Handbrake --stop-at parameter not working as intended

Question

I run the following from command line:

handbrakeCLI.exe -i SourceFile.mkv -o OutputFile.mkv --stop-at 120

According to the CLIGuide you can supply the --stop-at value as seconds (which is what I want, stop encoding 120 seconds into the file).

My purpose for this is to quickly create a very high quality video clip from a full movie for testing other encoding processes.

However, when I view my output file, it is the entire movie. Any ideas?

KG. · Answer 1 · 2010-12-29 20:33:03Z

Ok, so I decided to solve my problem with ffmpeg as such:

ffmpeg -i SourceFile.mkv -ss 00:00:05 -t 00:02:30 -ac 2 -sn OutputFile.mkv

Explanation:

ss : seek start, or "Begin my encoding at this point in time" (hh:mm:ss)
t : duration (hh:mm:ss)
ac : audio channels, since this particular movie was having a problem disseminating the audio tracks during encoding
sn : suppress subtitles, as ffmpeg was complaining about the subtitle track

This worked perfectly for what I was looking for.

Stefan Schmidt · Answer 2 · 2011-02-17 15:59:35Z

up vote 3 down vote

The answer can be found in Handbrake's help:

handbrakeCLI.exe --help

The correct syntax is as follows:

--stop-at     <unit:#>  Stop encoding at a given frame, duration (in seconds),
                        or pts (on a 90kHz clock)

Example:

handbrakeCLI.exe -i SourceFile.mkv -o OutputFile.mkv --stop-at duration:120

This will give you the first 120 seconds of the video

answered Feb 17 '11 at 15:59

	Have you actually tried that? That command looks like what you want, but in my experiments it processed the ENTIRE video asset, when all I wanted was the first two minutes. Fail. – KG. Feb 17 '11 at 18:02
	Yes I've used the command successfully. It's important to specify the duration keyword and a colon prior to the duration, otherwise it won't work. – Stefan Schmidt Feb 23 '11 at 6:37
	GREAT point! Thanks for the follow up! I'm still going with FFmpeg, as I'm more comfortable with it and use it a lot. – KG. Mar 2 '11 at 15:17
	This used to work for me, but now I was encoding a file where the `--stop-at` parameter was ignored (i.e. no matter what I set it to, `HandBrakeCLI` would always encode the entire remaining file), while the `--start-at` parameter was respected. Any clues? – kynan Sep 17 '11 at 8:21
	Note that `--stop-at duration:120` means encode 120 seconds and will not stop at 120 sec into the video when combined with `--start-at` and a duration > 0. This is a little counter-intuitive and is what confused me there. – kynan Sep 17 '11 at 8:30

feedback

2 Answers