Free the stories hidden in your footage.

Turn raw footage into structured story cuts in minutes, ready for finalization in your NLE.

Works with

Premiere
Final Cut
Resolve

The Archive Problem · Why We Built Synema

Edit the story,
not the timeline.

Tell Synema the story you want. It builds the cut. You refine it as much as you like.

Or explore your footage directly, search for moments, and shape the story yourself.

Story is the foundation. Not a feature. Every clip classified. Every arc surfaced. Before a single cut is made.

Story isn't a timeline problem.
That's just where we've been forced to build it.

The real work happens everywhere else — transcripts, stringouts, notes, conversations.

Teams shape the story. Editors are left to assemble it on a timeline that was never built for that.

By the time it reaches the timeline, it's too late.

Every change is slower, more precise, and more expensive. Review becomes fragmented. Iteration breaks down.

Synema brings review and revision forward — into the moment when the story is still taking shape. Story is shaped after the shoot. Now everyone can shape it.

The most expensive part of video isn't production.
It's getting the story right.

Teams don't struggle to edit video. They struggle to agree on the story.

Production is fast. Alignment isn't.

The bottleneck isn't editing. It's deciding what the story is.

Your footage becomes
a system teams can use.

Where every moment, person, and idea is immediately accessible.

Ingest & classify

Every clip enters labeled as interview, b-roll, or edited sequence. Story starts at ingest, not at the timeline.

Transcription & speaker identity

Every word transcribed, timestamped, and attributed to a named speaker. Search the entire archive like a document.

Story intelligence

AI reads every interview for narrative arc and surfaces the moments that move the story, including ones you would never have thought to look for.

Semantic story layer

Every spoken moment indexed as meaning, not keywords. Find what a subject said about a specific experience across your entire archive, even if they never used those words.

StoryCut

A new kind of editing interface. Edit in language, but every sentence is anchored to a face, a moment, a clip. See the whole story at once, then export a native sequence.

Collaboration & review

Frame-accurate comments, formal approvals, and public or private draft sharing. Everyone working from the same story, not a version of it.

Made for: Professional agencies and production teams
Cinema formats: ARRI · RED · Sony · Blackmagic · and more
Runs on: Cloud · On-premise
Languages: 50+ languages

The full engine.

Every capability below exists to make story decisions faster, richer, and less dependent on whoever happens to be at the keyboard.

Speaker diarization

Separates overlapping voices so every line is attributed correctly, even in a roundtable or vox pop.

Facial recognition

Identifies subjects across clips and cameras without manual tagging. The system builds a visual record of who is in your footage.

Voice identification

Recognizes speakers by voice alone, even when they are off-screen. Critical for multi-cam shoots and B-roll coverage.

People database

Named subjects with job titles, roles, and relationships. Find anyone across the entire archive instantly. Their name and title are always correct, regardless of which project or camera they appear in.

Moment segmentation

A 40-minute interview becomes a searchable index of moments, not a single file. Story lives inside the clip.

Proxy-original workflow

Review and edit against lightweight proxies; export against camera originals. No bottlenecks on large-file sets.

Cinema format support

MXF, BRAW, ARRIRAW, ProRes, XAVC, DNxHD, CinemaDNG, R3D (RED, coming soon) and more. Professional formats handled natively.

Large file handling

Multipart upload optimized for multi-gigabyte camera files. No size limits, no stalled transfers.

Automated organization

Footage sorted into structured folders on ingest: by type, project, and date. Non-technical collaborators navigate a clean library.

Client and project taxonomy

Multi-level hierarchy built for agencies: client, campaign, project, asset. Every clip in its correct context.

Version history

Every draft of a StoryCut is tracked. Roll back to any previous story shape without losing work.

Public and private sharing

Password-protected review links for external clients. Internal-only drafts for work in progress.

Multi-language support

Transcription and story analysis in 50+ languages. The story engine works the same way whether the interview is in English, Spanish, or Mandarin.

Burned-in captions

Captions baked directly into delivery cuts, sourced frame-accurately from the transcription. No third-party captioning service needed.

SRT export

Download frame-accurate SRT files from any transcription. Ready for subtitling, accessibility compliance, and closed caption delivery.

Auto lower thirds Coming soon

Synema already knows who everyone is. When you export, it generates the lower third for every speaker: name and title, auto-populated from the people database.

Any story. Any edit.

Synema is built for unscripted, interview-driven work, with custom story types on request. Use the full platform end-to-end, or just the search: find a clip in seconds and drag it straight into your existing edit.

Patient & family stories.

Healthcare storytelling built from testimonial and b-roll.

Documentary features & shorts.

Unscripted narrative work with multiple storylines and arcs.

Brand anthems & campaigns.

Interview-driven brand films that need a point of view.

Testimonials & case studies.

Proof and validation cut from customer conversations.

Employee spotlights & recruiting.

Culture and talent videos from unscripted interviews.

Donor & fundraiser reels.

Mission-driven asks for non-profits and institutions.

Event sizzle & recaps.

Gala, conference, and fundraiser highlight edits.

Long-form interview content.

Podcast video, expert conversations, creator episodes.

Social-first cutdowns.

Short-form clips pulled from long recordings.

Educational & explainer.

Expert-led teaching from interview and voice-over.

Custom story types.

Tell us what you make. We'll build it in.

Built by video people. For video people.

Most tools will help you do everything except shape that point of view. They'll transcribe, they'll search, they'll color, they'll render. Brilliant craft that doesn't matter if the story isn't in it.

Story is the only throughline that makes the rest worth doing. And story is what falls, every single time, to whoever happens to be in the edit bay at 11pm on a deadline, stitching outputs from a dozen tools that were never designed to talk to each other.

We built Synema to answer the question the rest of your stack forgot to ask: what story is in this footage, and are we telling it?

I'm Yis Tigay. I spent years as a producer watching good teams ship competent cuts that missed the story. The right moment: the patient who articulated what mattered, the family on discharge day, the line that captured an entire campaign, was always buried somewhere we couldn't find in time.

Synema is the tool I wished existed. Built for teams working in unscripted, interview-driven formats: healthcare systems, universities, agencies, independent docs. Private beta now. Request an invite, or if you're looking at an enterprise deployment, talk to us.