I got tired of opening CapCut every time I needed to quickly join 2-3 clips. Too many menus, too many features I'll never use. So I built my own.
2minclip.com — a free online video editor that runs entirely in the browser. No install, no signup, no watermark.
Here's how I built it and what I learned.
The core idea
The concept is simple: ilovepdf but for video. You open the browser, upload your clips, edit, export. That's it. No account, no server processing, no storage costs.
The key technical decision was using FFmpeg.wasm — a WebAssembly port of FFmpeg that runs entirely in the browser. This means:
- Zero server costs (users process video on their own device)
- Complete privacy (videos never leave the user's device)
- No backend to maintain ## Tech stack
- React + Vite — fast dev experience, easy deployment
- FFmpeg.wasm — video processing in the browser
- Tailwind CSS — styling
- dnd-kit — drag and drop for the timeline
- i18next — ES/EN internationalization
- Vercel — deployment (free tier covers everything) Total infrastructure cost: ~12€/year for the domain. That's it. ## The biggest challenge: audio streams The hardest bug I ran into was this FFmpeg error: Stream specifier ':a' matches no streams It happened when a clip had no audio track. FFmpeg was trying to extract [0:a] from a silent video and failing. The fix was to detect whether each clip has audio before building the filtergraph, and generate silence (aevalsrc=0) for clips without audio.
What it does
- Upload multiple clips at once (MP4, MOV, WebM)
- Choose canvas: 9:16 / 16:9 / 1:1
- Trim with playhead + split button
- Reorder by dragging
- Adjust speed (0.5x, 1x, 2x)
- Flip and rotate clips
- Add audio tracks with volume control and fade out
- Add text with fonts and colors
- Overlay images and videos
- Export to MP4 H.264 — no watermark, no limits
Lessons learned
FFmpeg.wasm is powerful but slow on mobile. For clips under 60 seconds it works fine. For longer videos on low-end devices it can struggle.
The canvas-first approach is better UX. Choosing the output format before editing eliminates confusion and produces predictable results.
SEO matters from day one. Since this is a tool people search for when they need it, organic search is the main acquisition channel.
Try it
2minclip.com — free, no account, works on mobile and desktop.
Would love feedback — especially if you've worked with FFmpeg.wasm and have tips on improving export performance on mobile.
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