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O/T editing video

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URL: https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9895
Printed Date: 30 April 2025 at 1:39am
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Topic: O/T editing video

Posted By: EdisonLite
Subject: O/T editing video
Date Posted: 25 November 2022 at 6:39pm

This is off-topic but I'm sure there are some people here that edit videos. Can
anyone recommend a simple-to-use software that simply edits specific parts
out of a digital video (mp4)? For instance, an hour-long show that has 2 songs
in it. I'd want to edit out everything except the 2 songs. In Wavelab, for audio,
I'd simply highlight each section of non-music and hit delete. And I'd be left
with the 2 musical segments. Anything in the video editing software world
that's that easy? I'm not looking for fancy visual effects, like overdubbing or
adding text to the video (although that might be included). Thanks. There may
even be a good price on the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend.

Replies:

Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 26 November 2022 at 2:34am

For simple trimming, I don't use a graphical editor. I just make a note of the timestamps for what I want to keep, and use FFmpeg on the command line to copy whatever portion I want to separate files. Then I merge them.


ffmpeg -i inputfile.mp4 -c copy -ss 37:07.5 -to 41:30 s1.mp4

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mp4 -c copy -ss 42:10 -to 44:22 s2.mp4

echo file s1.mp4 > flist.txt && echo file s2.mp4 >> flist.txt

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i flist.txt -map 0 -c copy output.mp4

Posted By: cristianmdp
Date Posted: 26 November 2022 at 10:28am

Not sure if you can do exactly that with the following
software but you can cut and export each segment you want
to keep with "AviDemux".
Here:

https://www.videohelp.com/software/AviDemux

Posted By: chendagam
Date Posted: 26 November 2022 at 10:59am

OpenShot is a nice free editor that works on Mac and PC:
https://www.openshot.org/

Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 11 March 2023 at 5:58pm

Thanks for these suggestions, guys. I'll try them.

Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 12 March 2023 at 5:34am

Curiously, will any of these editors act as video capture software? I tried digitizing some VHS tapes a few years ago, and the results
were less than great...jerky video, like frames were being dropped.

Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 13 March 2023 at 3:07am

@Hykker - Video capture is tricky. The software probably isn't the issue unless you were doing some CPU-heavy compression while capturing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_TDa9zY1c - There's a great no-nonsense YouTube video on video capture (linked).

I'd say if your capture hardware is one of those tiny, cheap no-name AV-to-USB dongles, those are said to vary in quality from "good enough" to "drop frames no matter what", so it might help to get something better. It helps to have a good VCR in good condition, to start with. Also, all VCRs output somewhat wobbly video which can result in dropped frames, even with a good capture card. So regardless of VCR, it greatly helps to stabilize the video by running it through intermediate hardware called a TBC (time base corrector), of which there are various types. Some TBC or TBC-like features are built into certain higher-end VCRs or DVD recorders, and there are also expensive external boxes for this purpose. In any case, you have to experiment with settings, and expect that nothing will ever be perfect; there's always tradeoffs. And of course, tapes vary in their condition; sometimes they are virtually unusable no matter what you do.

I use a JVC S-VHS VCR, Panasonic DMR-ES15 DVD recorder for stabilization, Hauppauge ImpactVCB-e capture card in my desktop PC, and AmaRecTV or VirtualDub software. I try to capture to a lossless format that's easy on the CPU (PCM audio, Lagarith or HuffYUV video, AVI container). Then I post-process it with FFmpeg and maybe AviSynth, depending on my requirements for compression, deinterlacing, and cleanup. My workflow is somewhat convoluted and is just one of many possible options, so I don't want to get into details here. No matter what you choose, getting the "best" results takes a lot of time and effort, and you eventually have to stop messing with all the possible settings and accept something that's good enough. Just keep your original lossless copies in case you want to revisit it later.

These forums can help a lot, but beware, there are some opinionated perfectionists there, people whose social skills are sometimes lacking:
• http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/ - http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/
• https://forum.videohelp.com/ - https://forum.videohelp.com/
• https://forum.doom9.org/ - https://forum.doom9.org/

Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 13 March 2023 at 5:40am

mjb50 wrote:

I'd say if your capture hardware is one of those tiny, cheap no-name AV-to-USB dongles, those are said to vary in
quality from "good enough" to "drop frames no matter what", so it might help to get something better.

Yeah, it was just something I got on Amazon. Don't think I paid much for it, not like I'm planning to do a lot of conversions, just
had a few home videos, etc. I'd hoped to digitize. None of the reviews mentioned anything about poor quality.
Thanks for the tips.

Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 14 March 2023 at 5:16pm

chendagam wrote:

OpenShot is a nice free editor that works on Mac and
PC:
https://www.openshot.org/

Chendagam, I have a question. I downloaded this software, dragged the file in,
and I wanted to delete the 1st segment. So I dragged it to section 1 below, and
set the cursor to the spot I wanted to cut. This is where I got lost. I clicked the
scissors icon to clip the video at that spot, but it didn't do anything. (Their
short "how to" vid didn't explain.) Do you know how to cut off the beginning or
end of a video? I looked for other icons besides the scissors one but none
seemed to apply.