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Comment by Laminary | Hacker News Reader

Neat app, I could see myself using this. However, one thing that makes me hesitant is bitrates and deeper information on file exports. Does it maintain the same bitrate as the original video? I see you have a lot of information (Cmd + F) on "export" but nothing regarding bitrates. An FAQ page would be useful instead of the long single page. I work in video production so bitrate is an important thing-to-know before purchasing. Anyways, cool app.

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Yeah, good call, I’ll add something about this. Right now it uses AVFoundation’s “highest” preset which seems just about as fast as the “passthrough” one I was using originally, so I suspect it’s leaving the video (mostly?) alone. I’ll try to get some actual numbers on that though.

I don't know anything about how to do it with AVFoundation (or if it's possible, or if you're already doing this), but to some approximation depending upon codecs, you can make a lossless recode of the video. E.g., what Rogue Amoeba's Fission does, but for both video and audio.

You could also provide a way to export a list of cut points suitable for feeding to some other workflow. E.g., ffmpeg.

These may go beyond the simplicity and spirit of your app, which seems very nice.

Oh yeah, the cut list is exactly what the app does now :) It can export XML, EDL, or a ScreenFlow project. That was the first feature I built, and the main thing I wanted. I think the video example demos better, but to me, the cut list is way more useful.

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