How do I cull footage in DaVinci Resolve?

Work on the Media page with live preview on, make Selects/Safety/Rejects bins first, then hover-scrub every clip and flag or color-label it as you go: JKL for shuttle, the number row for flags. Smart bins keyed on those flags file your Selects automatically.

What is the fastest way to review a lot of clips in Resolve?

Hover-scrub thumbnails instead of playing them back; only press play on a clip that might be a keeper. A reject should cost about two seconds, not a full watch.

When does manual culling in Resolve stop working?

It is fast for around a hundred clips. A wedding or multi-day shoot with several hundred clips across cameras turns into an afternoon of pure triage at two to four seconds per reject, and it still leaves every keeper in flat, unmatched log color.

How to cull footage in DaVinci Resolve

Q: Can culling and color correction be automated together?

Yes. Basecut runs the triage locally, bins keepers from junk, sorts by shot type, applies a per-clip baseline color correction, and hands Resolve organized bins plus a selects stringout, so you open Resolve at the step where taste starts.

Cull footage in DaVinci Resolve on the Media page: hover-scrub every clip, flag or color-label it, and let smart bins file your Selects. Here is the fastest manual setup, and the honest math on where it stops scaling.

Set up before you review a single clip

Work on the Media page, not the Edit page. Turn on live preview so hovering the playhead across a thumbnail scrubs it, and learn the two keys that carry the whole job: JKL for shuttle and the number row for clip colors or flags. Make bins first: Selects, Safety, Rejects. The structure you create now is the only thing that keeps hour three honest.

The pass itself

1. Scrub, do not watch. Hover scrub across each thumbnail; only press play when a clip might be a keeper. Rejects should cost you two seconds each.

2. One keystroke per verdict. Flag or color-label every clip as you touch it: keeper, safety, reject. Never leave a clip unmarked; unmarked clips are what force a second full pass.

3. Smart bins do the filing. Build smart bins keyed on your flags so Selects fills itself as you work. At the end, drag Selects into a stringout timeline and you have a reviewable cut of everything worth keeping.

Where manual culling stops scaling

The workflow above is genuinely fast for a hundred clips. It collapses on volume: a wedding or a two-day shoot comes home with several hundred clips across multiple cameras, and scrubbing is still a human watching footage in compressed real time. Call it two to four seconds per reject and half a minute per candidate keeper, and a 600-clip shoot is an afternoon of pure triage before any creative work starts. It also does nothing about color: your selects are still flat log that will not match across cameras.

Culling a two-shooter wedding card dump by hand

The manual Resolve workflow above genuinely works for a hundred clips from one camera. A wedding with two shooters and three or four bodies comes home closer to several hundred clips, and scrubbing every one of them, even at two seconds a reject, is most of a Sunday before you have touched a single creative decision. It also only sorts footage, it does nothing about the flat log sitting underneath every keeper you flag. Basecut runs that same triage locally on a full wedding card dump, bins keepers from junk across every camera, and applies a baseline color correction at the same time, so Resolve opens already organized and roughly matched. The honest limit: it will not know which ceremony take is the one you want in the film, that call stays yours.

See the wedding culling guide for the pass structure, and how Basecut hands off a graded Resolve project overnight for how the whole overnight workflow fits together.

The hybrid: automate the triage, keep the taste

The rejection half of culling is measurable (junk, duplicates, focus and exposure failures, shot type), which means it automates. Basecut runs that triage locally on your machine: it bins keepers from junk, sorts clips by drone, gimbal, tripod or handheld, applies a per-clip baseline color correction, and hands Resolve organized bins plus a selects stringout, so you open Resolve at the step where taste starts. Try the cull and color on your own footage free for 14 days, no card. See it on real footage.

Cutting in Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro instead? What each editor receives from a cull lists it exactly, and How to cull wedding footage with AI covers the first pass step by step.

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