Then you can do Command T again and trim to export another section. Now when you exported the clip and maybe you want to export another clip all you need to do is use Undo. Bring that into iMovie instead of increasing your iMovie project size by those several gigabytes. If you just want a portion of that you can use this technique to have a small file. Shooting a long 4K video on your iPhone can give you a file that is several gigabytes in size. In many cases it could be a lot worse than that.

So now I can bring this small clip into the iMovie project and keep the iMovie project relatively tight without bringing in this huge 200 MB file. This small clip that I exported, this one is only 17 MB and it's just 38 seconds long. This first one is 238 MB and you could see it is almost ten minutes long.

It's actually just taking that clip and putting it in a separate file.

So I can call this Clip 1 and save it to the Desktop. It's not going to save over the existing video but instead ask to save something new. When I get to that one part I can click Trim. Now I can select just the part that I want. This brings up this special interface here at the bottom. I'll go to Edit and then Trim, or Command T. So, in Quick Time Player there's some editing tools. Let's say we just want a portion of this. This will allow you to open the video, export just a portion of it without ever creating some big other project or file in between.Īs an example let's take this ten minute video here, which is an old film. But you can do it using the simple Quick Time Player that's on your Mac. You have to create this big project just to export this small clip. Now if you try to do this using iMovie or Final Cut Pro it kind of defeats the purpose.

But if all you want is a small clip from that large video it pays to export that clip first to a separate file and then just use that small clip in the project. Now if you want to use that in an iMovie or Final Cut Pro project the problem is bringing in that large video makes the project huge. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Let me show you how to export a portion of a larger video as a separate file on your Mac. Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with. Check out How To Cut Out and Save a Portion Of a Video at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

How to split video on imovie on mac