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desertman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 14, 2008
690
37
Arizona, USA
This might sound trivial to experts, but it is a big problem for me.

A friend of mine has a self-made video (mp4) on which he is seen to read a couple of poems. Now he wants to split this video into several videos that each show only one poem (and he, of course, would like to have some kind of blending in and blending out for each video).

How do I do this best? Are there any free applications that do this? I do have iMovie 10.1.2 but I don't know whether it can do this and I also don't know how to work with it. Same is true for QuickTime Player 10.4.

Thanks for your help.
 

ColdCase

macrumors 68040
Feb 10, 2008
3,358
276
NH
Kinda hard to explain but pretty basic editing. With iMovie, you import the video. Then start a new project. Select the part of the imported movie that you want for your first clip (drag the mouse over it) and drag it to the new project time line. Do this for each individual clip you want. Adjust the in and out points of each clip as you like. Drag the transition you want from the effects browser to the area between the clips. When done share/export depending on which version or iMovie you have. The help files/manual would have more detailed description of how to do this. Takes a little practice, but becomes second nature.
 

desertman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 14, 2008
690
37
Arizona, USA
Thanks. I guess the main "problem" is selecting exactly the right part (from split second to split second). For now I'm sitting in front of that like an idiot, but I will try ...
 

ColdCase

macrumors 68040
Feb 10, 2008
3,358
276
NH
There are probably a dozen ways to do that.

Another, perhaps better way, is to drag the entire imported movie to the new project time line. Then use the blade tool to split the clip where you want. This can be done precisely with more magnification, or moving the edit point with the left/right arrows instead of the mouse. The arows move the edit point frame by frame. You can also select and delete parts you don't want in this way. After you have all the clips separated, apply the transitions, titles, effects, etc..
 

desertman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 14, 2008
690
37
Arizona, USA
OK. Coming closer ...

This is such a strange world for me. Where, for example, do I find the blade tool?

Why is there not a tool bar with all tools? I do see some tools at the top of the window but there is no blade tool among them.
[doublepost=1464480390][/doublepost]I managed now to clip the movie twice, delete the parts at the beginning and end that I don't want in this particular movie and to have in the lower part of the iMovie window only the part that I want. Now I would expect to find somewhere in the File menu an "Save As" or "Export Clip" option - but I don't.

How do I get this clip as a separate mp4 file out of iMovie?
 

ColdCase

macrumors 68040
Feb 10, 2008
3,358
276
NH
Does your iMovie version have a share option?

Sorry I'm not much help as I haven't used iMovie in awhile. Been using FCPX, which is similar.
 

martinX

macrumors 6502a
Aug 11, 2009
928
162
Australia
MPEG Streamclip may be able to help. I use it to trim MP4 files and save them out as MP4s without re-encoding.
 

ColdCase

macrumors 68040
Feb 10, 2008
3,358
276
NH
Just use QuickTime. Go Edit Menu>Trim. Drag the slider and then click Trim. Save the trimmed clip and the original is left intact.
I think the OP wanted to break the original long clip into many smaller pieces, then add transitions. He could use quicktime to break the original up into smaller clips recursively, but it should be a lot easier with iMovie where you just slice it up in one screen/timeline/project. Then there is the transition thing.
 
Last edited:

Maxwill

macrumors member
May 25, 2015
52
20
There are many free video cutter or split program that enables you to split video into many smaller parts such as Free Video Cutter Joiner, Video Edit Master, Media Cope, Moo0 Video Cutter, Cute Video Cutter Free Version, ect. Here is a detailed review for those apps.
 

Macyourdayy

macrumors 6502
Sep 9, 2011
439
207
MPEG Streamclip may be able to help. I use it to trim MP4 files and save them out as MP4s without re-encoding.
I love MPEG StreamClip, but it chokes MP4 TS files for me. MPEG 2 mostly still works normally. Any idea what's gone wrong? I've tried it in several OS's.
 

Beyo

macrumors member
May 29, 2017
91
45
Poznań
There is no simple sofware on MacOS for doing such simple thing. What other users proposing is using manual select and save. But the expected way to handle that is that user select splits and click save and all clips are saved at once to separate files. Nothing can do that even ScreenFlow
 
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