Render and export

An approved edit becomes a frame-exact timeline, then a render, or files your editing app opens with every cut, sound and graphic where it was.

Render

cutwright compile my-show director_cut
cutwright render my-show director_cut

compile turns the edit into its timeline: every cut on an exact frame, every sound on an exact sample. render makes the program from your originals: an H.264 MP4 by default, through your computer's own video encoder; --prores for a ProRes MOV; --preview for a quick one from the proxies. The graphics are drawn by the show's package and laid over the picture, the sound is cleaned and mixed, and the whole program is mastered to −16 LUFS, its peaks under −1 dBTP. --stems also keeps each mic as the mix plays it, for the check to hear one at a time.

A render that already matches its timeline is not made again.

Check

cutwright check my-show director_cut

The check measures the render against what the edit meant: the frame count; the loudness and true peak; dead air; a click at any join; how much of the picture holds still and how much shows the footage; and the words, transcribed again from each mic's stem and compared with the words the edit keeps: lost, clipped, or heard where none should be. With music, it measures how far each phrase sits over it; with a Reelwright cutaway, how far its sound sits from the program either side of it. It also counts the edit's graphics in the picture. It is the same check the director runs before it reports.

cutwright validate checks a project's documents (an edit, a source, a graphics package) against their schemas, for when you edit one by hand.

Files for your editing app

cutwright export my-show director_cut --format otio
cutwright export my-show director_cut --format fcpxml7
cutwright export my-show director_cut --format srt

Format	Opens in	Carries
OpenTimelineIO `--format otio`	Resolve, Premiere, Avid, Kdenlive	Each clip from your original by its timecode; dissolves; B-roll on a second track; each graphic on a track above, as straight-alpha ProRes 4444; each mic on an audio track of its own; music with its level and ducking in Cutwright's metadata; captions, chapters and the cuts to look at as markers.
Final Cut Pro 7 XML `--format fcpxml7`	Premiere, Resolve, Final Cut via its importers	The same, with the music's and inserts' levels as Audio Levels, and graphics marked straight alpha.
EDL `--format edl`	Anything that reads CMX 3600	One video track of cuts and dissolves. No sound tracks and no graphics: it names the graphics it leaves out.
SubRip, WebVTT `--format srt`, `vtt`	Players and platforms	The captions, each on the frames its words are said; with `--language`, a translation's.

Your editing app finds your footage where it is. Nothing in an export is a copy of it, so relinking is by the originals' own timecode.

Graphics as files

cutwright check-overlays my-show director_cut
cutwright bake-overlay my-show director_cut
cutwright export-ograf my-show package.harbour --template lower_third

check-overlays runs every graphics check on an edit without drawing it: fields, contrast, reading time, text that does not fit, the safe areas, cuts under a graphic. bake-overlay draws each graphic as ProRes 4444 with straight alpha, which is what the render lays over the picture and the exports hand on. export-ograf writes a package's lower third, title card, chapter card or pull quote as an EBU OGraf graphic, which DaVinci Resolve 21 keeps editable.

From the browser

The Studio in your browser exports too, made in the page: the program as an MP4, its graphics drawn as the desktop render draws them, and the same files for editing apps and captions. What only the desktop render does yet, it names in the export: a Reelwright cover over the picture, the dialogue's cleanup and the room tone under the gaps.

A clip for a Reelwright screen

cutwright export my-show director_cut --format clip --from w.mic_1.120 --to w.mic_1.168 --out clip/

The program between two words, as frames, its mix and a description, every file hashed, for Reelwright to play on a screen in a cartoon set. The director tells you which words; you run it.