Trim a video

How it works

1. Drop an MP4, M4V or MOV. One video at a time.
2. Type the second the clip should start at, and the second it should end at. Leaving the end at 0 keeps everything to the end of the video, which is what you want when you are only cutting an intro off.
3. Leave the resolution on Keep the original unless the cut also needs to be smaller — lowering it here saves a second pass through Compress video.
4. Press Trim video. Only the part you asked for is decoded and encoded, so cutting ten seconds out of an hour takes about as long as ten seconds of video, not an hour of it.
5. Download the MP4, named after the original with -cut added.

Frequently asked questions

Is my video uploaded?

No. It is read, cut and written in your browser, by the same encoder your phone records with. Nothing is sent to a server, which is the point when the clip is family footage or something recorded at work.

Does cutting lose quality?

The cut is re-encoded, at the bitrate the source was recorded at, so the difference is close to invisible — but it is not a byte-for-byte copy. That is not a shortcut we skipped: a video decoder can only start at a keyframe, and keyframes sit a second or two apart, so a cut that lands exactly on the second you typed has to be encoded again. The alternative every “lossless” cutter takes is to move your cut to the nearest keyframe, which is not where you pointed.

How do I find the right second?

Open the video in any player and read the time where you want the cut. Most players show tenths, and this takes them: 12.5 is halfway through the thirteenth second. If you are unsure, take a second more at each end — a slightly long clip is easy to cut again, a short one is not.

Which files does it take?

MP4, M4V and MOV, which covers phone recordings, screen recordings and most cameras. WebM and AVI are not read, because the part that takes the file apart understands MP4 only. Whether the video inside can be decoded is down to your browser: H.264 works everywhere, HEVC works in Safari and in Chrome on hardware that supports it.

What happens to the sound?

An AAC track — what a phone or camera records — is copied across sample by sample, never re-encoded, so it loses nothing and stays in step with the picture. A MOV carrying uncompressed PCM, which some camcorders and DSLRs write, cannot be copied that way; rather than drop it silently the tool says so and asks you to choose Remove the sound.

Can I cut several pieces out of one video?

Run it once per piece: set the first start and end, download, then change the numbers and run again. Joining the pieces back together is not something this does.

Which browsers can do this?

Chrome and Edge, Safari 16.4 and newer, Firefox 130 and newer. An older browser is told plainly when you press the button rather than failing at the end.

What are the free limits?

One video a run at 150 MB, and 10 runs a day. Pro removes both; nothing is watermarked either way.