Install BaseCut and make your first cut

Last updated: 2026-10-21

What you need

BaseCut is two pieces of software. The installer puts both in place for you.

• The panel. This is the BaseCut window inside Premiere. You do the work here.
• The Engine. This is a small app that sits in your menu bar. It turns your interviews into text on your own Mac. Your footage never leaves your machine.

Step 1 - Download

1. Go to arcenginetools.com/account.
2. Sign in with the email address you bought with.
3. Find BaseCut in the list.
4. Press Download.

The download is one file. It contains everything.

Step 2 - Open the download

The file you downloaded is called BaseCut-0.2.0.zip.

Most Macs unzip it for you. If yours did not, double-click it.

You get one item: an app called BaseCut Installer. That is the whole download. There is nothing else to click.

The two pieces it installs live inside it, with a copy of these instructions beside them:

You do not need to open any of them for a normal install. To see them anyway, right-click BaseCut Installer, choose Show Package Contents, and open Contents > Resources > payload.

Step 3 - Install

1. Quit Premiere. Premiere only picks up a new panel when it starts.
2. Double-click BaseCut Installer.
3. It asks whether to install BaseCut on this Mac and offers three buttons - Install, Remove and Cancel. Press Install.

That is the whole install.

It does two things:

• copies BaseCut Engine into your Applications folder;
• hands the panel to the Adobe plugin installer that came with the Creative Cloud desktop app.

It refuses, and tells you why, if Premiere is still running, if the Creative Cloud desktop app is not on this Mac, or if the download arrived incomplete. A refusal is the installer doing its job: none of those installs cleanly, and all of them fail in ways you would only find out about later.

Keep the installer. Its Remove button is also the uninstaller, and it is the only one BaseCut ships. If you have already thrown it away, it is the same download on your account page.

The Engine has no window. You never open it yourself. The panel starts it for you, and it appears as a small lightning bolt in the menu bar at the top of your screen. Click the bolt to quit it when you are done for the day.

Your video never leaves your machine. The Engine only ever listens on this Mac (127.0.0.1) and requires a secret it generates fresh on every launch, so nothing else on your network can reach it.

Step 4 - Open the panel in Premiere

1. Open Premiere.
2. Open your project.
3. From the menu bar, choose Window > UXP Plugins > BaseCut.

The BaseCut panel opens. Drag it into your workspace where you want it. It stays there from now on.

It is not under the Extensions menu. That menu is for older Adobe plugins and it is empty in Premiere 26 and later.

Do not copy a plugin folder into Adobe's UXP Plugins/External folder by hand. It looks like it works. It does not survive. Premiere asks Creative Cloud for its list of plugins every time it starts, and a hand-copied folder is not on that list, so the panel is gone the second time you open Premiere and nothing brings it back. The .ccx file is the supported way, and it is the only way we ship.

Step 5 - Enter your license key

Your key is in your receipt email. It looks like ARC-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.

1. In the BaseCut panel, press the Settings icon at the top right.
2. Paste your key into the license box.
3. Press Activate.

The panel shows how many machines your key is on. Your license covers two machines.

Step 6 - Your first cut

1. At the top of the panel, make sure the Interview tab is selected. (Podcast and Shorts are the other two.)
2. In the Prepare card, pick the sequence that holds your interviews from Load a Sequence, or drag a bin onto Drag & Drop a Bin.
3. Press Load. BaseCut transcribes your footage on your Mac, and a progress bar shows how far along it is.
4. In the Brief card, type what you want into Describe the Edit. Write it as you would tell an assistant editor. For example: "Lead on why she started the business. End on the line about her dad."
5. Set Final Length with the slider or by typing a time in the box beside it.
6. Choose a Length Flexibility: Flexible, Balanced or Exact.
7. Optional: turn on Use Website Contextto have BaseCut read your client's website. Press Add URL first to enter the address.
8. Press AI Rough Cut. The cost in credits is shown on the button before you press it.

The first time you press Load, BaseCut downloads its speech model. This happens once and needs an internet connection.

• The download is about 500 MB.
• On a fast home connection this takes about 1 to 2 minutes.
• On a slow connection it can take 10 minutes or more.
• After the download, your Mac prepares the model. This takes another minute.

Click the lightning bolt in your menu bar to watch the progress. The menu shows the percent while it downloads, and you do not need to wait at your desk - it continues in the background.

After that, transcription is entirely on your Mac. A long shoot takes a few minutes.

BaseCut builds a sequence in your project. It also fills a Bank with every other usable soundbite it found. Drag anything from the Bank into your timeline.

Re-cutting a shoot you have already loaded is free. Change the brief and press AI Rough Cut again as many times as you like. To save your brief for later, press Save Draft; Clear Brief empties it and Start Over resets the panel. If you run low on credits, press Add Credits.

If the Engine will not read your footage, macOS is asking permission first - editors keep footage on external drives, and that is the one thing a fresh Mac will not hand over. Grant BaseCut Engine access under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Files and Folders.

To uninstall

Double-click BaseCut Installer again and press Remove. It removes the panel and the Engine and leaves your data folder alone.

By hand: in the Creative Cloud app, Stock & Marketplace > Manage plugins > BaseCut > Uninstall, then drag BaseCut Engine.app from Applications to the Trash.