On-device and Cloud transcription

The control

Transcription is a two-option control on both New Rough Cut and Transcribe Only. It is a per-job choice — it is not a global mode you switch on once.

When ✦ Cloud (OpenAI) is selected, a PRO badge appears beside the Transcription label. Selecting it without a Pro subscription opens the Pro paywall and leaves the choice on On-device.

On-device transcription

This is the default and it is the path the app is designed around.

Transcribed on this Mac with Whisper — private, nothing uploaded, no API usage. The default.

What that means concretely:

• The transcript is produced by a Whisper speech model running locally on your Mac, with Metal acceleration on Apple Silicon.
• Nothing is uploaded for transcription on this path. Your audio and your video both stay where they are.
• There is no transcription API bill, from anyone. Local transcription costs nothing per minute.
• It requires the speech model to be installed — a one-time download of about 1.6 GB, cached on your Mac. See Install the local speech model. Until it is present, Process stays disabled and the screen tells you why.
• The local path also runs two protections the cloud path cannot: silence-gated transcription, and hallucination-loop recovery when the model gets stuck repeating itself.

Cloud transcription (Pro)

✦ Cloud (OpenAI) is a RoughCut Pro option. It replaces local transcription for that one job.

This job's audio is sent to OpenAI's transcription model with your own key — no local model download needed. Billed by OpenAI at their per-minute rate.

The mechanics, precisely:

• Audio only. RoughCut extracts a 16 kHz mono analysis track and uploads that. Your video file is never uploaded — not for this feature, not for any feature.
• Only the selected job's audio. Nothing from your other jobs, your library, or your Mac is included.
• Chunked at silence boundaries. The audio is split into chunks that stay under OpenAI's request size cap, and the split points land inside detected silences rather than mid-sentence. Word times are then shifted back into whole-file coordinates.
• Your own API key. The request is authenticated with the OpenAI key you saved in RoughCut, held in the macOS Keychain. There is no RoughCut server in the path.
• OpenAI bills you at their published per-minute rate for the model.
• No local model needed. This is the practical reason to use it: a Mac that has not downloaded the 1.6 GB speech model can still transcribe.

Without a key saved, the control shows:

Cloud transcription needs your OpenAI API key.

with a link to add it in Settings. If the job runs anyway, the preflight check fails it with the full message:

Cloud transcription needs your OpenAI API key. Add it in Settings → LLM, or switch this job
to on-device transcription.

Setting the key up is covered in Create and add an OpenAI API key.

What leaves your Mac

The full picture, including what is written to disk and for how long, is in Privacy and data flow.

Both paths must return word timestamps

This is not a preference; it is a structural requirement. RoughCut builds the cut plan by snapping removals to word boundaries, and it builds the SRT export from word times. A transcript without word-level timing cannot produce either.

The local model returns word timestamps. On the cloud side, only OpenAI's whisper-1 currently does. If you point the transcription model at something else, the job fails loudly rather than quietly producing a broken cut:

OpenAI model '<model>' returned a transcript without word timestamps, which the cut
pipeline and SRT export require. Per OpenAI's docs only 'whisper-1' supports word
timestamps — set Settings → Full → Transcription → OpenAI transcription model to 'whisper-1'.

Leave OpenAI transcription model at whisper-1 unless you have verified that a newer model returns word-level timing.

The editing provider is a different setting

This trips people up often enough to deserve its own section.

They are independent. All four combinations are valid:

• Gemini editing with on-device transcription — the common configuration.
• Gemini editing with OpenAI Cloud transcription — perfectly normal; two providers, two keys.
• OpenAI editing with on-device transcription.
• OpenAI editing with OpenAI Cloud transcription.

Choosing ✦ Cloud (OpenAI) on a job does not move your editing pass to OpenAI, and setting LLM provider to openai does not enable cloud transcription. See Choose an AI provider.

Going back to On-device

• On a job: select On-device in the Transcription control before clicking Process. That job then transcribes locally and uploads nothing. There is no confirmation step and no penalty.
• For all future jobs: open Settings → Full → Transcription and turn off Cloud transcription by default. That setting only pre-selects Cloud on new jobs, and only for Pro subscribers — every job still shows the choice, and every job can be switched back before you process it.
• If your subscription lapses: new jobs start on On-device automatically. Non-Pro users always start on-device.

On-device needs the speech model, so if you adopted Cloud specifically to skip the download, install the model before switching back.

Common mistakes

• Assuming Cloud is faster or better. It is a different trade, not an upgrade. Its real advantage is not needing the local model.
• Assuming Pro alone enables it. Cloud transcription needs Pro and your own OpenAI key. Both.
• Changing the transcription model away from whisper-1. The job fails at the word-timestamp check.
• Expecting Transcribe Only to be exempt. The Transcribe Only screen offers the same two options. If you pick Cloud there, that job's audio is sent to OpenAI too, regardless of what that screen's own subtitle suggests.
• Believing the stage label. The progress screen reads Transcribing audio (whisper.cpp) even on a Cloud job. The label is generic; the work happening is whichever source you chose.

Troubleshooting