Browser-based video editor & motion design studio.
Meet AtomCut. A canvas for the design, a timeline for the edit, and room to make both your own.
in your browser.
An illustrated guide to the studio. Created by CodeIdeal. Product details link to AtomCut’s official documentation.
What is AtomCut?
AtomCut is a browser-based video editor and motion design studio. It brings a design canvas and a multitrack timeline into the same workspace, so you can draw a title, animate it, place it over footage, and mix the sound without moving the project between apps.
Open the web editor to work with locally saved projects, or use the desktop app on macOS, Windows, or Linux. Its frame modes cover timeline animation, hand-drawn flipbooks, and static layouts. A frame can become a video composition, a poster, or part of a larger scene.
That makes the tool worth exploring for short videos, animated explainers, title sequences, and product motion. The right starting point is a small project with a clear output, then a closer look at the tools that project needs.
A browser video editor with real tracks.
Footage, graphics, and sound sit on unified tracks. Move a clip to change its timing, trim its edges, or roll the join between two clips. Snapping helps align edits with the playhead, markers, and nearby clips.
Nested compositions let you build an animated section once and place it inside another edit. Double-click to work inside the nested scene, then return to the parent timeline. This is useful for a recurring lower third or an intro that appears in several versions.
Audio waveforms make it easier to see where speech begins and where a cut might land. Gain, fades, EQ, and pitch controls belong to the clip, keeping sound adjustments close to the edit.
Motion design you can tune.
Keyframes control how a property changes over time. In AtomCut, that includes transforms, colors, gradients, effects, and geometry. Record mode can create keys as you edit; the curve editor shapes how a movement speeds up or slows down.
A straight interpolation moves evenly. An eased move can leave quickly and settle gently. Scrub this illustration to see the difference before working with those controls in the studio.
Typography has its own timing. Text can enter by letter, word, or line, with control over duration and stagger. A title can reveal word by word while its whole layer moves into position. Per-unit sounds can give a typewriter effect its rhythm.
For interface motion, a short title sequence, or an explainer, these controls make individual decisions editable. Adjust a word’s entrance or a curve instead of rebuilding a finished video.
Go beyond a flat composition.
AtomCut also has 3D worlds, character tools, and physics. These extend the same composition model rather than requiring a separate project.
3D worlds, cameras, and solid layers
A 3D world holds meshes, lights, and cameras. Text and other 2D layers can stand in space; thickness and bevels can turn a flat design into an object. Material and modifier stacks change its surface and shape. A world can then sit inside a flat composition as a nested scene.
For a product title or a dimensional logo treatment, this offers a route from an existing layout into depth. Complex scenes still need deliberate lighting, camera placement, and a check of the final render.
Explore 3D worlds ↗Characters, rigging, and lip sync
Character workflows include bones, inverse kinematics, pose changes, and behaviors such as blinks and lip sync. Those controls support reusable mascots and speaking characters. Mouth and pose timing remain part of the editable project, so a performance can be adjusted rather than treated as a single flattened clip.
See the character feature overview ↗Physics that follows the shape
Layers can fall, collide, or hang from joints. Colliders can follow a shape’s outline, including the edges of a sticker or the letters in a word. Bounce, friction, and mass change how a body reacts; pins, ropes, and springs connect it to other objects.
Use that for a hanging sign, falling type, or a group of stickers. AtomCut’s documentation describes frame-exact simulation, allowing the same motion to be scrubbed, looped, and exported without a separate baking step.
Read the physics guide ↗Finish the sound and the picture.
Audio clips have gain envelopes, fades, a parametric equalizer, and pitch controls. Video clips expose the same tools for their embedded sound. Keeping pitch stable while retiming a clip is a separate choice from changing pitch for an effect.
The Color page organizes a grade as connected nodes. Corrections can use color selections and shaped windows; scopes help you judge the result. This makes it possible to isolate a region, correct it, and build a reusable look with a visible structure.
Start with levels and readability before adding effects. A title should remain readable against every background it crosses, and speech should stay clear under the music.
An AI assistant inside the working project.
AtomCut’s Agents panel can build designs, animate layers, edit footage, and help with captions or a grade. It works through the application’s command API, creating editable project elements. A request can be undone as one step.
You choose the connected model and media providers. External agents can also work through MCP. This is useful when you want an assistant to make an initial layout, repeat a structured edit, or generate a starting point you can refine in the canvas.
Give it a concrete brief: the composition size, duration, text, timing, and desired output. Then inspect the result. An assistant’s ability to create keyframes does not make every timing decision good.
AI capabilities are part of Pro, and provider usage is billed separately where applicable. A local model is another connection option.
Choose the export for the job.
AtomCut supports rendered video and image output as well as vector-oriented formats. The right choice depends on where the work needs to play.
| Output | Use it for | Check before delivery |
|---|---|---|
| MP4 / WebM | Edited videos and motion sequences | Browser codec support, resolution, and sound |
| GIF | Short repeating previews | File size and limited color |
| PNG sequence | Individual rendered frames | Frame rate and sequence length |
| SVG / Lottie | Vector artwork and supported animation | The fidelity report; unsupported effects may not translate |
| Posters, layouts, or several frames as pages | Whether each page exports as vectors or an image |
For Lottie, read the fidelity report rather than assuming that every effect can become a web animation. For video, test the actual export in the browser and device you plan to use.
What’s free, and what needs Pro?
The free studio includes the editing tools, effects, and panels, with locally saved projects and no watermark. The published plan comparison limits free video exports to 720p.
Pro adds full-resolution exports, transparent and per-layer exports, AI agents, AI media generation, and auto-captions. Its model connections use your chosen providers; their usage charges are separate from the AtomCut license.
Start with the free editor to check the workflow. Before a paid export or AI session, review the current plan page for the exact limits and terms.
Latest release checked: v4.17.0.
The latest public GitHub release checked for this guide is v4.17.0, published October 24, 2026. It adds justified text, including paragraph alignment behavior for Persian and Arabic, and lets agents clean up unused media while avoiding duplicate imports of the same file.
The release also fixes Y-scale animation on layers that previously only had uniform scale. That matters for motions such as mask wipes and animated bars.
These are release-specific notes. The installed application and web editor may update after this article’s review date.
Make one small thing first.
- Choose an output. A five-second title, a short captioned clip, or a simple loop is enough.
- Build one composition. Set its size and duration, add your footage or artwork, and keep the layer list short.
- Make one movement readable. Add a few keys, adjust the easing, and scrub the result at different speeds.
- Export a test. Watch it outside the editor before adding more complexity.
The studio also supports touch layouts and on-screen modifier controls. A tablet offers more room for precision work; a phone can still reach the canvas, timeline, and inspector.
Try the browser editor.
Start a composition and see how the canvas and timeline fit your work.
Open AtomCut ↗Keep the documentation nearby ↗Under the hood: layers, time, and the agent connection.
A document contains compositions and layers. A composition gives a scene its size and clock; groups and nested frames organize smaller scenes inside it. Layer order, active time ranges, keys, and effects determine the picture at a particular moment.
Components let several instances share a source. Editing that source updates the instances; detaching creates a separate version. Flipbook mode uses drawings and held cells for frame-by-frame work.
The project contains pages, compositions, media references, and reusable definitions.
Through MCP, an external agent discovers editor commands, reads their schemas, and works on the open document. It can inspect layers, change properties, and request rendered frames. The result is editable project state, with request-level undo, rather than a flattened response pasted into the timeline.
Components ↗ · Flipbooks ↗ · The MCP connection ↗
Follow the model connection and MCP setup guide →
More of the studio to explore
The feature set also covers vector drawing and brushes, icons, masks and track mattes, motion tracking and depth, expressions, modulators, scripts, adjustment layers, and reusable components. Use the feature list as an index and follow the documentation for the tools your project needs.
Explore AtomCut’s complete feature list ↗A few useful answers.
Can I edit video in AtomCut without installing anything?
Yes. The web studio runs in a browser. Desktop versions are also available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Can it make motion graphics as well as edit footage?
Yes. Vector design, text animation, keyframes, nested scenes, and effects share a workspace with video and audio tracks.
Does it work on a phone or tablet?
The interface adapts to touch and smaller screens, with on-screen modifier controls. How comfortable a complex project feels will depend on screen size and device performance.
Product information reviewed October 26, 2026 against AtomCut’s official documentation, plan comparison, and GitHub release record. The interactive illustration on this page is a teaching example, not an embedded AtomCut project.