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Use this program to cut your videos, as well as import, export and convert different files

Use this program to cut your videos, as well as import, export and convert different files

Vote: (725 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: FreeVideoCutter.com

Version: 1.1

Works under: Windows

Vote:

Program license

(725 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

FreeVideoCutter.com

1.1

Works under:

Windows

Pros

  • Cuts video files reasonably quickly
  • Extracts MP3 audio
  • Supports many different formats

Cons

  • Doesn't support audio playback while videos are loaded
  • Lacks a plug-in system

Free Video Cutter is a simple and user-friendly solution for those who want to trim down video content and convert between different file types. It's ideal for beginners, but it's also perfect for experienced users who don't want to be bothered with a number of features that they're not going to make use of.

That's not to say that Free Video Cutter isn't a rich application. It supports video files of almost all sizes, so you can trim content out of movies that are relatively long. All you have to do is load the file in question and specify the time indices that you want removed.

The interface is clean enough that you probably won't need any kind of tutorial to figure out what you're doing. While there is a simple onboard help system and a tiny bit of documentation, chances are that you're not going to need to read any of this. Once you start the application, you'll already know how to work with it. If you've ever used another media editing product, then nothing should really be all that new to you.

Since the app supports both 32 and 64-bit architectures, it should work with almost any modern Windows-based PCs. In theory, the 64-bit version should be considerably faster since it can load bigger video chunks by taking advantage of the CPU's increased word size. In practice, however, those with fast 32-bit chips shouldn't see too much of a performance cut.

You'll still want to be working with relatively speedy hardware, but it doesn't matter if you don't have a very beefy GPU. Free Video Cutter does almost everything in software, which is more flexible than trying to actually render a video and play it back while cutting it. The app simply treats each video object as a stream of bytes and performs the cuts the same way a program might when working with a text file. Those who want more control over this process are free to manipulate several configuration options.

Users can opt to disable thumbnail creation, which can help to further reduce the app's strain on their CPU. Those who consider file size to be the most important metric can turn down the bit rate and further compress their video file beyond what they would normally be able to. While this does cause the outputted file to look somewhat poorer than the original one would, it can save a great deal of disk space. This might be important to those who are trying to sideload some video netcasts over to a mobile device and don't want to waste much of their built-in storage.

Power users might want to take advantage of this by periodically chopping a long video lecture down, so they don't have to fast-forward to the middle of it each time they take a break. Those who find themselves more concerned about local storage will be pleased to learn that Free Video Cutter itself takes up less than 6.5 megabytes, which is nearly nothing for those working with modern storage devices. That's not even bad for those who want to run most of their software off USB memory sticks.

As soon as you have the program installed, you can load in almost any video using the open command. It's literally as easy as working with a text editor or word processing application. Once the video file has load, you'll get presented with information regarding the duration of the film and its bitrate.

Onscreen track bar utilities make it easy to place the cutter tool in the right position. One button controls the beginning of a clip while the other allows the user to select a new endpoint. Users can save the clip just as soon as the two buttons are positioned correctly.

Saving a video is almost as easy. You're free to use the save video command or a handy keyboard shortcut. Once the dialog box comes up, you can simply agree to the app's terms and have the file saved. Power users might want to make a few adjustments, however. This is especially true of anyone attempting to save a video to a mobile device that expects a specific format.

By default, you'll probably end up with a Windows Media Video file ending in the WMV extension or perhaps MPEG4 files ending with MP4. You're free to select DivX or the Flash Video format if you prefer, however. Since FLV is often very hard to work with, this should come as a welcome relief to those who have to. Naturally, Free Video Cutter also allows users to import files in any of these formats.

Perhaps the most interesting features come in the form of support for Apple QuickTime movies. If you need to save something in MOV format, then you can do so without any difficulty. The app includes full support for the QuickTime File Format container structure as well, which means these videos should work for those who are trying to plug an Apple device into a PC and sideload movies over to it.

MP3 export is another interesting option that wouldn't normally come with a program like this. You can cut a clip and then export only the audio from it, which is then saved as a portable MP3 file. If you've ever wished that you could listen to a media file like a podcast in spite of the fact that it's saved as a video, then this feature should come in handy. This is also a great way to convert music videos into song files that you can then listen to with a traditional MP3 player.

Best of all, Free Video Cutter doesn't require you to install any codecs that you already have access to. You won't need to load any special packages if your PC can already work with video files. That should help to dramatically reduce the amount of time spent tinkering around when you first install the app on your hard drive.

Pros

  • Cuts video files reasonably quickly
  • Extracts MP3 audio
  • Supports many different formats

Cons

  • Doesn't support audio playback while videos are loaded
  • Lacks a plug-in system

Pros

  • Very simple to use.
  • Supports a wide range of video file formats.
  • Can extract audio from a video clip and save it as a MP3 file.

Cons

  • No sound during video playback.
  • Can be slow on older computers.

Free Video Cutter is a tool that lets you easily crop videos. You can use it to split a larger video into parts or create clips that you can share on YouTube or other social media sites.

Using the program is quite simple. All that you need to do is to open the video file you want to work with and choose the part you want to crop by using the markers at the bottom of the screen. Free Video Cutter will then grab the part of the video you selected and save it in the format of your choice.

The software supports a variety of video formats, including MP4, MOV, WMV, AVI, FLV, DivX and many others. Therefore, it shouldn't have any problems handling most videos you can download on the Internet. It also lets you extract just the sound portion of a video clip and save it as a MP3 file.

While Free Video Cutter is a handy tool, it does come with some limitations. The program lets you play back a video so you can select the right part to crop, but doesn't play sound in the preview. However, your cropped videos will have sound in them.

It allows you to save your video clips in the format of your choice, but unlike some more advanced tools, it doesn't let you choose quality settings. This can be a bit inconvenient if you want to upload a video to YouTube in a specific resolution.

The program is reliable and easy to work with overall. It's just under 4 MB in size, so you can get it installed and running quickly. However, some users have reported that it may take a while to load and save bigger video files. On slower computers, saving even a short clip can take several minutes.

If you're looking for a very simple software tool to create video clips that you can share online, Free Video Cutter might be the right program for you. But if you want a tool that's faster or has more advanced options, such as the ability to save videos in different resolutions, you'll probably want to look at some of the other video cutting programs out there.

Pros

  • Very simple to use.
  • Supports a wide range of video file formats.
  • Can extract audio from a video clip and save it as a MP3 file.

Cons

  • No sound during video playback.
  • Can be slow on older computers.