How to Remove a Few Unwanted Frames at Start of MP4?

[pone44]

I am using a video splitter that for some reason insists on starting and stopping each section of video on a K frame. This results in my having a few unwanted frames at the start of many output MP4 files. Is there a straightforward tool to remove a few frames from the start of an MP4? Can ffmpeg do that? What is the command line to remove two frames from the start of the specified MP4 file?

[Budman1]

All encoder/splitters/editors split on K (I-Frame) EXCEPT 'Smart' encoder. This is because K/I frames are complete images. Cutting anywhere else (B/P frames) is cutting on an incomplete frame and will result in a video with incomplete pictures. Smart cutters encode just the incomplete frames and then join to the rest of the video.

You can do this in FFMpeg but it is difficult because you must specify ALL attributes (frame size, bit rate, frame rate, etc.) in order to make it able to be joined to the rest of the video of copied frames beginning at the next I frame.

You should be able to get smart editing using Videoredo TV suite & Tmpgenc Smart Rendererer. This is from searching information since I do not use these and can't be sure.

[pone44]

All encoder/splitters/editors split on K (I-Frame) EXCEPT 'Smart' encoder. This is because K/I frames are complete images. Cutting anywhere else (B/P frames) is cutting on an incomplete frame and will result in a video with incomplete pictures. Smart cutters encode just the incomplete frames and then join to the rest of the video.

So based on this, my goal should be to find a "smart" encoder and use that exclusively to copy off groups of frames from a larger video?

If yes, then I guess my question would be what are some of the best available (including commercial) smart editors that are lightweight and easy to use? My typical use case is to take a small video clip and grab a small section of that. In some cases the frames might exist as a stand alone MP4. In other cases I might resize those and then convert to GIF. But for purposes of this post, I just want an easy-to-use tool that lets me position to a begin and end frame and then have the output MP4 really be contained within those exact frames.

[drjtech]

LosslessCut is a GUI front end for FFMpeg that makes it fairly simple to trim the start and end of an mp4 file.