FFmpeg Audio Trim – How to Trim Audio Files Using Start and Stop Times

I finally found the time to try the answer suggested by @Mario G., but it seemed extremely cumbersome. I need to do this many dozens of times. I read the documentation of ffmpeg and found it much more powerful than avconv, including fading for audio and video, so the solution is

ffmpeg -i input.mts -map 0:0 -map 0:3 -ss 0:0:07 -to 0:59:57.5 -vf 'fade=t=in:st=7:d=2,fade=t=out:st=3595.5:d=2,crop=out_h=692' -af 'afade=t=in:st=7:d=2,afade=t=out:st=3595.5:d=2' out.mov

So the st= and d= parameters for the fade take times in seconds, no need for converting to frames.

I also discovered the -to option to take the end time directly instead of calculating the length.

This command does all steps

• channel selection with -map,
• trimming with -ss and -to,
• video fading with -vf option fade=t=in and fade=t=out,
• audio fading with -af option afade=t=in and afade=t=out and
• cropping with -vf option crop=

in a single step.

The effects function as a chain, so the stat effect feeds into trim, swap them around and it will work, e.g.:

sox audio.wav -n trim 50 5 stat