cinemasetfreeCinemaCutter
An editor that speaks your keyboard.
Premiere, Final Cut, Avid or Resolve — you pick, on day one.
A frame-accurate NLE that opens in a browser tab and also runs as a native desktop app. Three-point editing, real timecode, and an export list that hands your cut to whatever finishing suite the post house insists on.
- No install required
- 4 editor personalities
- Exports to FCPXML, AAF, EDL and OTIO
You already know how to use it
Every editor has muscle memory, and it isn't transferable. So CinemaCutter doesn't have opinions about keys — it has personalities. Choose Premiere, Final Cut, Avid or Resolve and the shortcuts, the trim behaviour and the segment-drag semantics all follow that application's factory defaults. Where an app has no binding for something, neither do we; a missing key is part of how an editor feels.
Your choice roams with your account, so the browser tab and the desktop app agree.
What it does
Four editor personalities
Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer and DaVinci Resolve — researched against factory defaults, not invented. Every timeline key is visible and rebindable underneath.
Three-point editing
Source and record marks, insert and overwrite, ripple and roll. The grammar of a professional timeline, not a drag-and-drop toy.
Frame-accurate, honestly
Media import reports the true frame count, rate, rotation, pixel aspect and start timecode — or it fails loudly naming the container and codec. A plausible-but-wrong frame count corrupts every edit downstream, so we refuse to guess one.
Interchange that loses nothing silently
Export FCPXML for Final Cut, FCP7 XML for Premiere and Resolve, AAF and ALE for Avid, CMX3600 EDL, and OpenTimelineIO. Anything a format can't carry is reported as a named warning rather than dropped quietly.
Lossless project files
The .csfx bundle round-trips your cut with nothing lost, so archiving or moving a project between machines isn't a conversion.
An assistant in the panel
Ask for a cut in words and watch it happen on the timeline — the assistant drives the same commands your keyboard does, so anything it does, you can undo in one step.
Cut against your production
Connect your account and takes stream straight from the production you shot them on, with sequences saved back to the project. Or stay local and never sign in at all.
Undo that means it
Every edit — keyboard, toolbar or assistant — goes through one operations layer, so one undo takes back exactly one thing you did.
Panels where you want them
Dockable panels, a real program monitor, and a timeline that stays locked to the window instead of spilling controls under its neighbours.
Get CinemaCutter
The browser build is live now. The desktop build adds direct disk access and native render.
Web browser
The full editor in a tab, decoding and playing back your footage on your own machine. This is the production build — open it and cut, no account required.
Chrome, Edge or Safari 17+ · a browser with WebCodecs support
- 01Open the editor and drop footage onto the bin.
- 02Pick your editor personality in settings — Premiere is the default.
- 03Sign in only if you want to cut against a production's takes.
macOS
The same editor as a native app: pick files with the real Finder dialog, drag footage in from anywhere on disk, and render through a bundled encoder instead of the browser sandbox.
macOS 13 or later · Apple silicon or Intel
- 01Email us for the current build.
- 02Open it and start cutting locally — no account needed.
- 03Choose 'Connect account' to pull takes from a production and save sequences back.
Windows
The desktop build on Windows, with the same direct disk access and native render path. HEVC playback needs the OS HEVC extension installed.
Windows 10 or later · 64-bit
- 01Email us for the current build.
- 02Install Microsoft's HEVC Video Extensions if you shoot HEVC.
- 03Cut locally, or connect your account to reach a production's takes.
Linux
The desktop build compiles on Linux, but webkitgtk's video support varies enough between distributions that we won't call it shippable until we've measured it on real machines. Rendering falls back to the bundled encoder where playback can't.
x86-64 · webkitgtk 2.40 or later
Desktop builds are in private beta — real, working applications we hand out directly while code signing and notarisation are set up. Nothing on this page links to a download that doesn't exist.
Browser or desktop?
Same editor, same project files. The desktop build differs only where the browser sandbox gets in the way.
| Capability | Web browser | macOS | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full timeline and three-point editing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Editor personalities and rebindable keys | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Frame-accurate playback | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | varies |
| All interchange exports | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Native file dialogs and OS drag-drop | picker only | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Random-access reads from disk | in-page | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Render without a browser sandbox | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works with no account at all | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cut against a production's takes | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
'Varies' means exactly that: webkitgtk's media support differs by distribution, so the Linux build reports what it can actually do on your machine rather than assuming.
Questions people actually ask
Not unless you choose to. In local mode the editor decodes and plays your files on your own machine and nothing leaves it. Connecting an account is what lets you stream takes from a production you shot.
Open a timeline
Drop in a clip, set your keys to the app you already know, and see how long it takes to feel normal.