Privacy policy

The short version

Basecut runs locally on your machine. Your footage never leaves your computer unless you opt in to a cloud backend, and when you do, the footage goes directly from your machine to the cloud provider you chose, using your own API key. We never see it, we never store it, and we never train AI on it. We run a small account system (email, plan, access status) so purchases unlock the app, and this website uses standard analytics so we can tell whether our ads work. Neither touches your footage.

What stays on your machine

• All source footage you ingest.
• Generated metadata: scene cuts, tags, transcripts, embeddings, ratings, marker positions, color sidecars.
• Proxy and preview files Basecut creates during analysis.
• The Basecut library database (SQLite) that powers the search index.

By default these live under your home directory. You can point Basecut at an external SSD in Settings; nothing else changes.

What leaves your machine (only if you opt in)

Basecut supports two backends for the AI analysis step:

• Local (default on Mac). A Qwen multimodal model runs on-device via MLX. No network calls. No data leaves your machine.
• Cloud (opt-in, default on Windows). Basecut sends video chunks and frames directly to Google's Gemini API using the API key you supplied. The request goes machine-to-Google. Basecut has no relay server in the middle. Google's data handling for Gemini API calls is governed by their terms. Basecut does not retain, log, or proxy the content.

Whisper transcription runs locally regardless of backend choice.

App diagnostics

The desktop app sends anonymous usage telemetry (feature counts, version, platform) and, if the app crashes, a crash report that is scrubbed of personal information before it leaves your machine. This is on by default so we can catch crashes and improve the app. Neither the usage telemetry nor the crash report ever contains footage, frames, filenames, or transcripts, and you can turn telemetry off in Settings at any time.

Account and access

When you sign into Basecut, it checks whether your account has active access. Authentication and your account record (email, plan, access status) are handled by Supabase, our accounts provider. Your purchase and subscription status is kept current by Dodo Payments, our payment processor, through a secure webhook. If you arrived at our site from an ad or a link, we may also store the campaign parameters from that first visit (for example utm_source) on your account record, so we know which channels actually work. Your footage and analysis never leave your machine as part of any of this.

Version check

Basecut fetches a static /version.json file from this site to tell you when an update is available. The request hits our hosting provider (Vercel) and is subject to their default access logs (IP, timestamp, user agent). We do not add tracking, fingerprinting, or analytics to this endpoint, and we do not associate the request with your license key.

This website

The basecut.app site is hosted on Vercel, which captures standard server access logs (IP, request path, user agent, timestamp) for every request. Beyond that, the website (not the app) uses a small set of analytics and advertising tools so we can see whether the site works and whether our ads are worth running:

• Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights: cookieless, aggregate page-view and performance metrics.
• Google Analytics 4: page views and site events (for example, clicking a download button). Uses cookies.
• Meta Pixel: lets us measure ads we run on Facebook/Instagram and show ads to people who visited this site. Uses cookies.
• Reddit Pixel and Microsoft Clarity: same purpose for Reddit ads and anonymized session heatmaps; only active if we run those campaigns.

These run only on this website, never inside the Basecut app, and none of them ever touch your footage. Standard browser tracking blockers will block them and the site works fine regardless. We do not sell personal information.

Payments

All purchases run through Dodo Payments, our merchant of record. Dodo collects the information needed to process payment and grant access: name, email, billing details, and payment method. We receive your name, email, and order info to provision your account. Card numbers and full payment details are handled by Dodo Payments and their payment processors and never reach us.

Email

If you contact us by replying to your receipt, we retain that correspondence so we can support you. We do not enroll you in any marketing list. We do not sell or share email addresses.

Your rights

You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of any personal information we hold about you (essentially: your email and order record) by replying to your receipt. Because footage and analysis live entirely on your machine, deleting that data is a matter of deleting the Basecut folders on your disk; we cannot do it for you.

Changes

If we change this policy in a material way, we'll update the date at the top and post a note in the next release. Continued use of Basecut after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Privacy questions: reply to your receipt email and a human answers.