Finding Soundbites In Interview Footage With AI

A core part of an editor’s workflow is finding the soundbites in interviews to form the basis of a story.

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Why Do Editors Create Soundbites?

To define a soundbite, think of it as a puzzle piece that fits together into a larger narrative: a short, 10-20 second quote that can be paired with other soundbites to create a bigger story, or to summarize a larger project.

You’ll find yourself creating soundbites most often when creating a corporate marketing video - you’ve got 5 interviews from 5 different people, and you need to grab all of the best quotes so you can place them together to create a topic-based video with a storyline.

When you get this footage, you’ll find it’s usually stuffed with stretches of silence, long answers to short questions, retakes, and a lot of content that won’t make it to the final cut.

It’s even worse if you’ve got interview subjects that like to go off topic for 10 minutes at a time.

If we’re going to compare editing to cooking a meal, it’s like having all of your ingredients prepped for you. it’s a lot easier to get cooking faster when you walk into a kitchen with all of the ingredients in neat bowls. Now, there’s still 100 different ways to combine chopped carrots, sliced potatoes, and seasoned meat - but you’re the one with the recipe, and it’s up to you to craft it into something great.

Storylines AI easily combs through those large interviews so you can create a rough cut faster and simpler. It’s called AI soundbite selection.

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How Does Storylines Use AI To Find Interview Soundbites?  

Storylines creates a transcript from your interview footage, and parses through the information to find relevant 10-20 second soundbites according to the prompt that you give Storylines AI. You can preview it in Storylines, and then export it to your favorite editing software - Adobe Premiere, Final Cut, or DaVinci Resolve.

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Using Storylines AI Soundbites in Final Cut

To export the AI selected soundbites to Final Cut, click Export Project on the top right.

Then, click Final Cut Pro and then click the Include Animated Captions. Export the project.

To import into Final Cut Pro, go to File > Import > XML. Then, select your XML.

And now that you're in Final Cut, you can start crafting a great rough cut from the AI selected soundbites.

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Using Storylines AI Soundbites in Resolve

To export the AI selected soundbites to Resolve, click Export Project on the top right.

Then, click DaVinci Resolve and then click the Include Animated Captions. Export the project.

Create a new project in DaVinci Resolve. Right click the empty bin, and select Timelines > Import > XML.

And now that you're in Resolve, you can create an amazing rough cut using your AI selected soundbites.

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Using Storylines AI Soundbites in Premiere

To export the AI selected soundbites to Premiere, click Export Project on the top right.

Then, click Adobe Premiere and then click the Include Animated Captions. Export the project.

After Storylines has sent you your XML with your highlight, open up Premiere and start a new project. Simply drag and drop your XML file into your bin, and it will import as a sequence.

Now that you're in Premiere, you can assemble the soundbites how you like them, and begin the process of creating an amazing rough cut.

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How Can AI Soundbites Help Me?

With AI soundbite selection, you’ve saved probably about 1-2 hours of combing through raw video, and you get to start a quarter mile from the finish line, so to say. But, the great thing is - you’re in the driver’s seat the whole time. A great video doesn’t come from having good soundbites - it’s the way you put them together that creates something good.

And this is just the beginning - soon, we will have multi-file soundbite selection, which means you can get soundbites for multiple interviews all in one project.

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