Can't I just trim and save an MP4 without exporting it?

Helllo. Is it always necessary to export even if all one has done is to take an existing video and trimmed off its beginning and end?

Can’t I just save it as an MP4? Exporting is time consuming and increases the file size and leaves me wondering about the file size and loss of quality and so on.

All I want is to keep the exact same quality of the earlier clip. Say it was a 27 mts video. I just want to cut it from 0:04 to 20:00 and 20:01 to 27:00 so as to make two parts. Can’t I just split and save the file I want without changing anything else?

Alternatively, could you please suggest how to retain the exact same quality as the original video? Presets and choosing the Export quality are very complicated and intricate decisions, apart from Export taking up a lot of time on my old macbook.

If I remember correctly, Shotcut has no such option or is limited. I don’t remember where the author of Shotcut explained it so well. I found some other explanations but not as good.

The keywords to find the solution to your question are
“without export” and “without reencoding” This information is also in the FAQ.

The answer and solution is e.g. the Avidemux program (allows you to use the copy option) to cut out the fragment(s) and save them without exporting. It can also be a mini editor. Cut precision may be limited by keyframes.

If you modify a video in Shotcut by trimming it you have to export.

See here (2nd post) for how to do what you want using FFMPEG.

Properties > menu > Extract Sub-clip

Free software for video called “Lossless Cut” does this, extremely rapid processing.
For audio there is MP3DirectCut … similarly extremely rapid.

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