Selects Now Automates the Hardest Part of Long-Form Editing

TLDR: Selects automates the pre-editing stage of long-form video, ingesting raw footage, syncing cameras, transcribing audio, removing silences, and organizing content into a structured timeline; so editors start the creative work rather than the prep work.

When we first started building Selects, we weren’t trying to make editing faster in small ways. We were trying to remove the parts of editing that almost everyone dreads so that they can enjoy their editing experience more. Our mission has always been to make storytelling accessible to everyone by streamlining the video editing workflow. In doing so, we’re enabling more video editors and creators the ability to focus on what really matters: narrative and creativity.

For anyone working with long-form video, podcasts, interviews, talk shows, or dialogue-heavy content, the first hours of editing are rarely creative. They’re spent syncing cameras, aligning audio, labeling speakers, creating endless markers, cutting unusable moments, and building a timeline that’s clean enough to actually work in.

With the latest release of Selects, we’re taking a major step toward a new baseline for AI-assisted long-form video editing, one where editors don’t start from a blank timeline or messy footage, but from a structured, editable draft built automatically.

From raw footage to structure, automatically

Selects is designed to handle the front half of editing: the work that traditionally falls on assistant editors or junior editors before any creative decisions can happen.

For editors who've been trying to solve this with ChatGPT or Claude, this article on why LLMs can't edit footage and what actually works breaks down exactly where that workflow fails.

With this release, Selects now allows you to:

• Switch to the active speaker without manual keyframing

• Detect the highest-quality audio source and mute cross-talk

• Automatically segment clips by topic for faster review

• Identify unusable clips and remove them from your timeline instantly

• Generate storyline-aligned timeline drafts by prompt-based command

Instead of manually assembling a stringout or pulling selects, editors can drop in raw footage and receive an editable assembly cut in minutes.

Editors who need to find specific moments across long recordings without scrubbing through the full timeline can see how Selects' text and scene search work in practice in the footage search guide.

Why podcasts are the proving ground for an AI video editor

While Selects works across many long-form formats, podcast editing remains the clearest stress test for automation.

Podcast editing workflows combine nearly every hard problem in video editing:

• Long runtimes

• Multi-camera setups

• Multiple audio sources

• Conversational pacing

• Repetitive prep work before storytelling even begins

If AI can handle podcasts well, it can handle most long-form content.

That’s why podcasters, podcast editors, and YouTube studios cutting interview-driven content have become the earliest and strongest adopters of Selects. The time savings are immediate, and the impact compounds across episodes.

A shift from video editing tools to focus on video production workflows

Many editing tools focus on isolated actions: removing silences, cutting filler words, or generating clips. Those features matter, and Selects includes them, but they don’t solve the larger problem.

The real bottleneck in long-form editing is structure.

Selects targets that bottleneck by automating how a timeline comes together in the first place. Through automated assembly cuts, although the result isn’t a finished video, it’s something more valuable: a clean, organized starting point that preserves creative control while eliminating hours of mechanical work.

For the full story of how professional editors from Beast Games and George Janko responded when we handed them Selects, here's what they actually said.

If you're coming from Descript or evaluating both tools, this comparison of Selects vs Descript covers where each one fits in a professional long-form workflow.

Built to work with real editors, not replace them

Selects isn’t a replacement for professional video editing software. As an AI-powered video editor, it’s designed to work alongside it.

Editors can review, rearrange, and refine timelines inside Selects, then hand off directly to Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve for finishing, color, detailed sound design, graphics, and final polish.

In practice, this mirrors the role of an assistant editor: preparing footage so senior editors can focus on pacing, emotion, and story.

For a broader look at how studios and agencies are building AI into every stage of their production pipeline, see how top video agencies use AI to stay ahead.

Selects is setting a new expectation for long-form editing

Long-form video editing has lagged behind short-form when it comes to automation. This release is our attempt to close that gap and reset expectations for what AI should handle before an editor ever touches the timeline.

For teams producing podcasts, interviews, or any form of long-form content at scale, Selects represents a shift from manual prep to automated structure.

And this is only the beginning.

Selects is available today with a free 7-day trial.

For more in-depth knowledge about the ins and outs of video editing, check out our latest posts on the Cutback blog or our YouTube channel.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Q: What are selects in video editing?
A: "Selects" is an industry term for the best usable takes chosen from raw footage during the editing process, the clips an editor or assistant editor picks out as worth using before assembling a rough cut. Pulling selects has traditionally been one of the most time-consuming manual stages of post-production, especially on long-form content with many takes or camera angles. The AI tool Selects by Cutback takes its name from this process, automating the work of identifying usable footage and structuring it into an editable timeline.

Q: What is Selects by Cutback?
A: Selects is an AI-powered desktop application that automates the pre-editing stage of long-form video production. It ingests raw footage, syncs multiple cameras, transcribes audio, removes silences, segments content by topic, identifies and removes unusable clips, and generates a structured assembly cut, all before an editor opens a traditional NLE. The output hands off to Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve for finishing work like color, sound design, and final polish.

Q: What is long-form video editing?
A: Long-form video editing refers to editing content that runs significantly longer than short-form social formats, typically podcasts, interviews, webinars, documentaries, and YouTube videos running anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours. It involves different challenges than short-form editing: multicam sync, speaker management, pacing across a longer runtime, and substantial prep work (syncing, organizing, identifying usable footage) before any creative editing decisions can be made. This prep stage is where tools like Selects focus their automation.

Q: How do you edit a long-form video?
A: The traditional workflow starts with syncing camera angles and audio, labeling speakers, scrubbing through raw footage to identify usable moments, building a rough timeline structure, then refining pacing and creative decisions from there, a process that can take 4-8 hours of prep before any storytelling work begins. With Selects, that prep stage is automated: drop in raw footage, and the AI syncs cameras, removes silences, segments content by topic, and generates a structured assembly cut in minutes, which you then hand off to Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve for the creative finishing pass.

Q: Is Selects free to use?
A: Selects is available with a free 7-day trial, after which it requires a paid plan to continue using. It is not a permanent free plan. During the trial period, you can test the full pre-editing workflow, multicam sync, silence removal, transcription, and assembly cut generation, on real footage before committing.

Q: Does Selects replace a video editor?
A: No. Selects is designed to automate the pre-editing stage, the mechanical work traditionally done by an assistant or junior editor, not the creative editing process itself. It produces a structured assembly cut, not a finished video. Editors review, rearrange, and refine the output inside Selects before handing off to Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve for pacing, color, sound design, and final creative decisions. The goal is to remove hours of mechanical prep so editors can spend their time on storytelling rather than syncing and organizing footage.

Q: What makes podcast editing a good test case for AI video editing tools?
A: Podcast editing combines nearly every difficult problem in long-form editing simultaneously: long runtimes, multi-camera setups, multiple audio sources, conversational and non-linear pacing, and extensive prep work before any storytelling begins. If an AI tool can handle podcast editing reliably, the underlying technology generally extends well to other long-form formats like interviews, webinars, and panel discussions. This is why podcasters and podcast-focused editing studios have been among the earliest adopters of automated pre-editing tools like Selects.