filmcraft/ROADMAP.md

FilmCraft Roadmap

Progress toward feature parity with Adobe Premiere Pro, with estimates. Updated as milestones land.

Last updated: 2026-10-02 · Overall parity: ~62% (measured scorecard below) · Code: 34 crates, 1095 tests

Parity scorecard

Measured against Premiere Pro 26.5 on this machine. Menu items: the native menu bar dump, minus Adobe-cloud-only items (Team Projects, Productions, Firefly, Stock, Dynamic Link, account/help pages), matched against filmcraft-cli commands and the UI command table. Effects: the Effects panel tree.

Area	Weight	Measured	Coverage
Editing, timeline, trimming, multicam	20%	core edit algebra, trim modes, sync, multicam, menu long tail	~75%
Menus / commands	(cross-check)	~285 of 344 in-scope menu items	~82%
Effects and transitions	12%	video effects 56/93, audio effects 30/53, video transitions 30/84, audio transitions 3/3	~51%
Media I/O and codecs	12%	H.264, HEVC, VP9, AV1, ProRes, DNx, MJPEG, Opus, AAC, MP4/MOV/MKV/WebM; no MXF, image sequences, HW decode	~70%
Panels and UI fidelity	12%	all main panels; Metadata, Media Browser, scopes (parade/histogram), Timecode, Events, Search panels thin or missing	~60%
Audio	10%	mixer, automation, Essential Sound, meters, 30 effects	~60%
Colour	8%	Lumetri complete, LUTs, colour management, HDR	~80%
Graphics and captions	8%	text engine, shapes, captions, transcripts; no MOGRT, rolls/crawls, responsive design	~60%
Export	8%	own H.264/AAC, ProRes, DNxHR, PNG/GIF/WAV; no preset library/queue UI, AAF/OMF, MXF	~60%
Preferences and project management	5%	Auto Save, shortcuts, project manager, proxies; 18 of 20 Settings categories missing	~55%
Performance	5%	1080p real-time, 3×1080p; 4K/8K and AV1 real-time not yet	~50%
Weighted total			~62%

Estimate to parity

Measured throughput in the last work block (2026-10-01 night → 10-02): five Opus 5.5 agents in parallel for ~4.5 wall-clock hours (~18 agent-hours including integration) moved parity by ~4 points (≈4–5 agent-hours per point), on a machine that was heavily overloaded (load 150–300 on 14 cores) and once ran out of disk. The remaining points are a long tail (each effect, dialog and preference page is small, but there are many), so the estimate applies a 1.3–1.5× tail factor.

	Opus 5.5 agent-hours	Wall-clock (4–5 parallel agents + integrator)
Feature parity by checklist (~38 points left)	~190–260	~45–65 h
Robust on real-world material (codec edge cases, 4K/8K performance, pro workflows)	+120–200	+30–50 h
Total to "100% and better"	~310–460	~75–115 h (≈3–5 days, 24/7)

Limits on speed: CPU and disk on one machine (more than ~5 agents slows everyone down: each worktree build is 6–7 GB and a full cargo xtask ci takes 20–60 min under load), and a single integrator merging, resolving conflicts (e.g. two agents bumping the project schema) and re-running CI. With one agent and no parallelism, multiply wall-clock by ~3–4.

Not reachable clean-room and locally: Generative Extend (needs a large video-generation model). Enhance Speech and Auto Reframe are feasible only with openly licensed models we can ship.

Milestones

Status: ✅ done · 🟡 in progress · ⬜ not started. Estimates are remaining agent-hours.

#	Milestone	Status	Done	Remaining	Est.
M0	Skeleton + visual shell	✅	Workspace, 20 crates, dock/workspaces, Premiere 26 look, native menus, control channel, MCP, xtask gates (layers, wasm)	—	—
M1	Media I/O	✅	MP4/MOV demux+mux, WAV, stills, MJPEG, symphonia audio (MP3/FLAC/ALAC/Vorbis), GOP seek + frame cache, import	Media Browser polish	2
M2	H.264 decoder	✅	Own decoder, bit-exact on 37+ streams, 500–600 fps 1080p	—	—
M3	Editing core	🟡	Edit algebra (insert/overwrite/razor/lift/extract/ripple/roll/slip/slide/rate-stretch/nest/paste), tools, markers, trim mode + Trim Monitor + dynamic J/K/L trimming, Keyboard Shortcuts editor with FilmCraft/Premiere/FCP/Avid presets; Edit/Clip/File menu commands (Label colours and Select Label Group, Paste/Remove Attributes, Select All Matching, Remove Unused, Consolidate Duplicates, Sequence From Clip, Bin From Selection, Offline File, Close Project, Make/Edit Subclip, Modify Audio Channels/Timecode, Frame Hold Options/Add Frame Hold/Insert Frame Hold Segment, Time Interpolation with frame blending, Fit/Fill frame, Breakout to Mono, Extract Audio, Replace With Clip); multicam (Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence, Multi-Camera view with live switching on 1–9, angle switching, Enable/Flatten, Edit Cameras) and sync (Synchronize, Merge Clips; In/Out/timecode/marker/audio — GCC-PHAT, sample-accurate)	Multicam paging >16 angles and grid thumbnails, optical flow (renders as frame blending), ~200 Premiere default shortcuts whose commands don't exist yet	6–10
M4	Playback	🟡	Audio-clock master, prefetch with cancellation, J/K/L, correct dropped-frame stats, playback resolution, render bar + content-hashed render previews, App Nap opt-out; 1080p H.264 and 3 stacked 1080p streams play with 0 dropped frames	4K under load, 8K, frame-threaded AV1 decode, reduced-resolution decode for multicam grids	6–10
M5	Effects, keyframes, GPU	🟡	~60 CPU effects, 30 transitions, keyframes + value/velocity graphs, wgpu compositor, effect + opacity masks (ellipse/polygon/pen, feather, expansion, modes; CPU/WGSL parity), mask tracking (Lucas–Kanade + RANSAC), adjustment layers, effect presets (built-in + user, JSON import/export)	Full ~150-effect catalogue, WGSL parity for all effects and masks in the live GPU path, Warp Stabilizer, Morph Cut	20–30
M6	Export	✅	Own H.264 encoder (High/Main/Baseline, B-frames, VBR/CBR/2-pass) → MP4 + own AAC; ProRes, MJPEG, PNG, GIF, WAV; background jobs	Preset library, queue UI, smart render	6–8
M7	Audio	🟡	Mixer graph (tracks → submixes → Mix, pre/post-fader inserts and sends, latency-compensated, sample-accurate, ~6× realtime for 24 tracks × 3 effects on one core), Audio Track Mixer + Audio Clip Mixer panels, track automation (Off/Read/Latch/Touch/Write, recorded live while playing, thinned to keyframes, timeline lanes with pen editing), solo/solo-safe, channel mapping basics, peak + BS.1770 loudness meters (match ffmpeg), DSP crate with 16 clip/track effects, Audio Gain (set/adjust/normalize), Constant Power / Constant Gain / Exponential Fade, Essential Sound (types, Loudness auto-match, Repair incl. DeEss/DeReverb, Clarity, Creative, Ducking keyframes, presets; full Dialogue chain 22× realtime)	Music duration remix, ML speech enhancement, 5.1 panner and multichannel buses, voice-over record, effect editor windows (EQ curve), remaining effects (multiband, convolution reverb), clip-mixer automation recording	6–9
M8	Colour	🟡	Lumetri: basic, creative + looks, RGB & hue curves, wheels, HSL secondary, vignette, section bypass; Input LUT / Look LUT (.cube 1D/3D/shaper, .3dl; tetrahedral CPU + WGSL; project LUT library; built-in camera conversions); Colour Match (Oklab tonal-range statistics, skin protection, solved in Lumetri wheels); colour management: Rec. 709 / Rec. 2100 PQ / HLG working spaces + wide gamut, Interpret Footage colour space (S-Log3, V-Log, Canon Log 2/3, LogC3/4, Apple Log, D-Log from published specs), metadata auto-detect, BT.2390 tone mapping, gamut mapping, HDR export signalling (VUI/colr/mdcv/clli/SEI, ffprobe-verified); scopes incl. HDR nits waveform	Parade/histogram/HLS scopes, HDR-aware Lumetri maths, macOS EDR monitors, mastering metadata → tone-map peak, D-Log M (no published formula), HSL Secondary refine	3–5
M9	More codecs	🟡	ProRes decode+encode, AAC decode+encode, HEVC Main/Main 10 decoder (bit-exact on 41 fixtures, ~225 fps 1080p), VP9 decoder (profiles 0–3, 8/10/12-bit, bit-exact on 50+ fixtures; WebM/MKV V_VP9 and MP4 vp09 import with key-frame-checked seeking), Matroska/WebM import (H.264/HEVC/VP9/ProRes/MJPEG + AAC/Opus/FLAC/MP3/Vorbis/PCM), Opus decoder (SILK/CELT/hybrid, 5.1/7.1 multistream; all RFC 8251 vectors range-exact; WebM/MKV/MP4), DNxHD/DNxHR decoder (all SMPTE ST 2019-1 CIDs, 8/10/12-bit, 4:2:2/4:4:4, interlaced, alpha; within IDCT precision of ffmpeg on 22 fixtures) + DNxHR LB/SQ/HQ/HQX/444 encoder and MOV AVdh export, AV1 decoder (Main profile, 8/10-bit, all intra/inter tools, loop filters, superres, film grain, intra BC, spatial layers; bit-exact vs libdav1d on 19 SVT fixtures + 22 libaom vectors; MP4 av01 / WebM V_AV1 import)	VP9 frame threading, AV1 threading/SIMD (~4 fps 1080p today), AV1 High/Professional profiles, Ogg Opus files, MXF, hardware decode	12–20
M10	Graphics & captions	🟡	Caption tracks (Subtitle/CEA-608/708/Teletext formats, track style), SRT/WebVTT/SCC import+export (frame-exact, property-tested), caption editing (add/split/merge/trim/move, sync-locked insert/extract), Text panel Captions tab, burn-in in Program monitor and export; text engine (crates/text: bundled + system fonts, harfrust shaping, bidi, line breaking, paragraph layout, glyph cache; 3-line 1080p title ≈ 0.15 ms warm); graphic clips with text + shape layers (fill, 2 strokes, background, shadow, keyframable transform), Type tool with on-monitor editing, shape/pen tools, Properties/Essential Graphics editor, align/distribute	Responsive design pins, rolls/crawls, per-character styles, motion graphics templates, MCC/STL/TTML, 608/708 embedding, speech-to-text	12–18
M11	Interchange & project management	✅	.fcproj schema versions + migrations, atomic saves, Save a Copy/Revert, auto-save ring + crash-recovery journal (Preferences ▸ Auto Save, recovery prompt), FCP7 XML, FCPXML, EDL, OTIO; offline media (own slate) + Link Media (fingerprint-checked relink, folder remap, search, Align Timecode, Make Offline); proxies (ProRes Proxy/LT, H.264 ¼/½ background jobs, attach/detach/reconnect, monitor toggle, export full-res) + ingest (copy/transcode/proxies); Project Manager (collect, consolidate + transcode with handles, size estimate)	Rename media to clip names, image-sequence conversion, Media Browser-driven relink, smart (cross-drive) path tracking	1–2
M12–M16	Multicam, web (WASM), platform, long tail	🟡	Multicam: audio sync (GCC-PHAT, sub-sample), Merge Clips, multi-camera source sequences, Multi-Camera view with live switching (1–9); L0–L4 crates compile to wasm32	Web app shell (file access, WebCodecs, audio), scene detection, auto reframe, ~800 remaining commands and dialogs, performance hardening	35–55

Running now

• Nothing; next: remaining Premiere menu items (Settings categories, Scene Edit Detection, Normalize Mix Track, OMF/AAF, Find), AV1 single-thread re-measure on an idle machine

Log

• 2026-10-02: Premiere menu long tail: Sequence/Markers (gaps, split edits, through edits, subsequence, Delete Tracks, range/chapter markers, ripple sequence markers), Clip/Edit/File (Paste/Remove Attributes, subclips, Frame Hold Options, Time Interpolation with frame blending, Audio Channels, Breakout to Mono, Extract Audio, Replace With Clip, Remove Unused, Consolidate Duplicates), View/monitors (paused resolution, alpha/RGB display modes, comparison view, magnification, rulers, guides + templates, snapping), Graphics and Titles (vertical text, shape layers, align/distribute/arrange). Transcripts and text-based editing (Text panel, optional local Whisper). AV1 tile/frame/post-filter threading. Agent-friendly CLI (exec, inspect, describe, import, export, run -, --save, --bridge). Project schema v10.

• 2026-10-01 (night): new README hero (Apollo 11 documentary edit, NASA public domain); agents never steal keyboard focus; masks + tracking, adjustment layers, effect presets; multicam + audio sync; DNxHD/DNxHR decode/encode; AV1 decoder bit-exact against libdav1d (all stages, film grain, superres, SVC).

• 2026-10-01 (M12 multicam): Synchronize / Merge Clips / Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence (sync by In, Out, timecode ± hours, clip markers, or audio: GCC-PHAT cross-correlation, offsets recovered to the sample on noisy multi-mic recordings), multi-camera clips (angle render, Switch Audio), Program monitor Multi-Camera view with live switching (keys 1–9, one undo step per pass), Ctrl+1–9 cuts, Enable / Flatten / Edit Cameras, project schema v7. Fixed: nested sequence audio was silent.

• 2026-10-01 (evening): M11 done: offline media with our own slate and the Link Media dialog (fingerprint-checked relink, folder remap, search), proxies (create in background / attach / toggle; export stays full-res) with ingest settings, Project Manager (collect, consolidate + transcode). Fixed: GOP cache deadlock when a rayon decoder inside a parallel export re-entered the same source.

• 2026-10-01 (M7.4): Essential Sound panel: Dialogue/Music/SFX/Ambience types, Loudness auto-match (BS.1770, exact to the target), Repair (noise, rumble, hum, new DeEsser and spectral DeReverb), Clarity (dynamics, EQ presets, Enhance Speech DSP chain), Creative reverb / stereo width, ducking that writes Volume keyframes, presets; all essentialSound.* commands, effects visible and keyframable in Effect Controls.

• 2026-10-01 (night): M8 colour: camera log curves and gamuts from published specs, colour-managed pipeline (PQ/HLG working spaces, Interpret Footage, BT.2390 tone mapping), HDR export signalling verified with ffprobe, LUTs (.cube/.3dl, tetrahedral CPU + WGSL, project library, Lumetri Input LUT / Look), Colour Match, Lumetri section bypass, HDR scopes.

• 2026-10-01 (night): DNxHD/DNxHR decoder + encoder (SMPTE ST 2019-1) with MOV export; AV1 decoder (spec v1.0.0 + Errata 1, all decoding tools incl. film grain) bit-exact against libdav1d, wired into MP4/WebM/MKV import with key-frame-checked seeking.

• 2026-10-01 (later): text engine (shaping, bidi, line breaking) + Type/Shape/Pen tools + graphic clips + graphics panel; Trim Monitor + dynamic trimming; Keyboard Shortcuts editor; audio mixer with automation. Fixed: MP4 muxer wrote unreadable all-empty sample tables; system font scan race.

• 2026-10-01: Audio mixing (M7.2/M7.5/M7.6 basics): mixer graph with submixes, sends, inserts and latency compensation; Audio Track / Clip Mixer panels; Latch/Touch/Write automation recorded live; timeline track keyframes; Audio Gain dialog.

• 2026-10-01: recovered from a machine crash with no lost work. Merged: VP9 decoder (profiles 0–3, bit-exact, WebM/MKV/MP4), Opus decoder (RFC 8251 range-exact; WebM/MKV/MP4), captions (SRT/VTT/SCC, burn-in), render bar + render previews, project schema versioning + atomic saves + auto-save + crash-recovery journal, test infrastructure (golden images, loudness oracle vs ffmpeg, headless scripted UI tests; fixed a GPU stale-texture bug), public contributor docs and licence files.

• 2026-09-30 (evening): Opus decoder (RFC 6716/8251, range-exact on every conformance vector, ~80–110× realtime 48 kHz stereo) wired into WebM/MKV and MP4 import.

• 2026-09-30 (afternoon): Matroska/WebM import; LUFS meters; clip audio effects on the DSP crate.

• 2026-09-30 (midday): HEVC decoder, Matroska/WebM demuxer and audio DSP merged; HEVC import wired; asset rules (AGENTS.md, ATTRIBUTION.md, cargo xtask assets); README with hero screenshot and the Craft family.

• 2026-09-30 (late morning): keyframe value/velocity graphs; xtask gates; H.264 MP4 export; Lumetri curves, wheels, looks, HSL secondary.

• 2026-09-30 (early morning): H.264 decoder, ProRes, AAC; GPU compositor; MCP; Premiere 26 visual fidelity pass.