Like others, I got some movies in formats like MP4, AVI, and MOV. Some movies I like to share with children, like “A Christmas Story,” but you got scenes and words they should not hear. I read about some methods and plugins for VLC, but some have been removed or too old for current VLC versions on Windows. So I am asking if anyone knows of fresh methods (free software [I can not afford to buy anything] or methods within VLC) to be able to play a movie and have it mute certain time frames I choose and skip or blank out others? Looking for some current suggestions that would work, like a text file it reads from to mute, skip, blank time frames, or some editing of a copy of the movie (because I will not manipulate the original file), or something.
Thank you for any ideas.
VLC Skipping & Muting Certain Movie Scenes
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There is a way to do this in VLC, if not too elegant. Load the movie you want, open the playlist, make sure your movie is the only one in the playlist, and use Media -> Save Playlist to File to create an xspf file. Now you can achieve what you want by playing the with “extension” field. Here is an example:
Playlist
file://YOUR MOVIE
Some title
6884298
0
start-time=0
stop-time=3142
some-option=100
file://YOUR MOVIE
The Title
6884298
1
start-time=3142
stop-time=3193
no-audio
no-video
some-option=100
file://YOUR MOVIE
The Title
6884298
3
start-time=3193
some-option=100
Then save this again as an xspf file and open it with VLC (Media -> Open File). The example above becomes black between 52:23 and 53:14 (the times are in seconds in the file. 3142 and 3193 seconds). Basically you need to replicate the section and change the section to match the options and desired times.
It is extremely easy to make skip(s) in the playback of a video (and possibly an audio) file in VLC. Follow these steps:
Open the video file in VLC.
Click on the “File” tab and the last option would be “Save Playlist”. Click on it. (This is how it looks on mac, and I assume it should be the same on Windows version of VLC as well. If not, you only need to find the “Save Playlist” option in one of the tabs.)
In the opened window, write an optional name and make sure the selected format is M3U (.m3u). Then save it exactly in the folder in which the video (or audio) file is located.
Then go to that folder and open the created m3u file with TextEdit on mac (or with Notepad on Windows).
If, for example, the name of your video file is “School.mkv”, then the text in the m3u file is something like the following text. (For those who might not know, the “.mkv” in the mentioned name is not a part of the actual name and it is actually the format of the file in our example and it can be different for different types of files. So the name of the file in our example is “School”)
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:617,School.mkv
School.mkv
In this step you need to add the following command to the above-mentioned text:
Let’s imagine the video file’s duration is 10:17 and you want VLC to skip from 2:47 to 4:51 during the playback. For this purpose, you first need to convert these times to seconds.
For converting times to seconds, you can use this free online tool:
https://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/hh_mm_ss_to_seconds/
So based on our example, you want VLC to play the video file from second 1 (0:01) until second 167 (2:47) and then from second 291 (4:51) until the end which is second 617 (10:17). So the code you should prepare will look like this:
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=1
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=167
School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=291
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=617
School.mkv
Then you should add this command to the original text in the m3u file. The final result based on our example looks like the following code. Please note that you should delete the “School.mkv” which is mentioned in the third line of the original m3u file:
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:617,School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=1
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=167
School.mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:start-time=291
#EXTVLCOPT:stop-time=617
School.mkv
Save the changes. Then instead of opening the video file, open the m3u file with VLC.
That’s It!!! VLC will play the portions of the video you have indicated in the m3u file.