A few users have asked how to set the start and stop points for playing back a particular video—for instance, to skip a portion at the start or end of a video clip that you’d rather not see. (This is the equivalent to setting a Start Time and Stop Time on the Options tab of iTunes’ Get Info window.)

While it’s not quite that simple to mark a video’s start and stop points in Usher, it’s really not much harder. Read on for the quick how-to, in both text and video forms.

The Steps

1. Open the video you’d like to modify in Usher’s playback window.
2. Drag the playback slider to the desired starting point.
3. Select Edit > Set Selection Start, or press Command-(.
4. Drag the playback slider to the desired end point.
5. Select Edit > Set Selection End, or press Command-).
6. Select Edit > Trim to Selection.

From now on, the edited movie will play only from and to the points you marked. One note of caution: Do not select File > Save unless you want to make the edits you made permanent. As long as you stay away from Save, you’ll always be able to get back to the unedited video by selecting Edit > Revert to Original.

The Video

If you prefer learning via visuals, here’s a very short video that demonstrates the above steps:

If you prefer, you can also watch in HD (956×574, 4.5MB).

This entry was posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 7:05 am by Rob Griffiths, and is filed under How To, Products, Usher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.