How to find a spoken phrase in DaVinci Resolve

Transcribing and searching one clip

Transcription starts from the Media Pool. According to third-party guides, the language is set in Project Settings › Subtitle and Transcription, where you can also leave it on auto-detect.

1. Right-click a clip in the Media Pool and choose AI Tools › Audio Transcription › Transcribe.
2. When the transcript is ready, its window opens with a search field: type the words and the matches are highlighted.
3. Click a word to jump playback to it; selected text can be placed on the timeline.
4. To have new clips transcribed automatically, turn on DaVinci Resolve › Preferences › System › Background Tasks › Transcription; it's off by default.

Searching the whole project

In Resolve 21 you can search transcripts across every clip at once: click the magnifying glass in the Media Pool and choose Transcript Only. Matches are marked with a yellow line under the clip thumbnail, and the Media Pool's list view has a Transcription column with the full text.

Limits

You can only search the open project, and only clips that are already transcribed. Third-party reviews citing the version 21 manual list transcription as a feature of the paid DaVinci Resolve Studio ($295), so the free version most likely doesn't have it.

The same in Rescanzo

Rescanzo searches speech in Pro mode across the whole footage folder and understands Russian and English speech. The result opens in the free version of Resolve too.

1. Add the folder of recordings to Rescanzo and let indexing finish.
2. Switch to Pro mode and type the line. The app shows the price of the search before you run it.
3. Add the results you want to a collection and choose export to DaVinci Resolve: Rescanzo saves the timeline as FCPXML.
4. In Resolve choose File › Import › Timeline and pick that file: the moments land at their source timecodes.

Which to use

If you have Studio and all the footage is in the project and transcribed, the built-in search is enough, and it covers the whole project at once. Rescanzo is handier in the free version of Resolve, when recordings sit in folders and you don't want to import them all for one line, or when you want a cloud AI to double-check what was found.

Questions and answers