Sometimes we want to trim a video file to get the exact parts we want or get rid of unwanted parts like commercials. Of course, there are many video editing software tools capable of doing this, but most of them will re-encode the file. Then what if you want to trim an FLV video without re-encoding in order to preserve the original video with no quality loss and save time wasting in re-encoding?

To trim a FLV video without re-encoding, we need a video editor that can open FLV format and can save the trimmed/edited file without re-encoding. There are two free programs that can do the work. One is FFmpeg and the other is Avidemux. Both are cross-platform software so they are applicable in Windows, Mac and Linux.

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is free and multi-platform for handling multimedia data. Many other software tools are based on it. Although it’s a command line program, which makes it difficult to use for novices, it’s an undeniable powerful program.

FFmpeg

The following shows you how to ignore the first 1 m 50 s of an FLV video with the -ss option and then copy the next 20 seconds with the -t option:

ffmpeg -ss 1:50 -t 20 -i input.flv -acodec copy -vcodec copy output.flv

The -acodec copy and -vcodec copy options will copy the audio and video streams and place them in a new flv container. In this process, no re-encoding happens and the quality keeps as the original.

Besides FLV, FFmpeg can handle many other formats including AVI, ASF, BFI, IFF, MXF, OMA, etc. You can use it to work with more than just FLV.

Avidemux

Avidemux is easy to use and stable in performance, with support for most video input formats like AVI, FLV, MOV, WMV, ASF, MKV, MP4, VOB, MPG and output formats like AVI, FLV, MPG, MPEG, M1V, M2V, MP4, MKV and OGM.

The following describes how to select the wanted part of an FLV video and save without re-encoding.

There are two options at the bottom of the window: A and B. You can cut the video by clicking on A to drag the bar to select the start point and B to drag the bar to select the end of the clip. Then, in the left panel, select copy in the drop-down menu of both Video and Audio and select the FLV format in the drop-down menu of Format. In this way, the video and audio streams will be copied and you will save the trimmed video and audio without re-encoding.

trim and save video without re-encoding with Avidemux

For more guides on editing videos using Avidemux, you can refer to another article by clicking here.

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