Newbie question

[noob2011]

Hello

I am trying to edit the output of a video camera (mp4 format) with the following objective:

1a) Take the first 5 out of every 100 frames (removing the other 95); and/or
1b) Take the first frames out of every 100 frames repeated 5 times (removing the other 99)
2) in each case, from a long list of files; and
3) catenate the output (from the multiple files) in a new file (mp4, avi, or whatever).

I wasn't able to figure out how to get the looping control structures to work at all.

The files are video only, no sound.

Could someone help?

Thanks

[vampiredom]

If variables v1, v2, and v3 represent different videos of the same format, such as:

# DirectShowSource() is only an example
# use whatever you want/need to import the video instead
v1 = DirectShowSource("file1.mp4")
v2 = DirectShowSource("file2.mp4")
v3 = DirectShowSource("file3.mp4")
# etc.

Using step 1a)

v1 = v1.SelectEvery(100, 0,1,2,3,4)
v2 = v2.SelectEvery(100, 0,1,2,3,4)
v3 = v3.SelectEvery(100, 0,1,2,3,4)

v1 + v2 + v3

...Or, step 2b)

v1 = v1.SelectEvery(100, 0).Loop(5)
v2 = v2.SelectEvery(100, 0).Loop(5)
v3 = v3.SelectEvery(100, 0).Loop(5)

v1 + v2 + v3

Is that what you are looking for?

[noob2011]

Thanks. That's great. Any way to (a) run it from the command line with the different files (and/or an arbitrary number of files)?

Also, any way to save the output as a file instead of just play it?

Many thanks in advance.

[vampiredom]

I don't know of any way to automate sourcing of multiple files (though I, personally, might write a Perl script if I had to do something like this with a large number of files).

If you want to save the output, I suggest opening it with VirtualDub and compressing it to a lossless AVI (like Lagarith or Ut) to make a "master" and then using whatever other encoding tools you'd like to output to whatever particular delivery format you'd like.