"We have SponsorBlock at home"
Last updated : 23/6/2026 (initial writeup)
Introduction
SponsorBlock is useful to save your time from being wasted by cruft in videos you downloaded from YouTube. But its implementation in most YTDL clients tend to leave a lot to be desired for me.
- In Android (YTDLNis), 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.
- In Windows (Parabolic), 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 sucked considering desktop computers has more power to use than Android could ever get)
- 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, owing to the crowdsourced nature of SponsorBlock, its cuts can be inaccurate at times, sometimes cutting off relevant parts. 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.
- 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. 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. 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.
- Enable "Show export options screen before exporting".
For now, the set up is done. However, later on, LosslessCut throws you one last curveball 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 that Export/merge button after setting the export mode.
- Wait for video to export and check if the cut is to your liking. If it is, you're done. If it isn't... well keep at it until it is done.
Known issues
Conclusion
Yes, you are editing your own video for that "SponsorBlock at home".
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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