Sometimes you want to trim a video clip but don’t want to open up your NLE (Non-Linear Editor, like Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Avid, etc.) for that.

Boilsoft Video Splitter and Free Video Cutter

A simple task such as cutting a clip in two or more parts shouldn’t be so hard but the number of decent video splitters online is astoundingly small. Most of the free splitters I’ve tried are pure junk. Even spending money on a splitter isn’t a guarantee that it’ll do what you want it to. I usually use the Boilsoft splitter because it doesn’t re-encode whatever I’m splitting. So that’s great for making clips out of large movies: it’s very fast and retains the quality.

If you’re building clips for galleries or online promos and just need to split and not edit anything, the Boilsoft splitter is decent. Not always entirely frame accurate but okay for most tasks. It’s not free but because it doesn’t re-encode and handles WMV, MPEG, AVI and other files very well it might be worth it.

Now there’s also the Free Video Cutter.

As the name implies, the Free Video Cutter trims down your movie and saves it in either MPEG4, WMV, FLV, DivX, MOV, or MP3 (Audio only). It’s a very basic application but it’s free and reasonably fast.

Free Video Cutter Notes

It seems to re-encode the clips, even if the output format doesn’t change from the input format. And it uses the old WMV8 codec (Four CC code: wmv2) to encode to WMV. WMV9 is the standard these days, it looks better and is more efficient. I wouldn’t use the Free Video Cutter to encode to WMV, unless the video quality isn’t absolutely critical to you. Still, for a cheap and easy quick video trim job this tool might be your ticket.

TIP: before you do anything, click the “Options” button and check the “Don’t create video thumbs” box. Depending on your system, FVC takes quite a while to create these thumbnails. Kinda defeats the purpose of super quick trimming, ya know.

Download Free Video Cutter (free)

Download Boilsoft Video Splitter (not free)

Both are for Windows programs and they work on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 (yes!)