x264

http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/x264_options_page1.html

Use mencoder for converting your video into a raw video
mencoder Videos/xacti_hd2000_dogsample20090207_1.mp4 -o dogsampleraw.mp4 -ovc raw -oac pcm

cut tool
         ss will skip first 15 seconds and start and will end after t seconds. `copy` will use the same codec as the input file to generate output file 

fmpeg -ss 15 -t 30 -i input.mkv -acodec copy -vcodec copy output.mkv