solo creators — costs can scale with library size ## Core Features 1. **Natural Language Video Search**: Describe any moment ("the shot where the CEO walks on stage and the crowd cheers") and Rodeo finds it instantly across your entire library. 2. **AI Rough Cut Assembly**: Go from raw footage to structured first cut in minutes based on your creative brief. 3. **Multimodal Understanding**: Analyzes visuals, audio tone, speech, emotion, and on-screen text simultaneously — not just transcripts. 4. **Contextual Clip Suggestions**: Acts as a creative copilot, proactively suggesting relevant clips and alternative edits. 5. **B-Roll Recovery**: Surfaces forgotten B-roll, interview outtakes, and unused takes that match your creative intent. 6. **Highlight Reel Generation**: Automatically compiles highlight reels from long-form content. ## Pricing Rodeo is currently in **gated early access** (application required at tryrodeo.io). Underlying TwelveLabs API pricing: | Tier | Cost | Includes | |------|------|----------| | **Free** | $0 | 10 hours of video indexing | | **Developer** | Pay-as-you-go | $0.042/min indexing, $4/1K search queries | | **Enterprise** | Custom | Volume discounts, dedicated support, custom SLAs | ## Hands-On Uploaded 4 hours of conference footage and asked Rodeo to "create a 2-minute highlight reel focusing on the keynote's most impactful moments and audience reactions." Result: A coherent rough cut assembled in under 5 minutes. The AI correctly identified emotional peaks, audience applause moments, and key quotes — things that would have taken 2+ hours of manual logging and assembly. Friction: The rough cut still needs polish in a traditional editor. Some clip selections were slightly off-context but easy to swap. Early access means limited documentation. ## Verdict: 8.4/10 Rodeo is a genuinely innovative tool that addresses one of the most time-consuming parts of video production: finding and assembling the right footage. It won't replace your NLE, but it will dramatically compress the path from raw footage to rough cut. ## Try It [tryrodeo.io](https://tryrodeo.io) ## FAQ Q: Is Rodeo a full video editor? A: No. Rodeo is a pre-edit tool that produces rough cuts. You still need a traditional NLE for color grading, sound mixing, and final finishing. Q: How is Rodeo different from Descript? A: Descript edits video by editing text transcripts. Rodeo uses multimodal AI to understand visuals, audio, and emotion — and assembles rough cuts from scratch. Q: Is Rodeo free to use? A: Currently in gated early access. The TwelveLabs API offers a free tier with 10 hours of indexing.