How to Cut One Part Out of a Meeting or Lecture Recording and Send It
Open ClipCut's Video Cutter, drop in the recording, set the start and end of the part you need and press Cut a video. With Exact cut off, the video data is copied, so quality stays the same. If the clip is still too big to send, run it through Compress Video with a Target size such as 20 or 25 MB.
Why cut first and compress second
A recording of a long meeting or lecture is usually far too big to attach to an email or a chat message, and the person you are sending it to probably only needs a few minutes of it: one decision, one explanation, one question and its answer.
The quickest route is two small jobs. First cut out the part you need. Then, only if that part is still too big, compress it to a size that fits.
Doing it in this order matters. Cutting with ClipCut's Video Cutter copies the video data without re-encoding it, so it keeps the original quality and is usually quick even on a long file. Compressing re-encodes the whole file it is given, so compressing a short clip is much faster than compressing the full recording, and a short clip can stay sharper at the same file size.
Step 1: cut the part you need in Video Cutter
1. Open ClipCut's Video Cutter and drop in the recording. It accepts MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM and AVI. The file stays on your device and is not uploaded.
2. Find the moment where the part you want begins. Drag the left handle on the timeline, or press ▶ Play and press ⇤ Start here when you reach it.
3. Find where it ends. Drag the right handle, or press End here ⇥ while it plays.
4. Fine tune both points. Tap the Start or End time to choose which point the nudge buttons move, then use −1 s, −0.1, +0.1 and +1 s. The Length readout between the two times shows how long the clip will be.
5. Leave Exact cut (slower) off for now and press Cut a video. The result card shows the file size on the Download button.
6. Press ▶ Play on the result, or use Before and After, to check that the clip starts and ends where you meant it to. If not, press Keep editing, move the points and cut again.
Finding the right moment in a long recording
Scrubbing through an hour of talking to find one sentence is the slow part of this job. A few habits help, and they are suggestions, not rules.
If the meeting or lecture had slides, drag along the timeline and watch for the slide that matches the topic. The thumbnail strip on the timeline makes slide changes easy to spot.
Start a few seconds before the sentence you need and end a few seconds after it. A clip that begins mid word is hard to follow, and a little breathing room costs almost nothing in file size.
If you need two separate moments, cut them as two clips. To send them as one file, you can join them afterwards with ClipCut's Merge Videos.
Step 2: shrink the clip to fit if it is too big
Look at the size on the Download button. If it already fits where you are sending it, you are done. If not, open ClipCut's Compress Video and drop in the clip you just cut.
Pick a Target size: Auto (720p), 8, 10, 20, 25 or 50 MB, or Custom to type your own. ClipCut counts 1 MB as 1,000,000 bytes, aims just under the size you pick and checks the real size of the finished file.
Press Compress a video. When it finishes, the result says whether the file fits under your target. If the clip is already under the size you picked, ClipCut tells you there is nothing to compress.
Pick a target with some room to spare. Gmail's help pages put the attachment limit at 25 MB, and Discord's help pages say free accounts can send files up to 20 MB (both checked October 2026). These limits change, so check the service's own help pages before you rely on them. Many workplace email systems set their own lower limits, so if you are not sure, ask or pick a smaller target.
Talking head and slide recordings usually compress well, because most of the picture stays still. Text on slides can soften at small sizes, so play the result and check that the slides are still readable.
What each export actually does
Video Cutter with Exact cut (slower) off copies the video and sound data between your two points into a new file in the same format. Nothing is re-encoded, so the picture and sound are exactly as they were. MP4 and MOV clips start right on time. Other formats, such as MKV or WebM, can start a moment early.
If the start lands a moment early, or ClipCut says it could not read the video for a fast cut, turn on Exact cut (slower). The clip is then re-encoded to an MP4 and starts on the exact frame, at the cost of a longer export.
Compress Video always re-encodes to an H.264 MP4 with AAC sound. Auto makes a 720p version. With a Target size, ClipCut works out a bitrate for the length of the clip and lowers the resolution if it needs to, and it tells you when it does.
Limits and what to do if it fails
A target size cannot fit any length. If the clip is too long to fit in the size you picked at a watchable quality, ClipCut refuses and tells you roughly how short to cut it. Cut a shorter part, split it into two clips, or pick a bigger size.
Small targets mean lower quality. A long clip squeezed into a few megabytes will look soft, and small text on slides may be hard to read.
Compressing is slower than cutting, and long or high resolution files take longer, especially on phones. If ClipCut says your browser ran out of memory, close other tabs and try again, cut a shorter section, or use a laptop or desktop in a modern browser.
Video Cutter keeps one continuous part. To take out a stretch in the middle, such as a break, use ClipCut's Remove Part of Video instead.
If ClipCut says the file cannot be read, the recording may still be saving or downloading. Wait until the meeting app or recorder has finished, then try again.
For very large files, a link to a shared folder is often a better way to send the whole recording than any attachment.
Privacy and permission
Meeting and lecture recordings often show other people's faces, names and voices. Only share a clip if you are allowed to: check with the people in it, and follow your school's or workplace's rules about recordings.
ClipCut does the cutting and compressing inside your browser, so the recording is never uploaded to ClipCut. Closing the editor wipes the file from the page. If a name or a screen needs hiding before you send the clip, ClipCut's Blur Video can cover it with a box.
Try it on your clip
Free in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and the file is wiped from the page when you close the editor.
Open the Video Cutter →