I got tired of fighting ffmpeg for basic video trimming, so I built clipflow

Description and use

clipflow simplifies video trimming by managing ffmpeg, offering lossless stream‑copy by default and frame‑accurate cuts when requested, with a clean Python API and CLI.

Problem

Trimming large videos with ffmpeg is slow and error‑prone, especially when frame‑accurate cuts or lossless stream‑copy are required.

Outcome

clipflow trims a 10‑minute video in seconds with lossless stream‑copy, and only re‑encodes when requested, eliminating the 20‑minute re‑encode wall.

Workflow

• Install clipflow via pip or Docker
• Use the CLI: clipflow trim <input> <start>-<end> [options] or the Python API: clipflow.trim(...)
• Specify --compress high for frame‑accurate cuts, --highlight to copy to highlights/, and --aspect 9:16 for cropping
• Inspect metadata with clipflow inspect <file>

Evidence

clipflow is a typed Python API and CLI for video clipping.

Source

It auto‑downloads the binary on first use, caches it locally, and falls back to your system PATH if you already have it installed.

Source

Lossless stream‑copy by default. Trimming a 10 GB file takes seconds with zero quality loss.

Source

Highlights as a first‑class concept. In clipflow, you mark a clip with highlight=True. It automatically copies that slice to a highlights/ directory.

Source