How to use VLC Media Player to save only part of video (crop image or time)

[DIV]

Can anyone please advise on how to use VLC Media Player to save only part of video: specifically to crop the picture and/or to include only a portion of the time?

So far I have received information about various methods that don't work, but (as interesting as that is), I'd rather know if there are some methods that work.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You need to transcode, which makes this a rather unappealing idea. But if you still want to do it, you can set up transcoding and crop from the CLI. Refer to tye streaming documentation

[DIV]

Hello, Rémi.

Refer to tye streaming documentation

Thanks for the pointer.
Is this the documentation on transcoding through streaming in VLC Media Player that you were referring to?
If so, I would need a bit more explicit guidance, as that documentation doesn't mention cropping the picture or adjusting the time span for the output video.
It looks rather like the approach that I have tried unsuccessfully to use already — chances are that there's some step in the correct process that I may have overlooked.
For example, if I am only modifying the picture information, do I have to transcode the audio too?
Where should I configure the settings (on a per file basis)?
What is the correct sequence of steps?

You need to transcode, which makes this a rather unappealing idea.

Secondly, I am not sure in what way you mean "unappealing".
Do you mean that cropping the picture and/or exporting only a short snippet of a video is always, inherently, unappealing? (Because of file bloat and/or loss of image quality, for instance?)
Or do you mean that VLC Media Player is not expected to be used for such operations (even though the feature is — possibly — available in VLC), and hence it does not perform this task in an optimal way; rather, it would be better to use some other purpose-built software tool or another application?

***UPDATE***

you can set up transcoding and crop from the CLI.

By the way, the streaming documentation (per the link above) makes no mention of "CLI".
Only later I have eventually figured out that you might have been referring to the "Command-line interface".
(I concede that you may be very busy and trying to save time in your responses, but please be aware that not everyone will understand such jargon — especially non-experts who are asking for assistance.)
So are you saying that it cannot (or should not) be done through the GUI?
Furthermore, I cannot find documentation (neither instructions nor examples) of how to apply cropping the picture or adjusting the time span for the output video when using a command-line instruction.
Moreover, if I go to the commandline and enter commands such as

Code: Select all

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC>vlc/? C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC>vlc/help

I do not get any information on syntax.

***UPDATED UPDATE***
OK, I found this VLC command-line help. It looks very complicated.
It looks like it'd be hard to get the syntax right, and easy to get it wrong (e.g. a misplaced comma) without knowing why.

—DIV

P.S. By the way, does that requirement to transcode apply to every type of format/encoding/container?
I have tried on two different MP4 files, with H.264 (avc1) encoding, of different resolutions, and I accept that transcoding would be necessary there. I'm just curious as to whether that's always the case.
If there's a video equivalent of BMP image format, for instance, I could imagine that there should be neither losses/changes in image quality nor (further) file size bloat. Maybe some sort of 'raw' format/encoding. Just curious — it's not the main issue.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Transcoding is slow and lossy. That's why it's unappealing.