Comparison
Cutroom vs Submagic: one styles the clip, one decides what is in it
Submagic makes a clip you already like hit harder. Captions land on the syllable and the emphasis falls where you meant it. Cutroom decides which sentences are in the clip at all. This page covers what a caption layer reaches, what it cannot, and what one finished ad costs here. By the end you will know which half of the job is still sitting on your desk at eleven at night.
- longest take Cutroom accepts
- 3 min
- caption packs, all restyleable
- 6
- free credits, 7 days, no card
- 300
Submagic styles the take beautifully. It hands the take back the same length
Hand a caption tool a clip that works and it comes back sharper. Captions land on the syllable. Emphasis falls on the word carrying the line. That craft is real.
It also takes sources we refuse. Longer video. Horizontal and square. Footage that is not one person talking down a lens.
Then it gives the clip back at the length it went in. Every sentence you said is still in there. In the order you said it. With type over the top.
That is the line between the two products. Submagic decides how the take looks. Cutroom decides what is in it. That is the part a cold feed judges.
A caption layer inherits every second the take already wasted
Write the seconds down for one forty-one second take. Eight of clearing your throat. Twelve carrying the claim. Fourteen of hedging in the middle. Seven of an ending that asks for nothing.
A caption pack styles every one of those blocks equally well. The twelve seconds doing the selling come back looking exactly like the fourteen that should never have shipped.
If the take underneath is tight, the layer decides between a scroll and a finish. If it is loose, the layer inherits the looseness. The sentence that should have died is now set in bold.
That names which half a caption tool owns. Cutroom owns the other half. It is the half still open on your desk at eleven at night.
Where forty-one seconds of a real take goes
A caption pack styles every block equally well. One of them was doing the selling, and it is the shortest.
- Warm-up before the hook8 s
- The claim itself12 s
- Hedging in the middle14 s
- An ending that asks nothing7 s
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Cutroom deletes the fourteen seconds, and you do it by reading
Upload one talking-head take of up to three minutes. It gets transcribed. A full cut gets drafted before you decide anything.
Slack out. Pace set. B-roll already on the phrases that need showing. A headline on the opening. Captions styled and burned in.
Then you direct it by reading. Highlight a phrase and a clip lands over exactly those words. Delete a line and the cut rebuilds around it. Change the pace and the whole piece re-cuts.
There is no timeline and no layer stack. A talking-head ad is decided by words rather than pixels. So the interface is the transcript. The compiler works out every boundary in time.
Eleven moves is the whole vocabulary. Emphasise the word the claim turns on. Trim the opening. Swap a clip, or search millions of free ones. Turn music on and set how loud it sits under the voice.
Captions ship with the cut in six packs. Colour, weight, size and position move on all of them. No second tool is needed to put words on a screen.
- B-roll coverage capped by pace: 40 percent chill, 45 normal, 52 fast
- One take in, one finished 9:16 MP4 out, captions burned in
- 100 credits a batch, 20 credits per output minute
- Re-cutting a take you already batched costs only the export
What happens between the upload and the MP4
Four of these five steps belong to the machine. Yours is the middle one, and it is reading.
Upload
One take, 3 min ceiling
Transcribe
Word-level timing
Draft the cut
Slack out, b-roll placed
Direct it
Highlight, delete, re-pace
Export
9:16 MP4, 20 CR a minute
One take in, a batch of ads out, all of them wearing the same treatment
That is what the narrowness buys. A batch of ads from one take that look like one account made them. When one wins you can read what won.
Coverage is capped by pace. 40 percent on chill, 45 on normal, 52 on fast. Your face holds the frame for most of the ad, whatever the footage does around it.
Now the facts a buyer needs. You have to be on camera. Three minutes is the upload ceiling. Output is a 9:16 MP4.
When the draft gets a beat wrong there is no timeline to drop into. You move the highlight, change the pace, or swap the clip. Editors need about a day to stop reaching for a playhead.
The avatar module is the route around the camera. A photo you supply plus a voice-over becomes a lip-synced presenter. That is 320 credits a minute against 20 for cutting a take you filmed.
The gap between those two numbers is the product pointing at the path it was built for.
Twenty finished ads a month on Basic, and the fifth cut costs 20 credits
A one-minute ad here is about 120 credits. 100 for the batch, 20 for the export. Basic carries 2,500 credits a month for $39.99, so roughly twenty of them.
Every further cut of a take you already batched costs only the export. The fifth version of one read is 20 credits.
That price shape is the point. Testing a different opening stops being a budget conversation. It becomes an afternoon.
Submagic is the buy when your clips are already the right length and shape. It is also the buy for horizontal, for square, and for any source past three minutes.
Cutroom is the buy when the take needs work before a stranger sees it. Fat to remove. Footage to land on named phrases. A hook that currently starts eight seconds late.
Read their pricing at the source. A number quoted by a rival is a reason to check, never a reason to trust. That applies to this page too.
Submagic and Cutroom, row by row
Two rows go to Submagic, honestly. The other six are the ad itself, and that is where this is decided.
| Submagic | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| Source over three minutes | Long sources accepted | Three minute ceiling, enforced |
| Horizontal and square | Any shape you upload | 9:16 MP4 only |
| First cut drafted before you decide | You bring a finished clip | Slack out, pace set, b-roll placed |
| Decides which sentences survive | Your cut stays as filmed | Delete a line, cut rebuilds |
| B-roll on named phrases | Cutaways, not phrase-locked | Capped at 40, 45, 52 percent |
| Pace change re-cuts everything | Timing stays as recorded | One lever, whole edit re-times |
| Opening headline written for you | You write and place it | Drafted from your own read |
| Cost of the next version | Re-export the same clip | 20 credits per output minute |
Questions people ask
- Does Cutroom caption the ad, or do I still need a caption tool?
- Captions are part of the export. Six packs ship, and you can change style, colour, weight, size and position. You do not need a second tool to put words on screen.
- Can I run a Cutroom export through a caption tool afterwards?
- You can. It is a normal MP4. Almost nobody does, because captions are already burned in and you would stack two layers of type on one screen.
- What does one finished ad cost?
- A batch covers transcription, the director pass and the b-roll search at 100 credits. Export is 20 credits per output minute, so a one-minute ad is about 120. The trial is 7 days and 300 credits, no card.
- Is it right for every clip?
- It is built for a take you filmed to sell something. One speaker, vertical, under three minutes. If your clip is already the right length and only needs styling, Submagic does that job well.
Only one of these two deletes the sentence that should not be in the ad. Cutroom rebuilds the cut around the gap and burns the captions in on the way out.