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Windows 10: How to Trim Video

By 58 Comments

After recording videos with my smartphone, I often need to trim parts of the video files. Fortunately, Microsoft Windows 10 has tools that provide an easy way to trim video. Just follow these steps.

  1. Right-click the video file, and choose “Open with” > “Photos“.
  2. Select the “Trim” button located at the upper-right portion of the window.
  3. Slide the two white sliders to where the portion of the video you wish to keep is in between them. The blue slider only shows the current frame and has no bearing on trimming.
  4. Once you have the area of the video you wish to keep selected, click the “Save a copy” option located at the upper-right portion of the window.
  5. Give the video file a new name. Once saved, it will be the new trimmed version of the video.

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Comments

  1. I don’t have “open with”. I only have “open”. Is there some way to change that setting.

  3. This is fantastic! I have so many video files, I’m having memory concerns. This is so easy and whether I trim 5 seconds, 5 minutes or an hour it reduces the size of the video file by more than half! I don’t see any quality issues in the trimmed files. Is it compression? I don’t know – I’m trimming all my video files – no more memory concerns!

  4. Super helpful! Edited two videos with no issues. Mine were both 50-60 mins, so just as a note for others if it is a longer clip the screen will kind of gray out for a little while to process. You’ll think it’s not working, but give it a few minutes.

    Thanks for posting.

  6. Thank you. You were the only one that gave me the critical piece of information that I needed to make it work. Specifically the “white” slider bars, not the blue one! Noone else made this clear. If you don’t use the white sliders the “Save a copy” will not become active.
    You might also want to mention that the quality is “somewhat” degraded in the trimmed version; not seriously, but it does appear to be not quite as clear. The file size is less than half of the original and I only trimmed 5 secs off a 1:45 sec video.
    Thanks again.

  7. It worked perfectly for me, thanks!
    (I trimmed a video which I created from a Powerpoint presentation)

  8. It worked when I trimmed an 18 second video to 16 seconds but repeated tries to shorten a 3& 1/2 min video to a minute & a half keeps saving as 0 bytes and no video.

  9. Why my finished file plays in slow motion? Did I do something wrong in the trimming process?
    How can I get it to play at normal speed?

  10. Works well except that it changes all the frame rates to 30fps. Where can I disable this??

  12. Hey. It is absolutely useful. I have tried many tools to trim but they add watermark in free trial version s.

  13. How do I trim it to a specific duration instead of having to toggle the sliders and guess?

  16. Same here. Good old Microsoft. Millions of people reporting it and they haven’t fixed it in years. Nadella is an idiot with no idea how to do anything but Azure.

  17. What if I wish to re-order a video. e.g. taking moving the second section to the start etc? How do I do that? Thank you.

  18. I have this: “it looks like you don’t have permission to save changes to this file.” It also says save a copy instead. Well, I am trying to save a copy, there is no other option?

  19. I cannot save the trimmed video. I get an error box that says:

    It looks like you don’t have permission to save changes to this file. Try saving a copy instead.

    How do I fix this??

  20. I’ve tried to trim my video clip on two different types of computers and each time the clip is sped up. What can I do to avoid this problem ?

  21. The trim worked, and saved. BUT … the original was 482 mb and the trimmed copy is 1.51 gb … almost 4 times the original size!!!! That really doesn’t help.

  22. After you do the trim and you know the beginning and end is where you’ve marked it, go to the top right of the “photos” screen and use the drop down to choose ‘save as’. The file will go to wherever you designated BUT it is not ready to play yet. Notice that on the ‘photos’ page where you did the trim, that a blue line is now in the middle of the screen and moving slowly. That is film actually getting ready to be complete. Wait for it to finish and then you can close out ‘photos’ and go to your file and it will play.

  23. DO NOT FOLLOW THIS GUIDE
    Trimming video using Windows Photos reduces the quality of the trimmed video and worst of all reduces frame rate from 60FPS to 30FPS.

  24. Thanks for the good tutorial. wonderfox hd video converter factory can also trim/cut videos easily. I use it to do basic video editing like cutting, cropping and merging.

  25. Hi, I trimmed the video, however it will not let me save, “i don’t have permission” how do i get around this? Thanks!

  28. Hi, I trimmed the video, however it will not let me save, “i don’t have permission” how do i get around this? Thanks!

  29. Having the same problema as Julie. It doesn’t allow me to save the document. Save as button does not work.

  30. The save section is not illuminated so I cannot save after moving the dial to trim. Thank you so much.

  33. A friend sent me an MP4 video. After setting the section to be trimmed, I tried to use the save a copy option and I got a message that said, “It looks like you don’t have permission to save changes to this file. Try saving a copy instead” which, of course is what I had already tried. How do you solve this?

  34. Thanks so much! We already spend so much on our tech tools I appreciate being shown how to use the features on something I already own rather than downloading yet another tool.

  35. I’ve tried this several times, but for some reason the trimmed copy won’t play after it’s saved. Any ideas?

  37. What I do is I split it where I want the first segment, then split it second at the end of what I want to edit out. Then the segment in the middle can be deleted. Repeat until end of video.

  39. I wanted to trim parts in multiple sections, piecing the video together, but it deleted the rest of the video! Glad I saved the whole thing on my drive first…

  40. BEST and EASIEST – I just trimmed a video file using your amazingly easy and correct instructions after fighting with understanding how to do this and feeling like a dunce from other “instructional” pieces online.

  41. Thanks Mitch.
    Am SO pleased I found your page as this was so easy after I’d been grappling with complicated software.
    I can now send my speaking extracts to event organisers. Hurray!

  42. Easy, works great in windows 10 without having to download any other software. Thanks for sharing!

  43. Once I open the video with the Photos app, and open the trimming option, only one marker appears. I assume I need two for the trimming to take effect?

  45. Nope. When I follow the advice it does NOT give me the option of any “save a copy” as the save a copy is greyed out.

  48. When I try to trim a 10 minute mp4 video there’s a message saying the video is less than 1 second and the only option is to close! Please help!!!

  50. Im trying to trim my mp4 video and I’m on windows 10..but it says not supported
    Ugggghhh!! Help!!

  51. It does the job but I won’t say it works. I have a 4Gb MP4 file around 160 minutes long. I followed the steps and trim out 20 minutes at the ending. The result file is only 140 minutes long and both Video and Audio are good. The problem is not it takes 2 hours to finish but the result file is 7.95Gb!.

  52. how do you trim something in the middle? with the start and the end in the video, taking out part of the middle??

  53. Same here about it washing out the video. That’s what led me to look for some other way to do it.

  54. Whenever i trim a video I get this slight gray tint on the final video, regardless of if I cut 10 seconds or 5 minutes of the video. Any known solutions?

  56. Oh, man. This helped me A LOT. I was going nuts trying to figure out how to easily do this. Thanks so much!

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