Or you can use the -to option to specify an out point, like -ss 60 -to 70 to capture from second 60 to 70. To extract only a small segment in the middle of a movie, it can be used in combination with -t which specifies the duration, like -ss 60 -t 10 to capture from second 60 to 70. This approach uses keyframes to seek until 00:22:30, and then seeks frame-by-frame until it reaches 00:00:30 (00:22:30 + 00:00:01), continue increasing the second -ss option until the duration is short enough unfortunately you'll lose an exact start and end time and the duration may only be approximately close to the desired amount.įfmpeg -ss 00:22:30 -i -ss 00:00:01 -frames:v 30 out3.mkv Slow Combined Seeking: For this we specify the -ss parameter before and after -i. when burning subtitles into a video, you don't need to modify the subtitle timestamps), but the drawback is that it will take a lot of time until it finally reaches that time point.įfmpeg -i -ss 00:23:00 -frames:v 30 out2.mkvĪdjust the start time forward so that when it ends on an i-frame the total duration is close to the desired duration. As of FFmpeg 2.1, the main advantage is that when applying filters to the output stream, the timestamps aren't reset prior to filtering (i.e.

This will be done very slowly, frame by frame. Slow Output Seeking: The -ss parameter needs to be specified after -i. The input will be parsed using keyframes, which is very fast.įfmpeg -ss 00:23:00 -i -frames:v 30 out1.mkv This is what you have now.įast Input Seeking: The -ss parameter needs to be specified somewhere before -i. not just stream copying), -ss is now also 'frame-accurate' even when used as an input option.Īccept splits on i-frames and work with the output as-is, based on the options used. So be careful when splitting and doing codec copy.Īs of FFmpeg 2.1, when transcoding with ffmpeg (i.e. Basically, if you specify 'second 157' and there is no key frame until second 159, it will include two seconds of audio (with no video) at the start, then will start from the first key frame. Though it will-if possible-adjust the start time of the stream to a negative value to compensate for that. Using -ss as input option together with -c:v copy might not be accurate since ffmpeg is forced to only use/split on i-frames. The help for seeking using ffmpeg explains the problem.

Ffmpeg clip video time