Guides.Five real jobs.
Not a feature tour. These are the four kinds of footage people actually bring, the settings that suit each, and the mistakes worth avoiding.
A game with no commentary
A 2 to 4 hour broadcast or sideline recording. Maybe a commentator, maybe just crowd and whistle. This is the case transcript-based tools cannot do at all.
- Shape
- Vertical (9:16)
- Reframe
- Follow - tracks the ball carrier, not a face
- Clips
- 8 to 12 for a full game
- Captions
- Bold, or off if there is no commentary worth reading
- 01
Upload the full broadcast
Do not pre-trim it. The whole recording is what lets Cutlist score a moment against everything else that happened - a loud moment in a quiet game and a loud moment in a loud game are not the same thing.
- 02
Open Options and set Reframe to Follow
This is the setting that matters most for sport. Fit keeps the whole picture on a blurred bed, which is safe. Follow crops in and tracks the motion, which is what makes it look shot for vertical.
- 03
Let it run and come back
A few hours of footage takes a while to read. It runs in the background, so you can close the tab. Progress shows the real stage - transcribing, listening, watching the frames.
- 04
Sort by score, watch the top four
Open 'Why this one' on anything that surprises you. It will tell you what it saw, what the audio did, and what was on the scoreboard.
- 05
Fix the edges in the editor
Auto-detected sports clips often want a second more at the front. Nudge the in-point back in tenths until the snap is included, then re-cut at the anchored rate.
Eight to twelve vertical clips, each following the play rather than sitting centred on an empty pitch.
If a clip comes back as a replay of a moment you already have, delete it - the score cannot tell an original from a replay, and it will sometimes rate both.
A two hour episode
One or more people talking. Plenty of transcript to work with, so the risk is not finding moments - it is picking ones that stand alone out of context.
- Shape
- Vertical (9:16)
- Reframe
- Face for a single speaker, Fit for two
- Clips
- 5 to 8
- Captions
- Bold, or Clean for a slower conversation
- 01
Upload the finished edit, not the raw record
If your edit already removed the false starts, Cutlist is working from the same material your audience hears. Raw recordings will surface moments you already decided to cut.
- 02
Use the prompt box if the episode has a theme
Something like "moments where they disagree" or "practical advice only" narrows what gets picked. Leave it empty and you get the strongest moments regardless of subject.
- 03
Read the hook line on each result
Every clip reports the line it opens on. If that line does not work with no context in front of it, the clip will not either - move the in-point to a better sentence.
- 04
Cut the throat-clearing with the Text tab
Click any word to remove it and the footage goes with it. This is the fastest way to lose an 'um, so, yeah' at the front without hunting for the exact frame.
- 05
Pick a caption style that suits the pace
Punch for a hard-hitting line, Clean for a considered one. Subtle if the speaker is already lower-thirded in the source.
Five to eight clips that open on a real line and end on a real ending, captioned word by word.
Two clips that overlap in subject sometimes both score well. Keep the one whose first line is stronger.
Six hours down to six clips
A long unedited session where most of the runtime is not worth anything and you cannot remember where the good parts were.
- Shape
- Vertical (9:16)
- Reframe
- Follow, or Manual if your camera is in a fixed corner
- Clips
- 6 to 10
- Captions
- Bold
- 01
Upload the whole session
Long sources are exactly what this is for. Cost scales with length, so check the estimate on the pricing page first if it is very long.
- 02
If your camera sits in one corner, use Manual
Follow tracks motion, which on a screen-share is the screen rather than you. Manual lets you place the crop over your camera and leave it there.
- 03
Skim the scores, not the clips
Anything at 85 or above is worth watching. Below 70 is usually the tool being generous - delete freely, it costs nothing to discard.
- 04
Re-cut the good ones tighter
Stream moments are usually longer than they need to be. Trimming ten seconds off the front is often the difference between a clip that holds and one that does not.
A handful of clips from a session you would otherwise never have gone back through.
Pay for the game, not the pre-show
A three-hour broadcast where the part you care about starts twenty minutes in and ends before the panel discussion. Most of the runtime should never be processed at all.
- Only this part
- 0:22:00 - 3:05:00
- Footage type
- Action
- Find these moments
- "every scoring play and every turnover"
- Clip length
- Under 30s
- 01
Paste the link and let the panel appear
The moment a source exists, Direct the cut opens underneath it. Everything in it is optional - but on a long broadcast, the range control is the difference between 430 credits and 477.
- 02
Set the range first
Type where the real content starts and ends. The line underneath confirms what will be processed, and the credit estimate recalculates as you type. Only the window is billed.
- 03
Tell it what the footage is
Action leads with the pictures, which is what a wide broadcast shot needs. Add a Find these moments instruction if you want scoring plays rather than crowd shots.
- 04
Read the estimate before the button
The number above Find the moments is computed by the same code that bills you. If it looks wrong, the range probably is - fix it before spending anything.
Clips from the stretch that mattered, at a fraction of the full-broadcast cost, without scrubbing through the parts you already knew were dead.
A moment that straddles the edge of your range is trimmed to fit inside it, so give the window a minute of slack at both ends.
Cutting from timestamps you wrote down
You made notes while watching, or your platform already logged the moments. Detection is skipped entirely, so the start-up charge drops to the delivery and the renders, and the source bills at the anchored rate.
- Shape
- Whatever you are posting to
- Reframe
- Follow for action, Face for talking
- Clips
- One per timestamp
- Captions
- On, if you want them - transcription is billed when it runs
- 01
Click 'I already know my timestamps' at upload
The box takes almost any format: 0:45 Title, 12:34 - Title, ranges like 1:02:11-1:02:40, bracketed times, or bare seconds. One per line.
- 02
Check the count before you submit
It tells you how many moments it recognised as you type. If the number is lower than your list, a line is missing a time on it.
- 03
Give an end time where the moment has a clear one
A start on its own gets a default length around it. A range is cut exactly as written, which is what you want for anything tightly bounded.
Exactly the moments you asked for, in the order you listed them, at the anchored rate with no detection start-up.
A timestamp past the end of the recording is dropped rather than clamped, so a typo will simply not produce a clip.