Sam Kolder style travel montage

Sam Kolder style travel montage

Turn a folder of raw travel clips into a fast, music-driven montage in DaVinci Resolve.

Requirements

• DaVinci Resolve 19+ with the Resolve MCP server running
• ffmpeg on PATH
• A music track (any mp3/wav) and a folder of clips

Steps

1. Ask the user for the clip folder and the music track. Import both into a new Resolve project via the MCP import_media tool.
2. Detect the music tempo with ffmpeg: ffmpeg -i track.mp3 -af ebur128 -f null - and estimate beats. Place edit points on every second beat.
3. For each clip, find the 1 to 2 seconds with the most motion (frame-difference score via ffmpeg select filter). Use only those ranges.
4. Cut clips to the beat grid. Alternate wide and tight shots when metadata allows.
5. Add speed ramps: 40% into each clip, ramp 100% to 250% over 8 frames, back to 100%.
6. Apply a teal-orange grade on a shared adjustment layer: lift shadows toward teal (-8 on B), push highlights toward orange (+6 on R), saturation 55.
7. Render a 1080p preview with the MCP render tool.

Verify

• Total runtime should be within 5% of the music track length.
• No clip should appear twice.
• Ask the user to watch the preview before rendering full quality.