Rough cut: what stays

You decide what stays, by word index. A planner script decides where each cut lands (pads, waveform checks, pause shortening, frame snapping). Never do its job by hand.

The brief creators give: remove retakes and silences, keep it feeling like a natural vlog. Not a jump cut every second.

Read first

The manifest, then every clip's word list in order. Each token: {i, text, start, end, type} with type word or audio_event ("(laughs)", "[lighter click]"). Read it as a story before deciding anything.

Rules

1. Retakes: keep the best complete take, usually the last. Never keep a take that trails off. Cut the restart cue with it ("let me do that again", a swear at themselves).
2. False starts: cut an abandoned sentence plus its restart cue.
3. Spoken notes to the editor ("editor, roll the video here", "this slide is a video"): cut them and write each as a note moment → becomes a pink marker on the join where it was.
4. Fillers stay. It's a vlog. Only cut a filler that is clearly dead air on its own. Stumbles inside a word stay (cutting them makes a visible jump).
5. Keep their voice: asides, jokes, a laugh, a deliberate pause before a point.
6. Pauses are not your job. Give whole thoughts as one range; the planner shortens long pauses.
7. Keep recorded order unless asked.
8. Unsure? Keep it and flag it. A wrong cut is invisible to the creator; a flagged keep is a 5-second decision. Typical flags: near-identical lines in a row (deliberate repetition or retake?), self-corrections, a joke about "starting this three times".