Auto-Editor

Auto-Editor is a command line application for automatically editing video and audio by analyzing a variety of methods, most notably audio loudness.

Before doing the real editing, you first cut out the "dead space" which is typically silence. This is known as a "first pass". Cutting these is a boring task, especially if the video is very long. 

auto-editor path/to/your/video.mp4

Installing

pip install auto-editor

See Installing for additional information.

Cutting

Change the pace of the edited video by using --margin.

--margin adds in some "silent" sections to make the editing feel nicer. Setting --margin to 0.2sec will add up to 0.2 seconds in front of and 0.2 seconds behind the original clip. 

auto-editor example.mp4 --margin 0.2sec

Set how cuts are made

Use the --edit option. to change how auto-editor makes automated cuts.

For example, edit out motionlessness in a video by setting --edit motion.

# cut out sections where percentage of motion is less than 2.
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit motion:threshold=2%

# --edit is set to "audio:threshold=4%" by default
auto-editor example.mp4

# Different tracks can be set with different attributes
auto-editor multi-track.mov --edit "(or audio:stream=0 audio:threshold=10%,stream=1)"

# Different editing methods can be used together.
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit "(or audio:threshold=3% motion:threshold=6%)"

Exporting to Editors

Create an XML file that can be imported to Adobe Premiere Pro using this command:

auto-editor example.mp4 --export premiere

Auto-Editor can also export to:

Other editors, like Sony Vegas, can understand the premiere format. If your favorite editor doesn't, you can use --export clip-sequence which creates many video clips that can be imported and manipulated like normal.


Manual Editing

Use the --cut-out option to always remove a section.

# Cut out the first 10 seconds.
auto-editor example.mp4 --cut-out start,10sec

# Cut out the first 10 frames.
auto-editor example.mp4 --cut-out start,10

# Cut out the last 10 seconds.
auto-editor example.mp4 --cut-out -10sec,end

# Cut out the first 10 seconds and cut out the range from 15 seconds to 20 seconds.
auto-editor example.mp4 --cut-out start,10sec 15sec,20sec

And of course, all the audio cuts still apply.

If you don't want any automatic cuts, use --edit none

# Cut out the first 5 seconds, leave the rest untouched.
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit none --cut-out start,5sec

And the inverse

# Leave in the first 5 seconds, cut everything else out.
auto-editor example.mp4 --edit all --add-in start,5sec

More Options

List all available options:

auto-editor --help

Use --help with a specific option for more information:

auto-editor --scale --help
  --scale NUM

    default: 1.0
    Scale the output video's resolution by NUM factor

Articles

Docs

Copyright

Auto-Editor is under the Public Domain and includes all files besides the ones listed below. Auto-Editor was created by these people.

ae-ffmpeg is under the LGPLv3 License. The ffmpeg and ffprobe programs were created by the FFmpeg team.