The -ss option seeks to an approximate position if used as an input option (placed before the -i), and seeks (much more slowly) to an exact position if used as an output option (placed after the -i).I’ve seen comments in other forums regarding possible loss of sync between audio and video when using these options. Copying (using the copy pseudo-codecs for the -acodec and -vcodec options) is fast, and performs no transcoding.If the source has multiple streams, check the -map option to force copying of all required streams.

The above example only copies one video and one audio stream, and throws away any subtitle stream.Episode 1 runs from the beginning of TwoEpisodesMyShow.m4v up to the 1hr 30min 00sec mark, and episode 2 runs from the 1hr 30min 02.5sec mark to the end.Įpisode 1 can be extracted using ffmpeg and the “-to hh:mm:ss” option as follows: ffmpeg -i 'TwoEpisodesMyShow.m4v' -acodec copy -vcodec copy -to 01:30:00 's01e01 MyShow.m4v'Įpisode 2 can be extracted using ffmpeg with the “-ss hh:mm:ss” option as follows: ffmpeg -ss 01:30:02.5 -i 'TwoEpisodesMyShow.m4v' -acodec copy -vcodec copy 's01e02 MyShow.m4v' m4v file.Īssume, for example, I wish to extract “ s01e01 MyShow.m4v” and “ s01e02 MyShow.m4v” from TwoEpisodesMyShow.m4v. Splitting can be effected by using ffmpeg to copy video and audio tracks (without any transcoding) between nominated start and end times of the source. For the PMS to properly recognise the individual episodes I need to split this into separate per-episode. Hypothetically, I’ve ended with a file called TwoEpisodesMyShow.m4v that contains multiple episodes of a TV show in a single m4v. If you’re not me, hope these notes help you too 🙂 Splitting an m4v file

These are my notes to myself of what I did using ffmpeg after much googling. m4v files containing h264/aac encoded material.

While constructing content for a Plex Media Server (PMS) at home I’ve recently need to both split and merge.

Ffmpeg concat video files