Cut MPEG Video

How to Cut MPEG Video Online

1. Upload Your MPEG File: Drag and drop or click "Add Files" to pick your .mpg or .mpeg clip. Both extensions are accepted and treated as the same MPEG program/elementary stream. Batch input is supported — drop several recordings to cut them in one session.
2. Set Time Range, Start Time, and Duration: Under Trim, choose "Time Range" and enter Start Time and Duration. Use plain seconds (e.g., 30.5) for short clips, or switch to HH:MM:SS.sss for anything over a few minutes when you need frame-accurate timestamps off a DVD chapter or TV recording.
3. Pick Video Codec, Audio Codec, and Quality Preset (Optional): Default is MPEG-2 video + MP2 audio — the DVD-Video standard pair. Switch to H.264 or H.265 if the cut is destined for the web. Adjust Quality Preset (Highest → Lowest), Target File Size % (1-100), Specific File Size (MB/KB), Constant Quality (CRF), Constant/Variable Bitrate, or Constraint Quality. Use Video Resolution to keep the original or downscale to 1080p, 720p, 480p, or a custom WxH.
4. Cut and Download: Click "Convert". The trimmed segment is re-encoded with your chosen codec and quality, then offered as a download. No sign-up, no watermark, no upload to a third-party cloud.

Why Cut MPEG Video?

MPEG-1 (1993) and MPEG-2 (1995) are the legacy program-stream formats behind Video CDs, DVD-Video, ATSC/DVB broadcast TV, and many older camcorders and PVRs. Files arrive long: a full DVD title, a 2-hour TV capture, a lecture recording. Cutting lets you keep only the part you need before converting, archiving, or sharing.

• Pull a scene out of a DVD rip — A ripped DVD title typically lands as one 4-8 GB VOB/MPEG file. Cutting to a 30-second scene before upload turns a multi-gigabyte source into something Discord (10 MB free / 50 MB Nitro Basic / 500 MB Nitro), Slack (1 GB per file on free), or Google Drive will accept without compression headaches.
• Trim recorded TV broadcasts — Older Tivo, Topfield, and Windows Media Center captures save as MPEG-2 transport streams. Cut commercials, station ID intervals, and dead air between shows.
• Shorten camcorder MPEG-2 footage — MiniDV-to-MPEG-2 dumps and older Panasonic/Canon camcorders write MPEG-2 .mpg directly. Trim the boring 30 seconds at the start where you were aiming.
• Carve lecture or webinar recordings into chapters — Split a 90-minute lecture into 10-minute topic clips for LMS upload or YouTube unlisted shares.
• Make highlight reels from sports captures — DVB-T sports recordings often arrive as MPEG-2 .ts/.mpg. Cut goals, points, or sets into individual clips before re-encoding to H.264 for sharing.
• Prepare clips for re-authoring to a new DVD — Keep the MPEG-2 + MP2 defaults and the output can drop straight into authoring tools like DVDStyler without another encoding pass beyond ours.

MPEG-1 vs MPEG-2 vs MPEG-4 — Format Comparison

Property	MPEG-1	MPEG-2	MPEG-4 Part 2 / Part 10
Year ratified	1993 (ISO/IEC 11172)	1995 (ISO/IEC 13818)	1999 / 2003
Typical extension	.mpg, .mpeg, .dat	.mpg, .mpeg, .vob, .ts	.mp4, .m4v
Primary use	Video CD, early web	DVD-Video, ATSC/DVB SD/HD broadcast	Web streaming, mobile, modern devices
Video codec	MPEG-1 Video	MPEG-2 Video (H.262)	MPEG-4 ASP (DivX/Xvid), H.264 (AVC)
Typical audio	MP2 (MPEG Audio Layer II)	MP2 or AC-3	AAC
Max resolution in spec	352×240 / 352×288 (SIF)	Up to 1920×1080	Up to 4K+
Typical bitrate	1.15 Mbps (VCD)	4-9.8 Mbps (DVD)	1-15 Mbps (H.264 SD-4K)
Modern browser support	Limited	Limited (no native HTML5)	Universal (MP4/H.264)

If your cut is going to the web, set Video Codec to H.264 and Audio Codec to AAC and export as MP4 instead — or use MPEG to MP4 after cutting for a single-purpose pipeline.

Compression Options at a Glance

Mode	What it does	Best for
Quality Preset (Highest → Lowest)	Maps to a CRF/QSCALE band internally	Quick cuts when you don't want to tune numbers
Target File Size %	Aim for X% of the input size	Predictable shrink (e.g., 50% of source)
Specific File Size (MB/KB)	Hit an exact ceiling	Email caps, LMS upload limits, Discord 10 MB free tier
Constant Bitrate (CBR)	Same bps throughout	DVD-compatible output, broadcast workflows
Variable Bitrate (VBR)	Spend bits where motion is	Web delivery, smaller files at same quality
Constant Quality (CRF / QSCALE)	Quality-locked, size varies	Best quality-per-byte for archives
Constraint Quality	CRF with a max-bitrate cap	Streaming where peaks must stay below a ceiling

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I cut MPEG losslessly without re-encoding?

Not with this tool — the trimmed segment is always re-encoded so you can change codec, bitrate, and resolution in the same pass. For visually identical output, pick "Highest" Quality Preset or Constant Quality (CRF) with a low value (e.g., CRF 18 for H.264, qscale 2 for MPEG-2). True stream-copy cuts have to land exactly on a GOP boundary (about every 12 frames on PAL DVDs, 15 on NTSC — roughly one I-frame every half-second), and cutting between keyframes is what causes the "frozen frame" or "black start" artifacts you see in tools like LosslessCut.

What time format should I use for precise cuts?

You can enter plain seconds (120.5 = 2 minutes 0.5 seconds) or switch to HH:MM:SS.sss (01:03:27.450). For anything past a few minutes — DVD titles, TV recordings, lectures — HH:MM:SS.sss is easier to copy from a player's timecode. Both formats support millisecond precision; the actual cut snaps to the nearest re-encoded frame.

Which codec should I keep for DVD-compatible output?

Leave Video Codec on MPEG-2 and Audio Codec on MP2 — that's the DVD-Video specification. For NTSC, keep resolution at 720×480 and target a CBR around 6-8 Mbps (the DVD-Video peak is 9.8 Mbps for video alone). For PAL, use 720×576. Anything else will need re-authoring before it plays in a standalone DVD player.

How do I cut and shrink at the same time?

Set your Time Range, then enable Target File Size (% or specific MB) under File Compression. You can also reduce Video Resolution to 720p or 480p — a smaller frame size at the same quality drops bitrate roughly proportional to pixel count. Combining a shorter duration with a lower resolution typically takes a 2 GB DVD-Video title down to 50-200 MB for web sharing without obvious quality loss at viewing distance.

Does this tool accept both .mpg and .mpeg files? What about .vob?

.mpg and .mpeg are the same file with different extensions and are both accepted directly. .vob (the DVD-Video container) is structurally an MPEG-2 program stream with extra navigation packets — for those, use VOB to MPEG first or rename to .mpg if your source has no DVD-specific structures.

Will the audio drift out of sync after cutting?

It shouldn't. Because we re-encode rather than stream-copy, both audio and video timestamps are rebuilt from the chosen Start Time. Drift is the classic problem with cut-on-keyframe stream copies, where audio cuts at the requested time but video snaps to the previous I-frame, leaving a gap or overlap. Re-encoding avoids that at the cost of a slightly slower export.

Can I split one MPEG into several clips in one session?

Each cut produces one output. To make three clips from one source, run the cut three times with different Start Time / Duration values — batch the trio in a single session and the queue runs sequentially. If you only need to remove a middle section, cut the head and tail separately and concatenate them after with a merge tool.

My cut starts with a frozen or black frame for a fraction of a second — why?

That happens when the input's first I-frame after your Start Time is several frames away. The decoder has to wait for the next keyframe before it has full image data; re-encoding usually masks this, but a very short Duration (under ~0.5s) on a PAL DVD source (one I-frame per 12 frames at 25 fps) can still show it. Shift Start Time a few hundred milliseconds earlier or raise Quality Preset to Highest to avoid it.

What's the maximum file size I can cut?

There's no hard cap published — most browsers handle multi-GB MPEG files fine because cutting only re-encodes the requested slice, not the whole input. For very long DVD rips (>8 GB) on slower machines, cut in two passes (head first, tail second) rather than one 4-hour-long range to keep memory pressure low.

For related workflows, see Compress MPEG to shrink a file without cutting, Trim MPEG for the same time-range UI under a different name, or MPEG to MKV to rewrap into a more modern container after cutting.