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.

[Bridgy]

Hi there, i have not yet installed your tool, however will you ever be adding any encoding features whereby i can do frame accurate cuts, and also output my cut files to other formats as well.

I mostly work with 4k/60 HEVC and AVC recorded videos, sometimes 1080/60p as well, and i currently use VRD Pro to cut and smart render back to the original format, and VRD has a wonderful set of pre-made output presets that we can choose from, or we can create our own output formats and save them.

My issue with VRD is that HEVC was only really implementation the year that Dan Rosen passed away, so in the timeline when cutting these 4k/60p HEVC files, there is an issue with seeking where it was very laggy when trying to locate the precise cut points, to a point where i had to start using Losslesscut to trim my files and output back to the original format, which it did very well, without any lagging, but it only seemed to work properly when cuts were made on keyframes, however i can live with this with the type of editing that i need to do, but it would be nice to cut my files anywhere i want them.

Anyway, i will give your tool a go and see how it goes, as most of us VRD Pro users are always looking for another tool that can replace VRD in the future, and having an all in one tool would be great.

I heard that TMPGEnc Smart Renderer is pretty decent at smart cutting, but we will need to also buy the TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 7.0 to re-render the cut files from Smart Renderer to other formats if needed, which is a very dumb idea by Pegasys.

Good luck with your software.

[ChristianundCo]

Will there be a function with that I can merge clips with different codecs to one clip? Tmpgenc Smart Renderer does that. You can define a clip as master and the other clips will be encoded with the same settings and merged.

[skeskinen]

Hi there, i have not yet installed your tool, however will you ever be adding any encoding features whereby i can do frame accurate cuts, and also output my cut files to other formats as well.

I mostly work with 4k/60 HEVC and AVC recorded videos, sometimes 1080/60p as well, and i currently use VRD Pro to cut and smart render back to the original format, and VRD has a wonderful set of pre-made output presets that we can choose from, or we can create our own output formats and save them.

My issue with VRD is that HEVC was only really implementation the year that Dan Rosen passed away, so in the timeline when cutting these 4k/60p HEVC files, there is an issue with seeking where it was very laggy when trying to locate the precise cut points, to a point where i had to start using Losslesscut to trim my files and output back to the original format, which it did very well, without any lagging, but it only seemed to work properly when cuts were made on keyframes, however i can live with this with the type of editing that i need to do, but it would be nice to cut my files anywhere i want them.

Anyway, i will give your tool a go and see how it goes, as most of us VRD Pro users are always looking for another tool that can replace VRD in the future, and having an all in one tool would be great.

I heard that TMPGEnc Smart Renderer is pretty decent at smart cutting, but we will need to also buy the TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 7.0 to re-render the cut files from Smart Renderer to other formats if needed, which is a very dumb idea by Pegasys.

Good luck with your software.

Hi, I support converting between container formats (e.g. mp4 -> mkv conversion) if all the streams use codecs compatible with both containers. There is also option to recode the whole video to a new codec.

Right now there are no presets and you have to set all the settings again the next time. This is something I want to fix later.

Let me know if you encounter any issues with editing HEVC videos. I don't think I ever tested it with 4k/60p videos, but in principle it should work the same.

Also, I want to do a big UI rework before the end of the year, so if something about the UI feels off, I'm interested in how you'd like it to behave instead.

[skeskinen]

Will there be a function with that I can merge clips with different codecs to one clip? Tmpgenc Smart Renderer does that. You can define a clip as master and the other clips will be encoded with the same settings and merged.

This is the next big feature I want to implement. Don't know when I will have time to do it, because I recently started another job.

One thing I've wondered about is how should this feature deal with input videos that have different amounts of audio tracks and different audio codecs? Should it export the master clip audio losslessly and recode the rest? Or maybe it's ok to recode the audio in the master file as well?

[ChristianundCo]

I would stick to the codec of the master clip. Only recode what does not correspond to the master. Tmpgenc Smart Renderer also leaves empty passages if an audio track is missing in the other clips.
I'm looking for a tool that does it better than SR. Because I have problems with clips mixed together on some devices. Because the encoding settings don't really match up - unlike what was promised in the advertisement.

[Bridgy]

Hi, I support converting between container formats (e.g. mp4 -> mkv conversion) if all the streams use codecs compatible with both containers. There is also option to recode the whole video to a new codec.

Right now there are no presets and you have to set all the settings again the next time. This is something I want to fix later.

Let me know if you encounter any issues with editing HEVC videos. I don't think I ever tested it with 4k/60p videos, but in principle it should work the same.

Also, I want to do a big UI rework before the end of the year, so if something about the UI feels off, I'm interested in how you'd like it to behave instead.

I sometimes downscale my videos to 1080p for youtube, or for other reasons such as lack of 4k and/or HEVC support on some devices, but after i trim out my 4k/60p HEVC files i usually retain those in their original format as my master file, and i store it away on an external drive just in case i need it later on.

I can't seem to find any reference to outputting my files to other resolutions of formats in your tool, even my files are laggy on playback in your preview screen, and seeking where i need my cuts is laggy as well, and your method of setting the cut bits seem clumsy and not very accurate, so far i have had issues with that.

For me i don't think it suits my needs on the files that i work with, but i will keep testing just in case.