How are 3-dimensional overlays synchronized with videos?

There are two different approaches that can be used.  Motion/Camera tracking and Motion Control.

In Motion or Camera tracking, multiple non-coplanar fixed points in the scene are tracked and from that it is possible to extrapolate the position of the camera within the scene.  This information can then be fed into a virtual camera used to generate the output from the 3d model such that when the 3d model output is superimposed over the video, the movements line up.

Motion Control is similar but uses a special camera rig to either track the camera movement exactly or to reproduce a movement plotted in the 3d software exactly in real life.  This is the more precise but also much more sophisticated approach as it requires far more elaborate gear to do.  It also allows for more accurate tracking of things like change in zoom verses actually moving the camera in (which are otherwise only evident by fairly subtle shifting of perspective and vanishing points.)

The result of both is effectively similar though.  You end up with data on how the camera moves in the real life scene and it matches the movement done in the 3d scene.  There are other factors such as lighting that also have to be matched for the best looking composition.  Then both outputs are brought in to a composition package like After Effects where they can be overlayed and blended together.  Sometimes various additional effects like depth of field and other virtual camera effects may be applied to help it blend.

Another thing is that if anything in the real scene needs to move in front of the 3d object, then they need something called a mask layer.  This is normally produced by rotoscoping, which is a process of updating the image on every frame to follow the subject.  This mask then tells the compositing software that the real video plate should be placed over the 3d plate on the areas where the mask is painted.  Otherwise the 3d plate is used over the real plate.  Alpha channel blending is used to convey information about the transparency of a 3d shape such that the image behind it can be visible.

If the 3d object has any refractive properties, then the real life plate may be fed into the 3d software as an environment.  Then the 3d render engine can actually sample information from the environment in order to figure out refraction in things like a glass object or a 3d object with a mirror.  Since it is mapping a 2d environment onto a 3d one, a lot of the selection of how the environment is applied would be done manually though.


A program for Windows 10 to turn photos and videos into a birthday clip

At the time of writing (Sep 2020), it looks like Video Editor does not provide "audio ducking" for videos with audio. As a workaround, you could use Custom audio (button next to Background music) and trim the music around video clips. From this thread on Microsoft Community:

The Video Editor does not currently have an audio ducking feature as you describe. Here are two potential workarounds:

Make the background music quieter throughout so your speaking can be heard
Use Custom Audio to add the same piece of music several times. You can trim very precisely by selecting a card on the storyboard to move your playhead, and then back in Custom Audio, drag the music trim handle to snap to the playhead location. Once you have the music in segments you can control the volume of each individually.

Unfortunately, if you have hundreds of clips, this may be very tedious work.


Is there a video type for vector animation?

There was one, but it fell in to disuse and isn't used very often anymore, largely because of the lack of mobile support, but also due to security issues it created.  It was called Flash.


I don't know the footage, but would guess that it isn't good enough for tracking.
In this case, you will need to Rotobrush it. Or manually create a mask. If it is only for a few frames and a smaller part of the screen, I guess a rough mask with a bit of a higher edge blur will do the trick.


What are some simple video editor with Masking capability?

An oldie question, but let's add an answer...

The answer depends on if the faces are moving through the frame.

If the faces are relative still, like a camera on a tripod and the persons sitting in front of the camera, any video editor with more than 1 video channel can do the trick. Just add a layer with something on it, a prepared semi-transparent PNG as a mask perhaps.

But more complex software is needed if the faces are moving or if you want a blur, instead of a semi-transparent mask.

If the faces are moving you need to track them, so the program needs to track it.

As @Shultc commented Both Blender and HitFilm can do this, and I would add Davinci Resolve.


How to create a educational video by only using your voice and some photos

Use PowerPoint.
The truth is that the latest version of it can do nice transitions so the presentation is not dull at all.
At the end, you can export as a video to Mp4. If used properly you do not need video edition at all.
Do not use less than HD for your videos. The resolution may not be important to you, but the viewers are used to Full HD.


Which options exist for exporting music used on the timeline?

To my knowledge FCPX does not have anything built in for this. You would need 3rd party.
If you willing to use 3rd party my best bet would be Producer’s Best Friend


Depends on who you ask. Old traditional people who grew up back in the bad old analog days have the Safe Action Area and Safe Title Area embedded in their brains.  But even as old analog TV receivers evolved, there was less and less danger of losing the periphery of the frame to overscan.

With modern LCD, LED, plasma, whatever, TV screens, there is ZERO danger of overscan. It simply doesn't exist anymore. I now use a rule of thumb to keep any text or significant graphics at least 2 or 3% away from the edge, mostly as an aesthetic design rule.


How they did it? (3D-like screenshots with animation)

This looks like 2.5D to me, probably in After Effects. You create high res art, perhaps by capturing web pages from a 4K display, then animate each screen. Its only a small amount of mousing. Then use the After Effects 3D camera to spin objects and place them in a depth field. turn on Motion Blur and add shallow DOF with a defocus effect driven by depth.


Unselect after making a cut in Davinci Resolve 15

Assuming you work in the edit window, I guess you're using following:

press B to select Blade cut tool
mouse click on clip where you want to cut it
press A to switch to select mode
select cutted part I want to delete
press Delete

You can achieve something similar with Trim tool:

press T to select Blade cut tool
mouse click on clip where you want to cut it
press Shift+[ to Trim start (from left)
or Trim End with Shift+] (from right side)

This will make the clip shorter and if you click on the clip you'll see that it continues (the white box) only some part is shown:

now you can move which part of the clip is shown by pressing < or > (comma and dot keys)


How do I add multiple videos into multiple shape layers

You'll need to make a separate layer for each county. You can do this by duplicating the entire NJ layer and deleting all but county #1, then duplicating the NJ layer and deleting all but county #2 and so on… You probably want to select all these layers and set their parent to the first layer so that if you transform one (move, scale, rotate) they'll all transform.

Once you have your separate layers you need to put the video layer for each county underneath its county shape layer. So it should look like a multi-layered sandwich, shape layer, then video, then shape, then video…

Then set the alpha matte for each video layer to the layer above. The alpha matte drop-down is next to the transfer mode drop-down. Then it will use the opacity of the layer above as a matte for the video layer.


Why recording a still image using a mobile camera is taking up more space?

A still image doesn't have any temporal redundancy to exploit - it is a snapshot of a single point of time! Also, the quantization parameter will be low. Video compression uses higher quantization parameters since each individual frame is seen for a fraction of a second, so in a normal playback mode, the user doesn't get to focus on the details within each frame. Both of these contribute to the lower file sizes for the average image in a video.


Oh gosh; days of my life wasted because I needed to empty browser cache. I was loading the videos through my browser which is why the deleted videos were still being loaded. Eww cache !!!!!!!!!!!


How can I make the best quality SD DVD's

There isn't one.  What you have been told in the past is correct, DVD resolution is very, very limited.  720 by 480 is barely even 1/3 of a megapixel of resolution, which is exceptionally low and will look poor on pretty much any HD display.  There is no solution for going higher quality than this on a DVD that is playable on normal DVD players.

The reason that it is not all that noticeable when you watch a video on DVD is that the information presented over time is not all the same and thus your brain is able to piece together a picture of what things would look like based on successive frames of video.  This makes it seem smoother and clearer than it actually is, but it relies on the content moving.  Static images present no new information in successive frames.

It is possible that you are using a poor quality encoding or too low of a bitrate, but if you are getting very similar results from both programs, it sounds like it is probably just the limitation of SD formats.  (A poor quality encoder or too low of bitrate would result in artifacts being introduced to the image, but photos should require very little bitrate since they are static.)  If you can post a screenshot captured from playing back the DVD on your computer, that might help us better evaluate, but my best guess is that you are just noticing how poor quality DVD actually is.


How to make a single video out of few pics of different resolution and videos of different resolution

Any basic editing program will do the job for you. Are you on PC or Mac? If you have a PC then Windows Movie Maker is a very good, simple option.

To get the footage to the same codec and resolution you should use this free program called mpeg streamclip. I can't recommend a compression setting because I don't know the specs of the footage and what you are aiming to do with the video once it's been made. But there are many tutorials online that you can find with a quick google search.


Converting from 8mm Video Tapes to Digital (PC)

Three years ago I purchased the DIAMOND One Touch Video Capture similar to the 2nd link you provided.:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815306013

This device worked perfectly for converting tons of old VHS tapes to a format suitable for DVDs, I must have converted over 50 tapes this way. I also discovered that I could use this device to capture live broadcasts using the following chain: Antenna --> Video Converter box --> Diamond...Capture --> USB Computer input --> capture software.

The main thing you have to remember is that the conversion is in real time and linear. I had to allow for the tape to play through the parts I wanted to capture at the normal playback speed. On the plus side, the USB interface allows quick and easy set up, no need to open up your computer and install another PCI card.


How to make Premiere Pro Connect Hindi Characters?

Solved..

Turned On Ligatures in Preference-Titler

Changed font to Adobe Devnagari

Restarted Premiere

Thanks to @user1118321 for Ligatures Meaning


How to simulate a photo being taken from the photographer's POV in a film?

Drawing out a viewfinder should not be a big deal. You can do this quicker than searching for one. Do it in photoshop or another decent app. Draw the lines with anti-aliasing on a transparent layer and export it as a PNG with transparency. You may want to set the layer compositing mode in FCP to be something other than the default, play around a bit.
Simulating closing of the iris is just a quick fade to black and back; the sound effect sells it.
Desaturation, the addition of grain. Don't over do it.

I would try 'pillar boxing' the viewfinder shot (4:3 inset in the 16:9 frame of the film), possibly reducing the size so it is inset from the outside frame completely (black all around in addition to being 4:3) as this will give more of the feeling of being 'inside' the camera viewfinder. Then when the taken photo is shown that is full frame.

You may find that desaturating the viewfinder view and showing the taken photo with normal saturation does a better job of achieving what you want; this will depend on the narrative purpose of this effect.


What is the difference between Refresh Rate and Flicker Rate?

In the context of a CRT vs. flat panel, that is a Cathode Ray (vacuum) Tube, you have to consider the following:

1) Video sync as broken down to Vertical and Horizontal scan rates.

2) Phosphor persistence (the length of time the phosphor coating on the inside of the CRT will glow). "Phosphors are available with persistences ranging from less than one microsecond to several seconds."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube

These two factors will determine the overall picture quality with regard to time.

Refresh rate would be best explained as vertical frames per second, for NTSC it is 60 fps.

Flicker rate includes the refresh rate plus factoring in the persistence of the phosphor.

Long persistent phosphors were employed in radar screens and O'Scopes as to allow objects to last longer on the screen while shorter persistent phosphors were employed in most consumer TVs to reduce motion blur.

"Flicker occurs on CRTs when they are driven at a low refresh rate, allowing the brightness to drop for time intervals sufficiently long to be noticed by a human eye..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_(screen)


Ok, just a simple restart of iMovie fixed this. But it is still a weird glitch though.


I take the references from Tektronix seriously in my daily work.
Amazon has a 48-page magazine-sized technical booklet from this company or you could download it from this link
Of course, this company has other references as well


What softwares are used to produce this video?

You will need some kind of 2D animation program to do this. After Effects is one possibilty.

However, these are advanced animations. Without any experience, it will take quite some time to learn how to do this and achieve similar effects. If you're not willing to put some time in it, you don't even have to start ...


Select the end of the png clip, so that the edit is highlighted. Then move your playhead to the end of the program, and hit e, which is the shortcut for extend edit. More info can be found by reading the manual.


Is ffmpeg the solution to automate video building from multiple files

You can do this with ffmpeg using either the concat filter or the concat demuxer. Which one to use depends whether or not your inputs have the same parameters or not. If they do not, you may have to perform additional filtering to make everything suitable to be concatenated properly.

Example: concat filter

For inputs that vary in frame rate, width, and height:

ffmpeg -i video0 -i video1 -i video2 -i music -filter_complex \
"[0:v]fps=25,scale=1280x720,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
"[1:v]fps=25,scale=1280x720,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1]; \
"[2:v]fps=25,scale=1280x720,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v2]; \
"[v0][v1][v2]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0,format=yuv420p[v]" \
-map "[v]" -map 3:a -shortest output

If outputting mp4 consider adding -movflags +faststart as an output option if your viewers will watch via progressive download.

Example: concat demuxer

If all of your inputs are similar then first make a list file named input.txt:

file "/path/to/video0"
file "/path/to/video1"
file "/path/to/video2"

Then run ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -f concat -i input.txt -i music -shortest output

Add -codec copy if you want to stream copy instead of re-encode. This is not possible with the concat filter because filtering requires re-encoding.

Your questions

  Is it possible to map a web form to the assets listed above (located on a local server) and have the web form ultimately build the order of the video and render out to the local server?

Yes. As long as your protocol is supported by ffmpeg. See ffmpeg -protocols for a list supported by your build.

  If possible, would FFmpeg or Animoto API (or another) be the right choice?

It is possible with ffmpeg, but I've never used Animoto API so I can't comment on that.

  What kind of time/resources would it take to build something like this?

That's not really possible to answer. You provided very little info and it depends on the skill of whoever is building it.

Also see

FFmpeg Wiki: Concatenate


FFMPEG how do i remove png and blur from this code

Your command with 55.png, overlay, and boxblur removed:

ffmpeg -y -i 55.mp4 -i "intro.mp4" -filter_complex "[0:a]atempo=1.15,volume=1.6,pan=stereo|c0<c0+0*c1|c1<c0+0*c1,aeval=val(0)|-val(1) [amain]; [0:v]setpts=PTS/1.15,crop=iw/1.2:ih/1.2,scale=1280:720,setdar=16/9 [vmain]; [1:v]scale=1280:720,setdar=16/9 [vintro]; [vintro][1:a][vmain][amain]concat=n=2:v=1:a=1" -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -r 30 -g 60 -b:v 1400k -profile:v main -level 3.1 -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 128k -ar 44100 -metadata title="" -metadata artist="" -metadata album_artist="" -metadata album="" -metadata date="" -metadata track="" -metadata genre="" -metadata publisher="" -metadata encoded_by="" -metadata copyright="" -metadata composer="" -metadata performer="" -metadata TIT1="" -metadata TIT3="" -metadata disc="" -metadata TKEY="" -metadata TBPM="" -metadata language="eng" -metadata encoder="" -bufsize 500000k -threads 0 -preset superfast out2222.mp4


Newbie Question - speed of footage lags in Premier

Problem solved. The video was edited originally in Movie Maker and for some reason destroyed the quality. After I re-did everything all over again and only using Premiere, it cleared it all up.


Best way to cover a long video with music

For the most part this is a stylistic choice. While I won't say it's impossible to maintain the viewers attention throughout a 10 minute Video with no narration - it's not an easy task either. I would highly recommend cutting in some B-roll and talking over it maybe, if only for a few seconds to break up the flow a bit.

However, for finding coherent music that fits the feel, I'd recommend you check out Artlist. You can filter by mood, theme, instruments, genre, etc. to find similar yet high quality music.


You can use a bash for loop.

cd ab1
mkdir cd2
for f in *.mp3; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k -ar 48000 -map_metadata -1 "cd2/${f%.*}.mp3"; done

This assumes your OS supports bash shell scripting.


Only the first video clip I drag to timeline has audio

I have seen this before with camcorder clips. It was a bug in the codec used for avchd files. The workaround was to extract the audio with Adobe encoder,  and add it separately. I have not seen this since spring 2017. You might see if your deployment is up to date.


How to camera match move for moon/clouds/stars?

You can assume celestial bodies are infinitely far away, as the amount of parallax you can achieve in anything except a space ship is infinitesimal. So that means that the moon and stars stay fixed to a point of view, as long as you're not panning. If you're panning then the moon and stars can be on layers a long way from the camera, but scaled up to fill the frame.


Your audio is PCM, but you're trying to streamcopy to AAC, which won't work.

To extract the audio to WAV, use

ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec copy -y a.wav

To transcode the audio to AAC, use

ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec aac -y a.aac

Note that AAC isn't lossless. But FLAC is a lossless and compressed codec.

ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec flac -y a.flac


USB Webcam not working with USB Microphone

I think I found the issue. One of the device is USB 1.1, and this causes the whole hub to fall down to USB 1.1 to accommodate it. I saw it using lsusb -v.

USB 1.1 has a max bandwidth of 12Mbps, hence the reading I get with lsusb -t. I'll need to either replace the USB 1.1 device for a USB 2.0 device, or plug in a second USB card directly in the motherboard.


Premiere Pro is not allowing any objects to be dragged to timeline

Where premiere allows you to drop or insert clip depends on on Source patching and Track targeting. Basically, you can only drop clips into a track that has Source patching turned on in the track header.

You also cannot drop clips onto tracks that are Locked

This video explains these features in more detail:


Working in a linearized Color Space in After Effects causes hard gradients

I use the trapcode suite as well, the issue has more to do with the fact that even though you may be working in an sRGB workspace at 32 Bit; your monitor output is 8 bit. 10 Bit monitors are available but unless you forked up a lot of cash - you are viewing 8-bit.

The way to solve gradient problems like this - with this as well as any other gradient in AE/Premiere/PS; is to add an adjustment layer to the top of your project; on top of all layers. Add the standard NOISE filter. Check monochromatic (or un check use color noise) - you don't want color. Gaussian sometimes looks better; it's one of two options on the NOISE pop-up.

Typically; I use a setting of 2 - 4%. But it really depends on your comp settings. If I'm working with RED 5k footage I typically have to do 1-2%.

Lastly; honestly I almost always add NOISE to all the work I do; even if it's just 1% on a nested timeline for output. It solves a lot of aliasing problems and is a standard trick in post many people use.

Hope that helps.


Set file size limit for video on Canon 5D mark iii

The 4 gig limitation is there cause most memory cards are formatted with FAT32 which can't handle files larger than 4 gig.

Refer to Manual page 234, http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/8/0300007348/05/eos5d-mk3-im7-en.pdf

The only way to limit the file size, is to limit the recording time.
You can always do the math and find out how many minutes to record to hit 2 gig.

EDIT: the link no longer works.  Here is a screenshot of the page -


Apply the parameters of automatic color balance to another clip

Unfortunately the settings are not visible when you use automatic colour grading. AFAIK what the algorithm does can’t be replicated on another clip.
To be honest I would not use automatic for what I publish. It’s just too unpredictable and not repeatable. Sometimes you get different results with the same footage in your timeline.


Looking For A Video Editor that will maintain the codecs of the original source video

In many instances you can use ffmpeg to create a clip out of a longer clip, and request that the original frames are copied instead of re-encoded.

I'm writing this from memory so you may want to double check, but I believe the command line options you need to use for this are:

ffmpeg -i <source-filename> -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss <start-position> -t <duration> <destination-filename>


Trying to do a "clipping mask" a video to an image in After Effects

Track mattes work by applying the alpha (transparency) or luma (≈ brightness) of one layer to the transparency of another layer. So in the case of an alpha matte, if the upper layer is transparent in an area (or opaque for alpha inverted), the lower layer will be too. In the case of luma mattes if the upper layer is black (or white for inverted*) then the lower layer will be transparent. The amount of transparency is controlled by the Luma of the matte layer.

In your example To get fully transparent / opaque mattes use curves or levels or brightness and contrast effects to adjust the contrast of the upper layer. Or use whatever you used to create the image and output one with a transparent / black background.

 *could be the other way around, I always forget


After tearing my hair out I found the "hand cursor", now I can drag the panel around however I want it :)


The PS3 is very picky on what it plays and what not. I had the same problem as you (again with an OpenShot video)

Solutions

1)Use http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/ that automatically transcodes to formats for PS3

2)Convert your existing video to PS3 format with https://handbrake.fr/


There's Adobe Character Animator. It does pretty much exactly what you're looking for. It's a commercial product, part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. I'm not aware of any other real-time 2D animation packages at this time.


You just need to add the original input to the concat.

ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -filter_complex [0]reverse[r];[0][r][0]concat=n=3,setpts=0.5*PTS output/boomerrang.mp4


ffmpeg merge 3 videos to a single widescreen video

For 1. use amix filter.
For 2. You could use trim filter to trim some of inputs. To delay one of videos, with black? frame, you could concat it with color source filter. But that needs quite convoluted filtergraph.


Use one or more dilation filters after showwaves filter.


Premiere Pro takes several minutes to render six seconds

I managed to figure out my problem. I decided to try disabling my video adapters to see if that fixed my problem thinking that there was an issue with having two dedicated GPUs. I found no problem with having two GPUs but I discovered that disabling Intel graphics on my 8th gen i7 instantly fixed my problem. I'm not sure why that was causing an issue but disabling Intel UHD 630 graphics fixes the problem.


How can I copy-paste audio effect to other audio clips in VideoPad?

Ah, found it!

Click the disquette icon: "Save template" to save the audio effect template.
In the clip(s) you want to copy the effect to, click the green plus icon to load the template.

The effect will be then added to the clip(s) with all its settings.


Voice over translation with interjections

The difference between a Dub and a Voice-over is that a Dub attempts to match a foreign language with lip movement and fully replace the audio using new words that don't change the meaning (much) whereas a Voice-over attempts to keep the original audio at a low level to preserve the feeling of the original and can be a bit freer with the translation.

Even though a Voice-over keeps the background audio any music may be replaced with something better accepted (as that type of song) by the audience.

Similarly a Dub while attempting to fully replace the audio may include some original audio.

In the specific case of your question and example: >"I don't know what it has to do with me or anything ha ha ha".

"The laughs are saying that on the contrary, the person saying those words does know that it has to do something with her."

In the case of "News" (for English speakers) you would want to translate accurately and add additional words that it is the Reporter's opinion that the interviewee said the comment in a sarcastic manner or to clearly overdo the sarcasm to avoid a misleading translation. Culture plays a complex role in the result.

A Dub would have the Translator do the laugh and a Voice-over would likely have the original laugh but could have the Translator do the laugh with the additional original laugh synced.

There's a knack to it and getting the right feel for both languages and cultures is difficult.

In 'English speaking culture' a bad dub or voiceover can be part of the feeling/amusement of the work in those that know nothing of the other culture/language; that IS appreciated by the listener but may well be seen as butchering the work of Art from the opposite point of view.

Examples from "The Matrix", in Russian:

These seem to work OK but the background could be a bit louder and the Voice-over a bit less dominating. It's more or a mixing issue (or an ardent desire to make the audio more clearly distinguished) and is slightly overdone.

It's a fine Art, to change and not ruin someone else's work. As difficult to explain in general terms as it is to do and undoubtedly done differently in different parts of the world.

One example is untranslated East Indian movie clips and trailers often trend on YouTube in mostly English speaking countries together with many English comments in the Comment Section - no reason to think enough people understand it in North America for it to trend, more of a curiously I would imagine. I only watch sometimes to see why it Trends so well. Others seem to find a lot of humor, even in serious movies.


What Happens to Frequencies Above the Nyquist Limit?

Sounds above the Nyquist limit (in this case 4000 Hz) will seem to fold back into the allowed range. For example, a tone 100 Hz above the limit will appear as a phantom tone 100 Hz below it. So a frequency of 4100 will seem to appear at 3900, one at 4200 will appear at 3800, and so on.

This is called 'aliasing' or 'folding'. The apparent 3900 tone is an alias for the 4100 tone. Since actual, complex sounds are composed of many frequencies, the audible effect is not as clean as theory describes it.


ffmpeg: adding blankspace to end of video

Method 1: concat demuxer

Pros: Avoids re-encoding the main video and therefore preserves quality since it is stream copied. Fast.
Cons: Requires several steps. Harder to get right, because the blank video needs to have the same attributes as the main video.

Make the black video using same attributes and same number and type of streams as the main input. This example makes a 15 second black video, frame rate of 24, size is 1280x720:

 ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=1280x720:r=24:d=15 black.mkv

Make input.txt. The order in this text file determines the order that they will appear when concatenating.

file 'main.mkv'
file 'black.mkv'

Concatenate:

ffmpeg -f concat -i input.txt -c copy output.mkv

Method 2: concat filter

Pro: Can all be done in one command.
Con: Filtering requires encoding, so no stream copying of the main video as in the concat demuxer. Some attributes must still be matched.

Use the color source filter to make the 15 second, 24 fps, 1280x720 black video and append it to the end of the main video with the concat filter:

ffmpeg -i main.mkv -filter_complex "color=c=black:s=1280x720:r=24:d=15[black];[0:v][black]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[v]" -map "[v]" output.mkv

If you prefer the black to be at the beginning instead then switch the order for the concat filter inputs, such as [black][0:v]concat….

Method 3: tpad and apad filters

Pro: Easy. No need to match any attributes.
Cons: Filtering requires encoding, so no stream copying of the main video as in the concat demuxer. Relatively new filters: use FFmpeg 4.2 or newer, or even better use a build from the current git master branch.

Append 15 seconds of black video to the end of the main video:

ffmpeg -i main.mkv -filter_complex "tpad=stop_duration=15" output.mkv

If you want it at the beginning instead use start_duration instead of stop_duration. If you want to clone the frames instead, or want a different color than black then refer to the tpad filter documentation.


How can you correct EBU R128 loudness in Premiere?

In general loudness correction is a two step process. (There's a little more to it for full EBU R128 compliance, but I work exclusively in the US and this all that is required for A/85 / CALM Act compliance.)

Measure the long term/infinite loudness of the asset.
Shift the level of the asset by the difference between the measured loudness and the target.

Premiere does not have a built in method for automatically correcting loudness. But you do have a few options:

You can use the built in Loudness Radar plugin to measure the long term/infinite loudness of the asset and then manually shift the level by the difference from the measured loudness and the target loudness.
You can buy a third party plugin to do the correction.
You can use FFmpeg as I paraphrased the last time you asked this question.
You can use Adobe Media Encoder.


I think the other thing wrecking your video is that your source is interlaced but you are processing as if not interlaced.  Interlaced video is an anachronism from the days of analog.  Digital camcorders can still record 1080i, but that leads to very unhappy images when presented on non-CRT screens.  If you don't know what a CRT screen is, you should definitely change your settings to shoot progressive instead of analog.  (And if you do know, you can easily understand why you should shoot progressive anyway.)

Moreover, a progressive format like 720p24, 720p25, or 720p30 (or 1080p24, 1080p25 or 1080p30) will slow down your shutter speed, which will also reduce whatever flickering effect might exist as mentioned by others.

Premiere Pro does have a "de-interlace" filter, but it's difficult to repair the damage of interlacing.  Best to shoot progressive from the get-go.


FCP Editing: Timeline Footage Looks terrible in timeline & export its 4:3

It seems to me from a high level, two things. First off your project settings in FCP do not match your source materials. First off you should transcode one of your two sources to a common format so you are dealing with only one aspect ratio and frame size, it may require cropping or scaling down some of the larger content to match the smaller one (i.e. bring the 960x540 down to 720x432 so that the width of that clip is the same width as your PAL source, not the other way or you will get fuzzy resolution)

Next set up your sequence setting, to match your source 720x576.
Usually when you drag a clip to FCP new sequence in FCP 6.06 the dialog message in fcp will offer to create sequence settings to match your clip, do it, just pick the lower res clip, and scale down the high res ones.

As you bring in the 720x432 (formerly 960x540) you will need to adjust aspect manually in FCP for that clip (double click on your clip in timeline, click motion tab, then adjust/play with the distort Aspect Ratio slider) , there will be a little black on top or bottom of the clip, but at least that way you are no blowing out and scaling up the PAL content, and you can manually adjust aspect if needed.


How to slow down ProRes file from 25fps to 16fps without re-encoding?

I just found a way to do this by changing the parameters help by fps tbr tbn tbc; answer is derived from this post.

ffmpeg -y -i at25fps.mov -c:v copy -video_track_timescale 16 at16fps.mov

I am getting these remarks from Apple Sound Media Handler (so I am not sure if this is the best way to do it)

  Non-monotonous DTS in output stream 0:0; previous: 0, current: 0; changing to 1. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.

  Non-monotonous DTS in output stream 0:0; previous: 1, current: 1; changing to 2. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.

  ...


How does GSpot calculate "Recommended display size"

I don't know what tags or fields are present in a .MP4 file, but something is flagging the file as having a 16:9 'display aspect ratio' (shown as "dar" in GSpot), while the 'pixel aspect ratio' (par) is 4:3.

((480 * 16) / 9) = 853


An APC-C sensor size has a diagonal that's 1.6x smaller than FF35 (such as EOS 5d), which means that for a given field of view it behaves as if there's about 1.5 stops more depth of field.  Or, seen another way, if you are shooting indoors, you might use a 35mm lens on a FF35 camera and a 22mm lens on an APS-C camera, in which case the 22mm lens has about the same depth of field as if you stopped down the 35mm lens an additional 1.5 stops.  So your 18mm f3.5 gives you the depth of field similar to a 28mm shooting at f5.6 (which is pretty deep) and a 55mm shooting at 5.6 has a similar depth of field as an 85mm shooting at f9 (which is still pretty deep).  If you rack focus between the back of the room and an object 8" in front of the camera, you will see the rack focus effect, but if you rack focus between 6' and 8', the effect will be minimal.

Cameras such as the SONY A7 are low-light wizards, but nothing else does low-light like that.  And shooting with ambient lighting is a recipe for boring, flat-looking video footage that looks amateur.  Do study and learn 3-point lighting.  First and foremost it will bring your subjects to life.  Second, even the most basic cameras and lenses can capture good video of a well-lit scene.


Davinci Resolve with fast CPU but Slow GPU

From what I've read, Resolve very much depends on your GPU power -- speed and VRAM. I believe there's a preference to turn off at least some GPU usage, but that's probably more of a workaround for something crashing rather than something to be done on a normal basis.
Probably the best place to ask would be the Black Magic forums and over there, Carsten Sellberg answered a similar question with:

In Resolve the CPU is used to run the app, disk I/O and compression and decompression of codecs.
Resolve does all its image processing in the GPU on the graphics card. More CUDA/OpenCL Cores are better.
There are two factors that is important for the Graphics card. The first is, that it have enough vRam to hold a single video frame. For 4K is the absolute min 6 GB of vRam, but min 8 GB of vRam or more are recommended.
The other factor is the CUDA/OpenCL performance. Higher CUDA/OpenCL performance gives a faster Resolve.


Disclaimer: not a lawyer, but based on the experience from usage (and making) of such tracks -

All music is "copyrighted" by default unless the creator explicitly has in writing abandon those rights. The author can also write it's OK to use his music for "anything". Copyright only means that the author has the right to determine the usage of his track. If the track is used commercially or not doesn't really matter, but commercial tracks are often restricted by default by an organization that represent the artist.

"Fair use" only applies to USA and UK. Though other countries has similar variants and various restrictions/liberties in relation to usage.

For the USA version of it: Fair use means you can use any copyrighted material with another purpose than public performing or sharing. More specifically you use an excerpt of the track to criticize it, review it, as an example in relation to education and so forth.

You can not just use it, or a part of it as a background piece or in some way which does not have a purpose as mentioned above (unless you have permission through for example royalty agreements with the organization or the artist).

Lets say you are a music journalist in a radio or TV station and doing a review of a track. Here you may use a fair part of the music, a part that is sufficient for the task so you can make your point but not so large you have in practice performed the "whole" track publicly.

If you work as a teacher in a lets say a music school and want to show the student how to make a certain effect, bridge, sound or whatever, you can use a part of the music sufficient to demonstrate what you try to teach, but you can not play the whole track or the irrelevant parts of the track for the students (this last would be considered public performance).

If you post a video on YouTube showing a screen recording of a game and use a few seconds of a track as background music - this is not fair use.

If you make a movie trailer and use a part of a cool track you like - this is not fair use (however, there are exceptions in some countries to this for radio/TV stations that makes in-house trailers (commercials for their own programs/shows), I am not sure about USA on this).

Bottom line is - Use common sense and not the heart and love for the track you want to use! :-)

If you want to use a track outside  the fair use you can always become a member of the organization which manage the copyright and pay royalties for the use if it is public performance related. If you want to use it for non-generic performance (movie, commercial, youtube video..) you will need a written permission to use the track for that purpose (and it comes, most likely, with a price tag).

Worth to mention: there are commercial music made especially for usage in films, commercials etc. where you don't have to pay royalties and where you have automatically all permissions you need to use it in that way. There are plenty (too many to list here) of company sites where you can buy this from. For instance SmartSound, iStockphoto Music ++.


Frame rate mismatch when converting to raw video

Raw video is just that - a raw dump of video content payload - there is no packetization or metadata.

Output to Y4M for a format with metadata

ffmpeg -r 50 -i test.ts -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf "setpts=PTS-STARTPTS" -y test.y4m


How to make a video from a still image and an audio file?

To expand upon ObscureRobot's answer, use ffmpeg like so:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -f image2 -r 2 -i input1.png -i input2.aiff -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -shortest output.mp4

-loop 1 -f image2 -r 2 -i input1.png tells ffmpeg to loop input1.png forever, at a frame rate of 2fps. -c:v libx264 tells it to use x264 to encode the video, and -c:a copy tells it to simply copy the audio, without encoding. -shortest makes ffmpeg stop when the shortest input ends - input2.aiff in this case.


Hardware encoders used for best performance, not quality. So, if you don't need realtime, I suggest to use software encoder with many options.


Is there image degradation when you apply the same chroma subsampling iteratively?

If the target chroma subsampling is the same as the source subsampling, then any ffmpeg scaling will be a no-op in that regard, so it's not subsampling 'further'.

FFmpeg does not determine chroma sampling scheme from a tag. It is a basic property of the decoded bitstream. If it's 4:2:0, then the decoder will emit chroma planes of half-width and height with respect to the luma plane; for 4:2:2, half-width and full-height. A scaling operation will be carried out if the input and output schemes are different. A scaler will resize each row of the chroma plane to the target width of the output chroma plane and then rescale the resized rows to obtain the target height of the chroma planes. The "translation" is done as per the choice of scaling algorithm - see list at https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-scaler.html#Scaler-Options


Good question Xavier! I had a similar job recently, here's how I did it.

First I would suggest re-working your json file to be a little easier to parse. For example (hopefully I got your intention correctly):

{
    "slider1": {
        "start": 1000,
        "end": 2000,
        "duration": 4,
        "ID": 1
    }
}

Then add two sliders to your layer, one called Anim Duration (seconds) with a default value of 4. If you want to read this value from the json file add the following expression instead:

var data = footage("example.json").sourceData;

data.slider1.duration

Okay now to the second slider (which is the one that actually animates) add the following expression:

var data = footage("example.json").sourceData;

start_value = data.slider1.start;
end_value = data.slider1.end;

step = (end_value - start_value) / effect("Anim Duration (seconds)")("Slider").value; // alternately you can just plug data.slider1.duration here instead of using a second slider...
count = Math.floor(step * (time - thisLayer.inPoint)); // you don't need to use the in-point here, but it is conventient if you know that's where you want to start your animation

if (count < e_value) {
    count;
} else {
    end_value;
}

(if you have any trouble with this let me know, I don't have AE handy for testing so this was mainly done from memory and a snipped I have on me...)


replace video track and keep everything else

I ended up using this and it worked
ffmpeg -i "original video file" -i "video file I want to insert" -map_metadata 0 -map 0 -map -0:v:0 -map 1:v:0 output.mkv

this tells ffmpeg to remove the 1st video track from the 1st file and insert the 1st video track from the second file while retaining everything else as is.


How Was This Isometric Vector-looking Video Made?

As this is mostly hand drawn animated vector graphics you could do these kind of videos in most 2D animation software. Lighting in this case isn't rendered by the program but painted by the artist.
In most cases this would be done in Adobe After Effects as it offer very sophisticated timeline animation tools and works very well with vector graphics. There are also still quite a few people using Adobe Flash for these kind of animations.

You are not limited to these two software options though, you can definitely do this in Apple Motion or Sony Vegas aswell.

An artist would draw the single elements for the video in a vector graphics program like Illustrator or Inkscape and then these would be animated in a 2D animation software package like mentioned above.

You might want to have a look at this article from the maker of this specific video, it explains the design process quite well: https://www.behance.net/gallery/CBRE-Animated-Infographics/15921655


ffmpeg - one input, two outputs - separate instances

Remove the pipe character.
ffmpeg -f v4l2 -standard PAL -i /dev/video0 -f alsa -thread_queue_size 512 -i hw:0,0 -preset superfast -crf 25 -r 25 -aspect 4:3 -acodec libmp3lame -b:v 6M -b:a 128k -ac 2 -ar 48000 /vids/vid1.avi -b:v 500k -b:a 128k -ac 2 -ar 48000 -y /opt/lampp/htdocs/preview.mp4
(mp3 is not standard in MP4 so let ffmpeg pick the default audio codec)


I would think you could make sure it's centered by having a horizontal object (just a dowel, or something) placed at the center of the item. Turn on the turntable, then look at it through your camera's viewfinder. If the dowel moves back and forth horizontally, then it's not centered on the dowel.

As for fixing in post, it's certainly possible, though maybe a little time consuming. BTW, the "fixed" video in the dewobbler example still has a small amount of wobble that I personally find more irritating than the original large wobble. But maybe it's just me.

To fix it in post, you need to mentally define the center of your object. Then as it moves back and forth, move the center of the object to the center of the frame and set a keyframe. The keyframes will probably create a periodic pattern like a sine wave or something similar. In fact, it seems like that's mainly what they were doing in the dewobbler video - just setting keyframes for moving the center. This can be done in most video editors or motion graphics apps like FCPX, Motion, Premiere, After Effects, etc. Just use the normal transform tool.


Adobe Media Encoder (Why is it not using all the available power)

So after quite some time it turns out ame is pretty useless on using as much comp resources as you have. I did how ever find a really solid solution. Rendergarden is a third party tool that splits the output render into chunks and renders them all in parallel. I went from using no more than 3% cpu to render garden using as much as I asked ie 96%.
This axes render times by a factor I genuinely cannot believe. In real terms it cut a 3h 52min render into a 24min job. (16 CORES SMASHES THROUGH RENDERS)
It does cost money but if you are experiencing this issue this 100% removes the media encoder render bottleneck.


It depends on the environment, but generally, you want directional microphones that you can point at the audience from in front of the speakers.  In an auditorium designed to spread sound around though, you are always going to get some of the speaker in the sound.  Directional mics will focus the direction of sound they pick up towards the crowd, but some sound still bounces back.

Another possibility, since crowd noise is generally fairly similar and non-distinct, it is entirely possible that they aren't using the crowd's actual sound.  They may just be using laugh tracks to emulate the audience.  This can get clean sound since there wasn't anything else going on when it was recorded.


Merging 2 video input source into 1 output

You need to edit it using an editing software like Premimere, Sony Vegas or any other.
I don't know how you do it in Sony Vegas but in Premiere you just place both videos in the sequence and resize them.

That's pretty basic editing, try to search for the best editing software that works best for you and search for tutorial about that software.

If you need it for live broadcasting then you need a professional live video broadcasting software or use what you got in the platform you're broadcasting in.


How to recreate a low shutter speed effect on 1/10000 footage?

Even if the camera has no (suitable?) filter thread, you should be able to fix some Cokin filter holder to a flash bracket.  While I cannot vouch for ready made solutions here, I should be surprised if you cannot combine a few stock components.  The main problem of course when using such a contraption on an ND filter is to prevent side glare.  You might need to work with some light-proof drapings or stuff.  It may be feasible with a flash bracket or similar (macro bracket?) to move the filter right up to the camera, greatly reducing the problem.


You'll need to make a separate spotlight for each different link.  So one spotlight goes from 5 seconds to 6 seconds, and another spotlight goes from 6 seconds to 7 seconds.  Each of them starts your linked video at a different point (15 seconds, 16 seconds, or whatever).

It's easy to set the starting time within an annotation link.  When you create the annotation, and add the link URL, it will ask you about the starting point.  (The default is 0.00, the beginning of the video.) You just set it there before you publish your annotations.

Note that annotations don't yet work on mobile devices (as far as I know).

Here's a useful page that instructs you how to create and use annotations, in case you need some more info.


There are a number of factors that could cause the effect you've described. It's unclear which you're talking about specifically, but here are the possible problems and their possible solutions:

Interlacing - Video filmed for broadcast is split into 2 interlaced fields. For NTSC, this means that instead of ~30 full frames per second, a camera will first film even lines for ~1/60th of a second, then the odd lines for ~1/60th of a second. Or for PAL, instead of 25 full frames, they'll do even lines for 1/50th of a second, then odd lines for 1/50th of a second. The solution to this problem is to shoot progressive (full) frames.
Rolling Shutter - DSLRs, cell phones, and other types of cameras use a CMOS sensor which scans the field of view from the upper left of the sensor horizontally, going down to the next row of sensor sites until it reaches the bottom left and starts over. This can cause artifacts when objects in the scene move faster than the scanning happens. (Or when the camera is moving.) The solution is to use a camera with a different type of sensor, such as a CCD sensor, or to apply a post process to fix the rolling shutter problem. Most video editing applications have a filter of some sort to correct this.
Shutter angle - When shooting video, you can tell the camera how long you want the shutter to be open for each frame. If you're filming at 25 frames per second, then it can be opened as long as 1/25th of a second. But you can reduce it to, for example, 1/50th of a second while still only shooting 25 frames per second. This may be expressed as either a time value (such as 1/50th of a second) or as an angle, where 360° is the full frame time, 180° is half the frame time, etc.

It's hard to tell from your description which problem you might be encountering, but you can try making changes for each. Canon cameras will allow you to film in either interlaced or progressive modes by simply changing a setting. Likewise with shutter angle. Fixing rolling shutter requires either a different camera or applying a post-process.

The Canon C300 has a CMOS sensor just like the 5D and the C100, so it's probably not the rolling-shutter issue.


If you're looking to only trim videos, I would recommend checking out ffmpeg. It's easy to use from the mac terminal and is able to trim videos with -ss and -t. For downloads and documentation visit:

ffmpeg.org


You can use the free Dashware app, which is normally used to overlay telemetry data directly on footage.
As per the FAQ,

What’s the best way to use DashWare with another video editor, so I can do sophisticated edits?
How to make blue/green screen, gauge-only videos with DashWare:

Add your video and data files to the DashWare project like usual: synchronize, set up your gauges how you like, etc
Once you are ready to export, create a new “Green Screen” gauge. In this new, empty gauge add a Filled Rectangle component with the
dimensions of your video (e.g. 1920 by 1080). I use a bright, neon
green color for the fill. You want to pick a color that you are not
using in any of your other gauges.
Put this new gauge behind all the other gauges in your project and it will cover up your source video.
Export and now you will have a green screen video with only gauges.
In your favorite video editor use a chroma key filter to turn the green screen parts of the video transparent and presto you have a
transparent video with your gauges.


Can upconverting 1080p videos on 4k TVs, lower their quality?

Upsample by an integer ratio can be completely blameless, just repeating pixels and lines gets it done, no new information, and you get only the original resolution displayed, but no losses either.

This zero order hold based approach tends however not to be popular, and the amount of processing to do anything else rises rapidly especially if you either want to apply filtering over more then a very localised area or play dynamic games to try to give the impression of more resolution (Popular with consumer gear which compounds the messing about by not having sufficient processing to do it well).

Just doing a 2D sinc interpolation is pretty close to blameless (potentially 90% bandwidth or so if you can afford to throw sufficient processing at it), and takes the edges off the pixel doubling.

However for most reasonably sized tellies at reasonable viewing distances, HD is in fact just fine, 4k is nice on a computer monitor where you are sat 18 inches away from a 30 inch screen, but that is not the usual use case for telly.
You may find a search on the term "Circles of confusion" to be informative.

Now HDR (On a set that has the brightness and contrast ratio to pull it off, not technically easy) is a real win even on a SD screen.


Here are some suggestions:

Film the bike from a moving car.
Have two people in the car, minimum: One for driving and one for filming.
Shoot through open windows of the car, not through glass.
Get every shot from every angle you need separately.
Do all of your editing after recording, not in camera, using video editing software.


Fade text background on one end in Sony Vegas Pro 13

What you are looking for is luma keying.

With luma keying, you provide a greyscale image to represent degrees of transparency (properly called an alpha channel) in addition to your background and foreground images. I have not used it in Vegas Pro, but here is a link to a tutorial:


Compact Camera for nighttime live streaming?

You can use old(ish) Android phone to have all-in-one solution or you can use go-pro camera with laptop.


My ffProbe script only seems to work with MKV files

Since the implementation of the new decode API, ffprobe's readout for MP4 files takes much longer to be printed, and depends on the duration of the video. Switch to a version earlier than April 2017.


How to (safely) produce flying dust on set?

I would avoid burning things to make ashes. Not very environment-friendly.
Instead of paying attention to the acting and to the light, and framing you will be worried about the effects. That is not a good idea.
Now days is pretty simple making particles in a 3D program. Try Blender, that can track the footage and have a very robust particle system and render options.
Here is an example of how a normal scene can be transformed into an apocalyptic scene, one typical example is Silent Hill.


Video Broadcast within Retirement Community

Short of doing a live stream which you've already ruled out, your best bet sounds like it will be a fiber link between the auditorium and the health center.  HD-SDI has a technical limit of around 100 meters, so you would need a booster in between to make use of SDI (which would be a coax run and possibly a bit cheaper).  Neither of these options can be completed for less than a few hundred dollars in cabling alone.

Other than that, your best bet is to provide training on how to use the live stream and possibly setup a device like a roku that can be adjusted remotely over the network by someone in the main auditorium.


How to work with desqueezed anamorphic footage in FCPX

Create a new library and then click on 'New Project'. Here you can change the format to any resolution you want.

In the sync dialogue your can also set a custom video format.


Optimizing short Videos (~10 sec.) in Size for embedding in website & app

The best thing for such a use case is creating diffrent files which get loaded in different scenarios.

Current recommendation is to use webm for web content, this container is not supported with all Browsers tho, so also include a .mp4 to switch too.

GIFs can be compressed quite nicely, but you need to keep in mind that GIFs are quite strict about colors.

You can go quite far by compressing with FFMPEG


How do I get royalty free music, images ,video clips, cartoon characters with different actions and emotions for short filmmaking

By buying it or looking for freely licensed media (such as creative commons).  I'm not sure what more you are looking for.  Royalty free content still has to be purchased, there are online stores that specialize in it.  The only trick with it is that you don't have to pay for each copy you make of the final media that you use it in.  There may also be other limitations (such as how much of the media it can make up).  Be sure to read the license for the media closely prior to purchasing to make sure it meets your needs.


Hold down the option key while you open Final Cut in the Finder.  This will open a dialogue which asks you to select a library.  DO NOT select a library from the list.  Instead, click the "new" button, name it "blank_Library" or something, select a destination, and click "OK".  This process should start Final Cut cleanly.  If FCPX has crashed at this point, then your problem is with the application itself, and you need to re-install.  If everything's OK at this point, you might have a corrupt library.

Assuming that FCPX is running, now you'll want to try to open the project upon which you're currently working.  Go to File->Open Library.  You should see the library which contains your project in the list.  Click it.  If FCPX crashes on this step, you know there's a problem with the current library.  If it doesn't crash, it could have been another open library which was corrupt and causing your crash.  If everything works at this point, carry on with your day.  If not, proceed to the next step.

Option-double-click to start FCPX again.  From the dialogue, select the blank library that you created in the first step. Click "OK".  Quit Final Cut.  This will ensure that the next time you try to open the program, it won't try to open the corrupt library.  Next, Spotlight search "Final Cut Backups".  This folder contains backups of all of your projects.  If the library which contained your project was called "Skateboarding_Kids", you'll see a folder called "Skateboarding_Kids".  Open that.  Within, is an iterative list of backups sorted by date.  Open the most recent one.  Did Final Cut crash?  If not, carry on with your day.  If so, repeat the steps in this paragraph, but open the next-oldest-to-the-last-backup-you-just-opened.

If none of this works, then my guess is that you're running a NAS or a SAN, and it's a network problem that's causing the crash, but I don't know enough about your system to say.

Hope this helps.


Is this as high quality a GIF I can produce from this MP4 using FFMPEG?

The separate cropping step is leading to a generational loss. You can combine that and see.

ffmpeg -i in\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4
       -vf "crop=1262:423:91:154,scale=896:-1:flags=lanczos,fps=35,palettegen"
       out\PALETTE.png

ffmpeg -i in\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4 -i out\PALETTE.png
       -filter_complex "[0]crop=1262:423:91:154,scale=896:-1:flags=lanczos,fps=35[v];
                        [v][1]paletteuse"
       out\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.gif


Mixing audio with HDMI video to replace the sound from the camera

It seems that what you are looking for is an HDMI audio embedder.

It seems that the Tascam DR-701D offers this functionality as described in Outputting this unit's audio as the HDMI output audio

Examples of external alternative such products can be found here (I am not affiliated with these manufacturers, other products might exist):

Kramer FC-69

Extron HAI 100 4K


Frame capture from videos: I-frame vs P-frames

"I, B and P" don't refer to the viewed frames, they refer to the encoded, stored forms of the frames. However the frame is encoded in the file or stream, when it appears on the screen or is extracted as a still it is a complete frame, reconstructed from the IBP information as needed.


There are two FFmpeg frontends that I have used quite a bit for batch video conversion:

WinFF
XMedia Recode

They are both for Windows, but I know there are more free FFmpeg frontends out there for other platforms. QWinFF is for Windows & Linux, but I think development has ceased.

https://alternativeto.net/tag/ffmpeg/
https://alternativeto.net/tag/ffmpeg-gui/


To add a dissolve you would want to add keyframes to the opacity property for the image. Park your playhead at 10 seconds and with the image selected hit the letter t. You should see the opacity property for the layer. If the stopwatch isn't blue then click it, which will turn on animation for that property. Go to the time at which you want to end the dissolve and wind the value down to 0. You should have two new keyframes on the opacity channel, and the layer will fade out.

A wipe can be achieved in many ways, one of the simplest is using a mask. With the image layer selected hold the alt / option key down and double-click the quickmask icon:

That will add a rectangular mask the size of your layer. Hit the m key to show the masks for the layer. Park the playhead at the time at which you want to start your transition and click the stopwatch next to the mask path property to animate the mask, tThis will also make one keyframe.

Now move the playhead to where you want the transition to end. Double click on the mask outline in the comp window, and you should see a wireframe outline around it. Drag the wireframe right off the screen, in the direction you want the wipe to go. Hold the shift key to constrain the movement to vertical or horizontal only. This will create another keyframe, and the layer will wipe off.

You can add easing to the keyframes to make the motion more pleasing - hit the f9 key to add ease-in/out. You can further refine the motion in the graph editor (hit this button with the mask property selected)

As for anything in After effects the ways of achieving these effects are limited only by your imagination and skill. Hopefully using native AE tools instead of relying on presets will give you a taste for how it works.


ffmpeg alternative to setpts for making a survey gif

Assuming you want a 30 fps 2.5m GIF, use

ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -vf "select='not(mod(n,trunc(234/2.5)))',palettegen" palette.png

and

ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -i palette.png -filter_complex "[0]select='not(mod(n,trunc(234/2.5)))',setpts=N/30/TB[v];[v][1]paletteuse" survey.gif


Is there a "starting place" in terms of colour correction before adding a stylistic LUT

Applications such as FCPX and Adobe Creative Cloud actually ship with a wide variety of stylized LUTs, so if you use either of those you can play around with them.  Most LUTs will specify what they expect as input, and many I have seen are designed to work either with LOG or REC709.  (There are many LOG formats out there--Arri Log-C, RED RedLogFilm, Sony SLOG, Canon, etc.  Some LUTs get really particular, others less so.)

A good rule of thumb is that the LUT expects a properly exposed image, meaning black, white, and 18% gray land at around 16, 235, and 110-120 in the 8-bit broadcast video safe world of 16-235.  It's very helpful to have an optical signal generator (calibrated black, white, and gray pieces of paper which, when hit by light, generate an optical signal) so that you can verify exposure before you shoot.

If you don't have a waveform monitor on your camera or in your signal chain, you can record data from the optical signal generator, upload it to your favorite NLE (which should have a waveform monitor) and you can verify that your white, black, and gray levels are sane.  Learn whatever it is your meters are telling you when you shoot your black/white/gray value chart with a correct exposure.

If you cannot shoot LOG, then look for LUTs that will accept REC709, shoot properly exposed images, and have fun!


The color in my Final Cut PX Viewer is way off

I discovered that it is an issue with my graphics card. I am running FCX on a late 2008 Macbook, which does not have a graphics card that supports the application.

Check HERE to see if yours is supported.


Shows can be either "Single camera" or "Multi camera."  Sitcoms, shows broadcast live, and stuff shot in front of a live audience is generally multicam -- they do it once, or as few times as needed to get a good take.  They just have three (or however many) cameras, and cut between them.

Other stuff is Single camera.  Some "Single camera" stuff actually has two cameras rolling when it's convenient, or maybe a rare action shot where they had a whole bunch of cameras running to capture an expensive stunt or something, but it's still considered single camera style work.  I expect Better Call Saul is shot this way.  Basically, you do many "setups" where you typically tweak staging and lighting for each camera setup and do the scene or part of the scene over and over.  There is usually some piece of equipment just off screen in any given shot like a light stand or a boom mic so each shot is as nice as they can make it, but if you shot it from another angle at the same time you'd see equipment or crew, or it just wouldn't look as nice.  People and objects get moved around between shots to get nice framing, and you never really notice that a table moved a few inches or whatever.

As for how many times, ultimately the director decides.  Some directors are lunatics, and a certain scene in a film with a long schedule may get shot hundreds of times for variations on performance, angle, etc.  Some directors are more efficient and a scene might only get shot like a dozen times if you do three takes for each of four angles/setups.  Some directors will work closely with their crow in deciding these things -- often the cinematographer will have a lot to say about how many angles they need to get to cover the whole scene, and which shots will be most interesting.  In a few rare cases, a whole scene will get shot just once, if it's something that is a big expensive stunt.  If you only have one car, you can only blow it up once, so you just have to try to get it right.  There was a scene in the documentary TV series Connections where the presenter timed his monologue to the countdown timer of an actual NASA rocket launch of a space probe that was visible in the background.  Obviously, they could only get that shot once because you can't go to NASA and ask them to quickly launch another 100 million dollar space probe because you got a little tongue tied.  Though, I assume they got a few takes without the rocket launch as well.


What is a projector's "pixel frequency"?

Pixel frequency, also known as dot clock is referring to the bandwidth of the projector's controller chip.

For a resolution a certain data rate is required to display all the data (not pixel frequency, see later) - it can be for example:

A resolution of 800x600 at 60 Hz would require:

800 x 600 x 3 (RGB) x 60 Hz/2 (interlaced frame rate) = 43 200 000 bytes per second

or divided on 1024^2 = 41.2 Mb/s, as data rate with full 8-bit color-depth.

To calculate the projector/monitor's bandwidth you will need accurate timing measurement available, but you can get close by using the vertical frequency and compensate for VBLANK (vertical blanking which is a sync feature) with about 5% and HBLANK with about 30%:

So with 800x600 resolution at 60 hz:

800x1.3 x 600x1.05 x 60 = approx. 39 Mhz

The closer these two results get the better it is as that will tell that the projector/monitor is capable to handle the needed data rate to get full resolution, color depth as so forth.

The bandwidth becomes a factor when showing video in particular.


Unable to render file larger than 4 Gigs in Sony Vegas 10

Not sure what went wrong but I was able to render it in .wmv format. Must have been something wrong with the file itself.


How to force to automatically continue VIDEO-Recording after being stopped (after 12 mins or so)

Alternatives:

Depending on the camera model used, one could expand the recording time a 4GB file can take up by reducing the recording quality (compression, bit rate, resolution...) of your video.

With SOME cameras, you might be able to use an SDHC card forcibly formatted to a file system that does not have a 4G file size limit, eg exFAT or NTFS. If you can make it work, test THOROUGHLY.

Be aware that certain cameras also have a hard coded 30 minute video limit, which is there for reasons all unrelated to file size: In some markets, video cameras are taxed higher than still cameras, and the definition of a video camera in the relevant tax codes is continuous video recording capability beyond 30 minutes. In some cases, the camera might also not be THERMALLY designed to handle more than 30 minutes uninterrupted recording load.


Maya Python: worldspace to screenspace coordinates

I finally found how to do this on the internet. Just call this procedure with a camera name and the worldspace coordinate of a point as attributes.

def worldSpaceToScreenSpace(camera, worldPoint):

    # get current resolution
    resWidth = mc.getAttr('defaultResolution.width')
    resHeight = mc.getAttr('defaultResolution.height')

    # get the dagPath to the camera shape node to get the world inverse matrix
    selList = om.MSelectionList()
    selList.add(camera)
    dagPath = om.MDagPath()
    selList.getDagPath(0,dagPath)
    dagPath.extendToShape()
    camInvMtx = dagPath.inclusiveMatrix().inverse()

    # use a camera function set to get projection matrix, convert the MFloatMatrix
    # into a MMatrix for multiplication compatibility
    fnCam = om.MFnCamera(dagPath)
    mFloatMtx = fnCam.projectionMatrix()
    projMtx = om.MMatrix(mFloatMtx.matrix)

    # multiply all together and do the normalisation
    mPoint = om.MPoint(worldPoint[0],worldPoint[1],worldPoint[2]) * camInvMtx * projMtx;
    x = (mPoint[0] / mPoint[3] / 2 + .5) * resWidth
    y = (mPoint[1] / mPoint[3] / 2 + .5) * resHeight

    return [x,y]


Video overlay - how is this effect created?

I was able to produce it by doing the following:

Convert the video to monochrome by turning the saturation down
Apply Levels and bring the output black point up to around 30%
Put an orange color solid over it and set the opacity to 50%
Set the blend mode to "Normal," "Overlay," or "Hard Light"

You can experiment with the black point and blend modes to get the look just right for your footage.


Blender has a video stabilization feature based on its camera tracker.  Here is a YouTube tutorial on how to use this feature to stabilize a hand-held video:


Final cut pro export file size is huge (despite the small size of the initial video) - how can I shrink it?

A Master file export is a multipass high-resolution export. Its meant for archiving or transcoding into other formats.
Also, your Zoom recording is probably in a format what is not natively compatible with FCPX and was transcoded into ProRes during import. ProRes is excellent for editing, saving space is not its purpose.
Depending on where you want to publish your video you should choose different export presets, what will trade size for quality or vice versa. However, I doubt you can export in the same format than the recording from Zoom, so export size might vary significant.


How can I set up video files so that, if a film is foreign, the subtitles automatically play?

Finally, I found a video on YT.

Open notepad
Type "0" on the first line
Type "00:00:00.00 --> 00:00:00.00" on the second line
Save as .srt file type

Now you have an empty .SRT file that MKVToolNix accepts.

You can also edit the file order and the default audio/video files in the program itself.


Screen recorded videos have audio sync delays in Premiere Pro

Okay so I found the issue and a quick fix for the .mp4 audio sync issues. First you need to backup your video files, then change the file extension from .mp4 to .mov. This will allow you to reimport with accurate playback speed.

If Premiere gives you a weird error upon importing, make sure you have QuickTime installed from Apple's website, restart, and then try again.

The fix came from this video, and I hope it helps someone else!


How can I stabilize very shaky video in After Effects?

Another possibility is to stabilise it by hand, frame by frame. I've done this before on wobbly walking time lapses, and the results are usually better than just using a warp stabiliser. In order to do it, you need a point of reference in your shot, that you can line up to a pair of horizontal and vertical rulers in each frame. Takes ages, but it's worth it.

Without seeing your footage, it's hard to show, but I'll give an example:
We did this on the timelapses in this programme:

https://vimeo.com/52539719

Take the first shot.  The camera was moving between every frame, but the peak of the roof does not move, and is in every shot.

We decide whereabouts in the shot we want the peak to be in the first frame.

We place one horizontal guide and one vertical guide in the comp, so that they cross over at the centre of the peak.

We scale the original footage up slightly, so that any repositioning of the frame doesn't result in black edges to your shot.   It's best to shoot in a higher resolution than your final output resolution.  Our shots were on a Canon 5D, full frames, so much higher than the final 1920x1080 HD output.

Set a position keyframe, then go to frame two.

The roof will have moved in the frame, because the camera is wobbly.
Reposition the frame, so that the roof is in the middle of your two guides again.
Make sure a new position key frame has been set.
Keep going, frame by frame, with lots of coffee and music playing :)

update: Looking at your footage, I'd probably use the right edge of the waterfall, as it's fairly central in the shot... But I don't think you've got enough frames to ever make a nice smooth timelapse, even if you slow it down with some frame/motion interpolation afterwards...


Why would it make sense to not be able to video in 30fps in a 720 resolution, and have to video in a higher resolution to get 30fps?

720 is typically captured at 60fps, not always, it's not required (different video capture devices have different abilities), but 720p60 is more common than 720p30, so it may simply may not be, and likely is not a supported format.

You also shouldn't have to speed it up (as it should play back at it's base frame rate). This is common on higher end camera systems such as RED and ARRI, where you can set your base frame rate of say 24fps, but record 240fps thus it would play back at 1/10th speed.

The base frame rate is encoded into the file's wrapper, and most if not all programs would recognize that for correct playback.


In the first step you are doing a lossy conversion, you transcode from vob to mp4, and then to ts. For a lossless re-mux you should just re-mux, better to specify both video and audio:

ffmpeg -i VTS_01_1.VOB -c:v copy -c:a copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb -f mpegts intermediate1.ts

However, if you re-mux for the purpose of slicing then you should be aware that with this method it is possible only on exact keyframe boundary, so you might want to reconsider whether you want to do it this way. For a detailed explanation please see in this answer.


filming objects that emit light in low light conditions

This type of photography is called 'available light' which covers shooting subjects without adding strobes or other lights. It is favored by many photographers for many reasons. I personally favor this because the subject and scene appear more natural to me. Things that glow interest me as well and there are tons of things that fit this: the moon, neon art, neon signs, street light reflections on the surface of wet pavement, faces illuminated by camp fire, Christmas lights and decorations, just to name a few.

Each of these subjects will require the photographer to make needed adjustments to capture the light. Let's start with the brightest thing in my list, the moon. The moon as you know does not emit light, but rather reflects the light from the sun. As I recall when I would measure it with my digital spot meter, a full moon might be close to or exceed 12 EV. When I shoot video of the moon where it is almost 50% of the frame, I have found these things that assist:

1) very high magnification, 80x to 100x

2) heavy tripod and no vibration

3) do not touch camera while recording, use remote to start and stop

4) manual exposure

5) manual focus

6) set the white balance to outdoor (sunlight)

7) setting up these things before starting the recording.

According to the specs on the Canon HF100 it has both manual exposure and manual focus.
When I put my Sony in digital zoom, I notice that the manual focus is not always accurate as far as the numbers go, so I trick it by first lining up the moon in the middle of the frame, set focus to auto then after it adjusts, I lock it down by pressing the manual button. I adjust the manual exposure by looking at how much detail I want on the surface.

example of moon shot:

https://vimeo.com/11145790

Notes: in the example the motion is sped up 4x in post production, also note the wavy lines as per atmospheric distortion.

Regarding the issue you are having with "the camera is that it quickly renders the objects to be white when in fact they emit purple light (the diffuser is purple on the object)."

This could be more than just one thing that needs adjustment. First I would check that you are not over exposing the lamp, then I would also make sure you have set the proper white balance as well. If you were expecting to capture both the purple lamp and an illuminated face, the lamp may be too bright for this or that the dynamic range of getting the lamp's purple glow and enough illumination to see detail on your subject's face may exceed the camera's dynamic range. You may have to change the bulb in the light to be brighter or darker to bring it in range.

Also note that in very low light situations, less than 10 LUX, you may start to notice digital noise in the black areas.

Shooting a light emitting object in sunlight is going to be difficult as you are correct in thinking that the daylight is too intense compared to your subject. Remember the sun is so bright that it may harm your sensor if you expose the sun directly for extended periods of time.

Another thing you can do is add a reflector on your subject as a fill light or add highlight. Here is an example:

Balancing the light of a scene will take some practice and some experimentation. Let's say you wanted to shoot a scene outside in daylight and your subject is working on a laptop. Your goal is to have the subject's features to be illuminated and at the same time be able to read or see detail on the laptop screen. To do this, you will likely have to shoot these in the shade to reduce the amount of daylight in your frame, and may have to use a reflector on your subject as well as put the laptop display in max brightness. It's all a balancing act of light.

If you can not afford a light meter, or spot meter, use your camera's display as the best source of how the scene will be balanced for light.

I recommend that you examine your display carefully to see that all the things you want are properly illuminated. Some scenes may have extreme high and low values of light that exceed the dynamic range of your camera.

Summary:
Capturing things that reflect light or emit light can be interesting yet require camera adjustments and good planning. Adjustments include: manual exposure, manual focus, manual white balance, possibly using a reflector, and if possible change the brightness of any lamps in your scene.


Video editing software with Audio scrubbing[Windows 10- 64bit]

I'd also suggest DaVinci Resolve for your needs, though you may need the studio version ($300 one time purchase with free upgrades, so far even between major versions.)  While recent versions of Resolve include very full featured non-linear editing and fantastic sound handling with Fairlight audio, I don't believe they include effects and much in the way of transitions.  The paid "studio" version includes a good selection.

You are also getting a pretty high end node based compositing tool (Fusion) built in to the software for that price as well.  Resolve's NLE isn't quite as good as Premiere Pro, but it's very good.  I like Fusion better than After Effects (which is the partner compositor that goes with Premiere Pro.)


Static frame video and a motion-intensive appendix: how to render fast?

As I can see, you know duration of your song, it good.

I can suggest this trick:

Generate 5 second of video with static image. With good settings, good fps, slow encoding and so on. Video must be without audio.
Join this video with itself as many times, as you want, so duration will be a little more of your clip. This operation not requires reencoding, so can be performed very fast.
Split your clip to exact size as you need. (no re-encoding)
Join outro to file
Join your file with audio (without re-encoding for video, but audio you can modify based on your needs. If you want to upload it to youtube, you can not reencode audio, youtube does it itself)

This can be pretty fast.


Native SDI-output vs HDMI-SDI adapter for live stream

For amateur events, SDI may be overkill compared to using simple Component.  The key for long runs is to separate the various components so that they don't degrade.  There is a similar question here about long distance runs.

As for HDMI to SDI, there should be no quality loss compared to HDMI as both are digital formats supporting full uncompressed HD streams.  The quality of the converter may make a difference, but there is no technical reason that you couldn't have a flawless conversion between formats.  Both support both YCbCr 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, so the color spaces should be compatible either way.


Premiere CS4+ has a feature called Speech Search. I haven't used it personally, however, so I'm not sure of the quality. However, this site has a sample of video, and also a PDF of the transcription Speech Search provided (they describe it as "eh").


Bit rate reduction when converting 60fps footage into 30fps?

In theory, if the number of keyframes and their placement were about the same, as decided by the encoder, then yes, you can reduce the bitrate to half and retain the same quality. In practice, the encoder may be configured to place a keyframe every N seconds, in which case, you should use a bitrate a bit higher than half the original bitrate, say, around 55%.


Why does digital cinema focus on prime lenses?

You seem to have a serious misunderstanding of cinema lenses.  Primes are almost always cheaper to cover the same range than zoom lenses.  Comparing prime lenses that cost thousands of dollars a piece to a $1000 zoom lens is not a valid comparison.

I have a $2400 Canon 24-70 f/2.8 II.  It is the single best zoom lens Canon has ever made for under $50,000, yet it is only comparable in sharpness to the $300 - $400 f/1.4 lenses and barely exceeds the sharpness of the $100 f/1.8 primes.

Additionally, sharpness is only one factor to consider, you also have speed.  Long exposures aren't an option with video, so if you want good low light performance, you need a fast lens.  Prime lenses are much, much faster than zooms and thus provide much better low light performance while keeping shutter speeds quick enough to avoid too much motion blur.

Finally, even high end photography lenses are not parafocal, meaning that as you change the focal length, the focus shifts as well, making them undesirable for any kind of push or pull shot (though you can work around it by following focus carefully.)

The cinema lenses help with this problem (though they don't solve it entirely), however, the Canon prime lenses are $20,000 a piece while the zoom lenses are $55,000 a piece the last time I looked at their pricing.

So in short, primes are the cheaper and higher quality option on a budget.  You only really want zoom lenses when you need the flexibility on the fly or need to execute a pull or push shot.  Given the difficultly of pulling off a good pull or push with photography lenses, it isn't that common to bother with them unless the camera is also used for photography.


Creating a stream of the same object between two points in AE?

One possibility is to move a single object along a path (an asterisk in the example shown), using some position keyframes.

Then place an adjustment layer above the object, with an Echo effect on it.

Weirdly the delay in seconds needs to be a negative number, adjust to get the distance between the repeating objects that you need, then increase the number of echoes for as long as you need the effect to last.

It won't create a perfect loop, but you could do that afterwards by adjusting the timing of the echoes, and the start/end points of your comp as described in this answer.


How Do I Film A Rotating Object With White Background?


What does the `-context` parameter mean when using FFV1 in ffmpeg

The coder here refers to the process used for entropy coding the error residuals. The context size sets how many neighbouring residuals are considered in this process.

As to the relative benefits, have no particular experience here, but since this is a lossless process, the tradeoff will be between time, size and resource use. This latter question is better suited for https://dsp.stackexchange.com/


Premiere .prproj file ticks drift by 1/1000 compared to timecodes

First, let me say that I have no idea what Premiere is doing with its values or what a 'tick' means in their terms. I can only speak generally.

The video frame rate should match the timecode rate, but for 'drop frame' timecodes the relationship isn't perfectly linear. There are certain timecode numbers that never show up in the sequence -- the ones that are 'dropped'. So for such codes you can't just perform a simple computation, you have to consider the drops.

Over the course of 1 hour there are 108000 frames at 30fps, but drop frame code will produce only 107892 unique numbers. Both clocks will agree that "the time" is 1:00:00:00.

If you're just using timecodes to label each frame with a unique number then any scheme will do. If you need to match time of day, then you have to take the dropped numbers into account. What do you need to do with your values?


Automate After Effects assets rendering via script and external data

Have you got the latest version? After Effects CC 2018 is all about data driven animation.

Either way you can use external file to drive expressions (in older versions too) using the eval javascript function. I explain it on my blog thus:

If you have a file that contains something like this:

var vals = {"rotation":8, "scaleX":150, "scaleY":200};

you can use this expression, e.g. in the scale property:

$.evalFile("/path/to/test.js"); // or "c:\path\to\test.js"
[eval(vals).scaleX, eval(vals).scaleY]

the first line reads the file and treats it as source for the expression, so vals is defined as an object with rotation, scaleX and scaleY properties, which we access as the value for our scale property.

In your case you'd be wanting to use the expression for the Source Text property, so your data file might be something like

var vals = {"comp1": {line1:"Doctor MCDoctorface", line2:"Surgeon"},
            "comp2": {line1:"Skinner McHackett", line2:"Butcher}…
           }

So that's an array of arrays, where each comp has 2 values, line1 and line2. In your expression you'd loop through the array, until you found the member of the outer array whose name matched thisComp.name and then use the appropriate member for line 1 and 2.

To automate your rendering you can use the built-in command line renderer aerender (aka aerender.exe). With a bit of shell scripting you can automate the whole workflow.


Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12.0 - 21:9 / 2560x1080

YouTube does not natively support 21:9 aspect ratios.  If you upload a 2560x1080 video, it will scale the video down to 1920x1080 and letterbox it (put black bars top and bottom).  You are better off rendering 1920x1080 in your video editor and doing your own letterboxing.


To pipe to x264 and encode to AAC file in the same command, use

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -map v -f yuv4mpegpipe - -map a -c:a libfaac v.aac | x264 --demuxer y4m --crf 18 --output "v.mp4" -

Then you can mux it via

mp4box -add v.mp4 -add v.aac -new va.mp4


Setup for including commentators in live stream (including monitoring)

When I first started doing this, I always thought it was better to give them "clean" audio as well. I've since figured out that they want to hear themselves. Also they want to hear each other, so really you do not want a separate feed for them.

Depending on what you are broadcasting, you may not even need the sound from the event.

The only issue you're going to run in with a delay in the video to them commentating is if they are only using the video feed to do it, not the live event going on right there.


Is it possible to get a better quality by increase the frame rate, even if I don't have the raw footage?

If you are really talking about frame rate, then if you tried to invent new frames while maintaining the speed of playback, your quality level would go down (likely significantly).

If you didn't mind it looking like someone was watching a fast forwarded version of your video, increasing the frame rate should have some increase in quality as long as the frame rate isn't too high already due to the dithering impact over time resulting in better apparent quality (this is why still frames of video don't look as good as playing the video.)

If you actually meant bit rate (the amount of data being used to encode each frame), then no, all that would happen on the re-encode is that your existing problems would be preserved with less additional quality loss, but it is impossible to restore quality by increasing bitrate.  The information is already lost.  In fact, if you do highly lossy compression more than once, the quality loss starts growing exponentially as the random noise destroys the effectiveness of compression algorithms.

This is why renders are run from the highest available source so that the compression can make the best use of real information without having to waste bits on trying to compress noise.


You are best off to convert from a supported format (DVI, HDMI, maybe even DisplayPort) to SDI.  SDI cards are not designed for gaming, they are designed for workstations and video.  You aren't going to get a good quality gaming graphics card with SDI outputs.


I dropped my Panasonic HC-V180 Camera, and now camera doesn't work?

As far as what is technically wrong with your camera; the answer is it’s busted. You dropped it.

As far as repair, go to the Panasonic Website, navigate to support, cameras, repairs. Depending on your camera model, it will give you your options on repairing it.

Some companies use vendors, some charge a fee up front just to accept it to determine what needs to be repaired, then quote a price for parts and labor.

But the answer to where to get it fixed is on the Panasonic website. Youll have to mail it to a service center. Then decide if its worth repairing.


Projection mapping as an external display for a computer

Try Resolume Arena, at youtube you can get tons tutorials


How do I rescue a Final Cut 7 project that elicits "File Error: Wrong Type" when I try to open it in FCP?

After installing SetFile (instructions below), go to terminal and execute this command:
setfile -c "KeyG" -t "FCPF" INSERT_FILENAME_HERE

According to SetFile's man page, "-c" sets the creator and "-t" sets the type.
I found what the type and creator should be set to in Peppy's second post on this thread: http://hintsforums.macworld.com/archive/index.php/t-16983.html
SetFile can be installed as part of the Xcode Command Line Tools by opening Terminal and typing:
xcode-select --install

But if I recall that sometimes fails so you might also try downloading it from the Apple Developer site.


ffmpeg - resizing .mp4 changes the timebase (tbn & tbc)

Add -video_track_timescale X to manually set a timescale of X.
ffmpeg -i org_video_1280x720.mp4 -strict -2 -vf "scale=640:360" -video_track_timescale 90k new_video_640x360.mp4


How do I make a YouTube video with text-only?

You can create these easily in most video editing programs. For example, in iMovie (which is available on Apple devices), each of these is a Title.  "Title" is what iMovie calls a page of text.  So you create one Title for each thing you want to say on screen, and you add them to your video. Make sure the beginning of every Title fades in from black, and the ending of every title fades out to black.

Once you're done with that, you probably want to make sure you can read each of them in the time they're visible.  I typically leave Titles on screen for as long as it takes me to read them out loud (rather that just reading them silently in my mind).

When you've got the timing done, find music to add in the background. iMovie offers a lot of free, royalty-free music that you can use.  YouTube also offers you free music you can download and use at http://youtube.com/audiolibrary.


Surround sound for cinema feature film (Pricing of Dolby Surround)

If your plan is to deliver the end product as a DCP, you don't need any Dolby licensing or approval, you can just deliver the theater mix as a 6 discrete channels 5.1 mix in the DCP container.

Nevertheless, you will need an experienced sound mixer and appropriate dubbing theater. Budgeting the audio production and post-production will depend on many factors and the help of a sound person might be needed.


Adobe Media Encoder render videos with fixed file size

Well you can select every output option for each file, selecting the first and holding shift, then clicking the last one. That way, you can change the max filesize for each file. For example, when you have a max of 12gb and must encode 173 files, the max file-size must be roughly 12000/173 mb for each one. You'd only have to calculate that once, alternatively, if you don't even want to do that, you could jam all your timelines in a new one, which you could then limit in filesize. Wouldn't recommend that though, as you'd have to slice them after rendering to get seperate files again.


How do I specify baseline H264 profile using FFmbc?

Note: This is for recent FFmpeg, not FFmbc, which doesn't use the same option syntax (yet)

You need to use the -profile:v option, which has been introduced in FFmpeg 0.9 (afaik) and is now standard in 1.0.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -preset fast -profile:v baseline out.mov

Why? -profile was used (and prioritized) for AAC encoding. It's simply ambiguous, therefore you need the stream specfier :v.


Shutter Speed or frame rate we looking at when dealing with flickering issue?

The reason you get flicker in the video is that many conventional lights don't actually stay on all the time.  When running on AC power, the power actually "goes off" 100-120 times a second (depending on if you have 50hz or 60hz AC).  The way this oscillation impacts things differs by type of light from a slight dimming in incandescent to a color shift in some florescent lights to other odd behaviors in LEDs (depending on the DC conversion circuitry and how power is supplied to the LEDs).

When the light says it is flicker free up to speeds of 1/3000th of a second, it means that any flicker it has should balance out for frames as fast as 1/3000th of a second (meaning the flicker, if it has one, is faster than that so that it's guaranteed to give most of the exposure in any 1/3000th second window.)

As far as the shutter speed the camera uses, I'd assume it is whatever setting you choose.  At 1000fps shutters, the "shutter" is purely electronic and is just the interval between blanking and reading of the sensor.  As long as each frame has more than 1/3000th of a second to accumulate light, you should be ok.  If your camera gives shutter speeds in degrees, that means you'd want at least a 120 degree shutter at 1000fps.  If it measures it in fractions of a second, just make sure it is set for 1/3000 or higher.

You may need to adjust the exposure type for HFR shooting by putting the camera in HFR mode and then using the function menu to make it either manual or shutter priority exposure so that you can keep the frame rate fixed at a slow enough setting.


How To Make an Advanced Loading Bar in Sony Vegas

If the spark footage has an alpha channel, as is likely, then make sure, it is activated - right-click on the event, launch Properties, and check that Alpha Channel in the Media tab is set to Straight.

Now, animate the Spark's position in its Pan-Crop window to track the leading edge of the bar.

Offhand, I don't know if you parent a track, is the parent's Pan/Zoom inherited by the child tracks. Try it out. For Track Motion, it is, but that reduces the resolution of the footage pre-compositing to fit the project dimensions, so I avoid it.


Yes, there is a lot you are missing.

The 24-70 has substantially better transmittance (more light makes it through the lens), slightly better sharpness, significantly less chromatic aberration, 2 more diaphragm blades (better, more round bokeh), full time manual focus (can auto-focus at the start of a shot but still adjust after starting shooting).

Also, image stabilization can be very helpful when shooting video.  If you are on a tripod you shouldn't, but if you are shooting free-hand, it is a good thing unless you need quick, lag free panning (which would be a problem due to your rolling shutter on a 600d anyway).

While I don't recommend putting too much stock in the overall score that DXoMark produces, there individual discreet stat comparisons are generally reasonably good.  You can find the comparison for these two lenses on the 700D listed here.  (Sadly, they did not have data for the 600D specifically.)