LosslessCut — The Complete Guide: Fast, Lossless Video Cutting for Drone and Inspection Footage
LosslessCut is an open-source (GPL-2.0) video and audio editor that copies the data stream directly instead of re-encoding it. The result: cutting a long file takes seconds and quality is fully preserved. It is a good fit for drone footage, site inspection videos and meeting recordings.
LosslessCut
Mikael Finstad
Cut and join video without re-encoding — fast and with no quality loss, for drone footage, inspections and recordings.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Cutting without re-encoding — fast and with no quality loss.
- Segment marking — pick several segments from one file and save them.
- Merging files — join several clips into one file.
- Track extraction — save the audio or subtitle track separately.
- Stills — save a frame from the video as an image for a report.
What to know
Because there is no re-encoding, cuts snap to keyframes and are not frame-accurate — usually not an issue when cutting segments out of a long recording. For precise cuts, transitions and captions you need a full editor. LosslessCut is free for any use, including commercial, when downloaded from GitHub; the Microsoft Store and Mac App Store versions are paid, signed builds with automatic updates that fund development.
Related tools
For full editing with transitions and titles — Shotcut or Kdenlive. For compressing and converting videos — HandBrake.
Shotcut
Meltytech
A free video editor — cut, caption, add callouts and export tutorial and site-inspection videos.
Get it from the vendorKdenlive
KDE
A multi-track non-linear video editor — for longer training videos and project presentations, with automatic subtitles.
Get it from the vendor
HandBrake
HandBrake team
Compress and convert large video files — screen recordings and site videos down to a shareable size.
Get it from the vendorOBS Studio
OBS Project
Screen recording and streaming — software tutorials, model walkthroughs and recorded lectures in high quality.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
When you only need to cut the one important minute out of an hour of footage, LosslessCut is the fastest tool — free and with no loss of quality.