Help request: clipping .mkv?

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

So I make clips with virtualdub and reassemble them with Debugmode Wax, which I know no one else on earth uses but it's free and it's not WMM. The problem is that neither of these support .mkv and I want to use about 15 gb of .mkv source. I can use Hamster Free Video Converter to convert whole videos from .mkv to .avi at once, and it works fine, but it takes hours. I would rather just clip the bits I want in .mkv and then convert to .avi.

Does anyone have a good, preferably free application that can clip .mkv files with some degree of precision? Thanks for any advice.