LosslessCut

LosslessCut is a free, open-source video and audio editor built for one job above all: cutting media files without re-encoding them. A traditional editor processes every frame again, which can take hours and slowly degrades quality; LosslessCut copies the original data stream directly, so the same operation finishes in seconds and the output keeps bit-for-bit identical quality. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Cut First, Re-Encode Never

The core workflow is trimming: mark the parts you want to keep or drop, then export instantly. That makes it ideal for rough-cutting long recordings from a camera, drone or GoPro before archiving, shaving gigabytes off footage you will never watch. It is just as good at cutting commercials out of a recorded TV show, trimming a screen recording down to its useful minute, keeping only the best thirty seconds of a flight or dive, or extracting the music track from a video and saving it on its own.

More Than a Trimmer

Beyond cutting, LosslessCut merges clips losslessly as long as they share the same codec, which is perfect for joining files from the same camera or phone. It adds, removes, replaces or extracts tracks: pull out a subtitle stream, swap the audio, or strip languages you do not need. Remuxing changes the container, for example from MKV to MP4, without touching the video itself. It also detects scenes, black frames and silence to split files automatically, edits metadata and rotation, creates chapters, and works with markers, CSV, EDL and other segment formats. A snapshot tool saves still frames, and keyboard shortcuts, a command-line interface and an HTTP API cover batch and scripted workflows.

Formats and Playback

Out of the box it plays what Chromium supports natively: MP4, MOV, WebM, Matroska, OGG and WAV, with common codecs such as H.264, H.265, AV1, VP9, AAC, MP3, Opus, FLAC and Vorbis. Anything else opens through FFmpeg-assisted playback, and the export still runs against the original file, so it stays lossless. In practice, it opens almost any file FFmpeg can decode, even ones your regular player cannot.

Things to Know Before You Rely on It

Lossless cuts can only begin on a keyframe. Depending on how the file was encoded, a cut may start a fraction of a second to a few seconds before your chosen point, so frame-exact edits are not guaranteed. H.265 playback also depends on having a hardware decoder. This is not a full editor either: there are no transitions, effects, color tools or multitrack timeline. And as a one-developer project, support lives on GitHub rather than in a helpdesk.

Editorial Note

LosslessCut earns its place for the single most common video chore: removing the boring parts fast, without losing quality. For trimming, merging, track swapping and remuxing it replaces far heavier tools; for anything beyond that, pair it with a traditional editor.

For anyone sitting on hours of raw footage, few tools make the first pass this painless.