How to easily clip video files on Linux with Video Trimmer
Do you have some video footage you need to cut into smaller clips? Are you sick of dealing with complicated video editors on Linux? Check out Video Trimmer! It allows you to quickly cut up clips out of video footage with incredible ease.
Install Video Trimmer on Linux
The Video Trimmer application is not like a lot of other video tools on the Linux desktop. Rather than being available for all Linux OSes through things like DEB packages or RPMs, Video Trimmer is instead installable as a Flatpak. If you want to get up and running with this app, you will need to use Flatpak and Flathub. The only exception is if you’re an Arch user as Video Trimmer is available in the AUR.
Setting up Video Trimmer as a Flatpak via Flathub is super easy, and it starts by setting up the Flatpak runtime on your computer. To set up the Flatpak runtime on your system, install the “flatpak” package the way you typically install programs.
Note: are you having issues setting up the “flatpak” package on your computer? Need help? Please follow our in-depth guide all about how to set up the Flatpak runtime on Linux.
Flatpak method
After setting up the “flatpak” package, and by extension the Flatpak runtime on your computer, the next step is to add the Flathub app store. The Flathub app store has thousands of apps to install. We’ll need it to set up the Video Trimmer tool. To set up Flathub on your Linux PC, enter the following command in a terminal window.
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
The flatpak remote-add command will set up the Flathub app store on your Linux PC. Now you must use the flatpak install command to get the Video Trimmer program up and running.
flatpak install flathub org.gnome.gitlab.YaLTeR.VideoTrimmer
Arch Linux installation
While the vast majority of Linux users cannot get Video Trimmer as a native package and will need to install the program as a Flatpak package, Arch users will be able to get the app working with the AUR. To start the installation, open up a terminal window and use the pacman command to install both the “Git” and “Base-devel” packages.
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
After setting up both the “Git” and “Base-devel” packages, use the git clone command to download the Trizen AUR helper tool. This program will make downloading the Video Trimmer source code and compiling it an automatic process.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/trizen.git
Install the Trizen program onto your computer using the makepkg command.
cd trizen makepkg -sri
Once the Trizen AUR helper program is set up on your computer, you can use it to quickly download and compile the Video Trimmer program onto your Arch Linux or Manjaro Linux computer.
trizen -S video-trimmer
Clipping video files
Clipping video files with Video Trimmer is very straightforward thanks to its easy to understand UI. To start the trimming process, open up Video Trimmer by searching for it in the app menu on your desktop.
Once the Video Trimmer application is open, find the “Open” button in the top-right hand corner of the app, and select it with the button. After clicking on the “Open” button, a file browser window will appear on the screen.
Using the file browser window, locate the video file you are trying to clip and trim. Keep in mind that if you have multiple video files to trim, you must do it one at a time, as the app only handles one clip at a time.
When the video file is open in Video Trimmer, you will see a preview of the clip. Look in the video trimmer app for the play button, and click it to start the playback of the video. Let it play until you find the beginning spot where the video file should be clipped. Then, press the play button once more to pause the footage playback.
After pausing the video footage playback, look to the Video Trimmer timeline and look for the yellow bar in the timeline. This yellow bar is what is to be cut out of the video. By default, it selects a seemingly random portion of the video.
Using your mouse, grab the left-hand or right-hand side of the yellow bar and maneuver it over the section of the footage that is to be clipped in Video Trimmer. Keep in mind that the yellow bar on the timeline is tricky, and may require some tinkering with to get just right.
When you’ve selected the part of the footage you want to trim, locate the “Trim” button at the top of the app, and click on it with the mouse. Then, use the file browser to save your trimmed footage to your Linux PC.
Neat small tool for simple video cuts. Make sure to save the modified video with a different name (otherwise it will break).