How to Trim a Video Online (Cut the Start and End)

To trim a video, decide where the part you want starts and ends, enter those two times, and save just that section as a new file. Our trim video tool cuts exactly at the times you enter, to a tenth of a second, and gives you an MP4. It's free whenever the part you keep is 30 seconds or less, even from a much longer video.

When you need to trim

• Cut the fumbling start where you're pressing record, and the end where you reach for the phone.
• Pull one moment from a long recording: a goal, a speech, a first step, a funny reaction.
• Fit a time limit for a story, a status update or a short-video post.
• Make it small enough to send: a shorter clip is a smaller file.
• Prepare a clip for a GIF, a transcript or subtitles.

Step 1: Find your times

The tool works from times you type in, so first note where your clip should start and end:

1. Play the video in any player: Photos on your phone, the Windows Media Player or Photos app, QuickTime on a Mac, or VLC.
2. Pause where the clip should start and note the time, for example 1:24.
3. Pause where it should end and note that time, for example 1:52.
4. Convert the times to seconds: minutes × 60 + seconds. So 1:24 is 84 seconds and 1:52 is 112 seconds.

A quick reference:

Time in the player	Seconds to enter
0:45	45
1:30	90
2:15.5	135.5
10:00	600
25:40	1540

Give yourself half a second of space either side, so a word or movement isn't clipped.

Step 2: Trim

1. Open trim video and choose your video.
2. Enter Start at in seconds (for example 84). It starts at 0, meaning the very beginning.
3. Enter End at in seconds (for example 112). It starts at 10, so always change it, and it must be after the start. If you enter a time past the end of the video, the clip simply runs to the end.
4. Under Choose a file, pick your video: MP4, MOV, WEBM, and MKV in Chrome or Edge, up to 1 GB and 30 minutes long. Your browser has to read the video's length first, which it usually can't do for AVI files or WEBM videos recorded in a browser (the tool says "We couldn't read that file"), so convert those to MP4 on your computer first.
5. Press Start and wait while it trims.
6. Press Download result to save your MP4. It's kept for 1 hour.

Both boxes take decimals, so you can cut at 84.5 seconds when a tenth of a second matters.

Cuts are exact

Many quick trimmers snap the cut to the nearest "keyframe", which can be a second or more away from where you asked. Trim video re-encodes the part you keep, so the clip starts and ends exactly at your times. The result is a high-quality MP4; videos larger than 1080p, such as 4K, are scaled down to 1080p.

Free limit

Only the part you keep counts. Trim video is free when the trimmed clip is 30 seconds or less, from a video of any length up to the tool's limits, with no daily limit. So cutting a 25-second highlight out of a 20-minute recording is free.

With Pro, you can keep longer sections. See Pro.

What to do with the clip

• Make it smaller for WhatsApp or email with the video compressor. See how to compress a video for WhatsApp and email.
• Turn a moment into a GIF with video to GIF, which has its own start and length settings, up to 15 seconds. See how to make a GIF from a video.
• Keep only the sound with video to MP3.
• Add captions with the subtitle generator.

Cutting the middle out

Trim video keeps one continuous section. To remove a part from the middle, for example an interruption, make two trims (before and after the interruption) and join them with merge videos (free for up to 3 clips totalling 30 seconds), a phone gallery app or a free desktop editor.

Your files and privacy

Trimming runs on our servers, so your video is uploaded. It's deleted as soon as it's trimmed, and your clip is available to download for 1 hour, then deleted too. With Pro, your files and results are kept in My files until you delete them.

Trim your video

Note your start and end times in seconds, then cut the clip with trim video. Clips with 30 seconds or less kept are free.