ButterCut Pro — Features

The workflow

01 · PROCESS

Process your footage.

Claude builds a library from your footage: word-level transcripts, contact sheets, and a written summary of every clip. All on your Mac.

02 · CUT

Build a cut.

Ask for selects, a scene, a roughcut, or an edit built from a written script. Claude pulls takes, trims filler, and assembles the timeline.

03 · EXPORT

Open it in your editor.

ButterCut exports a timeline and opens it in Final Cut, Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve. You finish the edit where you always have.

Feature support

Primary features

ButterCut Pro works with the three leading editors.

Feature	Final Cut	Premiere	DaVinci Resolve
Footage analysis Word-level transcripts, timestamped contact sheets, and audio-visual clip summaries
Cuts Selects, scenes, roughcuts, and script edits — details below
Exports Native timeline files, opened straight into your editor

Extended features

Feature	Final Cut	Premiere	DaVinci Resolve
Multi-track support Builds beyond a single track — like B-roll laid over your A-roll spine
Production tools One-off tasks like pulling audio, converting audio or video files, or creating one-off transcripts
Subtitles Coming soon Subtitles generated from your transcripts, on the timeline
MultiCam Coming soon Cut between angles from a synced multi-camera shoot	Native	Synced tracks on timeline	Native

In Claude Desktop

Companion app

ButterCut Preview.

A visual app for your libraries — view footage, download transcripts, and read Claude's clip summaries. Preview runs inside Claude Desktop, next to your conversation, and works no matter which editor you export to. In other agents (ChatGPT Codex, etc.), you can view Preview in your browser.

The cut types

Selects

Find the clips you asked for.

A flat reel of clips matching your criteria — best takes, every mention of a topic, B-roll on a theme. The fastest way to see what you have.

Scene

Build one story beat.

A single scene, typically 30–90 seconds, assembled and trimmed. Good for tackling a video one beat at a time.

Script edit

Edit to a written script.

Hand Claude your script. It finds the matching footage, line by line, and cuts the video to match what you wrote.

Custom editing task

Ask for anything else.

Describe the edit you need in plain language. Claude works out the steps and uses ButterCut under the hood to build it.

Secret menu

Claude
doesn't stop
at the feature list

After Claude digests your footage, it can try things ButterCut doesn't natively support: Computer use, DaVinci Resolve scripting, Japanese translation. No guarantees on unsupported features, but Claude + ButterCut often can pull next year's video editing features into tonight's edit.

Hand-drawn genie lamp with a film strip flowing out of the spout

"What scenes am I missing?"

Hand Claude your current export. It rewatches it, checks what's left in your library, and tells you which scenes are missing.

"Add Japanese subtitles."

Subtitles aren't built in yet. Claude shrugs, translates your transcript, studies your editor's timeline format, and writes them in by hand. 完成です。

"Make this 4K video look old-timey."

Claude drains the color to black and white, layers on film grain, and hands your crisp 4K footage back looking like it spent 80 years in a shoebox.

Claude tells you when a request is off the tested path. When something works, it can save the steps as a custom skill so it works the same way next time.

Features