FWDS Cut

Beta

Automated first-assembly editing for DaVinci Resolve

Cut runs inside DaVinci Resolve Studio as a workflow integration. It reads the day’s footage, judges it, and builds a brand-new timeline in your Media Pool: cut rate, shot lengths, ritual order, transitions and music, in the style it learned from your own finished films. It builds your first assembly. You finish the edit.

Pricing & trial What it does

Runs on: Windows 10 or 11, or an Apple silicon Mac
Needs: DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.2 or newer
Trial: 10 days, no card
Price: 1,299rupees a month, or 10,490rupees a year

What it does

It builds your first assembly. You finish the edit.

01
It builds a real timeline, inside Resolve
Not an EDL you have to import, not a list of suggestions. A new timeline appears in your Media Pool with the clips in order, trimmed, labelled and ready to scrub, in the project you were already working in.
02
Two ways to hand it the day
Either point it at camera-card bins, Intro, Wedding title, Video 1…n, Subam, Songs, or arrange the footage yourself on a timeline and mark each event with a clip colour: green for seer, pink for reception, chocolate for the ceremony. Arranged mode is strictly read-only; your timeline is never touched. A day with only one event works fine.
03
It judges the footage before it cuts
FFmpeg decodes frames to find shake and blur, plans head and tail trims, and flags what needs stabilising. A trained quality model scores each shot against footage you have actually kept. Faces are detected on-device to recognise the couple, and to notice a posed group on stage so it is held rather than paced away.
04
It cuts in your style, not a generic one
Training reads your finished timelines, where you cut, how long you held a shot, which event got what share of the film, which transitions you used, and turns them into a versioned profile with per-rule agreement counts. Profile hints stay advisory: safety rules and your own choices override them, and an overridden rule is reported with a reason rather than dropped silently.
05
It finishes the timeline, not just the order
Songs are laid end to end with gap detection, cuts can snap to the music’s bar lines, and real dissolves are applied by round-tripping through Resolve’s own .drt format. Every clip is colour-labelled with what was done to it, so you can see the reasoning at a glance.
06
Then it learns from your corrections
Finish the edit your own way and press “I’ve finished, compare my changes”. Cut diffs your final against its plan across seven categories and offers what it found. Nothing is ever learned without you pressing a button.

Measured in-house

At Film Wedding Days, a wedding film that took 6 days to cut now takes 1. FWDS Cut builds the first assembly. You finish the edit.

Six weddings tested. One 4-hour 28-minute file went from six days to one. Your own footage and your own habits will land somewhere of their own. This is the result we measured, not a number we are promising you.

In detail

Everything else it does

The list a working studio actually asks about on the second call.

Beyond the main film

Teaser cuts: a one-minute version built from the same day.
Multiple length variants from one assembly.
Tamil, English and Thanglish captions transcribed on-device.
A separate sound-led orchestrator for podcasts, interviews and reels.

How it treats your project

Builds a new timeline. It never edits, overwrites or reorders one you made.
Arranged mode reads your event-marked timeline without modifying it.
Head and tail trims are planned, not guessed at playback.
Clip colours record what Cut did, so a first assembly stays auditable.

What “beta” means here

Cut builds the first assembly. The finish, the grade and the final pacing are yours.
Trained on six weddings in-house so far, and it improves as it reads more of your finished timelines.
Every past wedding you still have a finished timeline for is training data you already own.
Mac and Windows both, since 14 September 2026. The Windows build is newer than the Mac one and has had far fewer weddings through it.

On screen

Where Cut shows its working

One screen before the cut and one after it. Between them they are the whole argument for trusting a first assembly you did not make yourself.

It judges the footage before it cuts

Every shot is decoded for shake and blur, scored against footage you have actually kept, and given planned head and tail trims. Faces are matched on-device, so it knows the couple from the crowd, and knows a posed group on stage is a shot to hold rather than pace away.

Then it learns from what you changed

Finish the edit your own way and press “I’ve finished — compare my changes”. Cut diffs your final against its plan across seven categories, then offers what it found as plain sentences with agreement counts behind them. Tick the ones you agree with. Nothing is learned without that press.

What you need

A Mac with Apple silicon on macOS 12 or later, or Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.2 or newer. Developed against Resolve 21. The free edition of Resolve cannot host workflow integrations.
Resolve Studio is licensed per machine. Your FWDS Flow plan covers one computer on a monthly plan and two on yearly, and each of them needs its own Resolve Studio licence before the plugin will run there.
The download is about 4 MB. FFmpeg and the face model are fetched once on first run, into a folder an update cannot delete, and every byte is checked against a fingerprint built into the app.
The Windows installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows shows a blue "Windows protected your PC" notice the first time. Click More info, then Run anyway.

No footage, audio, metadata or profile ever leaves the machine. Everything runs locally, including the captions.

Download FWDS Cut

The 10-day trial runs on the full app. No watermarks, no crippled export.

EmailPassword

At least eight characters.

Confirm passwordMobile number

For help with your account. Never shown to anyone else.

Your name (optional)

Company name

I agree to the terms and privacy policy.

Already have an account?

Your password is typed here, in your own browser, and never inside the app.

FWDS Cut — what it costs

compare with the other apps

Monthly

1,299rupees

billed monthly

1 computer

Buy monthly

Yearly save 33%

10,490rupees

billed once a year

2 computers

874rupees a month

Buy yearly

2 years save 37%

19,590rupees

billed once, covers two years

2 computers

816rupees a month

Buy for 2 years

A monthly plan runs on one computer; yearly and two years run on two, any mix of Mac and Windows. The 10-day trial runs on one computer and needs no card.

Will it run

What FWDS Cut needs from your machine

Measured on a real install. Where a figure is reasoning rather than measurement, it says so.

Windows

Version: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
Download: 4 MB
Disk after install: 22 MB, then about 325 MB after first run
Admin rights: Needed. It installs into Resolve's own plugin folder.

The installer is not code-signed, so Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" the first time. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Mac

Chip: Apple silicon only: M1 or newer
Version: macOS 12 Monterey or later
Download: 639 KB
Admin rights: Needed. The plugin folder is inside /Library.

Both installers ask for your password because Resolve keeps its plugins in a shared folder, not in yours. Nothing else on your machine is touched.

Either machine

DaVinci Resolve: Studio 19.0.2 or newer. The free edition cannot run it.
Resolve licence: Per machine. Resolve's rule, not ours.
Python: Not needed. It is built into the app.
Internet: On first run, for FFmpeg and the face model; then once every seven days.

The free edition of DaVinci Resolve cannot load workflow integration plugins at all. That is Blackmagic's rule and there is no way around it: Cut needs Resolve Studio.

The part people forget

The plugin is 22 MB. What it learns from your finished films is not. This is our own folder, measured today:

Captions: 679 MB
Learned cutting style: 592 MB
FFmpeg and FFprobe: 41 MB
Face model: 37 MB
Reference timelines: 29 MB
Total: about 1.4 GB

So allow a couple of gigabytes for Cut. That is separate from — and far smaller than — the cache and optimised media Resolve itself keeps for the same weddings.

Where these came from

The 4 MB download is the installer and the plugin. FFmpeg, FFprobe and the face model — 303 MB between them — are fetched once on first run into a folder an update cannot delete, so the next release is 4 MB again. Every byte is checked against a fingerprint built into the plugin.
macOS 12 is measured, not guessed: the face detector is built for it, and it ships inside the plugin. Resolve Studio's own macOS requirement is higher again and is Blackmagic's to state, not ours. The Resolve floor is 19.0.2, and it is Blackmagic's line rather than a choice of ours: from that release Resolve runs plugins under a newer Electron with sandboxing and context isolation, and Cut is built that way. On Resolve 18 the plugin does not appear in the Workflow Integrations menu at all. This page said 18.5 until 22 September 2026, when an install on Resolve 18 Studio showed an empty menu; 18.5 had never been tried. Cut is developed against Resolve 21.
No footage leaves your machine. Cut reads your files and writes a timeline into Resolve.

Questions

What studios ask before they try Cut

Short answers, from the same facts as the rest of this page. Anything else, ask us, or read how the five apps fit together.

Does Cut work with the free version of DaVinci Resolve?

No. Cut is a workflow integration, and the free edition of DaVinci Resolve cannot load workflow integration plugins at all. That is Blackmagic’s rule. You need DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.2 or newer, licensed on each computer that runs Cut.

Why is Cut missing from the Workflow Integrations menu?

Almost always one of two things: the free edition of Resolve, which cannot load it, or a Resolve older than 19.0.2. On Resolve 18 Studio the plugin does not appear in that menu at all. Update to Resolve Studio 19.0.2 or newer. If it is still missing, message us.

Does Cut make the finished film?

No. Cut builds the first assembly: a new timeline with the clips in order, trimmed, with the songs laid and transitions applied, in the style it learned from your finished films. The finish, the grade and the final pacing are yours.

Will it change the timelines I already have?

No. Cut always builds a new timeline in your Media Pool. In arranged mode it reads your event-marked timeline and never modifies it.

Does my footage leave the computer?

No. Footage, audio, metadata and your cutting profile stay on the machine. Captions are transcribed on the computer too, in Tamil, English and Thanglish.