Cuts retakes and NG takes
Same line said three times, only the best take kept.
BearCut · automatic tidy edit· Open source, free
The parts you fluffed,
it cuts them out itself.
Drop in raw talking-head footage and retakes, stumbles, stalls and long silences are cut out automatically, with Traditional Chinese subtitles and a list of what was cut and why. It all runs on your own machine — the video never leaves your drive.
Version 0.2.0 · Windows only · no installer, no sign-up, no email required
Free Version· What you can do without paying
The free version cuts clean.
Clean does not mean watched.
Everything below is free, uncapped, and needs no sign-up — we do not ship a crippled version. But it solves whether the clip is usable,not "will this one go viral". That is the next part.
Cuts stumbles and stalls
"Um… so…", and the gaps where you stopped mid-sentence, removed whole.
Cuts long silences
The wind-up before you speak and the pause after, cleaned out automatically.
Traditional Chinese subtitles
Recognition tuned for Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, with SRT output you can use as is.
Vertical shorts
Horizontal to vertical, keyword colouring, large captions, covers — all clear of the platform UI safe area.
Check your own cut afterwards
Checks audio, video and subtitles line up, and flags anything that does not.
Cut-by-cut list
What every cut removed and why. Disagree, edit the list, re-cut — no need to run recognition again.
Joining long recordings
Podcasts and talks recorded in parts: each part is tidied separately, then joined into one, with the subtitles stitched automatically.
Hand the whole folder to an AI assistant
Do not want to touch the command line? Hand the folder to Claude Code or Codex and just talk.
Do that and you have a clean, subtitled clip ready to publish.and then you notice the numbers have not moved.Because what decides whether anyone watches is not how clean the cut is — it is how the first three seconds open, how the captions land, where the pacing settles. Those are what Pro updates every month.
Get Started· Running in three steps
No coding required.
STEP 01
Download the ZIP and extract it
Any folder will do; avoid Chinese characters or spaces in the folder name.
STEP 02
Double-click START_HERE.bat
The first run installs what it needs, which takes a while. Let it finish.
STEP 03
Drop a video in
The finished clips appear in the output folder. That is the free version, complete.
Do not want to touch a command line at all?
Hand the whole thing to your AI assistant.
BearCut ships with a manual written for AI agents and five skill packs. Hand the extracted folder to Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, so you speak plainly and it works out what to install and which command to run.
「Read AGENTS.md and set the environment up as described」
「Cut video-file.mp4 for me」
「List what you want cut first, and let me review it before deciding」
「Turn it into a vertical short for IG」
This is deliberate: every command supports --json, with output that programs and agents can parse directly. **You do not need to learn commands — talking is enough.**
Open source, Apache-2.0
The whole source is public on GitHub. Read it, change it, use it.
Processed locally, the video never leaves
Everything runs on your own machine, start to finish. Nothing uploaded, no cloud queue, nobody sees your footage.
No cap on hours
Cut as many as you like, as long as you like. We are not going to shrink it into a trial later.
Free vs Pro· What differs
The free version cuts it right,
Pro makes it travel.
The engine is identical. What Pro buys is a rule pack updated monthly. Pro locks nothing away from the free version — it adds what the platforms are rewarding this month.
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Cut it right (the engine) | ||
| Cuts retakes, stumbles, stalls and long silences | Same as left | |
| Traditional Chinese subtitles and a cut-by-cut list | Same as left | |
| Vertical shorts, captions, covers | Same as left | |
| Automatic check after the cut | Same as left | |
| Joining long recordings (podcasts and talks recorded in parts) | Same as left | |
| Hour cap | no cap on either | |
| Cut like something that travels (Pro only) | ||
| Catalogue of hooks that travel | Updated monthly | |
| Caption effect styles | 24+, with more each month | |
| Editing techniques and pacing parameters | Updated monthly | |
| Misheard-word corrections | 100+, with more each month | |
| This month's read on the platform algorithms | Updated monthly | |
| Founder-brand insight analysis and trend report | Emailed to you monthly | |
| Auto-pick the highlights (finds the segments in a long video worth cutting) | Included with the subscription | |
| Motion graphics (charts animated automatically from the meaning) | 17+, with more each month | |
| Animation palettes (switchable, or build your own) | 5 built in | |
| Keyword colouring in subtitles | Pain points red, numbers gold, proper nouns cyan | |
Every item in the table aboveAll available now, with no "coming soon". The engine is exactly the same in free and Pro — Pro adds judgement, it does not lock features away.
Template Library
17 animation templates,More every month.
Mention a number and it grows a stat card; list five things in one breath and it lays them out as a thumbnail wall; say "it used to be… now it is…" and it cuts to a before-and-after.You do not pick the template; it works out what you are saying and picks one.
And every number that reaches the screen traces back to your transcript — if it does not match, the whole graphic is dropped. It will not invent a nice-looking number for you.
5 palettes, swapped with one command — try them:
The default. Gold and orange on deep navy; gold pops hardest on a dark base
10 months
1,0000,000
A one-person company past NT$10 million
Team size
Before
10people
→
Now
1people
One person doing what a team of ten does
Three steps to live
1
Stocktake
See how it works now
2
Wiring up
Only wires up what gets used
3
Partnership
Runs until it gets there on its own
The three above are **real animation running**, not screenshots — BearCut templates are HTML and CSS to begin with, and the graphics in the video are rendered from that same code. What you see here is what ends up in the clip.
All 17
·Number front and centre — One sentence with a single key number in it
·Before and after — The turn from X to Y
·List wall — Several different things listed in one go
·Ranked bars — 3–4 numbers worth comparing
·Ring chart — Percentages, share, completion
·Three-step flow — Explaining a method or an order of steps
·Timeline — How one stretch of experience changed
·Big statement — One strong claim, not a statistic
·Device frame — I used this tool, I opened that thing
·Calendar — Several days running, updated daily
·Chat window — I told the AI to do it and it did
·Quote card — Your line as spoken, unrewritten
·Name bar — Naming who is speaking
·Stat card — Big number, bars and ring in one view
·Thumbnail wall — Each item drawn as a small interface
·Progress bar — Completion and attainment
·Trend line — One line, up or down
Templates areData, not code — new templates arrive with the rule pack, no reinstall and no waiting for a release. Want to build your own? Write an HTML file, drop it in the folder, and it gets picked up.
Subscribe· Subscribe to Pro
You already have the tool.
What is missing is a monthly read on what works.
A clean cut is only a pass mark. What actually decides whether anyone watches is how the first three seconds open, how the captions land, where the pacing settles — and those change every month. We watch them every month and turn the conclusions into your editing rules.You do not have to track it yourself.
17 animation templates
Stat cards, before-and-after, list walls, device frames, calendars, chat windows — more each month
5 palettes, swapped with one command
Midnight gold, charcoal cyan, ember orange, deep green, pure black and white — or build your own
A rule pack updated monthly
Hook catalogue, caption effects, editing techniques, misheard-word rules
This month's read on the platform algorithms
What the distribution weighting is doing, with a "data → what to change" mapping
Founder-brand insight and trend report
Substance on AI and on founder brands, emailed monthly
Auto-pick the highlights
Finds the segments in a long video worth cutting, and produces several vertical shorts at once
a day
13NT$
A year of the subscription costs about what an editor charges for 3 clips.The difference: those 3 are finished and gone; here you cut as many as you publish this year, with no cap.
Annual also includes one 1-hour founder-brand positioning session(NT$30,000 on its own) — that alone is worth more than the subscription.
And the expensive part was never the editing fee. A clip nobody watches costs you the two hours you spent: finding the topic, setting up, and three takes to get it right. That is what Pro is saving.
The licence key is emailed the moment you pay. On your machine, run bearcut login <licence key> then run bearcut update and this month's rule pack is installed. Run update once a month after that.
Requirements· System requirements
Straight up
how far it will take you.
Windows
This is what we actually tested and the only thing we guarantee. Windows 10 or 11, and leave a few GB of disk free for temporary files.
macOS / Linux: experimental
There is handling for it in the code, butnot yet fully verified on real hardware. You can try it, but we will not promise it runs, and we cannot support it yet.
To try it: on Mac, double-click START_HERE.command，not the .bat(that one is Windows only). The first launch is blocked by macOS, so on the fileright-click → Open, do not double-click — that is normal for anything outside the App Store.
Source and issues are on GitHub. Only a ZIP download for now; it is not in a package registry yet.
FAQ· Common questions
Ask first, then decide.
If I do not subscribe, how long can I use the free version?+
Forever, with no cap on hours. It is Apache-2.0 open source; we could not take it back if we wanted to. The boundary is worth stating: the free version cuts the video clean. The criteria that decide whether it gets seen — how the opening lands, how captions move, what platforms are pushing this month — are what Pro updates monthly. The tool and the judgement are two different things.
Once I have Pro, where do I enter the licence key?+
Enter it on your own machine, not on this website. When the email arrives, run two commands: bearcut login <licence key>, then bearcut update, and this month's rule pack is installed. Run update once a month after that for the new one. If you would rather not use the command line, open bearcut ui — there is a "Pro licence key" field at the bottom of the web interface.
Can it handle long videos?+
Recorded in parts, yes — that is in the free version. Put the usual Part 1, Part 2… from a podcast or a talk in one folder, run bearcut longform, and each part is tidied separately then joined into one, with the subtitle timeline stitched too. To be clear: a single one-hour file gets no special handling right now — it runs through as one ordinary video, eats memory, and the judgement quality drops. We do not recommend it. If you genuinely have only one file, split it into parts yourself first; the result is much better. Pro's "auto-pick the highlights" is for after you have a long video: it finds the segments worth cutting into shorts and produces several vertical clips at once. The criteria for which segments are worth cutting update monthly, and that is the core of Pro.
Early-bird or annual — which should I take?+
If you plan to use it long term, take the early-bird — it locks the price at today's number for good, any later increase does not touch you, and it opens only once. If you would rather not be charged monthly or store a card, take the annual: one payment, done when it expires. The first 30 annual subscribers also get a one-hour 1-on-1 founder-brand positioning session (NT$30,000 on its own) — the booking link is in the licence email and you pick the time. Both plans get exactly the same rule packs.
After my subscription ends, do the rule packs I already downloaded still work?+
Rule packs already on your machine are not taken back and keep working. What stops is receiving new ones — next month's update will not download.
Why not just sell one rule pack outright?+
Because rules expire. A hook that works today stops working three months later when the algorithm shifts. What you want is not the file, it is the production line: someone watching it every month and rewriting the conclusions for you.
Does it support Mac?+
Windows is the only guarantee right now. We have not verified macOS or Linux on real hardware, so before subscribing please check the free version runs on your machine.
Download BearCut freeSee what Pro adds
Not decided?Just use the free version.
It does not expire, and nobody comes chasing you to upgrade.
It does not expire, and nobody comes chasing you to upgrade.