Manage models, data, jobs, and storage

Where these controls live

Open Settings and choose the Models & Data tab. It holds four sections, in order: the speech model, the exemplar bank, the golden-set folder, and storage. Only the first is needed for ordinary use.

The speech model

This section is the full lifecycle of the local Whisper model that powers on-device transcription.

The caption states what the model is for: everything runs on this Mac, and the model transcribes locally with Metal acceleration.

Advanced users can store the model elsewhere with the Whisper model path setting on the Full tab, which overrides the default location. Leave it empty unless you have a specific reason — a wrong path produces a missing-model error at job time.

Full detail, including the manual install path, is in Install the local speech model.

The exemplar bank

An exemplar bank is a file of real removals from edits you have already made, which RoughCut injects into the AI editor's prompt so its judgement moves toward yours. It is optional and advanced.

• Import exemplars_v2.json… opens a file picker restricted to JSON and copies the chosen bank into RoughCut's own storage.
• The status line reads Bank installed or No bank installed.
• The caption tells you the second half of the job: set LLM editor exemplars above 0 after importing. That setting ships at 8, so an untouched installation is already ready — but if you have set it to 0, importing a bank alone will do nothing.

Two behaviours are worth knowing:

• With no bank installed, nothing breaks. The editor pass runs without exemplars and records that fact in the job's provider accounting. It is visible, not silent.
• With a bank that exists but cannot be read, the job fails loudly, naming the file and the reason, rather than quietly falling back. Cloud-synced folders are a common cause, because macOS can refuse the read.

See Use an exemplar bank.

The golden-set folder

A golden set is a folder of your own clips where you already know the right edit, used to measure how closely RoughCut's automatic cuts match yours. It is a power-user tool and everyday use never needs it.

The tab's job here is access. Choose golden-set folder… grants RoughCut permission to read that folder once, and the app remembers it — macOS sandboxing means RoughCut cannot simply read an arbitrary folder without you pointing at it.

Only evaluations read that folder. Everyday rough-cut jobs never touch it. Connecting a golden set does not change how your normal jobs are cut, and does not send anything anywhere.

Keep the folder on a local disk. Cloud-synced folders can be slow or blocked outright by macOS permissions. See Build a golden set and What evaluation measures.

Storage

The storage section reports two figures and offers one toggle and one button.

Underneath, a caption states the policy in force: finished jobs are cleaned up automatically after the retention window, the folder is kept under the total budget, and working audio is deleted when a cut finishes unless Keep analysis audio is on.

The retention window and the total budget

RoughCut cleans up on its own, on two rules:

1. Retention. Jobs whose status is done or errored, created longer ago than the retention window, are deleted. The window is Job TTL hours and ships at 24 hours.
2. Total budget. While the jobs area is still larger than the budget, the remaining finished jobs are deleted oldest first. The budget is Max total GB and ships at 25 GB.

Running and queued jobs are never touched by either rule. Only finished work is eligible.

Both values are on the Full tab under System. The practical implication matters more than the numbers: a job folder is working space, not an archive. Export the FCPXML, the SRT, or the text you need as soon as a job finishes.

Keep analysis audio

To analyse and transcribe, RoughCut extracts a working audio file at roughly 115 MB per hour of footage. On a successful cut this file is deleted automatically — the review list, the FCPXML, and even Recompute Cuts are built from the transcript and the decision list and never need it.

Keep analysis audio is off by default and keeps that file instead. Turn it on only while diagnosing an audio problem, and turn it back off afterwards; a few hours of footage will otherwise add up quickly. On a job that failed, the working audio is kept regardless, so the failure can be investigated.

Delete Completed Jobs Now

The destructive button at the bottom of the storage section clears finished work immediately, without waiting for the retention window.

It asks Delete all finished jobs? and states exactly what it will do: it removes every job with status done or error, including files still in their folders, and running jobs are not touched.

Three things to expect:

• Done and errored jobs go together. There is no option to keep the failures for later inspection.
• The job folders and their contents are deleted, including any FCPXML, SRT, or text you have not exported elsewhere.
• The remembered file access for those jobs is released. RoughCut also drops the permissions it was holding for each deleted job's source video and audio, which is the correct hygiene but does mean those jobs are entirely gone.

Anything you exported to your Desktop, your project folder, or anywhere else outside RoughCut is untouched.

What deleting the app removes

RoughCut keeps the speech model, the job folders, the exemplar bank, and its configuration inside its own sandboxed container. Deleting the app removes all of it. You would download the roughly 1.6 GB speech model again on a fresh install.

Two things survive: files you exported elsewhere, and your purchase, which is tied to your Apple Account and is restored with Restore Purchases. The free-cut counter also survives a reinstall — it is stored in the Keychain, not in the app container, and nothing lowers it. See Trial, unlock, and Pro.

Two settings that look like limits but are not

The Full tab, under System, shows Max video GB and Max audio GB.

Neither is enforced. They are editable fields that nothing in the app currently reads, so changing them does not limit, reject, or warn about anything. Do not rely on them to stop a large file from being processed.

The setting that genuinely governs disk use is Max total GB, the jobs-folder budget described above, together with Job TTL hours.

Common mistakes

• Treating a job folder as storage. It is cleaned automatically. Export first.
• Leaving Keep analysis audio on after debugging. It grows at about 115 MB per hour of footage.
• Importing an exemplar bank while LLM editor exemplars is 0. The bank is installed and ignored.
• Putting the golden set in a cloud-synced folder. macOS may block the reads.
• Expecting Max video GB to reject a big file. It does nothing.
• Deleting the app to "reset" it. That also deletes the speech model, so you re-download 1.6 GB.

Troubleshooting

Still stuck? See Troubleshooting by symptom.