My application · Video Editor at PlanetScale

Hi, I’m Beau.
Your new Video Editor!

I took PlanetScale’s “Does MySQL scale better than Postgres?” and recut it: a 3½-minute wide cut, 11 vertical shorts in 11 visual styles, a making-of film and a Blender-to-Seedance piece. Every one is built in code, and every caption lands on the spoken word.

26years editing video

51 minskate film I directed and edited

1feature doc co-edited, awarded by Amnesty International Italia

2+years making AI films

Watch the wide cut My portfolio ↗

01 · Spec ad

Your database / PlanetScale

Three 10-second spec spots in the split-screen format of Apple’s 2017 “Switch” ads: change your schema, revert a bad deploy, scale out. The action is one Seedance 2.5 generation; the labels and logo are composited in code. This is the 480p draft.

02 · Long-form

MySQL vs Postgres, the 3½-minute cut

An 11:55 video restructured into a cold open, a title and four chapters. The diagrams are animated in code, his real terminal sits next to each one as proof, and the sound mix is ducked under his voice.

03 · Short-form

Eleven shorts, eleven styles

Same source, different treatments. The host footage is never restyled. The style goes around him.

Riso gardenA query as a bee, a leaf as a B-tree leaf node

WatercolorThreads vs processes, painted

EditorialMagazine type on the spoken word

DataLive counters from the real demo

Kinetic typeCamera rides the sentence

Time capsuleA 90s desktop for a 1995 story

OdometerMechanical counters, +1.2 GB vs +26 MB

3D heapThree.js rows moving through the heap

Felt stop motionA needle-felt LAMP stack

Paper cut-outAn elephant made of extensibility

Pixel artAn 8-bit young developer

04 · 3D + generative

One becomes many

One database bursts into a planet of them. I blocked the motion and camera in Blender, then used that render as the motion reference for Seedance 2.5. The vertical shows both passes on the same move.

05 · Process

How these were made

A 71-second film that shows the real artifacts: transcript, word timings, code and renders.

Word-exact timingA forced-alignment script times every caption word and every graphic to speech, then a second transcriber checks the first and last words of each render.
Code-driven videoHyperFrames, GSAP and Three.js for motion; Python and ffmpeg for cuts, foley and the mix.
Reusable skillsEach style is packaged as a Claude skill, so a new short in that style is a brief, not a rebuild.
Real footage stays realThe speaker is never filtered or regenerated. Proof on screen comes from the source video.

06 · About

Beau Sterling

Video editor and filmmaker in Seattle. I’ve been making and editing video since 2000 and AI films since June 2024. University of Washington, BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Art (DXARTS). Co-editor of Walls and the Tiger, which received an Amnesty International Italia award.

Portfolio ↗beausterling.xyz Where’s Dad? ↗51-minute skate film, directed and edited (2013) Walls and the Tiger, trailer ↗Feature documentary, co-editor (2015) Claude Code Course, Module 1 ↗22-minute long-form YouTube lesson The Wetlands Conservancy ↗AI spec ad, Quixotic Shorts Meta AR headphones ↗AI spec ad 5 Best Neighborhoods in Seattle ↗Real estate YouTube, 10,000+ views LinkedIn ↗linkedin.com/in/beau-sterling GitHub ↗github.com/beausterling Instagram ↗@beausterling.ai