Transcript editing
A free transcript-based video editor that runs on your machine
The thing nobody tells you about floating point — and I looked this up beforehand — is that it was never meant to be exact.
Rescript edits video and audio the way you edit a document: it transcribes the file on your own device with Whisper, then cuts the matching footage the moment you delete a word. Free for noncommercial use, open source, and running in a browser tab or as a desktop app. No account, no upload, no watermark, and no cap on file length or export resolution — because none of it runs on our servers.
- Price
- Free and open source for noncommercial use
- Where your media goes
- Nowhere. It never leaves your device
- Delete words to cut footage
- Word-level, with a live preview of the cut
- Rewrite a line and have it spoken
- Yes — cloned from that speaker's own audio, on-device
- Export formats
- MP4, WebM, M4A, MP3, WAV, SRT, VTT, JSON
- Runs on
- Browser, macOS, Windows, Linux
Step by step
How it works, start to finish.
- 01
Open your file
Drop an MP4, MOV, MP3, WAV, or M4A into the web app or the desktop app. Whisper transcribes it on your device with word-level timestamps, and speaker diarization labels who is talking. If you already have captions, import an SRT, VTT, or JSON file instead and skip transcription entirely.
- 02
Delete the words you don't want
Select text and press delete. The matching footage is cut, and playback skips it immediately so you hear the edit as you make it. Use Remove fillers to strip every "um" and "uh" in one pass, and Remove silences to cut every pause of 0.3 seconds or longer.
- 03
Fix what you can't cut around
For a line you fumbled rather than one you want gone, rewrite it and press Generate. Rescript speaks the new wording in that speaker's own cloned voice, generated on your machine and fitted to the exact gap the old line occupied.
- 04
Export the cut
Render MP4 or WebM up to 4K, audio as M4A, MP3, or WAV, the transcript as TXT or Markdown, or captions as SRT, VTT, or JSON. ffmpeg runs on your own CPU and writes the file straight to your disk.
Why a transcript beats a timeline for spoken video
For anything speech-driven, the edit is mostly deciding which sentences survive. A waveform can't tell you that, so you end up scrubbing back and forth, listening for the start of a phrase and clipping the first consonant anyway.
A transcript turns that into reading. The tangent that should go, the third take that beat the first two, the twelve seconds of throat-clearing — all visible at a glance. Deleting them is a keystroke, and the cut lands exactly where those words were spoken.
Free, with nothing held back
There are no tiers. 4K export, unlimited file length, speaker detection, voice regeneration — all available immediately, with no trial, no watermark, and no transcription meter. That works because the expensive parts run on your hardware rather than ours.
The licence is PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0. Everything that runs on your own device stays free for noncommercial use; commercial use needs a paid licence. The source is on GitHub, so the privacy claims here are checkable rather than promised.
Where it stops
Rescript is not a general video editor and won't replace one. There's no recording, no multitrack, no layers, transitions, titles, colour, or effects, no noise removal, and no burned-in caption styling. It edits one clip against its transcript and exports the cut.
For a lot of spoken-word video, that's the entire job. When it isn't, a reasonable pattern is to rough-cut in Rescript — which is fast — and finish the tightened file somewhere else.
FAQ
Questions people actually ask
What is transcript-based video editing?
It's editing where the transcript is the timeline. The tool transcribes your recording with word-level timestamps, and deleting a word or sentence from the text removes the matching span of video and audio. It's much faster than scrubbing a waveform for anything speech-driven.
Is there a free transcript-based video editor?
Rescript is free for noncommercial use, open source, and has no watermark, no account, and no limits on file length or export resolution. It runs in a browser or as a desktop app on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Does my video get uploaded?
No. Transcription, editing, and export all run on your device. The only network request is a one-time download of the Whisper model from Hugging Face, which is then cached — after that you can work fully offline.
What languages can it transcribe?
English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese, using Whisper Base or Whisper Small. You can also import an existing transcript in any language as SRT, VTT, or JSON and edit against that.
What can I export?
Video as MP4 or WebM from 720p up to 4K, audio as M4A, MP3, or WAV, the transcript as plain text or Markdown, and captions as SRT, VTT, or JSON.
Keep exploring features
Filler removal
Every "um" and "uh" in the file, in one click.
Silence removal
Cut every pause over 0.3s, then adjust any of them.
Speakers
Group the transcript by who is actually talking.
Timeline
Waveform, cut handles, and word-level timing by hand.
Regenerate
Rewrite a fumbled line, hear it in the original voice.
Weighing it against something else? See how Rescript compares.
Open it and see.
Free, open source, and running entirely on your own machine. No account, no upload, no watermark.
Or open the web app