Easily Trim Videos With VidCutter in Linux

When you think of the best video editors for Linux, it’s usually feature-rich and thus complicated video editors like OpenShot.

But not all of us require all those advanced features, do we? For me, simply trimming the videos is often sufficient for my needs.

I guess I am not the only one to think this way. Someone heard my prayers and released VidCutter.

VidCutter is an open source video editor that does video trimming and merging, that’s all.

Since it doesn’t provide advanced features, it is fairly simple to use, and that’s what makes it more useful for simple editing tasks of splitting or joining videos.

VidCutter Video Editor Features

VidCutter is a cross-platform video editor based on QT5. It uses FFmpeg for the backend.

If I have to list the features, it would be:

Open source
Cross-platform app available for Linux, Windows and macOS
Supports most of the common video formats such as AVI, MP4, MPEG 1/2, WMV, MP3, MOV, 3GP, FLV etc
Simple interface
Trims and merges the videos, nothing more than that

Not really a feature but more of a limitation; there is no option to export the videos in other formats. It keeps the output in the same format as the source.

VidCutter

Install VidCutter from PPA (for Ubuntu-based distros)

To install VidCutter video editor in Ubuntu-based distributions such as Linux Mint, elementary OS, Linux Lite, etc., you can use the official PPA.

Open a terminal and use the following commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ozmartian/apps
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vidcutter

Adding VidCutter PPA to Ubuntu — Adding VidCutter PPA

If VidCutter throws an error while trying to load a video file, you should uninstall it and then install the dependencies:

sudo apt install qml-module-qtmultimedia

And then install VidCutter again.

Remove VidCutter

To uninstall VidCutter, use the following commands:

sudo apt remove vidcutter
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ozmartian/apps

Install VidCutter as Snap

VidCutter is available as a Snap package if that’s what you prefer. You can head over to Snap Store to install the package. You can also install snap packages via CLI using:

sudo snap install vidcutter

Install VidCutter as Snap using command line — Install VidCutter as Snap

Remove VidCutter

To remove VidCutter installed as snap, either use the uninstall button on the supported software center or the following command.

sudo snap remove vidcutter

In Arch-based distributions, VidCutter is available in the community repository. So, simply use the pacman command to install VidCutter. You can install VidCutter as Flatpak from Flathub as well.

Alternatively, you can check its source code on GitHub:

VidCutter GitHub

Using VidCutter to Trim Videos

To trim a video, drag and drop the video to VidCutter. Now, place the seek pin at the starting point of the required area. Click on Start Clip.

Place the seek pin to the start of required area and click on "Start Clip" — Click on Start Clip button

Now, place the seek pin on the end of the required area and click on the End Clip button.

Place the seek pin to the end of the required area and click on "End Clip" button — Click on End Clip Button

Now, click the Save Media button and enter the name and location to save the clip.

Click on "Save Media" button to save the clip — Save Clip

This will save the clip along with a success notification.

Clip is created from the video and saved to the location — Clip completed

Is VidCutter Good Enough?

In my opinion, VidCutter is a to-the-point application that does what it says, i.e., trimming and joining videos, nothing extra. Such applications with limited features do serve a purpose. Simplicity is the key here.

For anything more than that, you should use a proper video editor on Linux like Kdenlive.

VidCutter cannot export videos in other formats. Once you have edited your video, you may want to convert the video file into a more suitable format. For that, you can use the amazing Handbrake tool.