How to split one larger video into multiple smaller videos?

Question

How can I view a single video file and mark places to cut it into many smaller clips, naming each clip, and then batch exporting all of them into many smaller video files?

Here is the full situation:

I want to send personalized videos to each of 30 people. But I want most of the content of the video to be identical. I.e. I want to say "Hi, [First name], it was great to see you at [location] recently." And then I want it to seamlessly flow into the main video content.

I use Adobe Premiere's "Morph Cut" feature to ensure that the first video flows into the second video seamlessly.

But instead of recording 30 separate intro videos, I recorded just 1, and now I need to separate that one longer file into 30 smaller named files.

How can I easily do this?

Answer 1

Assuming that all of them are the same length you can just use ffmpeg as in the answer to https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/22585/split-video-file-into-pieces-with-ffmpeg.

Assuming that you are on Windows you will either need a bash shell or to expand things by hand.

Since your videos are not all exactly the same length you will have to either do one of two things:

1. Develop a mechanism for identifying automatically where the transition between the video segments occur, while this is possible, using tools such as OpenCV it generally it is only worth doing if there are going to be lots of occasions when you need to use it - one of the best examples that I have seen recently was detecting the highlights of football games based on the sound levels - obviously this could be used several times a week for the foreseeable future. Which is why I would recommend:

2. Watch your video and:

   1. make a note of all of the times at which you need to split the segments - most video player programs include an elapsed time display, sometimes optional if yours doesn't use VCL.
   2. Write a batch file of the following format:

   ffmpeg -i input.mpg -sameq -ss first_start_time-t second_start_time name_for_first_section.mpg

   ffmpeg -i input.mpg -sameq -ss second_start_time-t third_start_time name_for_second_section.mpg

etc. where the times are all in the format HH:MM:SS

While this is not the most efficient method for doing this task it will work and may remind you not to make the same mistake again.

Answer 2

Check VirtualDub . It's free and has been around since years. Has a lot of cool features too.