Knowledge Base

Use ffmpeg to trim video

To cut a video, without re-encoding

Use this to cut video from [start] for [duration]:

Here, the options mean the following:

• -ss specifies the start time, e.g. 00:01:23.000 or 83 (in seconds)
• -t specifies the duration of the clip (same format).
• Instead of -t you can also supply the end time with -to.
• -c copy copies the first video, audio, and subtitle bitstream from the input to the output file without re-encoding them. This won't harm the quality and make the command run within seconds.

Note that if you've used -ss, you have to subtract this from the -to timestamp. For example, if you cut with -ss 3 -i in.mp4 -to 5, the output will be five seconds long.

For more info, see https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Seeking

Example

To keep the first 26 minutes of a 41 minute video: