Troubleshooting

What do I have to fill in?

Only your footage. Link one or more videos (drop them anywhere on the create page, or browse) and press Generate. FirstCut reads everything that was said and finds the story itself. You can press Generate while the footage is still being prepared: it waits, and starts the moment the last file is ready (keep the tab open until then, because the audio uploads from your browser). The editor opens by itself.

Everything else is optional: notes in your own words, and the pills under the prompt — story shape, length and rhythm. Type a note and press Enter (or Add) and it joins your brief in the panel above; add as many as you like. Each note and each option you set has its own ✕, and only what is still listed is sent. Enter never starts the cut — only the Generate button does. Type / in the prompt to open the same pickers from the keyboard (/story, /length, /rhythm, /add).

Story shapes: directions and templates

A direction is a kind of video in plain words — Story, Highlights, Explainer, Teaser, Conversation, Recap. A story template is a named sequence of beats, like The Turnaround (before → the struggle → the turning point → after) or Problem → Fix → Proof. Each beat is a share of the runtime, so a template fits any length. If your footage has nothing for a beat, that beat is left out rather than invented. The extras — open with a hook, end on the strongest line, keep the original order — work with any shape.

Leave it on Auto when you are not sure: the story the footage actually contains usually beats a shape it doesn't.

How long will the cut be?

On Auto, about a third of the talking — pauses and dead air don't count, so a 30-minute recording with 20 minutes of speech comes back at around 6 minutes. Pick Custom to set a length yourself (2:30, or a bare number of minutes).

When a sequence uses more than 2 hours of footage, the longest cut you can ask for is 60 minutes, and Auto stops there too. The length is a target: the cut that comes back can run shorter or longer, and /fix-length in the editor brings it closer.

How much footage can one sequence use?

Each file can be up to 2 hours. Importing footage needs an account (a free one is enough). One sequence can be built from up to 1 hour of footage on the Free plan and 10 hours on a paid plan, counted across every file in the sequence. Footage you imported earlier counts toward that total but uses no new media hours.

The Free plan's library holds 10 hours of footage in all; a paid plan's library has no limit.

Fix: FirstCut refuses a file that would pass the limit before anything uploads. Remove some footage from the sequence, or split a long shoot across several sequences.

Why do I see a black video in the player?

A black frame almost always means one of two things: the source file isn't linked correctly, so the player has nothing to show, or the video is in a format your browser can't decode. Remember that only the audio is uploaded — the picture is played straight from the original file on your disk, so both the link and the format have to be right for you to see anything.

Fix: first, relink the footage and make sure you're pointing at the exact source file — this clears up most black-frame cases. If it's still black after relinking, the format likely can't be decoded in-browser: transcode the source to a standard, widely-supported format (H.264 .mp4), re-import, and relink. For the full details, see Relinking footage and which formats are supported below.

My cut won't play (black frame, or it skips clips)

FirstCut only extracts and uploads the audio from your footage — the video itself never leaves your machine. To preview a cut, your browser has to decode the original video file, and some camera formats can't be decoded in-browser: ProRes .mov, many .mkv files, and some HEVC/H.265 clips. The transcript and edit still work perfectly — only the picture preview is affected.

Fix: transcode the source to H.264 .mp4 (any editor or HandBrake will do it), re-import, and relink. The cut timing is unchanged — you're only swapping in a decodable file.

Clip boundaries look slightly off

The player is a preview, not a frame-accurate NLE. Clip boundaries and switches between two different source files aren't gapless. Your exported EDL/XML carries the exact timecodes — the drift is in the preview only.

Fix: trust the export. Open it in Premiere, Resolve, or Final Cut for frame-accurate cuts.

Renaming a beat or clip, or telling the AI what to change

Click the ✦ on any beat or clip. Change the title and it updates straight away. Write an instruction (“shorter, open on the laugh”) and it is saved on that item, so it stays with it however you reorder the cut. A lit icon with a dot means the item has an instruction waiting.

To act on it: press Send in the AI assistant. Everything you queued goes in one Send, which uses one AI cut. Save keeps your edits for free but doesn't ask the AI to do anything.

Slash commands

Type / in the AI assistant, or in a beat's or clip's ✦ box, for the commands that fit where you are. Picking one never sends anything: it pins a small pill and asks a question, and what you type is the answer.

On a beat you say what the story should do and the AI works out which clips do it: /focus (what should this beat focus on?), /expand (what should it develop further?), /tighten (what should be shorter or sharper?), /strengthen (what needs stronger support?) and /connect (how should it lead into or follow another beat?). /focus and /connect need an answer; the others can be left empty for a general pass.

On a clip: /add-start and /add-end take a number of seconds of footage to add before or after it. With only a number they apply at once and need no AI: the clip plays longer straight away, and the new edge is placed on a word when you save. Add a note (“start from her question”) and it becomes a request for the AI instead, with the seconds as how far it may look. /trim-start, /trim-end and /better-take take a note. In the assistant the commands act on the whole cut: /new-arc opens the same story picker as the create page, /fix-length takes a length like 1:30, and /clean-repeats removes repeated phrases.

How to tell what is queued: the ✦ on the beat or clip changes to the command's own icon, and the AI assistant lists every change on its own line. Press ✕ on a line to undo just that change. Requests for the AI are carried out on your next Send, which uses one AI cut. When the list holds only finished edits — renames, deletes, reordering, added seconds — the button reads Save and is free.

Adding a beat or asking for a new clip

Use the + above the beat list or the clip list. A new beat appears right away; drag clips into it, or describe what it should hold and let the AI fill it. A new clip shows as a dashed requested row: it has no footage yet, so it plays nothing until the AI finds it in your footage on your next Send.

Deleting, and getting it back

Open the item with its ✦ and choose Delete (or press Delete while the clip list is focused). It leaves the cut at once. It stays in the list as a struck-through line, and ↩ puts it back exactly where it was. Undo on the notice, or Ctrl/⌘+Z, reverses your last edit. Deleting a beat that still has clips asks whether the clips go with it or move to the next beat. The AI is told what you deleted, so it won't bring it back.

What the struck-through words mean

A cut-out is a removal inside a clip — a filler word, a repeat, an interviewer's “mhmm”, a silence. The clip stays one editorial moment; what plays is the clip minus its cut-outs. In the clip transcript they show struck through: a solid line means the current pace removes it, a faint dotted line means it is recorded but this pace leaves it in, and a wavy line means you just made it and it hasn't been measured yet.

To make one: select words in the clip transcript and choose Cut out. Select struck words and choose Release to put them back. Editing cut-outs needs the footage's transcript, which is kept for three months after import.

A cut-out I just made didn't change the runtime

It won't until you save. Your browser knows which words you picked, but the exact hole they leave — measured to the millisecond, including the breath around them — is computed on the server. So a new cut-out is struck through straight away and applied once the save completes, usually a second or two.

Fix: hit Save in the top bar. Exporting saves first automatically.

Pace: natural, fast, faster, fastest

Cut-outs are a catalogue of removals; the pace level decides how many of them apply, so you can move between them freely and nothing is thrown away. Natural plays the speaker uncut (cold starts and trailing ends are still trimmed). Fast takes out filler words and the model's own editorial removals. Faster and fastest also take out silences — faster leaves a short breath at each gap, fastest leaves none beyond what the pause itself was measured with. Cut-outs you made by hand always apply — they're an edit, not a pacing preference. Changing the pace doesn't use an AI cut: it's an ordinary edit, and it changes the file you export, not just the preview.

“Pace” in the editor vs “Rhythm” when you create

They are different controls and they both have a setting called fast, so it is worth being clear. Rhythm, on the create page, asks for shorter or longer clips — fast gives a montage of roughly 4-second clips, measured about 6 s, slow around 17 s. It is part of the brief, so it changes the whole cut and only takes effect when the cut is built. Pace, in the editor, changes nothing about which moments are in the cut — only how much is removed inside each one. You can move it whenever you like.

A gap marker instead of struck-through words

A small mark after a word means a pause was removed there — the quiet between two words, with no word taken. That is why the word in front of it isn't struck through: it is still in the cut. Gap markers carry the same three weights as struck words, and they are the removals the faster and fastest pace levels turn on. They can't be released by selecting words, because there are no words in them — the pace dial is the control for those.

I can hear a tiny stutter where something was cut

Removing a hole mid-playback means either muting through it or seeking over it, and neither is free in a browser. Short removals (under ~0.4 s — most filler words) are muted: the sound is exactly right, but the picture keeps rolling for those few hundred milliseconds. Longer ones are seeked, which is exact but can stall briefly on long-GOP camera files. Either way the export is precise — the preview is a preview.

/clean-repeats said there was nothing to remove

That is a real answer, not a failure. It looks for a phrase said twice in a row — “we were, we were three weeks out” — and it can tell there are none before it asks the model anything, so it comes straight back and doesn't spend an AI cut. Your unsaved edits are untouched and still unsaved.

I have no editor to open the exported file in

The Export page can also render the cut into one MP4, for when you have nothing that opens an EDL or XML file. It is made in your browser from your own video files, which still never upload.

It is experimental and you use it at your own risk. FirstCut is a pre-editor: its job is to hand an EDL or project file to a professional editor, not to render the finished video. The render is not guaranteed to work on every device, browser or operating system, the colours and timing can come out different from your footage, and for now it supports a cut made from a single video file. The joins are hard cuts and it is slower than an editor. When it cannot run, the page says why.

Fix: open Export, find Export video, choose the source video if asked, and press Render video. Keep the tab open and in front until it finishes, then press Save video. If it fails, open Details there and send us what it shows.

It keeps asking me to relink my footage

Because your videos live only on your disk, FirstCut has to be pointed at the files each time it can't remember them. Within a session, links are held in memory and survive navigation. Across sessions, it can only re-grant access to files you linked before on a supported browser (see below).

Fix: use Link from folder to point at the whole footage folder once — every matching source relinks at once. Or drag a file straight onto the player frame to relink just that clip.

“Restore footage” doesn't work / never appears

Remembering footage between sessions uses the browser's File System Access API, which is Chromium-only (Chrome, Edge, Arc, Brave) and needs a secure context (localhost or an HTTPS site). On Safari, Firefox, and most mobile browsers there's no persistent handle — you relink per session with the file picker. Re-granting also requires a click (browsers won't restore access silently).

Fix: for footage that persists between visits, use a Chromium browser on desktop. Everywhere else, relinking each session is expected — nothing is broken.

A file wouldn't import

FirstCut prepares your audio in the browser, and your video never uploads — so a file works only if its audio can be packed up locally. AAC (MP4/MOV) is copied out as-is; Opus and Vorbis (WebM/MKV) are repackaged; raw or lossless audio, like the PCM in ProRes and many camera masters, is compressed first so a small file uploads instead of a huge one. Files with no audio track, with audio your browser can't read (FLAC, AC-3, DTS), or that can't be parsed at all are refused.

Fix: convert the file to an MP4 with an AAC track and re-import. That is also the format with the most accurate timings — see below.

“No or little transcript” or “Not supported — not English”

FirstCut currently supports English footage. Every import is transcribed, and two kinds of footage come back with a grey label instead of a transcript a cut can use: footage with no or very little speech (B-roll, ambient shots, a clip where someone only says “Hi”), and footage in another language. Neither is an error, and neither can be picked for a sequence. Both count toward your media hours like any import; importing the same file again doesn't charge it twice.

Fix: nothing to fix for B-roll — FirstCut builds cuts from what people say. For another language, there is no workaround yet.

“Upload didn't finish”, or many files at once

Only the audio uploads, but it uploads from your browser, so keep the tab open until the uploads finish. After that you can close it: transcription continues on our side. When you link many files at once, eight import at a time and the rest wait in a queue. A file whose upload was cut short (the tab closed, the connection dropped) is marked Unfinished in Media.

Fix: link the same file again, on Create or in Media. It finishes the same import rather than starting a new one, and nothing is charged twice. The same works for a transcription that didn't finish.

The cut's timings are slightly off

MP4/MOV with AAC audio gives the most accurate timecodes, because its audio is used exactly as it is. Every other format has to be converted in your browser first, and rewriting a container regenerates its timing information — which shifts things a little. In our testing the difference was about 0.019 seconds, usually less than a single video frame; it depends on the file and can be more.

Note this is separate from the preview player, which advances clips on a browser timer and is never frame-exact regardless of format.

Fix: if exact timing matters, re-export your source as MP4 + AAC before importing — that removes the conversion step entirely. Otherwise treat the export as a starting point and trim in your editor. See Terms §7.

Generation seems stuck

Transcription and the edit run in the background. Once you press Generate the editor opens straight away and shows the build there, waiting on a live update from the server — so a slow model or a large batch of footage can take a while. The progress bar deliberately never claims it's done early. If a build fails, the editor offers Try again with the same footage and brief.

Fix: give it a few minutes. If it never advances or shows an error, reload the Sequence — the live document will reattach. Persistent failures usually mean a source never finished transcribing; check its status in Media.

I hit a limit

Each plan allows a number of media hours (footage imported) and AI cuts (generations and AI refinements) per billing period. When one runs out, FirstCut says so before anything uploads or runs — nothing is deleted, and your existing sequences, edits, Save and export all keep working.

Fix: wait for the reset date shown on Account, or move to a larger plan on the plan page — an upgrade applies at once.

My usage meters aren't showing

On the Free plan the meters start counting at your first import; until then Account shows the allowance instead. On a paid plan they appear as soon as the payment is confirmed.

I paid, but my plan hasn't changed

Confirmation from the payment provider normally lands within a minute, and Account updates by itself when it does.

Fix: if it still shows the old plan after a few minutes, email us (below) with the address you paid from — don't pay a second time.

Cancelling, invoices and your card

Go to Account → Subscription → Manage or cancel subscription. That opens the billing portal of Creem, our merchant of record, where you can cancel, update your card and download invoices. Cancelling keeps your plan until the end of the period you paid for.

Switching plans

Use the plan page while signed in. A larger plan (or monthly → annual) applies immediately with the prorated difference charged now; a smaller plan (or annual → monthly) takes effect at your next renewal, and Account shows the date. Refunds are covered in refunds and cancellation.