Trim Video

Setting the cut points

Play the preview and note the times where the part you want begins and ends, then add a few tenths of a second at each end. Seeking lands on the nearest frame the decoder can produce, and a small margin means the first word or movement is not clipped. The start and end fields take tenths of a second, such as 12.3. To keep two separate moments, run the tool once for each; joining them back together needs a video editor.

Why the file may not shrink

The trimmed clip is written at a fixed high bitrate for its resolution, about 9 Mbps for 1080p, regardless of how the original was encoded. A phone video recorded with a more efficient codec can therefore come out larger per minute than it went in. If size matters, trim first and then compress the result, rather than the other way round; each pass re-encodes, and cutting first means the compressor has less to do.

How to use it

1. Choose a video file.
2. Set the start and end seconds.
3. Trim and download the clip.

Privacy & limitations

The video is read straight from your device and never uploaded. Everything — decoding, resizing, and encoding — happens in this browser tab, so large files are limited by your own memory rather than an upload queue. Encoding runs at playback speed because the browser records the video as it plays, so a two-minute clip takes about two minutes and the tab must stay in front. The trimmed clip is re-encoded rather than copied, so it is not bit-identical to the source.