Extract text from Prelude rough cuts (ARCUT)
To convert ARCUT Rough cuts to another format, you need Adobe Prelude or other Video software.
To convert other file formats to the "Rough Cut Video Project" file type, you need software like Adobe Prelude or a similar tool.
The .arcut file extension represents a Prelude Rough Cut File, a proprietary format originally developed by Adobe Systems. These files are primarily used in professional video production workflows to store initial timelines, subclips, metadata markers, and voice-overs logged before final editing. They were natively created by Adobe Prelude.
The major disadvantage of the .arcut format is that it is heavily proprietary and completely tied to the Adobe ecosystem. Furthermore, it is a "living project" file - meaning it contains absolutely no video data itself, only text-based metadata and file paths pointing to the heavy video files stored locally on your hard drive. Because Adobe has officially discontinued Prelude, these files are increasingly viewed as legacy formats, forcing users to migrate their workflows.
Users typically need to convert this file to share their timeline with clients or other editors. For actual playback, the timeline must be rendered into a standard video format like MP4 or MOV, which bakes the referenced clips into a single viewable file. If you are migrating to a non-Adobe editor like Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve, exporting the timeline to a standard XML is the best target, though some proprietary marker types may be lost in translation.
Because an .arcut file contains only references and no actual media, standard online converters universally fail to process it into a video format. Often, only the original software or Adobe Premiere Pro can properly read or export the data by linking it to your local video assets. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ARCUT file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert ARCUT file to , you can use Adobe Prelude or similar software from the "Video Editing Project File" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to ARCUT, try Adobe Prelude or another comparable tool in the "Video Editing Project File" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our ARCUT converter.