If you want a quick and easy way to extract a clip from a larger video
it doesn’t get much simplier than using
avconv (the new ffmpeg.) All you need
to know is the start time and duration of the section you’d like to
extract. Once you have those you can plug them in to the following
command.
avconv -ss <start-time> -t <duration> -i long-video.mp4 -codec copy funny-clip.mp4
If for example you’d like to take a 48 second clip starting at 32
minutes and 15 seconds you’d use the following.
avconv -ss 00:32:15 -t 00:00:48 -i long-video.mp4 -codec copy funny-clip.mp4
Of course you can use any of the conversion capabilities of
avconv in the process, here we’re
preserving the input codecs.
If you happen to be on an older system with ffmpeg the you’ll need to
make a slight modification to the command and specify copy for both
audio and video.
ffmpeg -ss 00:32:15 -t 00:00:48 -i long-video.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy funny-clip.mp4