Not for: Not a guide to filming a wedding, and not a promise that software makes the film for you. Auto-Edit makes the first cut; you make the film.
What the job is now
A wedding used to be one day and one film. Now it is often a weekend of events, several cameras, a drone, phones from the family, and a list of deliverables: a teaser, a highlight, a ceremony film, a reel for each function, sometimes a same-day edit. The footage runs to many hours. The slowest part of the work is rarely the finishing. It is the first assembly: watching everything, choosing the moments and laying them against the music. That is the part Vantacut’s Auto-Edit does. It makes the first cut of a highlight from your footage, one song and a brief, on a real timeline, and you make the film from there.
Plan the films before the first card
Write down what you sold before you import anything. A teaser of thirty to ninety seconds. A highlight cut to one song. A longer ceremony film. Separate reels for the mehendi, the haldi or the sangeet. Each of those is its own film, and in Vantacut each film is its own song and its own Auto-Edit run, charged for its own minutes. Knowing the list first decides how you set up the project, which songs you need, and what each run should be told about who matters.
Organise the footage
Offload every card the way you always do, then add the folders to the project. Vantacut reads clips from your drive where they are and never copies them, so a project does not duplicate the shoot. Import the whole weekend into one project, or each event into its own if they are separate films. Heavy footage gets light proxies, so playback stays smooth, and you can skim any tile to scrub through it and mark In and Out right in the bin. Phone clips from the family are clips like any other.
Turn on AI analysis
Turn on AI analysis and Vantacut watches the footage to find the best moments. The first pass runs on your computer. To go further, it shares low-quality copies of your clips, still frames and the speech with the AI services it uses, and the app asks once before anything is sent. Each clip is only watched once, across every film you cut from the project, and if you close the app it picks up where it left off. Auto-Edit needs an internet connection; editing does not.
Choose the song, then trim it
The song decides the film. Its length is the reel’s length, and the cuts land on its beat. Start from the song the couple chose, and trim it to the film you promised before you press Create: drop a long intro, end on a phrase that resolves. When one song cannot carry a whole day, join songs with a cut, a crossfade or a gap, and the reel follows the join. A teaser wants a shorter song, a ceremony film a longer one, and a sangeet reel may want the stage track itself.
Pick a theme and write a brief
Auto-Edit has four themes: Cinematic Story, Documentary, Emotional and Energetic. You pick one alongside your song and brief, before you press Create. A theme shapes what Auto-Edit reaches for, not how the picture looks, and it never changes the length of the reel; the song does that. The brief is optional and in your own words: who the couple are, what the day was like, what the film is for. Each theme has its own page, and the use-case pages suggest one for each kind of event.
Answer the questions, read the plan
When you press Create, Auto-Edit asks up to three questions only you can answer: who matters most, the tone, what to leave out. Never cut points or codecs. Each question comes with a recommended answer, and if you leave one unanswered it goes with that. Then it shows its plan before it cuts.
Walk the timeline
The reel opens as a new timeline of ordinary clips on ordinary tracks, so your own edit is never touched. Auto-Edit checks the cut and keeps improving it, and you can keep working while it is made. Then walk the timeline against the beats of the day you shot; the table below lists them for each kind of wedding event. Swap a clip it chose for a better one, trim, reorder, add titles, effects, masks and keyframes, or undo the whole reel in one step if you want to start again.
Keep the voices
Vantacut hears speech in 22 Indian languages and English, detected automatically, so the vows, a toast or a blessing can count as a moment. When a line of dialogue stays in the reel, the song ducks under it and comes back after. Keep a line or two in a highlight, the best sentence of the vows or the punchline of a toast, and leave the full speeches for the long film. Speech the microphones caught clearly is speech you can keep, so plan your audio on the day with the edit in mind.
One look across a wedding’s light
A wedding moves through every kind of light: tungsten in the getting-ready room, daylight or a mixed mandap or church, hard sun at a haldi, coloured canopies at a mehendi, stage LEDs and haze at night. Auto Balance Colour on the colour page evens white balance across the cut, so a first cut is watchable. It is a pass, not a grade. The look is the colour page’s job: wheels, curves, LUTs and scopes. Applying the same LUT to the teaser, the highlight and the ceremony film keeps a wedding’s films looking like one set.
Transitions that hold up
Vantacut’s transitions, dissolves, wipes, push, zoom and more, are built on real handles: they use the footage past each cut, with the audio crossfaded to match. Use them where the film changes place or time, from the ceremony to the reception or from one day to the next. A highlight that dissolves on every cut feels soft; a hard cut on the beat is usually the stronger choice within a scene.
Ceremonies are films of their own
Each ceremony has its own order and its own beats, and the cut should respect them. A Hindu wedding runs from the baraat to the jaimala, the pheras and the vidaai, and the pheras should still follow the baraat on the timeline. A nikah is quiet and spoken, and a walima is a celebration. A church wedding has its processional, readings, vows and recessional. The mehendi and the haldi are looser and brighter. Auto-Edit is not a ritual detector: answer its questions, then check the order yourself. If you sold a separate film for an event, give it its own song and its own run.
The teaser and the same-day edit
The teaser is a short cut of thirty to ninety seconds from the same project, made with a shorter song, in the film’s 16:9 or in 9:16, 1:1 or 4:5 for phones. Run Auto-Edit again: the footage is not watched again, the teaser opens on its own timeline, and the run pays for the teaser’s minutes only. A same-day edit is mostly planning: agree the song and the screening in advance, prepare the computer at home, and test the venue’s internet, because Auto-Edit needs a connection. Both have their own pages.
Export and delivery
Render on your machine, from your originals, at full resolution: MP4, MOV or WebM, with GPU encoding where your graphics card supports it. There is no upload and no render queue. Export with Ctrl+E from the same timeline you edited. If your studio finishes elsewhere, export the movie and bring it into the editor you already use; the reel arrives as a rendered film.
The couple’s footage stays yours
Your original footage and your songs never leave your computer. Editing, playback and export work offline once you have signed in. Only AI analysis shares anything, and only low-quality copies, still frames and the speech, after the app asks once. Finding the people in your footage is its own switch: faces are detected on your computer, and a few face pictures of people who appear often are shared to ask you who is who. If a contract limits where a shoot may go, that is easy to keep.
What it costs, and where it runs
The editor, the colour page and export are free with a Vantacut account, and no payment details are needed to sign up. Only Auto-Edit uses credits, from credit packs priced in Indian rupees, charged by the minute at the rates on the pricing page. Importing, editing, grading and export never cost a credit. Vantacut runs on Windows and Linux, worldwide, in English; macOS is coming.
Beats to check for your kind of day
Walk the timeline against the day you shot. A missing beat is a clip you swap in, not a new run.
| Event | Beats to check |
|---|---|
| Wedding day | Getting ready, the walk in or first look, vows and the kiss, portraits, the first dance and a full floor |
| Hindu wedding | Baraat, jaimala, pheras in order, vidaai, the night’s entries |
| Christian wedding | Processional, a short reading, vows and rings, recessional, steps and portraits |
| Muslim wedding | The quiet room, the nikah, rukhsati, the walima entrance, family portraits |
| Mehendi | The first lines of henna, the finished design, the name in it, the family songs, the guests’ turn |
| Haldi | The bowls, the first touch, everyone’s turn, water and petals, washed and laughing |
| Sangeet | Family dances in order, the couple’s number, items you promised, front-row faces, the last chorus |
| Engagement | The ask, the ring, the two of them, a walk, the kiss |
| Reception | Grand entrance, toasts as one line each, cake, first dance, a full floor |
| Pre-wedding shoot | The place, one chapter per outfit, the walk and look back, the laugh between takes, last light |
| Teaser | One line of the vows, a glimpse of the reveal, three faces, the floor, the couple |
Your footage stays on your computer
Editing, playback and export run on your computer, and your original footage and songs never leave it. To find moments, Auto-Edit shares low-quality copies of your clips, still frames and the speech, and the app asks once before anything is sent. The editor works worldwide, in English; credit packs are priced in Indian rupees.
Questions
How many films can I cut from one wedding’s footage?
As many as you sold. Each film is its own song and its own Auto-Edit run, and each clip is only watched once, so a second film does not start the analysis over and pays for its own minutes only.
Can I edit a multi-day wedding in one project?
Yes. Import the whole weekend into one project, or each event into its own. Either way, a separate film is a separate song and a separate run.
Is Vantacut only for Indian weddings?
No. The editor works worldwide, in English, on Windows and Linux, and a wedding anywhere is the same job: footage, one song, a highlight on a timeline you can change. Credit packs are priced in Indian rupees.
Get the editor
Windows and Linux now; macOS is coming. The editor is free; create your account when it first opens.