15:49Greg Edits Video · Tutorial
The Only 3 Transitions You Need to Edit Any Video
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July 7thThe argument in one line.
DaVinci Resolve's new native AI integration is genuinely useful for slow, tedious background tasks like project setup and troubleshooting, but too slow and imprecise for anything you need done in the next ten seconds.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A video editor curious whether an AI assistant built into DaVinci Resolve can actually save real editing time, not just automate a demo.
- Someone who edits from a repeatable base project and wants to know if AI can handle duplication, media import, and rough cuts unattended.
- An editor dealing with messy timelines or media pools who wants a hands-off way to sort and label clips.
SKIP IF…
- You already have custom keyboard shortcuts and macros dialed in for quick timeline tasks; this won't beat them.
- You're looking for an AI that nails color grading from a single reference image without a starting LUT.
The full version, fast.
DaVinci Resolve 21.1 lets ChatGPT or Claude talk directly to the app and execute real tasks, not just advise from the sidelines. Tested across nine scenarios, an AI assistant handles slow, unattended background work well: duplicating a base project, importing and syncing footage, placing timeline markers on a spoken word, sorting a messy media pool, applying an existing color grade, and relinking offline media. It fails at anything needed quickly in the moment, taking nearly ten minutes for tasks a keyboard shortcut does instantly, and it can't invent a good grade from a bare reference image. The practical rule: hand it tasks you can walk away from, keep shortcuts for real-time work, and expect it to improve as the app opens up more of its API.
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00:00 – 01:02
01 · Cold open
Announces DaVinci Resolve 21.1's native AI integration (ChatGPT or Claude talking directly to the app) and previews the tests to come: project setup, color grading, cutting a roll, breaking something on purpose to see if AI can troubleshoot it, and a separate screen-control feature.
01:02 – 05:06
02 · AI Setting Up a Project
Connects Claude via Resolve's new Set Up AI Assistant menu and gives one loose prompt: duplicate the base project, import and sync footage, cut out pauses and mistakes, zoom in 40% per cut, and mark every timeline instance of the word 'transition'. The AI nails the 97 markers but over-applies the zoom instruction to every clip instead of alternating ones, due to a vague prompt. The full pass takes about 50 minutes.
05:06 – 06:23
03 · AI Cleaning Up a Project
On a deliberately messy test project, one prompt tells the AI to color clips by type and sort the media pool into matching bins (stills, timelines, etc). It executes both correctly.
06:23 – 07:47
04 · AI Color Grading
Asks the AI to grade V-Log footage into an orange-and-teal look using a reference image found on Google; the from-scratch result is mediocre. Switching to his own saved power grade instead, the AI applies it cleanly across the whole timeline.
07:47 – 08:47
05 · AI Real Time Editing
Tests fast, in-the-moment tasks: pulling a logo image off Google and positioning it with a slide transition, then adding a title preset at the playhead. Both technically work but land sloppily positioned, and each takes nearly 10 minutes.
08:47 – 10:52
06 · Save Time with Essential Presets
Because the small AI tasks were too slow, the case shifts to custom keyboard shortcuts and macros as the actual fast path for repetitive timeline actions, contrasting an instant shortcut against the AI's multi-minute wait.
10:52 – 12:33
07 · AI Troubleshooting For You
Deliberately breaks a project by moving a clip's file, triggering Media Offline, then simply asks the AI to fix it. It locates and relinks the file and explains where it found it, the strongest use case demonstrated in the video.
12:33 – 14:25
08 · AI Can Control Your Screen
Moves past Resolve's own limited API into full screen-control, where ChatGPT moves an actual cursor and clicks like a human editor to cut up a roll, apply ripple delete silence, and apply a saved grade.
14:25 – 15:59
09 · The Big Downsides
Names the two real costs of using AI in Resolve: speed (minutes for tasks a shortcut does in seconds) and the ongoing subscription or credit cost of complex multi-step prompts, plus a suggestion to keep a running rules document of what works.
15:59 – 17:19
10 · Will This Change Video Editing Forever?
Frames the AI as a junior editor: slower, unable to make pro-level creative decisions, and not free, but capable of taking boring repetitive tasks off an editor's plate as the vendor keeps opening more of the API.
17:19 – 17:33
11 · Next video CTA
Points to a follow-up video on the 10 best AI features in DaVinci Resolve.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- An AI assistant built into DaVinci Resolve 21.1 can duplicate a project, import and sync footage, and cut out pauses and mistakes from one loose text prompt.
- A single AI prompt found and tagged 97 instances of a spoken keyword with timeline markers, a task that would take a human editor a very long time to do by hand.
- Vague prompt wording gets applied literally: asking an AI to zoom in on each cut zoomed in on every single clip instead of alternating ones.
- An AI editing assistant took nearly 10 minutes to add a title and position an image, tasks a custom keyboard shortcut can do in about 10 seconds.
- Asking an AI to invent a color grade from a single reference image produced a mediocre result, but feeding it an existing saved preset applied cleanly across a whole timeline.
- Describing an error in plain English, like media offline can you fix it, was enough for an AI to locate and relink a moved file.
- Screen-control AI, which moves an actual cursor and clicks like a human, exists to cover the gaps left by an app's incomplete API access.
- The real cost of using AI for editing tasks isn't just money, it's the credits eaten up by complex multi-step prompts that a cleaner prompt could have avoided.
- The most useful frame for evaluating an AI editing assistant is a junior editor: slower, no pro-level creative judgment, not free, but able to take repetitive tasks off your plate.
- AI-driven project setup that takes 50 minutes unattended still nets a real time save if you'd otherwise spend 10 minutes doing it by hand while waiting on it.
Where an AI editing assistant actually saves time
WHEN AI HELPS
The dividing line isn't whether the AI works, it's whether the task can run unattended: background setup, cleanup, and troubleshooting win, but anything needed in the next ten seconds doesn't.
02AI Setting Up a Project
- A single loose prompt duplicated a project, imported and synced footage, and cut out pauses and mistakes, but vague wording like zoom in on each cut got applied to every clip instead of every other one.
- Marker-placement on a spoken keyword is one task manual labor genuinely can't compete with: it found and tagged 97 instances of a single word across a full transcript.
03AI Cleaning Up a Project
- A messy media pool and an uncategorized timeline can be fixed with one plain-language prompt: color clips by type, then sort files in the media pool into matching bins.
- This kind of file-organization cleanup is a genuinely solid use case because it replaces manual sorting that carries no creative upside.
04AI Color Grading
- Asking AI to invent a color grade from scratch, even with a reference image, produced a mediocre result. It's not yet a reliable substitute for actually knowing color science.
- Feeding it an existing saved preset to apply across the whole timeline worked cleanly, because the AI only had to apply a known style, not invent one.
05AI Real Time Editing
- Small, in-the-moment tasks like pulling an image off Google or adding a title preset technically worked, but positioning was sloppy and each one took nearly 10 minutes.
- If a task takes you 10 seconds with a shortcut, an assistant that takes 10 minutes is a net loss no matter how correct the result looks.
06Save Time with Essential Presets
- Custom keyboard shortcuts and macros still beat AI for anything you need to happen instantly while you're actively editing.
- The real lesson is matching the tool to the job: shortcuts for real-time work, AI for tasks you can walk away from.
07AI Troubleshooting For You
- A single plain-English description of an error, media offline can you fix it, was enough for the AI to locate a moved file, relink it, and explain what it found.
- Troubleshooting is the strongest use case here because it replaces exactly the kind of dead-end search a less experienced editor would otherwise burn 20 minutes on.
08AI Can Control Your Screen
- Screen-control AI exists to cover the gaps left by an app's incomplete API, so treat it as the fallback rather than the first choice since native API calls are faster.
- The same set-it-and-walk-away logic applies: a cut-and-graded timeline waiting for you after a break is a real time save even if the process itself took longer than doing it by hand.
09The Big Downsides
- The two real costs are speed, minutes for tasks a shortcut does in seconds, and ongoing subscription or credit spend, which climbs fast on complex multi-step prompts.
- Keeping a running rules document of what worked and what didn't for your own prompts cuts down on wasted credits over time.
10Will This Change Video Editing Forever?
- Treat an AI editing assistant like a junior editor: slower, unable to make pro-level creative calls, and not free, but capable of taking repetitive tasks off your plate.
- The access it has today is deliberately partial, so expect it to do more as the software vendor keeps opening its API to outside control.
Terms worth knowing.
- V-Log
- A flat, desaturated camera picture profile that preserves more dynamic range for color grading later, at the cost of looking washed out straight out of camera.
- Power Grade
- A saved DaVinci Resolve color grade, complete with every node and adjustment, that can be reapplied to new footage instead of rebuilding the look from scratch each time.
- Ripple Delete Silence
- An editing function that automatically removes silent gaps from a clip and closes the resulting gaps in the timeline so the remaining footage plays back to back.
- Media Offline
- DaVinci Resolve's warning state when a clip's source file has been moved, renamed, or deleted, breaking the link between the timeline and the original media.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
04:06
“This is where this AI integration is going to shine. A manual task like this would take ages.”
10:59
“Most editors, and especially beginners, will end up going down a Google rabbit hole for 20 minutes trying to figure out what went wrong.”
16:04
“So think of this as a junior editor.”
14:50
“This is very much a tool for working in the background on repetitive manual tasks that you don't necessarily have to be spending your own time on.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogy
Blackmagic just released DaVinci Resolve version 21 .1 and for the first time ever you can have your own AIs like ChatGBT or Claude talk directly to DaVinci Resolve and run tasks for you. So basically you can get AI to set up your entire project for you while you're off having your breakfast and that's pretty cool. So in this video I'm going to do a series of tests to see how this new AI integration works.
with real world tasks like setting up new projects color grading and cutting a roll and then i'm going to break something on my timeline on purpose to see if it can troubleshoot it for me and then fix it and i'm also going to show you another ai feature that has been blowing up on social media where ai can take control of your screen and actually click things for you and then by the end of the video you'll be able to see what it's good for what it's terrible at and exactly how you can use this tool to make your editing easier.
So let's start with the first test. So something that I always have to do when I start editing a new video is make a duplicate of my base project, which has all of my timeline settings in it all ready to go.
And then I have to name it what I want the video to be called, put in the relevant media from my folder, and then put the A -roll in the timeline, and then cut it all up to remove the mistakes and the pauses. And this is something that I want to see if this new AI can do for me, basically. So can it do these repetitive setting up tasks for me so I don't have to do them every time that I start an edit?
So before I test this, I just need to set up the link between Resolve and my AI. So in Resolve, you can come up to file and then click on set up AI assistance. And then you'll get this pop up.
And then you might get Claude or ChatGBT also pop up where you just have to follow the on -screen prompts to get all connected. And that's it. You can close this and you're ready to go.
So here I can open up Claude and give it a basic prompt. So I'm going to put in DaVinci Resolve, make a duplicate of my base project and call it AI test project. Then add the video and audio from my AI test video folder.
on my desktop to the media pool. Sync the audio to the video and then add it to the timeline. Then I want you to remove all of the pauses and mistakes in the video so the video flows nicely.
Then I want you to reframe the A -roll on each cut so that it zooms in by 40%. Lastly, I want you to add markers on the timeline every single time the speaker says the word transition. So that's not the most detailed prompt in the world, but I want to see what it does with it.
So now I can hit enter and let it do its thing. So first it made a duplicate of the project and renamed it. And then it added my media with the mic's audio sync to it.
So that's looking good. And then it removed that from the timeline before adding it back on with all of the cuts already applied. So it's basically transcribed the audio and taken each piece that it needs and put it on the timeline.
So then it told me what it had done so far and how it made those cuts. And it let me review the A -roll before moving on to its next task. So here's how the A -roll looked.
So we're not tied down to the keyframes. positions. So to do that we just need to double header and it will move like this.
Now to add the modifier Now to add a modifier to the displacement control, it didn't do the most amazing job of removing my mistakes. But to be fair, I do make a lot of mistakes in these videos because I'm not a great presenter.
So maybe I'm not the best example. There's definitely room for improvement there. So I then let it crack on with the rest of the task.
So as you can see, it's added the zoom ins, but it's done it to every single clip. Whereas I actually wanted it to be every other clip. So that was my fault for not prompting it very well.
And it also hasn't framed it very well because I wanted it to keep the eye line in the same place. But that was just because my prompt wasn't great. So I can see why it did that.
Next, it added all of these markers every time I say the word transition. And as you can see, it's done a really good job of this. Transition to...
Transition to... Transition to... Transition...
Transition here... this is where this ai integration is going to shine a manual task like this would take ages i'd have to transcribe the timeline search for the word put a marker down then go to the next word put another marker down and as you can see in this timeline there's 97 of them so having an ai jump into your timeline and do this for you is a huge win now the end result of this prompt is actually really good it's done nearly exactly what i wanted it to do the only problem is that it took 50 minutes which i could have done quicker myself but that's actually the wrong way to look at this because for this scenario i wouldn't just set the prompt up and then watch it slowly do it for me while i'm sitting here just staring at it i would set it up and then go and do something else so that could be replying to emails having lunch anything i'll normally be doing anyway and when i'm ready to edit it's already done which means if this would normally take me say
10 minutes then it's actually saved me 10 minutes so that's how it can help with setting up an edit but what about cleaning up a messy project near the end of an edit so you might either be near the end of your edit where your file management has gone out of the window or you're taking over an edit from someone and you get a timeline like this where nothing's really clear in the timeline and the files in the media pool are all over the place with no organization so this is where this ai integration is really handy so for this example i've just got this test project that i mainly use for just testing random things so everything's a bit all over the place so here i'm going to give claude this prompt color all of the videos on track one blue then for the rest of the clips in the timeline color all of the still images green all of the titles orange and everything else pink then organize all of the files in the media pool so all of the still images are in a still bin all of the timelines are in a timeline bin and organize anything else in there that isn't where it needs to be so here it's colored all of the clips how i want it and it's also made the stills folder and found all of the timelines and put them into its own folder so this is a solid use case for it because this would have actually meant me going through all of this manually to sort it all out so having the ai do that all for me is really nice
Now let's move on to the next test, which is a bit more ambitious. Color grading. I wanted to see if the AI could take my A -roll and grade it into something that's actually usable.
So for this test, I wanted to give the AI a reference image. So I found one on Google and then gave it this prompt. This is my cat Smudge.
That wasn't the prompt. That was just me introducing you to my little cat. The prompt was, can you grade my footage?
It's in V -Log and give it the classic orange teal look like this reference image. So it then took me over to the color page and started creating its own LUTs to make the grade. And it ended up with this, which isn't great.
But to be fair, I wasn't expecting it to be amazing, given the fact I just gave it a very basic prompt and a random reference image. So I'm sure with a more detailed prompt, you'll be able to get a better result out of this. But another way of using it to color grade, your footage would be to already have a power grade ready for it to use.
And if you're not sure what a power grade is, it's basically a saved grade with all of the nodes and everything you've used to make it already all set up. So because I normally film my videos in the same place with the same lighting, I can just use the same grade for every video that I make. So I can tell Claw to get rid of its grade and use my power grade instead.
And there we go. It's added my grade to all of the clips on the timeline. So this AI integration can be really useful for doing batch processes like setting up a project how you like it and adding your grades and running things in the background.
But now let's see how useful it is for doing smaller things in real time while you're actively editing your video. So things like grabbing images for you and putting them on the timeline and adding transitions and titles. So for this test, I wanted to see if it could grab an image of the DaVinci Resolve logo from Google, add it on top of my A -roll and position it towards the left of the frame and then add my sliding from left transition to the start of the clip so that it slides into the video from the left of the frame.
And as you can see, it's pulled the image from Google, positioned it here and added my transition to the start of it. So if I put my play head here, it now slides in from the left. It's not positioned it very well because it's quite small and it's not far enough to the left.
So I can just adjust it like this. and now it flies in like this and if i want to adjust the direction it flies in from i can easily turn on the fusion overlay over here and use the on -screen control to position where i want the animation to come from so if i put it here it's gonna slide in from there this transition is actually part of my preset pack which is full of transitions effects titles and generators that are all designed to make editing faster and easier so you can check that out in the link in the description if you want to make your editing life easier so here's another test that i tried i thought it would be cool to tell the ai to add a specific title to my timeline at the playhead and so i then hit the mic button and said add my wipe titles preset to track 2 on the timeline at the playhead and change the text inside the title to say transition to duration and it did add it to the timeline but it pushed all of the arrow over so it left this massive gap
although it did change the title text to what I wanted. So I then had to push everything back over and line up how I wanted it. So aside from it not doing exactly what I wanted with this task, the huge downside for asking AI to do small, quick things like this is that it isn't quick at all.
Both of these tests. So adding the title and adding the image for the transition. took nearly 10 minutes while the ai figured out the best way to do it which is a crazy amount of time when i could have done each of them in about 10 seconds by just using keyboard shortcuts which is why i'll always recommend editors to learn how to set up custom keyboard shortcuts and macros i actually made a whole video showing how you can set up your own custom keyboard shortcuts so that you can add things like titles and transitions onto your timeline with just a single keyboard shortcut so if i was going to add my wipe titles preset to the timeline i'd just hit my keyboard shortcut and it comes straight to the playhead if i want to add my transition i can just hit my shortcut and it's there straight away so i'll leave a link to that video in the description below it's the one video i would tell every single editor to watch because it speeds up your editing by an incredible amount so using ai for quickly doing small things around the timeline
isn't what it's intended for but where it does shine is this next test and this one is the perfect use case for it so when something breaks in davinci resolve Most editors, and especially beginners, will end up going down a Google rabbit hole for 20 minutes trying to figure out what went wrong. But that's where this AI integration can come in really handy.
And it's with troubleshooting. So here I've purposely set up a problem. I've changed the location of a clip in my finder.
So now Resolve is showing media offline. And if you're working in a busy timeline and you can't remember where you put that file, it might take a little bit of time to figure out exactly where it is. and how to relink it.
So here I've opened up Claude and said, the media in my timeline says media offline. Can you fix it? Nice and simple.
And there you go. It's relinked the clip and told me where it found it and where it originally was, which is great. So if you have a really busy project full of missing clips everywhere, this is where you could ask the AI to hunt those down for you instead of going through the relink clips window and locating them from different folders one at a time.
troubleshooting is a pretty cool use case for it. Because even though I may know how to fix these things, a lot of beginner editors might not. So I'm sure there's going to be situations where editors run into a problem and aren't sure how to fix it.
So being able to ask AI to directly look at your timeline and be able to potentially fix it for you and tell you how it fixed it is something that I can see being really helpful for editors as they're still learning the program. But the API integration to resolve does have its limitations as black magic doesn't give full access to absolutely everything under the hood.
So that's why I want to show you another way that you can use AI inside of DaVinci Resolve. And this one works a bit differently. So this next feature isn't actually a DaVinci Resolve feature.
but it ties into everything I've been showing you really nicely. So AIs like Claude and ChatGPT can actually take control of your screen. So they can move a cursor around, click things and do tasks for you, just like a human editor would.
The API integration is definitely faster because the AI is talking directly to Resolve internally rather than looking at it from the outside. But since Resolve hasn't opened up its API for everything yet, it means that there are still some limitations with that. and when those limitations come up your AI can just look at your screen and do it for you how a professional editor would.
So I'm going to give it a similar task to what I tested earlier but this time I'm going to tell it to control my screen instead of using the API. So I'm going to use ChatGPT for this one. And I'm giving it this prompt.
Take control of my screen and add my A -roll to the timeline. Use ripple delete silence to cut it up and then use my grade to grade it. The still is called my grade.
And as you can see, there's a secondary cursor on my screen. So that is ChatGPT's own cursor. And it's basically acting like an editor now.
It's putting the footage into the timeline, setting the ripple delete silence, and it's heading over to the color page. And now it's applying my grade. And that's it.
And what's really useful about this is that you don't even have to be watching it happen. You can have this running in the background while you're replying to emails, having lunch in the toilet, having a shower and come back to a graded and cut timeline, which is ready to go. So having this tool alongside the API integration completely opens up what AI can do in DaVinci Resolve.
But there are some downsides to all of this. So the first downside is how long it takes it is slow so you very much have to find when and where are the best places to use it because if i use it to set up my project organize my folders cut up my a -roll and tell me where certain things are said in that a -roll while i'm having my breakfast in the other room then it's just saved me about 20 minutes of time and I don't care if it took 15 minutes to do it.
But if I'm wanting it to do a task quickly for me while I'm waiting to crack on with an edit, then it's just going to be a frustration. So this is very much a tool for working in the background on repetitive manual tasks that you don't necessarily have to be spending your own time on. That's where the big gains are going to be.
The next downside is the cost. So obviously you have the monthly cost of AIs like ChatGPT or Claude, but when you start using them to do complex tasks in Resolve, they can start eating through a lot of your credits. So there is a limitation for how often you might want to use this tool, but you can use up less credits by learning how to prompt AI properly so that it makes less mistakes.
In this video, I used very, very basic prompts that I wouldn't recommend copying, but that was just because I wanted to see what it would do with that. So with better and more detailed prompts, you'll get better results. And you could also ask your AI to create a document of rules that it can follow for all of your DaVinci Resolve prompts.
So when things do or don't work, you can add them to your documents so that the next time your AI does something, it already knows what worked and what didn't work last time. So do I think that this will change video editing forever? Yes.
I think it will. It's going to mean that editors are doing less and less of the boring tasks that take time and in turn meaning there's more time for editors to do the creative part of the edit. So .
They're not as fast as you, they won't be able to make the same creative decisions that you make and they're not free, but they will be able to do some of the tasks that you don't need or want to do. I've seen some people do some really cool stuff with this already.
There was one person on Reddit who said that they used it to cut up a 50 minute interview down to a good 10 minute portion, which they said saved them three hours of time, which is pretty nuts. I tried to make it do something similar as a test for this video, and it didn't do a great job of it. And I also tried to get it to just make a simple multicam.
and it gave me this. So I think a big part of getting it to work well at the moment is knowing exactly how to use it and being able to give it good prompts. But over time, hopefully that might become less of an obstacle.
Also, Blackmagic are only going to keep opening up more of the API over time, which means the AI is going to be able to do more and more inside of DaVinci Resolve as each update comes out. So what we're seeing right now is just the beginning of how this is going to look going forward. And it's only going to get faster and better from here.
which is really exciting. But this isn't the only AI feature that DaVinci Resolve has. So click here to watch this video where I show you the 10 best AI features in DaVinci Resolve and exactly how I use them when I edit my videos.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve 21.1 update lets an AI assistant talk directly to the app and run real editing tasks, not just answer questions about it. One editor spends the video testing exactly how far that goes, from unattended project setup to full screen control, and lands on a clear line between what it's actually good for and what it just makes slower.
Named ideas worth stealing.
16:04concept
AI as a junior editor
- Slow
- Can't make pro-level creative decisions
- Expensive
- Can do less-desirable tasks
A mental model for scoping what an AI editing assistant is actually good for: like a junior hire, it can take repetitive tasks off your plate but shouldn't be trusted with creative judgment calls or urgent turnarounds.
Steal forevaluating any new AI feature added to a creative tool
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
08:32product
“check that out in the link in the description if you want to make your editing life easier”
soft, in-context plug woven into a feature demo rather than a dedicated pitch break, mentioned twice (preset pack, then the shortcuts video) as natural asides.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
