Difference between revisions of "Avidemux - Cutting out sections of video"

This how-to is about nothing more than being able to cut one or more sections from a video. Which, when using Avidemux is (& should always be) a pretty simple process.

Both the console tool 'avidemux-cli' and qt-based GUI 'avidemux-qt' are in the official repositories.

I usually set this one (in the drop down menu under that sections '''Output Format''' title) to the same format as that of the video that I'm editing.

 

 

Though, you can choose a different format if for some reason it suits you. In fact, another easy trick of Avidemux is the ability to easily change a video's format from one to another - with no other editing involved whatsoever.

 

To do this, just choose your desired format & select the '''Menu File > Save''' being sure to at least change the file format suffix in the name to the format that you've chosen (.avi .mp4 .mkv ...), just doing that will save you from overwriting your original video file.

 

Use whatever method your DE/WM &/or the filemanager/directory utility program that you use within it, to choose the video that you want to edit & then use your RMB menu, or drag & drop or however else you can get Avidemux to open the file (the reason I'm sounding so vague on this matter is that I've been using '''Worker''' [https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Worker_-_An_Introduction] in my Openbox system, as my filemanager/dirutil for so many years that I've forgotten about all of the other ways that most everyone else is using to do this stuff.

 

Anyway, if you can't find an easier way, just open Avidemux & use its '''Menu File > Open''' & then source the video file that you want to start snipping up.

After the video is loaded it can then be edited. So the first thing that needs to be done is for you to go to the '''Menu Edit > Set Marker A''' & select that straight away, '''IF''' you do actually want to remove video from the very beginning of the video.

 

 

Next you need to drag the bar that you'll find down near the bottom of the Avidemux screen, through the timeline of the video until you get as close as you can to the start of the part of the video that you want to cut out.

Once there, you can use the curser control arrows on your keyboard to much more slowly & accurately move to the point where you want to set '''Menu Edit > Set Marker B''' ''so that we can mark the '''end''''' of the section that we want to cut out of the move (this is the method we are using with Avidemux).

Again we use the left & right cursor control keys on our keyboard to accurately position the point where we want to set our marker. Once found, go to '''Menu Edit > Set Marker A''', then (unless you want to remove a section & retain another in the video) we slide the video's timeline to the very end ''(use the cursor control right arrow to be sure that you are at the very end of the video - this often matters)'' & then we go to (you guessed it) '''Menu Edit > Set Marker B'''.

Next we go to '''Menu File > Save''' & '''be sure to change the file's name from the original''' & save it where we choose. I always add the file extension ''.mkv .avi .mp4'' that I have chosen from the Output Format drop down menu down near the bottom right of the Avidemux window.

=Conclusion=

Simplistically, at this point you should have the section of video that you wanted to excerpt from the larger/longer video stored on your computer & ready to play whenever you choose to view it.  

Though of course you could have done far more complex things using these instructions. As it would be easy to use this method to remove multiple sections of a video & in so doing compress the remaining video peices into one.

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