The old way to cut a piece of audio out of a YouTube video was a chain: download the video, open an editor, find the moment, cut, export. Samplecut replaces the chain with one page — paste the link, see the audio as a waveform, drag a selection over the part you want, download it as a WAV or MP3.
It works for any kind of snippet: a quote from a podcast or interview, a sound effect, a musical phrase, a moment from a lecture. Here is the three-step flow, the URL trick that makes it a one-step flow, and how to keep a cut around permanently.
Step 1 — Paste the link and get a waveform
Drop the video's URL into the editor and hit Extract Audio. Regular watch URLs, Shorts, and live or embed links are all recognized. A few seconds later the full audio track appears as an interactive waveform — peaks and silences visible, which is what makes finding a precise moment fast.
Step 2 — Drag the selection over the part you want
The highlighted region on the waveform is your cut. There is no separate "mark in / mark out" mode:
- Drag the region's edges to set where the cut starts and ends.
- Click the waveform to seek, then play or loop the selection to check it by ear.
- Zoom in for precision — with the waveform stretched out, you can land an edge right on a word boundary or a drum hit.
Loop the selection while you nudge the edges; when it sounds clean on repeat, it is ready.
Step 3 — Download it as WAV or MP3
Download the selection in either format: WAV (uncompressed — the right choice if the clip is going into an editor or a project) or MP3 at 320 kbps (small, plays anywhere). The file contains exactly the range you selected.
Need the whole track instead of a section? That has its own path — including a full-track WAV that is streamed straight through with no re-encode — covered in YouTube to WAV.
The one-step version: edit the URL
You can skip the paste step entirely. On any YouTube video, edit the address bar and swap the domain:
youtube.com/watch?v=… → youtubecut.com/watch?v=…
Press Enter and you land in the editor with extraction already running. If the URL carries a timestamp (?t=90), a ten-second selection starting at that moment is pre-selected — so a "check 1:30" link turns into an almost-finished cut.
Keep the cut: banks and permanent links
Two ways to hold on to what you cut, beyond the downloaded file:
- Add cut banks the current selection so you can keep cutting more from the same video — each banked cut can be renamed, previewed, and downloaded on its own.
- Publish it (the one action that asks you to sign in) and the cut gets its own permanent page with a link you can share — anyone who opens it can play or download the cut without redoing any of this.
If you are cutting musical material to build on, how to sample from YouTube walks the same editor from a producer's angle. And as ever: the audio belongs to whoever made the video — clear the rights for anything beyond personal use.
Frequently asked questions
Can I cut more than one section from the same video?
Yes. Add cut banks the current selection and leaves you on the same waveform to select the next one. Each banked cut downloads independently, as WAV or MP3.
How precise can the cut be?
As precise as you can see and hear: zoom into the waveform, drag the selection edges onto the exact transient or word boundary, and loop the selection to verify. The downloaded file contains exactly the range you selected.
Do I need to download anything or make an account?
No. Cutting and downloading run entirely from the browser, free, with no account. Signing in is only needed for one optional thing: publishing a cut to get a shareable permanent link.
Can I share a cut without sending a file?
Yes — publish the cut and it gets a permanent page of its own. Anyone with the link can play it or download it as WAV or MP3, no software needed on their end.
Is there a limit on video length?
Yes — extraction currently caps out at around 40 minutes of source video. Age-restricted, private, and members-only videos also fail to extract.