A script for splitting videos using ffmpeg

Here is a small bash script for automatically cutting a video file into smaller chunks of fixed length. ffmpeg cannot output multiple files, but it has start offset and duration parameters which my script uses to actually split the file.

For example, if we have a video called 'video.mpeg' which is 3000 seconds long and we run

ffsplit.sh video.mpeg 1200

we will obtain three files : video-001.mpeg (1200 seconds), video-002.mpeg (1200 seconds) and video-003.mpeg (600 seconds).

 #!/bin/bash

 
# Written by Alexis Bezverkhyy <alexis@grapsus. net> in 2011
# This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.
#  For more information, please refer to <http://unlicense.org/>
 
function usage {
         echo "Usage : ffsplit.sh input.file chunk-duration [output-filename-format]"
         echo -e "\t - input file may be any kind of file reconginzed by ffmpeg"
         echo -e "\t - chunk duration must be in seconds"
         echo -e "\t - output filename format must be printf-like, for example myvideo-part-%04d.avi"
         echo -e "\t - if no output filename format is given, it will be computed\
 automatically from input filename"
}
 
IN_FILE="$1"
OUT_FILE_FORMAT="$3"
typeset -i CHUNK_LEN
CHUNK_LEN="$2"
 
DURATION_HMS=$(ffmpeg -i "$IN_FILE" 2>&1 | grep Duration | cut -f 4 -d ' ')
DURATION_H=$( echo "$DURATION_HMS" | cut -d ':' -f 1)
DURATION_M=$( echo "$DURATION_HMS" | cut -d ':' -f 2)
DURATION_S=$( echo "$DURATION_HMS" | cut -d ':' -f 3 | cut -d '.' -f 1)
let "DURATION = ( DURATION_H * 60 + DURATION_M ) * 60 + DURATION_S"
 
if [ "$DURATION" = '0' ] ;  then
         echo "Invalid input video"
        usage
         exit 1
fi
 
if [ "$CHUNK_LEN" = "0" ] ;  then
         echo "Invalid chunk size"
        usage
         exit 2
fi
 
if [ -z "$OUT_FILE_FORMAT" ] ;  then
        FILE_EXT=$( echo "$IN_FILE" | sed 's/^.*\.\([a-zA-Z0-9]\+\)$/\1/')
        FILE_NAME=$( echo "$IN_FILE" | sed 's/^\(.*\)\.[a-zA-Z0-9]\+$/\1/')
        OUT_FILE_FORMAT="${FILE_NAME}-%03d.${FILE_EXT}"
         echo "Using default output file format : $OUT_FILE_FORMAT"
fi
 
N='1'
OFFSET='0'
let 'N_FILES = DURATION / CHUNK_LEN + 1'
 
while [ "$OFFSET" -lt "$DURATION" ] ;  do
        OUT_FILE=$(printf "$OUT_FILE_FORMAT" "$N")
         echo "writing $OUT_FILE ($N/$N_FILES)..."
        ffmpeg -i "$IN_FILE" -vcodec  copy -acodec  copy -ss "$OFFSET" -t "$CHUNK_LEN" "$OUT_FILE"
        let "N = N + 1"
        let "OFFSET = OFFSET + CHUNK_LEN"
done