You don’t want to miss a second of your granddaughter’s graduation ceremony, so you start the video camera rolling as she’s walking up to the stage. Now you wish you hadn’t done that! Nobody wants to watch the 3 minutes of her walking, they just want to see her step onto the stage and get her diploma.

No problem, if you took the video with your phone, you can use Google Photos, or even the Photo Gallery app that came with your phone, to trim the beginning or end of your video.

1. Google Photos App: View the video, tap the Edit button and you will see a white vertical bar on either end of the video, drag them to your desired begin and end point, then tap Save Copy. If you’re using an Android device, you can also “stabilize” by tapping the button before Saving Copy.
2. Samsung Gallery: View the video, tap the pencil Edit button, then the scissors icon at bottom and you should see the frames of your video with white bars at the beginning and end. Drag those bars to your desired beginning and end points then Save at the top. Notice the little clock icon where you can tap and and change the speed of the video to Slow or Fast.
3. Apple iOS Photos: View the video, tap the word Edit, drag the beginning and ending markers to your desired positions. These markers are not white lines like the others, it’s the arrows on either end, when you move them you’ll see a yellow border. Then tap Done and Save or Save as new clip.
   

What if you want to cut out the middle?

Cutting out the middle is not just a trim and it can’t be done with the simple photo app edit tool, but there is a way with Google Photos using the MovieMaker tool. Usually you use the MovieMaker tool to combine several photos and video clips into one movie complete with music. But, you can also use it just to combine 2 parts of the one video to create a new clip. Let’s say you have a 3 minute video and you want to cut out the middle minute, here’s what you do:

• Using the Google Photos App on a mobile device
• Select the 3 minute video, tap the +Add To and choose Movie
• Notice how a piece of that video has been placed on the first video segment – it has automatically trimmed it to a tiny piece. Tap the 3-dots to the right and choose “Show entire video” You now have the full 3 minutes.
• Tap the 3-dot menu and choose Duplicate
• You now have two segments with the same 3 minute video. In the first segment, drag the white markes to highlight the first minute. In the second one drag the white markers to hilight the last minute.
• When you save this movie it will consist of the 1st and last minute – leaving out the middle.

What’s the difference between a video and a movie?

• Video = video footage you took with a camera
• Movie = a file that is created from a combination of videos, photos, and music

Now, go take more videos!

To learn more about making movies, see these videos:

• 567.GP-Vacation Movie with Google Photos
• 660.GP-Horizontal movies
• Show 218.How to Make Movies from Your Photos Quick and Easy Using Google Photos