Trim Video Online: Cut the Beginning, End or Middle

Find the first and last frames you want to keep

Import your source, play it and pause near the unwanted opening or ending. Look for a complete start to the action: the beginning of a word, the moment a subject enters or the point before a useful gesture. Starting on a visually clean frame is not enough if the audio begins halfway through a sentence.

Keep a copy of the original. The project records edit instructions and source ranges, so changing a clip does not replace the source file. You can undo a trim and try a different boundary before exporting. Review with a little context on both sides rather than judging only the still frame at the cut.

Shorten a clip’s beginning or ending

Select the clip you want to shorten on the timeline. Set its start and end to the source range you want to keep, using the clip trim controls. The source range and project time are different concepts: after several clips are joined, a moment at 00:10 in a source may appear much later or earlier in the finished project.

A prompt can describe a simple edge removal using the current project time. After the edit, check the new duration and play from the new beginning. If your first cut removes a breath or the start of a word, undo and keep a little more lead-in.

Remove the first 2 seconds from the video. Keep the remaining footage at its normal speed.

Remove a section in the middle of a video

A middle cut joins the footage before the unwanted range to the footage after it. Give the agent the start and end in the current project, or split around the section and remove the unwanted clip manually. Check that the resulting join keeps the order of the remaining material.

Deleting an interval shortens the project. Later footage moves earlier, which can affect where a follow-up instruction should act. Recheck the timeline after each cut rather than reusing a list of original timestamps without adjustment.

Remove 00:12 to 00:15 from the current timeline and join the footage on either side.

Listen to the cut as well as watching it

Replay a few seconds before and after each join. A small visual jump is normal when joining two different moments, but a missing syllable, repeated word or sudden change in background sound can make the edit feel unfinished. Keep the natural start and ending of a spoken phrase where possible.

A fade can soften a deliberate boundary, but the available fade goes through black and fades the sound at the clip edges. It does not overlap two clips like a cross-dissolve, and it does not repair a badly placed speech cut. First choose the correct boundary, then decide whether a fade suits it.

Check trims after changing playback speed

Playback speed changes how much project time a source range occupies. Ten seconds of source played at twice normal speed occupies five seconds of the project. Read the current project duration after a speed change before selecting another removal range.

This beta changes audio pitch when you change speed. If the goal is only to remove dead time, a trim may be more suitable than speeding up the speaker. Use a short test section before applying a large timing change to an entire recording.

Export the trimmed video and keep the edit instructions

Choose an available MP4 or WebM export and keep the tab open while encoding finishes. The maximum height does not upscale the source. Play the resulting file from the start, through each cut and at the ending so you verify the actual exported media.

Browser codec support and memory affect import and export. The beta supports 15-minute projects and source files up to 1 GB; the in-memory export fallback is limited to five minutes. A project backup stores your edits and source identities, so keep the original footage separately for recovery.

Frequently asked questions

Related video editing guides

• Video Editing Prompts for Cuts, Text and Audio
• Remove Silence from Video and Make Jump Cuts
• Mute Video Online: Remove Sound from a Clip or Section