stitchi 0.1.0

cli video clipping tool

stitchi

cli tool for video wrangling

This is currently just a proof of concept for video editing through scripts.

1.0 Features

A lot of these features can be expanded in the future, but the current features are below:

1. Show available videos in your directory
2. Play a video in your directory
3. Trim a video
4. Combine videos
5. Generate thumbnail sheets

2.0 Staring Out

This is currently a CLI tool, so you will be interacting with the terminal when using this. Can be expanded into another interface if this tool were to be further worked on.

2.1 Getting Help

Let's take a look at how to work with this application.

2.1.1 Available Commands

To take a look at the available menu options, type in the following:

python main.py

2.1.2 Help Option

At any time, you can take one of the commands and add the --help option to get more information on what the function needs to process.

python main.py add --help

2.1.3 Example of Help Option Output

Typing the command will give you the arguments that the function needs, as well as any optional flags you have available.

3.0 Adding Two Videos

For the add command, you need the base_video_index of the main video, and the add_video_index of the video you want to add to the end of the base video. Let's take a look at how to get the index of the two videos first.

3.1 Available Videos

Let's get the list of videos we have available by typing show command, to get a table of all the videos you have available.

python main.py show

The output should be a table with a lot of data, including the path, the size of the file and when it was created. The index of the file you are looking for is the very first column under #.

3.2 Run the Add Command

Once we have the two indexes, run the add command in order to clip them together. If you include the --output-name flag, you can name the merged video. When left blank, it will be given the default name.

• Remember, that the argument is currently the fullpath for the output name

python main.py add 0 1

• This code would merge two videos, (#0 and #1) together.
• Video #1 would get appended to the end of Video #0

Things to Improve

1. We can decrease the latency of pulling all the files in a folder. Currently, it searches recursively and the data is pulled from different sources
2. The data could potentially be saved in a database, so we don't have to re-pull the files inside a folder every time
3. Add different types of transitions. If we focus on improving the add function, it can be made to look professional
   1. https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Xfade have some fade types available depending on how we want to transition clips
   2. There's also options with overlays, so we can get really creative
4. Thumbnail sheet generation can be improved by adding data on the resolution and duration
5. Can automate the entire video editing process (will need to be able to run independent of the CLI)
6. Adding multiple videos together at once
7. The optional path for add could be cleaned up to be able to handle whitespace