How to Trim and Cut a Video with VLC Media Player for Beginners

Open your VLC media player. If you do not have it, download it from the official website for free.

Go to the Media menu, and choose the Open File option. Find and select the target video on the open-file dialog, and open it directly.

Pause the video playback. Turn to the View menu, and select the Advanced Controls option. Then the advanced control bar will appear at the bottom above the basic control bar. If you have enabled the Advanced Controls, move to the next step directly.

Play the video until you reach the new starting point. Click the Record button, which is a red round icon on the advanced control bar.

Keep playing the video and click the Record button again when you reach the new end of the clip that you want to cut. You can also use the Frame-by-frame button to get the end exactly.

Then VLC will save the trimmed video in MP4 format in your computer’s Videos folder with the same name as the original video. To find the video clip produced by VLC, open a file explorer, click and expand the This PC section on the left navigation bar, and go to the Videos folder. On Linux, the clip is saved in the /home/videos directory.

If you need to trim a video on Mac with VLC, open it in the media player.

Play the video to the new beginning point or head to the point directly.

Head to the Playback menu at the top of the screen, and choose the Record option. The menu bar and interface of VLC on Mac are very different from the PC version.

Play the video and VLC will record the clip. Next, click the Record option in the menu bar again when you want to stop recording.

Then the clip will be saved in your Mac’s Movies folder. Unlike PCs, the clip will be renamed vlc-record followed by the date and other information.

Run your Finder app, and go to your Mac hard drive. By default, it may be called Macintosh HD. Then you will find the Movie folder in Users. Or you can locate the directory from VLC’s Preferences menu.

Open a video

Run the best Alternative to VLC when cutting a video after you install it on your computer. Switch to the Toolbox window from the top ribbon, and choose the Video Trimmer tool. Next, drag and drop the video that you want to shorten into the interface to import it directly.

Trim video

Put the left slider to the new beginning on the timeline, and click the Set Start button. Place the right slider to the new end, and click the Set End button. Next, click the Add Segment button to confirm video cutting with the VLC alternative. If you want to split the video, put the play bar to the desired point, and click the Split icon. Finally, leave the filename, output format, and location folder at the bottom. Once you click the Export button, the clip will be saved to your hard drive.