Coming soon · macOS

Story,
first.

Paper Cut turns your unscripted footage into scenes and structure — with as much or as little direction as you give it. From a blank slate to your exact storyline, assemble the narrative before you open the timeline.

Coming to macOS first, then Windows — we’ll email you when it ships.

First frames first

The problem

100 hours of footage. A blank timeline. And no obvious place to begin.

Knowing your footage cold — logging every clip, transcribing the interviews, remembering the exact look on someone’s face when they said the thing — is the groundwork a good cut is built on. It’s also the first thing the schedule cuts. The brief just says “dive in.”

The principle

Collaboration,
not automation.

Paper Cut surfaces what’s in the footage — the themes, the moments, the through-line — and hands it to you. It never decides for you. Every cut, every call, stays yours.

What’s inside

Sees everything.
Misses nothing.

Story Sense

It reads the whole shoot and hands you scenes.

Point Story Sense at a shoot day and it comes back with proposed scenes — named, summarized, and ordered the way the story wants, not the way the camera rolled. Promote the ones that land. Reject the rest.

  • Scenes, not clips — each with a one-line read.
  • Sorted by narrative, never by timecode.
papercut · story sense · day 6

✦ Here’s what I’m seeing — Day 6

Intimate moments, reflective drives, and the practical rhythm of RV life — strong emotional beats, a mix of verité and context.

Arrival at the Vintage TruckRejectPromote

Establishes the dynamic between Brian and his subjects — the human connection, the Americana setting.

●●●●○ verité · 3 clips · ~16 min raw Brian’s Journey
The Suburban PortraitRejectPromote

A more intimate, artistic portrait — widens the range of subjects in the project.

●●●●● verité · 27 clips · ~70 min raw The Portraits

The landing

You open Paper Cut to your film, not a folder.

Every clip clustered by what it’s actually about — theme, region, shoot day, visual quality. Your strongest material rises to the top. Filter, and the whole board recomputes on the spot.

  • The shape of your story, the second you arrive.
  • A thousand clips — never a wall of filenames.
papercut · drive bys · 1,080 clips

Top picks — your strongest material

5★
0142_B-roll★★★★★

By theme

By region

By visual quality

Per-clip intelligence

Every clip — watched, rated, transcribed.

Open any clip to a full read: narrative value, visual craft, a timecoded list of its best moments, and the entire transcript. Mark IN and OUT right there in the player. Nothing left unseen.

  • Highlights timecoded to the second.
  • Search the transcript, not your memory.
L1140381.MP4 · ★★★★★ strong
INOUT00:00 / 01:08
Narrative · StrongCraft · Excellent

Highlights

00:00 Opening close-up — masked Elvis, full glitter. The image is the thesis.

00:21 “So that’s why the king’s wearing the mask.”

Transcript

brian You live in Vegas?

subject Twenty years. First time I’ve put the suit on in a month.

Story Center

Then you build the cut, beat by beat.

Acts, scenes, beats — the arc laid out, clips dropped into beginning, middle, and end. When it’s right, send it straight to your NLE.

  • Acts → scenes → beats — your structure.
  • Onto your Premiere or Avid timeline, from the panel.
papercut · story center · act I
Vegas — JessicaAct I · 2 beats
The shape Opens on Jessica’s backstory, builds to her portrait, pivots to Corona Elvis.
BeginningJessica — open
MiddleCorona Elvis — pivot

Natural-language search

Ask for “wide shots, golden hour, one subject.” Get them.

Keyboard-first player

JKL shuttle, I/O marks, draggable IN/OUT — the keymap you set.

Local or cloud, your call

Run fully private on-device, or switch on managed cloud AI with Sync. Either way, the footage stays yours.

Collaboration

Pass the story around.

A cut is a conversation — between you and the footage, and between everyone with a stake in the film. Paper Cut keeps that conversation in one place, wherever the work happens.

Your projects, anywhere

With Sync, every project lives where you do — the edit bay, the hotel room, the kitchen table. Open any machine and pick up on the exact frame you left.

Bring the room into the cut

Invite a director or producer in as a collaborator. They shape a scene, hand it back, leave a note on a clip — the story moves between you, instead of living in one person’s head.

Straight to the timeline

When a cut is ready, load it onto your active Premiere or Avid sequence from the in-app panel. No exports to chase, no round-trips to untangle.

Questions

The honest answers.

Is my footage uploaded anywhere?

No. Paper Cut runs locally. Only AI requests — thumbnails plus a small set of frames per clip — are sent to Anthropic during analysis, using your own API key. Your original media stays on your drive. When cloud sync ships, it’s opt-in and encrypted, and you choose what to share.

What does it cost?

Paper Cut runs on simple monthly plans — from $12/mo Standalone (local-only, fully private) up to the Sync tiers with managed cloud AI and remote collaboration. See Pricing for the full breakdown.

Will it work with Premiere, Avid, or Resolve?

Paper Cut ships with dedicated Premiere and Avid panels that load your stringout straight onto the active timeline — no round-tripping. It also exports AAF and FCPXML, covering Avid, Premiere, Resolve, and Final Cut. The catalogue itself is editor-agnostic — you can use Paper Cut purely as a logging tool even if you cut elsewhere.

What footage formats are supported?

Anything ffmpeg reads — ProRes, H.264, H.265, BRAW, R3D, DNxHR, ARRIRAW (via proxies). Mixed-framerate projects are handled. The catalogue tracks source timecode so AAF relink is reliable.

Who’s building this?

Paper Cut is the first software product from Supergiant — a documentary post-production specialist and software label. Built by a working editor, for anyone who has to find the story in a mountain of footage.

Where’s the Windows version?

macOS first. Windows is on the table once 1.0 ships. Linux later, maybe.

Plans

Local and private,
or synced and shared.

Standalone

$12/mo

Everything runs on your machine.

  • Local-only AI — no cloud, nothing leaves your drive
  • The full catalogue, Story Sense & exports
  • AAF + XML to every major NLE
Notify me

Sync Teams

$50/mo

Bring the whole room into the project.

  • Everything in Sync Solo
  • Up to 25 hrs scan time / mo
  • 3 remote collaborator seats included
  • Add more seats anytime
Notify me

Enterprise

Let’s talk

For large teams and companies.

  • Volume scan time & seats
  • Priority support
  • Custom terms
Talk to sales

Need more hands? Add remote collaborator seats to any Sync plan — $8/mo each.

Where the story
begins.

Paper Cut · coming soon to macOS, Windows to follow