ffmpeg to select video sequences

Blog post edited by Anonymous - "Migration of unmigrated content due to installation of a new plugin"

ffmpeg can be used to crop the start and end times of a video sequece. Use the following command to read though the ffmpeg help message in the terminal window:

       man ffmpeg

Use arrow keys to move the text up and down and use 'q' key to quit. The two options we are interested in are as follows:

-i filename
   input file name

-ss position
   Seek to given time position in seconds.  "hh:mm:ss[.xxx]" syntax is also supported.

-t duration
   Restrict the transcoded/captured video sequence to the duration specified in seconds.
   "hh:mm:ss[.xxx]" syntax is also supported.

The following command should trim out the interesting area of the video:

     ffmpeg -i ChamC_Jul12_2011_LB3.MOV -ss  "00:01:40" -t 23 ChamC_Jul12_2011_LB3.mpg

That worked for me but the quality is not right. I did some more searching of the ffmpeg man page and came up with the following item that will impact quality:

-sameq
   Use same video quality as source (implies VBR).

This seems to work better:

     ffmpeg -i ChamC_Jul12_2011_LB3.MOV -ss  "00:01:40" -t 23 -sameq ChamC_Jul12_2011_LB3.mpg

View Online

Blogpost migrated from ICER Wiki using custom python script. Comment on errors below.