Privacy

What we store — and what never leaves your machine

FirstCut is built so your footage stays yours. The short version: your multi-gigabyte video files are never uploaded. Only the small audio track is sent, only to produce a transcript.

Last updated: 19 October 2026

Who we are

FirstCut is operated by Eran Strassburg, a sole trader. That is the data controller for the personal data described on this page, and the party you are contracting with under the Terms.

For anything about your data — questions, access, correction, or deletion — write to support@firstcut.video. It's read by the person who built the service. There's more about who that is on the about page.

Your video never uploads

When you add footage, your browser extracts just the encoded audio track locally and uploads only that. The video itself stays on your disk. To preview a cut, FirstCut reads the original video directly from your machine — the edit is a list of timecodes, and the pixels come from your own files.

What we do store

• Audio for transcription. The extracted audio track is uploaded to our storage and transcribed. The resulting transcript is saved to your account.
• Your sequences. The briefs you write and the edits (the ordered list of clips and timecodes) are saved so you can reopen and refine them.
• Account identity. If you sign in, we store the identifier from your sign-in method (Google, or a passwordless email link) to keep your work separate and private to you.
• Footage links (on your device only). On supported browsers, a tiny reference to where your video files live is stored locally so you don't have to relink every visit. This reference never leaves your device and no video bytes are copied.

What we don't do

• We don't upload, copy, or stream your video files.
• We don't sell your data or footage.
• Your work is isolated to your account — no other user can reach it.

Third parties

We use a small number of external providers to run the service. What matters is what each one receives, so that's what we describe — and none of them receives your video files, because we never have them:

• Cloud hosting, storage, and authentication — runs the service and holds the extracted audio, your transcripts, and your sequences.
• A speech-to-text provider — receives the extracted audio track and returns a transcript.
• An AI model provider — receives your brief and the transcript text to assemble a cut. It never receives audio or video.
• A payments provider acting as merchant of record — receives your name, email, billing country and payment details in order to sell you a subscription and issue your invoice. It is the party named on your card statement. It never receives your footage, your audio, or your transcripts.

We name categories rather than companies because the specific providers change — for capacity, latency, cost, or output quality, and sometimes more than one is used for the same job. What each category receives is the part that doesn't change, and it's the part that affects you. If you want to know exactly who we use right now, ask at support@firstcut.video and we'll tell you.

Eran Strassburg is registered as a sole trader in Israel.

Some of these providers operate outside Israel, including in the United States, so the data described above may be processed there.

We use Google Analytics and PostHog (cookies, pages visited, clicks, device details; once you sign in, PostHog links this to your internal account id, never your email) to see how the site is used. PostHog also records sessions to show us where the product is confusing, with all text and typing hidden, no video picture, and the Account page never recorded. Neither ever receives your footage, audio, transcripts or sequences.

When something breaks in your browser, PostHog also receives an error report — the error message, where in our code it happened, and your browser and device — with file names and local paths removed first. PostHog's requests are sent through our own domain (firstcut.video) rather than directly to PostHog.

Deleting your data

You can clear your locally stored footage links and account data from the Account page. To request full removal of your stored audio and sequences, write to support@firstcut.video.

Anonymous sessions

Using FirstCut needs an account; we no longer create anonymous sessions. If your browser still holds one from before, anything it holds is merged into your account when you sign in. Until then, its data isn't linked to a personal identity.

This page is a plain-language summary of how FirstCut handles your data, not a substitute for a formal privacy policy or legal advice. The agreement for using the service is in the Terms & Conditions.