jclip

Clip a section of a YouTube or X/Twitter video to mp4 or mp3 in one command.

jclip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DlBcS70EEk 2:53 8:05

That's it. The clip lands in ~/Videos/.

Platforms: Linux and macOS (both tested in CI). Windows via WSL2.

Install

Requires yt-dlp and ffmpeg. Install them for your OS, then grab the script.

OS	Dependencies
macOS	brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg
Arch	sudo pacman -S yt-dlp ffmpeg
Debian/Ubuntu	sudo apt install yt-dlp ffmpeg
Fedora	sudo dnf install yt-dlp ffmpeg
Windows	Use WSL, then follow the Linux steps

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JonTelep/jclip/main/jclip -o ~/.local/bin/jclip && chmod +x ~/.local/bin/jclip

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH. To remove it, delete ~/.local/bin/jclip.

Or clone it (upgrade with git pull):

git clone https://github.com/JonTelep/jclip && cd jclip && ./install.sh

install.sh installs the dependencies via pacman/apt/brew if missing and symlinks ~/.local/bin/jclip to the checkout.

Usage

jclip <url|file> [<start> <end>] [--mp3]
jclip --dir <path>

jclip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DlBcS70EEk 2:53 8:05   # clip to mp4
jclip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DlBcS70EEk 2:53 8:05 --mp3
jclip https://x.com/SmashJT/status/2107933367694205275        # whole video
jclip https://x.com/SmashJT/status/2107933367694205275 --mp3  # whole video as mp3
jclip ~/footage/demo.mp4 0:05 0:50                            # local file

Timestamps are anything ffmpeg accepts: 90, 1:30, 1:02:30, 1:30.5.

Output directory

Default is ~/Videos/. Change it permanently:

jclip --dir ~/Clips        # saved to ~/.config/jclip/dir

Or per invocation with JCLIP_DIR=/tmp/clips jclip .... The env var wins over the config file.

The full video is cached in <dir>/.cache/ so further clips from the same video are instant. Delete that folder to reclaim space.

Scripting

jclip prints the final file path on stdout (progress goes to stderr) and exits non-zero on failure, so it composes with other tools:

out=$(jclip "$url") && notify-send "Saved" "$out"
JCLIP_DIR=/tmp/clips jclip "$url" 0:05 0:15 --mp3

How it works

One bash script. yt-dlp downloads the best mp4+m4a once per video id; ffmpeg cuts the section (re-encoding to H.264/AAC for frame-accurate edges, or to mp3 with --mp3).

License

MIT