How to Download Part of a YouTube Video

What is the quickest way to download part of a YouTube video?#

The quickest way is a section download: the tool asks YouTube for only the range between your start and end times and saves it as its own file. A section download fetches only the chosen range, so it saves time and disk space.

Three methods do this without downloading the whole video first. The table compares B-ROLL, the yt-dlp command line and online cutter sites on the points that matter for an edit.

Two other routes show up in search results but give an editor less. YouTube’s Clips feature shares a selection of 5 to 60 seconds as a link on YouTube, according to YouTube Help on clips. Downloading the full video and trimming it in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro works, but you wait for and store the whole file to use a few seconds of it.

Pick the output format before you cut. Ema Zamboni, who edits YouTube videos in DaVinci Resolve Studio and built B-ROLL for that work, found 4K60 AV1 downloads heavy to play back, and AV1 or VP9 files crashed Resolve at times. B-ROLL’s ProRes and DNx formats convert each clip into an edit-ready .mov after the download for that reason. More jobs like this one are in the guides for YouTube footage from download to timeline.

How do you download part of a video in B-ROLL?#

B-ROLL downloads part of a video once you switch Advanced options to a part mode and paste one link. With VLC media player installed, the link opens the preview and trim player; without VLC, a prompt asks for Start and End times.

Open Advanced options with the ⋯ button next to Subtitles and pick one of three part modes: Whole video (the default), Only a part, ask me which each time, or Only a part, use the default below. The last mode applies one saved Start and End to every link you paste, which suits a batch where each video needs the same range.

Mark the range in the preview player#

The preview player marks a range with editor keys. Shuttle with J, K and L, press I at the start and O at the end, and the range turns green on the timeline. Press Enter or Add part to keep it and mark the next one; the button then reads Download (n), and each part becomes its own card and file.

The preview plays at up to 720p and only serves to pick the range; the download uses your Quality setting. In and out points land on whole seconds. With nothing marked, Download clip fetches the whole video. The full key list and the naming rules are on the YouTube clip downloader with preview and in and out points.

Type Start and End times instead#

The Download which part? prompt appears when VLC is not installed or when you paste several links at once, and it takes one range per video. B-ROLL states its rule next to the fields: “A number = minutes (2 = 2:00). Use m:ss for exact (e.g. 1:30).” The table shows how B-ROLL reads what you type.

Typed times may use decimals, so they can be finer than the player’s whole seconds. Click Download section to start.

Each part is saved as the video title plus its range, for example Interview [02-10 to 02-38].mp4, or .mov with ProRes or DNx. Credits are on by default, so Interview [02-10 to 02-38].credits.txt lands next to it. Folder habits for a growing pile of parts are in how to organize downloaded YouTube clips.

How do you download part of a video with the yt-dlp command line?#

yt-dlp downloads part of a video with the --download-sections option: a * prefix marks a time range instead of a chapter name, and the option needs ffmpeg, as the yt-dlp README states. This command saves the range from 1:30 to 2:10:

yt-dlp --download-sections "*1:30-2:10" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

The README documents a few variations. Repeat the option to download several ranges, write *10:15-inf to run to the end, and use *from-url to take the start and end times from the link. Add --force-keyframes-at-cuts for a frame-exact cut, which the README calls “slow due to needing a re-encode”.

The default output template, %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s, carries no times, so two ranges from one video end up with the same name. The README’s section fields fix that. The template in this command keeps the hour in the name, formatted with the README’s > time syntax:

yt-dlp --download-sections "*1:05:30-1:06:10" --force-keyframes-at-cuts -o "%(title)s [%(section_start>%H-%M-%S)s to %(section_end>%H-%M-%S)s].%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

B-ROLL runs this same yt-dlp option underneath and adds the player, the naming, the credits file and the ProRes or DNxHR conversion. What the tool is, who maintains it and how it is licensed are covered in what yt-dlp is and whether it is safe to use.

Are online YouTube cutters worth it compared with a desktop app?#

Online cutter sites are worth it for a one-off clip on a phone or on a PC where you cannot install software. For footage that goes on a timeline, a desktop app usually serves an editor better.

Online cutter sites often cap free clips by resolution or length and process the video on their own server, so you get the site’s encode rather than a format you chose. Many carry ads and pop-ups, and every link you cut passes through a third party. None of that matters for a quick social post; it matters when the clip has to match a 4K timeline.

A desktop app works on your own PC at your own Quality setting, and B-ROLL can hand you ProRes or DNxHR instead of YouTube’s delivery codecs. The trade-off is an install, and B-ROLL runs on Windows 10 and 11 only, with macOS and Linux planned. The categories side by side, with the limits of each, are in online downloader vs desktop app vs browser extension.

How do you download one chapter of a YouTube video?#

A YouTube chapter is a labeled time range set by timestamps in the video description, so one chapter runs from its own timestamp to the next one. According to YouTube Help on video chapters, the list starts at 00:00, needs at least three timestamps in ascending order, and each chapter lasts at least 10 seconds. YouTube can also add automatic chapters.

B-ROLL has no automatic split by chapters, so you turn the chapter list into ranges yourself. Take a description that reads:

0:00 Intro
2:15 Setting up the lights
9:40 Color grade

For “Setting up the lights”, type 2:15 as Start and 9:40 as End. For “Color grade”, the last chapter, type 9:40 as Start and leave End empty. To save several chapters in one run, mark each range as a part in the preview player. The file name carries the times, not the chapter title, so rename the file if you want the chapter name in your bin.

yt-dlp handles chapters by name. --download-sections "Color grade" treats the text as a regular expression and downloads every matching chapter, while --split-chapters splits a full download into one file per chapter, as described in the yt-dlp README.

How do you clip highlights from a finished livestream?#

A finished livestream that the channel archived is a regular YouTube video, so you clip highlights from it like any other video: mark each moment as a part and download only those ranges. As of September 2026, YouTube Help on archiving live streams describes the archive as automatic but warns that a stream that exceeds 12 hours “may not be captured at all”.

B-ROLL does not recognize youtube.com/live/ links. Paste the regular watch link instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= followed by the same video ID. To find the moments, scrub the chat replay, read the timestamps viewers leave in comments, or search the transcript, as in a paper edit from a YouTube transcript.

Long streams hit the naming limit. Clip names drop the hour, so a part starting at 1:05:30 is named [05-30 to ...], and parts at 1:05:30 and 2:05:30 collide: the second counts as already downloaded. Shift one of the two in points by a second and each part gets its own name.

B-ROLL prefers YouTube’s HLS streams for clip downloads, because clips from deep inside long videos could stall on one large stream; the switch fixed those stalls. The stream picked for a clip can therefore differ from the one a full download of the same video would use; that difference has not been measured.

What goes wrong when you download part of a YouTube video?#

Section downloads go wrong in 6 predictable ways, and each one has a fix in B-ROLL’s settings or in the link you paste. The table maps each symptom to its cause and fix.

A clip that starts early is covered step by step in YouTube clip starts at the wrong time, and the reason behind it in keyframe cut vs frame-exact cut. If the player shows “Couldn’t load this video.”, work through B-ROLL preview not loading.

As of September 2026, YouTube sometimes answers a download with “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot”. What fixed it on Ema’s PC was exporting a fresh cookies.txt from a browser signed in to YouTube and loading it in B-ROLL. Cookies expire, so the message can come back; export them again when it does.