How can I really split a movie into multiple clips?

Question

Level 1

108 points

How can I really split a movie into multiple clips?

Can I use Quicktime Player, iMovie, or some other Apple app to split a movie file into multiple clips? I want to be able to string the clips together to recreate the original movie, so the clip boundaries have to be accurate.

Quicktime Player lets you split a movie into clips, but as far as I can tell you can't save the clips individually.

iMovie pretends to let you split a clip into multiple clips, but it's not really splitting them. When you try to apply a series of affects to one of the sub-clips but not the other it gets confused and the sequence doesn't render properly. For example, if you want to have a Ken Burns affect followed by a freeze frame it doesn't work.

This seems like it should be very simple basic functionality, but I can't find it. Anyone know how to do this?

MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.3)

Posted on Oct 24, 2017 1:01 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Rich839

Level 8

48,340 points

Oct 24, 2017 2:20 PM in response to Andrew Shalit

Hi, Andrew,

I'm not sure I am following you. iMovie is designed to split clips, not just "pretend" to do it. So if you have clip "A" and want to split it into clips 1, 2, 3, and 4, you select it and place the playhead where you want each split, and select Modify/Split clip. That leaves you with 4 clips. You can edit them separately. You can select each clip, Edit/Copy it, paste it into a newly created project, and share it out. After sharing out each clip you can drag them into a new iMovie project and reassemble them. If you want a freeze frame at the end of a clip to which you have added the Ken Burns effect, stop the playhead at the end of the clip and share out the last frame and an Image to your desktop, and then drag it back in and place it at the end of the Ken Burns clip.

Quicktime Player can split clips, as you point out, but if you want to share out any of the splits you need to delete all the others and share out the one clip. So, you would split your clips 1, 2, 3, and 4, duplicate the movie, delete 2, 3, 4, from the duplicate, and share out 1. Then go back to the first movie, duplicate it again, and follow the same process to share out clip 2.

- Rich

Reply

Answer 2

Rich839

Level 8

48,340 points

Oct 24, 2017 3:08 PM in response to Andrew Shalit

After you make your splits in Quicktime, and duplicate the movie (File/Duplicate), the splits do carry over to the duplicate. You just have to click on them to outline them in yellow after doing View/Show Clips.

I've not noticed iMovie forgetting that a clip has been split, but apparently it does since you have observed it. A workaround, as I outlined in my previous post, would be to copy and paste the split into a new project and share it out. That would lock in all editing.

Cheers,

Rich

Reply

Answer 3

Andrew Shalit Author

Level 1

108 points

Oct 24, 2017 2:53 PM in response to Rich839

Quicktime Player can split clips, as you point out, but if you want to share out any of the splits you need to delete all the others and share out the one clip. So, you would split your clips 1, 2, 3, and 4, duplicate the movie, delete 2, 3, 4, from the duplicate, and share out 1. Then go back to the first movie, duplicate it again, and follow the same process to share out clip 2.

- Rich

Thanks for the response. In Quicktime player, if you split clips and then duplicate the movie, the new copy doesn't have the splits anymore. So that technique doesn't work.

As far as iMovie, I've been splitting clips within a project, not in the library. I've run into multiple cases where iMovie forgets that the clip has been split, and performs an operation on the whole thing, or loses track of a transformation, etc. Maybe it will work better if I do it in the library and then bring the individual pieces into my project. I'll try that. Thank you for the suggestion.

Reply

Answer 4

Andrew Shalit Author

Level 1

108 points

Oct 25, 2017 1:30 PM in response to Rich839

Thanks! You're right about Quicktime. I don't know why I couldn't get it to work before. That gives me what I need.

Reply

Answer 5

Rich839

Level 8

48,340 points

Oct 25, 2017 3:03 PM in response to Andrew Shalit

Great! Glad I could help.

-- Rich

Reply