Your rough cut, already done.
Sisyphos is an AI rough cut generator for Mac. Point it at your raw footage and it assembles a first pass you can open and edit — the rough cut you would normally build by hand. Editors call it a rough cut. On our homepage, we call the same thing “Your first cut, already done.” Either way, it is a starting point you question, adjust, and change, not a finished video handed back to you.
Sisyphos is a local-first desktop app that watches your raw footage, finds the best moments, and explains every pick by what's on screen — motion, sound, beat, and framing. Nothing leaves your Mac.
An AI rough cut generator watches your raw footage and assembles a first pass you can open and edit — the rough cut editors used to build by hand. Sisyphos does this on your Mac. It measures what’s actually on screen: motion, sound, beat, sharpness, and framing. It finds the strongest moments, trims each one toward its best second, and lines them up as a rough cut. Then it explains every pick in plain words, and records every clip it dropped and why. Unlike cloud auto-editors that cut by transcript, Sisyphos never needs anyone to talk. It works on GoPro, wedding, sports, and event footage where nothing is said. Your files stay on your machine. You get a rough cut you can question, adjust, and trust, plus a one-click push into DaVinci Resolve. The rough cut is a starting point; every decision stays yours.
How it works
The slow half of video editing is not the timeline. It is the culling: scrubbing hours of raw footage to find the parts worth using. Sisyphos does that first pass, so you save the hours you would spend logging and start from a rough cut instead.
- It watches every frame on your Mac. Sisyphos measures your footage on-device: where the cuts are, how much moves, how loud it gets, where the beat lands, what’s sharp, what looks good. Nothing is uploaded.
- It builds your selects. It finds the strongest moments and trims each one toward its best second — never just cropped to the middle. Cuts land on real events: a beat, a shot change, a quiet dip, never at fixed intervals.
- It writes down why. Every pick comes with a reason. Every reject, too. Every clip Sisyphos considered is on the record — including the ones it dropped, and why: too similar to a better take, too little happening, didn’t make the shortlist.
- It hands off to your editor. One click pushes the rough cut straight into a DaVinci Resolve timeline. Everyone else gets standard FCPXML and EDL exports, linked to your original files at the right timecode.
What makes it different
Other AI editors guess. Sisyphos knows why.
Footage in, finished video out — and no way to ask why. They cut by transcript and template, not by what’s on screen. A strong moment with no words gets lost, and when the result is wrong, your only option is to start over.
Sisyphos rates every moment the way an editor would: what happens, how it feels, how it flows, how it’s shot. When a moment you loved is missing, you look up the reason it was dropped instead of guessing. And the result holds: Run it today. Run it next year. Same cut, to the frame. That consistency is what makes it safe for client work.
Pricing
One license, yours. €129 at launch, €189 after. Perpetual, because it runs on your machine. Pay once, use forever, with 12 months of updates included. Bring your own AI key. The rating step uses your own Google account at cents per clip, with a hard cap, and footage you’ve already analyzed never costs you again.
FAQ
What is an AI rough cut generator?
It is software that reviews your raw footage and assembles a rough cut — a first assembly of the strongest moments — that you then refine. Sisyphos runs on your Mac, works from measured signals instead of the transcript, and shows its reasoning for every clip it kept and dropped.
Does it work without transcripts, on GoPro or wedding footage?
Yes. Sisyphos judges by what’s on screen — motion, sound, beat, sharpness, and framing. It works on footage where nobody talks: GoPro, sports, weddings, events, b-roll.
Is it a Mac app? Does it run offline?
Yes. It’s a local-first macOS desktop app. All the footage analysis runs on your machine, offline. Only the final rating step sends a few still images plus the measurements to your own AI account — never the video.
How is a rough cut different from a first cut?
They’re the same thing, named differently. “Rough cut” is the editing-room term for the first assembly; “first cut” is how we say it on our homepage. Both mean a draft you open and change.
Does it feed DaVinci Resolve?
Yes. Sisyphos pushes the rough cut straight into a running DaVinci Resolve timeline in one click, and also exports FCPXML and EDL for any other editor. See the DaVinci Resolve AI selects workflow.
Sisyphos is in development. Join the waitlist and you hear it first when it ships.
You stay the editor.