Cutback has released a new version of Selects, its AI assistant for long-form video editing, designed to take over the prep work between raw footage and the first creative decision. An editor drops in the recordings and Selects syncs, organizes, and cuts them within minutes, so a project opens at the storytelling stage rather than the cleanup stage. The team's framing is consistent: keep the editor on the craft and route the mechanical groundwork to the assistant.

The tool handles pro-grade multicam from the start, covering automatic sync, speaker detection, camera assignment, and the selection of the best audio track across every angle, with support for 4K and 360 footage. From there, it arranges the material into a stringout organized by scene and topic, the way an assistant editor would, with transcripts and chapter markers that make a long recording searchable. Natural-language search pulls specific moments on request, so locating an intro or a particular reaction no longer means scrubbing a timeline.

The capability at the center of this release goes a step further. From a single prompt, Selects builds a draft edit with the storyline and pacing already in place, then layers silence and filler-word removal, camera switching that follows the active speaker, and B-roll placement into the cut. An editor can specify duration, narrative angle, and switching preferences in plain language and get a structured assembly to refine rather than build from an empty timeline. Once the draft is ready, the project hands off cleanly to Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut, or DaVinci Resolve as a labeled timeline that fits an existing workflow, so teams can finish within the tools they already use.

According to Cutback, the workflow removes around 60 percent of prep time per project, the figure that matters most for studios cutting multiple long episodes a week. Selects is now available as a standalone desktop app with a 7-day free trial, and the company says it ran the tool with several professional editors ahead of a walkthrough video that shows the workflow on real projects.

Cutback, the San Francisco company building Selects, is an Official Adobe Video Partner and positions its products as an AI layer that supports editors rather than replacing them. Led by co-founder and CEO Tom Kim, the team also ships Premiere Assistant, a plugin that automates transcription, silence removal, and repetitive tasks inside Premiere Pro, while Selects covers the pre-editing stage across Premiere, Final Cut, and Resolve. The product has been picking up adoption among podcast teams, YouTube studios, and post-production shops, cutting interview-driven content, the formats where assembling a stringout from multicam footage is the recurring drain on time. That places Selects in a field where AI has mostly automated short-form clipping and captioning, while long-form assembly stayed manual, with Cutback betting the front half of editing is where the real hours are won back.