mpv-concat

Suppose you have a file called concat.txt with the following content:

# This is a comment
file 'video.webm'
inpoint 00:03:02.57
outpoint 00:10:37.44

# This is another comment
file 'video.webm'
inpoint 00:14:53.89
outpoint 00:23:29.26

# This is another comment
file 'video.webm'
inpoint 00:25:32.67
outpoint 00:32:21.28

This file specifies video segments, based on their filenames, start-point and end-points, to be concatenated in a final video with the following command.

$ ffmpeg -f concat -i concat.txt -c copy out.webm

mpv-concat helps the creation of such a file. With mpv-concat you can interactively select segments of videos from your mpv video player.

Usage

If a file named concat.txt exists in the current working directory, it is read by this script and video segments are get from it, as specified by ffmpeg-formats(1). After opening a video file with mpv, you can create more video segments in addition to the ones read from concat.txt. Then, after writing the segments to disk, a new concat.txt file is created in the directory the mpv command was ran.

Set time. In the video screen, press Ctrl + T to grab the first timestamp and then press Ctrl + T again to get the second timestamp. This process will generate a time range, which represents a video segment. Repeat this process to create more segments.

Show segments. To see all the segments made so far, press Ctrl + P. All segments will appear in the terminal in order of creation, with their corresponding timestamps. Incomplete segments will show up as “Segment N in progress”, where N is the segment number.

Reset segment. To reset an incomplet segment, press Ctrl + R. If the first part of a segment was created at the wrong time, this will reset the current segment.

Delete segment. To delete a whole segment, start the segment deletion mode by pressing Ctrl + D. When in this mode, it's possible to press Ctrl + NUM, where NUM is any number between 0 inclusive and 9 inclusive. For each Ctrl + NUM pressed, a number will be concatenated to make the final number referring to the segment to be removed, then press Ctrl + D again to stop the segment deletion mode and delete the segment corresponding to the formed number.

Example 1: Deleting segment number 3

Ctrl + D 	# Start segment deletion mode
Ctrl + 3	# Concatenate number 3
Ctrl + D	# Exit segment deletion mode

Example 2: Deleting segment number 76

Ctrl + D 	# Start segment deletion mode
Ctrl + 7	# Concatenate number 7
Ctrl + 6	# Concatenate number 6
Ctrl + D	# Exit segment deletion mode

Preview concatenation. To preview how the segment concatenation will look like, press Ctrl + V to enter the preview mode. In this mode, the player will jump between segments. To exit from the preview mode, press Ctrl + V again.

Write concat file. To write the concat.txt file, to be used by ffmpeg, press Ctrl + W. It's important that there are at least one segment, otherwise a blank file will be created.

Notes

• This script prevents the mpv player from closing when the video ends, so that the segments don't get lost. Keep this in mind if there's the option keep-open=no in the current config file.

• This script will also silence the terminal, so the script messages can be seen more clearly.

• The concat.txt file generated by this script is slightly different from the one illustrated at the beginning of this README. In special, the timestamps are in seconds rather in the HH:MM:SS.ss form. Both forms are supported though (but using seconds is more precise).

Log level

Everytime a timestamp is grabbed, a text will appear on the screen showing the selected time. When Ctrl + P is pressed, besides showing the segments in the terminal, it will also show on the screen the total number of cuts (or segments) that were made. When pressing Ctrl + W, a message will be shown on the screen and the terminal telling that the concat.txt file was written.

Note: Every message that appears on the terminal has the log level of 'info'.

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to pvpscript for writing mpv-video-splice, on which this script and this README are based.

• Thanks to unusualpepe for writing mpv-multiloop, on which the preview functions are based.