Trim MP4/H264 video? Want to remove the start and end - how?

[the loc-man]

Hi

I'm converting my stuff for my Apple TV 1G using Handbrake on Apple TV preset, works great.

However I would like to trim the beginning and end rid of the no use stuff, pointless having them, just to save that little bit extra.

Is there an app to do this for free and easy? I know iMovie may do it, but I think you then have to export it, and it re-encodes.

I basically want to just trim the start and end of the video,a bit like what you can do on an iPhone for a video you took.

I have an iMac, Snow Leopard and iLife 09.
cheers

[poisondeathray]

you can try avidemux (free) or quicktime pro

[the loc-man]

Included with Snow Leopard is QuickTime X, it let's you trim start and end, but then when you say save movie it saves it as .mov file, takes about 1min to save so looks like not re-encoding.

However I'm not sure if then I will lose chapters and meta tagging etc in the file, and if it will play on my PS3.

[budwzr]

H.264 doesn't support chapters anyway.

[yoda313]

If the original poster wants chapters and play on ps3 you need to retain as mp4 or output to m2ts.

I don't know if mp4 supports chapters but I think you can do that with m2ts. Try tsmuxer for that.

Of course you could always create an avchd for your ps3. That can be as fancy or basic as you want.

[the loc-man]

Wow this is getting complicated for me! I basically am happy with the files I have as they play on my PS3,iPhone 4 and Apple TV. However I was hoping to be able to trim them to get rid of credits at end.

Only thing I can find is QuickTime X on Snow leopard that does it perfectly what I want,easy but then changes it from mp4 (H264) to a .mov on saving it after trim.

I'm unsure if this does any "damage" to the file after I rename it back again to .mp4, ie does it keep the meta data, file header ok for other programs, not corrupt it in any way?

Cheers

[yoda313]

Sorry I did not see you were on a mac. I can't offer advice on software for that as I am a pc guy. Good luck.

[johns0]

Thread moved to mac forum where you can get more responses.

[rumplestiltskin]

Don't rename the file extension; there might be issues with doing this. The H264 (minus the stuff you clipped out) is simply re-wrapped in a ".mov" container. Your AppleTV and iPhone shouldn't have a problem with it.

[the loc-man]

But will it play on PS3? I'm not sure also if it will keep the meta data when displaying on Apple TV, eg it shows movie poster, actor, description, rating etc?

[rumplestiltskin]

Try it and see. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes to determine.

[the loc-man]

Has anyone used Boilsoft Video splitter and video joiner? These avertise the fact that try can join/split mp4 amongst other video formats.

Seems nice easy to use but never heard of them? They also do a Mac version of the joiner, although I do have access to a Win PC as well