Your footage never leaves the room.

What never leaves your machine

Your footage. Your audio. Your Resolve projects and timelines. The speaker detection that decides where the cuts go. None of it is uploaded, queued, copied or processed anywhere but the computer in front of you.

This is a property of how PodoCut is built, not a policy we could quietly change: the analysis engine runs locally, and there is no upload path in the software. It means an unreleased episode, an embargoed interview or anything under NDA never has to go anywhere.

When PodoCut does use the network

Five times, and none of them involve your footage:

• Signing in. Once per machine, when you first open the panel — and again after you sign out, after a password reset, if the licence on that machine is withdrawn, or if the machine has gone about a month without reaching us.
• Starting an edit. PodoCut checks with our server that your licence is still active before it begins, and refuses to start if it cannot reach us — this is why an edit needs a connection. It sends a token for this machine and the machine identifier, and nothing about the project you are editing.
• Keeping your licence current. About once a fortnight, when the panel opens, PodoCut refreshes its stored licence with our server in the background. It sends the same machine identifiers and nothing else.
• Looking for updates. When the panel opens, it checks whether a newer version has been published and downloads it if so.
• Signing out. When you choose Sign out, PodoCut tells our server to free that computer’s place on your account. It sends the same token and machine identifier as above. The computer is signed out on your side whether or not the request gets through.

The component that actually reads your audio and decides where the cuts go makes no network requests at all.

What we do hold

Only what is needed to sell you a licence and to keep it working:

• Your email address. To identify your account, to send you the licence, to confirm the address really is yours, to tell you when something about your account changes, and to answer you when you write to us.
• Your name, if you create an account on the website. We ask for it when you sign up. It appears on your account page, and we see it when we look your account up to help you. Nothing else uses it.
• Whether you have confirmed your address, and when. The confirmation link itself is kept only as a one-way hash, the same as a password-reset link.
• Your password, hashed. We store a one-way hash, never the password itself. We cannot read it and cannot tell you what it is — only reset it.
• Google’s identifier for your Google account, if you sign in with Google. When you do, Google tells us your name, your email address and the identifier it uses for your account, and that is all we keep from it. We never see your Google password, and signing in this way gives us no access to your Google account. We keep the identifier so that the same Google account always signs in to the same PodoCut account.
• Your licence status and the order reference from the payment, so we know the licence is paid for.
• For each purchase: the amount, the country PayPal reports for the payment (or the one you chose on the card form), and when you ticked the box agreeing to the Licence Agreement, with which version of the agreement that was. Sales tax depends on the buyer’s country, and the agreement is the record of the terms you accepted.
• Your signed-in machines. For each one: an identifier for the computer itself — PodoCut takes the machine ID your operating system already assigns and stores only a one-way hash of it, so the same computer is recognised again even after you reinstall, and the original never leaves your machine. Alongside it, the name your computer already gives itself, which PodoCut reads rather than asks you for — if that name has your own name in it, that is what we hold — which version of PodoCut it runs, and when it was first and last seen. This is what enforces two machines.
• Rate-limiting records. The email address used and the IP address it came from, for sign-ups, sign-ins, confirmation re-sends, password-reset requests and checkout attempts, so that nobody can hammer those or guess at your password indefinitely.
• A request to sign the panel in through your browser. When you press Sign in with Google in the PodoCut panel, your browser opens a page on this site and you approve the computer there. While that is going on we hold the request: the computer’s name and its identifier, the version of PodoCut it runs, the IP address the panel asked from, and, once you answer, which account answered. A request can be answered for ten minutes. It is deleted as soon as the panel has collected your answer, and one the panel never comes back for is deleted within about twenty minutes.
• A record of attempts to get into our administration area. If somebody tries to sign in as one of PodoCut’s own administrator accounts, or to reset its password, or calls the administration part of this service, we record the attempt: the account used, the time, the IP address, the country it came from, the browser, what was asked for and whether it was let in. This is a security record. Signing in to your own account is not recorded this way. We keep it for 180 days.
• A record of the emails we send you. Which email it was, the address it went to, when, and whether it was delivered, along with the few details it mentions — your order reference, or the name of a computer that signed in. It is there so that a licence email that fails to send is tried again rather than lost, and so we can tell you whether one went out. Links that let someone into your account are not part of it.

That is the whole list. No analytics, no tracking, no profile, no advertising identifiers, and nothing about what you edit or how often you use it.

What the website does

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics. There is nothing to consent to, which is why you have not been asked. Fonts are served from this domain rather than from a third-party CDN, so loading an ordinary page does not hand your IP address to anyone else.

Two kinds of page are the exception. The checkout page loads PayPal’s payment form from paypal.com, so PayPal sees your IP address there, as it would on any page that takes a PayPal payment. The sign-in and create-account pages load Google’s sign-in button from google.com, so Google sees your IP address there, whether or not you press it.

Who else is involved

Five companies are involved, each only for what is listed here:

• PayPal takes the payment. Your card details go to PayPal and never to us — we never see or store a card number. PayPal tells us that an order was paid.
• Cloudflare hosts the licence server and its database, and also serves this website — so it sees the IP address of anyone loading a page here, including this one.
• Resend sends the email PodoCut sends you: your licence, the link that confirms your address, password resets, and notices about your account, such as a new computer signing in or a password change. It sees each message and the address it goes to.
• Google hosts the mailbox behind support@podocut.com. Anything you write to us passes through it and stays there while we are helping you. We will delete a conversation if you ask. Google also signs you in, but only if you choose Sign in with Google: it confirms to us who you are, and so it knows that you signed in to PodoCut and when. Sign in with your email and password instead and Google takes no part in signing you in.
• GitHub hosts the update files. PodoCut asks GitHub for the current version each time it opens, so GitHub sees that request. It is not made on our behalf. The request carries a random identifier for this installation, the operating system and PodoCut version you are running, and, once you are signed in, your licence identifier — never your email, your password, or anything about your footage.

We do not sell your data, share it for advertising, or pass it to anyone else.

How long we keep it

Your account for as long as you have a licence, because the licence has to keep working. Machine records for as long as the account does: signing out frees that computer’s place and clears the licence from it, but the record of the machine stays with us, so write to us if you want one removed. If you ask us to delete your account we will, and the licence stops working at that point.

The shorter-lived records go by themselves. Rate-limiting records after a day. A request to sign the panel in through your browser when the panel has collected your answer, or within about twenty minutes if it never does. Password-reset and confirmation links a week after they have been used or have expired. The record of an email we sent you after a month, or three months if it could not be delivered. The record of attempts to get into our administration area after 180 days.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to support@podocut.com from the address on the account and we will do it — there is no form and no process to go through.

If you are in the UK or the EU, you also have the right to complain to your data protection authority.

Security

Passwords are hashed. Traffic between PodoCut and the licence server is encrypted. Sign-in tokens, password-reset links and confirmation links are stored as hashes, so a copy of the database does not let anyone sign in as you.

Changes

If this notice changes, the date at the side of this page changes with it. If a change materially affects what we collect, we will email account holders rather than quietly editing the page.

Getting in touch

support@podocut.com. A person reads it.