Exporting part of the project

How to export only part of the project? In Blender, I just set the start and end of the region and export that while the rest of the project stays untouched. I’ve not seen that option in Shotcut. I’ve also searched around in Internet and seen suggestions like copying the timeline to source and using the keys i and o but they don’t seem to work.

My project’t length is about 90 minutes. There’s an audio portion that lasts only two seconds that I want to export as an audio file. How can I do that? If I copy the whole track to source then there’s the whole track, there aren’t only two needed seconds. And if I use the suggested keyboard shortcuts, the start and end will be set to the same place. I can’t even zoom in the timeline in the source player.

Sometimes, I have many such audio parts inside the same project that I want to extract. I can separate them into a new track but what then?

They work as well as dragging the in and out points in the player. Sometimes something not obvious has focus and eating those keys, and you need to click the player video area to return focus to the global shortcut handler. There is also a keyboard shortcut for that Shift+Esc that works most of the time.

I have many such audio parts inside the same project that I want to extract

You can set in and out and enqueue an export, and then repeat the process. You do not need to wait for the job to finish before repeating.

set the start and end of the region

The problem with letting one define a region on the timeline ruler is that people will think it is a selection range for doing edits, For example, remove all of this region. And if it does not then it is reported as a bug. When markers are added to the tool, I hope to include the option to export between 2 markers. Or, possibly include the ability to add duration to a marker (also known as “range”).

Your suggestion just doesn’t work. At all. The output is like 650 bytes and it’s obvious that it contains no audio. And in addition to that, the file was stored in a totally wrong folder.

Works for me all the time, every time without anything special other than paying attention and doing the right thing.

Can we have a live conversation like over [Jitsi](https://meet.jit.si/arvutiteadus) right now? Because we get different results and something must be wrong.

Can you? I’m really eager to figure that out how to export just parts of the track. The best result I’ve come to was a two minute snippet but I only wanted a second snippet that I couldn’t get.

I see that you can’t help me. Anyway, what I do is the following: I click “Project” and then move the cursor to the beginning of what I want to export. I copy to the time value and click “Source” and paste the time value and click “enter” and click “I”. This should set the start, right? It also moves the cursor in the player to the correspondent position. Then I click “Project” and move the cursor to the end of what I want to export, copy the time value and click “Source” and paste that time value and click “enter”. I see the cursor moving to the right position. I click “O”. No selection happens. I export and I see these 650 bytes of silence. Am I doing something wrong or is “Shotcut” broken? Can you explain this here or why don’t you join our conversation so that we could sort this out right now?

I see that you’re not willing to help me out. So I go to Audacity and do the things I want to do. Shotcut just seems to be not over beta level. Even blender can do that and I don’t have time to mess around with Shotcut to do the same thing, even if it works for you all the time. If something works for you, that doesn’t mean that it works for the rest of the world.

Even if I after some tens of tries get finally an export that isn’t only 650 bytes large I can’t get the export I wanted. The copied part is somewhere else in the track as in the original file. The export includes the part that corresponds to the snippet of the original not the modified track. So the export of snippets is useless. It only seems to work if I copy the snippet exactly to the position as it was in the original file. But after editing the grand story, that copy won’t be in that location.

Here is the problem. Pressing Enter does not change focus, and the time field does not accept characters other than numeric and colon. Tab key works.

So why don’t you want to discuss this issue with me right now with audio so that we could sort the thing out right now? I don’t get your explanations at all. So please join the link I shared with you before I go to sleep. Maybe you’re on “Windows” or something but I’m on “Ubuntu” and your explanations just don’t work at all here.

The only way it works is deleting everything else on that track, removing the space between the start of the whole project and the snippet and then do that thingy with “TAB”. Look Dan I want to help you but you won’t let me. I adore FOSS but only if it works and has a comprehensive manual. “Shotcut” doesn’t. Only some enthusiastic guys produce how-to videos. It would be ground zero if one produces a functionality that one also produces a comprehensive manual for it. Making workarounds doesn’t make a software diligent. If you would let me, I’d produce these video manuals. Would you?

Shotcut version 20.11.28
Windows 10 Home 64-bit

How to export a 2 second audio clip from a video in Source.

  1. From the timeline of your project:
    shotcut_2020-12-14_05-27-37
  2. Find your IN (starting) point. Press I to set your IN point
  3. You said 2 seconds… Page Down 2x
  4. Set your OUT (ending) point. Press O
  5. Export: Select an audio preset under “audio”, then Export File, name your file, and then save.

Here are the keyboard shortcuts for Windows/Linux.
And the order in which I chose to use them.
If you want a more direct route, you could do Shift+Page Down.
2020-12-14_05-22-12

  • Note: Timecode in Shotcut is [HH:MM:SS:FF] Hours:Minutes:Seconds:Frames

The parts aren’t exactly two seconds long. They have different lengths. Is this kind of export only possible using an integer number of seconds?

Your sample clip is also very short - ten seconds. My project is 90 minutes long and a fraction like something less than two seconds can’t be seen on that timeline. That blue part isn’t visible.

You use the timeline to get your in and out times.
09:01:09 and 09:11:30
I just picked these two at random.
2020-12-14_09-20-35

Then you key in the timecode and set your in and out points.
I had to click outside the box to deselect the time before it would accept both in and out keyboard shortcuts. As this is how it works with Windows.
2020-12-14_09-28-35
explorer_2020-12-14_09-29-36

This solution only works for one track. If I have a large project having multiple tracks then I can’t export just a segment of the timeline that has multiple tracks? Like in blender or audacity where I can set the export markers or select a segment spanned over multiple tracks and just export the selection. If there’s no such feature in Shotcut then an important feature is missing. Then It wouldn’t make a sense to export full a couple of hours, then open the exported and compressed video, look for the segment I wanted to export and do the “copy track to source”-thing. It’d be useful to export any selection with any number of tracks right while editing.

Even the “copy timeline to source”-thing requires redoing as every time the source goes lost (gets replaced by something else) and I have to copy it again even while exporting from the same track if I have multiple tracks.

This is false.

In point


Exported

  1. Save As (name to a different project name). Purely as a measure to not disrupt your current project.
  2. Then start hiding/muting tracks you don’t want to show/hear.
  3. Copy Timeline to Source.
  4. Export From Source to your desired format.

You’re right. However, I discovered another issue that’s a subissue of this issue. Sometimes, the copied-to-source-thing doesn’t match the original. I don’t know whether it has something to do with proxies switched on.