mpv-smartcut

mpv-smartcut is a small mpv frontend and maintained packaging fork of skeskinen/smartcut. It makes frame-accurate cuts while re-encoding only the GOPs around each cut point.

The frontend and backend ship together but remain separate processes:

• mpv-smartcut.lua owns selection, progress, cancellation, temporary files, atomic finalization, and cleanup.
• mpv-smartcut-backend is the minimal codec-aware worker invoked by the frontend.

The fork preserves the original MIT license and codec implementation. Its first runtime change replaces NumPy timestamp indexing with Python standard-library lists and binary search, avoiding a large numerical-computing closure.

mpv usage

Copy mpv-smartcut.lua to mpv's scripts directory and ensure mpv-smartcut-backend is in PATH. Press c at both ends of the desired range. Press C to clear a selection or cancel a running cut.

Optional settings belong in script-opts/mpv-smartcut.conf:

backend=mpv-smartcut-backend
cut_key=c
cancel_key=C
output_prefix=cut_
quality=high

quality controls only the small re-encoded boundary GOPs and accepts low, normal, high, indistinguishable, near-lossless, or lossless.

Cuts are written to a hidden partial file and renamed only after success. Partial output is deleted when processing fails, is cancelled, or mpv exits.