How to Trim Videos and Do Interior Cuts

You can edit the beginning and end of a scene to make for smoother transitions and cut out dead time when the respondent has stopped speaking. If you want to learn more about all the ways you can edit your videos, check out this article: How to Edit Videos in the Vocal Video Collector Read on to get details on how to trim scenes do interior cuts when you want to remove something in the middle of a scene.

How To Trim Scenes

First, look for your draft in Videos to get started. 

Click on the video you want to edit. This will open the video editor. Select a scene from the left side-bar of the editor. Once you select a scene, you will see a Trim Video Clip button on the right.

Once you click the Trim Video Clip button, you will enter trimming mode on your selected scene. Don’t be afraid to edit your video scenes, as any changes you make are not permanent and can be undone. 

You will see a green bar at the bottom of the screen showing the length of the video scene and the scene’s beginning and end points. 

To make edits at the beginning and end of your video scene you can either drag and drop the bright green vertical lines to your desired beginning and end points of the scene, or you can use the “+” and “-” buttons to move one frame at a time. 

After each edit you can play back the scene to see if the desired amount has been cut. Once you feel like the scene is just right, click the blue Done button to save your changes.

How To Do Interior Cuts

Interior scene segments can also be removed. Cutting out an interior segment of a video scene can be useful when a respondent’s answer is irrelevant, confusing, or fails to answer the question asked.

Start by clicking on the video draft you’d like to work on, and hovering over the scene you’d like to edit on the left side-bar.

Look for the icon that looks like two sheets of paper, and click Duplicate Scene.

Once you duplicate the scene you will see two copies of the same video scene in the scenes panel. 

To edit out an interior segment of the video scene you will want to trim the first copy of the scene so that it ends before the segment you wish to remove. Be sure to hit the blue Done button when you are done to save your edits.

Now you will want to trim the second copy of the scene. For this copy of the scene you will want the scene to begin after the segment that you wish to remove. You can also trim off any extra time at the end of the clip if you wish. Click the blue Done button when you are done to save your edits.

To check for continuity you should now go back to the video page and re-watch the preview. It can take a couple of passes to get the transitions just right when trimming a video scene, but don’t be discouraged - you can get it just right with enough patience. 

Trimming Can be Undone

When you trim scenes, nothing is permanently deleted. So, if you decide you want to undo a scene’s trimming, just go back into trimming mode and drag the start and stop markers to restore the trimmed footage.