Build a Rough Cut

Rough Cut rates the transcribed sentences in your footage, then lets you decide how much to remove. Rating and cutting are separate, so you can inspect the proposed edit before changing the timeline.

Before you run Rough Cut

Transcribe every recording you want Rough Cut to consider. Tracks without transcribed media are unavailable, and untranscribed media on a selected track is skipped. See Transcribe Your Footage.

Running Detect Retakes… first is optional. Choose Detect Only if you want to find repeated takes without changing the timeline yet. Lift removes the unused takes and leaves gaps, while Ripple Delete removes them and closes the gaps as soon as detection finishes.

After detection, open View > Retake review if you want to pick the best take yourself. Rough Cut respects those choices when Treat repeated takes as cuts is on. If you haven't picked a winner, it keeps the last take in each group. See Detect Retakes.

Choose an engine

Agentic is the better choice when the wording inside a sentence needs trimming. It can propose cuts within kept sentences, but it takes longer and its run time varies. It needs Claude Code logged in on this computer.

Quick finishes in a few minutes and removes whole sentences only. Its results are rougher, but it doesn't need a Claude login. With the default model settings, Quick needs an OpenAI API key under Edit > Preferences… > API Keys.

If Agentic can't run, Solar Sailer may use Quick instead. That result is still usable, but it contains whole-sentence cuts only. Fix the reported login or setup problem and run Rough Cut again if you want cuts within sentences. If Solar Sailer reports that Quick used a backup model, you can apply the result or rerun later for the primary model's ratings.

Rate the footage

1. Open the Process menu and click Rough Cut….
2. Choose Agentic or Quick.
3. Select the audio tracks to rate. If only one track has transcribed media, Solar Sailer selects it for you.
4. Leave Treat repeated takes as cuts on if Rough Cut should remove the unused takes found by Detect Retakes. The option is unavailable until the selected tracks have retake data.
5. Click Run.

The run saves ratings in the transcript. It does not edit the timeline. For cancellation and failures, see Run an AI Tool.

Apply the proposed cuts

Open Clip > Apply Rough Cut… after the ratings are ready.

1. Under Apply to tracks, choose any extra tracks that should receive the same cut regions. The rated audio tracks are always included, and linked clips follow their linked audio or video.
2. Set Sensitivity. Neutral is the default. Move toward Ultra Safe to keep more, or toward Ultra Aggressive to cut more.
3. Choose an Action.
4. Turn on Add audio fades at cuts if you want Solar Sailer to check each splice and add a short fade when a cut lands in speech.
5. Click Apply.

The actions have different consequences:

• Disable splits the clips and turns off the removed sections in place. Nothing moves, and you can enable those sections again.
• Lift deletes the sections and leaves gaps. Later clips keep their positions.
• Ripple Delete deletes the sections and moves later clips left to close the gaps.

Lift and Ripple Delete remove timeline material, so listen through the proposal before applying them to a long sequence. Disable is the forgiving first pass when you're unsure. See Cut and Delete.

Locked tracks aren't changed. Solar Sailer also blocks Apply when overlapping placements of the same linked recording would create conflicting cut ranges. Change the sensitivity or remove extra tracks from Apply to tracks before trying again.

Check for skipped cuts

When Add audio fades at cuts is on, Solar Sailer checks whether each splice can be made cleanly. It skips a tiny cut when the removed audio has no clean splice point, then places a marker where that cut was planned. With the option off, Rough Cut applies the computed cuts without this check, without fades, and without skipped-cut markers.

Listen around each skipped-cut marker. You can leave the words in place or make a manual edit after choosing a better cut point. The markers behave like other timeline markers and can be deleted when you've finished reviewing them. See Markers.

Undo an applied pass

Press Ctrl+Z once to undo the whole applied pass, including its cuts or disabled sections, audio fades, and skipped-cut markers.