I'd typically tackle something like this in After Effects, but since Premiere Pro is the restriction here, lets give it a go;

Screenshot/Screen Record the application you wish to deconstruct.
Import the footage into Premiere.
Count how many components you'll be splitting the footage into and duplicate the footage that number of times.
On each duplication, use the rectangular mask in premiere to isolate the different components of the application.
You now have control over the position of each components you isolated. Use positional keyframes to animate as you wish.


Automatically capturing stills from video presentation

You can do this with Processing.  You would have to write a processing sketch to step through the movie frame-by-frame, and calculate how different each was from the previous frame.  When the difference is above a certain threshold, save the whole frame as an image file.  Here is a forum post about something very similar.

Other than processing, you may also be able to use Max/MSP's Jitter, Quartz Composer, or a bonafide programming language such as Python.


ffmpeg: is it possible to have a text slideshow with a static image in background?

Use ASS or SRT subtitles. You can make them with Aegisub or manually in a text editor. Then use the subtitles filter:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.foo -vf subtitles=your_subtitles_file.ass -t 60 output

You did not mention your desired output format so I made a very generic example.


You can do this with an expression on the Opacity property:

fade = framesToTime(10);
fadeIn = (time - inPoint) / fade;
fadeOut = (outPoint - time) / fade;
if (time < inPoint + fade) { ease(fadeIn, 0, 1) * value }
else if (time > outPoint - fade) { ease(fadeOut, 0, 1) * value }
else { value }

This expression will fade the layer from 0% to 100% Opacity across the first 10 frames, then fade from 100% to 0% on the last 10 frames of the layer. This is based on the layer's in and out points on the timeline.

Full tutorial (starts at 3:08):

Hope this helps!


Would 2 lights solve my DSLR green screen noises?

The result of your key depends on many things. It would have been really nice to see a still of your footage before you keyed it. I believe you are working in after effects, which has a pretty solid keyer built-in called "keylight". Using the clip white and clip black settings under the matte-section will help you clean noise from foreground and background. You might want to throw a "roughen edges" onto your keyed footage and set everything to 0 before raising the amount gradually, which will give you a bit of a softer edge.

Other than that, proper lighting will be your only hope. Look for wrinkles in the screen, or shadows you or anything else throws onto it. Try standing as far away from the greenscreen as you can to minimize spill (the bounces green light thrown back at your body) and to avoid shadows of yourself on the screen. If the color of the greenscreen differs from the foreground at every place and has no shadows or wrinkles on it, you should be good to go.

If you want to you can send me a short clip of your unkeyed footage so I can try to key it as best as I can, so we can see how far you can push your current setup. Have a blessed day :)


Suggestions/Ideas for a "Show Me" project for school about Audio or Video Encoding?

Entropy

Entropy is an important and notoriously difficult to teach (and understand) concept in physics. It's often explained as a measure of disorder, though that's not technically correct. However, from this perspective a video with lots of small particles would be considered to have a higher entropy than a video showing a black screen, for example. Read this for an explanation of the 'confetti phenomenom' and watch this great video by TED-Ed about the general concept of entropy.

Not gonna do your project for you, but you could for example show how the visible artifacts in a video increase when the amount of small particles in it increases (use a constant bitrate for this though). Based on this you can explain related topics such as bitrate, temporal and spatial interpolation and compression in general (read up on how archive recovery files can be used to replace ANY missing part of a split-up archive, cool stuff (though more maths than physics (is physics just applied maths though?))).

Have fun!


remove black frames from vob files with ffmpeg

What you experienced are called dropped frames.  These shouldn't be confused with drop frame video formats (such as 29.97fps NTSC video, which is otherwise known as 30 fps drop frame (because a frame is dropped to get 29.97 frames per second.)

Dropped frames occur when the system capturing is not able to keep up with the rate of playback.  They are duration .04 because it is a single frame, which works out to around .04 seconds.

Dropped frames are a relatively tricky issue to deal with as they interfere with the flow of the video and also the audio sync.  Even if you clip them out of the source material, it results in a spatial and auditory gap of .04 seconds that is often detectable by a viewer.  Due to this, the best practice is to re-capture if you experience dropped frames during capture.

If re-capture isn't an option, your best bet is to interpolate a frame to fill the gap by averaging the preceding and proceeding frames of video.  This frame often doesn't come out super well, but it is still often less jarring than removing the frame entirely and allows the audio to continue normally (provided the audio didn't also cutout for the dropped frame).

As a last resort, you can simply cut out the dropped frame, but as previously mentioned, this results in a .04 second gap in your footage and is non-ideal.


How to create Apple Keynote style Picture in Picture video

Any fairly basic video editing package should be able to closely emulate the look.  You just have to be able to distort the video to make it fit the shape that looks like it is 3d and then size and position the speaker's video appropriately.  I'd personally probably do it in After Effects with a 3d layer for simplicity, but most far cheaper consumer video editing packages should be able to do basic deformations to get the same look.


Adobe premiere has a speech analysis system built in, after cs4 I believe. Machine transcription systems tend to be very poor though - in my experience it is only useful for a vague sense of where you are in the video. See below:

http://www.realeyes.com/blog/2010/03/05/caption/

Human transcription services are getting cheaper as many of them use Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" to provide the human labour. The quality is much better, but will still require editing for readability. See the link for more info:
http://waxy.org/2008/09/audio_transcription_with_mechanical_turk/


how can video clips be merged in Corel Video Studio Pro x7?

Here is how its done.
Create a new folder.Select the film clips you want to merge together all at once and import them into the folder you created. Drag the clips into the storyboard view and its done.
Check this out :


What can cause poor quality video in Canon point&shoot camera?

Are you dragging the videos and watching them in an editing program such as Final Cut or Premiere Pro? If so, it is probably because you need to log and capture and run them through 'Compressor' to convert the files to a suitable format (say ProRes(LT)..)... I am guessing you are just viewing them in a default viewer, which in that case, as mentioned above it may be due to expectation from watching them on a smaller, lower resolution lcd screen on the camera..Though, the camera you mentioned should output fairly decent video... Hope this helps.


It appears that BT.709 is a larger standard that includes the sRGB color space as part of what it means.  The Wikipedia article says “based on”, but looking carefully at the chart of numbers, they are identical.  So there is no need to convert from one to the other.

Of the various mixing recipes given (which do not agree with each other), the hex code is said to be for HTML/CSS, so that one I can assume is for the sRGB color space.

I used that value in Premiere in the new Graphics drawing tools, and it looks like the right kind of green.

The green background in the white-on-green EPS file they provide for the logo is not the right green when simply imported into Primere, as I noted.  So I loaded it into Illustrator, turned off the background, and saved as the white logo only.  This I imported into Premiere which I layered over the background color, drawn using Premere’s shape tool.


Playing back a video file with an optional time sequence

Cutting a video doesn't require more knowledge than what you are trying to do here. I'd even say it requires less knowledge.
Consider the free video editing tool Lightworks and this short video tutorial on how to cut videos with it:


What is this effect's name? And how would I be able to do it in Sony Vegas?

Search Google for "light leaks". Here's free collection: http://vegasaur.com/free-light-leaks

How to use: Place the desired light leak clip on the track above your video and set track's compositing mode to Screen or Add. Adjust the amount of light by lowering the clip or track opacity. You can also add change luminance or color by adding Levels, Color Balance or Hue/Saturation filters.


Is there any relation between a Exposure & Flicker

Video is refreshed at a certain rate, depending on the display device, between 24 to 60 FPS. Any time you shoot video a a faster shutter-speed you risk the camera taking shots will the between refreshes.

If you take a photo with a slower shutter-speed, say 1/20s, then the camera will capture an entire refresh cycle and the flicker will go away. Use shutter-priority (S or T mode, depending on your camera), Manual (M) or time-aperture (TAv) mode to control shutter-speed yourself.

PS: I realize your question is slightly ambiguous. I am assuming you are taking a photo of something that is playing a video. If you are shooting a video of a video, then your question is off-topic here.


If you retime the images so that there are more than one images that can land on a frame, your video software will likely interpolate between the two by blending the two frames.  If you play back at 12 fps with zero offset, your video software should play the first image for two frames (assuming 24fps playback), then the second frame for two frames, etc.  If you play back starting with a one frame offset, the first image will play for one frame, then a blend of the 1st and 2nd image will play the second frame, then a blend of the 2nd and 3rd image will play the third frame, then a blend of the 3rd and 4th image will play the fourth frame, etc.  That image blending will make the film look blurry.

Alternatively, say you have 240 frames and you want to play them at 24fps, but you are asking the editor to play them all in 1 second instead of 10 seconds, the video editing software might not pick every 10th image and display it for one frame, but will instead blend 10 images and play that as a frame.  That could also account for the blur.


"sparkly things" stock assets for Premiere Pro?

Several years ago, Mitch Martinez created quite a stir by releasing an enormous library of stock footage shot in 4K resolution on RED cameras.  He offers a wide range of fireworks clips that are free to download and use.  Among other things.

I have no affiliation with Mitch whatsoever.  I just know the story.


I not know how do this with AE animation software but I do this in Blender:

Basic theory (see picture) for real camera or software:

• Want repeat image every n animation frames

• Assume camera view is w × h pixels

• For camera view w pixels wide, minimum need draw picture wide 2w pixels wide

• Copy picture two times and put left/right each other (draw left and right edge of image for can't see edge)

• Shift picture -w pixels for first animation frame relative to camera left edge

• Step size for each animation frame is ∆s = w/n

• Image position = ∆s*(animation frame number mod n), means at every n animation frames shift image back -w pixels (return to start position)

• Use linear interpolation for image position (need select this for Blender)

• Use repeat cycle (for Blender)

Blue dot show shift for each animation frame

If image is wider than camera view (R ≥ w):

• shift picture -R pixels for start animation frame

• step become ∆s = R/n

• shift image back -R pixels

Reverse Direction

• Shift picture 0 pixels for first animation frame relative to camera left edge

• Step for each animation frame is ∆s = –w/n (∆s = –R/n for image R ≥ w), negative direction


It is hard to say without seeing the file itself, but my best guess is that an issue occurred causing the data stream to die but the meta data was still set "properly".  Generally, the actual video data itself is not looked at for the length of the video.  Instead, there is header meta data in the file that holds the video stream which indicates how long the video is and how it is encoded.  It is possible that the video stream either had an error at around 9 minutes or perhaps it simply stopped recording around that time, however the timer kept going and the meta data for the length wasn't written until the end.

This would also explain why it goes dark, because the video stream player would try to play it, but the content isn't there, so it has nothing to play.

If the file just has a corruption for a short while and then works again, you might be able to get around it by splitting the video stream in to multiple parts, but my guess is that the data was probably not encoded in the first place and your stream itself is probably truncated.


Two video sources framerates vary by .01 FPS. Will this cause problems?

This shouldn't really be a problem and probablly is just a rounding error.
The shutter may come from somewhere else, are the export settings matching the 29.97FPS?


iMovie comes free with a Mac and can easily do what you want. Here's how I'd do it, for each section you want to replace with a freeze frame:

Decide where you want to start and stop the freeze frame.  Cut the video clip at each of those points (right-click and select "Split").
See how long (exactly) that section is.
Within that section, click on the frame you want to use for the freeze frame.  Right-click it and select "Freeze Frame".  That will create a 4-second freeze frame.
Double-click the freeze frame and set its length to exactly the length of the clip you're replacing.
With the freeze frame clip still selected, click on the "Crop" tool.  The crop will automatically apply animation (called "Ken Burns").  I would change it to "Fit".
Right click on the first half of the clip you're replacing with the still frame.  Select "Detatch Audio".  Drag that detatched audio over the first half of your freeze frame.  Select the now-silent clip and delete it.
Do step 6 again for the second half of the clip you're replacing.

That should do it! Let me know if you have any questions. (And please mark this question as "The Answer" if it's useful!)


FFMPEG of course. Being a command line application it can be easily integrate into any batch process no matter how convoluted, with the benefit that you get to learn about the power of the command line while you're at it (worked for me).

I haven't explored h.265 encoding much yet, but using settings I stole from the ffmpeg wiki here's how you'd encode a folder full of .movs:

cd "/the/path to/your/folder/"
mkdir "for the trash"
for i in *.mov; do;
  ffmpeg -i "$i" -c:v libx265 -preset slow -crf 25 -c:a copy "${i/\.mov/.mp4}"
  mv $i "./for the trash/"
done

Note that this won't delete the files, it will move them to a new folder called for the trash. This is because if you delete files with the command line they disappear instantly, you don't get a second chance if you change your mind or make a typo. There are trash command line utilities, but that's beyond the scope of this answer.

here's the wiki entry I based my ffmpeg command on, it does a good job of explaining the options used (I'm a bit thingy about lossy compression so I wound up the quality settings somewhat. I also used the slow preset which gives smaller file sizes. Depending on how much time you have you could use anything from ultrafast to placebo to achieve results that vary in file size but with the same quality. placebo being so named because the tiny bit of difference it makes at the expense of greatly increased processing time is mostly in your head):

  In this example, we will use the following settings:

  default CRF of 28. The CRF of 28 should visually correspond to libx264 video at CRF 23, but result in about half the file size.
  medium preset. The preset determines how fast the encoding process will be – at the expense of compression efficiency. Put differently,
  if you choose ultrafast, the encoding process is going to run fast,
  but the file size will be larger when compared to medium. The visual
  quality will be the same. Valid presets are ultrafast, superfast,
  veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow and placebo.
  AAC audio at 128 kBit/s. This uses the ffmpeg-internal encoder, but under AAC you will find info about more options.

  ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx265 -preset medium -crf 28 -c:a aac -b:a 128k
  output.mp4

Handbrake also works on the command line.

And lastly if you are allergic to the colossal power lurking in terminal.app there are GUIs for ffmpeg, like this or this. Not sure how well they deal with batch encoding, and this is not a recommendation, because I don't use any of them. Time to toughen up and use the command line!


ffmpeg: map 4 stereo pairs into 7.1 audio in FLV/RTMP

The inputs option in ffmpeg filters refers to number of streams, not channels.

ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist file,udp,rtp -threads 4 -loglevel info -i /tmp/sdp -filter_complex '[0:1][0:2][0:3][0:4]join=inputs=4:channel_layout=7.1[a]' -map 0:0 -map '[a]' -c:v copy  -c:a aac -b:a 384k -ac 8 -ar 44100 -f flv URL


Why won't After Effects import an uncompressed avi file?

After effects should take in the image sequence just fine. No reason to run it through Vdub first. Let me know how it works out for you, it sounds like a very interesting project.


According to the site you referred to:
http://www.encoding.com/what_are_the_best_flash_video_frame_dimensions

The math behind the "Best, Better, and Good" video formats are based on if both Horizontal and Vertical pixels are divided by 16 for best, 8 for better, and 4 for good.

Therefore 256x144 is best, while 384x216 & 128x72 are better, while 320x180 is good.


Best way to create closed captions in Premiere CS6? No 3rd party software!

To answer your question, you can't create Closed Captions in PP CS6. It's a new feature only available CC onwards.

Source: From Adobe forum
You have a few choices -- there are two commercial products that I have used and know about, to create sidecar closed captioning files that are usable in PPRO and follow industry standarads for CC: CPC (www.cpcweb.com) makes a authoring program called 'MacCaption' for MAC and 'Caption Maker' for WIN. Also, a German company (www.zeitanker.com) makes a program called 'Annotation Edit'.


It goes by pretty quickly! It looks to me like they've taken a frame of something that is white at the bottom and producing purple particles upwards, and then applied a rectangular to polar distortion to it, or possibly wrapped it into a 3D sphere.


Final Cut Pro - does 2GB vs 4 GB video memory make a difference

I would say, yes it makes a difference. Rendering in FCPX happens in tiles. The size of the tiles is determined by a combination of the amount of memory they consume, the speed of the graphics card, and other similar factors. Increasing the video RAM will allow more and/or bigger tiles to fit on the card at one time. Bigger tiles means fewer passes to make the same adjustments. More tiles means less trips back and forth to main memory or the disk to retrieve image data.

Whether that helps you or not depends on how you edit. If you're mainly just cutting HD clips together with no effects or color corrections, it might not make a big difference. But if you're editing 4k or 8k footage, adding 2D or 3D titles (particularly 3D), applying lots of effects and color corrections, doing retiming, using the 360° functionality, etc. then it will make a larger difference. In my experience, every little bit helps.


Can you render Adobe Premiere or After Effects projects on Linux using a render manager?

No. Unfortunately Adobe only supports win or osx. Official forum post about Deadline:

  Deadline itself is a cross-platform application, but it can only render on  operating systems that the rendering software itself supports. So AE and  C4D will only work on Windows and OSX.

Also see the manual: http://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/7.1/1_User%20Manual/

Thus it depends on the main application, if you are able to build a render farm on linux. In the case of adobe, the only remaining option is using a Virtual Machine for now.


Comparing audio waveform in a visual and / or numeric way

You could try a SoX and imagemagick solution, which could visually diff spectrograms, for example:

# generate spectrograms with SoX
$ sox 0000001353.noframedrop_Lg.small_1_edit.ogg -n spectrogram -arl -o spectrogram_1.png
$ sox 0000001353.noframedrop_Lg.small_2_edit.ogg -n spectrogram -arl -o spectrogram_2.png

# imagemagick
$ composite spectrogram_1.png spectrogram_2.png -compose difference spectrograms_difference.png

This could give you a quick heads up if there is a difference, similar to how you do for video streams, however is not suited to precisely locating TC positions. Below is an example with one of two source SoX spectrograms generated above (10min speech), and its imagemagick comparison with the other (nonblack indicates a difference):


Serving static video content directly vs. via adaptive streaming protocols (HLS, DASH)

ABR formats like HLS and DASH allow the client to adapt the its specific conditions, providing a better experience. faster startup, faster seeks, less buffering, etc.


FFmpeg video over video circular at specific time


It's ready man.
Watch the tutorial that I've created:


Downsampling 4K footage for an increase in chroma sub-sampling

As I understand it, ffmpeg creates a raw image buffer with the input files it is given, then applies effects such as scaling and then encodes. So if you use ffmpeg to do the scaling and encoding to a 4:4:4 codec it should do what you want:

ffmpeg -i "my_gh4_422_4k.mov" -vf scale=1920:1080 -c:v prores -profile:v 4 -c:a copy "my_prores_444_1080.mov"

It would be interesting to test this, but I don't have any 4:2:2 4k footage on hand. I believe ffmpeg also does dnxhd 444, but I can't find any documentation on how to specify it.


ffmpeg convert non transparent pixel to white

The two operand if expression returns 0 if the condition isn't met. You need the three operand version.

if(lt(alpha(X,Y),10),255,p(X,Y))


Best strategy to keep aspect ratio consistent for all videos having any resolution

If you want the output resolution to be 1280x720 and the video keeps its original ratio aspect as well:

ffmpeg  -v error -stats -i input -vf
"scale=1280:720:force_original_aspect_ratio=1,pad=1280:720:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2"
output


video letterboxing in premiere pro with the same image as background

Copy the picture into a second video track. Then, zoom in the picture on the lower track (i.e. increase it's size in the effect settings panel). Then, apply a gaussian blur from the effects panel and raise the blur factor in the effect settings panel until you are satisfied with the result.

If you need more detailed instructions, please provide some additional info on how you set up your project in Premiere Pro, what you have tried to achieve this and why it didn't work.


How to convert LibreOffice Impress to video with custom animations?

I would use a screen recording / capture tool. With this solution you can even define your individual timing from slide to slide.

Which software to use? Depending on your operating system there are many free or low cost solutions available. There are even web-based services.

This blog post lists 10 of them. I copied that list here for reference.

Desktop Software:

IceCream (Windows)
ActivePresenter (Windows)
CamStudio (Windows)
Snagit (Windows/Mac)
Jing (Windows/Mac)

Web Services:

Webinaria
Apowersoft
Screenr
ScreenToaster
ScreenCastle

I'm sure next year there will be different options. That's why this list can only be an overview and starting point for your own research.

You might need another tool to finally crop your recorded video to 1280x720 or 1920x1080 pixel, because the screen recorder might have recorded an odd rectangle that you have drawn with the mouse. My favorite is VirtualDub for Windows.


How to animate size parameter of ffmpeg zoompan filter?

The zoompan size parameter cannot be animated. It has to be a fixed numeral size of the form WxH, or a size label like hd1080.


ffmpeg tile command: ordering frames top to bottom rather than left to right

You can't change the behaviour of the tile filter, but you can adjust your inputs before and after to get the desired result.

ffmpeg -i input -vf hflip,transpose=cclock,tile=4x4,transpose=clock,hflip out.png

Note that the layout supplied to tile is transposed, so if you want the final result to be 6x4, tile should be given 4x6.


Generating thumbnail from only the first megabytes of a video file

Can there be a reliable answer?

No.
As with almost everything is video. The real answer is: It depends.
With mp4, the moov must be at the beginning, AND the mdat must properly interleave tracks. For example, If the there more than one megabyte of audio before the video, Then it won't work even with the moov at the start.
For TS, there must be a SPS, a PPS and and IDR in the first megabyte. That is probable, but not guaranteed.
For Mkv Interleaving matters.
The codec, codec configuration, and even bitrate will also matter.
If the first keyframe is over 1Mb, no container will work.
If the codec is using periodic inter fresh, it would probably take more that 1Mb, unless the video bitrate is very low.
Writing all the permutations would take a book.


how to set duration, fading start time and end time video wise in below command?

Your fade out timings are one second too late - the fade out should start at 9 seconds of each clip so that it can end by 10 seconds.

ffmpeg -y -i intro.mp4 -i video.mp4  -i outro.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=black:s=1280x720:d=30 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
 [1:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+10/TB[v1]; \
 [2:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+20/TB[v2]; \
 [3][v0]overlay[over1]; \
 [over1][v1]overlay[over2]; \
 [over2][v2]overlay=format=yuv420[outv]" \
-vcodec libx264 -map '[outv]' merge.mp4

If you have audio as well in the 3 files, use

ffmpeg -y -i intro.mp4 -i video.mp4  -i outro.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=black:s=1280x720:d=30 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
 [1:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+10/TB[v1]; \
 [2:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+20/TB[v2]; \
 [3][v0]overlay[over1]; \
 [over1][v1]overlay[over2]; \
 [over2][v2]overlay=format=yuv420[outv]; \
 [0][1][2]concat=n=3:v=0:a=1[outa]" \
-vcodec libx264 -map '[outv]' -map '[outa]' merge.mp4

This command assumes that all 3 files have 10 seconds of audio each, eolse sync will be lost.


Can I use a Linux Render Farm with a MAC Workstation running Adobe Premiere?

There are two steps, broadly speaking, to rendering a project in a NLE such as Premiere.

First step is for the NLE to generate the uncompressed final composite image for each output frame. This is undertaken/managed by the rendering engine of the NLE. And the second is to encode these generated images using a codec into the final video output file.

For the first step to be parallelized or offloaded to other processors, the app has to support such a facility, in the form of piecemeal division of rendering tasks to compatible renderers installed on the slave machines and final assembly of their results. I haven't seen anything to indicate that Premiere does so, even across a Windows/OSX farm.

For the 2nd step to be parallelized, the encoder has to support such a facility. The post you link to has an answer which suggests that frameserving from Premiere to ffmpeg can accomplish this. Except that the solution doesn't demonstrate any parallelization. It simply uses ffmpeg on the source machine to relay frames to a single ffmpeg instance running on a linux machine for encoding. The point of a render farm is to split and distribute the processing load across multiple machines for quicker output. That solution, in all likehihood, simply adds latency for no useful reason.


I've always just envisioned the film in my mind and sketched out (on actual paper) the shot angles.

Another option is to get miniatures of your locations, props and performers (dolls, action figures, etc.), position them as they'll be in the scene, and take photos of each of the angles you want in your storyboard. Then you have actual photos of the angles you want.

A third option is similar to the second:  Use miniatures, and then use a video camera to do the actual movements you want.  Someone could be reading lines of dialog aloud while you are shooting.  I saw a documentary showing that this was done during preproduction of Return of the Jedi for the speeder bike sequence on the forest moon of Endor.

With the first two options, I would have the storyboard on set with me, and put a mark next to each shot I'd gotten. That way I knew what I had left to shoot.


Color autocorrected on my Canon G10 in the middle of filming, any tips for editing in post?

Not easily.  You would need to apply a color correction to try to replicate the change.  If you can use the color correction to get the beginning and end pretty close, you can then use keyframes to have it blend between them and hopefully overcome the adjustment, but results are still probably going to be so-so and it isn't trivial to get even a mediocre fix.


Generally, you want to mix color for ideal conditions, not the common situation.  It is up to people to do the best they can to adjust their systems to support a vivid and clear image.  If you mix to try to make it look the best on some "average", not only will it look bad on any good displays, but it will also look bad on any well adjusted average displays.

The reason for this is because of gamut.  The gamut of a display is the range of colors which it can produce.  A good display has a wide color gamut and can make use of more colors.  A display with a smaller gamut will have to make adjustments to bring colors within gamut or else colors will clip out and appear as the furthest color it can render (relative chromatic  vs perceptual correction).

You want to mix to the widest gamut that will be used so that adjustments don't need to be applied on that display because different lower quality displays will not all have the same gamut.  Some will display more on the blue side, some more on the red, etc.  If you have mixed for a gamut that includes both, both of these lesser displays can make full use of their gamuts.  If you instead mixed for some average in the middle, not only will they lose the colors they don't do from the average, but they will also lose some of the colors they are capable of displaying, further limiting an already limited display.

Video is crap in, crap out.  You want to build the best possible input and then leave it up to the player to adjust.  The only exception to this is if you know the exact target conditions and want to customize for those conditions specifically.  You can always try to adjust visual information you can't display to look ok on your display, but you can't invent information that isn't there.

Also, one important caveat to remember.  Just because one display is brighter doesn't necessarily mean it has better color reproduction, or even a wider color gamut.  Newer consumer displays use localized brightness adjustments to allow for higher contrast ratios and thus can go brighter overall, but this is dependent on the idea that bright areas tend to be bright everywhere.  The local contrast ratio may actually be very low, which means that while the screen may produced bright colors, it does not necessarily do well with sharp contrast or accurate color reproduction (such displays are also a major pita to calibrate for accurate color due to the display fighting you with its localized brightness adjustments.)

Ideally you want something like an S-IPS or S-PVA panel with low color distortion from viewing angle changes and a high static contrast ratio with little or no dynamic contrast adjustment (unless it does it at a per-pixel level).  For best results, you also want to make sure that you have accurate color response curves for the display.  To do this, you need either a colorometer (such as a Spyder or Colormunchi) or spectrometer that can analyze the actual output of your monitor and fine tune the output of your monitor for most accurate color.


Why does After Effects not enable me to work with 60FPS?

Those "options" are just convenient presets. Just select Custom and input the frame rate and any other parameters you want.

Of course, if only some of your shots are 60fps, and your final output is 24 or 30 fps, then set your comp settings to the desired output values, and interpret your footage as 60 fps (if it isn't sensed by AE automatically).


FFMpeg - why recording a video and then compressing it produces a smaller size video than recording with combined options

Your first command is transcoding using FLV1 codec to store in .flv. This is not the same input provided to the x264 encoder as when directly encoded to H264. In fact, it's quite worse, since the default target bitrate set for FLV1 is 200 kbps (although for full desktop capture, it will overshoot by a lot). This has less complex detail in general so it's easier for x264 to encode than the full fidelity raw desktop input.


Sure, you have to combine the field extraction with interleaving.

ffmpeg -i video.avi \
       -filter_complex "[0]field=top[t];[0]field=bottom[b];[t][b]interleave" -r 50 fld%d.png

where the r value is double the original frame rate (or the same as the field rate).


Merge a Premiere-Elements project into another project

I'm not sure if that can be done in Premiere Elements. In Premiere Pro, you can import sequences from other projects, which would accomplish what you're asking for, but as far as I know, you can't do that in Premiere Elements.


What software and technique would I use to achieve this effect?

Tough question, and I imagine that those effects may be combinations of many other effects (probably in a 3D package given the context of the video itself). Barnaby Roper has a pretty interesting skill set, and we could try forever guessing what he did without getting it exactly right.

That said, you should be able to accomplish a similar effect with purposefully induced compression artifacts. Getting those artifacts to animate seemingly organically like the video will be tricky.

Otherwise, dig into After Effects and start playing with combinations of all the distortion. Trapcode's Particular is (unsurprisingly) used throughout, but it's hard to pin down exactly what they're using it for everywhere. Still, Trapcode does have a small blog about the video, which might be able to direct you to further expertise:

http://www.trapcode.com/journal/2013/11/19/david-bowie-love-is-lost-hello-steve-reich-mix.html

You may also want to look into Trapcode MIR: http://vimeo.com/46449353; I don't think it was used for the distortion you've highlighted, but it's possible.

Happy hunting!


ffmpeg: How to fix `Unsupported channel layout "1 channels (FL)" error`, when I convert the source containing separated FL/FR audio streams?

No need to use pan filter, you can reassign channel layout using the channelmap filter.

ffmpeg -i ticket1474.mov -af channelmap=0 -b:a 128k -map 0:v -map 0:a -y sample.mp4

See docs for channelmap filter.

I've skipped mapping the timecode track. ffmpeg will set it as metadata in the input file, and the MP4 muxer will pick it up from there.


There are a number of free, open-source, video players, but VLC springs to mind as one of the best for being cross-platform. You could freely include versions for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOs, Android, as well as OSes you've never heard of like QNX Sylable, OS2, Solaris and three flavours of BSD.


How can I take a part of a video and chroma key only the parts that I select?

This isn't chroma keying. If your subject isn't in front of a green screen (or blue) then you're only other alternative is to mask it, rotoscope to be precise. After Effects does have a tool called a rotobrush that let's you brush around the edges of your subject but it's not the most precise or clean mask.It will however make for a very quick rotoscope. If you go frame by frame, you can make a mask with the pen tool and key the shape each frame as you adjust it. 72 frames at 24 frames per second would give you three seconds like you're estimating. That's about 2 days of work for someone with a decent amount of experience with the pen tool. Hope this helps.


Is Nikon D750 a good choice vs. Canon 5D Mark III for avid Videographer?Edit

You should consider other options than Nikon/Canon. Even if they have proven DSLR can do really good video, thanks to 5D Mark II/III and Magic Lantern, they do not compete well against Panasonic and Sony.

If you compare 5D Mark III against a Sony A7S, you're going to have a much better video quality on A7S, thanks to its far superior sensor. Much higher dynamic range, better low noise performance, 4K, and so on. Watch the 5DIII vs A7S:

The mind-blowing low noise performance on A7S:

https://vimeo.com/99893160

Again, 5D III is left behind Panasonic GH4. The last one is far less expensive, and offer 4K resolution. Even if low noise is not really well performed on it, because of its 4/3 sensor, it's still a good competitor regarding of its price.

Nikon and Canon seem to be left behind nowadays. They provide the best DSLR for stills, but for video, you can find better, and often with less money.

Wake up Canon!


Attach image to layer with tracking mask

I take it you are looking for Motion Tracking. Unfortunately, Premiere Pro doesn't have that capability. You'd have to set keyframes for the animation manually, which can be a pain if it needs to be accurate. If you need to do automated Motion Tracking, you could switch to After Effects which comes with that capability (see link above).


Well, calibrating EQ for home speakers is not a common practice. However it seems that the easiest and cheapest way to do it is just play some music through them and record the output. Then you could use one of the free audio software (e.g. Audacity) to import the recorded audio and get the frequency spectrum graph. Using this graph you might get a general idea of salient frequencies.

And now regarding the graph you see.. You're right, usually the frequency response is represented with one line in dB/Hz units. However in your case there are actually 6 different graphs in one picture:

Regular frequency response (one of the 3 bottom lines with no comments near it)
Frequency response of 2nd and 3d harmonics distortion (the ones wit 2nd HD and 3rd HD comments near them)
What seems to be a phase response (the 3 graphs on top). This one is pretty unusual, especially for home speakers.


If you record speeches that are longer than 30 minutes, the 29m59s limitation of non-video cameras is going to drive you crazy, despite all the other wonderful things they can do.  Interviews can be broken up every 30 minutes.  Speeches not.

If you have ambitions to encompass art projects with your camera, the interchangeable lens feature of the SONY camera opens a world of possibilities (and and bottomless pit of budget requirements).  If you are really focused on ENG then the JVC packs an incredible punch in a single package.  Plus, small sensors are your friend for ENG because of deep depth of field.  It's incredibly annoying to have a speaker in front of a screen and the camera can only focus either on the speaker or their slides.

Based on the things you say you want to do, not the things you say you want, the JVC is the more sensible choice.


A fig rig would be an excellent choice for an action piece. If the fig is out of your budget range look at the Opteka X-Grip. Cheap ($30) and pretty flexible, especially if you mount it sideways instead of with the handle parallel to the lens barrel when the shot needs it.

Also if you have access to After Effects spend some time learning the stabilization and tracking capabilities. That will probably improve your shots, helps with rolling shutter issues too that you may experience on a DSLR.

Borrow a tripod. Lots of tripods sitting around in closets in this world.

Edit: Audio is the achilles heal of DSLR video. Make sure you take that into consideration. You can pick up some decent but cheap shotgun microphones that will plug into the D7000, that will help. Also consider grabbing an H4, or several H1s.


Fix bad files and streams with ffmpeg so VLC and other players would not crash

If parts of the file reside on physically bad sectors, or for whatever reason, the OS cannot serve the whole file to FFmpeg, then naturally FFmpeg can't do anything about that. You should get a utility which can ignore those portions and write the salvageable parts to a new file, like ddrescue.

Now, if the file protocol is not the cause of errors, you can try

ffmpeg -err_detect ignore_err -i video.mkv -c copy video_fixed.mkv


After Effects - Keystroke to move focus to the Project Panel

You can search for keyboard shortcuts by going to edit–>keyboard shortcuts. Searching for the project panel there only reveals the shortcut you have already mentioned. I guess that you're out of luck.


Applying different color keys to one layer in AE

You'll have to make as many duplicates of the layer as there are colours. Apply the appropriate key to each copy, and place the layer you want it to reveal beneath it. On the revealed layer use a track matte, and set it to "Alpha Inverted…". This will hide the keyed layer and use its alpha channel (transparency) to reveal the layer underneath it, but only in the transparent areas.
Your layer stack will look like this, but for any areas not in any of the keys you'll also need a copy of the original layer at the bottom of the stack:


Adobe After Effects CC - stabilize lighting

I'll assume the camera op was fooling with the exposure?

You'll need to key-frame color correction or AE's Auto Color function may work for you:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/color-correction-effects.html

If you go the CC route it may help to watch the YC waveform rather than the image itself.

The Color Stabilizer effect may also work for you. Here's lybda "starter" explination for it youtube tutorial.


Yes you can set a default transition that uses the ctrl-d key combo. I believe it's set by default to crossfade, which I use. You click your clip, control-d and it'll put the fade in and out on the item.

You can change the default transition in the preferences.

It really is simple.

For bonus points, Control-shift-d works for audio.


Sadly, no.
As  Michael commented, to get to lower resolution, all that higher resolution data has been discarded. There is nowhere to get it back from.


The mkvtools package provides a way to read and to edit the metadata of any Matroska file without the need to remux directly from the command line. This allows one to write a relatively simple bash script that does the job.

In here the job is broken into three steps:

UID of each file is read by mkvinfo, cleaned, and recorded into the .uid file. At the same time these files are copied to the previous and next file with the extensions .nextuid and .prevuid.
Option file is generated by taking data from .nextuid and .prevuid files where they exist, this option file is saved with .seqtags extension.
The tool mkvpropedit is used to write the information, and the temp files are deleted.

The reason why it is not done in a single step is to allow the user to abort during the read process and to know that no files have yet been altered.

mkvsequence.sh

#!/bin/bash
# GPL3.0
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

FILES=$(ls *.mkv|sort)

echo First reading all the information
for FILE in $FILES
do
    echo Processing $FILE
    exec mkvinfo "${FILE}" | grep "Segment UID: "  | sed "s/^| *+ Segment UID: //g" > "${FILE}.uid"
    if [ $PREVFILE ]
    then
        cp "${FILE}.uid" "${PREVFILE}.nextuid"
        cp "${PREVFILE}.uid" "${FILE}.prevuid"
    fi
    PREVFILE=$FILE
done

echo Creating the necessary option files
for FILE in $FILES
do
    echo Processing $FILE
    if [ -f "${FILE}.prevuid" -o -f "${FILE}.nextuid" ]
    then
        echo $FILE > "${FILE}.seqtags"
        echo --edit >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
        echo info >> "${FILE}.seqtags"

        if [ -f "${FILE}.prevuid" ]
        then
            echo --set >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
            echo prev-uid=$(cat "${FILE}.prevuid") >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
        fi

        if [ -f "${FILE}.nextuid" ]
        then
            echo --set >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
            echo next-uid=$(cat "${FILE}.nextuid") >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
        fi
    fi
done

echo Now writing all the data
for FILE in $FILES
do
    echo Processing $FILE
    mkvpropedit "@${FILE}.seqtags"
    rm "${FILE}.uid" "${FILE}.prevuid" "${FILE}.nextuid" "${FILE}.seqtags"
done

IFS=$SAVEIFS


Is there a way to burn video on dvd and set "expire time" of it to be watched?

No there isn't - DVD authoring does not include 'expiry' option.


Sony Vegas pro 15: Can not move Image in Pan/Crop

Use the track motion where you can move and resize images


Presuming you are talking about the Watermark2 filter, the AviSynth wiki page for the filter has for download a 64-bit, AviSynth+ version of the filter.


Minimal subtitle leading/lagging difference

There are lots of tricks to proper subtitling, but none of them involve delaying them. The reason you see large lags is because of "live" captioning -- they're appearing as fast as some trained operator can hear and enter them, which for the very best of them is still a few seconds.

For post-event titling, you want the text to appear at or slightly before the spoken word, but consistent with scene changes -- when a scene changes behind a title, the viewer tends to start reading it again, which is confusing.


Camera features useful when recording a live high school basketball game?

You may want to look at an action camera like the GoPro.  They are extremely limited in terms of versatility, but they are small, cheap (relatively speaking) and capture a wide field of view.  They wouldn't be suitable for broadcast use or making videos for fans, but they would be terrific at unattended capturing all the action from multiple angles to be able to review after the game to see what happened.


After selecting File -> Export -> Media, in the Export Settings window that pops up, go to the lower left and make sure that Source Range: Entire Sequence is selected.


What hardware/software to get fastest possible access time in AVC/h264 files?

If its just about playback, I can highly recommend Media Player Classic HC for Windows. I think I haven't seen a faster player so far. It utilizes DirectX 9 for most image rendering which results in a lot faster playback on many machines. Most players only uitilize the CPU for drawing.
Even uncompressed avi's had a lag free playback and fast seeking times from a USB 2.0 hard drive. The player is very good at caching aswell which should give you a benfit with files that have keyframes that are far apart from each other. It also has the option to always skip to the next keyframe when seeking (Options/Tweaks/Fast Seek). It also has a setting for the jump distance when seeking very long videos.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/

Generally for all plattforms recommendable is mplayer with a fitting GUI (there are quite a few of them out there for Windows/Mac/Linux). A little "geeky" but very powerfull.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

You dont need RAID storage to seek through h.264 files fast. That only applies to really huge "raw" video files that are meant for editing. A video card that has MPEG-4 decoding supported would be good to have but normally any video card from the last 4-5 years supports that. Apart from that you dont need any special hardware, your problem is mainly a software issue.


Can I zoom in, manual focus, then zoom out?

To answer your second question:

You can only use the zoom in, focus, zoom out if the lens is parfocal. Normally a parfocal zoom lens starts at 3000-4000 USD, thus I highly doubt the lens in this camera is parfocal.

Then again, how much of an issue this will be depends entirely on the lens, perhaps it won't loose a lot of focus or it will loose a lot of focus when you zoom out.

I'm not familiar enough with the camera to really answer your first question, but in general terms manual focus is the only way to lock focus. However, modern auto focus in certain cameras keep focus very well, but it isn't locked as such.


After effects Trapcode Tao put image inside the sphere

After some research I found a solution from the official Red Giant documentation

If Built-in Environment is set to None, you can choose a layer to use as a custom reflection map using the Reflection Environment Map pop-up menu. Any image can be selected, but to make a correct environment map it should be a spherical map (also called a “lat/long map” or an “equirectangular map.” Note that a “sphere map” is something else). Note that using a very large environment map uses a lot of space on the GPU.

Just import your image and select it from Reflection Environment menu
Material & Lighting > Image Based Lighting > Reflection Environment


What you could try is on your Mac, create a new user profile from the System Prefs Panel, then log in using that user and try to open up the project using the new users profile.

If this woks then I would finish off the project ASAP and once finished, do a system restore on the Mac to get rid of any errors or issues that might happen again


the file codec is dvsd (DVC/DV Video)

Usually DirectX comes with a DirectShow DVSD decoder. But maybe this decoder has some issue with your file(s).
Could it be you've had at some time software by Pinnacle, Sony, MainConcept, etc on your old system installed, whose DVSD decoder could have been used by Premiere Pro instead?


Premiere Pro CS6: how to change color of a clip as time progresses?

There are several ways to do this. The basic idea is always the same: You overlay a color and then animate it's hue. To get rid of all other color, you can either convert the footage to black-and-white (which can again be achieved using different techniques) or put the color on an adjustment layer with the blending mode set to color. This is the preferred way to do it, since this way, you can apply the effect to your entire scene at once. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this effect using the Lumetri Color workspace (which is not available on CS6 and earlier versions).

Create a new adjustment layer (File → New → Adjustment Layer) and put it over your video clips in the timeline of your sequence.
Select the adjustment layer in the sequence and change to the Color workspace (Window → Workspaces → Color). The Lumetri Color panel should now be on the right side of the program window.
In the Lumetri Color panel, under Basic Correction, reduce the Saturation to 0. Your video should now be black-and-white.
Under Creative, set a color for the Shadow Tint and move the Tint Balance slider all the way to the right (100). Your video should now be monochrome.
Open the Effect Settings panel (make sure the adjustment layer is still selected) and find the Shadow Tint setting under the Lumetri Color effect (this one is automatically applied once you change a setting in the Lumetri Color panel). Hit the stopwatch icon to activate the animation for that effect property and set the first keyframe (make sure the playhead is positioned at the first frame of the adjustment layer first). Now it's time to get creative, set keyframes at appropriate intervals and change the Shadow Tint to different settings every time. Premiere Pro will interpolate between the values, giving you the color transition effect you wanted.
Optional: Under Opacity, set the blending mode of the adjustment layer to Color. This way, the original luminosity values are preserved, making the effect more subtle. You can also try Hue for an even more subtle effect or change the opacity of the adjustment layer. This will reduce the color overlay effect, allowing some of the original clip colors to come through.

Workaround for CS6

Since the Lumetri Color panel doesn't exist in CS6, you will need to use another color correction effect instead. The basic idea will stay the same though. You can for example use the Tint effect in the same way as described above (you will have to set keyframes for both Map Black To and Map White To, since there is no balance slider in this effect). With the introduction of the Lumetri Color panel, a lot of the old CS6 color correction effects got deprecated in the new CC version. If you are still on CS6, you could for example also use the Three-Way- or Fast Color Corrector to get similar results.

Or just do it in After Effects using Layer Styles → Color overlay, set the Blend Mode of the effect to Color and animate the Color.


Go back to your reference and look closely. Although the pattern moves across the paper continuously around the edges, it still respects the 3D geometry of the scene. So the paper on top is on a different plane to the paper at the sides and the front. In fact that reference is totally possible to do with stop motion.

With that in mind you have to use AE's 3d capabilities. make a subcomp with your paper pattern. Now in the containing comp make a rectangle mask on the subcomp with the same proportions as the side of the box. Click the 3D icon on that layer, and angle it so that it matches the perspective of your reference. Now using another copy of the precomp add a mask that matches the proportions of the top of the box (use the width of the first mask so that the two edges match). Make this layer 3d and make the first layer its parent. Set its orientation to 90, 0, 0 (don't have AE on this machine so I'm guessing, it could be 270, 0, 0). It should now be at right angles to the side and horizontal. You have to move it so that it meets the side at the top of the box (use 0 as the x coordinate, half the height of the side as it's y coordinate and half the width of the top as the z coordinate). I'll let you work out how to add the end (hint, do the same thing but change the orientation to rotate around the y axis, not the x axis). Imagine you were making the box out of cardboard and think about how you'd rotate and move each piece to make the box.

This will achieve a stylised box, but you won't get too much in the way of realism without a bit more of work in AE. Things like the slightly rounded corners that catch specular highlights (circled in green), which you could use soft edged shape layers to do,  and an additional triangular mask for the folded over flaps at the side (rotate the layer 180 degrees so it doesn't match, and angle it out just a fraction so that it casts a shadow). Most importantly add lights to give some 3D shading.


A simple way in blender or any other 3d package would be to use a boolean modifier, if you want to subtract real geometry:

use a array modifier to duplicate your shape
create a path and aligning the objects on it
animate the object count of the array modifier
create a simple geometry for subtracting the path objects at the beginning
add a boolean modifier to your base object
animate the position of the boolean object to subtract the shape objects
make the boolean object invisible to the camera (e.g. with a transparent material)

.blend file

Edit: To get a soft transition you can render the bool object seperatly, blur the alpha channel and subract it from the another alpha. Or simply use a roto mask.

.blend


Export .mov 1080i60 (59.94i) 29.97 fps Adobe Premiere

Download Quicktime to enable missing codecs
In export settings select "Quicktime" for format
Ignore preset, scroll down to video codec and select H.264


For basics in digital cinema the Vimeo School is a great start.

There are tons of blogs for cinematography.

One of the most interesting blogs that covers gear and on the set experiences
is by noted DP, Philip Bloom, a real major force in modern digital cinema:
http://philipbloom.net/blog/

Coen Brothers too:
http://thecoenbrothers.blogspot.com/?zx=2bb8d66a241d6286

For me the best way to find what's up is to see if your favorite
director, studio, camera manufacturer, or whatever has a blog via Google.


De-Interlace footage in Avid Media Composer using standard effects

The Timewarp motion effect (adjusted with the Motion Effect Editor) can be used to deinterlace with the following settings:

Type: Both Fields
Source: Interlaced
Check Adaptive Deinterlace Source
Output: Progressive

Source: http://community.avid.com/forums/p/99392/572313.aspx


Where to input a log expression in FFMPEG

This is the original expression to be implemented.

x > 0.14996582 ? (pow(10,0, (x - 0.385537) / 0.2471896) - 0.0522720) / 5.5555556 : (x - 0.092809) / 5.367655

where x is the pixel intensity normalized to [0,1]. x is linear, so gamma returns identity.

I'm going to assume the 0 in the pow expression is an extraneous arg since the linked reference at http://strattoncamera.com/pdf/11-06-30_Alexa_LogC_Curve.pdf depicts pow() as having only two arguments. I'm also assuming that the input is 16-bit full-range integer RGB.

ffmpeg -apply_trc linear -i in%d.exr
       -vf "lutrgb=r='if(gt(val/maxval,0.14996582),maxval*((pow(10, (val/maxval-0.385537)/0.2471896)-0.0522720)/5.5555556),maxval*((val/maxval-0.092809)/5.367655))':
                   g='if(gt(val/maxval,0.14996582),maxval*((pow(10, (val/maxval-0.385537)/0.2471896)-0.0522720)/5.5555556),maxval*((val/maxval-0.092809)/5.367655))':
                   b='if(gt(val/maxval,0.14996582),maxval*((pow(10, (val/maxval-0.385537)/0.2471896)-0.0522720)/5.5555556),maxval*((val/maxval-0.092809)/5.367655))'"
        out%d.tiff


See signalstats filter description, it works in YUV colorspace only.
With it one can extract various per frame video statistics and even graph it in real time.


Rather than using constant bitrate, have a go using constant quality (AKA constant rate factor, or crf).

So instead of -b:v 2000 use -crf 23 (adjust the number to change the quality, higher is smaller / lower quality and lower is larger / better quality).

Constant quality usually gives you more bang for your bits, as it skimps on bitrate where it's not really needed. It also removes the need for extra scripting for diferent sizes, as it will automatically lower the bitrate for smaller frame sizes.

You could also use the x264 presets, like -preset slower or -preset veryslow to get x264 to spend more time optimising. It also removes the need to add all the extra encoding flags — the presets are basically some ready-rolled encoding flags (presumably made by people who know what they're doing). More on x264 encoding here

So your command could look like:

ffmpeg -y -i inputvideo.mp4 -async 1 -metadata:s:v:0 start_time=0 -s 1280x720 -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v baseline -movflags faststart -profile:a aac_low -preset slower -crf 23 -b:a 128k outputvideo.mp4

I don't think you need the -strict-experimental flag, unless you've got an old version of ffmpeg.


Your comparison of WMV to MP4 is a little bit confusing, because you're comparing apples and oranges.

MP4 is a container format, which may contain a variety of audio and video formats.  Most commonly, an MP4 file will contain wither an MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka H.264) or MPEG-4 Part 2 video stream, although it can contain MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 video streams.  There are a number of audio codecs that can be stored in an MP4 file as well. See Wikipedia for more information.
WMV is an actual codec (akin to H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 2 mentioned above), and files that end in .WMV are generally stored in an ASF container (see here).

What this all boils down to, is you need to use a codec that both Mac and Windows can play.

According to Microsoft, as of July 2010, Windows Media Player for Windows XP supports (among others):

Microsoft MPEG-4 Standard Video Codec
Vivo H.264 Video CODEC

Which suggests that it ought to play back the two common video formats contained in .MP4 files.  Note the caveat:

  NOTE: Not all of the supported codecs are installed by default. These codecs will be downloadable when you play content that requires the codec.

So it's possible that your users may be prompted to install a codec the first time they try to play one of your videos.

You'll also want to make sure you use an audio codec supported by Windows Media Player. The most common (but by no means only) one is probably MPEG-1/MPEG-2 Audio Layer III (aka MP3), and this is in the list of supported codecs.

So based on this information, if you use MP4 streaming, Windows users should have no trouble playing back your videos.  Although you'll surely want to test your specific output files on a fresh Windows (and Mac) install before you commit to this decision.


a) You can't output 10 different video signals on your single HDMI output. Besides limitation of the graphic card of your computer, that would also require generating/reading 10 different video streams from your computer. One possible option, depending on your project aim and structure, is to produce 1 hi definition video stream from your computer and use an external tool to tile/scale it in 10 different screens (something like http://www.ambery.com/2x2hdvgaviwa.html)

b) sending same video to all 10 screens only requires that you have a one input/ten outputs HDMI splitter (assuming your ten screens have a HDMI input).


Low quality video after exporting Still Image from Adobe Premiere Pro

Firstly it looks like your sequence is 720x480, i.e. standard definition DV NTSC. This is the default sequence for Premiere, and has been since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Since it's about 1/16th the resolution of your image, not to mention that the pixels are non-square it's no wonder that there will be some quality loss.

If you're finishing at 720p (i.e. 1024*720) you should set your sequence to match. You'll have to either start a new sequence using the HDV 720p setting and copy everything across to it…

or cut everything from the timeline, change the sequence settings to match those in the picture below and paste everything back.

N.B make sure that as well as setting the right resolution you also choose square pixels for your pixel aspect ratio. To make your clips match the sequence size you can right-click them and choose Set to frame size. If there are a lot of similar clips you can do the first one, copy it, select the rest and choose edit>Paste Attributes.

Secondly, you're better off creating your image at the final resolution - you won't gain anything by working at a higher resolution than your final product. Working at the native resolution also gives you a good idea of how it's going to look. Photoshop has film and video presets, so choose the correct one when you're setting up your image file.


Vox-style dynamic charts in Final Cut Pro X

You are better served with Motion 5 or similar programs for something like that.

Here is a good example from Ripple Training what might work as starting point for you.


How to include guitar tabs from guitar pro in video?

The Guitar Pro website doesn't list video as one of the output formats available within the software.  So, you'll need to use screen capture software to record the animated tabs, then composite this over your instrument footage.

Alternatively, you could use hardware video mixing devices to combine the video feed of the tab playback with a live camera feed of the guitarist.  This is how many video game streamers composite video feeds with their live gameplay.  Blackmagic design makes an entry level device suitable for this purpose called the ATEM mini.  AJA is another company with similar devices.

Neither of these methods will allow you to alter the format of the output from the guitar tab software; what you see is what you get.  For example, if Guitar Pro 7 doesn't have a continuously-scrolling lower third output format (Like the one in the Cerberus video), you'd need to manually re-create the lower-third tab notation, and then composite it with your guitarist footage.  You can get as fancy as you want with this method, using motion graphics techniques and software such as After Effects, Fusion, or Motion (to name a few), but you could also keep it pretty simple; It's pretty straightforward to animate an image moving left to right in any NLE.  You could use photo editing software like photoshop to convert one of the printable export formats of GP7 into a long, horizontal image, overlay the graphic on your footage, and animate it by setting a position keyframe at the beginning of your video, and one at the end (use linear temporal interpolation for steady movement).


FCP X 10.1.1 - Transitioning to libraries without blending

I got it to work. The key is to update Events and Projects to Libraries (which, incidentally, contain Events and Projects) in stages:

Hide everything except the Events and Projects that belong together in the same Library. Event Manager X is a great tool for this, as Jason suggested in the comments. Whatever tool you use, just make sure that only the Events and Projects that belong together are in the folders "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects".
Next, open Final Cut Pro X.
Go to File and click "Update Projects and Events..." near the bottom of the menu:
Click "Update All"

Final Cut Pro X will do its thing and you'll have a new library with just the Projects and Events you want inside of it.


What is the best method to record a home video of multiple players?

Here is what I do (for my videos on http://www.youtube.com/user/killergege).

Tools :

Software : Reaper for audio recording, Sony Vegas Pro for video editing
Hardware : a camcorder, an audio interface (POD HD500 in my case)

Process :

I create a new project in Reaper and Vegas and setup everything to record audio properly on Reaper through my audio interface.
I add a backing track in Reaper.
I record myself playing each instrument (video & audio) at the same time, Reaper takes the sound, the camcorder takes the video. I might do several takes, Reaper handles pretty well takes and the camcorder just keeps recording.
When finished recording I then have a track for each instrument in Reaper (with maybe several takes in each track), and a video for each instrument.
Then I select the audio takes and mix the tracks with the backing track (changing volume, adding fades, etc.)
I export the audio mixed and import it in Vegas
Then I edit the videos in Vegas, cutting the unused takes and mixing with effects (I use chroma keying to remove the background, fades, camera movements) and to place the videos like you want. Editing the video to do a "splitscreen" like in the example is quite easy and a lot of other editing software can do that.
The hard part is syncing the audio with the video. I try to sync the videos' audio with the Reaper mixed audio I imported just before removing the videos' sound.
I also do it visually (trying to match hand movements with audio).

If you need more details, just ask.


What is the difference between RGB and RGB + Alpha?

The alpha channel is a grayscale 2D image plane of the same size as the RGB image, and is used when overlaying (or blending) the image on top of another image. If the value of an alpha pixel is zero, then the corresponding RGB pixel is invisible when the image is overlaid. If the value is 255 (in an 8-bits per channel image), then the RGB pixel is fully opaque. For intermediate values, you get a composite result, depending on the blending mode used. When viewed in a video player, you won't notice a difference because there's no other video 'underneath'.

See Alpha compositing for more details.


The key thing is controlled lighting, and a camera positioned so that it never moves (locked off on a tripod).  It really helps to use a plain background - a solid colour is good.
Beyond that, you could assemble the images in After Effects, or as an Image Sequence in QuickTime Player, Screenflow, or many other packages.
After Effects is useful for things like this as you could overlap the images and make them semi-opaque, to see whether you need to tweak their positions very slightly.
If the lighting matches on each shot and the camera is in the same position, and the model stands at the same point each time, you may not need to morph the shots, but if you do, the built-in Liquify plugin can help with this.


How to achieve trippy breathing effect (visual drifting) on static photo

You can achieve an effect like this with a couple of distortion filters from most video editing or motion graphics packages. For example in FCPX/Motion, you could apply a couple of Bulge distortion filters to the upper right and lower left and adjust the scale and radius as appropriate.

In terms of implementing it yourself, I agree that it's a question for StackOverflow (once you've attempted to write it yourself). The algorithm is fairly straightforward. For all the pixels within the radius, apply a mapping function along the vector from the center to the current point. For example (in pseudo code):

distort (vec2 center, float radius, float amount)
{
    for (each pixel in the image)
    {
        vec2 dir = pixel.coord - center;
        float dist = dir.length()
        if (dist >= radius)
        {
            outPixel = pixel;
        }
        else
        {
            float percent = dist / radius;
            float newPos = pow(percent, amount);
            dir = dir / dist;
            vec2 newCoord = dir * newPos * radius;
            outPixel = getPixel(newCoord);
        }
    }
}


Create a video from a landscape image with ffmpeg

You can just use the crop filter.

ffmpeg -loop 1 -t 10 -i img.png
       -vf "crop=w=W:h=ih:x='(iw-W)*t/10':y=0"
       -r 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

The crop filter crops the image to Wxih pixels where ih is the original height. You should substitute W with your target width in pixels. The position of the top-left corner of the crop window is set by the x and y expressions.

Since you only want to move left-to-right, y is set to a fixed 0. For x, the expression (iw-W)*t/10 governs the horizontal position of the crop window. t is the processed frame's timestamp in fractional seconds. W is substituted with the target width. iw is the input width. The crop will start from the left edge and end at the right edge at t = 10 seconds.

For an image sequence of 10 seconds, use

ffmpeg -i img%d.png
       -vf "crop=w=W:h=ih:x='(iw-W)*t/10':y=0"
       -r 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4


Path shape not masking text through Track Matte in After Effects

Your approach is really creative, but I'm afraid you could have made it much easier on you.

If your text is moving on its own, you can simply pre-compose the text layer. That way, the newly created precomp doesn't move, allowing you to draw a mask around the person if needed. Remember to only draw a mask where the text touches the person, you'll easily create bigger masks than you have to (speaking from experience) which will take up unnecessary time.


Seeking Boroscope capable of focal lengths from 24 to 48 inches

Hmm.  Perhaps I asked for help too soon?
After more online searching, I found an Oiiwak Endoscope (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08L65982N/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza) that claims 5cm to infinity for focal distance.  We'll see if that's a legit capability or just a marketing claim.  Anyway, I'm going to try it out.
(The product info also states that it can feed video live to a PC via USB, so I should be able to point Skype etc. to it as my video source for video calls.)
If anyone has any advice, or comments, though they would be welcome/appreciated.


Use the concat demuxer instead:

Create a text file of the following format

file 'C:\source.mp4'
inpoint 0
duration 1
file 'C:\source.mp4'
inpoint 3
duration 1
file 'C:\source.mp4'
inpoint 6
duration 1
file 'C:\source.mp4'
inpoint 9
duration 1

Then run

ffmpeg -f concat -i file.txt -map 0:v -map 0:a? -vcodec h264 -acodec aac -pix_fmt yuv420p -strict -2 -fflags +genpts C:\output.mp4


Batch Processing Moved Assets in Premiere

You should only have to relink one of the assets per moved/renamed folder, Premiere will then automatically check for any other offline assets in that directory and relink them. Depending on your version of Premiere Pro there will be a checkbox in the Missing Media dialogue that will allow you to toggle that behaviour:

Premiere has also been made smarter successively. For example, the CC version will remember the last 10 locations of your assets and check those automatically in case of offline media. It might also relink all your assets in different folders if the overall folder structure of the project and/or the relative path from the project file to the media file haven't changed, but I'm not sure about that.


Whats the most affordable way to setup a large screen outdoors for live video

"Most affordable" makes this a very difficult question to answer. The way most festivals do it is by hiring large screens. You could try and do it with a projector, which can work okay at night, but not so good in daylight (like a drive-in cinema).

For bright displays there aren't really any shortcuts -

Have a good video platform and desk
Route signal
Use good quality screens

Technology-wise, it is very simple, as you aren't doing anything clever with video.


It is possible that the device is dropping frames when recording. If there are a lot of apps running or the device is running low on memory. I would try rebooting the phone then try to record video and see if you experience the same problem.


poor quality video VHS camcorder: is there a fix?

The AV ARTIFACT ATLAS is a good resource for identifying errors in video. It also gives advice on how to fix them.


Problems opening 3GP files in Sony Vegas 12 64bit

I finally got back in working order by also installing AviDemux and Quicktime.

CONCLUSION: Vegas is capable of opening 3GP files AS LONG it has the right codecs, which Quicktime seems to supply when installed alongside other codec packs.


Issues with uncompressed video in edting software

The limitation is certainly the disk I/O, which at 10GB/min is outside the capabilities of all but very high-end disk subsystems.

It's generally true that you should work at the highest bit rate and bit depth your system is capable of so you have the headroom for processing, but your system simply isn't capable of working at the rates your asking of it.

Determine what you need as the end result and pick a reasonable level above that for editorial. Uncompressed 1080p is way overkill if your target is YouTube, for example. Usually, choose an all I-frame (no interframe compression) format and a bit rate that will allow your system to handle two or three streams at once. If your disks can handle 60MBytes/s random access, it can play 3 80Mbit/s sources for compositing, and so on. That's more than needed for all but the most demanding targets.


ffmpeg batch overlay Error: "Cannot find a matching stream for unlabeled input pad 1 on filter Parsed_overlay_0"

Looks like you forgot -i. Try:

@echo off
REM Add watermark to video batch
for %%a in (*.mov) do ( ffmpeg -i "%%a" -i watermark.png -filter_complex "overlay=10:10" "output\%%~na.mov"
)
pause


There's a philosophical difference between delivery codecs (e.g. mpeg4, avchd), editing codecs (e.g. DNxHD, ProRes, Cineform), and capture codecs (e.g. r3d, DVCPROHD).  While almost any codec can be used for each of these three stages, your workflow needs will help you decide which are best suited for each stage.

The question you seem to be asking, is "Which editing codec should I transcode to for an online edit?".  Editing codecs are generally less compressed and larger on disk, to make playback simpler from a processing perspective.  It's definitely possible to use ProRes in Premiere, and coming from DSLR (as of July 2011) 422 is probably (technically) overkill, but it is a reasonable default choice.  Another editing codec option to consider is Cineform, since you can get the 1920x1080 codec for free now, as part of the GoPro Cineform Studio package.

There are even specialized tools to help you with transcoding batches of files, such as Magic Bullet Grinder.  If you're concerned about editing speed, there's even a chance that Premiere and your computer will be powerful enough to slog through your capture files as-is without transcoding, saving you from this step altogether.

As always, try it for yourself, and test, test, test, your workflow before putting it into production.


filgergraph as described can not work, you can not use [alpha] twice, you need to split it:

[0:v]split[bg][key];
[bg]crop=720:576:0:0, format=gbrap,setsar=0:1[rgb];
[key]crop=720:576:720:0,format=gray8,setsar=0:1,scale=720:576,split[alpha2][alpha];
[1:v]scale=720:576,format=yuv420p,setsar=0:1[video];
[alpha]negate[neg_alpha];
[video][neg_alpha]blend=all_mode='multiply':all_opacity=1[masked_video];
[rgb][alpha2]blend=all_mode='multiply':all_opacity=1[masked_3d];
[masked_video][masked_3d]blend=all_mode='addition':all_opacity=1


Blocky video artifact problem on Canon 600D

This is dropped data.  It may be a problem with either your memory card or your camera itself.  h.264 data, which is the format your video is recorded in, works off of a concept known as Group of Pictures.  Basically, many of the frames of video don't store information about what they look like, but rather what they look like related to previous or future frames.  The entire group of pictures is then decoded together.  A group of pictures typically covers somewhere around half a second to 3/4 of a second of video.

Additionally, image data is encoded in blocks within each frame.  When the data is encoded properly with sufficient bandwidth, these blocks blend seamlessly and you can't tell they are there.  If the data rate is too low or something gets corrupted, then they become obvious though.

This is what has occurred in your video.  During the recording, some data was dropped, resulting in the remaining data being shifted over and thus when the video is decoded, the image blocks are given information that doesn't line up correctly, resulting in the blocky look you are seeing.

Since full frames are only stored every 15 frames or so, the video can't recover from the error until the next full frame (I frame) is reached.  This is because the decoder only knows what changed from the neighboring frame for B (based on former and next frame) and P (based on previous frame) frames.  Thus, it works from the corrupt frame and produces further corrupt frames.

It is possible that the camera is trying to record proper data, but the SD card is not bothering to write it down correctly.  It is also possible that the encoder within the camera is corrupting the data and that the SD card is writing the data it is given faithfully.  The best bet to troubleshoot is to try a different SD card and see if the problem continues in the same manner.

If the SD card does not fix the problem, I would suggest contacting Canon's customer support for further assistance with getting your camera fixed.


Starting a YouTube channel - Advise/Questions/Tips

This is too broad, but here are some tips.

If it is like this one

you could start with a nice PowerPoint presentation... Nicer than that example.

  So what skills should I familiarize myself

There are three main categories.

1. Videos with significant production value.

Animation, photography, Illumination, music, voice, good quality, a script, storyboard, revisions...

Because of the big effort it represents, the scripting part (and its revisions) are of paramount importance.

Introduction, development, climax, conclusion.

2. Live recorded tutorials

As you remember to do things, with bloopers and fixed later with some annotation over the video.

3. Anything in between

  I don't have any experience in editing videos... videos that people can hopefully understand?

Simply make them suited to your target.

This is not related directly to editing video, it is related to your capacity to make your explanations understandable but mainly interesting. It is related to what draws attention to the intended audience.

We live in a competitive era. There are a lot of videos with good quality. Some rely on personal charisma, some on the production, some in the style, some on a ton of other things.

Define what is your "mojo". What is the thing you are going to do to differentiate and add value to your product?

Yes, some of that is given by the editing. The editing is meant to give you rhythm. Some parts are meant to give you unity, volume to the voice, volume to the music.

But any editing is not enough if your source material is not good. So...

Simply prepare a video like if you are preparing a good exposition to a live audience.


Premier Pro producing a 4 hour video that's corrupted

The first place I would look would be in the encoder log files. If you used Adobe Media Encoder you will find the log files here:

Windows 7 & 8:

C:\Users\[user]\Documents\Adobe\Adobe Media Encoder\8.0\AMEEncodingLog.txt

Mac OS:

/Users/[user]/Documents/Adobe/Adobe Media Encoder/8.0/AMEEncodingLog.txt

To view the log file, choose File > Show Log or press CTRL + L.

There are two log files:

AMEEncodingLog.txt - for successfully encoded jobs
AMEEncodingErrorLog.txt - for jobs that failed, or were stopped by the user

See the help: https://helpx.adobe.com/media-encoder/using/log-files.html

Check the last entry in each log file and see if your video was encoded correctly.

If the log file points to an encoding error, investigate that
If the log file indicates no error then attempt to play the video in a different media player and see if the problem still persists

I use VLC media player because I've found it to be most reliable.  There is also a debugging console in VLC that can be useful.


How does Salman Khan make his screencasts?

He uses Camtasia Pro ($200) a Wacom tablet and (at least on the earliest videos) MS Paint. And a head mic.

http://www.teachthought.com/technology/how-to-screencast-like-the-khan-academy/

On a mac, a similar piece of screen capture software would be Screenflow, although Khan works on a Windows machine:

http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/


Most quality editing (Adobe Premier, Final Cut, etc.) will allow you to do this pretty easily with both text and images using "keyframing". You can make them scroll, zoom in, or whatever other movement you need. There's tons of videos on how to do this on Youtube, but here's one for Adobe Premier:


Burn .ass subtitle onto .webm with no loss of quality

Use

ffmpeg -i input.webm -vf ass=subtitles.ass -b:v 0 -crf 20 output.webm

The libvpx encoders for WebM, by default, perform Constrained Quality encoding, and use the bitrate as a ceiling. Default bitrate is 200 kbps. To remove bitrate ceiling, set bitrate to 0. -crf controls the quality level.


How do I get a 1960s film look, like technicolor?

Pretty much any professional grade video editing software will have "color Correction/Color grading" capabilities -- this is the part of the art that you are looking for. Obviously, the "grain" you'll get here is digital/simulated noise, and not actual particles of chemicals. this is the Instagram filter before there was Instagram.

the website "shotonwhat?" is a good resource to see which actual cameras (and lenses, but not always) were used for movies. Lenses, lighting, makeup and wardrobe and production design also make a big impact on the look of the film, some of which you've mentioned.

Another big part of the equation is the "film stock" -- the actual film used in 35mm/16mm/8mm cameras -- which had countless varieties based on different factors. Individual film stocks often had special characteristics (sometimes intended, sometimes not) which were favored by cinematographers/directors.

the digital equivalent of a film stock is called a LUT (a look up table). so the way it works is this : you shoot the scene in the digital camera's "flat" mode to get the most information on your chip. Then you apply the LUT to make it look like how you want to. On set, you can live preview your LUT to approximate how it's going to look like in post, unless you're just playing with it in post from scratch.

It's hard to give a specific answer to your question without spraying a bunch of brand names -- which is frowned upon here -- but I hope my answer helps you in farther research.


Adobe Premiere Pro - How do I select a Region in the Timeline using Mouse

Not sure it can do exactly what you're asking for.
Nearest I can think of is selecting the razor blade tool (or press  C).
Making a cut using the mouse on your region, then switching back to the selection tool (or press V).
Then selecting your region, and adjusting the ends if necessary by floating over them, then dragging.
(In and Out points are massively useful when you get into more complex edits.  There's a reason most editing software uses them - they're worth learning to use).


Can camcorder Sony HDR CX455 record videos in MP4 at 1920 x 1080i to be uploaded to YouTube?

Finally, I got the official answer from Sony Customer Service as follow:

Yes, You can record MP4 at 1920 x 1080p. Please be advised that the video format for the XAVC S is in MP4, while the AVCHD is for m2ts files. And please make sure that the File Format that is set in your camcorder is XAVC S HD:
- Press Menu.
- Select Image Quality/ Size.
- File Format (film icon) and select  XAVC S HD.

http://helpguide.sony.net/cam/1610/v1/en/contents/TP0000945876.html


Does having a gimball mean you can disbale stability on action camera

As Michael Clark pointed out when the question was on photography, it depends on the type of gimbal, how good the gimbal is and how skilled the operator is.

An inertial gimbal works by giving the camera assembly a larger size and mass and then having the operator hold the assembly near the center of gravity.  When the operator moves, inertia slows changes in the orientation of the camera, resulting in smoothing of angular changes.  This requires the gimbal to be very near frictionless to minimize the impact of the operator's movement on the rotational inertia of the camera assembly.  A low quality or poorly maintained gimbal won't properly isolate the assembly and an unskilled operator may improperly balance the assembly or cause excessive motion do to the added weight and complexity of operation.

A robotic or motorized gimbal, such as a Ronan, acts on a slightly different principle.  They do not require the finesse of the operator to execute changes in camera direction as this is accomplished by a joystick (less direct control, but easier to operate).  Additionally, they are not quite as balance sensitive as the orientation correction is provided by gyroscopes and motors which can tell what's actually happening vs a simple passive physics based system.  Additionally, counterweights aren't needed for stabilization so the rig can potentially be lighter overall making it easier to handle.  The down side is the previously mentioned lack of direct control and the power requirements.  Additionally, the quality of the gimbal still becomes a major factor.  If gyroscopes are not sensitive enough or the motors are too imprecise or laggy, then the quality of the stabilization will be greatly reduced.

Both of these types of gimbals are designed for correcting 3 degrees of orientation and do not handle any lateral movement on their own (adding things like vest & arm systems can add some position stabilization as well, but weren't specifically mentioned in your question.)

Image stabilization on the camera depends on the camera.  Some use movement of lens elements (optical image stabilization) to correct the direction the lens is pointed as the orientation changes.  Others use free floating sensors that are able to move in response to motion to keep the sensor in the correct orientation and location in the image circle.

The amount of correction that either of these in-camera systems can provide is extremely limited since they don't govern the actual aiming of the camera body, but they can help with a degree of hand shake.  There is one noteworthy distinction though.  For the floating sensor types of camera stabilization, it is possible to correct of a limited degree of positional stabilization, not just orientation as the sensor can move up and down and side to side a bit.

In general, I would expect that with a half way decent gimbal and even intermediate experience as an operator, you should get much better overall results with the gimbal, but depending on your shooting situation, you may still gain some additional benefit from the camera's built in stabilization if it has a floating sensor particularly.  You really need to try messing with it either way though as the movement may be sufficient to throw off the balance and cause issues with the gimbal as well.

Certainly the effects should be pretty minimal, so if your primary concern is recovering the higher frame rate, then using a gimbal and turning off the in camera stabilization won't give you a major sacrifice in stabilization quality.


What video production softwares are typically used for the following

I'm not sure whether there is specific software that does this but my go-to would be after effects as it allows you to build all this within itself, or it can animate a file that was build in photoshop/illustrator


How to automatically fix lighting conditions in different shots in a timelapse?

There are plugins that adjust exposure over time to reduce flickering in timelapses - GBDeflicker works well. (But it won't change night to day or anything like that).
See also:
Correcting exposure flickering in time-lapse footage "in post"


Exchange project files between different versions of Premiere Pro?

Basically what @Amer said plus for a shortcut there's an app that can 'downgrade' your project online - http://joshcluderay.com/downgrade-premiere-project-converter/
the trade off is, it always sets the version to 1 so 'some' effects and attributes might be lost in the process. I found that for your everyday editing this doesn't affect anything unless you're using titles (type).


ffmpeg -r 0.25 -i video.mpg -f image2 %05d.png

ffmpeg invoke the program

-r 0.25  force the frame rate of

-i video.mpg  your input file

-f image2 %05d.png  force the format of  the output file

From the ffmpeg site:

  FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode,
  transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything
  that humans and machines have created. It supports the most obscure
  ancient formats up to the cutting edge. No matter if they were
  designed by some standards committee, the community or a corporation.
  It contains libavcodec, libavutil, libavformat, libavdevice,
  libswscale and libswresample which can be used by applications. As
  well as ffmpeg, ffserver, ffplay and ffprobe which can be used by end
  users for transcoding, streaming and playing


An XLR cable used with an adapter won't give you the audio quality that an all-XLR cable will. If audio quality is really important, I'd buy or borrow an external recorder that takes XLR cables directly. If this isn't an option, pick up an XLR to 1/8" adapter cable. I suggest taping the adapter to the camcorder so it doesn't move around much.

(Mic cables do move around, particularly if you have a boom operator. However, with an interview, you may be able to use on-screen mics in stands or a single, overhead mic on a stand or hung from the ceiling.)

If you need two mics for the interview, you'll need a small mixer which you can then feed into the camera.

Wireless only really makes sense if you want to use lavalier mics on the actors; wireless systems introduce additional complexities, as they're less plug-and-play than a standard cabled mic.

Balanced versus unbalanced audio:

Any signal chain will have line noise. An unbalanced system (like an XLR cable going into an 1/8" stereo adapter would be) will have more of it. XLR cables (with three connectors) are good because they deliver balanced audio, which is another way of saying that they can do long cable runs without much noise.

A 1/8" cable has also three connectors, but usually because they carry a stereo signal, which is not the same as an unbalanced one. I assume the stereo cable jack on your camera means that the cable run is not balanced - repurposing that third prong from ground to a stereo signal is what does it.

Although I think it's technically possible to have a balanced 1/8" jack, I've never heard of one. (A stereo signal carried through XLR would neccesitate two XLR cables.)

According to Panasonic's specs, your camera uses a "stereo mini" jack, not a balanced or TRS jack. Connector quality would be even more important in that case, since you're feeding an unbalanced analog signal to the camera.

If you have a little time, perhaps getting two adapters - one high-end and one inexpensive - and doing a test may be in order.

Conclusion:

In your situation, if buying or renting an external recorder isn't an option (around $300US), a good microphone feeding into an XLR to 1/8" adapter will introduce line noise, but will also give you getter audio quality than most onboard camera mics.


How to record a video of computer screen movements

I love using Camstudio!
It's free I've used it , not the best interface but great to use until you are willing to pony up $300 for Camtasia.

http://camstudio.org/


What are some good resources for learning Motion 4?

I found rippletraining to be very helpful. Larry Jordan is also a good starting point.

Alex4D puts out some really cool, easy to learn from, Motion templates. Sight-Creations is another great resource to find Motion templates.

You're also going to find lots of good starting material on YouTube.

TimesaverTutorials
DoApproductionss
Dan Allen

If you didn't know, you can also save YouTube search queries and subscribe to them in Google Reader. I find a lot of good stuff there too.

Lastly, I want to mention Vimeo. The quality of videos you're going to find there is really astonishing. Check out the group Motion tips & tricks

Cheers,
Andreas


Licence for including (with HTML embed tag) others YouTube videos

If you use the YouTube embed feature then it is allowed according to the YouTube terms of service. If the uploader doesn't want their video to be embedded they can simply turn it off in the video manager.

What is not allowed, whether the embed feature is enabled or not, is that you rip the video from YouTube and then distribute it from your own servers. The only exception is that the video author gave you permission to do this.

Also, you may get a cease and desist letter if you have a habit of just putting a ton of YouTube videos on your webpages and some ads and no original content of your own.


What does it mean when encode a yuv422 file to yuv420 by libx264 lossless encoding?

To directly compare the YUV422P AVI and YUV420P MP4,

ffmpeg -i input.avi -i out.mp4
   -filter_complex
      "[0]format=yuv420p,split[avi-p][avi-s];
       [1][avi-p]psnr;[1][avi-s]ssim" -f null -


How do you adjust the 'margins' in the Premiere Pro program window?

Possibility #1: If there's not just black filled rectangles from the rectangle tool around your text, then it looks like you might have nested your text into a sequence with smaller dimensions. Find the text on your timeline and check if it is in a nest. If so, try:
1. Right-click on the nest in the timeline
2. Choose 'Reveal in Project' to find the nest in the Project panel
3. Right-click on the nest in the Project panel
4. Choose 'Sequence Settings'
5. Change the Video > Frame Size 'horizontal' and 'vertical' values to match the sequence you added the nested text to.

Possibility #2:
Another way you can achieve this effect is in the Effects controls panel for the text clip. If you were to scale the video down, it would have hard borders. Check that the video scale is at 100%.


What was technically wrong with this unseekable wmv?

WMV is really just another name for ASF. That format, like many multimedia formats, contains its data in pieces of various types. Some formats call these packets, some call them segments. ASF, like RIFF before it, calls them chunks. There are several types of chunks, the main one being the data chunk, which holds the encoded streams. There may be several data chunks in the file, mixed in with other chunk types.

The other chunks can contain metadata, DRM info, text data and so on. WMV includes one called (I believe) the index chunk which holds information about where the data chunks are located in the file.

If the index chunk is corrupted or missing the file can usually be played but perhaps not seeked, or may seek randomly into the middle of GOPs. Programs like ASFTools and Steeper attempt to re-index the file by locating the data chunks and building a new index chunk if they can't locate a misplaced one.

Chunks of various types begin with unique identifying headers -- byte sequences called tags -- that can be found by scanning the file. This allows a repair program to potentially reconstruct a minimally playable file from a partially corrupt one by examining the full set of chunks.


Video editing software for easy freeze frame voiceover

I believe you can do this in both Adobe Premier and Final Cut Pro. Here's some links:
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/recording-audio.html
https://support.apple.com/guide/final-cut-pro/record-voiceovers-verc1faa9c5/mac