Whether you want to edit your home videos or you’re a content creator, Windows 11 has got many tools that’ll help you achieve this feat. If your goal is to only trim your videos, you don’t even need to look further than the in-built Photos app on Windows 11.
Windows 11 also includes Clipchamp, another inbox app on the new Operating System that provides great video editing capabilities at your fingertips. Before Microsoft bought Clipchamp, it used to be a web app you could only use in your browser. But now, Windows 11 users get to use this app right from their desktop without any hassle. Since the app provides a great number of tools for video editing that even beginners can easily use, we felt it was right to give it an honorary mention.
If your goal is to instead crop a video to remove some unwanted objects out of the frame, you can use one of the many apps available for the Windows OS. Let’s get to business!
Using the Photos app to Trim a Video
Trimming a video essentially means cutting out the unwanted parts of it to make it smaller. The Photos app makes it extremely simple to trim a video in Windows 11.
Open the Photos app and select the video you want to trim. Or, go to the video you want to edit. Then, right-click on it, go to ‘Open With’ and select ‘Photos’ from the sub-menu.
The video will open in the Photos app. Go to the toolbar at the top and click the ‘Video trim’ button. You can also use the keyboard shortcut to Ctrl + E to open the trimming tool.
Drag the sliders at the ends of the video bar to trim the video. Using this tool, you can only shorten the video from the ends. If you want to cut any part from within the video, skip to the next method.
You can view which part is falling under the trimmed part to make sure you’ve got it right. Adjust the sliders at the end if there’s a need for correction.
Then, click ‘Save a Copy’ or ‘Save as’ in the top-right corner of the screen. The edited video will be saved as a copy. The Photos app saves the edited video as a copy by default, preserving the original video as it is. If you want to save space on your PC, remember to delete the original video manually.
Use the Photos App to Trim Multiple Parts of the Video
The Photos app also has a built-in video editor, which not many people are aware of. Using this video editor, you can trim multiple parts of a video and even do much more. Open the Photos app on your Windows 11 PC. You can use the search option to find the app.
Then, click the ‘Select’ option in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Select the video you want to edit. Then, click the option ‘New’ from the toolbar in the upper-right corner.
A few options will expand. Select ‘New video project’ from the options.
It’ll take a few seconds for the video to load in the video editor as a new project. Enter the name for the video and click ‘OK’.
The editor interface will load. Click the ‘Split’ option from the toolbar in the lower half of the screen.
Split tool will open. Move the seeker to the part where you’d like to split the video. Since, the trim tool can only trim the ends, the motive behind splitting the video is to make the undesirable part of the video “an end part”.
You’ll be able to see the durations of the ‘Clip one’ and ‘Clip two’ in the right side of the window.
After moving the seeker where you want to split the video, click ‘Done’.
The video will be split into two parts. Continue splitting it if there are still more parts in the middle where you’d like to trim it.
If after splitting, there is a part of the video that is completely unwanted, select it and click ‘Delete’ (trashcan) from the toolbar.
Then, select each part separately and click the ‘Trim’ option.
The trim tool will load. Move the sliders inwards to trim the video. Don’t move the sliders towards the outside. Even after splitting the video, when you load it into the trim tool, the rest of the video exists outside of the selected section. Moving the sliders to the outside would take you to those other parts of the video.
You can play or scrub through the trimmed video to make sure you’ve got it right. Click ‘Done’ to save the changes.
Once you’ve trimmed all the sections of the video, click ‘Finish Video’ in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Select the video quality from the drop-down menu of the dialog box that appears on the screen and click ‘Export’.
Then, choose where you’d like to save it and click the ‘Export’ button.
Note: Even if you don’t export the video right away, your unfinished video project will be available in the video editor with all the changes you made. You can export it at any time.
Use Clipchamp to Trim the Video
Photos app is all well and good to trim a video, but it can be too unintuitive for some people. With Clipchamp available as an inbox app on Windows 11, it would be a shame to not try this if you’re not a fan of the Photos app.
Clipchamp is available as an inbox app on Windows 11 Insider devices and will soon be available on all Windows 11 devices. Go to the search option and type ‘Clipchamp’ in the search box. If the editor is available, it’ll appear in the search results. Otherwise, you can get it from the Microsoft Store.
Although Clipchamp is a full-fledged video editor, don’t let that overwhelm you. It’s rather easy to get a hang of, even for beginners. To get a crash course in using Clipchamp, you can check out our guide on Clipchamp for beginners.
Click ‘Create a Video’ from the homepage of the app.
To trim a video, click the ‘+’ icon from the toolbar on the left. Then, click ‘Browse Files’ to select the video from your computer or drag the file and drop it there. You can also trim a video that’s on your cloud storage, like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc., or your phone straight from Clipchamp.
Then, go to ‘Your media’ from the toolbar on the left.
Your video will appear there. Hover on the thumbnail and click ‘+’ when the option appears to add it to the timeline. You can also drag and drop it to add it to the timeline.
The video will load into the bottom half of the editor on the right of the screen. If you simply want to trim the video from the ends, go to the video and drag the edges towards the inside till you get to the desired position.
Play the trimmed video to see that you’ve got it right. If you end up trimming more of the video than you intended, simply drag the edges back out.
If you want to trim the middle sections of the video, Clicpchamp also has the Split tool. Place the white scrubber where you want to split the video. Then, click the ‘Split’ option from the toolbar. The single element of the video will be split into two. You can split it into as many parts as you want.
Then, to trim each element, drag the edges back and forth.
Once you’ve trimmed all the sections of the video, move each element so there is no space between them. Any gaps in the element will appear as a black screen in the video. Drag and drop the elements next to each other to eliminate the gaps. Play the video to make sure the edited version is the one you want.
Then, click the ‘Export’ icon in the top-right corner. Select the video quality from the menu that appears.
It’ll take some time for the video to convert and it’ll be saved to your Downloads folder automatically. You can also save it to the cloud options available or share it directly on social media.
Crop the Video Using VideoProc
Trimming a video is easy and many editors offer the tool. But if your goal is to crop the video, i.e., use a crop box to remove unwanted areas from the frame, you’ll find it’s not an option most editors offer. Cropping a video in this sense works similar to cropping an image. So, instead of cropping the length of the video, you’ll be cropping the actual video.
Neither the Photos app nor Clipchamp offers this functionality. So, you’ll have to download a third-party app. We found VideoProc a great choice for this purpose. Even though there are many complicated features the app offers, we won’t be getting into any of them for this guide.
Go to videoproc.com and click the ‘Free Download’ option to download the tool on your Windows 11 PC.
The executable file for the tool will download. Run the file to begin the installation. Click the ‘Install’ button on the tool window once it runs.
VideoProc is a lightweight tool and will only take a few seconds to install. Click ‘Launch’ once it finishes installing to run it. Since it offers full hardware acceleration, it’ll initially take a few seconds to analyze your graphics cards. Let it complete the analysis and follow any instructions on the screen to complete the setup.
Once the setup completes, click ‘Video’ from the main screen of the editor to begin.
Then, click the ‘Video’ (+) icon at the top. Select the video you want to crop from your computer. VideoProc supports a number of video formats.
Once the video loads, click the ‘Crop’ option.
The window for the crop tool will open. Click the checkbox for ‘Enable crop’.
Then, from the drop-down menu next to ‘Preset’, select the ratio in which you’d like to crop the video. By default, the option selected will be ‘Free’ where you can crop in any ratio you want.
Drag the selection box on the ‘Original’ video thumbnail to crop the video. The result will be visible in the ‘Preview’ thumbnail.
If you want to add black padding to the sides of the video, check the option for ‘Expand Video’, otherwise leave it unchecked. Then, click ‘Done’ at the bottom of the Crop window to save the changes.
Finally, tick the option for ‘Auto Copy’ to retain 1:1 quality for audio and video since the video won’t need re-encoding. Then, click ‘Run’ to export the video.
Cropping a video on Windows 11 is an easy task with the right set of tools. This guide introduces you to just that. Now, you can easily trim or crop any videos you want.
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