Shears

A Chrome extension for scrubbing through web videos and saving clips as .webm files. Built for creating video generation datasets, grabbing reference footage, or pulling review cuts -- fast.

Zero dependencies. No build step. Just load it and clip.

Screenshots

Scan for Videos	Video Detected	Clipping Overlay	Batch Mode

Features

• Scan any page for <video> elements (including Shadow DOM)
• Visual timeline with draggable IN/OUT handles
• Frame-accurate scrubbing with keyboard shortcuts
• Batch mode -- queue multiple clips and record them all at once
• Resolution control -- downsample to 720p, 480p, or 360p
• Organized output -- clips save to Downloads/shears-clips/ with configurable prefixes

Install

From Release (recommended)

1. Go to the latest release
2. Download shears-v*.zip
3. Extract the zip to a folder on your machine
4. Open chrome://extensions/ in Chrome
5. Enable Developer mode (top-right toggle)
6. Click Load unpacked and select the extracted folder
7. The Shears icon appears in your toolbar

From Source

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/vichitra-paheli/shears.git
2. Open chrome://extensions/ in Chrome
3. Enable Developer mode (top-right toggle)
4. Click Load unpacked and select the shears folder
5. The Shears icon appears in your toolbar

Quick Start

1. Navigate to a page with video
2. Click the Shears icon in your toolbar
3. Click Scan for Videos
4. Click a detected video to open the clipper overlay
5. Set your IN and OUT points
6. Click Clip & Save (or press R) to record and download

Setting IN/OUT Points

There are four ways to set clip boundaries:

Method	How
Buttons	Click Set IN / Set OUT while the video plays
Keyboard	Press I or O at the current playhead position
Timeline	Drag the purple handles on the timeline bar
Type directly	Click the IN, OUT, or Seek time fields, type a value, press Enter

Time Input Formats

All time fields accept:

• m:ss.ms -- e.g. 1:23.500 (1 min 23.5 sec)
• m:ss -- e.g. 2:05
• Plain seconds -- e.g. 83.5 or 120

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
I	Set IN point
O	Set OUT point
Space	Play / Pause
Left / Right	Step one frame
Shift + Left / Right	Jump 5 seconds
Q	Queue current clip (batch mode)
R	Record and save clip

Batch Mode

For building datasets quickly:

1. Set IN/OUT points for a segment
2. Press Q (or click + Queue Clip) to add it to the batch
3. Repeat for as many segments as you need
4. Click Record All to process the queue -- clips are recorded sequentially and saved automatically

Configuration

• Prefix -- Set a filename prefix (e.g. take1, ref_shot) for organized output
• Resolution -- Downsample output to 720p, 480p, or 360p to save disk space

Output

Clips save to Downloads/shears-clips/ as:

{prefix}_{0001}_{timestamp}.webm

Post-Processing Examples

# Convert all clips to mp4
for f in shears-clips/*.webm; do
  ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -preset fast "${f%.webm}.mp4"
done

# Extract frames at 8 fps for training data
for f in shears-clips/*.webm; do
  mkdir -p "frames/$(basename ${f%.webm})"
  ffmpeg -i "$f" -vf "fps=8" "frames/$(basename ${f%.webm})/frame_%04d.png"
done

Architecture

shears/
  manifest.json      Chrome MV3 manifest
  background.js      Service worker -- handles file downloads
  content.js         Video detection + clipping overlay UI
  content.css        Overlay styling (dark theme)
  popup.html         Extension popup -- video scanner
  popup.js           Popup logic
  icons/             Extension icons (16, 48, 128px)

No build tools, no bundler, no dependencies. Everything runs as plain browser APIs.

Limitations

• Cross-origin videos -- Some sites restrict captureStream() on cross-origin video elements. Shears uses canvas recording as a fallback, which captures video but may not capture audio.
• DRM content -- Videos protected with Widevine/EME cannot be captured.
• Real-time recording -- A 10-second clip takes ~10 seconds to record. The extension plays through the video segment and captures frames via canvas at 30 FPS.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT