Free software for batch basic editing and down-sampling I have a bunch of TV shows in HD that I want to down-sample to SD and at the same time strip out the titles and credits.

Handbrake has great encoding and can handle batches, but I can't find a way to set in and out points.

I've tried the free ShotCut, which is perfectly capable to doing easy edits, but seems to be really slow.

Are they any recommendations for doing this sort of easy, but bulk work for macOS?
I'm fairly certain you can do this with VLC 3.0+ or via the command line. 

https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_HowTo/Transcode_multiple_videos/

This can be done using the transcode/streaming options via the file menu in the graphical app. You can set the in and out and select all te files to process, as well as the codec and container format.