As GoPro Hero cameras and other POV (Point of View) cameras become more popular, users increasingly need quick and easy ways to edit the footage. For example, drone footage shot with a GoPro (or other camera) may produce long sequences composed of different views, perspectives, and subjects. If you need only one short clip from that footage for a video project or to send to someone, how can you easily and quickly extract that particular clip from a 15-minute long reel?

You could import the footage into a movie-editing program and extract the clip that way. But what if you haven’t mastered iMovie or GoPro Studio or just don’t want to fool with a movie-editing program to do some simple edits on your footage? One option is QuickTime, which is a movie player that comes bundled with Mac computers (there is also a Windows version). In addition to playing video files, QuickTime has some basic editing tools that can be used to trim, split, and combine video clips.

In the following video tutorial, I show how to use QuickTime to make basic edits on some GoPro drone footage. Although I’m focusing on GoPro to illustrate QuickTime’s editing tools, this application can be used with any video file (e.g., .mov, .mp4, .m4v, H.264) or audio file (e.g., .wav, .MP3) that QuickTime can open and play.