CapCut just got open-sourced — the link, and the 3 settings I'd change first

You commented CUT, so here it is.

The link: opencut.app

It's called OpenCut. Free, MIT licensed, and it edits in your browser — your footage never gets uploaded anywhere. That last part is the whole reason I bothered making a video about it.

Below: what it actually is, the three settings I'd change before you do anything else, and one thing nobody tells you that will cost you a project if you skip it.

An open-source CapCut alternative. The repo is at github.com/OpenCut-app/OpenCut — 78,690 stars and MIT licensed, which is the bit that matters. MIT means nobody can take it back. If someone paywalls it tomorrow, the community forks the last free version and carries on.

Their own stated reason for building it: "Privacy: your videos stay on your device." It runs in the browser and does the work locally. For client work, unpublished stuff, or anything under NDA, that's a genuinely different risk profile from uploading to someone's cloud editor.

If you use CapCut, the timeline will feel immediately familiar. Import, cut, export.

All three live in the Export panel, top right — except the last one, which is the one that actually bites.

It defaults to High. Move it up.

Instagram, TikTok and YouTube all re-compress whatever you hand them. You are not uploading your export — you're uploading the input to their encoder. Give it the most information you can and the version your audience actually sees holds up better. "Very high — largest file size" sounds wasteful until you remember the file gets thrown away after upload anyway.

The only time I'd drop it: exporting a long screen recording where the file would be silly, or you're on a slow connection.

MP4 (H.264) is the default and it's the right one for anything going to social. WebM (VP9) makes a smaller file, and it is genuinely better if the video is going on your own site — smaller means faster page loads.

But hand a WebM to some social uploaders and phone camera rolls and you'll hit friction. MP4 for social, WebM for the web. That's the whole rule.

"Include audio in export" is ticked by default, which is correct almost always.

Untick it when you're exporting b-roll — a screen recording, a cutaway, anything that goes underneath a voiceover in another edit. You strip a silent track you were going to mute anyway, and the file gets smaller. Small thing; it adds up when you export forty clips.

When you first open OpenCut it asks: "Your browser can automatically delete your projects when storage runs low. Allow OpenCut to protect them?"

Say allow.

Because the editor is local-first, your projects live in browser storage rather than on someone's server. That's the privacy win — and the catch. Without persistent storage granted, your browser is within its rights to evict a project when it needs space, and there is no cloud backup to restore from. It is the exact trade you signed up for, and it takes one click to cover.

If you clicked past it, you can re-grant it in your browser's site settings for opencut.app.

It's an early beta. The button on the homepage literally says "Try early beta." Treat it as a second editor for now, not the one your deadline depends on.

The 78,690-star repo is a ground-up rewrite that isn't finished. opencut.app currently serves the previous build. The rewrite promises a Rust core, plugins, headless batch rendering and an MCP server for AI agents — worth watching, not yet worth waiting for.

Neither of those changes the point. It's free, it's MIT, it edits locally, and it's a real alternative to a paywall that keeps creeping.

Go make something: opencut.app

Reply and tell me what you're editing — I read them all.

P.S. If it's the AI and automation side of a business you're trying to fix rather than an editor, that's what I do at optimax-ai.com.

]]>