LosslessCut
FreeTrim video without re-encoding — seconds, and zero quality loss
A lossless video trimmer. Cut segments, remove sections, merge files, separate audio and video tracks and batch-export — all without re-encoding, so it runs at roughly file-copy speed with the picture bit-for-bit unchanged. It also extracts thumbnails, edits metadata and splits by chapters.
Why we picked it
Most editors handle "I just want to remove the first 30 seconds" by re-encoding the entire file: ten minutes of waiting and a step down in quality. But if you need no transitions, no effects and no color work — only a cut — that whole re-encode is pure waste.
LosslessCut exists for exactly this. 42,910 stars, GPL-2.0. It cuts the stream at keyframes and remuxes, neither decoding nor encoding — so a multi-gigabyte file is trimmed in seconds and the output is bit-for-bit identical in quality, because it is the original data.
Typical uses:
- Phone footage with fumbling at the start and end removed.
- A recorded meeting or stream where only twenty useful minutes remain.
- Pulling the relevant segment out of dashcam or security footage.
- Cutting a sponsor segment out of a downloaded video.
- Splitting one long file into several by chapter.
- Rough-cutting camera footage into usable clips before fine editing elsewhere.
Usage is direct: drag a file in, mark in and out points on the timeline — several segments if you like — then export the selection or delete it. Keyboard-driven, and once familiar a file takes under a minute.
One structural limitation matters and must be stated:
- Cut points snap to keyframes, so the actual cut can land a fraction of a second to a few seconds from where you marked, depending on the video's keyframe interval. Frame-accurate cutting requires re-encoding, which the app offers as "smart cut" — at which point the lossless-and-fast premise is gone. For everyday purposes the offset rarely matters; for precise editing you need a real editor.
Also:
- It is not an editing suite. No transitions, titles, color grading, multiple tracks or effects. Those belong to Shotcut or Kdenlive, which complement rather than compete with it.
- FFmpeg is underneath, so format coverage is broad — mp4, mkv, mov, ts and webm all work.
- The download is sizeable (about 149 MB for the macOS dmg, 211 MB for the Linux AppImage) because FFmpeg ships inside.
If "just make one cut" is a recurring need, this turns a ten-minute wait into ten seconds.