ChopShop documentation

The everyday audio + video editor for Mac. Open a clip, chop it, ship it. This page walks through every feature in the order you'd actually meet it: install, drop a clip, edit, export.

Installation

ChopShop comes two ways. The download from bendansby.com/apps/chopshop is a standard .dmg — open it and drag ChopShop.app to your Applications folder. The Mac App Store version installs and updates the usual way.

Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel. The direct-download build checks for updates on its own; you can also check anytime via ChopShop → Check for Updates….

Quick start

1. Open ChopShop. Either click Choose Files… or drag any media file from the Finder onto the window.
2. The video appears in the preview area at the top; the timeline shows the clip on its rails at the bottom — video on top, audio underneath.
3. Press Space to play, again to pause.
4. Move the playhead to where you want to cut and press ⌘K. The clip splits in two — drag the half you don't want off the timeline, or press ⌫ to delete it.
5. Press ⌘E to export. Pick a format, pick a location, done.

The .chop file

Your project saves as a .chop file. It's small — kilobytes — because it doesn't contain any of your media; it just remembers which files you imported, where they sit on the timeline, and how you trimmed them. You can move .chop files around, email them, keep them in any folder.

If you move one of the source clips out from under it, ChopShop will ask you to point to the new location the next time you open the project. See Missing media.

Layout

The window has two parts:

• Preview area at the top — your video plays here.
• Footer panel at the bottom — the play button, timecode, timeline, and Crop / Export buttons live here.

Hover the empty strip across the top of the window to see the document name; click it to drop a Finder-style path menu. Drag anywhere in the preview area to move the window around your screen.

View → Fit Window to Video (⌘⇧0) sizes the window so the video fills the preview area exactly — no black bars.

Audio + video tracks

The timeline has two rows: a video row on top (film-strip icon in the gutter on the left), an audio row underneath (waveform icon). A clip with both video and audio sits on both rows by default and moves as one.

Right-click a clip → Unlink Audio (or press ⌘⌥L) to separate the two halves so you can slide one without the other — useful for J and L cuts. Right-click again → Re-link Audio to reattach them.

Selecting clips

Click any clip to select it. ⇧-click extends the selection to a range; ⌘-click adds or removes single clips from the selection. You can mix-and-match across both rows in one selection.

Click an empty gap between clips to select the gap. With a gap selected, press ⌫ to collapse it — every later clip slides left to close the hole. The button in the footer flips between Delete Clip and Collapse Gap so you can tell what ⌫ will do.

Scrubbing and playback

Space plays and pauses. Drag the round playhead handle above the timeline to scrub by hand; playback pauses automatically while you drag.

The cyan LCD readout in the footer shows the current time and (for video projects) the current frame number.

The arrow keys move the playhead one frame at a time. Hold modifier keys to step farther or to slide the selected clip instead:

Trimming

Hover any clip — small chevrons appear at the left and right edges. Drag an edge to trim. While you drag, the preview shows the source video at the new in/out point so you can see exactly where you're landing.

A small bubble above the edge shows the new source time and the resulting timeline length, updating per frame. Release to commit. ⌘Z undoes.

You can also mark in/out from the playhead. With a clip selected, position the playhead and press I for Set In, O for Set Out.

Splitting

⌘K (or Clip → Split at Playhead) splits the clip under the playhead in two. When more than one clip overlaps the playhead, the split prefers your selected clip; without a selection, it splits the topmost clip.

Deleting and collapsing

⌫ deletes the selected clip. If multiple clips are selected, they all go in a single undo step. If a gap is selected instead, ⌫ collapses the gap — every later clip on both rows slides left to close it. The audio and video halves of any unlinked pairs stay aligned with each other through the slide.

Link / Unlink audio

A video clip with sound starts linked — the audio and video halves move together. ⌘⌥L toggles the link state:

• Linked. Drag, trim, or split affects both halves in lockstep.
• Unlinked. The two halves move independently. Use this for J cuts (audio leads the video by a beat) and L cuts (audio trails into the next shot).

Unlinked halves still share a colour and a link badge — click the badge on either to reattach them.

Retime

Select one or more clips and pick Clip → Retime…. The sheet offers three presets — half speed (0.5×), normal (1×), and double speed (2×) — plus a slider for any rate in between. The footer of the sheet shows how the timeline length will change so you can see how much room a retime gains or loses.

One Apply covers the whole selection in a single undo step. A clip's audio and video stay in sync even if you'd previously unlinked them.

Reverse

Select clips and pick Clip → Reverse. Reversing video is heavy work, so ChopShop quietly renders a reversed copy in the background while you keep editing. A spinning indicator in the clip body lets you know it's working; you can still scrub the forward version in the meantime. When the render finishes, playback flips to reversed.

Reversed copies are kept on hand, so toggling reverse off and back on is instant. If you save and reopen the project later, the reversed copy re-renders in the background and the result is the same.

Export

Press ⌘E to open the export sheet:

• Format. MP4 or MOV for video projects; M4A or WAV for audio-only.
• Filename. Defaults to the first clip's name with - chopped appended.
• Output. A short status line showing how many clips, the total duration, and whether the export will be lossless or re-encoded — see below.

Click Save…, pick a destination, and ChopShop runs the export. When it finishes, the Finder reveals the file. If something goes wrong, ChopShop tells you why instead of failing silently.

Crop on export

Click Crop… in the footer (or Edit → Crop…). The modal lets you trim pixels from each edge of the output, with a lock button that mirrors any one edge to all four for a uniform border.

The preview keeps showing the uncropped frame, with a translucent red overlay marking what will be trimmed — so you can see exactly what the export will keep.

Lossless vs re-encode

The status line below the timeline tells you which kind of export is queued up:

• Lossless ✓ — every clip shares the same format, no crop is set, and no clips overlap. ChopShop can stitch them together without re-encoding, so the export finishes in seconds and the picture is identical to the source.
• Re-encode — at least one of those conditions doesn't hold. ChopShop re-encodes the output once and tells you the reason in parentheses (crop, overlap, mixed formats, watermark, etc).

Copy current frame

Right-click the preview area → Copy Current Frame, or pick Edit → Copy Current Frame. Captures the current frame to the clipboard as a PNG — without the red crop overlay. Disabled when the playhead is over an audio-only section.

Missing media

If you open a project whose source files have been moved or deleted, the missing clips appear on the timeline as hatched warning bars labeled Missing: filename.mov. Click Locate… on the bar (or right-click → Locate File…) to pick the file from a Finder dialog.

The relinked clip keeps its trim, timeline position, link state, and playback rate. If the new file happens to be shorter than the old trim, the trim shrinks to fit.

Keyboard shortcuts

The single-letter shortcuts (I, O, ⌫, arrow keys, Space) pause themselves whenever a text field has focus — so typing in the Crop, Retime, or Export dialogs always types letters, not commands.

Languages

ChopShop is localized into English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Português (Brasil), Русский, and 简体中文. It picks the right language automatically based on your System Settings → General → Language & Region preferences.

To pin ChopShop to a specific language without changing system preferences, open System Settings → General → Language & Region → Applications, click the + button, and pick ChopShop.

License

The direct-download build comes with a 7-day free trial — every feature unlocked, no watermark, no reminders. After the trial:

• Every other export shows a quick license reminder.
• Video exports get a translucent "Cut with ChopShop" stamp across the centre of each frame.
• Audio-only exports get a brief spoken "Cut with ChopShop" tag mixed in every twenty seconds.

A one-time license unlocks unlimited clean exports. Buy a license via ChopShop → Buy License… in the menu bar; activate one via Enter License…. Activation needs the internet briefly, then works offline; ChopShop revalidates quietly in the background every so often so refunded or revoked keys stop working.

The Mac App Store version is paid through Apple's standard pipeline — buy it once, no separate license key, no trial.