Ayah Editor

Desktop editor · macOS & Windows

The Qur'an video editor for creators who mean it.

Ayah Editor is a project-based desktop editor for Qur'anic video — verified mushaf text, translations you can edit, verse timings you place by ear, and an export that is pixel-identical to what you previewed. An editor first. Generation is only the last step.

Get early access See how it works

No account. No upload. Your recitation, your machine, your project file.

The Ayah Editor workspace: sources panel on the left, a 9:16 WYSIWYG preview of Sūrah Al-Fātiḥa in the centre, the inspector with provenance badges on the right, and a verse timeline across the bottom.
The editor · verse track, WYSIWYG preview, inspector with provenance
Uthmani mushaf · Tanzil, versioned Translation editable, origin visible Undo / redo · autosave 9:16 · 1:1 · 16:9 · 30 fps H.264 Works with no internet

Why it exists

Generators give you a video. An editor gives you control.

One-click Qur'an video generators make the same decisions for everyone: their timing, their translation, their layout — and no way to say where any of it came from. When the text is sacred, "close enough" is not a standard. So the workflow is not open audio → generate video. It is workspace → project → timeline → editor → preview → export.

01

Accuracy is not negotiable

The Arabic comes from a verified, versioned dataset and is locked in the editor. No model writes, alters or paraphrases it — ever.

02

Every value has an origin

Text, translation, audio and timings each carry a provenance badge showing the source and version. Edit a translation line and it is marked as modified, with the original one click away.

03

What you see is what renders

The preview and the exported MP4 are drawn by the same frame component. No surprises after a twenty-minute encode.

04

Nothing leaves your machine

Mushaf text and translation ship inside the app, projects are local files, and rendering runs on your own hardware. No account, no cloud, no queue.

What you get

Built like a professional tool, because that is what the work deserves.

Timing · sync by ear

Place verse boundaries by listening — even if you don't read Arabic.

This is the case the tool was built for: your own recitation, which no provider has timings for. Press ⇧⌘S and the sync bar puts the current verse's Latin transliteration front and centre — the one line you can follow against a voice — with its translation underneath and the next verse's opening words beside it. Play, and tap T the moment the reciter moves on.

  • Every tap is a normal edit — ⌘Z undoes it like anything else
  • Autosave persists as you go; a tap that would break the timeline is refused, not forced
  • Tapping gets you close; dragging the boundary afterwards makes it exact
  • The transliteration is an editing aid and never appears in the video
The sync bar open above the timeline, showing the current verse's Latin transliteration in large type, its translation below, a Tap button in the centre and the next verse's opening words on the right.
⇧⌘S · sync bar — transliteration first, tap on each boundary

Text · provenance

The sacred text is locked. Your translation is yours.

Arabic renders from the bundled Uthmani mushaf and cannot be typed over — it is marked read-only, with the dataset and version shown beside it. Translation lines are fully editable, and the moment a line diverges from the provider's original it is badged modified, so nobody — including you, a year later — has to guess what was changed.

  • Full mushaf bundled and validated at build time, with a content fingerprint
  • Translation provider is an extension point — new languages ship as plugins
  • Provenance travels into the export, so the finished file can be audited
  • Timings imported without verification are badged unverified until you check them
The inspector panel showing a locked Arabic field with its transliteration, the translation with a Korkut provenance badge, timing fields marked unverified, and the transition controls.
Inspector · source badges, locked Arabic, per-verse timing

Canvas · WYSIWYG

One frame, four themes, three aspect ratios — and it renders the same.

The canvas is the brightest thing on screen and it is the real frame, not an approximation. Switch between Reel 9:16, Square 1:1 and YouTube 16:9 and the layout scales as a single transform, so type, spacing and line wrapping stay identical fractions of the frame at any zoom. Themes restyle the frame your viewer will see — never the editor chrome.

  • Reel 9:16 · Square 1:1 · YouTube 16:9 — switching format is an undoable edit
  • Four built-in themes; themes are data, so more can be added
  • Click text on the canvas to select it in the inspector
  • Light or dark editor chrome, independent of the theme being rendered
The same project switched to the YouTube 16:9 format with the Sahar — Dawn theme, showing warm parchment tones in the preview canvas.
YouTube 16:9 · theme "Sahar — Dawn"

Speed · keyboard first

Every action on one key, and one gesture is one undo.

⌘K opens a command palette listing everything the editor can do — undo, playback, format, theme, translation reset, sync, export, go to ayah — filterable and arrow-navigable. Drag a clip boundary and the whole gesture commits as a single event, so ⌘Z reverts the drag, not thirty pixels of it.

  • Space to play · ← → to step verses · ⌥← ⌥→ to nudge a frame
  • ⌘1 / ⌘2 collapse the panels; ⌘= / ⌘- zoom the timeline
  • Autosave always on; the status bar tells you where you stand
  • The palette is where plugins will register their own commands
The command palette open over the editor, listing grouped commands for edit, playback, timings, translation, format, background, export, project and theme.
⌘K · the command palette

Media · background track

Drop in video or stills. Trim, crossfade, and keep the files where they are.

Underneath the verse track sits a background media track. Drag clips from Finder or Explorer, move them by the body, trim them by either edge — trimming moves the timeline edge and the source edge together, so the frame under your cursor doesn't slide. Gaps are allowed; the theme background shows through.

  • Media is referenced, never copied — your project file stays small
  • A moved file is flagged with ⚠ and can be relinked; nothing silently breaks
  • Clip-to-clip crossfades and fade-ins as a real pre-roll entrance
  • Text transitions — cut, fade, slide, rise, scale — project-wide or per verse
The new project wizard with four numbered steps: recitation, verse range, translation provider and theme, each recording its source and version.
New project · every choice records its source and version

وَرَتِّلِ ٱلْقُرْءَانَ تَرْتِيلًا

Accuracy above everything. AI assists; it never authors.
From the project manifest

The workflow

From a recitation to a finished reel, in six steps.

The Ayah Editor workspace screen: a New project button, the list of bundled offline sources with their versions and fingerprints, and recent projects.
The workspace · what this build can serve offline, before anything is created

  1. Start a project

    Pick a recitation (import your own file, or start on the silent demo track), a sūrah and ayah range, a translation and a theme. Each choice writes its source and version into the project.

  2. Sync the verses

    Play the audio and tap T at every boundary, following the transliteration. Then drag any boundary to make it exact.

  3. Edit the words

    Adjust translation lines where the wording matters to you. Modified lines are badged; the original is always one click away.

  4. Dress the frame

    Choose a theme, drop background video or stills onto the media track, trim them, and set how the text moves from ayah to ayah.

  5. Review in the real format

    Switch to Reel, Square or YouTube and scrub the timeline. What you see is the frame that will be encoded.

  6. Export

    ⇧⌘E resolves the project into a render plan and encodes an H.264 MP4 on your machine, reporting frame progress as it goes.

Under the hood

The renderer doesn't know what a sūrah is. That is the whole point.

The editor resolves what to draw; an engine decides how. They meet at a pure, serialisable frame description — so the export can be verified offline, audited as a plain JSON plan, and re-encoded by a different engine without touching the editor.

project state ──▶ validate ──▶ compose ──▶ RenderSpec ──▶ encode ──▶ project.mp4
                                    (pure data)      (Remotion + FFmpeg,
                                                      on your machine)
Specifications
PlatformDesktop application for macOS and Windows (Electron). Linux under evaluation.
Export targets1080×1920 (Reel / Short / TikTok), 1080×1080 (Square), 1920×1080 (YouTube) — 30 fps, H.264 MP4.
Qur'anic textFull Uthmani mushaf from the Tanzil Project, bundled, versioned and fingerprinted. Read-only in the editor.
TranslationsBosnian (Besim Korkut) bundled at launch; Latin transliteration as an editing aid. Further languages ship as translation-provider plugins.
RecitationsNone bundled — import MP3, M4A or WAV, including your own voice. Rights stay with their owners.
Project fileA single self-contained .qsproj document holding audio reference, edits, theme and full provenance.
Editing modelEvent-sourced: one gesture is one event, so undo, redo, autosave and history come from the same mechanism.
NetworkNone required. No account, no telemetry, no upload of your media.
PublishingPlanned: send an export straight to TikTok and YouTube as a draft you finish and publish yourself.

Read the full breakdown of every feature →

Questions

Straight answers.

Does Ayah Editor generate the Qur'anic text with AI?

No, and it never will. The Arabic ships as a verified, versioned dataset from the Tanzil Project and is read-only inside the editor. AI is not used to produce, alter or time the sacred text. Where AI could help later — suggesting a video title, a description, tags — it assists and never authors, and every suggestion stays overridable.

Do I need my own recitation audio?

Yes, or you can start on a silent demo track and add audio later. Ayah Editor ships no recitations, because distributing a reciter's work requires their rights. Import your own MP3, M4A or WAV — including a recording of your own voice — and place the verse boundaries by ear.

What if I don't read Arabic?

That case is the reason the sync workflow exists. The sync bar shows a Latin transliteration of the current verse as the largest thing on screen, its translation beneath, and the next verse's opening words to the side. You follow the recitation by ear and tap T at each boundary. The transliteration is an editing aid only — it never appears in the rendered video.

Will the exported video look exactly like the preview?

Yes. The frame's geometry is pure data and a single component draws it: the editor scales that component with CSS, the exporter scales the same geometry to real pixels. Automated golden tests lock the two together, so a change that would make them drift fails the build instead of surprising you after an encode.

Does it work offline?

Yes — that is a design principle, not a side effect. The mushaf text and the translation are bundled with the application, projects are files on your disk, and the render runs on your own hardware. There is no account to create and nothing is uploaded.

Which video formats and sizes can I export?

H.264 MP4 at 1080×1920 for Reels, Shorts and TikTok, 1080×1080 for square posts, and 1920×1080 for YouTube — all at 30 fps. Export targets are plain data in the render domain, so additional sizes and frame rates can be added without changing the pipeline.

Can I use my own translation, or a language you don't ship?

Yes. Every translation line is editable inside the editor, with modified lines clearly badged. Beyond that, the application does not hard-code any language: it knows only the concept of a translation provider, so a new language can be added as a plugin and recognised automatically.

What does it cost?

Pricing is not settled yet. Everyone on the early access list gets the beta free and will hear the terms before anything is charged.

When can I use it?

The editor, the timeline, the sync workflow and the render pipeline are built and working. What remains before a public beta is packaging: signed installers, auto-update and the last round of testing. Join the list and you will get the build as soon as it is signed.