Blog
Guides for story-driven video
How to find the story in footage where people talk, turn it into a rough cut, and take that cut into the editor you already use.
Find the story
Working out what a piece is about before you cut it.
- How to find the story in your interview footageA practical method for finding the story in long interviews: read before you watch, name the beats, then choose clips. By hand, or with FirstCut.
- What is a narrative editor for video?A narrative editor works on the story of a video (arc, beats, clips, words) before the timeline. What it is, what it is not, and when to use one.
- How to organize interview footage by story beatsWhat a story beat is in an edit, how many you need, and how to sort interview clips into beats so the structure is visible before you cut.
- How to try different story structures on the same footageThe same interview can open on the problem, the payoff or a question. How to build and compare alternative structures without re-cutting by hand.
- Assembly, rough cut, fine cut: what each stage is forThe three stages of an edit, what gets decided in each, and why story problems are cheapest to fix at the rough-cut stage.
Rough cut and paper edit
Getting from raw speech to a cut that plays.
- How to make a rough cut from interview footage, by hand and with AITwo ways to get from a raw interview to a rough cut: the manual selects method and a transcript-driven first pass. Steps, trade-offs and limits.
- A paper edit that stays connected to the footageThe paper edit in a document goes stale the moment you start cutting. An alternative where the plan is the clips and plays back.
- AI for documentary rough cuts: what it can and cannot doAn honest look at AI in documentary editing: good at reading interviews and proposing structure, blind to picture and performance.
- How to speed up A-roll editing for talking-head videosWhere A-roll editing time goes, and a workflow that settles structure, repeated takes and pauses before you open your editor.
- Removing filler words and silences without making the cut choppyWhy automatic silence removal sounds wrong, and how reversible cut-outs with a pace dial let you tighten speech and still back out.
Hand off to your editor
Taking the cut into Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro.
- From a transcript edit to a Premiere Pro sequenceHow to bring a transcript-based rough cut into Premiere Pro as an XML sequence that points at your original media, and how to relink it.
- Importing an AI rough cut into DaVinci ResolveBring a transcript-driven rough cut into DaVinci Resolve as a timeline that relinks to your camera originals. Formats, steps and common problems.
- How to export a transcript-based edit to Final Cut Pro (FCPXML)Turn a transcript-based rough cut into a Final Cut Pro project with FCPXML: what the file contains, how to import it and how to relink.
- EDL, FCP7-XML, FCPXML and OTIO: which timeline format to useFour timeline interchange formats compared: what each carries, which editors read it, and which to pick for a rough-cut handoff.
Which tool for which job
What each kind of video tool is for, and what FirstCut is not.
- Pre-editor or cloud video editor: export a timeline or render in the browserTwo kinds of browser video tool compared: cloud editors that render a finished file and pre-editors that export a timeline to your NLE.
- AI tools for video editors, sorted by the job they doGenerators, clip makers, text-based editors and narrative pre-editors solve different problems. A guide to choosing by job, not by hype.
- How FirstCut edits your video without uploading itFirstCut uploads only the audio track for transcription. The video stays on your disk and plays from there. Exactly what leaves your machine.