Automatic B-roll: cutaways from your library

Auto B-rolls places videos and photos from your library over your clip at the sentences that match them. You choose where the footage comes from and how often it appears; Choppity does the matching.

Plan: Creator and above. Owners and editors can run it.

Works on: clips made from video. Screen recordings and trailers are skipped, so they keep the screen in view and their hard-cut pacing.

Run it

1. Open a clip in the editor.
2. Click Auto B-rolls in the timeline toolbar, next to Split, or at the top of the Media drawer.
3. Where should we source the B-rolls? Pick one:
   • Whole library (shows how many items are available)
   • Only these folders (subfolders are included)
   • Only these items, up to 50 hand-picked files. Each one still needs a sentence that matches it.
4. How often, how long, and how big?
   • How often: 2 to 30 seconds between cutaways (default 6 s).
   • How long each one lasts: 1 to 10 seconds (default 1.5 to 5 s). Photos stay up for 2 to 4 seconds.
   • Layout: Full screen or Top of screen.
5. Click Place b-roll. You'll see "Placed N cutaways." when it's done.

Read the match strength

Every automatic cutaway carries a chip with its match score:

• Strong match (0.72 and up)
• Fair match (0.66 and up)
• Weak match (below that)

If your team previously swapped a piece of footage in for a similar line, the chip reads Your team's pick instead. Keep, swap or delete any cutaway like any other b-roll on the timeline.

Run it again

Open Auto B-rolls on a clip that already has automatic cutaways and the button reads Replace and place. Only the automatic cutaways are replaced. Anything you placed or swapped by hand stays where it is.

How your library gets tagged

Photos are tagged when they're added and b-roll videos once they finish processing. Videos of 20 seconds or more are split into shots, and each shot is tagged on its own. Tags you edit by hand (Manage tags in Storage) are never overwritten.

In Storage, b-roll has its own B-roll category alongside Videos, Recordings, Images, Fonts, Music, SFXs and Audio. In the editor's Media drawer, your b-roll is under the Video tab.