You filmed a clip and the first few seconds are you fumbling with the phone. The last few are the walk back to your seat. All you need is the good part in the middle, and you need it now.
This page lets you trim a video online in a few clicks. You drag two handles to mark where the clip should begin and end, press Trim, and save one new MP4. To take parts out of the middle instead, choose Remove parts. The video never leaves your device, because the work happens inside your browser tab.
Below you will find the exact steps, how to set the start and end to the frame, when the quality stays the same, and the questions people ask most.
How to trim a video online in three steps
You do not need an account, an app or a plugin. Everything you need is in this video trimmer above the article. Here is the short version.
- Press Select video, or drop your file anywhere on the page. The video opens with a preview and a timeline under it.
- Drag the two red handles to the part you want to keep. You can also drag the band between them to slide the whole selection along the timeline.
- Press Trim. After a short wait you get one new MP4 that holds only the part between the handles. Save it to your device.
If you have no video to hand, use the link that offers a sample clip. It lets you try the handles and the keyboard keys before you load your own file.
Set the start and end exactly
For one exact moment, use the fields or the keys below: move a handle and its field updates, type a time and the handle moves.
The Start and End fields
Each field shows a time as minutes, seconds and hundredths, and you can type over it. Press Enter or click away to apply the new time. Press Esc to put the old one back. Small arrow buttons beside each field step one frame at a time, so you can nudge a handle until the picture looks right.
Next to each field is a Playhead button. Scrub the preview to the frame you like, press Playhead beside Start or End, and that handle jumps to it. This is the fastest way to trim video to a spoken word or a visible action.
Keyboard shortcuts
- Space plays and pauses the preview.
- The left and right arrow keys move one frame. Hold Shift to move one second.
- I sets the start at the playhead, and O sets the end at the playhead.
The preview starts playing at your Start point and pauses at your End point, so a press of Space shows you exactly what the finished clip will look like. The shortest clip you can keep is 0.2 seconds, and the handles will not cross each other.
What the panel shows you
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Start | Where the new clip begins. Everything before it is dropped. |
| End | Where the new clip ends. Everything after it is dropped. |
| Playhead | Copies the current preview position into Start or End. |
| Keeping | The length of the clip you will get. |
| Dropping | The total length of the start and end that will be removed. |
Trim video without losing quality
Many online tools decode the whole file and encode it again. That takes a long time, and every re-encode throws away a little detail. This video trimmer avoids it for most of the video when it can.
When you trim an MP4 with H.264 video inside, only the frames right at your start and your end are re-encoded. Everything between them is copied as it is. That is why the cut lands exactly where you put it, and why the picture in the middle is the same as in your original. This copy needs H.264 video in a file that can be read quickly. Other codecs, such as HEVC or VP9, and any file that cannot be read quickly are re-encoded in full: the cut is still exact, but the original compression is not kept.
| Part of the video | What happens |
|---|---|
| Before Start and after End | Dropped. Not in the new file. |
| The few frames at each edge | Re-encoded, so the clip begins and ends on the frame you chose. |
| Everything in between | Copied as it is, with no new compression. |
Your result is an MP4. It is named after your original, with _trimmed added, so a file called holiday.mov comes back as holiday_trimmed.mp4 and never overwrites anything.
Cut video: remove parts from the middle
Trim keeps one stretch and drops the outside. When the part you want gone is in the middle, such as a slip of the tongue, a dead pause or an ad break, choose Remove parts at the top of the panel. It is the video cutter on this page, and the same video stays loaded.
- Move the playhead to where the part starts and press "Add a cut at the playhead", or double-click the timeline there.
- Drag the red band's edges over the part you want gone. Add as many as you need; the list beside the preview shows each one with its times.
- Press Cut. What is left is joined into one MP4, frame exact, with no jump or repeated frame at the join.
While "Also save the parts taken out" is on, which it is at the start, each removed part also comes out as its own file, so nothing is lost if you cut the wrong thing. If you want several separate files from one long video, use Split video. If the result is still too large to send, run it through Compress video.
Formats, file size and privacy
You can trim or cut MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV, M4V, AVI, WMV, TS, FLV and MPG files. Most videos have no size limit. Some files, such as certain AVI or WMV videos, take longer and can be up to 2 GB, and the note under the Trim button tells you when your file is one of them.
Whether you trim or cut a video online here, it is read from your disk and processed in this browser tab, and the server does no video work at all (see the privacy page). The tool works in current versions of Chrome, Edge and Firefox. It is free, with no account and no watermark, and video tools do not count towards the free daily limit for document conversions. See every video tool if you need something else.
Trim or cut your video now
To trim a video online, load the file, drag the two handles (or type the times), check the Keeping line, and press Trim. To use the page as a video cutter, choose Remove parts and press Cut. You get a frame exact MP4, and the file never leaves your device.
Scroll back up to the tool, press Select video, and trim your clip. If the clip was filmed the wrong way round, flip the video left to right or fix an upside down video on its own page.
