Keeping track of kept parts and undoing cuts in Cut
Cut by Zaweba lists every part you are keeping, shows it on the scrub bar, and lets you undo and redo each cut while you work out the final edit.
Most videos need more than one cut. A long recording might have three advert breaks, a phone clip a wobbly start and a pocket shot at the end, a recorded talk a stretch of dead air in the middle. Cut by Zaweba lets you make as many cuts as you like before saving, and it keeps a clear list of what you are keeping so you never lose track.
The list of kept parts
Every kept part is listed. As you mark in and out and cut sections out, or keep only a section, the list updates to show what will be in the finished video. Reading down it tells you, in order, exactly which stretches survive.
The same information appears on the scrub bar, where kept and cut parts are shown alongside the selection, keyframe ticks and the play head. The list gives you the precise detail; the scrub bar gives you the shape of the edit at a glance. A video with three adverts removed shows as four kept blocks with gaps between them.
Undo and redo
Every cut can be undone and redone. That makes it safe to work quickly. Mark a section, press Delete to cut it out or Ctrl+K to keep only it, and if the result isn't right, undo. If you then decide it was right after all, redo.
Because nothing is saved until you choose to, undo also lets you try different versions of an edit. Cut out a long introduction, play across the join, and if it feels abrupt, undo and cut a little less.
Working through a long recording
A sensible routine for a recording with several unwanted sections goes like this. Play or step to the start of the first unwanted bit and mark in with I. Move to its end and mark out with O. Press Delete. The section disappears from the kept list and shows as cut on the scrub bar. Move on to the next one and repeat.
When you reach the end, read the kept list from top to bottom and play across each join. Then save. A lossless save copies the kept parts untouched, which is quick and loses no quality; a smart cut lands exactly on the frames you chose.
A note on precision
A lossless cut can only cut at keyframes, so the edges of each kept part may move slightly when saved. The Cut tab tells you, for the marks you made, how far apart the keyframes are and how much extra will be kept, and asks before saving if anything changes. If that extra matters, a smart cut lands on the exact frame instead, re-encoding only the frames between each cut and the nearest keyframe.
One honest caveat appears in Cut's own documentation: smart cuts of open-GOP or intra-refresh sources were not tested with real camera files. Those are particular ways some cameras arrange their frames. If you use a smart cut on camera footage, play the result through and check each join before deleting the original.
Mistakes to avoid
Don't save after every cut. Make all the cuts, check the list, then save once. It is quicker and keeps everything in one finished file.
Don't skip the final check of the kept list. A section marked by accident is easy to miss on the scrub bar but obvious in the list.
Keep the original until you have watched the result. A recording you can no longer get again deserves one full viewing of the cut version before the source goes anywhere.
What the kept list feeds
The kept parts list is the bridge between marking and saving. What it shows is what gets used everywhere else, too. Extracting sound saves the sound of the kept parts, and converting converts only the kept parts in one frame-exact pass, with the filters applied. So once the list is right, every output from that video follows it.
