How to search for a particular frame within a video?
August 31, 2010 6:52 AM Subscribe
I have 50 video files. Each is 25 minutes long and I need to top and tail them leaving only the 10 minute program.
The programs all start the same way and end the same way. I have grabbed the first and last frames from one of the files so I need a way of searching for these in the other files. Presumably they won't be an exact match due to compression artifacts etc.
Ideally this would be possible on Linux command line because I already know how to do the trimming part with mencoder and I can script the whole process. A GUI or windows solution would be OK too.
Ideally this would be possible on Linux command line because I already know how to do the trimming part with mencoder and I can script the whole process. A GUI or windows solution would be OK too.
Best answer: AVIsynth can sort do that - in the past I've created a script (which I can't now find; I'll post it somewhere if I do) to do it based on the instructions here.
That said, in my experience it never works as well as you want, so you end up having to check each one individually anyway. As an experienced hobbyist, I reckon I could do all 50 in under 30 minutes in a simple editor like Cuttermaran, including the minor re-encoding around cuts necessary for frame-accurate editing. Not a generalised solution, I know, but unless it's something you're doing daily, with 100's of videos, and you've got no time to spare and are prepared to accept sub-standard results, I think it's much easier to do it manually…
posted by Pinback at 7:58 PM on August 31, 2010
That said, in my experience it never works as well as you want, so you end up having to check each one individually anyway. As an experienced hobbyist, I reckon I could do all 50 in under 30 minutes in a simple editor like Cuttermaran, including the minor re-encoding around cuts necessary for frame-accurate editing. Not a generalised solution, I know, but unless it's something you're doing daily, with 100's of videos, and you've got no time to spare and are prepared to accept sub-standard results, I think it's much easier to do it manually…
posted by Pinback at 7:58 PM on August 31, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Could you do it by timecode or something....like...the part you want to capture starts X minutes:X seconds into each clip? Then I'm sure you could use some linux command line apps to do it...but wow..trying to match a still frame with a video is just crazy talk :)
Sorry to not be more helpful.
posted by AltReality at 4:30 PM on August 31, 2010