[MPlayer-users] cuting ads

[Emmanuel Anne]

In case someone is interested :
I wanted to cut ads from videos captured from the tv using mencoder.
I tried avidemux (linux), but it can't read msmpeg4v2 video codec and
that's what I use for recording.
I tried Virtual Dub, but it can't record in this format (it can only
read, then you have to save in a much less compressed format
apparently, and then recompress everything).

So the best solution that I found : just read the video with mplayer,
write the time where the ads start and the time where they stop. And
then use something like :

mencoder -frames <frame where ads start> -oac copy -ovc copy -o \
video1.avi video.avi
mencoder -ss <time where ads end> -oac copy -ovc copy -o video2.avi \
video.avi
avicat -o newvideo.avi video1.avi video2.avi

It works fine with mp3 cbr, and msmpeg4v2 video codec.
Just a very little problem : the sequences are cut at keyframes, so they
don't start exactly at the time given, but it's fast, and you don't
loose quality in the process.
(avicat comes from libavifile, avifile-utils package in debian).