Let’s say, you come across an exciting video that you want to share on your WhatsApp or Instagram status. But, there’s a catch, the video is longer than 30 seconds. So you need to trim, cut or split (whatever you want to call it) the video file into smaller parts so that you can post it with ease.
Now, if you have the time, and you’re OK with using WhatsApp’s built-in editor, you could go ahead and trim the video multiple times until you post the whole thing, and you’re good to go. I genuinely respect your perseverance and dedication.
But, for the busy and lazy ones like me who like to get stuff done quickly, there are several ways to split long videos into smaller parts automatically. With that, one can post long videos in WhatsApp status, on Instagram, Facebook, & Snapchat stories, or wherever they want to.
How to cut long videos into small parts online
If you’re someone who doesn’t prefer installing software and apps on their devices, you can cut videos online with the help of web apps.
A lot of websites are available on the web that can cut videos. But, the one mentioned here is clean, efficient, and provides a lot of additional features (like cropping, rotating, etc.), as well.
Step1: Head over to “www.online-video-cutter.com“, the website should look something like this.
Step2: Click on the “Choose file” button to select the video file from your device’s storage. This website also allows you to choose a video directly from cloud storage services, like Dropbox and Google Drive. Alternatively, you can import a video by providing a link to fetch the video directly from a certain location on the web.
Step3: Using the sliders given, mark the start and the endpoint of the video. You can also make use of the two input boxes given below to manually insert the timestamps.
Rather than waiting for the video to be uploaded, you can start working on the editor right away, as the site uses client-side components to make the tool work. This saves a lot of data and makes the whole process significantly faster.
Step4: Choose the quality in which you want to download the exported files. Then, click the “Save” button at the bottom right corner of the editor, and leave the rest to the algorithm.
Step5: Once the processing completes, the site will prompt you to select the folder on your device to download to final export.
This is one good way to split your videos without installing any app. But, if you’re looking for a native video splitter app on Android, I have just the right one for you.
Video cutters for Android
By far, this is my go-to app for splitting videos on my Android device. It’s called “Video Splitter“. DUH! That’s a generic name.
The app’s user interface may give you an amateurish feeling. The app also contains ads, which can be frustrating or distracting at times. But, keeping all that aside, this app gets the job done efficiently.
How to use Video Splitter on Android
Step1: Once you install and launch the app it will ask for permission to access the phone storage. Given the permission, when you click on the “SPLIT VIDEO” button, the app will show you all the folders on your device, which contain videos.
Step2: After you choose the folder and the video you want to split, it will provide you with three options for splitting the video:
I)WHATSAPP SPLIT- This option splits the video into small clips with a duration of 30 seconds each (which is the default duration for a WhatsApp status video).
II)CUSTOM SPLIT– With this option, you can choose the duration of each split of your video clip, using the slider at the bottom. I use this option to split videos for Instagram (15 sec), Facebook (26sec) & Snapchat (15sec).
III) SINGLE SPLIT– You can cut the video into two parts at a particular point with this option.
Step3: When you’re done, click the “Tick” button at the top right corner to start the splitting process. The app will show you the estimated time that it’ll take to complete. If you want, you can even choose to be notified when it’s over.
Step4: Once done, all the clips will be arranged for you to choose and share. Long-press on the clips to select them, and press the “DONE” button to share them on your favorite platform. It also saves them in your gallery in a folder named ‘VideoSplitter’.
The clips are exported in the highest possible quality. So far, I haven’t noticed any reduction in the quality of the exported clips.
Video splitter app for iOS
For iOS users, there is a really simple, yet effective video splitter app available in the App Store called “VIDEO – SPLITTER“.
Just by looking at the logo of the app, you can get an idea of what the app does. It is free to use and doesn’t show any ads as of now. The steps here are quite similar to that of the Android app mentioned above.
How to use video splitter on iOS
Step1: Given the permission to access your iPhone’s storage. When you click the “SELECT VIDEO” button, the app lets you choose the video you would like to trim.
Step2: In the next screen, click on the “Select” button at the bottom right corner. The app then starts compressing the selected video. During the compression, you have to make sure the screen is ON; otherwise, it could get terminated.
Step4: The app should automatically redirect you to this page. Here, you can click on the small box adjacent to ‘NUMBER OF SECONDS’, to choose the duration of each split.
Step5: After that, click on the “Done” button at the right corner just above the keyboard. The app will save the clips in your iPhone’s camera roll.
Now you can directly go to your desired platform’s story section (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.) and select the already split videos from your camera roll to share.
Bonus: This can work for both Android and iOS users. Thanks to developers at Instagram, whenever you want to share a video on your Instagram story, it automatically divides the video into small clips of 15 seconds each, up to the one minute mark.
Once your video is already divided into parts, you can click on individual story segments and save it in your gallery.
The limitations of this technique are that you can only split a video smaller than 1minute and, the duration of each split remains constant and can’t be changed.
If you have a better app/website to suggest, that can make it to the table, feel free to drop a comment below.