Use cases · Interviews & documentary
How to do a paper edit of an interview without doing it by hand
The short answer
A paper edit is choosing and ordering sound bites from a transcript before touching the timeline. FirstCut does that first pass for you: it transcribes your interview, reads it against your brief, and assembles a narrative sequence of real source clips with in and out timecodes. You then steer the story in plain language and export the cut to Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro or Media Composer.
Step by step
1. Import the interview
Add the interview files. The browser extracts the audio locally; camera masters with PCM audio are re-encoded to compact Opus in the browser so the upload stays small.
2. Describe the story
Write the brief the way you would for an assistant editor: the arc, the audience, the running time.
3. Shape the arc
Drag clips between beats, stamp the lines that must stay or must go, and ask FirstCut for a new arc or a different length. Every revision is kept, so you can go back.
4. Hand off to the edit
Export the sequence as an EDL, FCP7-XML, FCPXML or OTIO timeline and cut picture in your NLE.
Why FirstCut for this
- It works on hours of talking-head footage, where finding the sound bites is most of the job.
- The cut is a list of real source spans, so nothing is re-rendered or re-encoded — the NLE gets your original media.
- Your footage stays on your own machine, which matters for unreleased documentary material.
Questions
Does FirstCut look at the picture?
No. It works from the transcript, so it suits interview and talk-driven footage. Choosing B-roll and cutaways stays with you in the NLE.
Does FirstCut upload my video?
No. Your browser extracts only the audio track and uploads that for transcription — about 115 MB for two hours of typical AAC audio. The video stays on your disk, and the cut plays back from your local files.
Which editors can I finish the cut in?
FirstCut exports FCPXML, FCP7-XML, CMX3600 EDL and OTIO, which open in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Avid Media Composer. The timeline points back at your original media with real in and out timecodes.
Try it on your own footage
FirstCut is free to try with no install and no credit card. Start a rough cut → · See pricing or other use cases.
Updated 2026-09-14