How a Software Engineer Cuts Video Down to Size

Note: Editing videos makes me feel this old …

I can do a lot of things with a computer – a lot. But one skill that has been eluding me since the mid 1990s is that of editing video. I don't know what it is about non linear editing (NLE) but I just can't master it. I recently had to help the StarbaseIndy folks with some video editing and they asked me to trip a video clip from seconds 8 to 15 and I said "Sure!" and then began sweating.

I started with ScreenFlow figuring that of course ScreenFlow can import an MP4 file – NOPE!. Sigh. I continued onto QuickTime which has a really easy to use Trim feature but while I was able to trim from the left of the video, trimming from the right seemed, well, sketchy.

I finally thought to google for "Command Line Video Cutter" and found an excellent Stack* forum.

Here is what ended up being the command:

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:08 -i VID_20190717_214004.mp4 -t 00:00:07 -vcodec copy -acodec copy starbase_indy_cmd_line.mp4

Basically you tell it the starting point and then the duration. And you'll get a great clip of someone saying something in Klingon about Starbase Indy!