Review cuts by category and confidence

What this mode is for

Timeline answers "what happened to my recording, in order". By category answers a different question: "what kinds of call did the editor make, and which ones is it least sure about".

The rows are identical in both modes. Only the grouping and the sort change — switching modes never alters a single decision.

Switching modes

Use the segmented picker above the review list and choose By category. Your choice is remembered for the next job you open; Timeline is the default until you change it.

Two controls appear only in this mode: the Low confidence first checkbox and the Expand all / Collapse all button.

The groups, in order

Each group header carries a count pill. Groups with nothing in them are omitted entirely, so a silence-only cut shows no retake or tangent groups at all, and a job with no AI pass shows little beyond Removed: Silence and Kept Segments.

Rows that Timeline mode does not show

Timeline hides every silence and micro-island row to keep the chronological read focused on editorial decisions. This mode shows them.

That matters when silence trimming was too aggressive for your recording — a stutter-step delivery, a language with long natural pauses, a deliberate dramatic beat. Open Removed: Silence, audition the suspicious ranges, and click Keep on any pause that should stay. If you find yourself keeping many of them, the real fix is a gentler setting on the next job: see Recording environments and silence thresholds.

Low confidence first

The Low confidence first checkbox is on by default in this mode.

• On — rows sort by confidence ascending inside each group, so the editor's least certain calls sit at the top. Rows with no confidence score sort last.
• Off — rows sort chronologically inside each group.

This setting is not persisted across launches. It returns to on every time you open RoughCut, which is deliberate: the riskiest decisions should be the first thing you see.

Combined with the confidence pill colours — red below 70%, green at or above — this turns review into a short, bounded task. Read the red pills, audition them, and stop.

Expand all and Collapse all

The link button beside the checkbox expands every group, or collapses every group once they are all open.

Expand all and Collapse all change visibility only. They never keep, remove, or accept anything. Collapsing a group does not exclude its rows from the cut.

Why Kept Segments starts collapsed

On first open, every group is expanded except Kept Segments, which starts collapsed by design.

It is normally the longest group by far — for most recordings it is the majority of the video — and reading it end to end tells you little. It is there for two specific jobs:

• confirming that a passage you care about actually survived
• clicking Remove on something the editor kept but you do not want, including a Second Look suggestion

Expand it when you have one of those questions, not as a routine step.

A fast risk-focused pass

A practical order for a job you have not seen before:

• Skim Timeline top to bottom. You are checking that the flow of the cut makes sense — that nothing structural was lost.
• Switch to By category. With Low confidence first on, work down the red pills in the removed groups and audition each one.
• Open Removed: Silence only if the pacing felt wrong in the first pass.
• Expand Kept Segments only to act on something specific.
• Click Recompute Cuts if you changed anything, then export.

For most clean recordings this is a few minutes, not a full review of every row.

Common mistakes

• Skipping Timeline entirely. Grouped rows lose the sense of continuity; a cut can be defensible one row at a time and still read badly end to end.
• Expecting Low confidence first to stay off. It resets to on at every launch.
• Reading Collapse all as a decision. It hides rows; it changes nothing about the cut.
• Ignoring Removed: Silence when the pacing felt wrong. That group is where the pacing lives, and it is invisible in Timeline mode.
• Forgetting to recompute. Changes made here are pending until you click Recompute Cuts.

Next steps

• Review the cut on the timeline
• Recompute after review changes
• Second Look, the optional refine pass