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Frequently asked questions

A few of these answers are about what is still planned, such as the Mac App Store build. Where something is still being built, this page says so. Anything missing, write to support@rooster.cam and we will answer it and add it here. How to do something in the app is in Rooster Help, and a lost key, a refund or a question about lifetime updates is answered on the support page.

  • What is Rooster?

    Rooster is a native Mac video editor built around the transcript. You record or import a video, Rooster transcribes it on your own machine, and you cut by deleting words from the text - the picture and sound follow. Captions, Studio Voice, Eye Contact and Green Screen are there too, and an export is an ordinary file in your Downloads folder. You can download it and try it free for 14 days, with no card, at rooster.cam/download.

  • How does editing the transcript cut the video?

    Deleting a selection of words is a ripple edit on the same edit graph the timeline uses, so the media under those words is removed and every other track closes the gap with it. Cuts snap to word boundaries and to silence measured from the audio itself, so one natural pause survives at the join. A single undo puts the whole edit back, transcript and captions together.

  • Can Rooster record my screen and camera?

    Yes, and this works today. Camera, screen, or screen with camera, with controls for the microphone, display, resolution, aspect ratio and countdown, plus a teleprompter with presentation controls. Recordings land straight in a project and transcription starts by itself as the project is created, so by the time you have stopped talking the text is usually already waiting for you.

  • Can Rooster add captions?

    Yes. Captions are generated from the transcript Rooster already has, styled, timed to the words and burned into the exported video. Transcript, Markdown and both subtitle sidecars - SRT and VTT - export today as well, so you can hand a subtitle file to a platform that wants one instead of burning the text into the picture. Caption timings survive cuts and corrections made in the transcript.

  • Does Rooster remove filler words?

    Yes, with a review list rather than automatically. Remove filler words finds every hesitation and shows each with the words either side and a play button, so you hear the moment before you decide. Approve them one at a time or all at once, and the approved set is cut as a single undoable ripple. It runs on your Mac with no credit meter, and it reads English hesitations. Cutting every hesitation unasked is how a good take gets mangled.

  • Does Rooster do B-roll?

    Yes, with your own media. Video and stills go on a lane above the recording and music on one below it - drag a file onto a lane, or add it at the playhead from the Media rail. Clips trim and move, and Fit, Fill and corner picture-in-picture are presets. Audio gets its own lane with volume, fades and ducking under speech. A large commercial stock catalogue is deliberately out of scope, so this will never be a search box over somebody else's library.

  • Where do my exports go?

    To your Downloads folder by default, as ordinary files you can move, back up or open in anything else. Rooster will not silently overwrite something that is already there. Recordings and imported media are treated as immutable and never rewritten: edits live in the project as a versioned edit graph, so the original take is always still the original take.

  • Is Rooster a replacement for Descript?

    For most of the loop a solo creator runs, that is the intention: record, transcribe, cut in the transcript, caption, export. It is not everything Descript does. There is no collaboration, no cloud project sharing, no synthesised AI voices, no translation or dubbing, no web publishing and no autonomous editing agent, and those are deliberate exclusions rather than features waiting in a queue.

  • Does my footage leave my Mac?

    Your footage never leaves your Mac unless you deliberately connect a cloud provider. Transcription, Studio Voice, Eye Contact, Green Screen, the preview and the export all run inside the application, on your own processor and Neural Engine. There is no Rooster server that receives media, so there is nothing on our side to hand over, to sell, or to lose.

  • Are cloud video editors safe for client footage?

    A cloud editor uploads your recordings to its servers to transcribe them and keep the project, outtakes included. Whether that is acceptable depends on your client's contract more than on the service: many NDAs forbid sending client material to any third party without permission. Rooster avoids the question. Your footage never leaves your Mac unless you deliberately connect a cloud provider, and the help page on what leaves your Mac lists every exception.

  • What does use the network?

    The transcription model downloads when first needed. The direct download asks GitHub whether a newer version exists, once allowed. Send in the Send Feedback box sends your message, email if given, an image if you attached one, ticked diagnostics, and your build. After a crash, Rooster shows the crash report and sends it only on Send, or automatically if you chose. Your own key sends audio to that third-party transcription service. Buying runs through Creem, our merchant of record. Licence keys are activated with rooster.cam, then checked periodically.

  • Is there an account to create?

    No. There is no account, no sign-in and no project sync, because there is no server holding your work. That is a design decision rather than something we have not got round to building. It also means no account is ever needed to open your own projects: they are kept on your Mac and stay openable whatever happens to us.

  • Do you train models on my video?

    No, and we could not: we never receive it. The transcription and effect models Rooster uses are downloaded to your machine and run there. The app reports nothing about what you edit, and a crash report goes only on your yes, carrying nothing from your projects. The privacy page lists the personal data we hold, chiefly what you send us when you write to support, the order details Creem passes us when you buy, and anything sent through the waitlist or beta forms this site used to carry.

  • What does Rooster cost?

    $4.99 a month at the founder price, locked in for as long as you stay subscribed, or $9 a month billed annually ($108 a year), or $249 once for a lifetime licence, all after a 14-day free trial. Every paid tier is unmetered. The founder price is open to the first 250 subscribers who join by 10 January 2027. Once it closes, monthly billing for new subscribers is $12.99. The pricing page has the full picture, including how the prices line up against Descript.

  • What does unmetered mean?

    No media-minute limits, no Rooster top-ups and no overage maths. Your Rooster bill won't grow with your workload. Record a short clip or a two-hour episode: the price is the same. Optional cloud services use your own account and are billed separately.

  • Is there a free trial?

    Yes: 14 days of the whole application, with no watermark on what you export, no card and no account. Download Rooster and the trial starts the first time you open it. When it ends, every project still opens, and editing, recording and export wait until you choose a plan and enter the key from your receipt. There is no free tier. Two weeks is meant to be long enough to get a real project recorded, cut, captioned and exported.

  • Is there a lifetime licence?

    Yes: $249 as a single payment, sold on the direct download only, never through the Mac App Store. The licence never expires and every future update is included: there is no update window, no renewal and no paid upgrade. If it turns out not to be for you, it is refunded in full within 30 days of purchase: write to support@rooster.cam.

  • What happens if I stop paying?

    You keep your projects and your exported media. They stay on your Mac rather than in our database, and no account is needed to open them. A lapsed subscription drops the application to read-only: every project still opens and plays and every file you already exported is untouched, but editing, recording and export wait until the subscription is current again, and nothing is deleted in the meantime. A lifetime licence never lapses, so none of this applies to it.

  • Will these prices change?

    They may change for new buyers, and this page will say so when they do. They never go up for an existing subscriber: the price you subscribe at is the price you keep. Joining at the founder price closes after the first 250 subscribers or on 10 January 2027, whichever comes first, and there is no code to enter and nothing to qualify for. A founder keeps it for as long as they stay subscribed.

  • How does that compare with Descript?

    Descript's Hobbyist plan is $16 a month billed annually or $24 monthly, and Creator is $24 billed annually or $35 monthly, both metering media minutes and AI credits, checked 14 August 2026. Rooster's $4.99 a month at the founder price and $9 a month billed annually do not meter recording, editing or export. The founder price is open to the first 250 subscribers who join by 10 January 2027. Once it closes, monthly billing for new subscribers is $12.99, unmetered too. Our pricing post breaks down Descript's two meters.

  • Which Macs does Rooster need?

    Rooster is built for macOS 26 and Apple silicon. Local transcription, Studio Voice, Eye Contact and Green Screen all lean on the Neural Engine and on the unified memory Apple silicon provides, which is what makes them fast enough to be worth running on the machine in front of you rather than in somebody else's data centre.

  • Which languages does transcription cover?

    Parakeet, the default engine, transcribes English and 24 other languages on your Mac, and the transcription feature page names every one of them. For anything outside that list, whisper.cpp is selectable inside the application and covers roughly 99 languages, more slowly. Parakeet is the default because it is faster and, on our own English recordings, more accurate: measured on 20 October 2026, it got 1.3% of words wrong to whisper.cpp large-v3-turbo's 6.0%, level with Descript. The Rooster vs Descript comparison page says how.

  • Can I edit on Windows or iPad?

    No. Rooster is a native Mac application. There is no Windows build, no iPad app and no version that runs in a browser, and none are planned. The whole argument for the product is that the editing runs on hardware you already own, which is the opposite of a browser tab talking to somebody else's render farm. A Mac is the requirement.

  • Do I need a fast internet connection?

    Only once, to download the transcription model the first time Rooster needs one. After that you can work on a plane, at a venue with hostile wifi, or in a hotel, because nothing is uploading and nothing is queued behind anyone else's job. Transcription starts the moment you stop recording rather than after a file has finished travelling somewhere.

  • Is Rooster on the Mac App Store?

    Not yet. Today Rooster is a direct download from this site: download the free trial at rooster.cam/download, then choose a plan at rooster.cam/pricing when you are ready. A Mac App Store build is planned to follow, carrying the monthly and annual subscriptions.

  • How do I get Rooster?

    Download it from rooster.cam/download: the 14-day free trial starts the first time you open it, with no card and no account. When you are ready, choose a plan on the pricing page. Checkout is run by Creem, which emails a receipt with your licence key; enter the key in Rooster, in Settings > Licence, and the trial becomes your licence.

  • I lost my licence key. How do I get it back?

    The key is in the receipt email from Creem, sent to the address you bought with, so search your mail for Creem first, including spam. If the email is gone, open Creem's customer portal at rooster.cam/manage, or from Help > Manage Subscription in Rooster, and sign in with that address: Creem says the key is kept with your order. If you still cannot find it, write to support@rooster.cam from the same address and we will find it for you.

  • Can I get a refund?

    A lifetime licence is refunded in full if you ask within 30 days of buying it, for any reason: write to support@rooster.cam from the address you bought with. A subscription can be cancelled at any time at Creem's customer portal, at rooster.cam/manage. If anything has gone wrong with a payment, write to us and we will sort it out with Creem, which runs the refund. The free trial comes first, so everything can be tried before paying.

  • How quickly does support reply?

    Usually within one working day, by email. Messages to support@rooster.cam, or through the form at rooster.cam/support, are read by the people building Rooster, and answered by them rather than a ticket queue. If something is broken, include your Mac model, your version of macOS and what you were doing when it happened, and the first reply is more likely to be the answer.

The longer versions of some of these live elsewhere on the site: what runs where is on the how it works page, the planned prices and the meter comparison are on the pricing page, and what does and does not cross the network is set out in full in our privacy policy.