Cut part from video file from start position to end position with FFmpeg

Question

I have a video file of 30 minutes, but I want to extract a video from 00:09:23 to 00:25:33.

I can define the startposition with -ss, but I couldn't find one for the end position. Any help please?

Answer 1

Install ffmpeg

Make sure you download a recent version of ffmpeg, and don't use the one that comes with your distribution (e.g. Ubuntu). Packaged versions from various distributions are often outdated and do not behave as expected.

Or compile it yourself. Under macOS, you can use Homebrew and brew install ffmpeg.

How to cut a video, without re-encoding

Use this to cut video from [start] for [duration]:

ffmpeg -ss [start] -i in.mp4 -t [duration] -map 0 -c copy out.mp4

Use this to cut video from [start] to [end]:

ffmpeg -copyts -ss [start] -i in.mp4 -to [end] -map 0 -c copy out.mp4

Explaining the options

The options mean the following:

• -ss specifies the start time, e.g. 00:01:23.000 or 83 (in seconds)
• -t specifies the duration of the clip. The format of the time is the same.
• Instead of -t, you can also use -to, which specifies the end time.
• -map 0 maps all streams, audio, video and subtitles

You have to understand that normally, -ss resets the timestamps of the input video after the cut point to 0, so by default it does not matter if you use -t or -to. If you want -ss to not reset the timestamp to 0, the -copyts option can be used. This makes -to behave more intuitively.

For example:

ffmpeg -ss 5 -i in.mp4 -t 30 -map 0 -c copy out.mp4

This seeks forward in the input by 5 seconds and generates a 30 second long output file. In other words, you get the input video's part from 5–35 seconds.

Or, same as above, but using -to:

ffmpeg -ss 5 -i in.mp4 -to 30 -map 0 -c copy out.mp4

This achieves the same result as the previous command, since the internal timestamps of the video get reset to 0 after seeking 5 seconds in the input. The output will still be 30 seconds long.

If we instead use -copyts, and we want the part from 5–35 seconds, we should use:

ffmpeg -copyts -ss 5 -i in.mp4 -to 35 -map 0 -c copy out.mp4

Finally, we've used the -c copy option. -c copy copies the first video, audio, and subtitle bitstream from the input to the output file without re-encoding them. This won't harm the quality and make the command run within seconds.

For more info on seeking, see https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Seeking

How to cut a video, with re-encoding

Sometimes, using -c copy leads to output files that some players cannot process (they'll show a black frame or have audio-video sync errors).

If you leave out the -c copy option, ffmpeg will automatically re-encode the output video and audio according to the format you chose. For high quality video and audio, read the x264 Encoding Guide and the AAC Encoding Guide, respectively.

For example:

ffmpeg -ss [start] -i in.mp4 -t [duration] -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a aac -b:a 192k out.mp4

You can change the CRF and audio bitrate parameters to vary the output quality. Lower CRF means better quality, and vice-versa. Sane values are between 18 and 28.

Answer 2

I think you can use the following command now.

ffmpeg -i inputFile -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:09:23 -to 00:25:33 outputFile

Have a look also ffmpeg Doc, or this wiki page.

Answer 3

This is odd that no-one suggested the trim filter.

Drop everything except the second minute of input:

ffmpeg -i INPUT -vf trim=60:120

Keep only the first second:

ffmpeg -i INPUT -vf trim=duration=1

Drop everything except from second 13 to second 58:

ffmpeg -i INPUT -vf trim=13:58 OUTPUT

Answer 4

You can use these two methods which work for Windows and Linux.

There are two ways how to split video files by ffmpeg. The first one is good in itself, more than that - it is faster, but sometimes creates output files with certain flaws. So for those cases there is the second way of splitting video files: it is considerably slower, the output files are bigger, but it seems they are always of the same quality level as input files used.

Way 1:

ffmpeg -ss <start> -i in1.avi -t <duration> -c copy out1.avi

Way 2:

ffmpeg -ss <start> -i in1.avi -t <duration> out1.avi

• <start> – the beginning of the part of a video ffmpeg is to cut out. Format: 00:00:00.0000, meaning hours:minutes:seconds:milliseconds.

• <duration> – the duration of the part of a video ffmpeg is to cut out. Same format as above.

Examples:

ffmpeg -ss 01:19:00 -i in1.avi -t 00:05:00 -c copy out1.avi
ffmpeg -ss 01:19:00 -i in1.avi -t 00:05:00 out1.avi

ffmpeg cuts out a part of the video file starting from 1 hour 19 minutes 0 seconds. The duration of the video sequence cut out is 5 minutes 0 seconds.

Answer 5

I use the following syntax to cut video with ffmpef:

ffmpeg -sameq -ss [start_seconds] -t [duration_seconds] -i [input_file] [outputfile]

-t is used to set the duration in seconds - you can't specify the end time but this should work for you.

Answer 6

You can use this

ffmpeg -sameq -ss clip_start -t duration  -i  original.ogg  clip.ogg

Here you have to give duration of video. ie. 00:25:33-00:09:23