A free, open-source Premiere Pro extension that brings AI-powered video editing automation, caption generation, audio processing, and visual effects -- all running locally on your machine. No subscriptions, no cloud, no API keys. Replaces the need for paid Premiere extensions.
- Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 or later
- Windows 10/11 (macOS/Linux: server works, CEP panel is Windows-only)
Option A -- Installer exe (recommended):
Download OpenCut-Setup-1.3.0.exe from Releases and run it. The installer handles everything: server exe, FFmpeg, CEP extension deployment, registry keys, desktop shortcut, and optional Whisper model download. No Python or FFmpeg needed.
Option B -- From source (requires Python 3.9+ and FFmpeg on PATH):
git clone https://github.com/SysAdminDoc/OpenCut.git
cd OpenCut
pip install -e ".[all]"
python -m opencut.serverThen copy extension/com.opencut.panel to your Premiere Pro CEP extensions folder and enable unsigned extensions via the registry key PlayerDebugMode = 1.
Option C -- Double-click installer from source (requires Python 3.9+):
Clone the repo and run Install.bat as Administrator. It handles FFmpeg check, Python deps, CEP extension deployment, registry keys, and launcher creation.
- Start the backend: run
Start-OpenCut.bat, the exe, orpython -m opencut.server - In Premiere Pro: Window > Extensions > OpenCut
- Select a clip and use the panel
OpenCut v1.3.0 includes 142 API routes, 6 panel tabs with 43 sub-tabs, and covers every major video editing automation task.
| Feature | Description | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Silence Removal | Detect and remove silent segments with adjustable threshold | FFmpeg / VAD |
| Filler Word Detection | Auto-detect and cut um, uh, like, you know, so, actually | WhisperX |
| Waveform Preview | Visual waveform with draggable threshold line synced to slider | FFmpeg PCM + Canvas |
| Trim Tool | Set in/out points to extract a clip portion (stream copy or re-encode) | FFmpeg |
| Full Pipeline | Combined silence + filler removal in one pass | Multi-stage |
| Feature | Description | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Transcription | Speech-to-text with word-level timestamps | WhisperX / faster-whisper |
| 19 Caption Styles | YouTube Bold, Neon Pop, Cinematic, Netflix, Sports, etc. | Pillow renderer |
| Animated Captions | CapCut-style word-by-word pop, fade, bounce, glow, highlight (7 presets) | Pillow + OpenCV |
| Caption Burn-in | Hard-burn styled captions directly into video | FFmpeg drawtext |
| Speaker Diarization | Identify who's speaking for podcasts | pyannote.audio |
| Filler Word Detection | Auto-detect and remove filler words | WhisperX |
| Translation | Translate captions to 50+ languages | deep-translator |
| Karaoke Mode | Word-by-word highlight sync for lyrics/captions | Pillow renderer |
| Transcript Editor | Edit segments in-panel with undo/redo and search | Built-in |
| Feature | Description | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Stem Separation | Isolate vocals, drums, bass, other | Demucs (htdemucs) |
| Noise Reduction | AI noise removal + spectral gating | noisereduce / RNNoise |
| Normalization | Loudness targeting (LUFS) with waveform preview | FFmpeg loudnorm |
| Beat Detection | BPM analysis and beat markers | librosa |
| Audio Ducking | Auto-lower music under dialogue | FFmpeg sidechaincompress |
| Pro FX Chain | Compressor, EQ, de-esser, limiter, reverb, stereo width | Pedalboard (Spotify) |
| TTS Voice Generation | Text-to-speech with 100+ voices | Edge-TTS / F5-TTS |
| SFX Generator | Procedural tones, sweeps, impacts, noise | NumPy synthesis |
| AI Music Generation | Text-to-music from prompts | MusicGen (AudioCraft) |
| Audio Preview Player | Floating player to preview generated audio before importing | Built-in |
| Feature | Description | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Stabilization | Deshake / vidstab with smoothing and zoom controls | FFmpeg |
| Chromakey | Green/blue/red screen removal + spill suppression | OpenCV HSV |
| Picture-in-Picture | Overlay PiP with position/scale controls | FFmpeg overlay |
| Blend Modes | 14 modes (multiply, screen, overlay, etc.) | FFmpeg blend |
| 34 Transitions | Crossfade, wipe, slide, circle, pixelize, radial, zoom | FFmpeg xfade |
| Particle Effects | 7 presets: confetti, sparkles, snow, rain, fire, smoke, bubbles | Pillow renderer |
| Animated Titles | 6 presets: fade, slide, typewriter, lower third, countdown, kinetic | FFmpeg drawtext |
| Speed Ramping | Time remapping with ease-in/out curves, reverse, slow-mo | FFmpeg setpts |
| Scene Detection | Auto-detect cuts and scene changes | PySceneDetect |
| Film Grain / Vignette | Adjustable film look overlays | FFmpeg noise/vignette |
| Letterbox | Cinematic aspect ratio bars (2.39:1, 2:1, 1.85:1, 4:3, 1:1) | FFmpeg pad |
| LUT Library | 15 built-in cinematic LUTs + external .cube/.3dl support | FFmpeg lut3d |
| Color Correction | Exposure, contrast, saturation, temperature, shadows, highlights | FFmpeg eq/colorbalance |
| Color Space Conversion | sRGB, Rec.709, Rec.2020, DCI-P3 | FFmpeg colorspace |
| Video Reframe | Resize/crop for TikTok, Shorts, Reels, Instagram, or custom dims | FFmpeg scale/crop/pad |
| Auto-Crop Detect | Smart reframe anchor using cropdetect for talking-head content | FFmpeg cropdetect |
| Merge / Concatenate | Join multiple clips (fast stream copy or re-encoded) | FFmpeg concat |
| Side-by-Side Preview | Before/after frame comparison modal for effects | FFmpeg + base64 |
| Watermark Removal | Remove logos via delogo or LaMA AI inpainting | FFmpeg / LaMA |
| Feature | Description | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| AI Upscaling | 3 tiers: Lanczos (fast), Real-ESRGAN (balanced), Video2x (premium) | FFmpeg / Real-ESRGAN |
| Background Removal | Remove video backgrounds | rembg (U2-Net) |
| Face Enhancement | Restore/upscale faces | GFPGAN |
| Face Swap | Replace faces with reference image | InsightFace |
| Style Transfer | Neural artistic style transfer | PyTorch models |
| Auto Thumbnails | AI-scored frame extraction for thumbnails | OpenCV scoring |
| Feature | Description | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Platform Presets | YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Podcast | FFmpeg encode |
| Social Quick Export | One-click export optimized per platform's format and limits | FFmpeg |
| Batch Processing | Process multiple clips in parallel | ThreadPool |
| Transcript Export | SRT, VTT, ASS, plain text, timestamped | Built-in |
| Auto Thumbnails | AI-scored thumbnail candidates from video | OpenCV |
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Command Palette | Ctrl+K fuzzy search across all 28+ operations with keyboard navigation |
| Clip Preview | Thumbnail + duration/resolution metadata when selecting a clip |
| Recent Clips | Dropdown of last 10 used clips, persisted across sessions |
| Favorites Bar | Pin frequently-used operations as quick-access chips |
| Waveform Preview | Visual waveform on Silence, Denoise, and Normalize tabs |
| First-Run Wizard | 3-step onboarding overlay for new users |
| Output File Browser | Browse recent outputs with Import-to-Premiere button |
| Custom Workflows | Chain operations into reusable named workflows |
| Collapsible Cards | Click headers to collapse/expand dense form sections |
| Right-Click Menu | Quick-action context menu on clip selector |
| Parameter Tooltips | Hover info on every range slider |
| Job Time Estimates | Estimated processing time based on historical data |
| Per-Operation Presets | Save/load settings per operation |
| Settings Import/Export | Bundle all settings as JSON for backup or sharing |
| Server Health Monitor | Auto-reconnect banner when backend goes offline |
| 6 Dark Themes | Cyberpunk, Midnight OLED, Catppuccin Mocha, GitHub Dark, Stealth, Ember |
| Premiere Theme Sync | Auto-detect Premiere's UI brightness |
| Toast Notifications | Non-intrusive slide-in alerts for job completion |
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Async Job System | Background processing with SSE streaming and polling fallback |
| Job Queue | Sequential job processing with queue management |
| FFmpeg Progress | Real-time percentage from -progress pipe:1 parsing |
| Cancel + Kill | Job cancellation terminates running FFmpeg subprocesses |
| Output Deduplication | Auto-increment suffix prevents overwriting previous outputs |
| Temp Cleanup | Stale preview files cleaned up on server startup |
| Dependency Dashboard | Grid view of all 24 optional deps with install status |
| GPU Auto-Detection | Recommend optimal settings based on detected GPU VRAM |
| AI Model Manager | View/delete downloaded models to free disk space |
+-----------------------+ HTTP/JSON +-----------------------+
| Premiere Pro CEP | <================> | OpenCut Server |
| Panel (HTML/JS) | localhost:5679 | (Python/Flask) |
| | | |
| 6 tabs, 43 sub-tabs | | 142 API routes |
| Dark theme, 6 color | | Async job queue |
| schemes | | SSE + polling |
+-----------------------+ +-----------+-----------+
|
+-----------+-----------+
| | |
+--+--+ +----+---+ +---+----+
|FFmpeg| |Whisper | |PyTorch |
|OpenCV| |Demucs | |Models |
+------+ +--------+ +--------+
Everything runs locally. No data leaves your machine. No API keys needed for core features.
Only the core tier is required -- everything else is optional and auto-detected at runtime.
flask, flask-cors, click, rich
pip install opencut[standard]
Adds: faster-whisper, opencv-python-headless, Pillow, numpy, librosa, pydub, noisereduce, deep-translator, scenedetect
pip install opencut[all]
Adds all standard deps plus: whisperx, demucs, pyannote.audio, pedalboard, edge-tts, realesrgan, rembg, gfpgan, insightface, audiocraft, simple-lama-inpainting
pip install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
OPENCUT_PORT |
5679 |
Server port |
OPENCUT_HOST |
127.0.0.1 |
Bind address |
OPENCUT_OUTPUT_DIR |
Source file dir | Default output directory |
WHISPER_MODELS_DIR |
~/.cache |
Whisper model cache |
Q: The panel says "Server offline" A: Make sure the backend is running. Check that port 5679 is not blocked. The panel will auto-reconnect when the server comes back.
Q: Transcription is slow
A: Install CUDA-enabled PyTorch and use faster-whisper with a GPU. The tiny model is fastest.
Q: I get "module not found" errors for AI features
A: Most AI features are optional. Install them individually or use pip install opencut[all]. Check the Dependency Dashboard in Settings to see what's installed.
Q: Can I use this without Premiere Pro? A: Yes. The server runs standalone with a REST API. Call any route with curl or build your own frontend.
Q: Does this send data to the cloud? A: No. Everything runs locally. No telemetry, no API keys for core features. Edge-TTS requires internet for voice synthesis.
Q: How do I update?
A: git pull and restart the server. Or download the latest exe from Releases.
Issues and PRs welcome. The codebase:
opencut/
server.py # Flask server (7500+ lines, 142 routes)
core/ # Processing modules
utils/ # Media probing, config
export/ # Premiere XML, SRT, VTT exporters
cli.py # CLI entry point
extension/
com.opencut.panel/
client/ # CEP panel (index.html, main.js, style.css)
host/ # ExtendScript (index.jsx)
CSXS/ # Extension manifest
MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
Built with FFmpeg, Whisper, Demucs, PyTorch, and many other open-source projects.