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Detecting Cuts

Press a button, wait a moment, and every change in the picture shows up as a spike in the Spike Graph.

Analyse a clip

The Analyse button and detector options

Do one of the following:

  • Click Analyse in the lower left corner
  • Press Enter

That's it. CutDetectorPro compares every frame with the one before it and draws the difference as a spike. Then you set the threshold to decide which spikes count as cuts.

Pick a detector

There are two ways to analyse a clip. Choose with the Content and Adaptive buttons next to Analyse.

  • Content

    The classic detector. It spots hard cuts by measuring how much two neighbouring frames differ. Anything above your threshold is a cut, and you can move the threshold after the analysis is done.

    Details

  • Adaptive

    Like Content, but it compares each change with a rolling average of the frames around it. Try it when fast camera moves cause false cuts.

    Details

Analyse only part of the picture

Got a burn-in that changes with every shot? Analysing just the burn-in is often more accurate than analysing the whole frame.

A purple rectangle drawn over the burn-in

  1. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) and drag a rectangle over the region.
  2. A purple outline shows the area. Only that area is analysed.
  3. Right-click to delete the rectangle again.

The rectangle always stays on the picture: if you start dragging outside of the image, it's trimmed to the image edge, and if the drag never reaches the image the rectangle is removed.

This is different from a sub-range

The rectangle limits the analysis to a region of each frame. A sub-range limits it to a span of frames. You can combine both.

Re-use a previous analysis

You only ever analyse a clip once. The results are saved automatically, and next time you import the same clip CutDetectorPro offers to load them instead:

The dialog offering to reuse an existing analysis

Where the saved analyses live

Each clip gets its own csv file:

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\CutDetectorPro\OHUfx (roaming profile)
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/CutDetectorPro/OHUfx
  • Linux: ~/.local/share/CutDetectorPro/OHUfx

You normally never need to look in there.

Sharing your work

Saving a project bundles the analysis data into the .cdui file, so the file is fully portable. See Import & Sessions.