VideoClipper questions / comments (V1.1 released)

kas1e had some good questions and comments about VideoClipper in the news item so I thought I'd start a thread to answer his questions and provide an area for other to post who might have comments or questions.

VideoClipper News Item

Please post comments, questions and bug reports here.

First, thanks for the feedback!

@kas1e wrote:
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Good point. I agree the help should run asynchroniously. I leveraged a function I wrote several years ago that uses the amigaguide.library and at the time I couldn't figure out how to make it run asynchroniously. I should update it sometime. In the mean time you can open the guide file outside the program or use the extensive gadget hints. Every gadget should have good hints. Maybe better than the help.

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Cutting in VideoClipper cuts the portion of the video you want to keep, not the portion you want to delete. If you want to cut off the first 5 seconds of a video then set the Start Time to 00:00:05.000 and leave the End Time at 00:00:00.000. No End Time specified means to continue to the end of the video.

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The cut button under the playlist will only cut the selected video in the list. Use the Preview button under the list to view it.

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The "Cut Only" button just cuts all the files in the list and doesn't create an Output File. You can then use the "Preview" button to view the cut files. (if I remember right). If you use the "Cut & Join" button an output file will be created and the "Play Output" button will be activated. I can see where this can be a bit confusing if you are only want to cut one entry.

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Hmmm....are you sure your end time is set properly? Sounds
like your End Time is set longer than the total video time or is so small as to not make a difference in the file size. The format is Hours:Minutes:Seconds:miliseconds. I'll double check but this should work fine.

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I'm not familiar with Virtualdub but from a quick look at the Website it looks like Virtualdub is intended to just cut out the peices of the video you want to delete and process what is left. Doesn't look like it can join videos. I could be wrong.

VideoClipper is designed to cut the peices of multiple videos you want to keep, process them then join them together, or you can cut out multiple peices of a longer video and join them together. A little different concept than Virtualdub.

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Good question. I can see where this coudl be confusing given the design of VideoClipper.

Here are the steps to cut the first 5 seconds off a video:

1. In the Clip Editor tab use the Add button to select the video you want to cut.

2. Set the Start Time to 00:00:05.000 and leave the End Time at 00:00:00.000.

3. In the Video/Audio Profile tab, set the Profile to Copy.
Ensure the Video and Audio Codec's get set to Copy.

4. Make sure you have "Output File" set to where you want to save the resulting video.

5. Click "Cut & Join" at the bottom of the window.
(I admit this part is confusing. Why Join is you only have one video.)

The cut file will now be written to the Output File location and the "Play Output" button should be activated.

Thanks for the input and all you do for the comunity kas1e.

Check out the gadget hints. Their help is sometimes better (unfortunatly) than the VideoClipper.guide help.

Also, feel free to email me. My address is in the Contact section of the help file.

@ktadd

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I guess I might be able to help you. Please PM me at dan dot jedlicka @ seznam dot cz, I'll send you a nifty piece of code

@ktadd

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Yep it works ! Thanks !

Through not really unintuitive when it come to work with one single file should to say :) For first that to cut first 5 seconds i need to set start-time to 5 (while by logic you need to set start time to 0), and end time to 0 (while by logic you need to set end time to 5, i.e. to point out a range which you want to cut). And second is that "Cut & Join" , yep :)

Just when i read "Cut", i think it will just "cut", not that it will mean "cut for keep". But i assume, its all because programm just initially done visa-versa: not for process over one single file to cut/split/edit/recode it, but instead for join files, and working with many files together, and all those "cuts" there mean files, not the operation. So maybe rename "cut" button to let's say "Cut File" ?

But in general it just programm by itself done for different purposes in compare with virtual dub. There just need for another one called "VideoEditor", which will looks the same nice, small, native, just with ability to do operations with single files :)

ps. If i want for example cut 5 seconds in the middle of the file, what start time / end time should i set in video clipper ? By logic i of course thinking about setting in start time the begining of area which i want to delete, and end time just +5 seconds to the start time, but thats seems will be different as well ?

Is it possible to have time format in:
Hours:Minutes:Seconds:frames?
This way it'll be more simple to do precise video editing

I'm not having a problem with the terminology or the operations. It works for me. Think of it as cutting a long strip of movie film or videotape into clips and then assembling them in your desired order.

Specify start (in point) and stop (out point) for each cut clip, and then arrange them in order. Cut and join slices them up and cements/tapes them together just like in old-fashioned film editing, only it does the deed all in one big batch operation.

I too would love this to work with frames and not millisecons, but I suspect that's some mendcoder limitication. Not sure, but I bet ktadd has the answer.

The other new video editing tool that's on os4depot right now doesn't specify millisecons and cuts to whole seconds only. That doesn't suit my needs as I want to get more precise than that. With the milliseconds have to do it by trial and error a couple of times, but I usually get it right, or close to what I want.

Maybe mplayer could be used. Okay it tends to crash if you step over the end of file (didn't in Linux though) but if such a program could read the verbose output mplayer sends to stdout... exact enough?

Speculative example: preview file, pause mplayer and step (.) to start position. Then in editor choose some function which will mark this position. Resume preview and repeat for the end position.

@mbrantley
did you get the other video tool to work ? Found the desired lib, but still reports a missing lib/wrong version... ?

However I liked VideoClipper, did some Betatesting on it.

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Your still thinking in terms of what you want to delete. You need to think in terms of what you want to keep. So for your example above, if you want to keep the portion of the video from 10 to 15 seconds, set the Start Time to 00:00:10.000 and the End Time to +5 after the start time or 00:00:15.000.
Something that may help is to look at the duration field and you'll see that in this case it is 5 seconds. The length of the section of video that will be left after cutting.

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Unfortunatly not. That's a limitation of mencoder. Usually you can find a particular spot in two or three tries if you need it that exact. The quickest way to find a spot is to set the Profile setting on the Video/Audio Settings Tab to Copy. This disables encoding and speeds up the cutting. Then set your times and use cut and preview to see if you haapy with it. Don't forget to set the profile back when your ready to join if you have video files with different formats and setting.

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Good idea.
There is actually code in VideoClipper to try to read the time position via AREXX but I haven't gotten it to work. The idea is to add a button next to the Start Time and End Time gadget that when clicked would read the current position from MPlayer and enter it into the appropriate time field.

@ktadd

How about implementing the 2 other programs aswell? sibtitles and audio? Would make it more complete package, And easier to use than having to use 3 seperate programs.

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The trick is how to do it and keep the interface simple and workable. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

1. Have independent times for cut files, audio files and title files:
If you want to be able to add audio and titles with independent start and end times from the cut start and end times it's a lot of work and I'm not sure this is the best interface style for that. Trying to figure out the timings with the limited preview capabilities would be difficult.

2. Be able to add audio and titles to each indepenent cut:
Adding audio and/or titles that match the use the same start and end timings as the video would'nt be so difficult and might work out Ok but the same music couldn't span seperately cut files and you would have to repeat the title entry if you wanted it to span cuts files.

3. Add one audio file and one title file to the fully cut and joined video file.
This would be rather easy to do and in fact can be done as program stands right now. The down side is you would sill have to use a seperate program to create the titles. The audio file would just automatically get cut at the end of the video but you would probably still want to create the audio file of in another program.

Here is how to do number 3 with the current interface:

1. Cut and join your file to get the video the way you want it.
2. Clear the video list and load the file created above.
3. In the "Enter additional options" area on the Video/Audio Settings tab enter the following option for audio:
-audiofile Ram:audiofilename.mp3 (use your volume:path/filename)
4. to add a title enter the following in the add options area:
-sub Ram:titlefile.srt (use your volume:path/filename)
5. If your only adding an audio file then set the Profile to Copy. No need to re-encode to add an audio file.
6. If your adding a title file or title and audio file you will need to re-encode so set the video codec to something other than copy. Make sure you set other video setting as desired. The audio codec can be left at copy if you wish. Encoding will be faster with audio codec left at copy.
7. Rename the "Output File" to something different.
8. Click the "Cut & Join" button.

Now you have a vidoe with a new audio track and subtitles.

The news item should show up soon but just wanted to let you know I've released version 1.1. It should appear on OS4Depot soon.

I believe I've implemented all your suggestions and more.
Now go out and make some vidoes with it! :)
Hey, if you actually do it would be nice if you make note of it.

I'll be taking a bit of a break from the programming but I'm always happy to hear and respond to comments, questions and bug reports. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Thanks ktadd. Have a good ctrl-c time :)

Added a file (*.mp4) then tried to save a frame while playing but there is no saved files in Ram. Play slower, faster, stop playing, mute work OK. Did I miss something?

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Hmm...I thought I had that working. I'm guessing your
using MUIMPlayer?

I'm at work right now so I can't double check it but I thought I fixed that bug. Maybe I fixed it for the Play Output button and didn't fix it for the Preview button.

A couple things to check.
Does Save Frame work if you use the Play Output button to start mplayer?
Are you paused when you click the Save Frame button?
If yes, does Save Frame work it while the video is running?
Does pressing the 's' key on the keyboard save a frame while muiplayer is running?
If pressing the 's' key doesn't work then you can probably get it to work by adding the following line to MPlayer config file:

vf=screenshot

If the 's' key doesn't work after that then there may be a compatibility problem between mplayer and your SAM.

MUIMPlayer does have a known bug related to the screenshot function where if you are paused then press the 's' key, the screenshot won't be saved until you start playing the video again or do a frame step. I added a workaround in VideoClipper to do a frame step when Frame Save is clicked.

Let me know what you find. I'll look at the code again tonight.

Yes, I'm using muimplayer. I could not use Play Output button because I have to have an output file, I suppose? The button is ghosted. Tried to cut a few seconds from a video but mencoder reported some audio incompatibilities. So, all attepts are done with preview.
I tried while playing and when video is paused-no frames.
I have enabled an 's' option and then pressing the 's' key saves the frames...

EDIT: OK, now it works (with vf=screenshot option). It works with the 's' key and Save Frame button

Thank you, Sir...

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Sound like the file you are cutting uses AAC audio codec.
mencoder does not support that codec due to licensing issues. You have to convert it to another format so just make sure your Audio Codec setting is not set to "Copy" and it should work. Then the output button will be enabled.

Yes, disabling 'copy' did the trick... but Play Output button is still ghosted.
An output file is located in ram.