Can we trim the vides with both ffmpeg and ffprobe?

Currently, I am working on an ETL process, and in the final stage of preprocessing my videos, I used to first auto detected black-screen frames using ffprobe and then trim. Now, while performing trimming I am not getting the desired result and sometimes, getting errors. Can someone from the community help me to figure this out?

Different tasks are performed by FFmpeg and FFprobe in the multimedia processing workflow. While FFprobe is a tool for multimedia analysis, metadata extraction, and media stream information retrieval, FFmpeg is mainly used for activities like video cutting, encoding, and manipulation.

FFmpeg is usually used for trimming videos because it can edit, crop, and resize videos. FFprobe, on the other hand, is useful for retrieving details about the video’s attributes, like codec specifications, resolution, and duration, even though it is not intended for video editing.

This is an example of how to trim a video with FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss START_TIME -to END_TIME -c copy output.mp4

  • -i input.mp4: Specifies the input video file.
  • -ss START_TIME: Sets the start time for trimming.
  • -to END_TIME: Sets the end time for trimming.
  • -c copy: Copies the video streams without re-encoding (preserving quality).
  • output.mp4: Specifies the output file.

On the other hand, FFprobe can be used to obtain information about the video file but is not directly intended for video trimming:

ffprobe -i input.mp4

This command offers comprehensive details on the input video, such as codecs, duration, and other information of the stream.

In conclusion, FFprobe is utilized for multimedia file inspection and analysis, whereas FFmpeg is the preferred program for video cutting and modification. They are frequently combined in a workflow for multimedia processing, with FFprobe offering data that helps guide choices made in FFmpeg commands.

For more:

Got it! And what about its durations, framerate, etc? Is there any other command or we can add the flags in the same command?

Hi ,
You can use ffprobe to get information about a video file, such as its duration, bitrate, and frame rate. For example:
ffprobe -v error -show_entries stream=duration,bit_rate -of default=noprint_wrappers=1 input.mp4
This command will print the duration and bitrate of the input.mp4 file to the terminal.

In my case, the FFmpeg video duration is not equal to the duration after the HLS process. Does anybody know the valid reason for this?

Sometimes, the duration of a video file as reported by ffmpeg, and the duration of the same video after being processed into HLS segments may differ slightly due to various factors such as encoding and processing.
Here are a few possible reasons why this may happen:

  1. Rounding errors: The duration of the video file may be displayed to a certain number of decimal places by ffmpeg, while the duration of the HLS segments may be rounded to the nearest whole number of seconds.
  2. Encoding differences: The video file and the HLS segments may be encoded using different codecs or settings, which can affect the duration slightly.
  3. Processing differences: The process of segmenting the video file into HLS segments may introduce additional processing overhead, which can affect the duration slightly.

AFAIK, it is also possible that there could be other factors at play that are causing the difference in duration. If the difference in duration is significant or causing problems, you may want to try re-encoding the video file or adjusting the HLS segmentation settings to see if that helps.