taking off start/end of video with ffmpeg (or other?)

[fredct]

Hey guys,

I know this may be relatively simple, but I can't spot any part in the ffmpegX window to chop off a part of a video (I'm using Mac OS X).

I want to take about 5 seconds off the front and 15 or 20 minutes off the end, and then make a DVD out of it. I've successfully been able to take the video and format it to DVD video, process it as a VIDEO_TS folder, and make a burnable and playble image.

The one thing that's getting me is just the 'simple' act of cutting the video down to size. The original video is MPEG-2 being converted to be small enough to fit on just one DVD. Is there any way for ffmpeg to just take part of an MPEG-2 video file? Is here any other free utility that can do it?

Your help is greatly appreciated,

Fred

[Case]

I think you might find MPEG Streamclip helpful in the cutting.

[fredct]

Hmmm, interesting, but the problem is it seems to require purchase of the QT MPEG-2 playback component, for $29.

I suppose one option would be to split the video into X pieces, so that the last one contains the useless stuff, and then rejoin all the others. But I have a hard time believing that no software can just chop off the end of a piece of video. Really?

[major]

You may try to use the "Split" tool (in the filters tab) by defining a split point in minec. However, it does not work very well with muxed mpeg-2 streams (.MPG) as it was designed for elementary .M2V streams. VOB format is not supported. Apart from that, you should consider using Streamclip.