Cut MOV

How to Cut MOV Files Online

1. Upload Your MOV File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to load .mov clips from your Mac, iPhone, GoPro, or camera card. Files stay in your browser session — no account, no email, no app install.
2. Set Time Range (Start + Duration): Under Trim, choose Range (or Time Range) and enter Start and Duration in seconds or HH:MM:SS.sss (millisecond precision). For a bit-perfect cut, leave Video Codec and Audio Codec on "Unchanged" — xconvert stream-copies the segment, preserving ProRes, H.264, or HEVC packets exactly as recorded. For a frame-exact start point, pick an explicit Video Codec (e.g. H.264) so the segment is re-encoded from your chosen timestamp.
3. Optional — Resize or Re-encode: Use Fixed Resolutions or Preset Resolutions to downscale (4K → 1080p for sharing), pick a Quality Preset / Constant Quality / Constant Bitrate under File Compression to shrink the output, or change Audio Codec (AAC for broad playback, leave PCM for editorial). Skip everything to keep source bitrate, resolution, and codec intact.
4. Cut and Download: Click "Cut". Files process in your browser session and the output downloads directly — no watermark, no sign-up, no queue.

Why Cut MOV Files?

MOV is Apple's QuickTime container, first released December 2, 1991, and the structural blueprint for ISO/IEC 14496-14 (the MP4 container standardized in 2003). On Apple hardware it's the native recording format for iPhone (HEVC since iOS 11, H.264 before), QuickTime Player exports, ScreenFlow recordings, Final Cut Pro masters, and every flavour of Apple ProRes (422, 422 HQ, 4444, 4444 XQ). Cutting an MOV means extracting a sub-range from the timeline — usually to keep one segment, remove dead air, or carve a long recording into shareable pieces — without going through a full NLE.

• iPhone and QuickTime screen recordings — Pull a 30-second answer out of a 45-minute interview recorded on iPhone in HEVC MOV, or extract one demo segment from a Mac screen recording (QuickTime Player saves as .mov by default). Stream-copy keeps the original quality.
• Final Cut Pro and ProRes masters — Trim a delivery-grade ProRes 422 HQ master (≈220 Mbps at 1080p29.97 per Apple's white paper) down to the broadcast slate range before sending to a colorist or distributor. No generation loss from a re-encode.
• GoPro, DSLR, and mirrorless clips — Canon, Nikon, and Sony cameras frequently write .mov files using H.264 or ProRes; pulling the in-focus segment out of a 5-minute take saves storage and import time in Resolve or Premiere.
• Social platform clips from Mac/iPhone — Instagram Reels caps at 90 seconds, TikTok feed posts at 90 seconds, YouTube Shorts at 60 seconds. Trim a long iPhone capture down to fit before upload, keeping the original HEVC quality.
• Court, podcast, deposition pulls — Isolate a single answer from a long-form .mov interview or deposition without re-encoding the audio, preserving voice clarity for evidence and editorial use.
• Pre-edit prep for Final Cut, Resolve, Premiere — Pre-trim multi-GB camera-original .mov files down to the segments you need before importing. Smaller proxies, faster scrubs, less SSD churn.

Need a different starting format or output? Convert MOV to MP4 for Android and broad-web compatibility, strip audio with MOV to MP3, or shrink an already-cut clip with Compress MOV.

MOV vs MP4 — Same Family, Different Conventions

MOV (QuickTime File Format) and MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14) share the same atom/box structure — that's not a coincidence, since Apple contributed the QTFF spec to ISO and it became the basis for the MPEG-4 container in 2003. In practice they differ in which codecs they're routinely used to carry and which players read them out of the box.

Property	MOV (QuickTime)	MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14)
Specifier	Apple (QTFF, 1991)	ISO/IEC 14496-14 (2003)
Container structure	Atoms (moov, mdat, trak)	Boxes — same model, slightly different vocabulary
Routine video codecs	Apple ProRes (422 / HQ / 4444), Animation, ProRes RAW, H.264, HEVC, MJPEG	H.264, HEVC, AV1, MPEG-4 ASP
Routine audio codecs	PCM (uncompressed), AAC, ALAC	AAC, MP3, AC-3, Opus (in fragmented MP4)
Native playback	macOS, iOS, QuickTime Player, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere	Every modern browser, Android, smart TVs, Windows, gaming consoles
Best for	Editing masters, ProRes workflows, iPhone source files	Web delivery, social uploads, cross-platform sharing
Extension	.mov, .qt	.mp4, .m4v

If your destination is YouTube, Discord, WhatsApp, or an Android device, convert to MP4 after cutting — MOV with ProRes or Animation codecs will fail or get heavily re-encoded by upload pipelines.

Lossless Stream-Copy vs Re-encode — The Keyframe Tradeoff

.mov video is compressed as a sequence of keyframes (I-frames, self-contained) and predicted frames (P/B-frames, referencing earlier frames). A cut can only start on a keyframe without decoding, so the mode you pick decides whether the output is bit-perfect or frame-accurate — you generally can't have both.

Mode	Output Start	Quality	Speed	When To Use
Stream-copy (codec "Unchanged")	Snaps to nearest preceding keyframe	Identical to source — no recompression	Very fast (seconds, even for multi-GB ProRes)	Default — preserves ProRes/H.264/HEVC quality, avoids generation loss
Re-encode (explicit Video Codec)	Frame-accurate to your chosen timestamp	One lossy pass (negligible for high-bitrate sources, but adds a generation)	Slower — CPU work proportional to clip length and resolution	Frame-exact start required (e.g. trimming a 0.2 s blooper, aligning to subtitle cues)

iPhone and modern Mac screen recordings place keyframes every 1-2 seconds, so stream-copy lands within a couple frames of your mark for most consumer footage. Apple ProRes is all-intra (every frame is a keyframe) so stream-copy on a ProRes MOV is frame-exact for free. Long-GOP H.264 from older camcorders can have 5-10 second keyframe intervals — there a re-encode may be the only way to hit an exact frame.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does cutting reduce MOV quality?

In stream-copy mode (the default when Video Codec and Audio Codec are left "Unchanged"), no — the original ProRes, H.264, or HEVC packets are copied bit-for-bit into the new container and the output is mathematically identical to the source for the selected range. Re-encode mode applies one lossy compression cycle, which is visually negligible at typical ProRes or high-bitrate H.264 rates but does add a generation-loss step.

Why does my cut start a few frames before the time I entered?

Stream-copy mode can only begin output on a keyframe. If you ask for a cut at 00:01:13 but the nearest preceding keyframe is at 00:01:11, the file starts at 00:01:11 so the first visible frame is fully decodable. Apple ProRes is intra-frame (every frame is a keyframe), so ProRes MOVs cut frame-exactly in stream-copy mode. For long-GOP H.264 or HEVC MOVs, switch to re-encode mode (set Video Codec explicitly) if you need the output to start at exactly the timestamp you typed.

Will the cut MOV play on Windows, Android, and the web?

.mov plays natively on macOS, iOS, and Final Cut Pro / DaVinci Resolve / Premiere. On Windows it requires QuickTime, K-Lite, or VLC, and Android does not support .mov by default. If you need to share with a non-Apple recipient, convert the cut output with MOV to MP4 — the H.264/HEVC video plays unchanged inside an MP4 container without re-encoding.

Can I cut an Apple ProRes MOV without re-encoding?

Yes. ProRes is intra-frame coded (every frame is a keyframe), so any timestamp is a valid cut point — stream-copy mode produces a frame-exact cut at the original ProRes bitrate (≈45 Mbps for Proxy through ≈220 Mbps for 422 HQ at 1080p29.97, per Apple's ProRes white paper). Leave both codecs on "Unchanged" and the output is bit-perfect.

What's the difference between this and the Trim MOV tool?

The trim tool is structured around "remove head and/or tail" — you mark in/out points on a continuous segment. This cut tool is structured around "extract a segment of length N starting at time T". Functionally they overlap for the single-middle-segment case. Pick whichever workflow matches how you think about the edit; both run client-side with the same stream-copy logic.

Can I cut multiple segments from one MOV in a single pass?

No — re-run the cut once per segment, varying Start and Duration. Each run downloads as an independent .mov. To stitch the resulting clips back together, drop them into a video-merge workflow. For dozens of segments, desktop tools like LosslessCut (which uses ffmpeg under the hood) are faster for batched multi-range exports.

Does this strip iPhone metadata, location, or HDR?

The container's metadata atoms (udta, meta) carry over unchanged in stream-copy mode, so capture date, model, and GPS tags survive. HDR signaling (the color primaries, transfer characteristics, and matrix coefficients in the video track) is preserved because the codec stream is untouched. If you need to wipe GPS or model data for privacy, run the cut output through an EXIF/metadata stripper afterwards — this cutter does not modify metadata.

Can I extract just the audio from a MOV?

This page outputs a .mov with both streams. To pull the audio into its own file, use MOV to MP3 for compressed delivery, or the standalone audio cutter for time-ranged audio extraction. Both run client-side with no upload.

What's the maximum MOV file size I can cut here?

Cuts run in your browser session, so the practical ceiling depends on your device's RAM and the source bitrate. Multi-GB 4K ProRes 422 HQ files (often 60-120 GB per hour) generally work on desktops with 16 GB+ free memory; phones and Chromebooks should stick to shorter HEVC clips. There is no hard server-side cap because nothing is uploaded.