splitting / segmenting video stream with gstreamer

Question

Is there a way to split a video into segments of specified length? Ie 60 minute video into 12x5 mins.

Answer 1

It seems the "official" way to do this without reencoding and without losing frames is using the splitmuxsink element:

For example for a MKV file input:

gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=input.mkv ! matroskademux ! h264parse ! splitmuxsink location=file%02d.mkv max-size-time=300000000000 muxer=matroskamux

The max-size-time gives the segment length in nanoseconds (sic), so the above value is 5 minutes. Because it cuts on keyframes, the real segment length will not be exactly 5 min but will vary by a few seconds.

Answer 2

Afaik, you will need to develop your own "segmenter". This is similar to what you need to create HTTP Live streaming files. There might be a simpler solution, but here is what I would do:

You can make a relative small program (in python) using multifilesink next-file=buffer (or next-file marker, if segments can't fit in memory).

You'll need to encode or demux your input stream, and mux the stream back. Cut the muxed stream on key-frame when the desired duration is reached, and push the aggregated buffer (or mark a fake key frame, for example, to force sink to create a new file). Reinitialize the muxer (or append muxer streamheader) to get file with correct header than can be played seperately (depending on the muxer).