How to cut a video for free?

Introduction.

Video editing software often turns out to be rather complicated to use. Many developers tend to satisfy professional editors or even video corporations, but what if you need to do something simple with your home party video and do not want to know what conversion or compression is? In this article we will discuss how to trim video with a user-friendly and lightweight video editing program, SolveigMM AVI + MKV Trimmer. It is completely free and will work even for inexperienced computer users.

Step 1: Download and install the program.

Download SolveigMM AVI + MKV Trimmer to a known location. Run setup and follow on-screen instructions to install the application.

Step 2: Start the program. Select video for editing.

Launch the video editor. The initial screen will be shown:

As the hint suggests, we need to add some video file, preferably the one we need to cut. Simply click on the folder image to get the usual "Open" dialog.

Browse to the folder with your AVI or MKV video file to cut and select it. Then click "Open".

Step 3: Set borders of video fragments. Cut video.

The video will be loaded into the video trimmer and the preview window will appear:

Now let's set the beginning and the end of the fragment to cut from our video file. Simply click on the "Beginning" marker at the beginning of the video timeline, hold the left mouse button and drag the marker to the needed position. Meanwhile, the preview screen will show the video frame at the marker's position. Set the end of the fragment in the same way using the "Fragment's end" marker.

Alternatively, you can use the third "Current position" marker shown on the above screenshot right between the "Beginning" and "End" markers. Drag it to the needed moment of your video (look at the preview window for better precision and convenience) and click the "Set start time of the fragment to current position" button on the navigation pane in the lower left corner of the window. Here you can specify the fragment's end time in the same way. Also playback buttons are available in this pane for video preview.

In the middle of the video cutter window, a list of fragments is shown. When the bounds of the fragment are specified, you can click the "+" button under the list to add a new fragment and start setting its bounds.

On the left from the "Fragments" list, you can uncheck the video or audio component to remove it from the output video clips. Thus you can turn it to a soundless video or to an audio-only track.

Finally, click the "Save" button to proceed.

The "Save as" dialog suggests a name for the new video fragment and a folder to save it to. You can enter another filename and select any folder on your computer for your cut videos. Hit "Save" to create the trimmed video clip. Note that only the highlighted fragment in the "Fragments" list is saved upon your click on "Save", so if you want to get several output fragments, do not close the program window after saving the first one.

A progress bar in the lower part of the program window will appear, and after several seconds of waiting you will find the cut video fragment in the specified output directory.

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