Splitting a real media file
 

Hi there. I have tried googling around a bit but I couldn't find an answer. How do I split a realmedia file into several smaller files? ffmpeg/mencoder should be able to do this shouldn't they? Will I have to convert it to avi before splitting? The resulting files must play however, so please do not post a reply saying "man split".

Thanks

RealMedia in general is a difficult format to work with. I would suggest converting the videos to AVI with Mencoder, and then manipulating them with whatever video editor you feel comfortable with. It will take longer, but you avoid the aggravation of trying to work with the RM files natively.

Yeah the problem with that is the corresponding avi file is ~180mb to the 50mb real media file. There is an endpos argument for mencoder which I am looking into at the moment.

What settings are you using to convert the video? Or more to the point, how long is the video you are converting? A 180 MB XviD file should be no less than 20 minutes long.

Well the real media file was ripped from a stream so as I'm sure you can guess the quality isn't great. It is about 30 minutes long.

This produces a ~35mb file.

I would ideally like each part to be under 10mb as I am uploading them to youtube.

There must be a way to do this. However I cannot find it.

This produced a 16mb file if anyone cares.

Here are some resources for those trying to find an answer to a question similar to mine:

Mencoder tips
Mencoder guide
Ffmpeg guide

Edit: It seems that -endpos adds to -ss so '-ss 05:30 -endpos 02:00' will start encoding at 5:30 and stop at 7:30. This seems to have helped :)