3.5. Edit Decision Lists (EDL)
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## 3.5. Edit Decision Lists (EDL)

The edit decision list (EDL) system allows you to automatically skip or mute sections of videos during playback, based on a movie specific EDL configuration file.

This is useful for those who may want to watch a film in "family-friendly" mode. You can cut out any violence, profanity, Jar-Jar Binks .. from a movie according to your own personal preferences. Aside from this, there are other uses, like automatically skipping over commercials in video files you watch.

The EDL file format is pretty bare-bones. There is one command per line that indicates what to do (skip/mute) and when to do it (using pts in seconds).

### 3.5.1. Using an EDL file

Include the `-edl <filename>` flag when you run MPlayer, with the name of the EDL file you want applied to the video.

### 3.5.2. Making an EDL file

The current EDL file format is:

    [begin second] [end second] [action]

Where the seconds are floating-point numbers and the action is either `0` for skip or `1` for mute. Example:

    5.3   7.1    0
    15    16.7   1
    420   422    0

This will skip from second 5.3 to second 7.1 of the video, then mute at 15 seconds, unmute at 16.7 seconds and skip from second 420 to second 422 of the video. These actions will be performed when the playback timer reaches the times given in the file.

To create an EDL file to work from, use the `-edlout <filename>` flag. During playback, just hit i to mark the beginning and end of a skip block. A corresponding entry will be written to the file for that time. You can then go back and fine-tune the generated EDL file as well as change the default operation which is to skip the block described by each line.

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