Hey Friends,

My rough cut used to eat up most of a day. Forty-something clips, multiple cameras, Rode audio to match — and before I touched a single creative decision, hours vanished. I wanted to open Resolve and actually work, not spend half a session just assembling a starting point. Nothing that existed did what I needed without a painful workaround. So I built it myself. RoughCut is live, and it's already changed how I edit.

My Journey Towards Financial Freedom 🤑

The rough cut is the most time-consuming part of post-production. It's also the least creative. Transcribing takes, identifying the best one, stacking alternatives — it's grunt work that has to happen before the real edit can even begin. I hated it. So I wrote a DaVinci Resolve script to do it for me.

Here's what RoughCut actually does:

-Transcribe every clip using AI — runs locally, nothing leaves your machine

-Match takes to your shooting script using fuzzy matching, so it handles stumbles, restarts, and ad-libs

-Score takes automatically and place the best one on V1, alternatives stacked on V2 onwards

-Add green markers for on-script sections, orange for improvised moments, purple for b-roll and red for missing clips

-Match external audio automatically

Works on Mac and Windows. One-time purchase, no subscription. $50 at drrave.com/tools/roughcut.

If you've been on the waitlist — your wait is over.

▶️ Watch the demo video

The Stock photography side of things

This is part of a bigger shift in how I run things. The Getty metadata script I built with Claude has been quietly transforming my portfolio. I uploaded 335 images from past shoots in the last six weeks alone — that's already double everything I uploaded in all of 2025, not counting video. The more friction I remove, the faster the whole operation moves. The only bottleneck left is selecting and editing images in my style — but with Claude now able to access Photoshop, I suspect that gap closes sooner than expected. Though honestly? Editing my own images is one part of the process I'm not sure I want to automate. Still thinking about that one.

Every hour of grunt work you automate is an hour you get to spend on the part only you can do.

What I Found Interesting 👌

📚 David Baldacci: Sometimes the best thing you can do for your productivity is put the productivity books down — I've been alternating fiction and non-fiction lately, and the mental reset is real.

🔴 RoughCut for DaVinci Resolve: The tool I built and use myself — if you shoot multi-take, multi-camera, or anything with a script, this removes the part of the edit that was eating your best hours.

💡 Consistency compounds: My YouTube channel has slowed down because I let other projects pull focus — a good reminder that the algorithm doesn't care how busy you were.

💡 Empty apartment shoots: Extreme heat has killed outdoor filming for now, but I've got access to a new empty apartment with a family moving in — watch this space for a home transformation shoot.

RoughCut is at drrave.com/tools/roughcut — $50, one-time, no subscription. It's what I use on every scripted project, and it's the reason my edit sessions now start with actual editing.

Until next time — keep creating and keep chasing. ☕

Dr Rave