Smart Media Cutter

[skeskinen]

Hi all,

I'm the author of Smart Media Cutter which was added to VideoHelp software list today (thank you to reviewers!)

Smart Media Cutter is a linear video editor with frame accurate lossless cutting capability, a.k.a. smartcut, smart render, VideoReDo type export.
It also has editing from AI transcript (local transcripts made with Whisper models) and automatic removal of segments with no speech or silence.

The long term goal of the project is to be the best linear video editor ever. Fast, easy to use and filled with functional "smart" features.

I've written a test suite that checks that the smartcut implementation is working with various codecs (h264, h265, vp9, av1, MPEG-2, flv), container formats (.mp4, .mkv, .mpg, .m2ts, .avi, .mov, .wmv, .flv) and audio codecs (mp3, vorbis, opus, aac, flac, wav). The test suite generates bunch of test videos and different cutting points and verifies that input and output videos are the same.

So I'm fairly confident that the smartcutting works for most uses with these codecs. Of course there are always exceptions with weird or corrupted input videos, etc. so it's never going to be 100% reliable. But I have 10-20 test users and so far nobody has complained that the smartcutting doesn't work

One known limitation is lack of vp9 profile 2 encoder, and some wmv encoders (wmv9+ are missing).

We also support exporting the timeline to DaVinci Resolve (with .otio format) and Adobe Premiere (with .xml format). This can be useful if you want to use the AI cutting capabilities, e.g. editing from transcript or silence removal, and then continue editing in an NLE.

Hope to hear all your thoughts on the project!

[davexnet]

Thanks for the info. Would you consider a portable version in Windows?

[skeskinen]

Thanks for the info. Would you consider a portable version in Windows?

Hi, sure I can make a portable version the next time I do releases. Personally I think it's going to be a slightly worse experience since the installer compression is pretty good and also the installed version will have faster startup than the portable .exe which is internally unpacked every time you launch the program.

But of course some people will still prefer portable and I get that so I can make one. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Alwyn]

Rating yourself?

I'll give this a go, for sure. It could be good for trimming OBS direct-to-MP4 recordings.

You don't mention MPEG2; I assume that's not supported?

[skeskinen]

Rating yourself?

I'll give this a go, for sure. It could be good for trimming OBS direct-to-MP4 recordings.

You don't mention MPEG2; I assume that's not supported?

I might be slightly biased, but I also am a user . I used to have a gaming channel on YouTube with 1.1M views. The first 7 months of this project were just me making an editor that I'd like to use myself. And now I've edited 10-15 videos for YT with this editor.

For now the support for many of the older codecs and formats is lacking. I just tried with some MPEG-2 video and the errors I get don't make much sense. I will try to tackle this at some point. https://github.com/skeskinen/smartcut/issues/2

But OBS to mp4/mkv and cutting is exactly how I typically use the software, so that should work for sure.

[skeskinen]

Version 1.0 is out

Release notes in my blog: https://smartmediacutter.com/2024/09/15/version-1-0-launch/ and donwloads: https://smartmediacutter.com/downloads/

• MPEG-2 support, along with support for various "legacy" container formats (.mpg, .m2ts, .avi, .wmv, .mov, .flv)
• UI translations to 10 languages: German, Spanish, English, Finnish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese
• New Light/Dark color themes. Previously you could still get dark mode e.g. in Win11 by using the operating system dark mode. But now you can switch in app.
• Smartcut now also exports any subtitle tracks found in the input video
• Export to Shotcut (.mlt file format)
• Simple automatic black scene/black frame detection

I also made a portable .exe for Windows, as requested

I hope you like it, and please report if something is missing or not working properly.

The opensource tool has also been updated with MPEG-2 support and subtitle cutting:
https://github.com/skeskinen/smartcut

[Alwyn]

There's no way of scrolling with the mouse wheel, either through the video or moving the play marker along.

The arrows keys should be used for frame-accurate selection.

It seems the only way to choose an exact cut point is by dragging the play marker and then putting the cut marker at that point, then dragging forward, but the image doesn't change as you are doing so.

Much easier to set the cut-start point, then move along to the cut-end point, such as AVIDemux (A B), VirtualDub, VideRedo and other NLEs. This behaves like Audacity which I don't like.

To me, the only special functionality required here is frame-accurate cutting. The rest should be as standard as possible.

[skeskinen]

There's no way of scrolling with the mouse wheel, either through the video or moving the play marker along.

The arrows keys should be used for frame-accurate selection.

It seems the only way to choose an exact cut point is by dragging the play marker and then putting the cut marker at that point, then dragging forward, but the image doesn't change as you are doing so.

Much easier to set the cut-start point, then move along to the cut-end point, such as AVIDemux (A B), VirtualDub, VideRedo and other NLEs. This behaves like Audacity which I don't like.

To me, the only special functionality required here is frame-accurate cutting. The rest should be as standard as possible.

Hi, you can set the selection with I/O keys. If you drag the playhead to the start of cut, press I, and drag the playhead to the end of cut and press O, it will select the cut you want and you can see preview of the cut end frame (since you are moving the playhead). I have thought about adding cut markers that are separate from the selection, but I didn't get to it yet.

Frame advance is bound to ,/. keys because that's how it is in most media players and using arrow keys as keybinds conflicts with some GUI elements from Qt (I might fix this eventually).

EDIT: Regarding the last paragraph, I view SMC as a transcript based editor first and foremost. Ofc. I want to support framecutting nicely since I wrote the smartcutting implementation, but the UI is not quite optimized for that.

[sambat]

@skeskinen
Does it work with Windows 7 ...

[skeskinen]

@skeskinen
Does it work with Windows 7 ...

No, sorry. I made one version for Win 8.1 as a test and that already required a lot of hacks to get working. All the libraries and dev tools have dropped Win7 support a long time ago

[sambat]

Thank you.

[Alwyn]

The "back" arrows and comma key basically don't move the play marker backward. Forwards works OK.

Exporting is a bit confusing. The main interface has a "transcribe" button but no real explanation about what that does or if it is required.

When I hit Export Output, I'm presented with a confusing screen with no option to change the video codec from say TS (my TV recordings) to H264/MP4 and an error message in red "template has no codec context".

The "export audio mix track" also needs explanation.

Hi, you can set the selection with I/O keys. If you drag the playhead to the start of cut, press I, and drag the playhead to the end of cut and press O, it will select the cut you want and you can see preview of the cut end frame (since you are moving the playhead).

Arr yes, got it.

Frame advance is bound to ,/. keys because that's how it is in most media players and using arrow keys as keybinds conflicts with some GUI elements from Qt

But this isn't a player, it's an editor, and the controls should be optimised for that. The arrow keys stand out by themselves and are much easier to hit than looking at the comma and dot keys buried in amoungst the others.

The standout issue for me is the difficulty in accurately positioning the play marker. We've got a single frame advance but then the next button is 10 seconds; that's too big a gap. Drawing on experience from other NLEs, there should be more options for moving the play marker, perhaps CTRL+ and Shift+ combinations for 10 frames, 1 second.

I view SMC as a transcript based editor first and foremost. Ofc. I want to support framecutting nicely since I wrote the smartcutting implementation, but the UI is not quite optimized for that.

Fair enough, it's your trainset, but apart from the smart cutting, you're competing with other free programs that are more user-friendly and more capable.