Before sharing most videos you’ll probably want to cut out unwanted scenes, reducing file size and helping viewers focus on the main content.

Free Video Cutter is a simple tool which strips out the leading and trailing frames you specify, saving the results without any loss of video quality.

The program imports most common video formats – AVI, MPEG, MPG, VOB, RM, ASF, WMV, 3GP, MKV, FLV, MOV and MP4 – but only saves MP4, AVI, WMV and MOV files.

Free Video Cutter stands out immediately thanks to an appealing, hand-drawn-like interface, which seems more like something you’d expect on a tablet than your desktop.

The hand-drawn style interface stands out right away

It’s also very simple. Drag and drop (or browse to) a video to open it; drag sliders to mark the start and end points of the video scene you need; click Save to save it.

Sometimes this simplicity goes too far. When you open a video it starts playing immediately, and there’s no obvious Play/ Pause button to stop it; you have to toggle playback by clicking in the preview area.

There’s no keyboard support for nudging the cut points by frame, unfortunately – you can only drag with the mouse, or enter a time code in whole seconds.

The biggest limitation is that you can only cut leading and trailing frames. There’s no way to, for example, keep the starting and ending scenes but delete everything between them.

Despite that, Free Video Cutter is a likeable program, quick and easy to use, and if your needs are basic then it might be good enough.

Alternatives like Free Video Cutter Expert and Avidemux have more trimming options. Or, if you’d like to process your video in other ways, a free editor like OpenShot has a lot to offer.

Freemake Video Converter could be another option for some. It’s not lossless, but does support conversion between a lot of formats, and the built-in editor is good enough for most people’s trimming needs.

Free Video Cutter is a freeware application for Windows 7 and later.