Your footage stays on your disk
Cutroom is built local-first. The cutting, the transcription, and the background removal all run on your own machine, so your source files are never uploaded to a server, ours or anyone else's. The only thing that ever leaves your PC is a generation request you deliberately make, and that goes to the provider whose key you brought. This page lays out exactly what stays and what moves.
Your footage, projects, and exports. Never uploaded.
Frames and audio, locally, to do and check the edit.
Only generation requests, to your provider, on your key.
The work happens on your machine
Editing is local
Cutting, effects, colour, captions, and the export all run on your PC. There is no cloud project and no upload step, ever.
Transcription is local
A transcription engine runs on your own machine, on the CPU. Your audio is turned into text without leaving your disk.
Cutout is local
Background removal and subject detection run on-device with small local models. Your frames are read on your machine, not sent off it.
You hold the keys
There is no Cutroom account tracking your projects. For generation, you bring your own provider key, and it stays on your machine.
The AI reads frames to check its own work
When you connect an agent, it does read your frames and audio, because that is how it sees what it is editing and confirms a cut landed right. That reading happens as part of the edit, on your machine. It is not a training feed and it is not stored by us. If that honest exception matters to you, you can edit entirely by hand and no AI reads anything at all.
- The agent reads frames and audio to do and check the edit
- That happens locally, as part of the edit, not as a data feed to us
- Edit by hand and nothing is read by any AI
Reading a frame to edit it is not uploading it.
The agent looks at your footage the way you do, to make the cut. Whether that agent runs locally or in your own cloud account, the source files themselves stay on your disk. They are never handed to us.
Generation goes to your own provider
There is one honest place where bytes leave your PC: when you ask the AI to generate an image, a video, or a voice. That request goes to the provider whose key you brought, on your own account, because that is where the model runs. It never routes through us. Everything else, the editing you do and the footage you already have, stays put.
- Only a generation request you make leaves your machine
- It goes to your provider, on your key, never through us
- Your existing footage is not part of that request
Where generation goes
- Your footage
- Stays local
- Transcription
- Stays local
- Generation
- Your provider
Questions about privacy
No. The editing, transcription, and background removal all run on your own machine, so your source files stay on your disk. Cutroom never uploads your footage to a server.
A connected agent reads your frames and audio to do the edit and to check its own work, the same way you look at footage to cut it. That reading is part of the edit and is not stored by us or used to train anything. If you edit by hand, no AI reads anything.
Only when you deliberately ask the AI to generate something, like an image, a video, or a voice. That request goes to the provider whose key you brought, on your own account. Your existing footage is not part of it, and it never routes through us.
On your machine. If you use the built-in chat or a generation provider, you paste your own key and it stays local. Cutroom is not a middleman for it.
No. Your projects, media, and edits live on your disk. There is no cloud project store watching what you make.
The editing, and transcription and cutout once their engines are installed, run without a connection. You need the network to download an engine the first time, to connect an agent, or to run a generation. The core editing is local.