Sunrise over Midtown Manhattan
Layacut
ANALYZING
SRC GX011219.MP4  ·  4K 30
00:00:00:00
MOMENT DETECTED
G-FORCE4.2 G
SOUND · WAVE BREAK

Finished reels.
From raw footage.
Automatically.

Point Layacut at your clips and a song. It reads your camera's own telemetry, watches the footage, listens to it, and cuts the best of it to the beat. All on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Download on the Mac App Store Download on the App Store APPLE SILICON · macOS 26 · iOS 26 · iPADOS 26
00:07:12:04
HOW IT CUTS
READ

Analyze

G-force, speed, and the moments the shooter tagged on the camera, read out of the file. Faces, subjects, framing and movement, read out of the picture. Voices and real sounds, read out of the audio.

DECIDE

Cut

The reel plays the day in the order it happened. What changes is the pace: shots hold where the reel should breathe and quicken where it should drive. Every cut lands on a beat, within a frame.

DELIVER

Finish

Color matched shot to shot. Music leveled, and pulled back under anything worth hearing. It fades out with the music and it is done. Not a rough cut.

00:09:44:12
ANY CAMERA

It speaks your camera's language.

A GoPro writes its own record of the ride: g-force, speed, the moments you tagged with the button. Layacut reads it. A DJI writes a flight log beside the clip, and it reads that too. Everything else, and on-device vision finds the moments in the pixels. No ecosystem. No lock-in. Whatever you shoot with, it cuts.

SOURCESIGNALREAD AS
GoProGPMF: g-force, speed, tagsTELEMETRY
DJIFlight log beside the clipTELEMETRY
iPhoneScene light, detected facesMETADATA
Any cameraFaces, subjects, movementVISION
Clip soundWaves, engines, voicesSOUND
00:10:51:00
WHAT THIS REEL IS FOR

Layacut never asks you to describe what you want. It reads the day you gave it, says what it thinks the footage is about, and lets you say otherwise with one click. The answer decides what counts as a good moment.

JUDGED

The People

Faces and reactions win. Best for a day with people in it.

CHOOSE

The Story

What was said wins, and sentences are held whole.

CHOOSE

The Action

Movement wins, and the camera's own evidence of it.

CHOOSE

The Place

Composition and scenery win, over whoever is in shot.

EVERYTHING ON YOUR DEVICE

Your footage never leaves the device.

No cloud, no Layacut account, no upload bar. The analysis, the decisions and the render all happen on your own Apple silicon, on the iPhone, the iPad or the Mac in front of you. That is why it is fast, and why it is private.

NOTHING IS COPIED
Clips are referenced where they sit
MOVE THEM ANYWAY
A relink puts a lost clip back
NOTHING IS COLLECTED
No analytics, nothing phoned home
00:11:38:16
IT SHOWS ITS REASONS

Every chosen moment carries the reason it was chosen, typeset plainly. Drop one, star one to feature it, or open the clip and pick the part you meant. The reel re-cuts around what you touched and leaves the rest of your work alone. Every clip you add offers at least one moment, even the quiet ones.

A frame from GX010437, chosen on a 1.5 g jolt over a rough track
G-FORCE0:06
A frame from GX010520, chosen on movement in the picture
ACTION0:11
A frame from GX010511, chosen on a sound in the room
NOISE0:13
A frame from GX010454, chosen on a voice off camera
TALKING0:06
00:11:02:16
REAL FOOTAGE

Frames from a GoPro carried across New York, Gujarat and Mumbai, read and cut by Layacut. No stock, no set dressing: two ordinary folders of clips, picked by the app at the moment each one looks its best. These stills are in this page, not fetched from anywhere.

A frame from GX011215.MP4, cut by Layacut
GX011215.MP4Lower Manhattan at blue hour, from a long way up.
A frame from GX010470.MP4, cut by Layacut
GX010470.MP4The Little Rann of Kutch, from a road that is mostly horizon.
A frame from GX011211.MP4, cut by Layacut
GX011211.MP4Glass and dusk, looking up from the street in New York.
A frame from GX011214.MP4, cut by Layacut
GX011214.MP4The Hudson and the West Side, in the first second of the clip.
A frame from GX011218.MP4, cut by Layacut
GX011218.MP4Midtown at sunset, the other end of the same day.
A frame from GX010457.MP4, cut by Layacut
GX010457.MP4Six autos in a line in Gujarat, parked at the end of a day.
00:13:20:08
YOU STEER IT

Six ways to cut the same day. A style sets how long shots run and which moves the reel is allowed. Change one and the reel re-cuts. On a big day it asks first. Point at a style to see its rhythm: every block is one shot, drawn to the length that style would give it.

One frame from the day, cut by LayacutOne frame from the day, cut by LayacutOne frame from the day, cut by LayacutOne frame from the day, cut by LayacutOne frame from the day, cut by LayacutOne frame from the day, cut by Layacut
0:0015 SHOTS IN 40 SECONDS0:40
SHOT LENGTH0.6 – 6.0s
PACINGARC
THE MOVESEVERY MOVE AVAILABLE
0:0026 SHOTS IN 40 SECONDS0:40
SHOT LENGTH0.35 – 2.2s
PACINGFLAT
THE MOVESRAMPS . STUTTERS . NO CLIP SOUND
0:006 SHOTS IN 40 SECONDS0:40
SHOT LENGTH1.4 – 8.0s
PACINGSLOW BURN
THE MOVESRAMPS . BLENDS . NO ACCENTS
0:008 SHOTS IN 40 SECONDS0:40
SHOT LENGTH1.6 – 9.0s
PACINGFLAT
THE MOVESBLENDS ONLY . NO RAMPS, NO ACCENTS
0:0015 SHOTS IN 40 SECONDS0:40
SHOT LENGTH0.9 – 5.0s
PACINGARC
THE MOVESRAMPS . BLENDS . NO STUTTER
0:0022 SHOTS IN 40 SECONDS0:40
SHOT LENGTH0.8 – 3.0s
PACINGFLAT
THE MOVESNOTHING BUT CUTS
DEFAULT

Dynamic

0.6 – 6.0s

Arcs: calm open, quickest through the second fifth, resolving at the end. Every move available.

STYLE

Hype

0.35 – 2.2s

Even and relentless. A move on nearly every other cut, an accent on half, and the music alone.

STYLE

Cinematic

1.4 – 8.0s

Slow burn. Long shots up to eight seconds, ramps and blends, no accents.

STYLE

Documentary

1.6 – 9.0s

Even throughout. The longest shots of any style, no ramps and no accents.

STYLE

Travel

0.9 – 5.0s

Arcs, more gently. Speed ramps and blends, no stutter.

STYLE

Straight Cuts

0.8 – 3.0s

No moves at all. Cut, cut, cut, on the beat, and nothing else.

00:15:06:22
AND THEN IT FINISHES IT
SPEECH

Captions

Transcribed on device from what was actually said, word by word. They stay inside the safe area, and lift out of the way when they would sit across someone.

TELEMETRY

Live gauges

Speed, altitude and G-force burned into the frame, drawn as instruments. A figure your camera did not measure is left off rather than shown as zero.

OVER THE PICTURE

Your logo

Your own mark over the whole reel, in the corner, size and strength you choose. Free, not a Pro feature.

THE MOVES

Transitions

Blend, whip, push, punch, wipe, light leak, a dip through black, Reveal and Pass: the next shot's subject stepping in over this one, or this shot's subject crossing while the scene changes behind them, cut out on the device. Jolt, Eyelids, Iris, Heart and Glow beside them. About one cut in five carries one, which is the rate finished reels actually use. A move the footage cannot carry is demoted to a plain cut and said so.

SOUND

The mix

Every track leveled to the same loudness. A shot worth hearing keeps its own sound and the music steps back for it. A limiter means it never clips.

THE FILE

Export

One file, in the shape on the panel. H.264 or HEVC, MP4 or MOV, up to 8K, at the frame rate your footage was shot at.

THE PICTURE

Steady It

Smooths the camera's path and levels the horizon, on the clips you choose.

Level

Every clip's tilt measured from its own picture, from the pillars and door frames and floor lines, and leveled on the next cut. A dial to change it, and the angle it found on screen before you touch anything.

Align

On a vertical reel, each shot's person lands where the last one's was, at the same height and about the same size, so the reel flows from cut to cut. On by default, off per shot.

Find footage

Search by what a clip shows, what was said in it, or what it sounds like. The card says why it matched.

Six styles

Dynamic, Hype, Cinematic, Documentary, Travel, Straight Cuts. Hype is the register for a music reel. Change the style from the reel's panel at any time and the reel re-cuts around it.

The moves

Blink, Pulse, Clone, Amplify, Handheld and a Film look, beside the whip, the punch and the triple take. Every one placed by hand, drawn before you drop it.

Music speed

Play the track faster or slower, pitch kept, and the reel re-cuts onto the new beat.

The Map

The reel drawn as a chart with four readings: the reel around the outer ring in each clip's own color, the evening by the clock on the inner ring, a spoke from each clip to where its shots landed, the music's energy between. Hover a shot to read it, click to go there. Save it as an image.

A tall reel is not a crop of a wide one, so Layacut follows the subject across the frame. When it picks the wrong side of the shot, you drag the tall frame where you want it, on the picture, with what is lost dimmed either side.

00:16:44:00
PRICING

Free

$0 · FOREVER
  • The whole automatic edit, nothing held back
  • Export at 720p
  • Over 130 bundled tracks, or bring your own music
  • A small Layacut mark, and a closing card
  • As many cuts of the same footage as you like
Download on the Mac App Store

Annual

$59.99 · PER YEAR
  • 1080p, 4K and 8K export
  • Turn the Layacut mark off, and end on a card of your own
  • One subscription, on your iPhone, your iPad and your Mac
Get Layacut, then Pro in the app

Annual renews yearly until canceled, and you can cancel any time under your Apple Account: in Settings on iPhone and iPad, in System Settings on a Mac. There is no free trial: the free tier is the trial.