I'm currently working on a Python project that needs to download a segment of a .mp4 file hosted on archive.org. For example, say I'd like to just download 10 seconds of this clip, from 2:30 to 2:40. Is this possible to accomplish in Python without downloading the entire file?
I've looked into moviepy (which I'm using to edit the video -- no issues there), as well as wget and ffmpeg. Any knowledge you can share is helpful, thanks so much!
For this kind of tasks ffmpeg comes in very handy. There are python wrappers out there but most of them are not very complete.
I think the best solution for you is to download a compiled version from http://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html and use it through Python to download the clip you want.
Once you have downloaded ffmpeg, here's an example usage with python:
import os
os.system('ffmpeg -ss 00:02:30 -i "https://ia800903.us.archive.org/35/items/ArcherProductionsInc/DuckandC1951.mp4" -to 00:00:10 output.mp4')
What each parameter does:
-ss: is the time at which your clip will start.
-i : is the URL or path to the video.
-to: How long the resulting clip will be / duration of the clip.