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I have an FFmpeg command to trim audio:

ffmpeg -ss 01:43:46 -t 00:00:44.30 -i input.mp3 output.mp3

The problem I have with this command is that option -t requires a duration (in seconds) from 01:43:46. I want to trim audio using start/stop times, e.g. between 01:43:46 and 00:01:45.02.

Is this possible?

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  • 1
    So you want to extract a section of an audio file using start and stop times instead of a start time and a duration, is that correct? Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 9:35
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    @Nasha That's correct. I'll edit the post to make that clearer. Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 9:51
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    I have rephrased your question accordingly. Indeed ffmpeg doesn't seem to provide anything else than a start time and a duration. And mplayer doesn't either. Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 10:13

2 Answers 2

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ffmpeg seems to have a new option -to in the documentation:

-to position (input/output)
Stop writing the output or reading the input at position. position must be a time duration specification, see (ffmpeg-utils)the Time duration section in the ffmpeg-utils(1) manual.

-to and -t are mutually exclusive and -t has priority.

Sample command with two time formats

ffmpeg -i file.mkv -ss 20 -to 40 -c copy file-2.mkv ffmpeg -i file.mkv -ss 00:00:20 -to 00:00:40 -c copy file-2.mkv

This should create a copy (file-2.mkv) of file.mkv from the 20 second mark to the 40 second mark.

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    Tx, that works nicely. I find that if I don't remove the copy part the audio/video is out of sync, so I remove that and add -async 1 and it works like a charm. Of course it requires reencoding, so an improvement would be a command that would allow for the copy but without the sync issues. Commented Oct 11, 2016 at 1:35
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    Is it possible to have multiple intervals and they would be joined together? i.e. ffmpeg -i file.mp3 -ss 10 -to 11 -ss 20 -to 21 -ss 30 -to 31 .... Commented Jul 17, 2018 at 11:47
  • @AvnerBarr I don't know if this is possible solely with FFmpeg, but I know it's possible with Mencoder. This works, using the -to option : ffmpeg -i mmm.mp4 -ss 00:04:04 -to 00:04:35 -c copy output1.mp4 && ffmpeg -i mmm.mp4 -ss 00:05:47 -to 00:06:05 -c copy output2.mp4 && mencoder -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -idx output1.mp4 output2.mp4 -o complete.mp4 Commented Oct 31, 2018 at 15:15
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If you have PHP installed, make it a script:

TimeDiff.php contents:

<?php // Create datetime objcects $dt1 = new DateTime($argv[1]); $dt2 = new DateTime($argv[2]); // Conver difference to seconds $dt3 = $dt2->format('U') - $dt1->format('U'); // echo $dt3."\n"; $h = (int)($dt3 / 3600); $dt3 %= 3600; $m = (int)($dt3 / 60); $dt3 %= 60; $s = $dt3; // Dump as H:M:S echo $h . ":" . $m . ":" . $s; ?>

audiochop.sh contents:

#!/bin/bash INFILE=$1 START=$2 STOP=$3 OUTFILE=$4 OFFSET=`php TimeDiff.php "$START" "$STOP"` echo "Disecting $INFILE starting from $START to $STOP (duration $OFFSET)" ffmpeg -ss "$START" -t "$OFFSET" -i "$INFILE" "$OUTFILE"

Usage:

./audiochop.sh [input.mp3] [startchop] [stopchop] [output.mp3]

Where [startchop] and [stopchop] are both absolute timestamps from the beginning of the track.

NB: Script(s) may need tweaking depending on platform version etc...

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  • So does the command look like the following example? audiochop.sh input.mp3 00:01:30 00:01:50 output.mp3 Commented Feb 8, 2015 at 5:01
  • Yes, exactly that. Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 5:39
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    This is actually the full command: ./audiochop.sh input.mp3 00:01:30 00:01:50 output.mp3 I had forgotten to put the period and slash in front of the command, which is why it wasn't working. Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 7:40
  • Incidentally, I found that this php/bash script also works on mp4 videos, so I assume it will work with any video format. Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 1:04
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    It should work with whatever format your ffmpeg supports. Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 10:42

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