The VideoLAN Forums

Hi all,

Nice if able to specify start and end time for particular video clip in play list as some video clip only started to play at the certain time or end time.

Thanks

--start-time=<integer> Start time
The stream will start at this position (in seconds).
--stop-time=<integer> Stop time
The stream will stop at this position (in seconds).
--run-time=<integer> Run time
The stream will run this duration (in seconds).

http://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_command-line_help

but... nice if this thing can be set in play list as this will applied to few video clip.
it is possible manually change the play list file by adding the start and end time in ?

Thanks

Depends about the playlist format you use. If you create .bat playlist, it should work. XSPF does support extension tags, so in theory one could add start and end times, but it would require support from players. m3u playlists don't support it.

do u mean create a bat file and add it into playlist ?

Thanks

You should be able to do something like

Found solutions!! hahaha

Easy!

1) Click "Add File" from Playlist.
2) Check "Show more option".

And there the "Start time" hide.

Thanks

And if you save the result to a playlist, you get to see that vlc uses extensions to implement these cue-list or edit decision list (EDL) type of replay:
or Times are given to the nearest second only, so this would not go for NLE work, but as a rough approximation ...
Incidentally, both the M3U version and the .xspf version produced by vlc work when fed back to it. I sensed better bokeh from the .xspf version, but maybe that's just the "eye of the beholder".
Bravo, vlc!

Times are given to the nearest second only

With new VLC builds they should be floats, so one can use e.g. 12.13

Sorry to bring up this older thread but I think this feature is exactly what I am looking for. I have a bunch of 720p and 1080p .mkv x264 videos that I would like to to be able to play in windows but in a certain order and only with certain specified start and end times. These files are live music concerts so I only want to play certain songs, which is the reason for this.

Can someone please tell me the easiest way I could accomplish this? I read the discussion here on how to do it but not sure I comprehend it fully.

I have for eg.

concert1.mkv (Total length is 1:24:01, I would like to play from 00:15:01 to 00:18:22)
convert2.mkv (Total lengh is 2:12:35, I would like to play from 00:17:22 to 00:23:07, and from 01:02:33 to 01:07:21)

etc etc.

If I could create a playlist with all the video files and just the times of each file and then hit play on vlc that would be awesome!

Any comments would be much appreciated!

Does vlc m3u extention support pre-buffer type of parameter? Playling through a series of network clips is very cumbersome due to the long and entirely unnecessary buffering period before each clip.

M3U has a very limited feature support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

M3U has a very limited feature support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

Is there a different way you can recommend to avoid buffering before each clip?

Setting cache to 10 might work.

Is there a way to skip end time? I have a playlist of some video clips with the same end time (129s) but different length (somewhat between 24 and 30 minutes). I already tried this extension https://addons.videolan.org/content/sho ... ent=159976 but no luck. Any suggestions?

It is extremely easy to make skip(s) in the playback of a video (and possibly an audio) file in VLC. Follow these steps:

1. Open the video file in VLC.

2. Click on the “File” tab and the last option would be “Save Playlist”. Click on it. (This is how it looks on mac, and I assume it should be the same on Windows version of VLC as well. If not, you only need to find the “Save Playlist” option in one of the tabs.)

3. In the opened window, write an optional name and make sure the selected format is M3U (.m3u). Then save it exactly in the folder in which the video (or audio) file is located.

4. Then go to that folder and open the created m3u file with TextEdit on mac (or with Notepad on Windows).

5. If, for example, the name of your video file is “School.mkv”, then the text in the m3u file is something like the following text.
(For those who might not know, the “.mkv” in the mentioned name is not a part of the actual name and it is actually the format of the file in our example and it can be different for different types of files. So the name of the file in our example is “School”)



#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:617,School.mkv
School.mkv



6. In this step you need to add the following command to the above-mentioned text:

Let’s imagine the video file’s duration is 10:17 and you want VLC to skip from 2:47 to 4:51 during the playback. For this purpose, you first need to convert these times to seconds.

For converting times to seconds, you can use this free online tool:

https://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/hh_mm_ss_to_seconds/


So based on our example, you want VLC to play the video file from second 1 (0:01) until second 167 (2:47) and then from second 291 (4:51) until the end which is second 617 (10:17). So the code you should prepare will look like this:



#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=1
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=167
School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=291
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=617
School.mkv


7. Then you should add this command to the original text in the m3u file. The final result based on our example looks like the following code. Please note that you should delete the “School.mkv” which is mentioned in the third line of the original m3u file:


#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:617,School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=1
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=167
School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=291
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=617
School.mkv


8. Save the changes. Then instead of opening the video file, open the m3u file with VLC.

That’s It!!! VLC will play the portions of the video you have indicated in the m3u file.


A few points to mention:

1. If you want multiple skips in different parts of the video, you can simply add more same commands. For instance, in the following code there are two skips (from 2:47 until 4:51 and from 7:02 until 9:25):

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:617,School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=1
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=167
School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=291
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=422
School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=565
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=617
School.mkv



2. Don’t change the number that is mentioned in the second line of the original m3u file. In my example it is 617, but it will be different in other examples. So you don’t need to change it. (It is actually the total duration of the video file in seconds).

3. These skips will not ruin the lip-sync or subtitle-sync and everything will work well.

4. Don’t forget to include the video file’s format next to the name of the file. As you see above, I have written (.mkv) wherever I have mentioned the name of the video file.


Good Luck