Raw Video · published
Raw Video has changed. A lot.
Over the past several weeks, Raw Video has gone through a long series of beta builds, protected test builds, clean-machine tests, workflow rebuilds, model tuning passes, and release candidates.
This update is the consolidated result of that work.
If you have not opened Raw Video recently, some parts of the application may feel completely new.
That is intentional.
Raw Video originally began primarily as a local image-to-video application. It has gradually grown into something much larger:
a local AI image, video, sound, editing, and creative-assistance studio.
This release is the first public introduction to that new direction.
Madison is Raw Video's new built-in local AI creative assistant.
Madison is designed around the actual Raw Video workflow rather than existing as a separate chatbot disconnected from your project.
She can help you:
Develop an idea
Write image prompts
Write animation prompts
Analyze the current Canvas
Understand the contents of an image
Help plan scenes
Help move a project from image creation into animation
Answer questions about Raw Video
Help guide a project from one creative stage to the next
Madison can also visually analyze the image currently loaded on the Raw Video Canvas.
That means the assistant can work with what you are actually creating rather than relying only on a text description.
Everything is designed to remain part of Raw Video's local creative workflow.
Guide Me is a new guided creation workflow powered by Madison.
You can begin with an idea and let Raw Video help develop it into a scene.
A typical Guide Me workflow now looks like:
Idea → Image Prompt → Create Image → Review → Proceed → Canvas Analysis → Animation Prompt → Animate → Next Scene
Guide Me is designed for people who want help getting from an idea to a finished result without needing to understand every model or generation setting first.
You still remain in control of when the project proceeds.
Create Image now includes three generation modes.
Lightning is Raw Video's fast local image-generation mode.
This is the fast image-generation option and is useful when you want to rapidly turn an idea into something visible on the Canvas.
Lightning is especially useful for:
Fast concept generation
Scene development
Quick Guide Me iterations
Testing prompts before moving to higher-quality generation
Standard is Raw Video's primary higher-detail local image-generation mode.
This is the primary higher-detail general-purpose generation mode.
The workflow has been tuned extensively during beta testing, including a final increase to a 25-step generation profile.
The result is noticeably better detail, composition, faces, and overall image consistency than earlier Standard builds.
Advanced uses Raw Video's advanced local image-generation workflow.
This mode is capable of both creating completely new images and powering Raw Video's image-editing system.
Advanced Create uses a shape-specific blank Canvas internally, allowing the image-generation system to create a complete new composition instead of requiring an existing photograph.
Raw Video now includes a substantially expanded Edit Image workflow.
Load an image onto the Canvas, describe the change you want, and Raw Video can send that image through its local image-editing pipeline.
The editing system includes:
Wide image support
Vertical image support
Square image support
Improved source-image preparation
Improved aspect-ratio handling
Better output detection
Improved progress reporting
Cleaner temporary-file handling
Improved error reporting
Better integration with the main Raw Video Canvas
The same advanced image engine can now serve two different purposes inside Raw Video:
Advanced Create for creating a new image
Edit Image for modifying an existing image
Madison can now analyze the current Raw Video Canvas.
This is used throughout the new creative workflow, especially inside Guide Me.
Canvas Analysis can help Madison determine:
What is in the current scene
How the image is composed
What motion would make sense
How the scene could be animated
What the next creative step should be
Visual-analysis requests now receive additional processing time compared with ordinary chat requests, which greatly improves reliability when working with larger local vision models.
The connection between image creation and video generation has been heavily rebuilt.
Instead of treating image creation and animation as unrelated tools, Raw Video increasingly connects them into one continuous workflow.
You can:
Create an image
Review it on the Canvas
Ask Madison to analyze it
Generate an animation prompt
Animate the image
Continue into another scene
Guide Me can automate much of this progression while still waiting for you to approve important steps.
Animate continues to offer three quality levels:
Rapid
Standard
High Quality
The animation-selection interface has also been updated with clearer controls.
A new large toggle controls whether the finished animation should automatically receive a 2X enhancement pass.
You can now lock your selected animation options for the current Raw Video session.
This is useful when creating multiple scenes and you do not want to repeatedly select the same animation settings.
The old checkbox-style controls were replaced with larger interactive toggle buttons after beta testing revealed inconsistent checkbox behavior on some systems.
Raw Video's local sound-effect generation workflow has received additional integration work.
You can generate sound effects from text descriptions and bring those sounds into the editing workflow.
Improvements include:
Cleaner prompt handling
Improved output naming
Better generation-state reporting
Improved timeline integration
Raw Video is no longer limited to generating individual clips.
The project editor continues to expand around building complete videos.
Current tools include:
Multiple video clips
Clip ordering
Trimming
Audio waveform display
Audio placement
Sound effects
Text cards
Storyboard tools
Enhancement
Final MP4 export
The long-term goal is simple:
Start with an idea and leave Raw Video with a finished video.
Storyboard tools are now part of the larger Raw Video creative workflow.
They can be used to organize scene ideas before or during production and help structure projects containing multiple generated shots.
Raw Video includes tools for adding text-based cards to projects.
These can be used for:
Titles
Scene transitions
Captions
Chapter cards
Story elements
Raw Video includes multiple interface themes:
Studio Blue
Raw Red
Forest Green
Hot Pink
Dark Steel
A bug that caused the application to visually start with the default theme even though another theme had been saved has been fixed.
Raw Video now restores your saved theme before the initial interface is drawn.
So yes, if you close Raw Video in Hot Pink, it should wake up Hot Pink next time.
The hardware-usage notice now includes a larger and more reliable:
DO NOT SHOW THIS WARNING AGAIN
toggle.
This was also converted from a traditional checkbox after clean-machine testing identified interaction problems with some checkbox controls.
The built-in Help system has received a major expansion.
Raw Video now includes a much larger indexed help library covering the current generation of the application.
Topics include:
Create Image
Image quality modes
Advanced image generation
Edit Image
Animation
Guide Me
Madison
Canvas Analysis
Timeline tools
Sound effects
Export
Troubleshooting
Help searches now prioritize focused articles before falling back to broader reference material.
Raw Video now performs a cleaner handoff between large local AI systems.
After a ComfyUI-based generation job finishes, Raw Video can release those GPU resources before restoring Madison.
This reduces VRAM competition between:
Image generation
Video generation
Madison
Other local AI components
This becomes increasingly important as Raw Video moves between several large models during a single creative session.
One particularly difficult crash discovered during beta testing was traced to a Qt threading issue.
A custom worker signal was using the same name as Qt's built-in QThread finished signal.
Under certain transitions between generation systems, this could cause a low-level application crash.
That worker system has been corrected and now uses its own dedicated result signal.
This substantially improves stability when switching between generation modes.
A large amount of development in this update happened underneath the visible interface.
The production build and startup system have been extensively tested on a second clean Windows PC.
Several issues that did not appear on the development system were discovered and corrected there.
Work included:
Startup wrapper fixes
Protected runtime packaging fixes
Splash/startup improvements
Runtime initialization fixes
Clean-install validation
Improved protected-file verification
Raw Video now performs additional cleanup when the application closes.
This reduces the chance of local AI, Madison, voice, or worker processes remaining active after Raw Video has exited.
Raw Video's protected Windows build pipeline has also been substantially hardened.
Internal release validation now checks areas including:
Protected source integrity
Startup wrapper placement
Runtime placement
Runtime initialization
Protected-file hashes
Required workflow configuration
Missing startup files
Accidental development-file inclusion
Most users will never see any of this.
That is exactly the idea.
This release did not come from a single build.
The new Raw Video generation has gone through many beta builds, protected test builds, experimental builds, release candidates, clean-machine tests, and model-tuning passes before reaching the public branch.
During that process we tested and refined:
New image models
New workflows
Madison
Guide Me
Canvas analysis
Advanced image generation Create
Advanced image generation Edit
Animation controls
GPU handoffs
Startup behavior
Shutdown behavior
Threading
Help documentation
Theme persistence
Clean Steam installations
Some experiments were kept.
Some were rebuilt.
Some were thrown directly into the technological volcano.
The version you are receiving is the consolidated result.
Raw Video now has a much clearer creative path.
Choose between:
Lightning
Standard
Advanced
Use Raw Video's local image-editing system to modify existing images.
Use Madison and Guide Me to develop ideas and scenes.
Turn still images into video using Rapid, Standard, or High Quality generation.
Combine clips, sound, text, storyboards, and other project elements on the timeline.
Turn the project into a finished video.
Raw Video is moving toward a studio where each part of that process can hand the project directly to the next.
Raw Video is being developed around a simple idea:
Powerful local AI creative tools should be usable without stripping away the control that makes local AI interesting in the first place.
This update represents one of the largest changes to Raw Video since launch.
There is still plenty more to build.
But this release establishes the foundation for what Raw Video is becoming.
Thank you to everyone who has downloaded Raw Video, tested it, reported problems, created something strange with it, or simply followed the project.
Have fun creating.
Raw Video
Local AI Image, Video & Sound Studio