HOW TO SPLIT OR JOIN VIDEO FILES USING MACHETE

Using Machete, you can quickly and easily split (cut) a multimedia file into two (or several) fragments, cut out unnecessary fragments (for example, commercials) and save a selected fragment as an individual file. In addition, you can join two or more files with exactly the same format. While many popular video joiners allow the adding of files only to the beginning or to the end of a current file, with Machete you can insert a new file at any position within an opened file.

! Note that all editing operations are currently available for AVI, WMV, WMA, MKV, WebM, 3GP, MP4, MOV, MP3, WAV and FLV multimedia files.

Splitting a file

The following example describes how to quickly split (cut) a file into two:

Step 1. Open the file you want to split in Machete. Set the current playback position to the point where you want to split the file. For a video file, this has to also be a key frame (for quickly navigating to the nearest key frame, use the Previous key frame Previous key frame: qiuckly and easily split AVI files and Next key frame Next key frame: qiuckly and easily split MOV files buttons). An audio file can be split at any point.

Selection panel of Machete: qiuckly and easily split FLV files

Step 2. Press Set the beginning of a selection Set beginning: qiuckly and easily split MP3 files button or the ( [ ) key. The section from this position to the end of the file will become highlighted. Using the Save the selection as... Save selection: qiuckly and easily split WAVE files button, save the selection using a new file name, e.g. "OriginalName_02 ".

Slider in Machete main window: quickly and easily edit WMA files

Step 3. On your keyboard, press the Delete key to delete the active selection. Using menu File-> Save As..., save the remaining (first) part of the file with a new name, e.g. "OriginalName_01 " (in this case, your original file will not be replaced).

As a result of this procedure you now have three files; these being the initial file "OriginalName " and its two parts: "OriginalName_01 " and "OriginalName_02 ".

Note:

If you just want to cut out a part of a file and discard the rest (from the current position to the end of the file), then the current position can be set to any frame (not necessarily a key frame). For more information on the rules of key frame editing, see the Edit Video Files section.

Joining files

The following example describes how to quickly join two files:

Step 1. Open the first file you want to join with Machete. Open the file you want to join in Machete. Set the current playback position to the point where you want to add another file. In a video file, this can be the beginning, the end or any key frame within the file. Audio files can be joined at any point.

Step 2. Press Insert file: quickly and easily split WMV files Insert a file at the current position... button, select the file you want to add from the list and press Open (please make sure that formats of the two files are exactly the same). Repeat this procedure to add as many files as you wish. Each time, you can select a new position for adding a file to.

Step 3. Save the resulting file with a new name using menu File-> Save As... to preserve the original file.

Note:

Since Machete performs all editing operations without re-encoding, you need to make sure that the two files you wish to join have exactly the same format. Specifically, they should have identical parameters of video stream (codec, frame size etc) as well as audio stream (codec, sample rate, number of channels etc) if it is present. Otherwise, Machete will display a warning that the files could not be joined.

See also:

How to add audio to video file