Trim a video
Cut a section out by time. Fast mode finishes in seconds because nothing is re-encoded.
Your file
Drop a file here, or click to choose
It stays on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Settings
Fast or exact?
Fast copies the existing video stream instead of re-encoding it. It finishes almost instantly and loses nothing, but it can only cut on a keyframe, so the real start can land up to a few seconds before the time you typed.
Exact re-encodes the section, so the cut lands on the exact frame you asked for. It takes as long as any other encode and loses a small amount of quality, the same as any re-encode does.
Use fast for chopping a long recording into rough sections. Use exact when the first frame matters, like a clip for social media.
Time format
Type 1:30 for ninety seconds, or 0:01:30.5 for hours, minutes, seconds and a fraction. Leave the end time blank to run to the end of the file.
Why fast mode cannot cut where you asked
Video is not stored as a series of complete pictures. Every few seconds there is a keyframe, a full image, and everything between is stored only as the differences from what came before. Those in-between frames are meaningless on their own; they need the keyframe to be reconstructed. So a cut that copies the stream without decoding it has to begin at a keyframe, because starting anywhere else would produce a file whose first second is unreconstructable garbage.
That is why fast mode moves your start time backwards to the nearest keyframe, and why the gap can be anything from nothing to several seconds depending on how the file was encoded. It is not imprecision in the tool; it is the only place the file can legally be opened. In exchange the video is copied byte for byte, so it finishes almost instantly and loses nothing at all.
Choosing between them
- Fast for breaking a long recording into rough sections, pulling a chapter out of a lecture, or anything where a second or two either side does not matter. It is instant and lossless.
- Exact when the first frame matters: a clip for social media, a cut that has to land on a beat or a word, anything going into an edit. It re-encodes, so it takes real time and costs one generation of quality.
A practical middle route on a long file is to use fast mode to get roughly the right section out, then run exact mode on that much shorter piece. You get frame accuracy without re-encoding an hour of footage to obtain thirty seconds.
Trim, cut and the difference
This keeps one continuous section and discards everything outside it. To remove something from the middle and join what remains, cut video is built for that and handles the rejoin. For several pieces, or for anything where you want to see what you are doing, the editor puts the clip on a timeline with a preview and cuts on the playhead.
Trimming first is also the cheapest optimisation available for every other tool here. Encoding is charged by the second, so getting the file down to the part you need before compressing, converting or captioning saves proportionally on all of them.
Common questions
Why does the fast cut start early?
Compressed video only has full pictures every few seconds; the frames in between are stored as differences. Without re-encoding, the cut has to start at one of those full frames.
Can I cut out the middle and join the ends?
Not in one pass here. Trim each side separately, then run both pieces through the merge tool.
Does trimming lose quality?
Fast mode loses nothing at all, it copies the original bytes. Exact mode re-encodes, so it loses a little.