After reading separate video and audio tracks (in Shotcut), just export a portion of it as one video

Question

I am using Shotcut for my video editing (I am a beginner). I record one big video file, and one audio file separately, but when I load them into Shotcut actually I just need some portion of it. Is there a way then when I have read in the video and the audio into separate tracks to just export a portion of it (like from 1min - 2min or so)?

The way I do it now goes like this: I add them both to Shotcut, export everything, so that I end up with one big mp4 file. Then I reread this into Shotcut and just add the portion (with the blue/red-slider beneath the preview) I actually want (as a track), and then I export this again. But this additional step of exporting (and thereby rendering) everything I wish to skip, as it takes some time. So is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

I am using Shotcut in version 17.03.02. There are probably more ways how you can accomplish this.

The simplest is to mark in and out points in you video after adding it to the playlist. You can do this using keyboard (I - for in) and (O - for out) also while playing the clip.

Then you can right click the file name in playlist and either Replace the clip with the new cut points or Insert cut, basically inserting a second clip with the cut points marked. Then you can append the file into the Video Track. Do the same with your audio file. Create cut points and append it to a new audio track.

You can do some additional trimming in the track editor. For example using the Split At Playhead and delete the parts you don't want. That way you can trim both files to the same length. Now you have to export the project.

Answer 2

I figured out how to do it (I use version 17.02.05, and the steps from Pavols answer are employed).

So suppose I have a video track and an audio track, and I want just the portion, say from 1min to 5min extracted. As written mark those positions and do (in both tracks!) the Split At Playhead (right click when the cursor is into the track). Then select the portion before (or behind) the marker and delete it. If it is at the end, and nothing else is there, the video and all tracks are shrinked automatically. But if you do this for a portion before the position, there is still some "empty space", i.e. if you export the video you see a black screen (from 0min to 1min in the above example). But when I finally right click in the tracks on these empty parts and click remove, and do this for every track, then after this everything is pushed to the start, so that the video starts at 0min as wanted.

Don't know if there is any shorter way, but this is what I was looking for.