System requirements and compatibility

Hardware and macOS

RoughCut is built for Apple Silicon only — the project targets arm64 and the bundled speech runtime ships for arm64 alone. Intel Macs are not supported.

For the current minimum macOS version, treat the Mac App Store listing as authoritative: the App Store enforces it at install time and it can change with a release. On-device transcription uses Metal acceleration on the GPU, which is why Apple Silicon is a hard requirement rather than a preference.

Supported media files

RoughCut validates by file extension when you drop or browse for a file.

If you drop something else, RoughCut says so explicitly rather than failing later: Unsupported file type .<ext>. Video: mp4, mov, mkv, avi, m4v. Audio: wav, mp3, m4a.

An accepted extension is not a guarantee that the codec inside will decode. Compatibility ultimately depends on what macOS itself can read. If you work with unusual media, run one short test clip before committing a long recording.

Languages

English and Arabic are tuned and tested for transcription and for the AI editing pass. The on-device Whisper model understands many more languages, so others often work well — but RoughCut makes no editing-quality guarantee outside English and Arabic.

The job Language setting (Auto-detect, English, Arabic) controls transcription. It is separate from the app interface language, which you change in Settings. See Switch between English and Arabic.

Editors

The exported file is FCPXML version 1.8, designed around Final Cut Pro, where you import it with File → Import → XML.

The same file also imports into DaVinci Resolve (File → Import → Timeline) and Adobe Premiere Pro. Those paths work but Final Cut Pro is the primary target, so treat the others as compatible rather than equally tuned.

You do need one of these editors. RoughCut prepares an edit decision; it does not play or render video.

Disk space

Three things use space, and only the first is large.

• The speech model, about 1.6 GB, downloaded once and cached on your Mac in the app's container. It is removed if you delete the app. You can skip it entirely if you have RoughCut Pro and use Cloud transcription for every job.
• Per-job working files, including the extracted analysis audio. That audio is roughly 115 MB per hour of footage and is deleted automatically when a cut finishes, unless you turn on Keep analysis audio.
• Finished job folders, which hold the transcript, cut plan, and exported FCPXML.

RoughCut cleans up after itself: finished jobs are removed automatically after a retention window (24 hours by default), and the jobs folder is kept under a total size budget (25 GB by default). Both are configurable, and you can clear finished jobs immediately with Delete Completed Jobs Now. See Manage models, data, jobs, and storage.

Because RoughCut never copies or re-encodes your source video, your original footage is not duplicated at any point.

Common mistakes

• Assuming an Intel Mac will work. It will not; the App Store will not install it.
• Reading a fixed macOS minimum from documentation. Check the store listing, which reflects the shipping build.
• Expecting guaranteed quality in an untested language. Transcription may be fine, but the editing pass is tuned for English and Arabic.
• Planning storage around the whole video. RoughCut does not store a copy of your footage — only analysis artifacts.