Fujifilm X-T3 or BMPCC4k for musicvideos and feature film

As long as you can do the job right, there is no contest here.  BMPCC4k all the way.  The X-T3 is a nice mid-range photo camera, but it's a still camera first and a video camera second with all the limitations that entails.  The BMPCC4K is a very solid entry level digital cinema camera.  It lacks the more full featured functionality of it's bigger brothers like the BMPC or Ursa Mini, but it inherits from their roots.

Yes, the file sizes are large and you shouldn't underestimate the cost of data storage.  If you are planning on shooting a feature length film in 4K RAW, expect to be using around 10-17TB of footage (I am working through post on a six episode TV series shot in 4K on a mix of Ursa Mini and BMPC4k currently.)  What you get for that extra data is well worth the cost though, especially on a large project.  You get a degree of flexibility in your color that is unmatched in the DSLR/Mirrorless camera video shooting world, which will greatly assist in your color grade efforts in post.  Also make sure you get your hands on a color target to simplify fine tuning your color as you go and save yourself lots of time in post.

Do make sure you have sufficient lighting and know what you are doing when it comes to exposure though.  While the Black Magic line of digital cinema cameras is a great line, it does not hold your hand.  It expects you know what you are doing and doesn't do a great job of covering for your mistakes, even up in to the Ursa end of their product line.  They can produce amazing images if you use them right, but used incorrectly, you'll have far better results out of the DSLR/Mirrorless world.

I have experience shooting video professionally with both a Canon 5D Mark iii (with Magic Lantern installed) and most of the Black Magic line of digital cinema cameras.  There is no comparison between them when used properly.  There are a few special cases I'd choose my 5D over my Ursa Mini, but they are few and far between (mostly low light shooting where it actually has to look like low light.)

The one thing that might be a gotcha for you would be that if you do weddings, the Black Magic line is really not well suited for weddings compared to the X-T3, but for music videos and feature film production where you can control the light to fit your needs vs the other way around, Black Magic wins hands down by a significant margin.


To anyone who has similar questions, I think I solved it. Pay attention to voltage inputs to your devices. The blackmagic monitor I was using has a power input of 12v using the two-pin barrel connector. The barrel connecter d-tap cable I was using was unregulated therefore it was pushing out more than 12v. What I need is a l-series dummy battery connected to d-tap regulated down to 8v or so, which do exist. The only reason my entire system didn’t fry was because my battery was only about a quarter charged. If it was full, I would have sent almost 18v to the monitor, probably killing it and maybe some other stuff along the way. Check input voltages on everything you’re planning on connecting to your battery.


There's no need to work with individual files; you can put everything into one ffmpeg command. This is also much faster and will result in better quality.

Define your three inputs (intro image, outro image, and the image sequence), then create individual filters to draw the text, trim the intro/outro clips, and run the fade filters. Finally concat everything into one stream.

I have omitted some specific text options and image file names for the sake of brevity.

ffmpeg \
    -y \
    -loop 1 -framerate 24 -t 5 -i intro.png \
    -loop 1 -framerate 24 -t 5 -i outro.png \
    -start_number 1 -framerate 1 -i frame-%04d.png \
    -filter_complex " \
    [0:v] \
        drawtext=fontsize=500:fontcolor=white:text=foo:x=(w-text_w)/2:y=(h-text_h-line_h)/2,
        fade=in:0:48 \
    [intro]; \
    [1:v] \
        drawtext=fontsize=500:fontcolor=white:text=foo:x=(w-text_w)/2:y=(h-text_h-line_h)/2,
        fade=out:20:60 \
    [outro]; \
    [intro][2:v][outro] \
        concat=n=3:v=1:a=0
    [outv] \
    " \
    -map "[outv]" -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 16 out.mp4

The -t 5 sets the duration of the intro/outro directly.

You can replace the input -framerate parameters with the desired frame rates of the intro and outro, and also change it in order to set the slideshow speed. That is, if you want one image every second, use 1, if you want one every two seconds, use 0.5, etc.


The "solution" that you gave to your own question confuses me because it seems to be somewhat unrelated to your initial question.

What I understood from your question:

You have a Sequence of Images in 3 directories.
Make a movie from each Image Sequence.
Length is 1s each.
Overlay an image for each 1s movie.
concatenate the movies -> 3s movie
Loop 3 times -> 9s movie

I've added the fllowing to your code in your question:

Add -start_number 1 before every input
Add loop=loop=2:size=30 after concat

Notice loop=2 loops 3 times.

Furthermore it needs a size (the total number of frames to loop over).

This depends on how many images you had.

I had 10 images in the 3 directories. 10 x 3 = 30

ffmpeg \
-start_number 1 -framerate 12 \
-i "imgSequ1/img-%d.png" \
-start_number 1 -framerate 12 \
-i "imgSequ2/img-%d.png" \
-start_number 1 -framerate 12 \
-i "imgSequ3/img-%d.png" \
-i "overlay1.png" \
-i "overlay2.png" \
-i "overlay3.png" \
-filter_complex "\
[0:v]scale=600x900[scaled1];\
[1:v]scale=600x900[scaled2];\
[2:v]scale=600x900[scaled3];\
[scaled1][3:v]overlay[tmp1];\
[scaled2][4:v]overlay[tmp2];\
[scaled3][5:v]overlay[tmp3];\
[tmp1][tmp2][tmp3]concat=n=3,loop=loop=2:size=30[scaled]" \
-map "[scaled]" -r 10 -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 23 "result.mp4"


Good codec for embedded system video decoding

While I haven't implemented this myself I would suspect Google's VP9 (or VP10) to be a good option.

Considering Android phones use an ARM CPU, the codecs and libraries supporting it should be highly optimized as they've been around for almost 10 years, and Google has a reason to continue improving it.  Plus it's royalty free both to play and to encode.

See VP9 on Wikipedia.


ffmpeg concat introduces a/v sync problem

Run

ffmpeg -i titlefile.mp4 -vf setdar=16/9 -video_track_timescale 29971 -ac 1 newtitle.mp4

and then run concat with the new title video.

Modern containers like MP4 have Presentation TimeStamps, which are denominated with reference to a timebase. So, if the timebase value is 1/500 and a frame's PTS is 200, then that tells the video player to show that frame at 200*(1/500) = 0.4 seconds. The tbn values shown in the readouts are the reciprocals of this timebase. Now, the concat demuxer, due to a design oversight (or choice!?) does not rescale the PTS values so that all inputs have frames with PTS using the same timebase. Your two videos have different TBs, and so the long video after the concat is being sped up. The difference is perceptually invisible - except for the audio drift. That tbn value is for the video stream. Audio streams have their own timebase, related to the sample rate, which is the same here.


I want to run two 24/7 livestreams at once, both these streams will be on Youtube, is it possible?

I think that will depend on the platform. I don't think YouTube allows that, unless you use two accounts. Either way, the answer is to open two instances of the upstream program (or browser for web based). Your only technical limits are your up speed and processing. Naturally, some platforms specifically block it. If we're working with recorded material, not actual live streams, then any consumer grade laptop should work.


How can I convert a large file from MP4 to MOV?

If you prefer a graphical user interface you can use the free MediaCoder for Windows.

In the Video Tab choose Format H.264.

Audio Tab > Format LC-AAC.

Container Tab > Container MOV.


ffmpeg - Unable to find a suitable output format

...tune=fastdecode :bitrate=30000...
                 ^^^

There's a space that should not be there.


How do I speed up slower video framerates with ffmpeg and get full 240fps and no truncated videos?

Use

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf "setpts=N/240/TB" -r 240 -crf 18 output.mov

The only thing the setpts filter does is retime frames, but the designated frame rate of the stream is still its original framerate, whatever that is (25,30..). Use the fps filter to change that - the fps filter may also drop or duplicate frames, but not in this case. There's a bug in the fps filter which makes it ineffectual for this purpose. Use output -r.

The default encoder for MOV in FFmpeg is libx264. Its default ratecontrol mode is CRF. Lower values retain more of the original quality but produce larger files - 18 to 28 is a decent range. This has no effect on which frames are included in your output.


Since this is a still image, what you can do is use the "Rate Stretch" tool (keyboard shortcut: R) and stretch the image shorter. If the keyframes don't move with the Rate Stretch tool, you can always create a "Nested Sequence" of just the image (Premiere Pro's rough equivalent to an After Effects precomp) and then rate stretch your nested sequence. This will stretch both the image and the keyframes together.


How to force After Effects to interpret footage at a specific framerate?

To answer your edited question:

If your footage is 15fps and After Effects thinks it's 30fps, you need to tell After Effects to re-interpret the footage.
You do this as follows:

Open the Project panel (by default on the left of your screen)
Right click on your footage and go to Interpret Footage -> Main... as shown below.

In the screen that opens up input the desired framerate (15fps in your case) in the textbox next to Conform to framerate. Press OK.

Now After Effects should know that the footage is 15fps.


Intermediate Codec for Resolve to Adobe Mediaencoder or Premiere Pro

Cineform is fine, as is DNxHR and ProRes. There are advantages and disadvantages of each, but the final container format that you export to doesn't really affect that choice. When you edit the intermediate it is decoded into a raster that has whatever resolution and depth your editing software uses internally, but we can assume that it will be higher quality than the intermediate or final codec. Then that raster gets recompressed to the final export codec.

It is possible that there are interactions between using one codec for intermediate and one for final export but they are going to be subtle, and assuming the quality of the codecs are roughly the same, whether it's better to use the same codec in and out or mix it up, is anyone's guess.

Another option is to change your workflow. There's a reason why colour grading was usually done last. Here's a suggested workflow:

Make a "one-light" grade of your raw footage—where you correct any obvious problems such as white balance and exposure, and apply any necessary LUTs if your camera uses a profile that needs correction.  It's called "one light" because you don't grade every shot, you just set a ballpark grade for each scene and apply it to everything. This shouldn't take too much of your time, you just want the footage to be usable for your edit.
Now you export the output to Premiere, using an intermediate codec and importantly exporting as individual clips with the same file name as the original (but in a different location, obviously). This intermediate doesn't have to be at the highest settings, e.g. you can use 8-bit instead of 10 or 12 bit. This speeds up the edit process, because the files will be smaller, so it will be more responsive, with less rendering time etc.
Next do your cutting, lock off your pictures and export the timeline as XML. You can move or delete your intermediate files now, so that when you go back to resolve to do the grade you link back to your camera originals, at full quality. Now you do the proper grade, where you create the look you want, balance between shots, do any secondary grading, etc.. This way you get the best possible quality, without spending time grading footage that you end up not using in the edit.


Auto-Orient to Camera creates unwanted Z orientation

I don’t know why it’s happening, but could you precomp each icon, and correct the rotation inside each precomp?


What is this "light trail" effect called - and how can I reproduce it today?

I don't know if it has an official name but could be classed as "ringing". Tube cameras would do it if you had any bright lights in the scene. 70's music videos are full of it.

You don't mention any software, so I'll give a platform agnostic solution. This would probably be easier in a node based workflow, but I've included the AE names for things because it's what I know best.

You could use a threshold effect ("extract" would probably work in After Effects) to grab just the bright parts of the image, and feed that into a delay ("echo" in After effects) then adjust the colour before compositing it back on to the original layer, probably using an additive compositing mode ("add" or "screen" maybe in AE).


Cameras battery dies. What happens to video?

Let's say the battery dies or you take it out while recording what would happen to the video?

Why can't you try it? Just start video recording and remove battery.

As I can see, you have camera using DV tape, so you will nothing lose of the recorded data.

If you have DVD camera, sdcard or HDD, things get worse, as you must "finalize" recording. In case power loss with HDD/sdcard, you can lost few last seconds/minutes or whole file. Some cameras writes temporary .dat files, which can not be played. But it can be repaired. Sometimes it's no easy, but it's possible to get back your data. I can't say anything about DVD, as I not expert in this area. So, just do experiment!


How can I crop an undistorted region from a wide angle gopro capture?

Pretty much any modern NLE will allow you to do this, with varying levels of difficulty. For example, in Davinci Resolve you could do most of this in the free version, except for removing the fisheye effect which is I believe only available in the Studio version.


How to avoid uploaded video being re-encode by Facebook

You can't avoid the re-encode. They do this to be sure that every video they serve is in a standardized format, resolution and bitrate. It would be inefficient and risky to vet all diverse set of incoming files to check if they meet all their parameters, some of which are not easily available to set or tweak at the user's end.


Using 2 lights with softbox would be great for your background.
The goal here is to get the background lit equally on all sides.
You can use the zebra on your camera to help achieve this.
Avoid shining your background lights onto your subject. That's what your key and fill are for.
Make sure you keep enough distance between your subject and the background. This ensures you have little/no shadows on your green screen. Also, it helps to remove the green spill bouncing back from your background onto your subject.
Please spend twice as much energy on lighting your subject. People tend to spend more time and energy on the part of the image that they will throw away (green screen) and forget about the part that they will use in their film.
Keylight is a difficult decision and might be different for each project. For a regular MC/CU another light with softbox would be great!
Those reflectors will work great as fill light. Depending on what Keylight you chose. They might be less optimal when using certain LED sources. In that case you might need a second LED as a fill.
We kind of skipped the backlight of you subject. Sure, this is optional. But it could really help your footage to the next level.

Good Luck,


FFMPEG single input file, crop to multiple streams, then overlay back into one output file?

Use

ffmpeg -ss %startTime% -t %duration% -i %input% -filter_complex "[0:v]split=2[c1][c2];[c1]crop=%size%:%position%[c1];[c2]crop=200:110:6558:106[c2];[c1][c2]overlay=%pixFrmLeft%:%pixFrmTop%" {your encoding options} %input%_Converted.mp4

Note that -framerate 8 is an input option for certain file formats. For an output at 8 fps, use -r 8.


Easiest workflow to get better audio when using a DSLR

Imagine using a point-and-shoot camera where you point the camera at something but instead of actually looking through the viewfinder, you only pay attention to whether or not you see an exposure warning light.  You don't validate focus.  You don't validate composition.  You only validate that the sensor is receiving signal not blocked by the lens cap.  That is kinda how people treat audio, whether using internal microphones or shotguns strapped on to their cameras.  When they listen, rather than just looking at the meters, they are still mostly validating that signal is passing through the microphone.

What you can learn by listening to the microphone as carefully as you might look at framing, composition, balance, focus, perspective, etc., is that many audio environments are a mess.  Many audio environments mess up sounds that can only be recognized/understood because we have a really good stereo imaging system (our ears) and a very powerful noise rejection / signal enhancement system (our brain).  Randomly locating a microphone in such an environment can sufficiently compromise the signal that our ears and our brain cannot properly (or will not happily) decode it.  The solution to that problem is to place the microphone where it is not overwhelmed with flutter echo, modal resonances and cancellations, etc.  Usually, that means placing the microphone 3x closer to the source than to any source of confusion, which means keeping it within 6"-36" of the source source (depending on microphone type, source type, room behavior, etc).  The reason that pro sound guys boom their mics is because there is absolutely no substitute for putting the microphone in the right place.  The reason they use $1000 microphones is because if you are going to go to the trouble of getting good sound, you might as well get excellent sound.

There is essentially no microphone you can buy and attach to your camera that will give you good sound in a variety of circumstances.  There are many mics you can buy and attach to your camera that will give you good sound in one particular circumstance: your talent is approximately 2' in front of the camera, and there's no terrible acoustically reflective surface too close to either the talent or the camera.

DSLRs often add insult to injury by also having poor quality preamps that compromise both good and poor microphone outputs.  But the most important factor in audio quality is location, then an appropriate microphone type (omni, cardiod, super-cardiod, figure-8, etc) for the location, then the quality of implementation of that microphone, then the quality of implementation of the preamp and finally the digital recording format.


Premiere Cut Video but Export File Size Bloats

Match sequence settings confuses a lot of people. It doesn't mean the output will match the bitrate of your source files—after all you could use any number of source files in a sequence with all sorts of bitrates. Match sequence means the output will have the same frame size, fps, PAR and so on as the sequence.

Basically, if you want to get your output below a certain size you have to wind down the video bitrate, reducing the quality until it produces the desired result (you can use a bit of maths to get in the ballpark: calculate (the desired size in Mbits) / (length in seconds) and you'll have the Mbits per second budget you need to work towards.


Video in Sony Vegas flickers and is full of black frames

While I wasn't able to fix the problem, I was able to go around it, by converting my input file into xvid.

I don't have any black frames anymore, but the video freezes for a few seconds at some point.

Since I was recording and playing the game on the same PC, I'm guessing that there's been a problem at some point and fraps had to drop the framerate.

In any case, I suspect some other bug in my video editing setup, since Vegas was adding black frames in other parts of the video, that play fine once converted to xvid.


Is is possible to trim portions of clips in FCPX to save disk space?

It depends on your method of encoding, but with many formats, you can not simply cut a clip at a point of your choice without running in to other issues related to how the file is stored.  It might be possible to do it within a few seconds of the desired point, but it's not frequently done in an editing application itself since that isn't the point of an editing application.

What you want to look for is an application that is capable of splitting the file format you are working with.  Quicktime itself can do this for at least some MOV formats.  Once you have split the file in two, you can delete the unnecessary portion and import the part you want to use.


FourCCs are Microsoft's ID tags for streams e.g. avc1 for H.264/AVC or mp4a for an AAC audio stream. The container doesn't really matter.

If you want to change the FourCC, use ffmpeg like so

ffmpeg -i input.mov -strict -2 -c copy -vtag ABCD new.mov

where ABCD is your new 4CC/tag.

You current file already shows avc1 for the video stream, which is default and expected.


Superimposing 2d photoshop cartoon into video footage

You will need to create 2 layers, one with the foreground person and one with the background, with the animation in between. Since you only have the one layer, you need to duplicate it, and send one copy to the front. You then have to remove everything except the foreground from the front copy.

How you do this will depend on your footage. I'm assuming you haven't shot against a green screen, so just keying out the foreground character (using something like Keylight) isn't going to work, unless you're lucky enough that the character happens to be standing in front of a well-lit object of a flat contrasting colour. In that case you'll have to rotoscope.

So, welcome to the world of rotoscoping, roto to its friends, except it doesn't have friends because it sucks. Basically rotoscoping means animated tracing of live footage. Disney pioneered it for their early hand drawn animation, but today it mostly means manually creating an animated matte.

If you have AE CS5+ you'll have the roto brush tool, which is like the magic wand from Photoshop, but it follows movement over time. Often it can do the heavy lifting and get you a nice clean foreground and background plate. Here's a link for the CS6 version, and they've given it some more love for CC with it's own refine edge tool. If you watch the Adobe videos it looks like a walk in the park, but unfortunately it doesn't always work like it says on the can. If your foreground and background are similar in colour, or are very detailed or grainy using roto brush might actually take longer than doing it by hand, because the matte will start to wander and it can be hard to convince it to go where you want it to go.

So your plan C is doing it by hand, which is a whole bunch of fun. My advice: get comfortable. I always use a graphics tablet when I'm doing roto, at least make sure you've got a good mouse, and a well set up workstation. Get some music playing or listen to a podcast or the radio. This may help stop you going insane. Now the important stuff is organised it's time to get to work.

First, play through the action. Try to analyse the movement, breaking it down into separate parts. If the character is walking for example, you might want a separate mask for each leg, to avoid having to create and destroy masks and handles as the legs cross over each other. The same for arms and hands.

Then you need to start drawing your masks. Do NOT start tracing frame by frame, that way is the short road to pain. Draw the mask around the foreground element you're starting with at the start of the shot, and then jump to the end of the shot and move all the points in the mask so that they are match up to where they were at the beginning - for example if there's a point on the end of the character's nose n the first frame, try and put the same point on the end of the characters nose in the last shot. Wait - you did set a keyframe for that first mask didn't you? I forget at least once every roto session.

Ok so if you play the shot back now you'll see that the mask starts out right, gets progressively wrong, and then goes back to being right. Find the point at which it is the most wrong and correct it, creating a new keyframe. Sometimes you'll need to create new mask handles, don't worry, AE interpolates them well, though deleting handles can be problematic.

Now play between your first and second keyframe, find where the mask is furthest out of whack, stop and add a keyframe there, and the same for the section between the second keyframe and last keyframe. And repeat, putting in-between keyframes where the mask is most out of line. You'll find that as you progress the mask will start getting closer and closer to where it needs to be, even on the in-between bits, until you're correcting very small errors. You may well have to keyframe every frame, depending on the shot, but doing it this way will mean that the computer is doing most of the work for you, compared to starting at the beginning and working frame by frame.

Remember that with AE if there is a single handle that has to be tweaked then it will create a new keyframe for the whole mask. So make sure the whole mask is right each time you make  anew keyframe. If you just concentrate on one bit and then realise after you've set keyframes for your whole shot that one handle is a couple of pixels off you'll have to edit each one of them again.

Another tip is to work in the layer window rather than the comp window. this will speed up the rendering, and avoid accidental clicks on other layers. I usually turn off the mask rendering (in the view options at the bottom of the layer window) because it lets me see what's happening outside the mask as well as speeding up display.


Trapcode's Sound Keys will do the job:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/trapcode-sound-keys/

From the promotional text:

  Now it's easy to synchronize motion and sound in After Effects. With
  Trapcode Sound Keys, your audio-intensive animations no longer require
  extensive keyframing. Visually select parts of an audio track and
  convert them into keyframes, syncing footage with audio using
  amplitude or frequency ranges. Sound Keys is applied as a regular VFX
  effect, so you can save its settings with your project, generate
  keyframes into output parameters, and link keyframes to expressions.
  The possibilities are huge, just like the beat.

By using the generated key frames you can hook them up to almost any effect or behavior that you want.

A basic example of using this plugin to drive a few "strobes":


Why must a sample rate by at least twice a frequency in order to reproduce that frequency accurately?

That's Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. Think about it in the other way: imagine you are given a set of samples (the black dots in the image).

The most intuitive way to recover the original analog signal would be by joining these samples. But you can easily notice that there is not a unique way of joining them. In fact, there are infinite possible signals that would contain the whole set of samples. Obviously, given the sample set, you would join them the easiest way, i.e. the blue signal.

Now, what about sampling? In the image you also have a red signal (which frequency is 1 Hz) that has been sampled too slowly, resulting in the black dot sample set. To have a clue about the real signal, we should have sampled it at, at least, 2 Hz. That way, we also would have samples (dots) at 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, etc seconds. And, as you can draw in Paint, the easiest path to join all the samples would be, again, the red signal. So we would have recovered our original signal successfully.


Use

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf yadif,format=yuv420p -force_key_frames expr:gte(t\,n_forced/2) -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -bf 2 -c:a aac -q:a 1 -ac 2 -ar 48000 -use_editlist 0 -movflags +faststart out.mp4

-vf specifies video filters

yadif will deinterlace videos if they're interlaced.

format=yuv420p will produce pixel format with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.

-force_key_frames expr:gte(t\,n_forced/2) will place keyframes every half-second, so that will be the GOP size.

-c:v libx264 will use the x264 encoder to produce a H264 video stream.

-crf 18 will produce a visually lossless file. Better than setting  a bitrate manually.

-bf 2 will limit consecutive B-frames to 2

-c:a aac will use the native encoder to produce an AAC audio stream.

-q:a 1 sets the highest quality for the audio. Better than setting  a bitrate manually.

-ac 2 rematrixes audio to stereo.

-ar 48000 resamples audio to 48000 Hz.

-use_editlist 0 avoids writing edit lists.

-movflags +faststart places moov atom/box at front of the output file.


What is the Marketshare of the big three video editing (NLE) software packages?

This kind of data is actually remarkably hard to come by.  There are a few industry reports available for thousands of dollars, but the best free resource I could find when I was searching was an informal poll that Dave Dugdale did.  It was an imperfect test by his own admission because it allowed both voting up and voting down, but it gives at least some kind of an idea of the rough market share.


Audio level goes up and down in rendered output [After Effects]

Have you export the audio only from audition & does it have the problem then ?

Does the audio have a compressor on it? You could use one to keep the levels consistent.

Are you sending from AE to encoder with the sound file ? Try using premier as a middle man. Bring the AE sequence & Audition project into premier and export from there. Could be that AE is ignoring your mix because it’s AE. Alternatively you could export direct from AE the vision and the audio only from audition and stick the two together in premier.


It's difficult to give advice on how to achieve this effect without knowing what knowledge you have in animation and motion graphics. In on itself, this is a very easy animation which will take up to 5 to 6 hours of work.

Create the letters individually in a compositing program like After Effects or Nuke
(optional) make the letters emit particles to make it look like actual embers, using something like trapcode particular and setting the emitter type to layer, then selecting the text layer.
Use glow, turbulent displacement, displace and fractal noise to your liking until you're happy with the result.
Turn the layers into 3D-Layers so you can rotate and move them on each axis.
Animate them using keyframes so they move according to your needs.

The hardest part in getting these things right is the lighting on the set. If you're filming in a dark area, these letters would emit a lot of light, which you would see on other actors and the environment. Try lighting the set accordingly while shooting, otherwise you would have to resort to lighting up the footage in post, which will not look as good as doing it for real.


Press the triangle marked "Add" next to the Contents of your shape layer.
Add a "trim path"
Add a keyframe to the "End" parameter of 0%.
Move along your timeline.
Add another keyframe of 100%.

Your path will draw on.
You probably don't want to fill it until it is drawn.


How to fully optimize RAM Disks in Adobe Premiere CC 2017

I would think that the codec of your proxies could be the issue.
H264 is very cpu intensive and this could be your bottle neck.
Switching to QT ProRes Proxy would be my first try.

A couple of links to help you out.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2287035
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/994398


How to create the text effects in short videos like this

You will be able to create something similar to this with iMovie on your Mac.
You will simply gather all of the video clips you want to use, the music you want, and then plan out your text (in a storyboard if it's easier). Make sure your video and music is licensed for you to use (not stolen from someone else or used without permission).

You can find lots of resources for stock videos, like this.
You can find lots of stock music here.
You can research about lower thirds for the text effects at the bottom.

Of course, there are lots of other ways to achieve this, and tonnes of resources. But this is where you can start to achieve something like the video you provided.


What is the best arrangement of lights to create a warm atmosphere in a small room?

To get a soft look, you can use:

lights pointed at the walls and ceiling, to reflect and diffuse the light
lights with a large surface area, like fluorescent tubes (which I use) or standard movie lights with big diffusers in front of them
lots of little lights, though these may create lots of little shadows

You'll still want at least a key light and a fill light -- that is, one light source that is the primary light source for your subjects, and another light source to one side that emphasizes that side of each actor (or object).

You can also add "warmth" in post production by color-correcting towards red or orange.


You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, to do this:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "select=not(mod(n\,30)),setpts=N/FRAME_RATE/TB" -r 30 out.mp4

-vf specifies a video filterchain i.e. a sequence of filters applied to a single input.

select=not(mod(n\,30)) - this filter keeps only each 30th frame from the source.

FFmpeg works primarily within the framework of time-based containers, such as a video, which is a series of images shown in a cycle through time. The PTS is the presentation timestamp of a frame i.e. when the player should present a frame. Due to how ffmpeg works, setpts filter is needed in this case to ensure that no frames are duplicated or dropped other than what the select filter specifies.

-r 30 is the framerate of the output. To set it to the rate of the source, you can either skip this parameter or set it manually i.e. -r 60 for a 60 fps source.


Can't figure out which projector fits these features

I would look on Ebay and Craigslist since your requirements would be met by most projectors produced in the last 10+ years. Find one that suits you, and invest in a spare bulb (or two) while you're at it, since you might be buying a used item.

Also, check out Slickdeals for clearance items, such as this BenQ DLP projector that meets your requirements: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3634482


Audio randomly cuts out for remainder of clip - Adobe Premier Elements 11

I'm not that familiar with Premiere Elements, however in Premiere Pro, there is a conforming process during which a special preview video is made that can be used for more efficient editing.  I wonder if perhaps either the conforming has not finished yet or if perhaps you are having a problem with the conforming.

Does it stop at roughly the same time on all clips?  Is the spot that it stops consistent?  How high is CPU usage and memory usage during the drop outs?

If the spot that it stops isn't consistent within a particular clip, then it is highly likely that it is an artifact of the conforming progressing.  If it is roughly the same spot across multiple clips, there may be some other kind of software or buffering issue going on that causes it to error or crash.  Also, if CPU or memory usage is high, it may support being a buffering issue where your system simply can't keep up with the playback.

This is also probably something that will be hard to troubleshoot over the Internet, so it might be worth contacting Adobe to see if they have any ideas as well.  It certainly doesn't sound like typical behavior.


I found the free (and paid) tutorials at Color Grading Central very helpful.  Using a dedicated color grading application is (in my opinion) usually the way to go.  The basic version of Davinci Resolve is free, incredibly powerful, and offers a lot more control than grading in After Effects with plugins, in my experience.

For more on the theory of color grading, the Tao of Color Grading is a useful video on vimeo, (although the lighting is terrible). (part two is here).


How to deal with Youtube making videos 'pinkish'?

One way you could deal with this is to try some tests where you move the color of the video towards green until you get something that looks right when uploaded. (You don't say which editor you're using, but you could use the color board in FCPX or use DaVinci Resolve Lite, or whatever works for your setup.) Green is going to be the opposite of pink on the color wheel. You might be able to figure out the right color transform by taking a screenshot of the pinkish video and seeing if you can correct that. Then apply that same correction to some footage before uploading it and see what happens.


Automatically scale video on import to sequence resolution

You can achieve this by the using Default Media Scaling preference, which takes effect when you subsequently import media and/or add to the timeline.

Edit > Preferences > Media > Default Media Scaling and choose "None", "Scale to Frame size" or "Set to Frame size"

Scale to Frame size: Will resize the media clip virtually at import - such that when added to the timeline at 100% it fits the frame.

Set to Frame size: Will set the media scaling dynamically using the effects control, such that at 50% (in your example) it fits the frame. Importantly - you can then rescale the media up on the timeline without loosing the original quality.

You can also use Clip > Video Options > Scale/Set ... (with clips selected in the Media Library or Timeline) to rescale clips in the manner stated above.


Is there any similar function of photoshop " Actions .atn" in adobe after effect?

There is no Action function in Adobe After Effects. You would have to write a script to do the sequence for you.

I'm not versed enough to tell you if there's a Plugin or not.


Read American Cinematographer.
Check out this famous series of “master classes” KODAK Cinematography
Master Class. In this previously linked excerpt, it's John Seale who takes a bunch of students
through a scene from the film “Dead Poet Society”. And here you have
other bits from the same series.

What you get is professional
film cinematographers working on set or in a studio with
students to solve lighting issues. It may be too advanced for you (I
don't know what you know), but this is the sort of work that happens
all the time on sets ... although only in the head of the DPs (or in
pre-production meetings when the script, the characters
and their motivation are discussed).

And, I just found out, after a quick search, that the series is still ongoing!. Do yourself a huge favor and start watching it -- the old and the recent stuff.
Kodak, the old film stock company, still has some good stuff for students and budding cinematographers available on their website. Check this page out: it's a bunch of informative PDF etc. on cinematography, like how to read a slate, workflow, filters, etc. There's a lot it seems.
Work on film sets, and see how they light things. Ask questions. Take
notes. And then shoot your own stuff (short documentaries, short films), with/about your friends, family,
whatever. Take photos, digital and traditional, always on manual (learn to use light-meters).
Shoot black and white and then color, which is harder.
Also, it's not (ever) about the gear you use, but about your eye,
your taste, understanding color and light and framing in relations to scripts
(and experience on sets).
Watch the best lit films ever made, the small ones and the big ones
(mainly the small ones 'cause they have no budget to light things).
Look at classical paintings and ask yourself: where's the light
coming from? Why is it lighting this part of the frame and not this?
What is it saying? What's the story?
Finally, keep at it. Make connections. Show up early and leave late.
Make connections. Smile and work hard. Keep at it. Becoming part of a community of filmmakers is absolutely vital. If one doesn't exist where you live, create it.

And I say all this with an MFA degree from one of the best film schools in the US.


To use newlines in the built-in Subtitle filter, you must specify the lsp (linespacing) argument:
subtitle("First line\nNext line\nLast line", lsp=12)

See the Subtitle wiki page for more info on the argument.


Warp stabilizer in Premiere Pro cuts off most of the image

The root of the issue might be your footage. If you have high amplitude shakes in your video the stabilizer will try to stabilize those as well. That can result in such issues.
Try different settings, the default values don't work with every type of camera motion.


Use

ffmpeg -i shorter.mp4 -i longer.mp4 -filter_complex
 "[0]trim=0:3.5,drawbox=c=black[delay];[delay][0]concat[left];
  [left][1]hstack[v]"
 -map "[v]" -map 1:a -c:a copy out.mp4

where 3.5 should be replaced with the delayed start time (in seconds) of the shorter video.


Shot lists are fairly easy to write. You can draw up your own grid or download a template online. The simplest way is to have four columns: shot number, shot type, action, notes. However you can customise a shot list to include whatever you think is necessary to illustrate your vision.
Here is a template I use for simple shoots:

Notice that they are written in an order that would be logical to shoot on the day. They are not listed in order of how they will play out in the story.
Hope that helps :)


HitFilm 2017: What's the difference between project video settings and export video settings?

Project settings determine the way your source media will be interpreted (played/processed/pre-rendered) by your NLE application.

Export settings determine the format of the file that you are going to output once the edit is finished.

For example:

  You shoot video on a Panasonic HVX camera in Apple ProRes 422 codec
  (HQ). Then you import the clips into your project. The project codec
  will be Apple ProRes 422 (HQ).

  You plan to publish the video on youtube. There is no practical sense
  in keeping the quality as high as Apple ProRes for web delivery, so
  you choose to compress the resulting video into H.264 codec inside an
  MP4 container (listed as Youtube 1080pHD) to make it easier to upload,
  without significantly sacrificing its quality.


Windows software to turn a 3gp video on its side before upload?

You could use Windows Live Movie Maker, which is free with Windows Live Essentials.  Here is a tutorial on how to do it.

It looks like Windows Movie Maker doesn't have native support for the 3GP format, but you should be able to download a CODEC for it.

For Mac users, iMovie is the equivalent.


Handling Frame Rate for Movies with Slow Motion

The reason we try to shoot at our target frame rate is because if we need to adjust the frame rate, the computer has to invent new frames to go in between our existing frames.  This can result in artifacts in the image and generally reduces the quality.

You are correct that 24fps is the standard for theater and also correct that you need to shoot a faster frame rate for slow motion.  In general, the best way to deal with a shot like the one you are talking about is to shoot at a multiple of the frame rate you want for normal action.  If you shoot at 48 or 72 fps, then the computer doesn't have to invent any new frames to reduce to 24fps, it can just drop every other or two out of every 3 frames.

This is why you see a lot of 240hz TVs these days.  There isn't actually any content that works at that refresh rate, but 240hz TVs can properly display either 24 frames per second, 30 frames per second or 60 frames per second since they all evenly divide.  The same thing applies when shooting video.

Unfortunately, most consumer cameras, and even some professional ones, don't support multiples of 24 for their high frame rate options.  There are some cameras, particularly some of those made by Lumix, that support 240 fps video, but the quality level is pretty highly reduced when shooting at that rate.  120 fps would also work.

Alternately, you could give up on the 24fps and shoot 30fps instead.  30fps isn't the end of the world and there are existing pulldown options for converting to 24fps.  30fps was (roughly) the NTSC video standard and still works just fine if your main target will be playback on computer screens or TVs that support multiples of 30fps playback.  This is a nice even multiple of 60fps.

One final option to consider is interpolated slow motion.  Since many cameras reduce the video quality available at high FPS, the best result may be to shoot at a lower frame rate and have the slow motion interpolated from the frames you capture.  The results for this technique also vary greatly based on how good your software is, but there are several very good tools out there.  Twixtor is generally the best, but it is also expensive.  After Effects also includes TimeWarp which does a decent job.  This may be the best option for maintaining both maximum quality and minimal cost unless you have a pretty significant budget to work with or have other reasons to need to limit yourself to 720p or lower quality.

The ideal is to shoot the frame rate you need for the shot. Do your homework, actually think through the flow of your film.  Shoot the slow motion shots by themselves and use the correct frame rate for each shot.  If you need to do slow motion mid-shot for some inexplicable reason, decide based on what will cause the least harm.  If most of the shot is slow motion, go with the higher frame rate and interpolate to 24, if most of the shot is normal speed, shoot 24 and interpolate for the slow motion.  This should only be a last resort though! Shoot distinct shots at distinct speeds and use editing to blend them together properly.  That's the entire point of editing.


How to trim a video with frame precision using ffmpeg?

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how video works.  Video is composed of frames.  You can't have millisecond precision because video doesn't have millisecond precision.  If there are 30 frames per second in the video, you can only stop after one of those frames.  That means your options are only every 1/30th of a second roughly.
If the format is group of pictures based it may be limited when it can end as well depending on the formats ability to end a group of pictures early. (A group of pictures is used in formats where some frames are stored as changes from other related frames rather than full images.)

What are you trying to accomplish that you need this precision for?  Perhaps there may be an alternate way to accomplish your goal.


How does one "convey" a news article in a movie?

If you don't need the interview to be conveyed verbatim, you can have two characters discussing (or arguing about) points from the article.

The people discussing the article could even be the hero and heroine, without having them read it aloud verbatim. "Did you really say that?" "I think the author took that out of context.  What I meant was ______."


Youtube-like video stabilization on Linux

To stabilize your video you can use the ffmpeg command line tool.
The easy way: one pass using deshake filter
ffmpeg -i shaky-input.mp4 -vf deshake stabilized-output.mp4

The deshake filter has also some optional settings.
The better way: two passes using vidstab filters
For better results you can try the two-step process using ffmpeg's vidstabdetect and vidstabtransform filters: (Thanks @Mulvya)
ffmpeg -i shaky-input.mp4 -vf vidstabdetect=shakiness=5:show=1 dummy.mp4

This will output a transforms.trf that will be read by the second pass:
ffmpeg -i shaky-input.mp4 -vf vidstabtransform,unsharp=5:5:0.8:3:3:0.4 stabilized-output.mp4

The vidstab filters documentation explains all the configuration options.


The issue you are seeing is a limitation of your video file format.  In order to get such high levels of compression, modern video is encoded such that only some frames are fully described.  The remaining frames are described by how they differ from those frames coming before or after them.  The frames of video that are based on a given full frame are called a GOP or group of pictures.

In many file formats, it is not possible to setup the video to start or end on a point that is not the beginning or end of a group of pictures without re-encoding which would result in quality loss.  What your file splitter/joiner is likely doing is grabbing the nearest start/end of a group of pictures that includes the part of the video you wanted and starting/ending there.  If the GOP is large, then this could potentially be some amount of time away from where you actually tried to make your cut.

You could use a transcoder to re-encode the footage, but this would result in a loss of detail since you would have an additional generation of compression loss.  You could also possibly try moving it to a container that allows arbitrary start and end points when playing back (basically just skips the start and end of the GOP on playback) but that would depend on the video players you use supporting the feature and having the actual encoding in a codec that is supported by such a container format.


stream with ffserver without encode-decode

FFmpeg, by default, uses ffserver's conf file to set encoding parameters.
Add -override_ffserver to the ffmpeg command to prevent that.


Does some macro exist for creating this text effect?

It's a Kinetic Typography piece. Search for templates on VideoHive, there are also plugins for AE that allow for easier generation of KT setups.

It's timeconsuming, search vimeo for some great samples: Kinetic Typography.

One of my all time favorites still to this day - produced years ago:  https://vimeo.com/17419652    The guy who did this spent months on it. But he did it all himself, great work.


This can happen if the GOP structure is unclosed at the end of the video. If you can assure that your video ends with an I frame, and that the audio is exactly the same length as the video, you stand a much better chance of getting a smooth recycle. Sorry, I don't know how to force that using ffmpeg.


Some general advice on motion graphics / rolling text, i dont know KDEnlive so i dont know how to achieve that in your specific software.

Make scrolling speed fit your framerate. If your framerate is 25fps, the text should scroll at 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 etc. pixels per frame.
If you are using a progressive scan playback device like a projector or a computer screen, make sure your project is set to be in progressive and not interlaced. If necessary, de-interlace video that was shot interlaced before using it in the project.
Never use fonts or graphics that have lines which are only 1px, if you need to do that, duplicate the layer and put a copy of the graphics with a very soft gaussian blur (1 or 2px blur) in the background.
Put a soft shadow around the font, also very subtle, 1 or 2px dissolved shadow.


Effective working at audio/video editing sessions (avoid fatigue making steady progress)

OK, I'll have a go. Here's my own answer (and advise I should take for myself - which I actually did do to some extent):

Avoid procrastination. Start small. Start with doing something. Don't hold up too high expectations to put yourself off. Good ideas here: http://zenhabits.net/dead-simple-guide-to-beating-procrastination/ (I succeed a bit with this advice, BTW I have no affiliation to zenhabits)
Regularly deliver draft work in a complete state to the customer. This rewards you. It gives them confidence that this is being done. It gives them opportunity to give feedback during the process (to avoid unnecessay work or deviation or disappointment). It gives them something to do on in the event you are delayed later, due to illness or other commitments.
Take breaks.
Track progress to help predict how long the remainder may take.

I'd welcome anyone else's input. I'm really answering here because no-one else has yet. I'd welcome some enlightenment from your own experiences.


I have video files recorded on an unknown digital camera, that I need to play through a Samsung HMX-F90 digital camcorder

... why? Can't you view the files on a computer?

Copying your older files to a camcorder to view them is a very strange idea and it will most likely not work, because camcorders aren't built to do that. A camcorder (or really, any digital camera) is not like a computer that reads a card, shows you all folders and files and allows you to watch them. Most cameras have a standard path where they store their files that can't be changed. Many cameras also create accompanying files that hold metadata and the camera uses those to create the file overview in their media browser. If those files are deleted (or don't exist in the first place), the camera might not know that the files are present at all. Also, the camera will most likely only be able to read files that use exactly the same format and codec (and maybe other things, like certain metadata tags), so even if you converted your files they probably wouldn't match the output format of the camera.

  I have converted the video files to H.264 encoding and the resolution matches those recorded by the F90 camera.

That is also a bad idea, as reencoding the files will reduce their quality and is totally unnecessary just to view the files.

tl;dr: Use the appropriate tool for the appropriate task. I.e. use a camera to record videos, and use a computer to watch them.

Edit: How to do it the hard way

If for some reason you absolutely have to do it in this convoluted way, you will have to find out how the camera records and stores videos on the memory cards. Three steps/considerations for you to make your camera recognise your videos:

Correct location. All cameras store videos in a specific directory on the memory card. For example, my Canon EOS 80D stores all photos on /DCIM/100CANON/ (it creates multiple folders with incremential numbers if necessary). Your camera might allow you to change this directory (or at least define a subdirectory) in the settings. This will also allow you to find out what the default directory is. If there is no such setting in the menu, check your camera's manual for that info.
Correct format & codec. If you have put your files in the correct folder and the camera doesn't show them, they might be in a format that the camera doesn't recognise. You said you converted your videos to H.264, but have you used the correct container format and audio codec as well? (More information on that in my answer here.) I suggest you record a test video with the camera and check it's metadata and file parameters using MediaInfo, then use that info to convert your video files to exactly the same format with the same parameters the camera uses. Also, note the naming pattern of the file created by the camera and rename your files following that pattern.
Keep in mind that converting your videos will likely degrade the video quality. This won't make much of a difference on a tiny camcorder screen, but do remember to backup your original files.
Cataloging files. Some cameras create catalog files alongside the actual video files that are used for the internal media catalog of the camera. If it isn't present or doesn't contain information on the videos you copied to the memory card, the camera might not be able to display them. For example, my 80D creates a .CTG file in /DCIM/EOSMISC/ for every set of images shot with the camera. However, there are also cameras that use one sidecar file per video file that may fulfil the same function. After you've recorded a test video with the camera, search the memory card for such a file and open it in a texteditor. If you are lucky, it's a plaintext file that uses a reproducible pattern that you can use to manually create the necessary files/entries for your own videos. If not, you're pretty much out of luck. You can try to look for some technical documentation on how the internal camcorder catalog works, but I doubt you would find any or that it would be any use for your situation.


Thunderbolt is a much better connection than USB 3 for these purposes.  Thunderbolt, when fully implemented, is actually able to function as an external 4x PCI-E connector in addition to a bunch of other things.  You can use a cheap adapter that will allow a USB 3.1 connection (which is backward compatible to previous USB standards) or you can buy a new device that is Thunderbolt 3 compatible and will be able to make use of the added bandwidth that Thunderbolt 3 supports.


i would attempt this by trying to find the frequency of the cough and then nuking it with EQ, turning the EQ on and off when needed via automation. You might have to dip the overall level for a moment too if its still too bad.

I'm guessing that in future having a second mic might help also so you can cut to that and it might get a better signal of the intended source.


What is the difference between mkv and mp4 files?

Both MKV and MP4 are container file formats. Container formats define how actual audio, video, subtitle and other data are structured. MKV is an open standard format, while MP4 comes from the ISO and is based on the QuickTime file format.


How to set up a 3-screen video installation to sync correctly?

The Matrox graphics card is probably the easiest and most versatile approach. I use the TripleHead2Go, which as you'd assume sends a signal(s) to up to three monitors/projectors.

Multiple computers will never stay in sync. I found this out the hard way the night of an event.

In terms of software, if you're on OS X check out VDMX. There's a fully functional demo that you can grab. Setting it up for your needs would be fairly trivial after a quick search for the right approach.

PS. I would have just commented on the other answers, but I'm new here and don't have the credentials.


Workflow for trimming, encoding, and publishing videos to the web

If you are willing to use Adobe products, Premiere supports direct integration with Adobe Media Encoder and can be set with presets that include multiple output formats and sizes.  Each encoding runs off the actual main project, thus you remove the extra generation of loss.

Alternately, using a lossless quality intermediate file will prevent issues as no additional quality will be lost going from the source material to the intermediate output.

A big pipe is the only answer to the second problem.  Encoding to the final format locally will save on bandwidth, but you have to transfer the file at some point and final output is the smallest amount of data possible unless you are making an awfully large number of different sizes of each video.


Resize, crop and SBS duplicate with ffmpeg

Use

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -filter_complex \
       "[0]scale=iw*sar:ih,setsar=1,scale=-1:960,crop=960:960,split[left][right]; \
        [left][right]hstack[sbs]"  -map "[sbs]" -map 0:a? out.mp4


What applications can I film in and integrate photos, and narrating on iMac/iPhone/Maybe iPad

iMovie is extremely easy to use - maybe you just need to find some local classes or a friend who can walk you through the process?

Alternately, try writing up the screenplay version of your story so you can shop it around to local producers. If you can write out a compelling story, you will have an easier to finding people to collaborate with you. And the written document may help you structure your recording and editing process.


How to zoom into a video inside of a mask?

You can do this by selecting every layer except the solid (your letterbox) and precomping it. Then, you can switch into your precomp and do as much zooming as you like. If you then render the composition with your precomp plus the solid layer on top, your solid will be unaffected by the keyframing going on inside the precomp.


First, get ffmpeg.

Generally, you want to give YouTube the highest quality you can because it will re-encode anything you give it, but the formats used in MXF can be mental for uploading. So re-encoding to modern formats for a more manageable upload often makes sense.

Example

ffmpeg -i input.mxf \
-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge" \
-ac 2 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a libvorbis output.mkv

What these options do

-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge[a]" – Take the two audio streams and combine them with amerge filter into one, multichannel stream.

The [0:a:1] refers to [input file index:stream specifier:stream index], so [0:a:1] is the second audio stream from the first input file (input.mxf).

-ac 2 – Downmix audio to stereo.
-c:v libx264 – Encode video to H.264. See more info and examples.

-crf 18 – libx264 option to make output roughly "visually lossless".

-c:a libvorbis – Encode audio to Vorbis.
output.mkv – Output to Matroska container format. It will not be playable in WMP or QuickTime, but who cares. YouTube will, and YouTube is all that matters in this case. VLC, mpv, or MPC-HC will be able to play it.

Keeping it as MXF

If you want MXF for whatever reason:

ffmpeg -i input.mxf \
-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge[a]" \
-map 0:v -map "[a]" -ac 2 -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16le output.mxf

The video will be stream copied (re-muxed). No re-encoding, so it will be fast and preserve quality.
MXF is picky, so the -map option is used to arrange the output streams in a MXF friendly order.


How to change framerate with HandBrake without side effects

FFMPEG is probably a better tool for the job, if you are prepared to deal with the command line. Install ffmpeg from the packages found here. These are all ready-built and should have all the included libraries you need.

Once you've installed ffmpeg you will need to run it from the command line. Since there's different ways of doing that depending on your platform, the one safe bet is that if you drag the ffmpeg icon into the command line window you should get the path to the ffmpeg executable auto-filled for you. Next you type out a command like this:

<ffmpeg executable path> -r 60 -i <input path> -preset ultrafast -crf 0 -r 30 -c:a copy <output path.mp4>

for a lossless mp4 file or

<ffmpeg executable path> -r 60 -i <input path> c:v prores -profile:v 3 -r 30 -c:a copy <output path.mov>

for a prores encoded quicktime file (ffmpeg will encode prores on Windows and Linux, but whether ProRes is readable depends on what software you're editing on. Alternatives are DNxHD/DNxHR and Cineform, but that's beyond the scope of this answer).

In both instances the <ffmpeg executable path>, <input path> and <output path.mp4> means the path to the respective files, i.e. what you get when you drag them into the terminal. So to fill out the path to the input file, just drag it into the terminal. Since the output file doesn't exist, copy the input file and change the name and extension to whatever you want. On Windows it will be something like "c:\users\stib\folder\another folder\movie1.mp4" on a mac it will be /Users/stib/folder/another\ folder/movie1.mp4 Linux will be similar to mac (though the home folder will vary depending on your distro. But anyway…).

The first example use h.264 compression with the Constant Rate Factor -crf (inverse of quality) set to 0 or lossless. Since you're not looking for small file sizes the preset is set to ultrafast and the audio codec -c:a is set to copy (this is assuming you're using an mp4 as input) so that the audio will not be re-encoded.

The second uses prores compression with the -profile:v 3 setting it to ProRes HQ, a very solid codec for editing work on Macs or Windows machines using Adobe Premiere. You could change this to Avid DNxHD or other codecs of your choice, with ffmpeg there are literally hundreds to choose from.

In both examples I changed the video frame rate using -r 30, this will drop input frames to output a constant 30fps. Since your input is 59.94fps.

I also used -r 60 before the -i input flag to force ffmpeg to treat the input file as 60fps (although it doesn't add or remove frames, just changes the way they are interpreted). You could instead change your output to 29.97 fps by using -r 30000/1001 instead of -r 30 for the output, and not bother putting a -r rate flag before the input.

Applying this to a whole folder of files involves using the shell. How you do that depends on your OS.

on a Mac or Linux machine, here's one way

cd "/path/to/my folder of media/"
mkdir "30FPS_converted"
for i in *.mov; do
ffmpeg -i $i <ffmpeg options here> "./30FPS_converted/${i/mov/mp4};"
done

change directory to the folder using the cd command, e.g. cd "/Users/stib/my media/folder1" once again, you can drag the folder onto the terminal window.
Create a new directory for your output files with the mkdir command (or do it in finder / file browser of your choice.
create a loop with the contents of the folder using the for command, and use that to provide the input for the ffmpeg command. The command above creates a list of all the files with the suffix ".mov", creates a variable $i and every time the loop goes round it changes the value of $i to the next file in the list. The ${i/mov/mp4} is called brace substitution. It substitutes the letters "mov" in the value of $i with the letters "mp4"

On Windows here's how you'd do it with Powershell (you could do it it with batch scripting, but I refuse to learn batch scripting):

set-location "c:\Users\me\my media files\"
new-item "30FPS_converted" -type directory
get-childItem*.mov | foreach {
ffmpeg -i $_ <ffmpeg options here> (".\30FPS_converted" + $_.name.replace("mov", "mp4))}

change directory to the folder using the Set-Location command (though usually cd works too), e.g. Set-Location "C:\Users\stib\my media\folder1" once again, you can drag the folder onto the terminal window.
make a new directory using the new-item command (mkdir usually works too). In the example above the path for the output folder is . (a full stop), this means "the current directory"
list the files in the folder (get-childItem, though usually ls works too) that end with the suffix you're after, and pipe | the output to a foreach loop. Inside that loop the variable $_ takes on the value of the file objects in the list one by one. Then use the name.replace() function to create the appropriate output name, and append that to the directory name.

Obviously if your source files aren't .movs you change the .mov bits in the command to whatever you've got, and the same for the output file extension.


Adding blurred background to portrait videos with ffmpeg

Limit the color output to a few frames. In the first overlay, it will repeat the last frame of the color once that stream ends. So,   color=black@.3:size=720x405:d=1[dark];

Filters can't be executed conditionally, so you will need to probe the input in a separate command beforehand and then execute a command with the filters or one without.

The command below

ffprobe in.mp4 -show_entries stream=display_aspect_ratio -of compact=p=0:nk=1 -v 0

will produce an output like this:

16:9

Just wrap a script to check that value.


What is the function of buffer size and what value should it have?

According to the blender documentation found here

Rate
The bitrate control also includes a Minimum and a Maximum.
Buffer
The decoder bitstream buffer size.

the buffer size is related to streaming video. The link in the manual takes you to this article which describes what the buffer is. It sounds like you are editing for web streaming in which case your buffer size should be based on your target internet connection and the quality of the video you are delivering.
If you are referring to a different buffer setting in blender please elaborate.


How do I dub just the dialogue for an existing movie?

You would need a version of the audio track without any dialogue on it.
You could attempt to remove the dialogue from the a sound track, but the results would be pretty bad.


What is the most user friendly projection mapping software?

I'd hate to answer my own question, but just wanted to share what I found in case anyone else is interested.

PaintingWithLight has a feature rich demo that is very beginner friendly, and only costs a bit over $50 for a full license. Compared to other projection mapping software out there, this is an amazing bargain.

VPT 7 is completely free and feature rich, but not as intuitively user friendly. Luckly it comes with a pdf documentation with lots of pictures to walkthrough someone through every feature.

Dynamapper is a $5 app that also works, but requires some additional hardware (to connect a smartphone or tablet to a projector) and some 3d modeling experience.


Identify H.265 from the OSX Command Line?

You can use ffprobe for this

ffprobe file.mkv -show_entries stream=codec_name -select_streams v:0 -of compact=p=0:nk=1 -v 0

For H.265/HEVC, this will print hevc; for H.264, h264 .


How to automate cutting the part with audio on a certain track out?

This guy did essentially the opposite of what you're trying to do. However, he posted the source-code here. So with a little bit of IT-finesse, you should be able to reverse the program's understanding of what to edit out - meaning that the code shouldn't say (in a very simplified, theoretical syntax):
if track5dB < 5dB:
{
cutThisOut();
}

but instead:
if track5dB > 0
{
cutThisOut();
}

Now, I haven't personally checked out the code in detail, so I cannot 100% vouch for it to work, but it might just be worth a try.


How to make interactive video presentation?

Quickest way is to create each video with multiple repeats rendered in one file, enough to cover a worst case scenario. Queue these in a playlist in VLC, Potplayer ...etc and manually advance as necessary.

You may also want to look at video jockey (VJ) apps like LiVES. Since those are meant for interactive video manipulation and playback, they may have this functionality.


How to produce Video with DVD Chapters on a Network Drive?

Check the format and bitrate that you are burning your DVDs at, it should be "MPEG-2 DVD" format, maximum video 9800Kbps, maximum audio 912Kbps. Buy a small package of rewritable DVDs to practice, and burn DVDs that you know you don't want to keep for a long time.

First save a backup copy. Edit your "C:\Users\your user here\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\10.0\profile.ini" file and change these parameters:

See Cyberlink's "Burning" and "Quick Guide to Choosing the Right Video Output Format" or Apple's "Encoding Video Materials for DVD" for more information on choosing formats and rates.

PowerDirector University's YouTube channel has this video: "CyberLink PowerDirector 13 Ultimate | DVD Menu & Disc Authoring Tutorial" along with many others, as does Sharper Turtle's channel: "PowerDirector 15 - How to create and edit chapter titles.

A video is a better format for explaining the intricacies of DVD menus and chapters, rather than a StackExchange answer with an endless series of menu screenshots each explaining one way.

Once you have created your .ISO file save it to your network drive rather than burning it to DVD, and use a Player that doesn't object to reading .ISOs off of a storage disk rather than a DVD.


360 Degree Video Encoding for Playstation Media Player and PSVR

A new Playstation Media Player has been released. As of version 5.0, more possibilities exist for media. At least photos worked very good so far, I watch equirectangular 360° images that I took with my Xiaomi Mi Sphere camera, stitched with the camera's software. But it didn't play any videos I tried.

However, I managed to watch videos that I took in 3.5k (3456x1728) with the Xiaomi Mi Sphere, stitched with the camera's software and then converted with "Littlstar PSVR Encoder" by Stormware: http://stormwave.uk/#downloads. It even kept the original resolution of 3456px width, but the result still doesn't look awesome. For macOS and Linux, you can try littlestar's official ffmpeg wrapper tool: https://github.com/littlstar/ls-psvr-encoder, I haven't tried it so far.

Littlstar will play stereoscopic videos, too. You can read more on "sideloading" in Littlstar (means: Not streamed from the Littlstar cloud) here: https://medium.com/@littlstarmedia/side-loading-now-available-on-the-ps-vr-app-fe362f6c3e94

I used a PS4 Slim, so a PS4 Pro is not required. I dunno whether the results might be any better on a PS4 Pro.


What's the benefit of using an external audio recorder compared to an internal one?

There are a variety of reasons to have an external recorder depending on the size of your production.  A big advantage is the number of audio inputs and the ability to record each of those inputs as separate tracks, allowing you to do the mixing in post.  I'm not sure about the H4n, but I know the H5 and H6 support multiple inputs as well as interchangeable capsules.

Another advantage is quality and control over quality.  Most audio devices have a switch for uncompressed .WAV or compressed .MP3.  You always want uncompressed audio unless you are tight on space.  External audio devices also give you better control over gain and have better support for audio monitoring.

The final advantage I'll list here is portability.  When your mic is tied to your camera, you'll need to string cables from the mic to the camera.  This isn't an issue when the mic is sitting on the camera, but if you want a distance shot this becomes a problem.  External audio gives you much more freedom of movement to place your mic in the best position to pick up sound.


Color Grading in Adobe premiere elements

The easiest way would be to use 3 way color corrector.

Do a first pass color correction to get it to a standard look.

Then do a 2nd pass within the same filter (lower down on the filter) to grade.

Or get Resolve (paid version), or Color Finesse, which is also very good.


Insert clip - but only the part with a given marker?

You can use subclips:

jump to first marker
set in point
jump to next marker
set out point
in the menu "Clip" -> "Make Subclip" (or use shortcut)
give it a useful name

Repeat.


How do I accurately calibrate an external on-camera LCD monitor?

It is because you are calibrating the monitor correctly however the other two, The Sony LCD and the Computer are probably not correctly color calibrated in the same way, I know that my laptop seems to desaturate colors around the 30% mark and when compared to a calibrated monitor it looks quite a bit different...I would assume this would account for why they are different, if you want it to look like it does on the laptop or Sony Camera then you will need to do just as you have, then eyeball it to bring the saturation back down.


Create Project Template in Adobe Premiere cs6

Certainly - you can simply create a new project with the appropriate files already imported. Save that project. Whenever you need to create a new video, go to your template project and save it as a copy. This way, you retain your original template and you can bypass the process of reimporting the necessary media.


FFMPEG stop converting from TrueHD to PCM

The WAV header is typically 32-bits. Your output will need 64 bits.

ffmpeg -i source.thd -c:a pcm_s24le -ar 48000 -rf64 auto output.wav


People need to define the priorities, if the video footage is important to assign a good place to the camera. A television studio with a live audience is a good example of the priority.

Of course, this is not the case, but I am pretty sure these days is not the opposite to that. It has some importance to be streamed, "Youtoubed" or something. So, talk to the organizers and define a good place.

On the case, you really, really can not be closed or in a better spot, Define if the lens is long enough for the case. Define if the camera shake at that distance, moving the camera to follow the presenter is good enough, define if that shake can be compensated filming on 4K and cropping to stabilize.


Is it possible to use an SSD for the RAM preview in After Effects CC?

An SSD is a replacement for a hard drive, not a replacement for RAM.

RAM previews are rendered into your computer's system RAM, not to internal storage (and then you can save the RAM preview to disk if you wish).

Having said that, I recently replaced a 7200rpm internal hard drive in my macbook pro, and added some more RAM. It makes a huge difference to the speed of loading and saving, and seems to improve render times to some extent too. It's like buying a new computer- I would definitely recommend it.


h264_omx and non-existing PPS 0 referenced

It turns out it is impossible to live stream with the RPi hardware acceleration using ffmpeg.
For ffmpeg to configure the hardware acceleration to issue SPS/PPS frames during the stream and not only at the beginning of it, it needs to use a specific API of the raspberry firmware which it does not at the moment.

Raspivid and gstreamer does that though. So turn to thoses solution and forget about ffmpeg.


Do a sort of HEAC - High Efficiency Audio Codec exists?

I think HE-AAC fits that bill.

  High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) is an audio coding
  format for lossy data compression of digital audio defined as an
  MPEG-4 Audio profile in ISO/IEC 14496-3. It is an extension of Low
  Complexity AAC (AAC LC) optimized for low-bitrate applications such as
  streaming audio. HE-AAC version 1 profile (HE-AAC v1) uses spectral
  band replication (SBR) to enhance the compression efficiency in the
  frequency domain. HE-AAC version 2 profile (HE-AAC v2) couples SBR
  with Parametric Stereo (PS) to enhance the compression efficiency of
  stereo signals. It is a standardized and improved version of the
  AACplus codec.

As does Opus.

  Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org
  Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force,
  designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single
  format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive
  communication and low-complexity enough for low end ARM3
  processors.[3][4] Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new
  applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher
  quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate
  until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.


Is it possible to merge two or more videos in real-time like this?

DASH HTML5 video streaming already works by getting the player to load video in chunks that are usually about 10 seconds long.  You should be able to cook something up that gets the player to display your segment seamlessly, by giving it a DASH-like list of videos.

You might need to remux your video segments into .mp4, if some web browsers choke on the flv container format.  (assuming that's the container for f4v, which I've never seen before.)


How do I create footage that has nearly the same quality as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNJdPyoqt8U but is taken by an action cam?

The Simple answer is going to be "No" That may sound harsh but you cannot as there are so many factors that were involved with this video unless you want to buy similar kit to the guys who made the video. The main thing being the camera and lenses they used
Tech spec:
Red Epic (M642) w/ Ti Canon Mount
Canon 24-70mm F2.8
Canon 16-35mm f/2.8
Canon 100mm f/2.8
Canon 70-200 f/2.8
Adobe Premiere CC and DaVinci Resolve
Freefly System MOVI M10

Your action camera, while it can record 4k video cannot compete with RED RAW files nor can the lens compete with the dedicated lenses listed above.

Now to answer the question: to achieve this type of video quality would be to invest in a better camera that can use different lenses and has good quality video capabilities, now having a RED EPIC is great but also having a HUGE budget is great but there are small decent cameras that can record 4k like the BMCC or Panasonic GH4 or Canon C500 etc but besides having the best kit in the world you would need to know how to use it all and probably have a team to help.

With the post-production any decent NLE can achieve this but it is knowing how to edit that is the skill.

Hope that helps and doesnt sound to bitchy


Color leakage effects with ffmpeg blend=all_expr

The default pixel format for testsrc filter is rgb24, which gets converted to yuv444p for encoding to H264. The default pixel format for color is yuv420p, which is kept as-is.

The blend filter requires both inputs to have the same pixel format, and will, where possible, convert the pixel format of the 2nd input to match that of the first. When red.mp4 is the first input, the frames from pattern.mp4 are converted to yuv420p. In yuv420p. the chroma planes are half the width (and height) of the luma plane, so in this case, 640x360.

Your blend expression, which is applied to all planes is, if(lt(X\,600)\,A\,B). For the chroma planes of a 1280x720 frame in yuv420p format, X = 600 is at ~6% from the right edge, hence the result you're seeing. You can modify the expr to if(lt(X\,SW*600)\,A\,B) to get the expected result. SW is the scale factor for the processed plane and represents the ratio of the current plane to the luma plane.


ffmpeg thread_queue_size warning: What does this mean?

The "Thread message queue blocking" message is an indicator that your computer cannot keep up with encoding in real-time. It's recommending the "thread_queue_size" parameter because it thinks you want to process data in real-time (based on your command). By setting "thread_queue_size" to a higher value, you are increasing the buffer size for packets which are waiting to be encoded. If you exceed the packet buffer size (i.e., buffer gets full), ffmpeg will start to drop packets to keep up in real-time; increasing the buffer will hopefully allow your computer to process the packets before it has to drop them... But that won't work if you eventually run out of memory or exceed the new buffer size anyway since you are processing in less than real-time (less than 1.0x speed).

With your command, the reason ffmpeg is trying to process in realtime is because you are using -framerate 500/21 as an input instead of your desired output fps. So basically, ffmpeg is trying to encode 500/21 worth of images per second, which your computer can't keep up with when using the fast preset. Using -preset veryfast lowers the output quality, and your computer can apparently keep up with that, but I doubt that's what you want...

Since you really don't need to process in real-time (you're using a file-based source and not something live), you should use -r for the output instead of using framerate on the input.

ffmpeg -start_number 1518 -i %d.png -i audio.ogg -c:a copy -vf "scale=3840:-1" -c:v libx265 -preset fast -crf 19 -pix_fmt yuv422p10le -r 500/21  output.ts


FFmpeg: Getting this error while trying to add a logo to video (Unable to find a suitable output format for ..)

The entire filtergraph should be one argument.
'-filter_complex','scale=1920:1080[main];[main][1]overlay=x=main_w-overlay_w-(main_w*0.01):y=main_h-overlay_h-(main_h*0.01)',


Good Intro Editor that can Join Audio+Video, and Present Two Frames Simultaneously

Possible duplicate of: What Beginner Video Editing Software Should I Use?

Though still valid on its own for requesting a specific feature set.
Even though pretty much any video editor will have your requested features.

I often recommend Lightworks (also available for Linux and Mac) as its free and soon to be open sourced.
Here a video tutorial on how to do a so called PIP (picture in picture) effect in Lightworks, he make a split-screen buts its essentially the same workflow, you just allign the videos differently.

Photoshop Elements has very limited video editing capabilities. Nice to have if you own it but if all you need is a video editor I recommend go with Lightworks.

A professional software that is affordable if you work on a project to project basis and not all year long is Adobe Premiere, Adobe has a subscription model where you can rent software for 20$ per month or 30-40$ for a whole suite.
If you don't plan to work on a semi-professional level at some point I recommend you go with the free Lightworks, it has more than enough features to make professional videos, it's just not at convinient and fast as Premiere.


Motion and shape tracking in After Effects CS5.5

I would suggest as a starting point to use Corner Pin Tracking, found on the tracking panel of AE.

Track each side of the sunglasses separately and when done, you should have two solids that move with the area of the glasses. Add a mask to each one, and rotoscope the actual shape of the glasses.

I think this would be easier than rotoscoping from scratch. These two solids can then be used as track mattes or precomposed etc.


Home office studio setting to create Calculus videos - Lighting issues

Lighting a green screen is even harder than lighting a whiteboard.  And performing in front of a green screen also requires practice different than that of writing on a whiteboard.

Here are two alternative strategies which you can possibly blend to taste.  The first, and most obvious, is to get a standard 4'x8' bead board.  Put that board on the wall opposite the white board.  Aim a focused, bright light to fill the 4'x8' bead board.  This will send diffuse light back to the talent and the whiteboard without a specular reflection.  If you need to, you can cheat the bead board to one side or the other so that you don't have a "warm spot" (a very large, diffuse hot-spot) in your whiteboard.  For illumination, start by looking at this ARRI 750W flood and then adjust to your favorite illumination source (LED, HMI, plasma, CFL, etc).  But don't lose focus and barn-door modifiers.  You can also raise the bead board off the floor to span the angle between the rear wall and the ceiling.  You can also place the bead board on the rear ceiling and bounce the lights toward the talent from on high.  The shadows, etc., will tell you how high the bead board needs to be to make everything look right.

The second strategy is to stay with the idea of a pair of side lights, but get a pair of tall vertical light baffles that you can use to completely shade the whiteboard from the lights.  Ideally the shadow pattern is such that the whiteboard itself is shaded from the lights but the talent in front of the whiteboard is not shaded.  Because white is so bright, you actually don't need a ton of light on the whiteboard itself--it will look white when the ambient (ceiling) light hits it.  But you do need light on the talent--skin tones are several stops darker than whiteboard white.  So let your side lights hit the talent and not the whiteboard.

It should be obvious you can combine these two ideas.  Beware of mixing color temperatures (i.e., don't use daylight CFLs for side lights and tungsten lights for the bounce board or things will look weird).


How to implement fast forwards or skips in video editing

The method used in your example is called "stop motion" and is pretty much the way people create their lego-videos, clay-animations, etc. To do this, you will need to take a picture of the paper, then rotate it very slightly, take another picture, rotate some more, and so on and so forth.
When you took all the pictures, you can import them as an image sequence in After-Effects or premiere and adjust the speed by setting the framerate, something between 10 and 25 should work for these purposes. But behold, this method is very time-expensive - just as a heads up.


How to change value in After Effects when passing marker

marker.nearestKey picks the closest marker - even if it is in the future.

A simple solution would be to iterate over the markers with a for loop instead:

if (marker.numKeys > 0) {
    let i;
    for (i = 0; i < marker.numKeys; i++) { // For every marker we have, add 1 to i
        if (marker.key(i+1).time > time)   // If the marker is past current time,
            break;                         // stop the loop
    }
    i; // Return i value
}


Closed Caption formats - support for overlapping phrases

I tried this just a short while ago, and YouTube supports interleaving captions! You can even jumble the captions around in time. So the first caption could be the last one showing up in the video.

Just specify the starting time and the end time on all of the captions and they will show up during the time you specified.

Have a good time captioning! :)


How to Record a Dark scene without any Noise?

With low light levels your brightest signal will be close to the noise floor, so you only really have three options:

a camera with better low light performance (although this can only take you so far)

More expensive sensors can give a lower noise floor, allowing you to resolve more detail

a faster lens

As Jason commented:

  If the widest aperture on your kit lens is 4.0, then you could double the amount of light your camera sees by purchasing an f2.8. Every additional "stop" doubles the light, so if you could find an f1.0, you'd be getting 16 times the light that f4.0 allows.

more light

Your easiest option may be just to increase the illumination and then reduce brightness in post. Remember that if you do this, you also need to watch for shadows that look too sharp.


How do I drag multiple media clips and vertically stack them onto a premiere pro timeline?

I dont believe there is any native built in way to do this. The easiest way would likely to build a simple keyboard mouse macro which can be run to repeat the action of selecting the next clip down, and adding to a new track at the start of the sequence.


Vector layer is blurry if it's in composition

About the only thing to do is scale up the nested comp (the one with the puppet animation in it), so that it matches the size it needs to be in the outer comp without having to zoom it.

There's a script that will do this for you, if you look at the File>Scripts> menu there should be one called scale composition.

This script basically just attaches everything in the comp to a null, resizes the comp using the comp settings, then scales the null to match. So if the script doesn't work for you you can do it manumatically.


which file format to use for the ios app tutorial which should be embedded inside the app?

The videos I've delivered for iOS App Previews have been as per the specification in this section, viz. H.264 video codec, Baseline profile, 30 fps, AAC-LC audio codec, sampling rate 48 kHz, stereo in MP4 or MOV. Resolution and bitrate haven't been restricted to what the docs say. Those should be tailored to the device(s) your app is for.


Replacing footage to a video with different frame rate - how to make timeline clips not slip?

Not sure I get what you're describing, but here are some ideas:

Right click on your clip in the timeline and select the "Speed/Duration" option. Have fun.
If you want that added clip to have its own frame rate within your sequence, perhaps you should start seeing it as an effect. So treat it as such: once your edit is done (picture lock), import it in After Effects, treat the portion of it that you need as you see fit. Export it thus transformed. Import that new clip in your timeline, place it over its old version and never worry again about a change of frame-rate.


How to mark multiple ins and outs in Adobe Premiere?

In and out markers are used for clip selection, however you have to put the clip somewhere once you select it.  You can either drag or insert it to a sequence or you can drag it to your Project window to have a copy of it saved with that in and out point.  You could later drag from that copy of it in the project to the timeline and it will use the in and out point you had set on it.

The reason you can only select one clip at a time is because the in and out point are designed to be used as part of three point editing.  In three point editing, you specify any 3 of these four points... source in, source out, destination in, destination out.  Whichever one you have the beginning and end of defines the length of the edit and the beginning or end on the other tells it either where to pull the clip from or where to place it.

This is a traditional way of editing and is how linear systems were used back in the day. The practice carried over to NLEs (non-linear editors) because the process itself is actually pretty quick and easy to use and is what many editors were used to.  It is the least information you need to define an edit.


C4D - Nothing seems to fix this stupid black screen

Are you sure it is not functioning as intended?  What do you expect to occur on an empty project?  I would expect that it should still be black even if you add lights as there is nothing for the lights to reflect off of.  If you haven't assigned materials to the objects, depending on the render mode, I'd still expect nothing to show up as it wouldn't be able to reflect any light back at the camera.

Make sure you have lights in the scene, an object (with actual surface geometry) in the scene and materials on the object.  If you're still getting black, you may be able to try different render modes.  I'm not familiar with Cinema4D specifically, but typically there are different render modes available.  This may also be what changed resulting in a change in behavior from what you are used to.  Some render modes behave differently in incomplete scenes than others.


Concat 2 video and add watermark first video ffmpeg

Concatenate can be found from this link
In case of using same codec
!echo "file 'video_1.mp4'" > list.txt
!echo "file 'video_2.mp4'" >> list.txt

Add watermark at (x=1, y=1) coordinated
!ffmpeg -y -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -i watermark.png -filter_complex "overlay=1:1" output.mp4

I don't quite understand your description, but i think it fits your title.


Audio and video track doesn't match in Premier pro

This might be a performance issue.

You could change playback resolution, quality, use proxy videos, render preview videos and some more. Tutorials for these steps should be easy to find.


Premiere Pro CC export produces dark, muddied video

In my experience Quicktime always produces incorrect shading and color with video- period. It shouldn't be used to assess what really "is there".

First, go into Bridge. Under EDIT, make sure you've synchronized all your color settings for all Adobe Products, and that you're using WEB AMERICAN (Monitor Color for sRGB).  That would be the correct profile for web content like youtube.

After that; try re-out putting. Also; you can check your NVIDIA settings; but you want to allow applications to control color; so it could be that your system is simply using a different color profile or an expanded color gamut for web vs what Adobe is using.

But I'd shy away from using QT for viewing files (or anything MAC for that matter); having switched over to only using Windows based workstations so many problems like these have been solved for us.

Hope this helps.


Mask in After Effects v 2020 is not accurate

Issues like these usually arise when you either have the layer transformed in 3D-space, or when using distortions and transform-effects on the layer. Since you do not have the 3D-checkbox ticked, I assume that you have some sort of transformation applied in the effect-controls. Did you use something like cc-lens, mesh-warp or turbulent displace? If so, first mask the layer, then precompose it, then apply the warping to it.


About Video Formats and prevention of download of videos

If you don't want your stuff to be stolen, don't put it on the internet

People need to be able to watch your video on their computers. For that purpose, it needs to be downloaded to their computers. If it's on their computer, they have it.

There are ways to protect your video, but those are not failsafe and will inevitably result in a poor user experience. If I visit your site to watch a video and find that I need to install a DRM plugin before I can watch your video (cough Silverlight cough), I close the tab and don't come back. By being overly protective of your video, you are hurting your own views and you don't actually stop people who really want to steal your video for whatever reason. The most intricate of DRM systems can't prevent me from simply using a screen capture software.

Don't worry, be happy

Just put your video on YouTube or Vimeo and embed it into your site. This will also benefit your views, since your videos can get recommended to users on the hosting site, so they potentially create traffic for your website as well. Yes, people can download the videos. In fact, it's legal to do so in most jurisdictions (in Germany for example, it would be called a private copy). This doesn't give them the right to share it anywhere else and if they do, you can sue them. If you feel so strongly about protecting your content, you can even hire someone to search the internet for illegal copies of your video and have them sue the unlawful uploaders. Yes, I know, you can't search the entire internet. There may be copies of your video floating around on the deep web that you don't know about, but who cares? If it's hidden well enough that you can't find it, your viewers won't find it either.

You see the same thing in the photo community. People slap their huge ugly copyright notice, website link or logo on their photos to 'protect' them. But the people that care about that will just crop the copyright notice or blur it out. So the photographers make them bigger, have them cover the entire photo until it's barely visible any more. In the end, they are just damaging their own content. Don't do that.

Don't host your video yourself

It never works as well as a dedicated video hosting platform. It just doesn't.