focalcut

Cut dance and event footage by who the camera is following: per-subject clips, beat-synced recap reels and editor timelines.

focalcut does two jobs.

• Split a library by subject. Point it at a folder of dance footage, or any video where the camera moves from one person to the next. It finds where the focus changes from one dancer or couple to another and exports per-subject clips plus a timeline for Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut or Avid. This path needs no GPU: it uses ffmpeg contact sheets read by a vision model. See Cutting a library by subject.
• Cut recap reels. From a curated folder it builds a landscape and a portrait reel on the music’s beats, told in acts. The reels have velocity edits, motivated transitions, portrait reframing that follows a dancer and favours faces, shake checks, effects and an optional MilkDrop light show. Each comes with a Premiere XML and a review page where the editor picks, bans and reframes shots. The editor’s picks always win. See Recap reels and The editor’s picks.

Every editing rule the planner follows is its own piece of code, listed in Editing concepts, so a teaser, a highlight or a promo can reuse them without the full reel.

• Source: github.com/isaacrowntree/focalcut (MIT)
• Write-up: focalcut on zackdesign.biz