There are two simple methods for cutting a large video into smaller chunks.
Option A: Split Video with Windows Movie Maker
Open the video file in Windows Movie Maker and drag the clip in the movie timeline. Play the clip until you reach the point from where you want to trim it.
Now click the Split Clip button on the Preview Monitor or press Ctrl+L. This splits the video into two parts. Repeat the process with the second portion and finally export the trimmed video in the desired format.
Option B: Split Video with VirtualDub
If you have a large video file, Windows Movie Make may not be the best option and we prefer using Virtual Dub, which is open source and available on all platforms. Virtual Dub supports practically all video formats include DivX, MPEG, AVI, etc.
Open the video file in Virtual Dub and select the portion of the video that you want to keep (or even crop) - the selection is done using Mark-in and mark-out controls which resemble a half arrow (see screenshot)Once you have made the selection, goto File->Save As AVI to save only that portion of the video on your hard disk. The VirtualDub method is highly recommended for chopping big videos. You can even capture live streams of video and save them to multiple files.
Related: How to Join or Split MP3 Audio Files
Reader Comments
Amit;
http://www.bobyte.com/AviSplit/
is a much faster option for windows.
For linux, http://sourceforge.net/projects/avitools/ does the same job.
Written on 7/2/07 12:13 AM
You are right Shyam - AviSplit Classic is really neat - it can even join video files.
Will check that..
AviSplit is an application for cutting and rejoining AVI/DivX files. Avisplit can split a large AVI file into more convenient pieces (you set the size), rejoin those pieces or extract a clip with a specified starting and ending point.
Whether pieces or a clip, Avisplit output can be viewed in any standard player, and when the pieces are recombined, the result is exactly the same as the original.
Whether splitting, rejoining or clipping, AviSplit is very fast as no data processing is involved (lossless). Generally, using Avisplit is about as fast as copying the file itself!
Written on 7/2/07 8:46 AM
AviSplit didn't work for me. The files it created after a 'split' didn't run in Windows Media Player (gave silly error) and the 3rd was certifiably corrupt - in that VLC Media Player showed an error saying "This AVI file is broken... do you want to try repair it"
VirtualDub is certainly more reliable. Download AviSplit with some expectation you might be wasting some time.
Written on 19/5/07 8:56 AM
Avisplit worked well for me on a 3 hour long (7gig) hd movie I had that i wanted to burn to two dvds. Ive used virtual dub in the past and liked it too though.
Written on 16/11/07 1:04 PM