Ever felt the need to make clips of short sections of a video you are watching? Welcome to the club. The needs are many, sending a small video to your friends and family, inserting it into presentations, or just save a portion of a video as a copy.
For better or for worse (probably the latter) this is easier said than done.
You may have to use a few different programs to accomplish this, depending on the video format in question. That also means that process can be a bit tedious and time consuming — more so for novices.
The good news is that the universally popular and free VLC media player has everything you need to make basic clips of any and all type of videos. These advanced controls, however, are hidden from view, and are easy to miss.
To put these hidden tools to use, just open the VLC player and play the video that you want to extract the clip from. In the toolbar, go to View > Advanced Controls.
Four handy buttons in the bottom left corner of the window should pop up.
Now this is not video editing in its truest sense, but it does the job more than amicably. Basically you are just recording the video and saving it as separate file. Get the video to where you want to start by dragging the slider and then click the red record button.
Then click the button again at the point where you want to end your clip. Simple as that!
As long as VLC can play any file, even from a DVD, you can create a clip. They are saved in your User > Video Folder as MP4 files. Which is perfectly fine for most needs, but you can convert them into another format using a video converter if you want.
Oh, and you can download the VLC Media Player for free from this link.
