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I have an MP4 format video.

I was wondering if there is a good tool to take a video, and create n number of new videos, by just setting a bunch of cut points.

Obviously most video editors will be capable of cutting a video and exporting. But I am wondering if there are any tools who are exceptional fast at this.

For example, and ideal situation would be like..

take a 2 min video and say..

set split @ 30 seconds set split @ 60 seconds set split @ 90 seconds

and then just hit export function that spits out 4 new videos orig_name_[number].mp4.

In an even MORE ideal world this could be done with a command line program and a batch file :)

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

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You can use ffmpeg, a command-line tool to do this.

If you want equal-sized splits, use 

ffmpeg -i input -segment_time 30 -f segment -force_key_frames expr:gte(t,n_forced*30) -reset_timestamps 1 a%02d.mp4

If you need to split at irregular intervals, use

ffmpeg -i input -crf 18 -segment_times 30,60,90 -f segment -force_key_frames 30,60,90 -reset_timestamps 1 files%01d.mp4
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  • I am curious what the files%01d syntax is doing. When I try to add this to a batch file called video_cut.bat I get error "Invalid segment filename template 'filesvideo_cut1d.mp4"
    – Scorb
    Feb 22, 2016 at 20:20
  • You have to escape special characters in a bat, so it will be filesvideo_cut%%1d.mp4 inside the BAT. Since you are generating sequentially named files, the %nd specifies the numeral field width. For files test-0000 to test-3342, you would use test-%04d
    – Gyan
    Feb 22, 2016 at 20:24
  • One more question. What does the -crf 18 refer to. What would the command be just to resave the whole video?
    – Scorb
    Feb 22, 2016 at 22:13
  • CRF is a rate control method which controls the quality of the output. Lower values are better but larger. 18-28 is a good range. To resave the entire source is ffmpeg -i input -crf 18 output.mp4
    – Gyan
    Feb 23, 2016 at 5:27

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