Best tools for turning a finished video into a shot list (2026)

StoryFolder — 2026-09-02

Last updated: 2 September 2026. Every price and capability below carries the date it was last recorded. The figures marked 2 September 2026 were read from the vendor's own page that day; the rest were recorded on 1 September 2026 and have not been re-checked since. Confirm current price and capability with the vendor before you buy anything.

You have a finished video, not a script and not a shoot day still to come, and you need an ordered record of every shot in it: where it starts, where it ends, and a picture of each one. Most "shot list" search results are pre-production planning apps that build a list for a shoot that hasn't happened yet. This compares the tools that work from footage you already have. We publish this comparison and StoryFolder is one of the tools in it, so take the recommendations with that in mind. Every price and capability below carries the date it was last recorded, and we say plainly where StoryFolder loses.

If you have a rendered video file and need a shot list you can hand to someone, StoryFolder writes a thumbnailed XLSX and CSV. PySceneDetect is the free, scriptable detector. Premiere and Resolve keep the detected cuts inside the edit. Production Clip Reporter reports on an editorial timeline that already exists.

StoryFolder does not do script planning, has no crew or call-sheet features, and cannot recover source reel numbers, source timecode or an EDL/XML/AAF/FCPXML round-trip, because it works from a rendered video file, not your project. If provenance or an editorial round-trip matters to your job, an NLE-native tool or one of the timeline-report utilities below wins that outright.

Which tools accept a finished video directly?

StoryFolder, PySceneDetect, Premiere's Scene Edit Detection, Resolve's Scene Cut Detection and MoviePrint all start from a video file. EditingTools' EDL Tool & Converter and Production Clip Reporter start from the other end: an EDL, XML or OTIO export from a timeline that already exists. If all you have is a rendered .mov, those two aren't in play until something else has produced a cut list for them to read.

Accepting video is one thing; producing a shot list is another. PySceneDetect's CLI will detect and list scenes, but what comes out is a CSV and a folder of images, so you still build the spreadsheet yourself. Premiere's Scene Edit Detection turns detected cuts into edit points, a subclip bin, or markers inside the project, with no native thumbnail spreadsheet on the other end. Resolve's Colorist Guide shows the same pattern: a reviewed Cut List you can save or add to the Media Pool. MoviePrint gets you a finished artefact with the least setup, a visual contact sheet, which is a picture of the video rather than rows you can add columns to.

In StoryFolder the equivalent step is importing the video file and letting it detect the shots.

Which tool produces a spreadsheet you can hand to someone?

StoryFolder writes an XLSX and a CSV from one spreadsheet export, and when you turn on Images in that same export, the XLSX embeds a thumbnail in every row. The columns are Frame, Filename, then any shot-level custom fields you've switched on, then Start Timecode, End Timecode, Duration Timecode, First Frame and Last Frame. There's no shot-number column, and the CSV never carries pixels; only the XLSX does.

Production Clip Reporter writes a richer Excel report, but it's working from real editorial metadata: an OTIO or XML export from Avid, Premiere or Resolve, complete with markers, transitions and effects that were already in your timeline. A rendered video file simply doesn't carry that information, so no tool that reads pictures instead of timelines can produce it. EditingTools converts an existing EDL, XML or CSV into other list formats (CSV, PDF, Excel), which is useful when your problem is format conversion rather than shot detection. PySceneDetect needs a formatting step of your own between its CSV and anything you'd hand to a client.

Which tool gives you cuts back in an editor?

If you need the detected cuts to live inside your NLE as edit points, PySceneDetect and the NLE-native tools are the stronger path. PySceneDetect 0.7.1, released 21 July 2026, documents an EDL export and OTIO/FCP-oriented outputs alongside its CSV, so a detected cut list can travel into an interchange format rather than staying command-line only. Premiere's and Resolve's detectors already put the cuts where you're editing, because that's where they ran.

StoryFolder is deliberately one-way. It writes a document you can hand to someone and nothing you can import back into a timeline. Production Clip Reporter documents cuts that already exist rather than creating them from a video.

How much correction control matters after detection?

Hard cuts are the easy case for any detector. Dissolves, fades and matched cuts inside similar-looking rooms get missed more often, and a camera flash or a fast whip inside one continuous shot can get reported as a cut that isn't there. That gap is why the correction path matters more than "AI-powered" marketing copy: every one of these tools will produce a board that needs a human pass before it's a deliverable, and the table below answers each tool on that axis.

The paths differ in kind, not just in quality. StoryFolder gives you a sensitivity control that moves the whole board's cut count, a second detector pass that surfaces suggested cuts you accept with one click, and split and join for everything else. PySceneDetect's controls are command-line options you re-run. Premiere and Resolve hand corrections back to the timeline tools you already use. We haven't run a shared benchmark file against the other tools here, so treat any claim about relative detection accuracy between StoryFolder and a competitor as unverified without a controlled, published test, and don't take marketing copy from any vendor, including us, as a substitute for trying your own footage.

What information can no finished-video detector recover?

A rendered video file does not carry the camera's original filenames, the source reel, source timecode, handles, or the structure of the timeline it was cut from. No tool working from the picture alone can get that back, because it was never in the file to begin with. StoryFolder's own timecode is elapsed from the start of the file you imported (HH:MM:SS,mmm), not SMPTE and not the master's source timecode; the exact numbers to trust are the integer First Frame and Last Frame columns rather than the timecode string's milliseconds.

If provenance matters (a VFX pull list keyed to original filenames, a conform that needs source timecode and handles), that information has to come from an NLE or an EDL/XML/OTIO export, upstream of any video-in tool. None of the tools in this comparison invent it after the fact.

Which tool should you choose for each job?

1. Finished video, want a reviewed visual spreadsheet: StoryFolder. Concession: desktop only (Mac or Windows, no Linux build), and the spreadsheet export and custom fields are a paid feature.
2. Want free, scriptable detection or an interchange output: PySceneDetect. Concession: command-line and Python, not a client-ready document with your own columns out of the box.
3. Want the detection to stay inside the edit: Premiere or Resolve. Concession: neither produces a standalone thumbnailed shot-list document by itself.
4. A real editorial timeline already exists and the deliverable is a production report: Production Clip Reporter. Concession: Apple Silicon only, and it documents a timeline rather than detecting cuts from raw video.
5. You want a visual contact sheet and nothing more: MoviePrint. Concession: its own repository says it's no longer under active development, and the latest listed release dates to 2020.

How do these tools compare at a glance?

We haven't scored these tools against a common test file, so treat any claim about which detects shots most accurately as unverified until someone runs one.

FAQ

Can PySceneDetect export a scene list? Yes. Release 0.7.1, dated 21 July 2026, documents a list-scenes CSV plus saved images and EDL/OTIO/FCP-oriented outputs, though it doesn't build a custom-field spreadsheet for you.

Does Premiere make a shot-list spreadsheet? No first-party source shows one. Scene Edit Detection produces cuts, a subclip bin, or markers inside the project instead.

What does a StoryFolder export actually contain? One export writes both an XLSX and a CSV; the XLSX embeds a thumbnail per row only when Images is turned on in that same export.

What is StoryFolder's shot-detection sensitivity range? 1 to 9, with a default of 5, and a default minimum automatic shot length of 10 frames.

Is MoviePrint still maintained? Its own GitHub repository says no; the most recent listed release is from 2020.

Can any of these tools recover the source camera's original timecode? No. StoryFolder's timecode is elapsed from the start of the imported file, and source reel and source timecode only exist upstream, in an NLE or an editorial export.

← All articles