What is Railcut?
Railcut is a set of editing tools for After Effects. It reads your comp and presents it as a familiar track-based timeline — giving you the clip-based workflow you know from Premiere or DaVinci, without leaving AE.
The right mindset
Section titled “The right mindset”Railcut is not editing software that lives inside After Effects. It’s a different way to see and interact with what’s already in your comp.
When you open Railcut, it translates your AE layers into clips on tracks. When you make edits in Railcut, they’re translated back into AE actions — trims, overwrites, reorders. After Effects is always the source of truth. If you make changes in AE and come back to Railcut, it re-reads your comp fresh. That’s by design.
Once you approach it that way, Railcut becomes exactly what it’s meant to be: a faster way to do editorial work inside AE.
What Railcut is great for
Section titled “What Railcut is great for”- Timing text layers to audio — arrange and trim text layers against a waveform in seconds
- Cutting demo reels or portfolio pieces — quickly cut footage in a familiar NLE layout without roundtripping to Premiere
- Assembly edits — make your assembly cut in Railcut, then get to work animating in AE
- Syncing clips to music/voiceover — audio waveforms make audio-based edits fast
- Cutting highlight reels entirely inside AE
What Railcut does
Section titled “What Railcut does”- Multi-track timeline — video tracks above, audio tracks below, NLE-style layout
- Drag-and-drop editing — drop footage from the AE Project Panel directly onto the timeline
- Full editing toolset — Select, Track Select, Ripple Edit, Rolling Edit, Rate Stretch, Razor, Slip, Slide, Pen, Zoom and Hand tools
- Keyboard shortcuts — Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, and After Effects layouts, plus fully customizable shortcut editing and custom presets
- Clip thumbnails — generated on supported footage clips (most footage and images)
- Audio waveforms — real amplitude waveforms extracted from source audio
- Ripple editing — trim or delete clips and downstream clips shift automatically
- Linked A/V editing — keep video and audio together, unlink/relink when needed, and use Alt for single-side split edits
- Clip groups — group separate clips so they select and move together
- Work area tools — mark in/out points, set work area to clips under CTI (mark clip), extract/lift ranges
- Label colors and blending modes — adjust common AE layer properties from the Railcut context menu
- Nudge clips — Alt+Arrow moves clips 1 frame; Alt+Shift+Arrow moves 10 frames
- Text layer editing — double-click a text layer to edit it without leaving Railcut
- Paste Insert — Ctrl+Shift+V inserts clipboard at the playhead, ripple-splitting and shifting downstream clips
What Railcut is not
Section titled “What Railcut is not”Railcut is not a replacement for Premiere or a full NLE. It’s focused on the editing operations that make sense inside an After Effects comp: trimming, timing, arranging, syncing, and organizing layers quickly. Use Railcut for timeline editing speed, then use AE for animation, compositing, effects, and finishing.
System requirements
Section titled “System requirements”- After Effects CC 2021 (v18) or later
- macOS 10.15 (Catalina) or later
- Windows 10 or later
- An internet connection for license activation
Ready to install?
Section titled “Ready to install?”Head to Installation to get Railcut running in After Effects.