Video Clip QuickTool is a simple utility for cutting, rotating and cropping individual digital video files.

Installation is quick and hassle-free. There’s no adware, no bulky dependencies and the package takes minimal space on your hard drive.

Video Clip QuickTool’s interface is basic. There are no button-packed ribbon controls, no toolbars or function-packed dialogs– it’s just a couple of video preview panes, with a scattering of buttons and controls.

Looks aside, the program is very easy to use. Drag and drop or browse to a video file, it’s displayed in a preview pane, and there’s a classic video cutter control underneath. Drag the left side to choose the start of the clip, the right to choose the end, and fine tune by frame if necessary.

What you don’t get is any form of video player. The frame updates as you drag the start and end point sliders, so there’s a visual indication of where you are, but you can’t hit Play to check this or hear audio.

The Rotate and Flip dialog has thumbnails showing the results of every combination of settings

The program does better with its flip and rotate tool. Instead of the usual “rotate x degrees” checkboxes, you get 8 frame thumbnails showing you the results of every combination of flip and rotate setting. All you have to do is select the one that looks right, and click OK.

In a thoughtful touch, Video Clip QuickTool can set your movie clip’s “rotate” tag to a particular value, or remove it entirely.

Elsewhere, there’s an option to resize or crop the frame, and again this is implemented more intelligently than we expected. You can click and drag to define the cropping area, for instance, but Video Clip QuickTool doesn’t stop there: it displays textboxes with the numerical values of those screen coordinates, and you can tweak the figures as required.

The final option seems slightly out of place as it’s just about volume, and reducing it to your chosen percentage of the original. But it worked for us, and is there if you need it.

Once you’ve made your settings, click Process, enter a file name, and choose your preferred format from a lengthy list: MP4, MPG, AVI, WMV, M4V, 3GP, RM, FLV, SWF, MKV, WEBM, MOV, VOB, ASF, TS, MTS.

Put it all together and Video Clip QuickTool is a handy application for carrying out quick cut, rotate or cropping tasks. There’s no video playback, but missing features are no surprise for version 0.2.4, and maybe that will arrive later.

Video Clip QuickTool is available for Windows 7 and later.