Media Scenedetect

Context: $ARGUMENTS

PySceneDetect is the go-to tool for reliable scene-change detection. It is superior to ffmpeg's built-in scdet filter, especially on anime, stylized, and low-contrast content. The scenedetect CLI chains a detector (detect-content, detect-adaptive, detect-threshold) with one or more commands (list-scenes, save-images, split-video, export-html) in a single invocation.

Quick start

• Detect scenes + dump a CSV: → Step 3 (scenedetect -i in.mp4 detect-content list-scenes)
• Split video at every cut: → Step 4a (split-video -m for stream-copy via mkvmerge)
• Generate thumbnails per scene: → Step 4b (save-images -n 3 -o thumbs)
• Auto-chapter a long file: → Step 4c (use helper script chapters subcommand)

When to use

• You want reliable shot boundaries for cut sheets, editorial, or auto-chapters.
• ffmpeg scdet is returning noisy / missed cuts on stylized, anime, or dark content.
• You need thumbnails per scene for a dashboard, chapter art, or video summary.
• You're building a pipeline that re-muxes segments into concat lists.