This Tool Lets You Trim Videos Without Converting Them

Most video editing software works through re-encoding—essentially, uploading the file so it can be broken apart and stitched back together. This is necessary for advanced editing techniques but has some downsides. It's slow, for one thing, and the encoding process isn't lossless, meaning videos can look worse over time. This is a particularly vexing problem when all you want to do is cut a bit from the beginning or end of a file.

Lossless Cut is an open source application for Linux, Windows, and Mac that can trim videos without the need for encoding. The changes to the original file are basically instantaneous and totally lossless. It's a great tool if all you ever do when editing video is remove the bits at the start or end that you don't want. It's also potentially a great companion tool for traditional editing software, as it makes it easier to cut clips to size before importing.

To get started, open the application and drag a video file to the window—it will open immediately. Use the finger buttons, located to the left and right of the play button, to mark which parts of the video you'd like to remove from the beginning and the end. When you're ready press Export—you'll instantly have a shorter version of your video.

Credit: Justin Pot

There's also a button for rotating the video, and another for taking a screenshot. You can hit the Toggle advanced view button to see a few more options. My favorite is the ability to add both thumbnails and sound waves to the editing timeline, allowing you to be a little more precise with your cuts. The advanced view also lets you types times manually, instead of clicking.

There's more here to play with, but not much, which is kind of the point: This is a very simple tool by design. In my testing, most of the videos I messed with worked without a hitch, though the officially support formats include MP4, MOV, WebM, Matroska, OGG and WAV files. Audio codecs supported include FLAC, MP3, Opus, PCM, Vorbis, and AAC. Supported video codecs include H264, AV1, Theora, VP8, VP9, and H265.

LosslessCut is free if you download it from Github. Alternatively, you can buy it for $18.99 from the Mac App Store or for $19.99 from the Microsoft Store. Purchasing the app from the store supports the developer, though you can also donate directly if you'd rather not give a cut to Apple or Microsoft. Give it a try next time you're cutting your own videos back to just the good parts, or trimming downloaded YouTube videos to a friendlier size.

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