Does trimming lose quality?

A little, because the kept part is re-encoded so the cut can start on the exact frame. At the default quality the difference is not visible on a phone clip; push the slider up for footage you care about, or down for a smaller file.

Can I cut out a section from the middle?

Not here: the trimmer keeps one stretch and drops both ends. To remove the middle, trim the two halves you want as two files and join them in the Video Editor, which cuts and joins on one timeline.

Why does the trimmer have no format or size options?

Because that is what makes it quick. It keeps the container, the size and the frame rate of the file you gave it, so the only choice is the quality. Every other setting lives in the Video Converter, which can trim as well.

Video Trimmer

Cut a video to the part you want and keep everything else as it was: same format, same size, same frame rate. Only the quality is yours to set. Nothing is uploaded.

Drop a video here

MP4, WebM, MOV, MKV, AVI, FLV, 3GP or WMV · up to 500 MB

About this tool

Cuts a video down to the part you want and saves it in the same format it came in. Drop the file, drag the two handles on the timeline to the first and last moment to keep, choose a quality, and save. There are no other settings: the container stays what it was, the size and frame rate stay what they were, and the only decision left is how much to compress. The whole job runs in your browser.

How to use it

1Drop in a video. It appears with a timeline under it.
2Drag the left handle to where the cut should start and the right handle to where it should end. The arrow keys nudge a handle by a tenth of a second, Shift by a second.
3Set the quality, then press Trim. The result appears beside the original with its size.

Good to know

Frame-accurate, because it re-encodes

A cut that copies the stream can only start on a keyframe, which in most phone footage is every two seconds or so, so the cut lands up to that far from where you asked. The trimmer re-encodes the kept part instead, with the converter's own settings for the container, so it starts on the exact frame you chose. The quality slider is the price of that: at the default it is hard to tell the cut from the original. The file is read into memory by your own browser and processed there, so it is never uploaded and never reaches a server.

The format stays the same

An MP4 comes out as MP4, a WebM as WebM, a MOV as MOV, and so on for MKV, AVI, FLV and 3GP, using the same codecs the Video Converter would pick for that container. M4V is MP4 by another name and is saved as MP4. A WMV, which this build cannot write, comes out as MP4 too. To change the format as well as the length, use the Video Converter, which has the same trim handles.

Files the browser cannot play

AVI, MKV, FLV and 3GP often play in FFmpeg but not in a browser, so there is no picture to scrub. The trimmer builds a small stand-in copy to scrub against; the cut itself always reads your original file at full quality.