Release notes

Windows 10/11 x64, with preview builds for Linux x64 and macOS on Apple silicon. Free and open source (GPL-3.0-or-later). No account, no subscription.

Wabcut 0.1 is the first version meant for real projects: long-form and short-form gaming videos, video essays and documentaries, edited with Premiere Pro's keyboard and edit semantics, with AI that runs on your machine or with your own API keys.

0.1.3 (16 October 2026)#

• A new look, "Echo". A black stage with rounded panels, pill-shaped controls, browser-style panel tabs with a colour dot for each panel, Manrope and JetBrains Mono type, violet and lime accents, and a new logo with a short launch animation (Settings > Appearance turns it off; Reduce motion skips it).
• Workspaces you make yourself. New, rename, duplicate, reorder, hide or delete; any panel in either column, and the monitors or the timeline on or off. Dock panels as tabs or side by side, along an edge, or in windows of their own.
• One Settings window: appearance with custom colours and theme files, the AI switch and your own model names, a left rail you can reorder and trim, and a quieter title bar.
• The Program Monitor works like Premiere's: a click selects what is under the pointer, a double-click edits a text or title in place, and each further double-click picks the object behind it.
• Drops onto the timeline: drag files straight from File Explorer onto a track. A plain drop overwrites and Ctrl+drop inserts; a drop never cuts clips on other tracks. Drops snap to the clip in front, holding a drag over the ruler adds a video track (below the last track, an audio track), and sequences from the Project panel drop in as nested clips.
• A time bar under the Program Monitor, a Tracks toolbar with Premiere's tool groups and labelled Snap / Linked switches, and cursors that show what a press will do.
• A redesigned Export page: filter chips, a grid of preset tiles, and an Export bar that stays in view.
• Linux and macOS preview builds: an AppImage and a tar.gz for Linux x64, and a disk image for macOS on Apple silicon. Each is installed, started and made to render a project on GitHub's machines before a release is published; what they do not have yet is under Known issues.
• Smoother panel resizing, and a new icon set (Boxicons).

0.1.2 (13 October 2026, evening)#

• All 27 clip blend modes and Track Matte Key render on the GPU (preview == export), matching the reference math.
• Rate Stretch (R), Pen (P) on volume rubber bands, Type (T) in the Program Monitor, and Audio Gain (G) (set / adjust gain, normalize peaks; Shift+G opens Audio Channels): every Premiere default tool key now works.
• Discord presets encode a second time when the first pass ends over the size limit.
• Auto colour, colour match and match scene work on multicam clips; Split at Shots reads through the active angle.

0.1.1 (13 October 2026, same day)#

• File > Export Timeline...: send a sequence to Premiere, Resolve or Final Cut as FCP7 XML, FCPXML, OTIO or EDL, with the export report (it was command-line only in 0.1.0).
• Hand (H) and Zoom (Z) tools in the timeline, as in Premiere.
• Render In to Out (Enter): renders heavy stretches between In and Out to preview files for smooth playback (progress in the title bar, click to stop); edits invalidate exactly what they change.
• Green-screen keying on the GPU: the Ultra Key effect now renders in preview and export (facecams on a green screen), and the Darken blend mode joins Add, Screen, Multiply and Lighten.
• docs/premiere-parity.md: a feature-by-feature comparison with Premiere Pro 26.5 (22 equal, 6 better, 9 partial, 3 missing of 40 areas), each backed by a test or a release-run step.

Who it is for#

• Gaming creators: OBS / ShadowPlay / Xbox Game Bar recordings to YouTube videos, highlight reels, montages and vertical Shorts/TikToks.
• Video essayists: script, voice-over, B-roll from your own library, animated captions, titles and music.
• Documentary editors: interviews and multicam, transcript-based editing, colour, archival media, lower thirds, and round trips with Premiere, Resolve and Final Cut.

Highlights#

Edit like Premiere#

• Premiere's default shortcuts (Windows and macOS tables, per panel scope), .kys import and a Keyboard Trainer.
• Insert/overwrite, lift/extract, ripple/roll/slip/slide, razor/add edit, trim mode with J/K/L, three- and four-point editing, source patching, track targeting and sync lock, markers with ranges and chapters.
• Nested sequences and multicam (angle grid with live switching; sync by timecode or audio).
• Keyframes with Bezier handles, speed/duration, time remapping with speed ramps, freeze frames, reverse.
• Version history, review notes with rendered frames, project merge; a recovery dashboard and portable project capsules.

Move in and out of other editors#

• One-click import of Premiere (FCP7 XML and .prproj), DaVinci Resolve (FCPXML/OTIO), Final Cut Pro (FCPXML), OTIO and EDL timelines, nested and multicam included, with a Carried / Approximated / Dropped report.
• Timeline export back to FCP7 XML, FCPXML 1.10/1.11, OTIO and EDL, with the same report, from the command line (File > Export Timeline..., or wabcut-cli export-timeline <project> <out> --format fcp7-xml|fcpxml|otio|edl).

Gaming#

• OBS multi-track recordings: game, mic and Discord audio land on their own named tracks.
• High frame rates (60/120/144/240 fps) and variable-frame-rate recordings, exact in export.
• Highlight finder (local): game-audio spikes, mic excitement, visual intensity and chat-log spikes become ranked markers; one click makes a highlight reel or a Short.
• Facecam picture-in-picture and vertical Shorts layouts; green-screen keying; adjustment layers and blend modes.
• Instant replay, slow motion with audible pitch-kept audio, punch-in zoom, camera shake, remove dead time.
• 12 built-in templates (subscribe, kill streak, lower third, replay stinger, countdown, callouts...) and Lottie stickers.
• Export presets: YouTube 1080p60/1440p60/4K60 (H.264, HEVC or AV1), Shorts/TikTok/Reels 1080x1920@60, Twitch, Discord file-size targets (10/25/50 MB), GIF and WebM for memes.

Video essays and documentaries#

• Local transcription (whisper.cpp on the GPU), text-based editing (also through multicam and nested clips, which stay multicam), filler and silence clean-up.
• Caption workshop: styles, speakers, corrections, animated captions (fade, pop, word by word), Thai shaping, translation (local OPUS-MT or your LLM key).
• Voice-over recording with punch-in and takes; Enhance Speech and stem separation (local); Essential Sound presets; auto-ducking; loudness to platform targets.
• Smart search over your footage (local visual + transcript search) for B-roll; rough cut from a script; retake picker.
• Colour: white balance, curves, wheels, HSL, LUTs, GPU scopes, auto colour and colour match; masks with tracking and AI object masks; source-anchored privacy redaction (blur/mosaic/bleep that follows the footage everywhere).

AI, your way#

• Every AI feature is optional. Local models run on your GPU/CPU; cloud models use your own key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, AssemblyAI...), stored in the Windows credential store, with a consent ledger, a spend cap and a project-level "no cloud" lock.
• An editing assistant whose every action is a typed, previewed, verified, undoable command; a local MCP server (read-only by default) for external agents.

Extensible#

• CLAP and VST3 audio plug-ins in a separate process; JavaScript extensions in a sandboxed host with permissions.

System requirements#

• Windows 10 (22H2) or 11, x64; a DirectX 11 GPU (hardware decode/encode used when present: NVIDIA NVENC/NVDEC, AMD AMF, Intel Quick Sync); 16 GB RAM recommended (8 GB minimum; local AI models need more); 2 GB disk for the app, more for caches and proxies.
• Developed and verified on Windows 11 with an NVIDIA RTX 3060 (32 GB RAM).
• Linux (preview): x64, Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 40 or another distribution of that age or newer; X11 or Wayland (through XWayland); a GPU driver with Vulkan or OpenGL; PipeWire or PulseAudio.
• macOS (preview): macOS 13 Ventura or newer on Apple silicon (M1 or later). Intel Macs are not supported.

Install#

• Windows MSI (per user, no administrator rights): wabcut-0.1.3-windows-x64.msi. Uninstalling removes program files only; projects, autosaves and caches stay.
• Windows portable ZIP: unzip anywhere and run bin\wabcut.exe.
• The Windows packages are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn on first run ("More info" > "Run anyway").
• Linux AppImage: chmod +x wabcut-0.1.3-linux-x64.AppImage, then run it. Or unpack wabcut-0.1.3-linux-x64.tar.gz anywhere and run bin/wabcut.
• macOS disk image: open wabcut-0.1.3-macos-arm64.dmg and drag Wabcut to Applications. It is not notarized yet, so macOS refuses the first start: open System Settings > Privacy & Security and choose "Open Anyway".

Known issues#

• Linux and macOS are preview builds. They are built and checked automatically (installed, started, a project rendered), but the developer works on Windows and nobody has edited real projects with them yet. Not on Linux and macOS yet: local transcription (whisper.cpp; cloud transcription with your own key works), CLAP/VST3 audio plug-ins, the managed local assistant, and zero-copy GPU decoding. The macOS build is for Apple silicon only and is not notarized.
• Not code-signed; no auto-update.
• Real local-AI quality and live cloud-provider runs are not benchmarked in this release.
• No OpenFX video plug-ins or AU audio plug-ins; no cloud collaboration (versions, review notes and merge are local).
• HDR grading (ACES/OCIO) is deferred; HDR game captures are tone-mapped to SDR.
• The Pen tool edits audio volume bands; video opacity keyframes are set in Effect Controls.
• No Optical Flow frame interpolation for slow motion yet (nearest frame).

Privacy#

Nothing leaves your computer unless you turn on a cloud feature with your own key, and every cloud call is shown with its cost first. Redacted regions and bleeped words are never uploaded in clear. Crash reports stay local until you choose to share them, and never contain API keys.