With Simon Says you can transcribe, translate and edit clips and captions with in sync frame-accurate video and text in DaVinci Resolve… but only if you’re using the macOS version.

Simon Says, a leading AI-based transcription, captioning and translation platform for video professionals, announced its seamless integration with Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve for macOS. Users can now easily find meaningful dialogue, in any language, and receive the frame-accurate video transcript as ranged markers, color coded by speaker, then caption timelines and even align translated subtitles once the edit is complete – all with a few clicks from DaVinci Resolve.

“Today, Simon Says became the first company to support AI transcription in Resolve,” states Shamir Allibhai, founder and CEO of Simon Says. “DaVinci Resolve is one of the most exciting non-linear editors on the scene today. Blackmagic Design has a growing, passionate user base, in part because of its unique strategy to sell great cameras with tightly coupled software add-ons and also because it offers a high-end video editing application for free. These users have been asking us to integrate our software with DaVinci Resolve, and we’re so happy to deliver it.”

The integration puts an end to what was, before, a painstaking and lengthy manual process, one that Windows users will continue to face, although internally the team behind Simon Says is evaluating the option to launch a Windows version.  On the other hand, if you’re using the macOS version of DaVinci Resolve, then the process is now completely automated through the use of Simon Says AI-powered transcription platform, accessible directly within Blackmagic’s NLE.

Key features of the integration

Now, video editors will be able to transcribe rushes, dailies, and raw footage from DaVinci Resolve, then receive and attach markers to clips, greatly accelerating the editing process by enabling editors to quickly make sense of their recordings and identify compelling soundbites. At the end of an edit, users can instantly subtitle and caption their content – a critical legal requirement for distribution in the US for most TV broadcast channels, as well as OTT streaming channels such as Netflix.

How does Simon Says for DaVinci Resolve work? Here is a summary of its key features, as presented by the company to explain the advantages of the integration.

• Transcribe Clips in Bin and Attach Markers
  With Simon Says, editors can transcribe their raw footage in minutes. Simply select the clips to import and transcribe. Add speaker labels, bookmark and make any edits in the nifty video-transcript editor. Collaborate with your team to identify the key soundbites and then export back into Resolve, receiving ranged transcript markers, color coded to delineate speakers, that attach back to the original clips. Editing just got a whole lot more efficient – versus scrubbing through audio and switching back to the edit list in another program.
• Subtitle-Caption Timeline
  In addition to transcribing video, Simon Says can easily and quickly caption video edits and translate subtitles into 100 languages. Use the visual subtitle editor to preview formatting and export subtitles that import back into Resolve. This will make your delivery compliant and increase accessibility to those who are hard of hearing, as well as delivery to international audiences.

Get the app for macOS

To get started, users can download the Simon Says app for macOS and install the Resolve scripts to communicate between Resolve and the Simon Says AI cloud. Read more about the new DaVinci Resolve integration on the Simon Says blog.

Simon Says is the leading transcription platform for video professionals, helping them find the meaningful dialogue in their content in 100 languages with artificial intelligence. Simon Says integrates with all the major video editing applications – Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Apple Final Cut Pro X, and DaVinci Resolve – and seamlessly fits within post production workflows.

Simon Says has been featured in Apple’s Keynote (twice), has cloud and on-premises applications that are suitable for every security requirement, and is used by customers at Adobe, BBC, CBC, CNN, Sony, Yale University, Bunim/Murray, Goodby Silverstein, and TED.