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Turn song lyrics into a rough cut with Storyboard

This guide shows you how to paste the lyrics of your song and get a clip for every line, ready to export as a first draft of your edit.

How it works: Potheon searches your footage for each line of the lyrics, one line at a time, and picks a clip for each. You swap the ones you don't like, then export them all as a timeline, in the order of the song. Each lyric comes with its clip as a marker, so you can see which line is which.

It's in the Potheon desktop app and in the Premiere Pro and After Effects panels. Exporting needs the Creator plan (beta testers have it).

Words used in this guide

Step 1: Open the Storyboard tab and paste your lyrics

Click the Storyboard tab. Click in the big box and paste your lyrics (Ctrl + V), one line per shot.

Lines like [Chorus], (x2) or Verse 1: are skipped: they're labels, not shots. Empty lines are skipped too.

Lyrics pasted into the Storyboard box

If Potheon knows which show your files are from, a menu next to the button lets you choose one show to take clips from. Leave it on All shows to use everything.

Step 2: Click "Find clips"

Click the pink Find clips button. Potheon searches for each line in turn and says how far it's got (Finding clips for line 2 of 4…). Click Stop if you want to stop early.

Step 3: Look at the clips for each line

Each line now has a row of up to 8 clips. The one with the pink border is the clip picked for that line.

Each lyric with a row of clips; the picked one has a pink border

When a line comes twice (a chorus sung again), Potheon picks a different clip for the second time, so your edit doesn't repeat itself.

Step 4: Not right? Search other words for a line

Lyrics don't always describe what you want to see. To search for something else for one line:

  1. Click the pencil at the right-hand end of the line.
  2. Type what you'd like to see instead, for example street at night in the rain.
  3. Click Search.

Searching different words for one line

The line keeps its lyric, with the words you searched shown next to it.

Step 5: Export the rough cut

Above the lines, a bar says how many clips are picked. Click Export…, give the sequence a name, and click Export (the button says how many clips). It works exactly like exporting from the Search tab:

The clips are in the order of the song, and each one has a marker with its lyric.

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