Rcut for Adobe Premiere Pro — Help & Support

Everything you need to install and use the Rcut panel: automatic rough cuts, multicam merging and text-based editing, right inside Adobe Premiere Pro.

1. Introduction

Rcut automates the first, most time-consuming stage of editing: cleaning up raw footage before the creative work begins. Instead of scrubbing through hours of material looking for blurry, shaky or dead segments, Rcut finds them automatically and gives you a timeline ready to work with.

What Rcut does

Detects blurry, shaky or static footage (blur and motion detection)
Recognizes scene changes for cleaner cut points
Detects speech, so you can keep only segments with dialogue
Combines several cameras into one synced, multi-track timeline
Transcribes dialogue locally (no cloud) and lets you cut video by deleting text
Exports subtitles as SRT

Rcut is built for editors who work with large volumes of raw footage: weddings, events, vlogs, interviews and travel content.

2. Installation

Requirements

Windows only (macOS is not supported), with Adobe Premiere Pro 25.6 or later
The Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64), if it is not already on your system

Install the plugin

Download the Rcut plugin file (.ccx).
Double-click it. Adobe Creative Cloud opens and installs the plugin.
If a warning about an unverified plugin appears, confirm the installation.
Restart Premiere Pro if it was open.
Open the panel from Window → Extensions (UXP) → Rcut.

Note: The unverified-plugin warning is expected for plugins installed directly from a file, and is safe to accept.

First launch

Rcut consists of the plugin panel and a small companion application, RcutEngine.exe, installed inside the plugin. The panel starts the companion application automatically in the background. You never need to open a command window. The status indicator at the top right shows Server online when everything is ready.

3. The panel at a glance

A sidebar on the left switches between the three tools:

Rough Cut — analyze a clip or a folder and produce a timeline of the parts worth keeping
Merge XML — combine timelines from several cameras into one multi-track sequence
Transcript — transcribe dialogue and edit video through text
Reconnect — restart the connection to the engine if the status shows it as offline

A status bar at the bottom shows what the panel is doing. Long operations (Rough Cut and Transcribe) have a Stop button.

4. Rough Cut

The core function: choose a video or a folder, and Rcut produces an XML timeline containing only the parts worth keeping.

Input

File… — select a single video
Folder… — select a whole folder for batch analysis

Combine into one sequence

Off: one XML per video. On: everything goes into a single timeline.

Run

Click Run Rcut. A progress bar and status line show what is happening. When it finishes, a result card shows how many clips were kept and how much of the original footage remains, with a button to Import Timeline into Premiere.

Advanced settings

Open the Advanced settings card to control how strictly Rcut filters your footage. Values change with the − and + buttons. Most settings are adaptive: each frame is compared against the rest of the same file, not against a fixed scale. Your choices are remembered between sessions, and Reset to defaults restores factory values.

Setting	Default	What it does
Blur percentile	15	How strict blur filtering is. 15 means rejecting the blurriest 15% of frames within the same file. Lower = more lenient.
Motion percentile	50	Equivalent filtering for camera shake. 50 rejects the shakiest half of the file's frames.
Min clip length (s)	1.0	Clips shorter than this are dropped, avoiding jarring fragments.
Padding (s)	0.15	Extra time added before and after each kept clip, so cuts feel natural.
Merge gaps shorter than (s)	0.4	Kept clips closer together than this are joined into one continuous clip.
Skip filter for clips under (s)	8	Files shorter than this are kept whole, because there is too little material to compare. Set to 0 to disable.
Analysis sample rate (fps)	4	How many frames per second are examined. Higher = more accurate but slower.
Scene-cut sensitivity	0.70	How easily abrupt scene changes are recognized. Higher = catches subtler transitions.
Scene-cut trim (s)	0.15	How much is trimmed around a detected scene cut to avoid artifacts.
Hardware acceleration	none	GPU decoding, useful on 4K/HEVC. Try `auto` or `d3d11va` if analysis is slow.
Folder extensions	mp4, mov	Which file types are included when you select a folder.
Keep only clips with speech	Off	Keeps only segments where speech is detected. Useful for interviews and talking-head footage.
Manual thresholds	Off	Disables the adaptive logic and lets you set fixed blur and motion thresholds. Only for users who know the exact values they want.

Understanding the result

Rcut never drops a file entirely unless it is genuinely unreadable. Per file you may see:

Normal result — X clips, Y seconds kept out of Z.
Kept whole — no scene stood out (common on very short clips), or analysis could not complete. The file is kept in full as a safe fallback.
Corrupted or unreadable — the only case where a file is skipped.

5. Merge XML

When you shoot with several cameras (main camera, drone, action cam), run Rough Cut on each one first, then combine the results into one multi-track sequence here.

Add the generated XML files (one per camera or folder).
Arrange them in the order you want them on the timeline.
Give each a label, for example Main camera, Drone, GoPro.
Choose where the merged XML will be saved.
Click Merge, then import the result into Premiere.

Tip: XML files that share the same label end up on the same video/audio track. To put two files from the same camera on one track, give them the same label.

Use Remove to take one XML out of the list (the file on disk is not deleted) and Remove all to clear the list.

6. Transcript — text-based editing

Rcut transcribes dialogue locally, word by word with precise timestamps, and lets you edit by deleting text. The matching footage is removed automatically.

Step 1 — Choose the source and transcribe

File… transcribes a whole video file.
From Timeline… uses the clip you have selected in the Premiere timeline. Only the portion of the source that appears in the timeline (its in and out points) is transcribed.

Then choose a model size (tiny, base, small, medium, large-v3) and the language, or leave it on Auto-detect, and click Transcribe. Progress is shown live and can be stopped at any time.

Greek and other non-English languages: use large-v3. Smaller models are fast but noticeably less accurate outside English. The first time you use a model size, an internet connection is needed to download it; after that it works offline. Large models can take several minutes to download.

Step 2 — Edit the text

Click a word to delete it (shown grey and struck through). Click again to restore it.
Drag across several words and choose Delete selection to remove them at once.
Restore all cancels every deletion.

Word counts (total, kept, deleted) are always shown below the text.

Step 3 — Generate the result

Generate XML converts the kept words into time ranges, adds the same padding as the Rough Cut setting, and produces a timeline you can import.
Generate SRT exports subtitles from the transcript. Deleted words are left out. Subtitle times refer to the original, uncut video.

Tip: If cuts feel too tight, increase Padding in the Rough Cut advanced settings.

7. Importing into Premiere

After Rough Cut, Merge XML or Transcript, click Import Timeline into Premiere on the result card. The XML is imported into your open project and appears in the Project panel. If automatic import is not available, the panel shows the file path so you can import it manually with File → Import….

8. Troubleshooting

Status shows "Server offline"

Click Reconnect in the sidebar. The panel restarts its engine. If that fails, check that your antivirus or firewall is not blocking RcutEngine.exe and add it to the exclusions (see below).

Antivirus or firewall blocks the engine

Some security software (for example ESET) can block a new program that listens on the local machine. Add the Rcut plugin folder and RcutEngine.exe to your antivirus exclusions, and allow it through the firewall. Rcut only communicates within your own computer.

The engine will not start

Make sure the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64) is installed. It is available free from Microsoft.

Transcription is slow or appears stuck

Large models (medium, large-v3) are much slower on a computer without a powerful GPU. Rcut runs transcription on the CPU. Try base or small first to test.
If the progress counter is changing, even slowly, the process is working normally.
The first run of a model includes its download time.

Repeated or invented text in the transcript

Silent or very noisy sections can make smaller models produce phrases that were never said. Use large-v3, and prefer clips with clear audio.

Many files are "kept whole" without any cutting

This is expected for very short clips. Adaptive analysis needs enough material within a file to tell better parts from worse ones. Adjust Skip filter for clips under (s) to match your typical clip length.

Auto-import did not work

Use File → Import… in Premiere and select the XML path shown in the status line.

9. Frequently asked questions

Does Rcut need an internet connection?

No, not for the core analysis and cutting. The only time it is needed is the first use of a particular transcription model size, to download it once.

Is my footage uploaded anywhere?

No. All video analysis and speech transcription happen on your computer. Nothing is ever uploaded.

What is the difference between Rough Cut and Transcript?

Rough Cut decides what to keep from visual criteria (blur, motion, scene changes), ideal for action, multicam and event footage. Transcript decides from the content of speech, ideal for interviews and talking-head video where you want to cut specific words or sentences.

Which languages can be transcribed?

Many, including Greek, English and Spanish. Choose a language, or use auto-detect. For best results outside English, use the large-v3 model.

Are my settings saved?

Yes. Advanced settings in Rough Cut are remembered between sessions, and can be reset at any time.

Is there a standalone version?

Yes. Rcut is also available as a Windows desktop app that exports XML for your editor. See the versions section on the home page.

10. Settings reference

Default values at a glance.

Setting	Default
Blur percentile	15
Motion percentile	50
Min clip length	1.0 s
Padding	0.15 s
Merge gaps shorter than	0.4 s
Skip filter for clips under	8 s
Analysis sample rate	4 fps
Scene-cut sensitivity	0.70
Scene-cut trim	0.15 s
Hardware acceleration	none
Folder extensions	mp4, mov
Combine into one sequence	Off
Keep only clips with speech	Off
Manual thresholds	Off (blur 3000, motion 25 when enabled)
Transcription model	large-v3

11. Contact & support

Need help? Email us at info@weproject.gr and describe what you were doing and what happened. A screenshot of the panel and your Premiere Pro version help us answer faster.