How to use ffmpeg to split a video

Have you ever needed to take a clip from a larger video file to use in a presentation, post to youtube, or to show awesome classic Christmas cartoons to your kids? Well, whatever the reason, here is a simple command to make it happen in Ubuntu, thanks to your friend, ffmpeg.


ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss START -t LENGTH -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE.mp4

"where START is starting positing in seconds or in format hh:mm:ss LENGTH is the chunk length in seconds or in format hh:mm:ss

So you will need to run this command few times depending on how long your video. If let's say your video is 31 minutes long and you want so split into 15 min chunks here is how you run it:"

ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 0 -t 00:15:00 -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE-1.mp4

ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 00:15:00 -t 00:15:00 -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE-2.mp4

ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 00:30:00 -t 00:15:00 -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE-3.mp4


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