# Free and Legal way to Cut/Crop/Paste Quicktime Movies?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-and-legal-way-to-cut-crop-paste-quicktime-movies/300956
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 25, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-and-legal-way-to-cut-crop-paste-quicktime-movies/300956 "2005-04-25T02:23:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-and-legal-way-to-cut-crop-paste-quicktime-movies/300956/1 "2005-04-25T02:23:32Z")
I bought a digital camera really cheap which is nice in that it will record videos in Quicktime format, and does a decent job. The problem is, if I’m filming something like Fat Cat, I have to run it for 2 or more minutes before he does something worth showing. And then, I have to send the whole file, and no one wants to download 300MB of a 25-pound cat just staring at the camera for two minutes before he does whatever cute thing he chooses to do.
Long story short, I need to crop Quicktimes. I don’t need advanced editing, I don’t need to convert them, I don’t need anything but the ability to cut out the few seconds of interesting stuff from minutes of painfully boring stuff. And hopefully, as a bonus, also be able to paste the pieces together too.
I’ve searched a bit, and gone down several blind alleys of lieware/virusware/malware - is there any free utility that will let me do what I want to do? FTR, WinXP platform or equivalent.
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### Author:  [@Gut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gut)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2005, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-and-legal-way-to-cut-crop-paste-quicktime-movies/300956/2 "2005-04-25T03:45:14Z")
You could try converting the mov to avi with [MP4Cam2AVI](http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp4cam2avi/) and then editing the avi with [ZS4](http://www.zs4.net/). I’ve never used these but that’s all I’ve got after some searching around. Good luck 🙂
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### Author:  [@AZCowboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AZCowboy)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2005, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-and-legal-way-to-cut-crop-paste-quicktime-movies/300956/3 "2005-04-25T04:35:55Z")
Don’t have the answer for you, but the definitive site for information is [www.videohelp.com](http://www.videohelp.com). I think you might convert, as **Gut** suggests, from quicktime to AVI. At that point, I would recommend [VirtualDub](http://www.virtualdub.org/). Good luck.
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2005, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-and-legal-way-to-cut-crop-paste-quicktime-movies/300956/4 "2005-04-25T17:13:31Z")
> [@Gut](#):
>
> You could try converting the mov to avi with [MP4Cam2AVI](http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp4cam2avi/) and then editing the avi with [ZS4](http://www.zs4.net/). I’ve never used these but that’s all I’ve got after some searching around. Good luck 🙂
That program doesn’t support Quicktime movies, sadly, as I just tried it.
Well, thanks for the tips guys. I had hoped this was common enough of a situation that someone would have a ready program. Perhaps everyone bites the bullet and buys the full Quicktime then…
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### Author:  [@awldune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/awldune)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-and-legal-way-to-cut-crop-paste-quicktime-movies/300956/5 "2005-04-25T19:41:15Z")
[RAD Video Tools](http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm) will convert quicktime, at least the .MOV files that my camera creates.