FYI: Precut, my free app for splitting video files via Premiere Projects without transcoding

[horshack]

Quick Description:
Precut is an open-source app I wrote that renders video files from an Adobe Premiere Project without transcoding/recompression. Its purpose is to reduce the storage requirements of your source media by letting you prune your source files to just the portions you need. Precut uses ffmpeg to perform its work, so it should be compatible with nearly every codec and video wrapper available.

Here is the homepage for the app:

http://testcams.com/precut/

And here is a YouTube demonstration:

 

 

[jcs]

Pretty cool. Was going to ask about interframe codecs (long GOP) if not transcoding (answered in video). Would be cool if there was a way ffmpeg could report the actual in/out times vs. what was specified so you could fix up the in/outs in the generated project, making a frame accurate solution possible (if not possible with ffmpeg, should be possible if using ffmpeg component libraries in C/C++ (might have to build in Linux/OSX and then cross-compile if targeting Windows)).

[horshack]

57 minutes ago, jcs said:

Pretty cool. Was going to ask about interframe codecs (long GOP) if not transcoding (answered in video). Would be cool if there was a way ffmpeg could report the actual in/out times vs. what was specified so you could fix up the in/outs in the generated project, making a frame accurate solution possible (if not possible with ffmpeg, should be possible if using ffmpeg component libraries in C/C++ (might have to build in Linux/OSX and then cross-compile if targeting Windows)).

Yep, for the culling purposes I designed the app for it doesn't need to be frame accurate since the it's a rough cut of the clips which are intended to become the new source files that then can be edited down the exact frames. I considered added frame accuracy in case anyone wanted to use the generation as a final cut rather than for culling - it would involve using ffprobe to identify the keyframe boundary near the in/out point, then doing two separate ffmpeg invocations to transcode between the keframe boundary and specific in/out points, then invoking ffmpeg again to concatenate the transcoded portion with the copy muxed portion. Basically a smart renderer. If I get enough demand for something like this I might reconsider adding it in a future version.