provide output folder directory when splitting videos

[fcakyon]

@Breakthrough thanks for this awesome project! I am utilizing it on my PhD heavily 👍

Issue

You can set the output directory in save_images function which is super useful in my case. However, there is no such feature for split_video_ffmpeg which is a must in my case.

Example:

from scenedetect.video_splitter import split_video_ffmpeg

split_video_ffmpeg(
 filepath,
 scene_list=scene_list,
 output_file_template="$scene-$SCENE_NUMBER.",
 output_dir=export_dir,
 show_progress=True,
)

Question:

1. Do you have any intentions to add such a feature?
2. How can I implement a workaround for this? Should I change these lines:

   PySceneDetect/scenedetect/video_splitter.py

   Lines 267 to 271 in b54aff9

   	call_list += [
   	'-sn',
   	filename_template.safe_substitute(
   	VIDEO_NAME=video_name, SCENE_NUMBER=scene_num_format % (i + 1))
   	]

[fcakyon]

How I solved it:

update this:

 call_list += [
 '-sn',
 filename_template.safe_substitute(
 VIDEO_NAME=video_name, SCENE_NUMBER=scene_num_format % (i + 1))
 ]

with this:

# create output dir at function start
Path(output_dir).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

 # prepend output_dir to filename
 export_path = str(
 Path(output_dir)
 / filename_template.safe_substitute(
 VIDEO_NAME=video_name, SCENE_NUMBER=scene_num_format % (i + 1)
 )
 )
 call_list += [
 "-sn",
 export_path,
 ]

[Breakthrough]

Hi @fcakyon;

You can replace the output_file_template parameter with an absolute path as well to work around this, e.g.:

from scenedetect.video_splitter import split_video_ffmpeg

export_dir = "C:/output_folder/"

split_video_ffmpeg(
 filepath,
 scene_list=scene_list,
 output_file_template=export_dir + "$scene-$SCENE_NUMBER.",
 show_progress=True,
)

The documentation could probably be improved here, but I probably will leave this as-is and not introduce another argument. Thanks for the report!

[Mensen]

Apologies for raising a closed issue from the dead here, but the proposed solution (#298 (comment)), doesn't work for my example.

>>> output_dir = r'F:\Gamepass_Clips'
>>> output_template = os.path.join(os.path.join(output_dir,"scene-$SCENE_NUMBER.mp4"))
>>> print(output_template)
F:\Gamepass_Clips\scene-$SCENE_NUMBER.mp4
>>> scenedetect.video_splitter.split_video_ffmpeg(video_file, scene_list,
... output_file_template=output_template)
Error splitting video (ffmpeg returned 1).
1

My code differs from your example by using the os.path functions instead of writing the path in a regular string... but I have also tried that with no apparent difference.

I considered whether there were some potential write permissions that throws the error but when I do the actual scenedetect, I also specify a stats_file_path in precisely the same way using the os.path method

Let me know if I should have simply raised another issue here, but considering the "solution" doesn't work, I figured it might be best to follow up here.

Thanks in advance for helping out one of your sponsors :)

[Breakthrough]

@Mensen what happens if you use forward slashes instead? Does it work as expected from the CLI? If it still fails feel free to re-open a new issue, what you show above should work.

PySceneDetect/scenedetect/platform.py

Line 95 in 46f47d1

def get_and_create_path(file_path: AnyStr, output_directory: Optional[AnyStr] = None) -> AnyStr:

is how this works for the CLI.

[Mensen]

Forward slashes also does not work.

scenedetect.video_splitter.split_video_ffmpeg(video_file, scene_list[0:2], 
... output_file_template='F:/Gamepass_Clips/Clip-$SCENE_NUMBER.mp4')
Error splitting video (ffmpeg returned 1).
1

No issue when simply specifying a file name, but this then puts the files in the code directory which, when splitting 100s of scenes are less than ideal

scenedetect.video_splitter.split_video_ffmpeg(video_file, scene_list[0:2], 
... output_file_template='Clip-$SCENE_NUMBER.mp4')
0

In the code snip above it refers to output_directory and not necessarily output_file_template so there seems to be an intermediate step between the split_video_ffmeg and the get_and_create_path code. Could the problem lie there?

For example in:

PySceneDetect/scenedetect/video_splitter.py

Line 234 in 99a17b9

arg_override = arg_override.replace('\\"', '"')

That would certainly replace the double \\ that os.path.join uses when combining paths to be os compatable.

And wouldn't the line:

PySceneDetect/scenedetect/video_splitter.py

Line 259 in 99a17b9

output_file_template_iter = output_file_template_iter.replace(":", ";")

Replace the ":" with a ";" in the path I specified?

[Breakthrough]

@Mensen thanks for pointing that out, indeed that seems to be the issue here. My apologies, feel free to file a new bug report for this.

[Breakthrough]

This has come up a few times again (e.g. #363), so I will look into revisiting this for the next release.