DaVinci Dialogue First Cut

Editing standard

Keep the best usable delivery of each intended thought. Remove alternate takes, abandoned starts, accidental repeated words, and redundant attempts. Judge the delivery in context; do not automatically choose the last take or delete intentional emphasis. Preserve meaning and complete words.

Cut long spaces between sentences down close. Do not leave dead time from retakes or hesitation between completed thoughts. Preserve natural pauses within a fluent delivery, including pauses that carry meaning or give the sentence its rhythm. The user wants tight pacing, not every quiet waveform removed. Do not substitute a fixed silence threshold for listening.

Do not remove unique substantive words merely to shorten the video. Make cuts at clean word boundaries without clipping initial consonants, final syllables, or audible word tails. Listen to the result at normal speed and adjust the edit when a join sounds rushed or incomplete.

Workflow

Prefer Resolve MCP for timeline inspection and supported editing operations; use computer use only for missing capabilities. Inspect the live timeline each turn and preserve the user's manual changes. For a requested visual pass, use edit-davinci-video for camera/screen framing, authentic screenshots, unique B-roll, main-timeline overlays, and restrained animation. Do not add visual work merely because this dialogue skill was invoked. If a one-clip sample is requested, render and identify that exact sample before seeking approval to apply it elsewhere.

Word-boundary verification

Before making the first cut, obtain a word-timed transcript and the corresponding audio waveform, aligned to the same source clock. Check them together at every proposed dialogue join; neither a sentence-level transcript nor a waveform-only silence detector satisfies this requirement. Follow the waveform and word-timing audit for source-to-timeline mapping, incoming/outgoing edge checks, pause assessment, and the per-join verification record. Reuse that record for later processing, transitions, and revisions, updating affected joins when their audio or timing changes.

Treat speech-to-text word timestamps as navigation estimates, not exact trim points. They can end before a final syllable or span silence and an abandoned restart. Check source audio on both sides of every proposed join with surrounding sentence context, preserving quiet consonants and word tails. Review the assembled join as well: separately acceptable outgoing and incoming trims can still produce an incomplete phrase or excessive pause together. Waveform and voice-activity analysis can flag suspicious cuts and dead lead-ins, but low amplitude alone does not prove silence. After adjusting an edge, recheck that join and preserve the same trim on all synced layers. If normal-speed audio audition is unavailable, explicitly report that limitation instead of claiming the dialogue was fully listened through.