Everything, step by step.

Getting started

What you need

• A Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) running macOS 14 or later.
• DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.1 or newer. The free edition of Resolve does not allow other apps to control it.
• A project with the cameras synced and stacked on separate video tracks, and a microphone recording for each person — separate mic files, stereo files with one person per channel, and multitrack recorder files all work. If you only have the raw files, start with Import instead: it syncs everything and builds the project for you.
• Keep the media drive connected while you work.

Install

Open the DMG and drag SOLD CUT into Applications. If an older copy is running, quit it first.

Turn on scripting in Resolve

SOLD CUT drives Resolve through its scripting interface, so Resolve has to allow it once:

1. In Resolve, open Preferences → System → General.
2. Set External scripting using to Local.
3. Restart Resolve.

The two Resolve settings SOLD CUT checks for you

Two settings in Resolve cannot be changed by another app, so SOLD CUT checks them and shows you where they are. The first time you open it, Before your first episode lists them; each row turns green by itself as soon as Resolve is right (or press Check Again):

• Resolve lets SOLD CUT connect: External scripting set to Local, as above. It needs DaVinci Resolve Studio.
• Playback frame rate matches the timeline: File → Project Settings (Shift+9) → Master Settings → Playback frame rate, the same as the timeline (25 for a 25 fps episode), then Save. When it differs (often 24, Resolve's American default, on a 25 fps episode), playback stutters, the sound crackles and long timelines can hang.
• Saved as your default for new projects: in Project Settings, the ⋯ menu at the top right → Save Current Settings as Preset… (give it a name), then ⋯ → that preset → Set as Default Preset → Set. In older Resolve versions: ⋯ → Save Current Settings as User Default Config. SOLD CUT can only see this on the next project it creates: if that project starts at the wrong rate, it tells you right after Import.

The sheet comes back at a start only while something is wrong (Later puts it off). Any project you open that plays at another rate than its timeline gets one warning of its own, and Settings › Support › Check Resolve Settings… runs the checks whenever you want.

Your first episode in three steps

The Episode page (⌘1) opens first: it shows the three steps with where each one stands and a blue Continue button for the next.

1. Import. Drop the episode folder: the cameras and microphones are synced into a new Resolve project and Setup is filled in for you. Already synced? Open that project in Resolve and pick its timeline on Episode.
2. Setup. Name each person (2–10), choose their microphone and give each camera a role: a close‑up, a group shot, the wide shot or a split screen. Anything that blocks Multicam is shown at the top, with the cameras it is about outlined. Save a show preset once you're happy with it.
3. Multicam. Choose a Pace (the rest is under Style), press Analyze, check the shots, then Cut to a Copy. Check the result in Resolve, then add subtitles, titles, jump cuts or quick clips from that working copy.

The sidebar, the toolbar and the copy rule

The sidebar on the left holds the pages — Episode, then the steps Import, Setup and Multicam, then After the Cut (React, Subtitles, Titles) and the tools Jump Cuts and Quick Clips (⌘1–⌘9). A page that isn't ready yet opens the step that holds it back. For an event or DJ set the steps are Import, Setup and Events. At its bottom: the Resolve project and timeline you're on (click it for the Episode page), your AI credits, the Guide and Settings. The toolbar at the top shows the page, the timeline it works on and the page's own controls, and its blue button on the right always does the next thing on the page (⌘Return). Advanced choices sit in the small buttons next to it (Style, AI Review, Presets…), and a right‑click on cards, transcript lines, cameras and exported videos opens their menu. While a job runs, its progress shows under the toolbar and on the Dock icon. One rule is worth remembering throughout the app:

Recent episodes, Quick Actions and the Shortcuts app

The Episode page lists the Recent episodes this Mac worked on: click one to open it in Resolve (another project opens after you confirm; the open one is saved first). ⌘/ opens Quick Actions: type a page, an action or a recent episode and press Return. Help › Keyboard Shortcuts lists every key. While a long job runs, the Mac does not go to sleep, and the list button next to the progress shows the job's steps.

From the macOS Shortcuts app or a launcher, the links soldcut://go/multicam (or any page: episode, import, setup, react, subtitles, titles, jump-cuts, quick-clips, settings, guide), soldcut://refresh and soldcut://quick-actions open SOLD CUT there. They never write to Resolve.

A project from another Mac

When a colleague's project reaches you, open it in Resolve and SOLD CUT checks what this Mac can find. The Resolve page lists it under Media:

• SOLD CUT graphics made on the other Mac (the React phone, split lines and backgrounds). They are named by their content, so the same files on your Mac are the same pictures: Relink Here points Resolve at them. SOLD CUT now keeps these graphics in SOLD CUT/Graphics next to the episode's media, so they travel with the drive.
• Cameras on a drive that is not connected play from their proxy; the camera pictures and face framing use the proxy too. Connect the drive before the final render.
• Other offline files, with the drive they are on: connect it, or relink them in Resolve (Media Pool › right click › Relink Selected Clips).
• Track names that no longer match what the tracks hold: a track added in Resolve moves the names (an "Illustrations" track can end up holding the phone background). Each one is listed with the name to give it in Resolve.

The Setup travels too: Cut to a Copy keeps the people, cameras and framing inside the Resolve project, and another Mac that opens it starts with the same Setup.

Import (from raw files)

Use Import (the first page in the sidebar, ⌘1; or just drag the episode folder onto the window) when you have a folder of raw camera and recorder files instead of an already‑synced timeline. It walks through six steps and hands you a finished Resolve project at the end.

1. Choose the folder

First choose what you filmed: Podcast (people talking, a microphone each) or Event / DJ (a set with a board feed and cameras with roles; see Events). Then point SOLD CUT at the episode's folder (cameras and recorder together). It groups the files into cameras and microphones automatically and shows a photo pulled from each camera so you can recognise them. The subfolders are listed with their file counts: untick one (an old take, a folder of exports) to leave its files out of this episode; the folder is scanned again without it.

2. Say who is who

Check every line — names are guessed from file and folder names. SOLD CUT does the first pass for you: on a multitrack recorder (RØDECaster, Zoom…) only the inputs someone spoke into are offered as people. The stereo mix, phone and USB returns, inputs that recorded nothing (Silent) and open mics with nobody on them (Very quiet) are set to Don't use or Other sound (room, music), and clips from an illustrations / b‑roll folder, or much shorter than the episode, are not taken for cameras. Change any line if the guess is wrong.

• Give each microphone a person. For a stereo or multitrack recorder file, choose the channel that carries them, use Mix to combine every channel, or One person per channel when two people share one file on different channels.
• Recordings cut into several files. Many recorders start a new file every 30 minutes or at a size limit. Files whose names differ only at the end (REC_A, REC_B; …0396S12, …0397S12) become one microphone, its pieces one after another on one track, when each starts where the one before ended; for recorders that write no date into their files, the time each file was written is used. Recordings made at the same time are never joined: they are different microphones. If SOLD CUT left pieces apart, choose Same recording as… on a microphone, pick the file that continues it, then Join; Separate Recordings undoes a join (yours or SOLD CUT's), and Scan Again keeps your choice.
• Give each camera a role: a person's close‑up, the wide shot, a group shot, a split screen, or Keep As Is.
• The cameras of the conversation come first. Illustrations and other angles (the clips SOLD CUT guessed as inserts, and anything set to Keep As Is or Don't use) sit in a folded list under them: tick several (Shift‑click for a range) and set them at once with Use as. An illustration that is not heard on the microphones was not used in the episode: at Check Sync it reads Not used · not heard in the episode and it is left out of the timeline, never on a CHECK SYNC track; type a start for it to place it anyway.
• Each camera's card shows the video track it will sit on (V1, V2…). SOLD CUT puts the wide shot first, then each person's cameras; to choose yourself, drag a card onto another or pick a track from the card's V menu — the other cameras shift. Automatic Order brings SOLD CUT's order back. Split screens always go right above the cameras.
• Cameras set to Keep As Is (illustrations, inserts) all share one Illustrations track; only where two of them overlap in time does a second one appear, on Illustrations 2. Their own sound (if they have any) goes on an Illustrations audio track, right below the recorded microphones, linked to the picture. It is never a person's microphone and never replaces the recorded screen audio the cut uses.
• Split screens live here too, under the cameras: Split of A + B, Each pair, Everyone, or tick the people yourself. It's the same editor as in Setup — layout, lines dragged with the mouse, an optional divider PNG on top, and a camera per piece — just working on the scanned photos instead of a live timeline. Auto‑frame faces in new splits is on by default: for every new split, SOLD CUT reads about 24 frames from the camera files on this Mac (no Resolve involved) and centres each face, showing Face found, Moves a lot: check, or No face: frame by hand under each piece.

3. Check sync

SOLD CUT matches every file to a reference microphone by sound, or by timecode when your cameras and recorder shared one jam‑synced clock. Files it isn't sure about are flagged, and you can type in where a flagged file actually starts, or skip this step and let sync run when the episode is created.

Every camera needs its own sound to be synced: turn on its built‑in microphone, at any quality. That sound is only used to line the cameras up and never reaches the cut. A camera recorded with its sound off can only be placed by a shared timecode (tick Camera and recorder clocks are jam-synced (trust timecode)); otherwise it lands on a CHECK SYNC track. More in cameras recorded without sound.

Illustrations that were not found by their sound are left out of the timeline and listed by name at the end, under Illustrations left out, each with why (not heard on the microphones, or no sound track to find it by): they stay in the Media Pool, to place by hand if they were used.

Files that couldn't be synced with certainty are never mixed into the cut. They land on disabled tracks named CHECK SYNC, placed after the main tracks — align them by eye in Resolve, then move them to the right track.

4. Frame rate, resolution, and where Resolve keeps its files

Choose the timeline's frame rate and resolution. The resolution you chose last time comes back; when the camera files are 1280×720 or less (often proxies), a note says the episode, its split screens and every copy will be that size unless you choose another. Yellow chips warn you when a camera's frame rate doesn't match what you've chosen:

• Exact multiples (50 on a 25 timeline, 60 on 30) look perfect; slower cameras simply repeat frames.
• Almost‑equal rates (23.976 on 24, 29.97 on 30) repeat or drop one frame roughly every 42 seconds — usually invisible.
• Other combinations (29.97 on 25, 30 on 24) judder on movement, and phones that record at a variable frame rate can drift. SOLD CUT warns you before creating the episode. Sound is never affected either way.

Resolve project location is the folder where Resolve keeps this project's cache, stills, and proxies. It defaults to whatever you used last, or to <episode folder>/SOLD CUT/Resolve otherwise. Choosing it here means Resolve won't ask you again with its own location dialog; the folder is created if it's missing and must be writable.

Resolve preset (optional) is a project preset already saved in Resolve. It's applied first, then the frame rate and resolution you chose here are applied on top.

5. Create episode in Resolve

This step creates a brand‑new Resolve project with a fully synced timeline. Whatever project was open before is saved automatically first (you can opt out, at the risk of losing its unsaved changes). Resolve is left on the Edit page with the new project and timeline open, and the first clip starts exactly on the timeline's first frame — no black frame at the head.

Files that couldn't be trusted land on disabled CHECK SYNC tracks, as above. The video tracks are ordered bottom to top: wide shot, group/2‑shot, the individual people's cameras, Split A + B (any split screens from step 2, built directly into the new timeline — no separate "SPLITS" copy is needed here), Illustrations, then CHECK SYNC.

If a split screen can't be built, the episode is still created in full: the timeline simply has no split screens yet, the report explains why, and the split appears in Setup so you can build it from there. A split that would start earlier than everything else is placed at the very start of the timeline instead, with the note "clamped to the timeline start — align by eye".

6. Setup fills itself in

Setup is populated automatically from what you told SOLD CUT in step 2. From here, continue straight to Multicam.

If you already have a synced timeline and don't need Import at all, use the classic path instead: open Resolve, choose the synced timeline, then go to Setup and Multicam as usual.

Setup

Setup is where you tell SOLD CUT who's on screen, which camera shows whom, and how each shot should be framed. Everything here is saved with a show preset, so a returning podcast only needs a quick check.

People & microphones

Name each person (2 to 10) and choose their microphone. When a microphone track holds more than one channel — a stereo or multitrack recorder file — choose the channel that carries this person, or Mix to use every channel together. Two people can share a single file when each one uses a different channel.

Cameras

Give every camera a role:

• Close‑up of one person.
• Wide shot, showing everyone.
• Group shot: a camera that frames two or three people but not everyone. Tick which people it shows — when exactly those people talk over each other, the cut reaches for this camera instead of the wide shot.
• Split screen, described below.
• Keep As Is, for illustrations and inserts: these are grouped onto their own Illustrations track, kept untouched by the cut, and their own sound never replaces the recorded screen audio.

The Illustrations track Import makes is marked as such and can never be a camera: the cut never cuts, moves or turns off an illustration. A person without a camera of their own (a guest on a lavalier) needs none: when they speak, the cut shows a group shot with them in it, or the wide.

Track order

Want the cameras stacked differently — say Wide, then each person's main camera, then the second angles? Track Order in Setup's toolbar lists the video tracks as Resolve stacks them, the top track first. Drag a row (or press ⌥↑ / ⌥↓) until the order is yours, then Reorder in a Copy.

Resolve cannot move a track by script, so SOLD CUT writes a copy named “… ORDER”: on it the clips of every track that changes place are put on their new track, with their framing, their grade, their on/off state and the track's name. Your timeline is not changed, and Setup follows the new numbers by itself.

Presets

• Load preset brings back the saved people, camera assignments, vertical framing, Style, and tuning for a show. Check the camera images before continuing — track numbers can change between episodes.
• Re‑detect replaces the proposed microphone and camera assignments with a fresh suggestion. Review the result before analyzing.
• Save preset saves this setup, including your Style choice, on your Mac for the next episode. It never saves or changes anything in your Resolve project.

Vertical framing

Vertical framing sets where each camera is cropped for 9:16 output: quick clips. Move the frame over the person and zoom in if needed; it's saved with the preset, and it's what Quick Clips uses to follow whoever is on camera.

Auto‑frame faces

Auto‑frame all cameras reads about 24 frames from each camera belonging to a person, finds the face using Apple's on‑device Vision framework — locally, nothing sent online — and centres the person left to right in the vertical framing. It never zooms and never moves the frame up or down: set the height and the zoom yourself if you want them (a camera you haven't touched starts centred, without zoom). The same goes for split screens; React already follows only left to right. Under any single camera, the same button — just Auto‑frame face — does it for that camera alone, and can also be used on a wide or group shot if you want.

Wide shots, group shots, and split screens are not touched by "all cameras" — they hold more than one person. You'll see one of these messages once it's done:

• Face found in N of M frames — done.
• Moves a lot: check — the person moves a great deal; double‑check the framing.
• N people in this shot — more than one face was found, and the largest was chosen.
• No clear face found: frame it by hand — move the framing rectangle yourself.

SOLD CUT reads the original media files; if they're offline, it falls back to the Resolve proxy. Nothing in Resolve is changed by this step, and the result is saved into the preset exactly like a manual framing. Frames it has already read are cached on your Mac (in faces_cache inside the app's folder), so a second run is much faster.

Split screens

Split screens appear in Setup whenever no single camera frames two or more people together. Add Split Screen asks who is in it: tick the people, or add Each Pair or Everyone at once (up to 10 splits). With four people you can have Ana + Bob, Cris + Dan, Ana + Cris and so on; the cut uses the split of exactly the people who talk over each other. The same people can also have more than one split, another frame of them: Duplicate copies a split for you to change (tighter, wider, another layout), and the cut takes the frames of the same people in turns. Then set up each split:

• Layout: side by side, top and bottom, columns, one large piece plus two small ones, or a grid.
• Who sits where: a new split follows the studio convention, the same as React: person 1 on the right, person 2 on the left (and on top in a stacked layout). Drag one picture onto another to swap them.
• Lines dragged with the mouse to resize each piece.
• Who sits where — drag one person's photo over another's to swap them — plus each piece's camera, position, and zoom. Cameras keep their own size (100% zoom); they're only shifted and cropped into their piece, the same way a hand‑made double frame is built.

The dividing line can be generated — the studio's own look, black, 37 px wide at 4K (16 px on a 9:16 cut) — or a divider PNG placed on top: the classic 16:9 or 9:16 dividers, or your own, added through My overlay PNG…, which copies it into My overlays. Set as standard makes your choice the default for new splits and saves it in the preset.

Split screens can also be designed directly inside Import's step 2; those are built straight into the brand‑new timeline, and Setup then shows them as Built.

Build split screens copies the timeline to a new one named "… SPLITS". Each split is built in its own helper timeline ("… SPLIT A + B"), turned into a single compound clip named SPLIT A + B, and placed on a new video track immediately above the cameras — illustration and graphics tracks move up one to make room. If Resolve refuses the insert, the track is placed on top of everything instead and the report says "Split track placed above all tracks". If Resolve refuses to make the compound clip, the nested helper timeline is used in its place and SOLD CUT tells you so. The original timeline is never changed, and building again — even on a timeline that already has splits, such as one from Import — replaces the old split tracks in the new copy.

Once built, the copy becomes the source for Multicam: every split screen is used exactly like a group shot, reached for whenever exactly those people are talking over each other.

Auto‑frame faces works per split too: it finds each person's face on the camera used for their piece and centres them left to right. It never zooms and never moves the frame up or down: the zoom and the height stay yours to set (it does not touch the camera's own vertical framing either).

Multicam

This is where SOLD CUT proposes the edit itself: which camera is on screen, and when.

Analyze

Analyze reads the microphone recordings and proposes camera changes. It writes nothing to Resolve — it's entirely safe to run as many times as you like. Run Analyze again after changing anything in Setup, Style, or Settings.

Style

Choose a pace — Slow, Balanced, or Fast — which sets how the cut treats a handful of related choices at once: how it handles interruptions (people talking over each other), how often it reaches for the wide shot, and how often it reaches for a split screen. Fine‑tuning any of these individually, in Settings, turns the Style into Custom. Always analyze again after a change here.

Split screen time is a slider under Split screen. At 0 the split screen (or the group shot of the people talking) appears only where the audio clearly shows it: long overlaps and fast exchanges, which with microphones hearing each other can be just a few times an episode. Move it to, say, 15% and at least that share of the talking goes on the split screen: SOLD CUT picks the liveliest exchanges — quick turns and moments when two people talk at once, whoever is louder — about 6 seconds each, longer where the exchange goes on. Silences, wide shots and illustrations stay as they are. The slider moves in steps of 0.1%, or type the value in the box next to it. It needs a split screen or a group shot in Setup.

Wide while talking (under Wide shot) works the same way for the wide shot, for shows with a wide worth seeing. At 0 the wide plays only in the pauses and under the illustrations; Wide shot › Minimal avoids it even there. Move it to, say, 12% and at least that share of the talking goes on the wide: 6 seconds at a time, placed in the longest stretches of one person talking, spread out, never over an exchange.

The monitor and the cut

After Analyze the whole cut appears as one coloured strip under the cameras, each shot in the colour of who is on screen. Move over the strip and the monitor shows that shot; click to keep it there, and the arrow keys step through the cut. Click a camera to see it on the monitor. The list button next to the strip opens every track like a Resolve timeline — V1 at the bottom and the video tracks going up, the microphones under the video from A1 down, each with its level. The line under the strip gives each person's share of the screen, the number of shots and the average shot.

The cut itself is the proposed shot list with its timecodes. Camera gaps — a stretch where the chosen camera has no footage — are automatically covered by another angle or by the wide shot, and group shots are used whenever exactly the people they frame are speaking together. If the report says CHECK or mentions holes, look at those spots before delivering. Every angle, whether it was used or not, is kept on the copy as a disabled clip, so you can always swap the visible shot yourself afterwards in Resolve.

Cut to a Copy

Cut to a Copy (or Cut Again) creates a new timeline copy — named "… AUTO" — and builds the proposed cut there; the original timeline is never touched. Any zoom, punch‑in, or grading already sitting on the individual cameras is preserved on the copy. Keep Resolve open while this runs, then check the result and watch the cut before you move on or deliver it.

The cut on the Program. After Analyze, Multicam shows the cut like a vision mixer: the shot on air on a 16:9 monitor drawn from the cameras' real frames, the cameras on the left (a red dot on the one on air), the shot's choices on the right, the shots in a strip grouped in two-minute windows, and under it the cameras' tracks as the copy will have them (on bright, off dim). Take a camera for the selected shot with 1–9 (⇧ with it: every shot of that person), by clicking it in the cameras on the left (⇧‑click: every shot of that person), or from the inspector. ⌘K cuts the shot at its middle, ⌘J joins it with the next, [ and ] nudge its start or end a frame (⇧ a second), and you can drag the border between two shots on the timeline. ⌘Z undoes; the caption says what was undone. The caption reads "Preview · N shots changed, not in Resolve yet" until Cut to a Copy (or Cut Again) writes a copy with exactly those shots; Analyze again asks before it drops your changes. If the copy already exists and you reviewed it by hand in Resolve, the page reads it back ("As reviewed in Resolve"): the shots are yours, and a change makes a new copy. The copy is the truth: multicam, your review, subtitles.

The phone stack on the Program. React › Preview shows every illustration on the Program: the two close-ups as their Fusion compositions will frame them, the phone background, the illustration zoomed into the phone and the phone frame, drawn from the cameras' real frames at that moment. The strip holds one piece per illustration (a hatched one is placed by hand: too short, or switched off in Resolve) and the timeline under it shows which tracks go on and off there. In the inspector, "This illustration" builds or skips the phone for that moment (a short one can be forced); who sits left and right, the framing per side, the zooms, the layout and the cameras kept on are the model and change every moment at once. Build in a Copy writes exactly what you see.

Subtitles on the Program. The subtitle drawn on a piece is the cue the Subtitles step will make there: cut at the border between a double frame (the middle), a reel (the card's line) and a single camera (the bottom; the lower third on 16:9), as the import cuts it, with the deleted lines left out. When the copy's layout differs from the plan at import time, the subtitles follow the copy and the step says so.

Checking a piece against Resolve. On any Program, V asks Resolve for its own frame of the written copy at the piece's moment and shows it on the monitor (the dot reads "Resolve's frame"; V again shows the drawing; while Resolve renders, the still waits and the caption says so). P plays 2.5 seconds of the microphones at the piece, the only playback the app offers. ⇧⌘O opens Resolve on the copy at that frame. The Edit › Program menu lists every key of the Program and runs it. When you come back to the app after a hand edit in Resolve, the copy is read again by itself: the cut badges and the shots follow what Resolve has.

Undo Cut to a Copy

Changed your mind about a cut? In Multicam, the cut's result (the check mark under the monitor) has Undo Cut to a Copy…; it is also in Quick Actions (⌘/). After you confirm, SOLD CUT removes the copy it made and shows the episode timeline again. It removes only a multicam copy SOLD CUT made from this episode (it checks its own mark on the timeline, not the name), never the episode timeline or a timeline you made. Resolve cannot bring a removed copy back.

Open in Resolve and Cancel

Open in Resolve selects the generated timeline so you can watch it and adjust the edit by hand. Cancel stops whatever is running and restarts the analysis engine; if you cancel while a timeline is being built, an incomplete copy may be left behind in Resolve for you to delete — the original is never affected.

React & illustrations

React appears in the sidebar whenever the timeline has an Illustrations track — Import creates one from any camera set to Other angle — or when the show is set up as a react show. While each illustration plays, it builds the studio's phone‑in‑the‑middle look on a copy named "… REACT" of the input timeline, normally the multicam "… AUTO" copy.

A screen filmed in the studio

Some react shows have no illustration files: a phone on Bluetooth plays the videos on a screen in the studio and the wide shot films it. Name that recorder track like the feed (Bluetooth, Phone, TV, Screen) and set it to Other in Import: SOLD CUT takes it as the screen sound, Multicam shows the wide while the screen plays and nobody talks, and Jump Cuts keeps those moments. There is nothing to build on React for such a show.

What it builds

For the length of each illustration:

• The two close‑ups sit side by side — left and right of the phone — each framed by its own Fusion composition matching the studio's: a 1.1x transform, a mask covering half the frame (0.25 on the left side, 0.75 on the right), and a Center X value keyframed to follow the face.
• The illustration itself is shrunk into the phone's screen: a 9:16 video at 0.8 scale, a 9:16 photo at 0.62 scale; other shapes fit inside the same screen.
• A new track, React background (the phone body and its shadow), sits immediately below the illustration, and a new track, React frame (the outline with its Dynamic Island cut‑out), sits immediately above it.
• Every other camera angle, split screen, group shot, and any track that would sit between the close‑ups and the illustration is turned off for that stretch.
• The illustration's own sound plays, while the screen audio recorded in the room (the Bluetooth feed) is cut and muted exactly for the illustration's duration. The wide shot underneath and the microphones are left untouched.

Layout and sides

Who sits left and who sits right of the phone is chosen once per episode — the studio default is speaker 1 on the right, speaker 2 on the left — and Swap sides exchanges them. Each side's default camera is that person's highest camera track (their close‑up).

Phone layout offers Phone classic, the studio's own phone, or Add layout…, which asks for two PNGs sized to the timeline — a background with transparent sides and a frame — copied into My react layouts. The zoom values (close‑up 1.1, video 0.8, photo 0.62) can all be adjusted.

Follow faces

On by default: SOLD CUT reads one frame per second from each close‑up (locally, on this Mac), finds the face, and writes one Transform keyframe per second into the Fusion composition, easing between them the way an editor's own keyframes would. Small movements are ignored, so the picture doesn't jitter and a stray wrong detection is smoothed out. With no face found, or with Follow faces switched off, the framing stays fixed. You can inspect the resulting keyframes on the Fusion page of any close‑up.

Mute the screen audio

This ticks, by default, the recorder track set to Other in Import, the Setup screen‑audio track, and any track named like Bluetooth. Each one is cut at the start and end of every built illustration, and that piece is disabled for the illustration's duration. Microphones and the illustrations' own sound can never be ticked here.

Preview and Build

Preview changes nothing: it lists every illustration with its length, which tracks will turn off, and — with Follow faces on — the face keyframes for each side. Illustrations shorter than the minimum length (3 seconds, adjustable) are never built; the result lists them with their timecodes instead, marked "Place by hand" since they're too short to sync automatically.

Build in a Copy creates the "… REACT" copy and verifies it — each close‑up should end up as one enabled clip with its composition, with no other camera or screen audio active during an illustration. If anything fails, the copy is deleted and the input timeline is never touched. Once built, it becomes your working timeline.

Find illustrations by sound

For older timelines that don't have an Illustrations track yet: choose the folder containing the episode's illustrations, then Listen — SOLD CUT matches each illustration's own sound against the recorded screen‑audio track to find where it played. Tick the ones you want built; Build first places them on a new Illustrations track (with their sound) in the copy, then builds the phone look around them as usual.

Events / DJ sets (beta)

Events cuts a filmed DJ set or live event the way Multicam cuts a podcast: from the music instead of the voices. It reads the board feed, finds the drops, changes cameras in whole bars at the set's tempo, builds a separate multicam copy in Resolve with a marker on every drop you chose, and turns those markers into social clips. It is a beta: it is tested on a full club set from the raw files to the posted clips, but the camera plan does not look at the picture yet, so watch every clip before you post it.

Import an event

In Import, choose Event / DJ before the folder. Instead of people you choose the board / master audio (the recorder that took the mixer's feed; a recorder named as a backup or safety copy is only offered when there is nothing else) and a role for each camera. The rest is the same as for a podcast: sync, frame rate, Create. Recorders that cut the set into several files are joined into one microphone (see Who is who).

Setup: board audio and camera roles

• Board audio: the audio track with the clean feed of the set, and its Channel (all channels mixed, or one).
• Tick each camera of the set and give it a role: Wide, Booth / performer, Crowd, Roaming or Detail. Tracks that are not cameras of the set (CHECK SYNC, inserts) stay unticked.
• Sync checked: tick it after you have looked in Resolve that the board feed and the cameras line up. Events does not start without it.

Your changes in Resolve come first

You can arrange the timeline by hand at any time: move a camera to another track, rename tracks, turn a track off, put the recorder's pieces on the track you want. When you open Setup or Events, or come back to SOLD CUT, it reads the timeline again and follows you: a camera you moved keeps its role on its new track, a board track you turned off is no longer used (when only one recorder is left on, that one becomes the board; with several, you choose), and a note says what was taken from your timeline. If you change the tracks while the page is open and press a button, SOLD CUT reads them again before it analyzes, keeps what you chose on the page, and tells you to check the setup.

The filmed range

A timeline is often longer than the set: sync‑check clips far away, a recorder left running. Events reads what your chosen cameras and the board audio really cover. When that is only part of the timeline, it shows the filmed range (for example 0:00–1:43:02) and what makes the timeline longer, and Prepare the Filmed Range and Continue makes a copy that holds only that range, with your setup and the sync check. The original timeline stays as it is. When the cameras stop in between, you choose which stretch to work on.

Analyze the music

Analyze Music reads the board feed on this Mac (no credits, no upload) and finds the moments where the music hits: drops, builds and breaks. It also estimates the tempo.

Drops for social clips

The drops are ranked by the music (its energy and how hard the moment hits); this is not a prediction of how a clip will perform. Choose 3, 5 or 10 in one click, or include and leave out drops one by one. Each chosen drop becomes a duration marker on the copy. The detected moments and the full list stay folded under the step.

Tempo and pacing

The tempo sets the rhythm of the camera changes: shots last whole bars at that tempo. Check it against the music and confirm it (Use … BPM), or type your own. A set that changes tempo keeps one grid. Pacing (Steady, Club, Fast) sets how often the cameras change.

Plan and build

Plan the Whole Set places the camera changes over the whole set, from the tempo, the drops, each camera's role and what was on screen before; the camera changes are listed under the step, and you can lock any shot and plan again around it. Build the Multicam Copy writes the plan to a new timeline (… EVENTS BETA) next to your original: the chosen camera is on, the others stay underneath, and every chosen drop is a green duration marker.

Markers and clips

In Resolve you can move a marker, drag its end to change the length, or delete it. Make the Clips reads the markers as they are at that moment (a deleted marker gives no clip) and opens Quick Clips with one range per marker: choose the format, Create Timelines, then Export Videos.

Subtitles

Transcribe

Transcribe and Review is one step: it reads the configured microphone audio, saves the subtitles locally, then the AI reviews the text. Choose the episode's Language first: 33 languages, or Auto‑detect. The page says what the two cost together before anything starts. Untick Review the text with AI to transcribe only; when the credits do not pay both, the transcription runs alone and AI Review waits in the toolbar.

Where the transcription runs is set in Settings › AI › Where the AI runs:

• Cloud · credits is used while your account has credits, unless you choose the Mac. It sends the whole episode (every microphone, mixed, at full length) to our speech provider and pays with SOLD CUT credits: a 90‑minute episode in about 3 minutes, each voice told apart and named from its microphone, and no model to download. Your vocabulary and the people's names go with it as the terms to listen for, and the words the recogniser was not sure of are the first the review looks at. The page says "In the cloud" before you start.
• On this Mac · free uses the Whisper large‑v3 speech model: with no credits, or when you choose it. The model (about 2.9 GB) downloads once, the first time you transcribe, and works offline after that. Nothing is uploaded.

Reels in another language. A reel or an illustration that speaks another language than the episode gets its subtitles in the episode's language: English reels in a Romanian podcast are written in Romanian, French ones in an English podcast in English. The episode's language is the one you chose, or the one heard most with Auto‑detect. The review does it; when no review follows a transcription on this page, the translation runs alone (5 credits at least, said on the page before it starts). Anywhere else, and with no credits, the reel stays in its own language and the page says so, with a Translate button that shows its cost (on Subtitles). A translated line is marked, shows what was heard, and right‑click › Undo the Translation puts it back. Untick Subtitle them to leave the reels without subtitles.

Transcribe Again (the ⋯ menu) replaces the saved transcript: export an SRT first if you want to keep your own edits. The menu says where it runs and what it costs, and has the same Then review the text with AI tick.

Subtitled before React. The React copy takes the transcript of the timeline it is built from, review and fixes included. The reels' own sound is on the copy only, so after the build it is heard on its own and its lines go between the ones you have; the React page says so, with what it costs, before you build (hearing the reels is free on this Mac). If that could not run, Subtitles on the copy shows Subtitle the Reels.

Review with AI

Review with AI is an online step: it reads the whole episode's transcript, deduces from context (what was said just before and after each piece) and corrects misheard words, diacritics, digits (numbers are written out as digits), and punctuation. Reels get an extra pass: a reel that speaks another language is written in the episode's language. Any change it makes can be undone.

It runs by itself after a transcription (Transcribe and Review) and again from AI Review in the toolbar, with SOLD CUT credits and a consent checkbox. Only the transcript's text is ever sent — never audio or video. Best is a slower, more careful model for higher accuracy: it takes 2 credits a minute instead of 1.

AI credits

SOLD CUT AI credits run the AI review, the Titles and cloud transcription, which is used while your credits cover the job unless you choose On this Mac · free. 1 credit is 1 minute of sound for one job (on a timeline of cuts, only the cuts count):

• Cloud transcription: 1 credit a minute, every microphone included.
• AI review: 1 credit a minute (Best: 2).
• Titles: 0.2 credit a minute, at least 5.

A 90‑minute episode with all three is about 198 credits. Every job shows what it costs and your balance before it starts. Unused jobs are refunded automatically; credits for provider work already started are kept until its outcome is known. Contact support if a charged job did not produce a usable result. Credits belong to your licence e‑mail, work on both your Macs and never expire. Your balance is in Settings › AI, next to the AI light in the title bar and on your account page, where Buy Credits takes you: packs of 1,000 (€19), 3,000 (€49) and 10,000 (€149).

Undo and edit

Undo restores one AI change at a time. Click any transcript line to edit its text, then Save. Once the subtitles are in Resolve, an edit marks the track there as older than your transcript and the main button becomes Update in Resolve: it writes the track again. A line's menu can also open Resolve at that line or play its sound.

Subtitle style

Cues are kept short — about a second, roughly four words — with a maximum of two lines of 26 characters each, and timed to the individual words. On import, a cue that starts within a few frames of a camera cut is snapped to start exactly on the cut.

Subtitle look

When you run Add to Resolve, choose how the subtitles should look:

• Studio style — the studio's own subtitle look (Montserrat ExtraBold: just under the middle line on a vertical cut, low in the frame on a 16:9 episode). This requires the Montserrat font to be installed on your Mac.
• Resolve default.
• Copy the look of … any other timeline already in the project.

Edited after transcribing? SOLD CUT remembers where the sound sat when it transcribed. If you move, trim or delete sound in Resolve afterwards, Subtitles tells you the transcript is older than your edit and offer Transcribe Again, so the subtitles follow your cut. Switching cameras does not count as a change.

Add to Resolve and export

Add to Resolve creates a copy of the working timeline and imports the subtitles onto its first subtitle track. If subtitles are already there, you'll be asked before they're replaced in the copy. Export SRT saves a copy wherever you choose, and Show SRT file opens its location in the Finder — neither one touches the timeline itself.

A timeline that already has subtitles

Subtitles you already have on a timeline (your own, Resolve's, another editor's) can be used as they are. Choose the timeline in Subtitles: when it has subtitles and SOLD CUT has no transcript of it yet, the page says This timeline already has subtitles with how many lines. Check the Language, then press Use These Subtitles: nothing is transcribed and nothing is paid for it. From there AI Review corrects them (counted on the minutes the lines cover) and Titles writes the titles from them. Your timeline is not changed; Add to Resolve works on a copy as usual.

Subtitles for a timeline of cuts you made yourself

Already built your short cuts by hand in Resolve? You don't have to transcribe the whole episode. In Subtitles, pick the timeline with your cuts and press Transcribe: only the cuts are transcribed, the gaps between them are skipped. With SOLD CUT credits, transcription and the AI review are counted on the minutes of the cuts, not on the length of the timeline. Then AI Review and Add to Resolve work as for an episode, in the vertical Studio look when the timeline is 9:16.

Titles

Titles writes ten titles for the episode on YouTube. The AI reads the subtitles of the timeline chosen on Subtitles and gives each title a score from 1 to 10 (how likely a viewer is to click and stay) and says why. The episode must be transcribed on Subtitles first, or use the subtitles it already has (see above).

Click a title to choose it. Copy Title (or double-click, or Return) puts it on the clipboard, ready to paste into YouTube. The number on the right is the title's length: YouTube shows about 70 characters. Write Again replaces the ten with ten new ones. The titles are kept with the episode's transcript.

Only the text of the subtitles is sent, never audio or video. It costs 0.2 credit a minute of the episode, at least 5 (about 20 for a 100-minute episode), and the page shows the cost before it starts. Go › Titles, ⌘7.

Jump Cuts & Quick Clips

Input timeline

Jump Cuts and Quick Clips start from the timeline chosen at the top of their screen, the Input timeline. By default it's your latest working timeline, the multicam cut, so they inherit the camera switching.

Jump Cuts

Choose the microphones to listen to, preview the quiet gaps found between them, then either:

• Build a tightened copy with the gaps removed, or
• Mark gaps only — put a red marker on every gap in a copy without cutting anything, so you can decide each cut yourself in Resolve.

The input timeline itself is never changed. The tightened copy nests the input, so subtitles already on the input play inside the nested clip rather than on the new timeline's own subtitle track; add subtitles after the jump cuts if you want to edit them there.

Quick Clips

Quick Clips is for a piece you choose yourself: a trailer, a quote, a teaser, a 20‑minute highlight for YouTube. Type each range as 1:15 (minutes:seconds) or in seconds, give it a title, pick the format (9:16, 4:5, 1:1 or 16:9) and the framing. Follow speaker rebuilds the clip from the multicam cut, each camera with its vertical framing from Setup. A clip has no length limit.

Clips from your markers

Mark the clips while you edit, in Resolve: a marker at the start of each clip and one at its end (name them IN and OUT, as many studios do), or one marker dragged to the clip's length. When Quick Clips opens on that timeline it reads them and says Found 8 clips in your markers (IN / OUT): Use Them fills the list, which you can still edit, or Ignore. A clip takes its name from its IN marker (“Interview IN” gives “Interview”). SOLD CUT's own markers (the red gap markers of Jump Cuts, the Events markers) are never taken for clips.

Then choose what to make:

• One Timeline (the choice when the clips come from markers): Create Clips Timeline makes one copy, “… CLIPS”, that keeps only the clips, each at its place with a gap before the next, and their names as its markers. Your timeline is not changed. Subtitles and Titles on that copy are paid for the clips only, and Titles know they read the moments you chose.
• A Timeline Each: one timeline per clip, framed for social, as before.

Export videos

From a clips timeline, Export Each Clip… renders every clip as its own video: choose the Size (Full HD, 4K or the timeline's size; a smaller episode is scaled up), whether the subtitles are burned into the picture, and the File names: “{episode} - Cut {n}” by default (EP30 - Cut 1, EP30 - Cut 2…), or your own pattern, and any clip can be renamed.

Once Quick Clips has created one timeline per clip, press Export Videos… and choose a folder. Resolve renders in the background; the list follows each video by itself, using the status Resolve reports, and never calls a video ready before Resolve does. Show in Finder opens the folder.

Licence

One SOLD CUT licence works on 2 Macs at the same time, for example the studio iMac and your laptop.

Activate

The first time you open SOLD CUT it asks for your licence key: it is in the e‑mail with your purchase receipt from Lemon Squeezy (a long code with dashes; a licence we gave you by hand looks like SC-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX). Paste it and press Activate. Activating needs internet once; until then you can still connect to Resolve and read the Guide.

Free trial

No licence yet? Under the licence key, Try SOLD CUT free for 3 days: type your e‑mail, press Send Code, then type the 6‑digit code from the e‑mail and press Start Free Trial. The trial lasts 3 days, with every feature on as many episodes as you like, and 100 AI credits. Transcription runs in the cloud while those credits pay for it, so nothing has to be downloaded first; past that, it runs on your Mac (Settings › AI chooses). 100 credits cover an episode of up to about 45 minutes with cloud transcription, the AI review and Titles. For a longer episode, choose On this Mac · free in Settings › AI before you transcribe: it is free (a 2.9 GB model, downloaded once), so the credits pay the AI review and Titles on up to about 80 minutes. The sidebar shows the days left, and Settings › Licence takes your licence key as soon as you buy. When the trial ends, SOLD CUT asks for a licence; everything you edited stays in Resolve. One trial per Mac and per e‑mail.

Working offline

After activating, SOLD CUT works without internet: on a plane, on location, anywhere. When it is online it quietly checks the licence about once a week. If it has been offline for 60 days, it asks you to connect once; Settings › Licence shows how many days are left when that gets close.

Moving to another Mac

• On the Mac you are leaving: Settings › Licence › Deactivate This Mac. The seat is free and you can activate the new Mac.
• That Mac is gone (broken, sold, stolen)? Activate on the new Mac anyway: SOLD CUT lists the two Macs using the licence, and Use Here Instead moves it from the one you choose. This works a few times a month; beyond that, write to [email protected] and we free it for you.

Lost your code?

Write to [email protected] from the e‑mail you bought with. SOLD CUT only sends the licence code, a random id of the Mac (not its serial number), the Mac's name and the app version — never your media, transcripts or projects.

What runs locally

SOLD CUT is built so that your footage never has to leave your Mac unless you explicitly ask for something that needs it.

The AI's suggestions, such as titles, are proposals, not editorial decisions — review every generated timeline in Resolve before you publish it.

Keyboard shortcuts

Troubleshooting

Resolve not found

If the Resolve screen says it can't reach Resolve:

• Check Preferences → System → General → External scripting using → Local in Resolve, then restart Resolve.
• Make sure you're running DaVinci Resolve Studio, not the free edition — the free edition cannot be controlled by other applications.
• Make sure Resolve is open with a project loaded, then use ⌘⇧R to refresh.

Playback frame‑rate warning

Resolve doesn't let other applications change a project's playback frame rate. When it differs from the timeline you're working on, a yellow warning appears on the Resolve and Setup screens and in the Quick Clips exports. Fix it once in Resolve: File → Project Settings (Shift+9) → Master Settings → Playback frame rate → set it to match the timeline → Save, then press Check again. To stop it coming back on every new episode, save those settings as your Resolve default: in Project Settings, ⋯ → Save Current Settings as Preset…, then ⋯ → that preset → Set as Default Preset (see the two Resolve settings).

Cancel restarts the engine

⌘. (or the Cancel button) stops whatever is currently running and restarts SOLD CUT's analysis engine. If you cancel while a timeline copy is being built, an incomplete copy may be left behind in Resolve — safe to delete — but the original timeline is never touched.

Export diagnostics

If something isn't working, go to Settings → Diagnostics → Export diagnostics… and send the resulting zip along with the steps to reproduce the problem.

Media drive and unsupported formats

Keep the media drive connected while you work — several tools, including Auto‑frame faces, read the original camera files directly (falling back to a Resolve proxy only when the originals are offline).

What does this button do?

Every button in SOLD CUT, in the same words the app uses. Type in the search box to filter.