For DaVinci Resolve editors on the Mac
Chat with your footage. Edit like never before.
Your footage, already watched. Prewatch indexes every clip on your Mac, so Claude knows what is in your footage and can build the cut with you in DaVinci Resolve.
Drop in a folder
Prewatch watches it and indexes every clip: shots, transcripts, speakers, days and scenes.
On your MacClaude asks Prewatch and answers with the clips, the scenes and the seconds where things happen.
Your Claude chatClaude picks moments with in and out points from the shotlog, not by scrubbing video.
Your Claude chatThe timeline appears in Resolve
Through DaVinci Resolve Studio's own MCP server, in the project you have open.
On your MacHow it works
Index once. Connect to Claude. Edit by chatting.
Prewatch does the watching before the edit starts, so the conversation is about your story, not about scrubbing.
Index once
Point Prewatch at a folder of footage. It indexes every clip and keeps up as new files arrive, writing a Shotlog next to the media.
Connect to Claude
One click adds Prewatch to Claude Desktop. No config files, no terminal. Add DaVinci Resolve Studio's MCP server beside it.
Edit by chatting
Ask “what happened on day 3?” and get clips and seconds. Ask for a teaser and Claude builds it in Resolve from the moments Prewatch found.
Measured on real footage
An agent cut the films without decoding the video.
Between 12 and 17 October 2026 an AI agent made nine rough edits of trip films in DaVinci Resolve: chapter timelines, markers and titles. It learned what was in the footage from the shotlogs alone. It never decoded a clip; it checked the frames it chose as stills exported from Resolve.
Then we made the shotlog cheaper to read. On a 381-clip folder, what an agent reads to plan a cut went from 110,241 to 34,765 tokens.
Tokens counted with Claude's tokenizer on the same folder (Sweden 2022, 381 clips), before and after the Shotlog read layer, October 2026.
tokens an agent reads to plan a cut
What Prewatch knows about every clip
Everything an assistant editor would log, and where it was worked out.
Each step says where it runs: on your Mac, or with the Claude API using your own key.
Shots and keyframes
Every cut inside a clip, the sharpest frames from each shot, and contact sheets with every tile mapped to a time.
Camera motion
Locked off, steady, handheld or shaky, per shot, plus the steadiest stretch of each clip.
Quality flags
Black heads and tails, frozen or static frames and flat log footage, flagged before you build a timeline.
Transcripts
Speech transcribed with Whisper on your Mac, with times, the language and a mark where the recogniser was unsure.
Speakers told apart
Who speaks when, inside each clip, without storing any voiceprint.
Days and scenes
Clips grouped by their own capture times and locations, so “day 3” means something.
Descriptions and moments
A paragraph per clip and the moments an editor cuts on, each with an in-point and a usability score.
Plain files next to the footage
A Shotlog folder of Markdown, TSV, JSON and JPEG that travels with the media to any drive or NAS.
Precise about local
Your video never leaves the Mac.
Decoding, shots, motion, flags, transcripts, speakers and scenes are computed on your Mac. Descriptions are optional and use your own Claude API key: Prewatch sends still frames and transcript text, never video or audio, and never your locations.
- No account with us, and no data sent to us
- Your Claude API key stays in the macOS Keychain
- A cost estimate before any cloud step runs
- Useful with no key at all: search, transcripts, scenes
- Locations are never sent to the description model
Requirements
What you need
A Mac with Apple silicon
M1 or later, macOS 26 or later.
Claude Desktop
Signed in to your Claude account. An API key is optional, for written descriptions.
DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.1
For timelines built from the chat, through Resolve's own MCP server. Final Cut Pro and free Resolve via a file handoff are planned.
Questions
Frequently asked
What does Prewatch do?
Prewatch is a Mac app that indexes a folder of video before you edit. For every clip it finds the shots, keyframes and camera motion, flags problems, transcribes speech, tells speakers apart and groups the clips into days and scenes. It writes all of this as plain files next to your footage, so Claude can answer questions about the footage and help you cut it in DaVinci Resolve.
Does it work with the free version of DaVinci Resolve?
The chat-to-timeline workflow uses the MCP server built into DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.1, which trade press reports as a Studio feature. With the free version of Resolve you can still index footage and ask Claude about it. A file handoff (FCPXML) that free Resolve and Final Cut Pro can import is planned and not available yet.
Do I need a Claude account or an API key?
To chat with your footage you need Claude Desktop, signed in to your Claude account. Prewatch connects to it with one click.
An API key is optional. Indexing, transcripts, speakers, scenes and search all run on your Mac without one. Written descriptions and summaries of each clip use your own Claude API key from Anthropic; Anthropic bills you for that use directly, and Prewatch shows an estimate before anything is sent.
What do descriptions cost with my own key?
With the default model (Claude Haiku 5.5) a request covers twelve keyframes and costs about $0.001, so a typical clip costs a fraction of a cent and a long take about one cent. Prewatch shows the estimate for the folder before it starts. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is finer on landscapes and wildlife at roughly twenty times the price.
Is my footage uploaded anywhere?
No video and no audio ever leaves your Mac. If you turn descriptions on and add your key, Prewatch sends still keyframes, one overview contact sheet and the transcript text of each clip to the Claude API. Locations are never sent with them. When you chat in Claude Desktop, Claude reads what Prewatch answers, as part of your conversation. Every step and where it runs.
Which Macs does it run on?
Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or later) running macOS 26 or later. Transcription runs on the Mac's GPU. There is no Intel or Windows version.
Let the footage be watched before you sit down to cut.
14-day free trial, then $59 a year or $7.99 a month.