Decart Launches Lucy 2.5: Real-Time AI Video Editing at 30 FPS 1080p

It has been less than a year since Decart unveiled Lucy, and the team is already shipping the sequel. On July 16, Lucy 2.5 went live — a real-time AI video editing model that pushes well beyond the original's capabilities. The headline numbers: 30 FPS at 1080p resolution, a new Self-Anchoring mechanism that locks identity across cuts, and a coarse-to-fine prompting system that treats video like a canvas you refine, not a prompt you pray over.

If you follow the AI video space at all, you know the field was already crowded — Runway, Pika, Kling, Sora. Lucy 2.5's answer to "why another model" is speed and controllability at the same time. Real-time inference at 1080p means you scrub, tweak, and see results instantly. No waiting. No iterative re-renders. The model runs at $0.02 per second for real-time output and $0.04 per second for rendered video exports.

Self-Anchoring: Identity that survives the edit

The most technically interesting piece of Lucy 2.5 is Self-Anchoring. In earlier video models, any edit — a background change, a lighting adjustment, an object removal — risks drifting the subject's appearance frame by frame. Facial features warp, clothing textures shift, scene continuity breaks.

Self-Anchoring solves this by encoding a persistent identity signal into the latent space. The model holds a "anchor" representation of the subject and enforces consistency against it across the entire timeline. You can swap out a studio backdrop for a neon-lit alley and the character's face, outfit, and posture remain stable. For any workflow involving character consistency — narrative video, commercial shoots, virtual production — this is the difference between usable and unusable.

Coarse-to-fine prompts: edit the edit

Lucy 2.5 introduces a coarse-to-fine prompting paradigm. Instead of one prompt at the start, you layer prompts at multiple granularity levels:

• Scene-level prompts define the broad setting and mood
• Shot-level prompts control camera motion, lighting, and composition
• Frame-level nudges tweak specific details in individual frames or small ranges

This hierarchy gives editors granular control without breaking the global coherence. You can dial in "cinematic lighting, shallow depth of field" at the scene level, add "slow dolly-in" at the shot level, and then nudge a single frame to fix an errant shadow — all without causing a cascading failure across the rest of the clip.

VFX tools built for production

Beyond the core editing pipeline, Lucy 2.5 ships with a set of VFX-grade tools that run inside the same real-time interface: object removal, background replacement, motion retargeting, and stylization transfer. These aren't separate models bolted on — they're native operations within Lucy's architecture, which means they inherit the same real-time performance and Self-Anchoring consistency.

The pricing reflects the production target: $0.02/second for the real-time interactive mode (what you see while editing) and $0.04/second for the final rendered export. At those rates, a 30-second 1080p clip costs roughly $0.60 for real-time work and $1.20 for export — well within reach for independent creators and small studios.

$300M raised, accelerating toward full video OS

Decart has raised over $300 million to date, backing a vision that goes beyond a single editing model. The company positions Lucy as the kernel of a full video operating system — a unified environment where generation, editing, compositing, and rendering happen in the same real-time pipeline. Lucy 2.5 is the strongest signal yet that this vision is real.

For now, you can access Lucy 2.5 through Decart's web interface and API. The real-time tier starts at $0.02/sec, and the company has hinted at a pro tier for studios that need higher batch concurrency and priority rendering.

Key takeaways

• Real-time 1080p editing at 30 FPS — no rendering queue
• Self-Anchoring keeps subject identity stable across any edit
• Coarse-to-fine prompting for layered, non-destructive edits
• Native VFX tools for background swap, removal, and stylization
• $0.02/sec real-time, $0.04/sec export — competitive pricing
• $300M raised, product roadmap toward a full video OS

Lucy 2.5 is live now. The era of real-time AI video editing just got a lot more interesting.