The problems people hit most, and what to do about each one. If yours is not here, mail contact@snitt.ai.
Import
A file is rejected as unreadable
You see a red row saying the file is badly damaged, with the details of what Snitt found in it.
Snitt checks the whole video rather than sampling it. A file with that much of its picture missing would pass the damage on to everything after it — the sync, the cut, the render.
The fix: get a clean copy. Re-export it from wherever it came from, or download it again. A file that opens in QuickTime is not proof it is intact: the container header can be perfect while the frames inside are not. Snitt cannot repair the file and this check cannot be overridden — remove it to start.
A file imports with a warning instead
The row carries a note saying Snitt found minor problems and is carrying on anyway.
That file is usable. Older re-encodes often produce harmless decoder complaints, and small losses do not change the edit. Click Use anyway on the row and carry on. If the damage was big enough to matter, the note says so instead, and Snitt leans on other evidence rather than trusting that file.
“No audio — will sync by order only” on an A-roll clip
That clip has no audio track. Snitt cannot transcribe it, so it cannot cut it: the clip will appear in your timeline untouched.
The fix: check you dropped the file you meant to, and that the camera was actually recording sound. If the clip is silent on purpose, click Use anyway and it rides through untouched.
The Start button is greyed out
The line beside it says why. It is always one of four things: files are still being checked, an unreadable file has to be removed, a warned file needs a decision (Use anyway or the ✕), or there is no usable A-roll yet. Clear it and Start turns on.
See Starting a project for the whole flow.
External audio
Your external recording did not sync
Snitt lines the external recording up against each clip’s camera audio by matching the shape of the two. When it cannot find a confident match, it refuses rather than sliding your audio a second out of place, and the clip falls back to camera audio.
Check these, in this order:
- The recording covers the whole shoot. A file that starts after the camera did has nothing to match against for those clips.
- Both tracks heard the same room. A line-in music bed, a heavily noise-gated track or a clip whose camera mic was muted have no common shape to align on.
- There is one external file for the project, not several.
- The clip itself is not silent (see above).
How to tell it worked: open review and play. A small waveform icon in the transport bar means you are hearing the synced external mic. No icon means camera audio.
Final Cut
Final Cut cannot find the media
The exported file points at your footage where it was when you imported it. If you moved, renamed, or unplugged a drive since then, the link breaks.
The fix: put the files back where they were and export again. Or use Final Cut’s own relink and point it at the new location once.
To avoid it: leave source files where they are until the edit is finished. Snitt never copies or moves your footage, so the export expects them where they were at import.
Clips play with an echo
You are hearing camera audio under the synced external track. On a normal export that does not happen — the camera audio on synced clips is muted for you. It does happen on a cut you restored by hand, because restorable clips keep their own camera sound so a restore brings picture and audio back together. Mute or delete the camera lane on that clip.
If it is happening across the whole timeline, you are running an old build — see Updates below. More detail in Exporting to Final Cut Pro.
Jobs
A job is paused
A paused project shows a Resume button on its card, and a note saying Snitt stopped partway through and nothing you have done is lost.
When a step cannot finish — something is down, a request keeps failing — Snitt stops instead of finishing the job with worse work in it.
The fix: click Resume. The job picks up exactly where it stopped and everything already done is kept. Ingesting a published video pauses and resumes the same way, from its row in the profile.
If it pauses again straight away, something is wrong on our side rather than with your footage. Mail contact@snitt.ai with the project name.
Your minutes are safe either way: a paused job still holds its minutes and only settles on what it really used once it finishes.
“Not enough minutes”
The run needed more than you had. Snitt says both numbers. Nothing was uploaded and nothing was charged, and the project is back in draft.
If you need more during the beta, write to us. See Account and minutes.
You are told to wait for another job
There is a limit on how many jobs one account runs at once. Nothing is wrong with the file or the account. Let a running job finish and start this one again.
Updates
The app will not update itself
Try Snitt → Check for Updates… first, or the button in Settings → General.
If the update still will not install, download the current DMG from snitt.ai/download and drag the new app over the old one. It is always the latest release, and installing over the top keeps your projects, profiles and sign-in.
If the update switch is greyed out with “Updates are off in this build”, that copy is not a released build and cannot verify a download. Get one from the download page.
See Install and updates.
Network
“The secure connection to Snitt could not be verified”
The full message ends with: something on this Mac or network is intercepting traffic — a proxy, a VPN, or security software. Turn it off for Snitt and try again.
This is not a connection failure, and retrying will not help. Snitt checks that it is really talking to Snitt’s own server before it sends anything. Some tools — corporate proxies, “web protection” in antivirus suites, certain VPNs — work by opening every connection on your machine and re-sealing it as their own. That is what the check catches, so Snitt stops.
The fix: turn the interception off, add an exception for Snitt, or use a different network. Your browser will not complain about the same setup, so a working browser is not evidence the network is clean. If none of that applies to your machine, mail contact@snitt.ai.
“Couldn’t reach Snitt” or “Something went wrong on our side”
The first means the request never got out — check the connection and try again. The second means we got it and we are the problem; wait a moment and retry. Neither loses work: an interrupted job keeps everything it had already finished.
Getting help
Mail contact@snitt.ai. It helps if you say:
- what you were doing when it happened,
- the project or profile name,
- the exact message on screen, word for word,
- and your Snitt version, from Snitt → About Snitt.
You do not need to send your footage.