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Auto B-Roll listens to your edit, looks at every b-roll clip in a folder of your project, and places them on a track above your timeline — wherever the visuals illustrate what’s being said. It uses your own footage. Nothing is generated, nothing is downloaded from a stock library. Works in Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.

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Quick Start

1

Prepare a b-roll folder

Put the clips you want available into a project bin. Only bins that actually contain video show up in the picker.
2

Open the tool

Open the Tools Menu and select Auto B-Roll.
3

Pick your b-roll folder

Choose it in the dropdown — the field pulses green until you do, because nothing can run without it.
4

Set the density

B-roll / min decides how much b-roll lands on your edit.
5

Write a brief (optional)

e.g. “only nature shots, keep it subtle”.
6

Run

Click Add Auto B-Roll and let it work through its four steps.
Your timeline must be under 2 hours — it gets transcribed, and beyond that the audio export becomes unreliable.

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Settings

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Mode

Project

Pick a project bin full of b-roll. The clips are added on a new track above your edit. This is the mode to use.

Timeline

Your b-roll already sits on a video track and gets moved to the spots where it fits. Coming soon — currently locked.

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Model

Start on Flash. If the placements feel random or literal-minded, move up to Sonnet 5 or Opus before blaming the footage — the model does the interpreting.

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B-roll / min

The target is your timeline duration × this rate, with a small tolerance. Density is treated as the priority: the AI aims to hit that count rather than holding out for a perfect visual every time.
  • 2–4 — occasional punctuation. Interviews, corporate, talking-head where the face carries the video.
  • 5–10 — the standard illustrated-video rhythm. Start around 8.
  • 12+ — dense, fast-cut, montage-heavy. Needs a large, varied b-roll pool to avoid repetition.
Density above what your folder can support forces repetition. A rate of 15/min on a 10-minute timeline asks for ~150 placements — with 20 clips available, you’ll see each one many times.

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How it matches

The run goes through four visible steps: transcribe the timeline → read and analyze your b-roll → AI matching → place the clips. What matters for your results:
  • Matching is thematic, not literal. A clip qualifies if it’s figurative, evocative or simply related in mood, setting or subject. A city at dusk over a line about ambition is considered a good match, not a mistake.
  • Repetition is minimised, not banned. Clips that haven’t been used yet are strongly preferred; a clip comes back only when nothing fresh fits.
  • Several clips can stack on one long passage, up to a small maximum — never on a short one.
  • Placements never overlap. A clip that would run into the next one is shortened, not dropped.
  • A clip is never stretched beyond its own length. Short source clips produce short placements.
Your b-roll only needs to be described once. Clips already analysed in a previous run are recognised, so re-running — or running on another sequence in the same project — is faster.

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Writing a Good Brief

The brief steers the creative direction. It’s optional, and short is better.

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What works

  • Restrict the pool: “Only nature and landscape shots — skip anything with people.”
  • Set the tone: “Keep it subtle and atmospheric.” / “Punchy, energetic, on-the-nose.”
  • Guide the interpretation: “Favour metaphorical matches over literal ones.” / “Stay literal — show exactly what I’m talking about.”
  • Protect passages: “No b-roll over the intro or the call to action.”
  • Give context: “This is a product demo — prefer the office and workshop shots for the process parts.”

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What doesn’t work

  • How much b-roll to place — that’s the B-roll / min setting.
  • Timecodes or exact placements — “put the drone shot at 2:15”. The AI picks the moments; do a specific placement by hand.
  • Naming a file — it works from what the clips look like, not from filenames.
  • Effects, transitions or speed — placement only. No fades, no scaling, no reframing.
  • Asking for footage you don’t have — it can only use what’s in the folder you picked.
“[What to include or exclude]. [Tone]. [How literal to be]. [What to leave alone].”
Example:
“Only exterior and nature shots, no faces. Calm and atmospheric. Prefer evocative matches over literal ones. Leave the first 20 seconds clean.”
If the results feel repetitive, the fix is usually more clips in the folder or a lower density — rarely a longer brief.

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Presets

The preset bar saves your whole configuration — mode, folder, track, density, model and brief. Build one per format so a recurring series is a two-click job.

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After the run

The b-roll lands on a track above your edit as ordinary clips: move, trim, replace or delete anything you disagree with. The underlying edit is untouched.
Review it as a pass, not clip by clip: play the timeline once and only stop on placements that actively distract. Auto B-Roll is there to give you a full first layer to prune, which is far faster than building one from scratch.

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Common Pitfalls

  • No folder selected → the Start button stays disabled and the picker pulses. It’s the only blocker you can clear yourself.
  • Empty bins don’t appear in the picker — only bins containing video are listed.
  • Timeline over 2 hours → refused before anything runs.
  • A tiny b-roll folder with a high density → heavy repetition. Add clips or lower the rate.
  • Very short source clips produce very short placements — that’s the source length, not a bug.
  • Touching the timeline while it’s placing → let the progress modal finish; it’s writing to your sequence.
  • Music or noisy audio under the voice hurts the transcription, and a weak transcript means weak matches.
Recommended workflow: a well-stocked, varied bin → Gemini Flash → 8 b-roll/min → a one-line brief → run → prune in one playback pass. Move to a stronger model only if the matching disappoints.