Timecode in file name of cut and merged video

[reaseno]

When I cut a video into several parts and merge them, I get a file with a timecode in the file name that I can't make sense of. I would like to have the information of the cut points. Is it possible to generate this again?

[mifi]

hi. you can change the merged output name in the export confirmation dialog (lower right)

[reaseno]

My question is: What does the number mean? Or is it just a random number. I would like to document the time codes of the cuts. Maybe in the metadata if the file name gets too long. Manual naming would be too cumbersome for me.

[mifi]

The number is Unix time. You can store the times of the cuts as chapters in the output file if you select that option

[reaseno]

If I cut out individual parts from a video, the file name of the new file contains the information about the cut point. So you know which part of the original video it is. This information is lost if I cut out several parts from a video and then merge them. I can't see how chapters are supposed to preserve this information. Because the new video, which only contains the parts I need, has a completely different running time to the old one.

[mifi]

If you have an idea how to store this data inside a mkv, mp4, mov, wav, mp3 etc, using ffmpeg, then I'm open to looking into it.

[reaseno]

It is explained here:
https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=FFmpeg_Metadata

Could be saved under the field comment as it seems tools like MediaInfo ignore custom field names.

[mifi]

Have to do some experimentation then to see how much data can actually be stored in a meta field. Seems it's 256 bytes for some formats: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/4833

And have to decide:

• what to store in this field?
  • start/end time?
  • label?
  • tags?
• how to format the data? like this 00:01:02.03-00:02:00.00,00:05:00.00-00:06:00.00 (2 segments example with only times)?
• what should happen if the data is longer than 256 byes (e.g. too many segments or long label / many tags)? just truncate?

[reaseno]

like this 00:01:02.03-00:02:00.00,00:05:00.00-00:06:00.00

That sounds good. And if it is truncated because of the limited field size, then that can't be changed. I don't normally cut that many parts either.

[mifi]

i've created a feature request #2096