Trying to get a short clip from a movie

[Telkwa]

Hi, everyone -
First post here, and yes it's another clueless newbie post. My first OpenShot effort was an abject failure. Running Ubuntu 10.04 on an old Pentium 4 PC. I used the ppa to get the latest version of OpenShot rather than the older version in Ubuntu repos.

The 2nd Ghost Rider movie has a short section where the Rider hops into a huge stacker-reclaimer and tears things up. We have a smaller stacker-reclaimer where I work. It was modified, and everyone hates the way it works now. I want to get that clip from the movie into a Windows Media Player compatible format, then bring it to work and suggest that we hire the Ghost Rider as our new Krupp Trainer.

So I used Handbrake to encode the movie in both .mkv and .mp4 formats. I could drag & drop either movie into OS. But sound was a mess in .mp4, so I proceeded with the .mkv file.

I had a heck of a time removing the rest of the movie from either side of the desired clip. At first I used the Resize Tool. That seemed to make the left side of the movie go away, but as soon as I clicked on the right side the part I wanted to keep disappeared. So I tried the Razor Tool, and that seemed to work better.

The Timeline arrow kept disappearing. It'd go way out to the left somewhere and I fought to keep it in view.

Finally got just the clip I wanted showing in the Timeline. I tried to Export the clip to the desktop. It took 30+ minutes to encode it to .avi. I was guessing, but I googled WMP-compatible formats and .avi was supposed to work. When the encode was finally done (the clip is only about 70 seconds) I tried to play it in VLC and Movie Player. Blackness. No sound or video.

Does anyone have some suggestions for an utter newbie? Maybe I started out wrong by using Handbrake? Or maybe I should have used one of Handbrake's other settings?

[Telkwa]

OK, I seem to be making progress in a fumbling sort of way. I can cut the parts I don't want out on either side until I just have the desired 71 second clip.

I tried Export Video. Tried this time as .mp4. It took a long time again to do the export, and I ended up with a 41 minute clip. Everything before the desired 71 sec. clip, but black/silent. Then the clip I wanted. The last part of the movie had been successfully removed.

So I brought the 41 minute .mp4 into OpenShot and tried again to lop off the front half using the razor tool, then going back to the default tool, right-clicking and telling OpenShot to Remove Clip. It looks like it's going to take a long time to export again, so I'm guessing that I was once again unable to get rid of the front half.

Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT Yeah, it made another 41 minute video with all but the end blank. I keep poking at it, but can't figure out how to get rid of everything before the 71 second clip.

[Joseph Eoff]

You will have to move the remaining piece (the 71 seconds you want to keep) to the beginning of the timeline. Use the arrow tool to grab the clip and move. Export again when you are finished. It should be just the 71 seconds now.

[Telkwa]

Thanks for the reply!
While guessing around, I took a stab at dragging the clip to the left, but the clip disappeared and I couldn't figure out how to get to it. Since I didn't know if that was the right thing to do, I gave up. I'll try again.
I keep clicking between the slider, timeline, "play" button, etc. and have moved the clip forward some, but there's gotta be a better way than this! The clip is now a couple of minutes from the front, but I can't get the timeline to slide over and show me where it is.

OK, I found the slider at the bottom of the screen. Sheesh Crisis averted...