"We have SponsorBlock at home"

Last updated : 25/7/2026 (forgot Smart Cut)

Introduction

SponsorBlock is useful to save your time from being wasted by cruft (inbuilt advertisements, offtopic stuff, etc.) in videos you downloaded from YouTube. But its implementation in most YTDL(P) clients tend to leave a lot to be desired for me.

• On YTDLNis in Android, you get to pick what you want to cut. And the option to re‐encode, but the download times skyrockets to hours (and to infinity until forcestopped if the device disconnects from internet even once while processing the video) and the Android device overheats for as long as the process goes. NewPipe forks (not upstream NewPipe themselves) only allow you that SponsorBlock if you're streaming the video.
• In the desktop GUIs (Parabolic, ytdlp‐gui by BKSalman, yt‐dlp‐gui by imsyy), SponsorBlock is either on/off; not giving you the option to pick which cruft you'd like to cut (AFAIK it's selfpromo and sponsor), let alone the option to re‐encode (which kind of sucked considering desktop computers has more power to use than Android could ever get)
Off‐topic : Parabolic also self‐updates itself and its inbuilt deno & ytdlp; with no off toggle. We kind of get autoupdating the inbuilt components considering YouTube, but Parabolic forcing updates on users opens them to the possibility of being hit with Parabolic's enshittification.


• As for directly using ytdlp from the terminal, you're going full wizard mode at that point. And if you put SponsorBlock commands on, the issue is still there.
• Either way, the cuts produced by YTDL sucks. FFmpeg would cut away from the keyframes & cause audio issues that only fixes itself after you manually seek (and sometimes also ruins the video file). Re‐encoding (archive.org) is apparently the usual shilled solution, but it doesn't always fix the corruption caused by ffmpeg cutting at the wrong area (and adds unnecessary processing burden). An alternative (round‐cuts‐to‐keyframes) (archive.org) is offered as a pull request, but so far it wasn't merged to yt‐dlp for unknown reasons.
• And thanks to the crowdsourced nature of SponsorBlock, its cuts can be inaccurate at times, sometimes cutting off relevant parts (other times it misses parts that was supposed to be cut, sometimes making awkward cuts, etc.). I think some of the contributors have M.S.I. (either device, skill issue, or both), but I digress.

As such, as beneficial as SponsorBlock is, I decided to have the middlemen removed and process the videos myself. It was not quite a smooth journey.

LosslessCut on desktop

On the desktop, LosslessCut is our easiest tool for "SponsorBlock at home". Though it is not necessarily perfect on its own.

• It defaults to keeping selected segments over cutting them out. At the very least it had the decency to keep user preferences.
• Lacks SponsorBlock integration, though this is exactly the issue we're fixing. So we're not counting this one.
• Based on Electron, which is rather curious for a video editor (at least before we get into the other aspects of Electron). Though I've yet to try out other video editors.

Setup

• Download & extract LosslessCut for your desktop platform. Or purchase from its recommended app stores. Or get them from AUR if you're on Arch/Artix. Either way, open LosslessCut.
• Upon opening LosslessCut, you will be greeted with a big blank DROP FILE menu and a bunch of small buttons (and one large watermelon button that we want to dodge as it opens your browser to whatever political issue the developer considered important, distracting us from the task at hand). We go to the small buttons for now, into the gear button for the settings. Every step after this will be done there, unless explicitly mentioned.
• Choose cutting mode : Remove.
By default, this is set to Keep, which is the opposite of what we want (to cut offparts of a video, not keep them).


• Enable Keyframe cut mode. Though this is still not enough as we will need Smart cut, which we can only enable later on.
• Enable "Show export options screen before exporting".

For now, the set up is done. However, later on, LosslessCut throws you one two last curveballs in the Export options. There, you want to set Export mode to "Merge cuts", as the default is "Separate files".

Guide

• Click the DROP FILE menu and open the video you're cutting.
• Press I to start cutting, O to end cutting. Those cut segments will be deleted. Or kept (while what you want will be nuked) if you forgot the cutting mode.
• After cutting out parts you don't want to see in the final video, go to bottom‐right section of losslesscut's UI & click on the Export button (or Export/merge, though at the very least the cut icon is present). You will see the Export options menu.
• Click on "Show advanced options" and scroll down to the lowermost section where you will see "Smart cut (experimental)". Enable it to ensure maximum accuracy on the cuts. Everything else in the advanced options can be ignored for now.
• Click that Export/merge button (or just Export if you're only keeping 1 section) after setting the export mode.
• Wait for video to export and check if the cut is to your liking by playing it on your video player of choice. If it is, you're done. If it isn't... well keep at it until it is done.
• If you want to edit another video, you can ctrl+w to exit the video LosslessCut is editing, back to the big blank DROP FILE menu.

Known issues

• Unable to export (random issue)
As this issue is random, the issue can be resolved by random stuff, ranging from using different (and preferably stronger) hardware to adding frames on the cuts (which you can do from advanced options before exporting video). Even changing the original video file could help (such as switching to AVC1 mp4/mkv or VP9 mp4/webm from AV1 mp4 and vice versa).

• With LosslessCut, I don't get to keep embedded chapters (most of the time this happened I just skip it to Ignore chapters). I may update if I find a way to preserve it while cutting shit out.

Conclusion

Yes, you are editing your own video for that "SponsorBlock at home". But compared to yt‐dl's M.S.I.738208;addled solution, your cut will be better for you.

As for video editors on touchscreen platforms like Android... I won't bother. This operation needs precision that touchscreens don't provide.

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