Common questions before you buy.
CutDeck requires Adobe Premiere Pro 15.0 or newer (that's the 2021 release, version 15.0, or anything more recent). The plugin works with all versions through the current release of Premiere Pro CC.
Yes. CutDeck has installers for both macOS and Windows 10/11. Both versions have the same features and work identically.
CutDeck installs the same way as every other paid Premiere Pro extension. Two steps, takes about a minute:
CutDeck.zxp file from your purchase email opens it in the manager and offers to install. (You can also open Anastasiy's first and drag the file onto its window if you prefer.) It installs in a few seconds.Restart Premiere Pro, then open the plugin via Window → Extensions → CutDeck.
Adobe extensions are distributed as signed .zxp files, and an extension manager is what reads the signature and installs the files in the right place. Anastasiy's is the most popular free one and is what most paid Premiere extensions (Motion Bro, Mister Horse, and similar) use. It's been around for years and is trusted across the Adobe ecosystem.
The alternative is a custom native installer, which requires expensive code-signing certificates that we'll add once we have the revenue to justify them. For now, Anastasiy's keeps CutDeck affordable at $7.99/mo.
Yes. "Self-signed" means we signed the extension with our own certificate rather than paying a Certificate Authority to vouch for our identity. The signature still proves the file hasn't been tampered with between us and you; it just doesn't include a third-party identity verification.
Every CutDeck release is built and signed from our own build server, and you can verify the file integrity by checking the signature in Anastasiy's at any time. Click "Yes" or "Allow" to proceed.
Open the plugin in Premiere Pro. You'll see a license gate asking for your key. Paste the license key from your purchase receipt, click Activate, and you're in. Your license stays active as long as your subscription is active.
It detects silent pauses in your audio and removes them from your timeline automatically. You control:
You can also pick which audio tracks to detect from and which tracks to cut. Perfect for gameplay videos where you want to cut silences in your commentary but keep the game audio intact.
Premiere Pro's editing engine slows down on timelines with many cuts. Each razor or remove operation has to update all clips in the sequence, so a 1-hour project with thousands of cuts can take much longer than 4 fifteen-minute projects with the same total cut count. This isn't something we can fix inside CutDeck because it's an internal Premiere limitation.
The workaround: manually split your timeline into nested 15-minute sub-sequences before running CutDeck.
Yes, this is more clicks than you'd want. It's the price of working around Premiere's internals.
If you have multiple people talking on separate audio tracks (e.g., a podcast with each mic on its own track), CutDeck can detect who's talking at any given moment and place their avatar PNG on the timeline automatically.
You add each speaker, upload their PNG, and tell CutDeck which audio track is theirs. Click "Detect & Apply Speakers" and the plugin handles the rest.
CutDeck uses OpenAI's Whisper for transcription, which is highly accurate for clear speech. Accents and technical jargon may produce occasional errors, but for most YouTube-style content it's comparable to or better than commercial services. It supports 99 languages: pick yours (or Auto-detect) on the Subtitles tab. English uses the faster English-only models; for other languages, including Hindi, choose the Balanced or Accurate model for the best results. The emotion-matched music, SFX, and clip features read the transcript too, so they work in any language once the AI emotion model is turned on.
You can toggle options like ALL CAPS, strip punctuation, or censor profanity before applying. All handled locally.
No. Everything runs locally on your device. Your video, audio, and project files never leave your computer. The only network requests CutDeck makes are to verify your license (hitting Gumroad's API) and to check for plugin updates.
Even the speech-to-text transcription uses a local Whisper model that runs on your CPU. No cloud, no API keys, no hidden uploads.
No telemetry, no analytics, no tracking. See our Privacy Policy for the full breakdown of what we do and don't collect.
Yes. Log into your Gumroad account, find your CutDeck subscription, and click Cancel. You'll keep access until the end of your current billing period, then the subscription stops renewing.
Up to 3 devices per active subscription. Install it on your main editing machine, your laptop, or a backup workstation. Whatever works for you.
Yes, this one. CutDeck's silence cutter is free forever. Download it, no card required, and cut silences as much as you want. Full details: the free silence cutter, explained. The AI features (auto subtitles, speaker overlays, multi-cam POV switching, music, SFX, viral clips) are part of CutDeck Pro: $7.99/mo, or $49 once for a lifetime license, unlocked with a license key. Every Pro feature also comes with 3 free previews.
If you're not happy within your first 30 days of paid service, email us and we'll refund you in full, no questions asked. Details on our Refund Policy page.
A few things to check:
Still stuck? Email support@cutdeckapp.com and we'll sort it out.
Most likely one of:
If you cut silences before transcribing, the subtitle timings should still be correct. They automatically map to the new timeline positions. If subtitles look wrong:
Restart Premiere Pro first. Installing any plugin requires a restart. If it's still missing, make sure the installer actually ran (the terminal window should have shown success). Re-running the installer is safe.
It worked once, then stopped opening after a restart (versions before 1.21): older versions saved their downloaded tools inside the extension folder, which made Premiere's signature check fail on the next launch. Install the current version from the download link and it will keep working. Your tools and models are moved to a safe location automatically, so nothing downloads twice.
Yes. The AI tab in the panel connects CutDeck to Claude Desktop on your computer. You tell Claude what you want ("cut the dead air and caption this") and Claude runs CutDeck's features on your actual Premiere timeline, using your settings, with every change on the timeline for review. The same works with OpenAI Codex for the GPT and Astra models. Beyond cutting and captions, it can mix your audio, add titles, slow-motion speed ramps, and freeze frames, place licensed stock B-roll, render the finished MP4, and write YouTube chapters and a thumbnail. CutDeck saves a checkpoint before each round of AI edits, so you can always ask it to undo. Either way it uses the AI subscription you already have, so there is nothing extra to pay CutDeck.
It can also see your timeline (still frames it renders on request), find royalty-free stock photos and videos from Pexels, Pixabay, and Openverse, and place and animate them for you, with credits saved next to your project.
Privacy: the connection between your assistant and CutDeck is local to your machine. What your assistant reads through the tools (timeline summaries, transcripts, and any still frames it asks to see) becomes part of your conversation with it under that provider's privacy policy. Your original video files are never uploaded. Stock searches go through cutdeckapp.com or directly to Openverse. The feature is off until you connect it, and free-tier gating works the same whether you or your AI presses the button.
Email support@cutdeckapp.com any time. We typically reply within 24 hours on weekdays.