[FFmpeg-user] Seeking for a method to remove sections of a video

[Eric Wilde]

At 05:24 PM 6/19/2017 +0200, you wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 17:28:06 +0300, anatoly at kazanfieldhockey.ru wrote:
> > Do you know that mplayer has -edlout option:
> > -edlout <filename> (EDL only)
> >  Creates a new file and writes edit decision list (EDL) records to that
> > file.
>
>Recently (Sep 19, 2016), ffmpeg gained support for MP4 (or MOV?) "edit
>lists". I.e. ffmpeg will take those into consideration when
>transcoding. I haven't yet found a tool though which creates those edit
>lists - that tool would be helpful for you (the original poster).

This is good news.  I have never been able to get the EDL feature of
mencoder to work.  The cuts are either too early or too late, when
applied to the original material that they were derived from.  If,
after endless fiddling with them (i.e. change the offset and
re-encode the input file, which is swell when it's an hour or two
long video), you finally get the cuts in the right place, the sound
is broken.

I spent a lot of time on this and finally gave up.

Not only that, but if you use mplayer to try to build the EDL, it is
like trying to swat a fly with a sledge hammer.  There is no way to
accurately position the cut to within a frame, here or there, so it's
just the luck of the draw.

Currently, since nothing works on Linux, I transcode the original
MPEG stream to an AVI stream using ffmpeg and then edit it on Windoze
using VirtualDub.  I know that this means re-encoding it twice, since
the cuts invariably never fall on a key frame, but Virtual Dub's
MPEG2 converter seems to lose it on large recorded videos such as an
hour's worth of HiDef TV (although it works fine for MPEG2 from
DVDs).  So, not the most optimal of solutions but this is the only
one I've found to be workable and reliable, so far.

It would be great if you figured out a better solution.

                                  Eric