How to automatically detect scene cuts in a video
Finding exactly where one shot ends and the next begins by hand means pausing, scrubbing frame by frame, and guessing. Shot detection analyses the visual content of your video and places markers at every cut boundary in seconds.
3 min read
What shot detection does
Shot detection analyses changes in visual content between consecutive frames. When two adjacent frames differ significantly - in colour, brightness, or structure - the tool identifies that boundary as a shot change. It finds hard cuts where the transition is instantaneous, as well as dissolves and fade-based transitions where the change happens across a short span of frames.
The result is a set of markers placed at each detected boundary. These markers give you a precise, frame-accurate map of every edit point in the file, without you needing to watch a single frame of footage to find them.
Two modes
Detect Shot at Playhead
Finds the nearest shot boundary to the current playhead position and snaps the playhead to it. Useful when you're already close to a cut and want to land on it precisely. Available on the Free plan.
Detect All Shots
Scans the entire file and marks every shot boundary at once. The full map of cuts appears on the timeline immediately. Requires Pro.
Step-by-step: detect all shots
- Open your video with ⌘O.
- Run Detect All Shots via Edit → Detect All Shots. The scan runs on-device and completes in a few seconds for most files.
- Review the markers on the timeline. Each detected boundary is marked. Scrub through or use the markers as reference points to navigate quickly.
- Set in/out points using the markers. Click a marker to jump to that boundary, then press I or O to set your segment start or end at that exact frame.
- Export with ⌘E.
Using shot detection with other tools
Shot detection works well as a first pass before running other smart scans. Run Detect All Shots to build a complete shot map, then run Find Face to locate appearances of a specific person. Because the face detection results align with real cut points rather than arbitrary time intervals, the resulting segments naturally start and end at actual shot boundaries. You get cleaner, edit-ready segments without manually adjusting each one.
The same principle applies when combining shot detection with speech search or object search - the shot map gives every other scan a precise structural grid to work against.
Use cases
- Navigating a long multi-camera edit without watching the whole file - jump between shots using markers to find the section you need
- Finding act breaks and scene transitions in a finished film to extract individual scenes for review
- Locating individual takes in a long, unedited recording where the camera kept rolling between setups
- Splitting a compiled reel of clips back into its constituent shots for re-editing
Try it now
Detect Shot at Playhead is free; Detect All Shots is a Pro feature
Download free and start a 7-day trial to unlock Detect All Shots and all other Pro tools.