Updates

ButterCut gets Multi-track editing, a new Preview app, and better support for misc production tasks

ButterCut Pro gets a new Preview app for viewing libraries, clips, settings and more. We'll add more features based on your requests. (I want to add a characters feature so Claude doesn't ask for the thousandth time if I'm the one in the video.)

We've also added the initial ability to edit multi-track videos. It works well for adding B-roll clips after creating an initial spine (a-roll story) as well as for working between a/b cameras. Beyond that we might need more work to help the agent understand what's happening at each second.

Preview and multi-track are in ButterCut Pro. $49 a year. 20 percent off with coupon QYOTC4OA.

Pro and Core both add the ability to add photos to libraries and mute clips (nice for B-roll), plus a new 'buttercut' home menu skill that makes your first ButterCut chat more welcoming.

ButterCut Pro

• Multi-track timelines. Lay B-roll and cutaways over a continuing voiceover instead of hard-cutting to them. Pro cuts can place a clip on a second video track; the free edition stays single-track.
• Preview libraries and clips inside Claude. A Claude Desktop panel for browsing a library's clips and cuts and handing work back to ButterCut — add footage, start a cut, pull a full transcript, change settings, or run a one-off task — without leaving the conversation.
• Installation improvements. Smoother, terminal-free setup. Claude brings over existing libraries too.

ButterCut Pro & Core

New & Improved

• Misc tasks now have a home. Project-tied one-offs (a stray transcription, a thumbnail, quick notes) save into a library's new misc/ folder; standalone jobs land in a dated misc/<date>/<task>/ folder; large scratch files go to tmp/ and finished exports go to your Desktop — never bloating your library.
• Libraries now include a misc/ directory for project-tied one-off artifacts. New libraries get it automatically (it's part of Library::SUBDIRS); existing libraries get it created on demand the first time the misc-task skill needs it.
• Add photos to your libraries. Libraries now hold still images (JPEG and PNG) alongside your video footage.
• Start from a home menu. Type "/buttercut" (or "/bc") and ButterCut welcomes you, asks what you'd like to do (start a cut, add footage, or a one-off task), and hands you to the right place. Less daunting than typing from scratch.
• Cut from a script. Hand ButterCut a written script and it finds the footage that delivers each line, then builds the cut in script order.
• Silence a clip in a cut. Cuts now have the ability to mute clips. Handy for B-roll and multi-track work.
• More resilient installs. Setup now leaves a small note (.buttercut_env) recording how it installed Ruby, Python, and WhisperX on your Mac, so future sessions can use it to find ButterCut dependencies — one of several setup resiliency improvements.
• A missing ffmpeg/ffprobe now fails fast with a clear "run the setup skill" error instead of a cryptic command-not-found buried in subprocess output. The contact-sheet skill's repair instructions point at the setup skill accordingly.
• Setup now pins WhisperX to the tested combination (whisperx==3.4.2, pyannote-audio==3.4.0 — matching requirements.txt), so fresh installs can't drift onto untested releases.

Fixed

• Premiere clips fill the frame. Footage shot at a different size than your sequence now scales to fit when you export to Premiere, matching how Final Cut and Resolve already behaved.

Processing clips uses far less of your plan, your Mac stays awake while it works, and finished cuts open straight in your editor.

• Footage processing uses about 60 percent fewer tokens — a 93-clip library runs on a small slice of your plan
• Your Mac stays awake through long analysis runs, so nothing stalls partway
• Open a finished cut in one step — ButterCut launches it right into Final Cut, Premiere, or Resolve
• Fixed: vertical phone footage now exports to Premiere right side up

A housekeeping release. v0.7.1 is the final Ruby gem. This last release is a heads-up before we collapse everything into a single new directory with all the code ButterCut needs to process footage and generate exports.

The fast one. Footage analysis runs 3x faster and uses 80-90 percent fewer tokens. ButterCut also analyzes footage more accurately and makes sharper B-roll cuts.

• The roughcut skill becomes cut and branches across scene, selects, custom, and roughcut tasks
• Skills moved to top-level skills/ so Codex and other agentic CLIs find them too
• Give ButterCut a script when creating a roughcut and it can precisely follow directions
• Faster, smaller backups that now live outside ButterCut

The one where ButterCut gets good. 0.6 gives you better edits, driven by you. ButterCut asks sharper questions, builds the narrative with you, and edits at the word level for tighter cuts.

• Plan first, then build. ButterCut proposes narrative directions and iterates with you until you approve a plan
• Tighter cuts with per-word transcript timing — trims inside a sentence down to hundredths of a second
• Less technical language. Claude talks more like an editor and less like a programmer
• Optionally copy exports to your Desktop after each build. No more hunting through ButterCut folders

• Process video footage ~2x faster with better accuracy
• Set editor and Whisper model once in libraries/settings.yaml and apply them to every new library

• Generate roughcuts about 2x faster by removing the scratchpad workflow and enlarging transcript chunks
• Save editor choice to library.yaml so Claude stops asking every run
• Add a worktree skill for working with libraries across git worktrees

• Simplify library paths, reducing library.yaml size by almost 50 percent
• Upgrade timestamp precision for smoother and more accurate roughcuts

• Add backup-library and update-buttercut skills for safer library management
• Expand setup documentation with flexible installation options

• Add Premiere and DaVinci Resolve support