MacOS – trim video without transcoding on lion

macosquicktimevideo

On Snow Leopard Quicktime allowed you to easily cut clips from videos and store them as .mov with the trim function (invoked with Command+T). On Lion Quicktime, the trim function still exists. But there is no option in the File menu to save the trimmed video as .mov. The only option is to "save for device" which actually trancodes the video (instead of just putting it in a different container) and takes an awful lot of time.

My question is twofold:

  1. Will Snow Leopard QuickTime work on Lion? (e.g. if I restore it from backup)
  2. Are there any free programs for cutting videos without transcoding?

Best Answer

Not sure whether Snow Leopard Quick Time will work if you restore it on Lion, since I don't have that version to restore.

However, there are a few freeware utilities that can clip videos:

  • According to this Super User thread, VLC can both cut clips of video without transcoding and also transcode entire streams/files into different formats (see the VLC wiki).
  • How-to Geek has a guide that shows how to quickly cut clips from videos with Avidemux.
  • SimpleMovieX has a free (unlimited) trial that can also do the trick. The main downside is that the trial version is slower than the paid version.
  • MPEG Streamclip is another freeware tool that provides similar functionality.

One of these utilities may provide the functionality that you're looking for.

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