Get started in ten minutes

Watch it first

The video below follows the same steps as this page: creating an OpenAI or Gemini key, funding it, your first rough cut, and the export into Final Cut Pro. Claude, which RoughCut added after the video was made, is covered in writing in Create and add a Claude API key. Chapters let you jump to the step you need. Everything it shows is also written out below, so you can follow either.

Play video4 min · English captions

Watch the guide in the app

In RoughCut 1.9.1, the first welcome page includes the four-minute captioned guide. The video is bundled with the app and plays offline with native playback controls. It does not start automatically: choose Play tutorial when you are ready. The app's interface language selects the English or GCC Arabic video; use the globe control to change the interface language and relaunch.

You can read all seven written tour pages using Continue without watching, or choose Skip tour. Reopen the tour and replay the guide at any time from Help → RoughCut Welcome Tour.

The player on this website loads an online YouTube video only after you press play. In the app, Watch on YouTube is a separate optional link that opens your browser; the bundled guide needs no internet connection. If the bundled video is unavailable, use Retry or continue with the written tour.

Prerequisites

• A Mac with Apple Silicon. RoughCut is built for arm64 only; Intel Macs are not supported.
• A current macOS version — check the system requirements and the Mac App Store listing, which is always authoritative for the live minimum.
• A voice-driven recording: a video (MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI or M4V) or an audio file (WAV, MP3 or M4A). RoughCut can build a rough cut from audio alone.
• Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve to open the FCPXML directly. Premiere Pro requires XML conversion first. RoughCut exports an editable timeline. Preview the assembled edit and render the final movie in your target editor.
• About 2 GB of free disk space if you use on-device transcription, for the one-time speech model download.

Steps

1. Install RoughCut from the Mac App Store. The download is free and includes five complete rough cuts, with every Pro feature included in them.
2. Open RoughCut. The welcome tour appears, with an optional offline video on its first page. Its seven written pages explain the workflow, the two timelines you can take into Final Cut Pro, the commercial model, and how to get an AI key. You can reopen it any time from Help → RoughCut Welcome Tour.
3. Choose your language if you want Arabic. The globe control at the top right of the welcome tour switches the interface between English and العربية. RoughCut relaunches to apply it. English is the default on first run for everyone, including Macs set to Arabic — Arabic is deliberately opt-in. See Switch between English and Arabic.
4. Install the speech model. Open Settings → Models & Data and click Download from Hugging Face. This is a one-time download of about 1.6 GB, cached on your Mac. If the download stalls, use Copy download link and Import model file… instead — the full recovery path is in Install the local speech model. You can skip this step only if you have RoughCut Pro and intend to use Cloud transcription for every job.
5. Decide whether you need an AI key. Without a key, RoughCut removes silences and long pauses using on-device analysis alone. With a key, it also proposes removals for retakes, false starts, tangents, and filler. The key is yours, billed by your provider, and stored in the macOS Keychain. OpenAI is the default provider for new installations, and Gemini and Claude are also available in Settings; the tour's key page walks through the OpenAI setup. Start with Choose OpenAI, Gemini or Claude.
6. Create your first job. Choose New Rough Cut in the sidebar, drop in a video or an audio file (or use Browse Video… / Browse Audio…), and leave the recommended defaults: Recording environment on Standard, Transcription on On-device, Bad-take removal on, Second Look and the annotated review timeline off, Video type on Auto, Edit intensity on Standard, Language on Auto-detect, and no video goal. Click Process.
7. Watch it run. The job moves through preparing, extracting audio, detecting silence, transcribing, the AI editing stage, snapping cuts to words, and writing the FCPXML. Transcription is the longest measured stage. The AI stage shows AI is reviewing your transcript with an animated indicator and Elapsed: time rather than a percentage, because the provider does not report one. See Understand job progress.
8. Review the cuts. When the job finishes you get a chronological list of every proposed removal with its transcript, category, and confidence. Play any range to hear it. Use Keep or Remove to flip a decision, then click Recompute Cuts if you changed anything. See Review the cut on the timeline.
9. Export. Click Export for Final Cut Pro… and choose where to save. The file is named after your source clip and ends in - Cleaned Cut.fcpxml. If you turned on the Pro annotated review timeline, the button reads Export Both Timelines… instead: you pick one folder, and RoughCut saves <name> - Cleaned Cut.fcpxml and <name> - Annotated Review.fcpxml together inside a new <name> - RoughCut folder. Existing exports are never overwritten.
10. Import into Final Cut Pro. Choose File → Import → XML and select the exported file — for the pair, either file. Your rough cut appears as a project linked to your original footage; if Final Cut shows the media rather than the edit, double-click the imported project in the browser to open its timeline.

Expected result

A Final Cut Pro timeline containing only the segments RoughCut kept, cut on frame boundaries and linked to your original media. For an audio-only recording, the timeline references the audio file. Nothing was re-rendered, and your source file is untouched.

Privacy and cost note

On-device transcription uploads nothing. If you enabled Bad-take removal, the transcript text — not your video or audio — is sent to the provider you chose, under your own key, and that provider bills you directly at its published rates. RoughCut adds no markup and operates no servers in that path. Help → API Costs in the app shows a dated example and links to the current rates; treat it as guidance, not a quote or spending cap.

Common mistakes

• Moving the source file after processing. The exported timeline points at your original media where it was when the job ran. Move it and Final Cut Pro reports the media as offline; use File → Relink Files to recover.
• Expecting a rendered video. The export is an edit decision file, not a new movie.
• Assuming a key is required. It is not. Turn Bad-take removal off for a silence-only cut that needs no key at all.
• Skipping the model download and not having Pro. Without the local model, on-device transcription cannot run and Process stays disabled.

Troubleshooting

If Process is disabled, check in order: a video or audio file is selected, no validation error is showing in red, the speech model is ready (or Cloud transcription is selected), and you still have free cuts left or have purchased the unlock. If the job fails, the error names the cause — see Troubleshooting by symptom.