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How to Find a Word in a Video in DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve Studio's built-in AI transcription makes finding specific words in hours of footage incredibly fast and easy.

Finding a single word or phrase buried in hours of interview footage used to require endless scrubbing and listening. With DaVinci Resolve Studio, you can now search your video files exactly like you would a text document.

Here is how to find a word in a video using DaVinci Resolve's AI transcription engine.

Step 1: Transcribe the Audio

Before you can search, Resolve needs to create a text transcript of your media.

  1. Open the Media Pool.
  2. Select the clip (or multiple clips) you want to search.
  3. Right-click the selection and choose Transcribe Audio... (or simply Transcribe depending on your version).
  4. Resolve's Neural Engine will analyze the audio and generate a full text transcript. This process is usually much faster than real-time.

Step 2: Open the Transcript Window

Once transcribed, you need to view the text.

  1. Go to the top menu and click Workspace > Show > Transcript Window.
  2. A new panel will open displaying the full text of your selected clip.

Step 3: Search for the Word

Now, finding the word is instantaneous.

  1. In the top right corner of the Transcript Window, you'll see a search bar.
  2. Type the word or phrase you are looking for.
  3. Resolve will immediately highlight every instance of that word in the transcript text.

Step 4: Jump to the Exact Moment

This is the most powerful part of the feature.

  1. Click on any of the highlighted words in the Transcript Window.
  2. The playhead in your source viewer (or timeline, if you transcribed a timeline clip) will instantly jump to that exact frame in the video.

You can even highlight a whole sentence in the transcript and click "Insert" to drop just that specific portion of the video directly into your timeline!