Flicker in the Capture, LED light source

Here is a blog posting from one of the leading LED fixture manufacturers, SORAA.  (Their chief scientist won the Nobel Prize for the invention of the blue LED.)  One of the design problems is that a rippler-suppressor reduces LED output efficiency by 2%-3%.  If you are a consumer looking for absolute Lumens from a given form factor, or highest Lumens per Watt, you'll end up buying a product that compromises on flicker in favor of output.  Moreover, while the industry used to agree on a definition of a flicker index, they are walking away from that and going to very application (and person)-specific definitions.  In the referenced article, mention was made that in the state of California, the only recognized flicker test is performed by the person sensitive to the phenomenon.  Finally, if you are using these lights for anything other than scientific motion studies, i.e., if color is actually important to you, Color Rendering Index (CRI) may also be important.

Obviously, cameras have very different sensitivity than humans.  And specialty instruments (made for high-speed video) exist, with more expensive power supplies and lower lumen/watt output.  I have been impressed with the SORAA lights I've purchased (CRI 95, and no visible flicker at framerates I've used).  If they don't test out for you, the best alternative is to get a specialty light that does specifically advertise flicker-free (usually by using a true DC power supply).


By default, ffmpeg treats image sequence and raw video inputs as having a native rate of 25 fps unless told otherwise. So, the -r 50 duplicates each frame.

Use

ffmpeg -framerate 50 -i imageSeq-%06d.png -vcodec png -pix_fmt rgb32 -y video.mov

You can skip the -r 50 since ffmpeg will use the input's framerate.


How to extract MOOV atom/metadata from MP4 file?

Maybe I'm a bit late, but I'd use bento4 mp4dump, it's really easy to install on mac with brew brew install bento4

mp4dump 1.mp4

[ftyp] size=8+16
  major_brand = iso5
  minor_version = 200
  compatible_brand = iso6
  compatible_brand = mp41
[moov] size=8+740
  [mvhd] size=12+96
    timescale = 1000
    duration = 0
    duration(ms) = 0
....


You should use Handbrake. If you rip the DVD using Handbrake, you will get a single file, which you can then import into Vegas.


After Effects won't consistently stop previewing video when I ask it to

When you press space bar, After Effects tries to playback the composition out of the current playhead position instantly. Theoretically the playback depends on your machine, but an instant playback of a  composition (in real time) is a very computing-intensive process and with conventional computers not possible at the moment. This also is the simple reason why After Effects sometimes does not respond. Also see the official Improve performance manual.

For correct playback (25fps) use the RAM-Preview instead of the space bar. Press Numpad 0 or the associated |||> in the Preview Panel to start the preview rendering process:

Press Numpad 0 again to stop it
Press Numpad 0 twice to stop and playback the previously rendered (green) frames

In order to facilitate the work:

Set the rendering resolution of the view to a lower value for e.g. to half or quarter
Limit the work area in your timeline, press B to set the start render point (Begin), press N to set the end point (End)
Enable loop preview (7th button) to repeat the preview of the current work area
Press Numpad ,  for audio preview only


Players buffer streams.  The bigger the buffer size, the longer window the encoder has to use higher bitrates for hard content, and then fewer bits earlier or later on easy content, to achieve similar quality for the whole video.

I'll assume you're going to use h.264 (aka AVC) as a codec, as it's the de-facto standard for streaming video on the Internet.  VP8 is not as good quality.  VP9 can look better than h.264, but support is limited.  HEVC (h.265) is also better than h.264, but again player support is limited.  (And hardware decode acceleration won't be widespread for years.  This matters, because HEVC is very cpu-intensive to decode, more than AVC.)

The quality comparisons I'm talking about are with the best available encoders for each codec.  x264 for AVC, Google's VPx for VP8/VP9, and x265 for HEVC.  All with settings cranked up nearly all the way.  x265 will start to get into seconds-per-frame instead of frames-per-second for 1080p with settings that slow, though.  (x264 orders of magnitude faster, since it's been essentially mature for a couple years now, with few new speedups or quality gains being found.)

All these encoders are free open-source software.  It's nice that you don't have to pay anything to get world-class quality codecs these days.  :)

A random google hit on x264 vbv for streaming:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=147460

An example from x264 --fullhelp:

  Constant bitrate at 1000kbps with a 2 second-buffer:
        x264 --vbv-bufsize 2000 --bitrate 1000 -o <output> <input>

(don't actually use one-pass target-bitrate mode, though.  Either 2pass if you have a specific target bitrate, or crf with a target quality.)

edit: recommended usage for streaming, according to the x264 lead developer (Jason Garrett-Glaser), is quality target (CRF) mode with VBV-constrained bitrate.  e.g.

x264 --vbv-bufsize 2000 --vbv-maxrate 1000 --crf 22 -preset slower -o <output> <input>

vbv-maxrate is the max speed the buffer can fill at.  (i.e. the max network bandwidth).  vbv-bufsize is of course the size of the buffer, which allows for non-sustained bitrate peaks higher than vbv-maxrate.

And of course, if you're encoding once to create a file which will be streamed many times, throw as much CPU time at it as you can.  Encode time is of little importance compared to getting the most quality per bitrate (rate-distortion tradeoff, aka RD).  The encode only happens once, and any bits you can save (while maintaining the same quality) are saved for every download.  e.g. Use x264 with --preset veryslow.


Can I reproduce video in 1440×1080 12M MP4 on a Full HD TV?

You don't mention either how (or IF?) you are editing anything here, or what forms of storage, distribution, archiving, etc you anticipate?

You are probably correct that MP4 is a more compatible distribution format, but distribution format does not necessarily have to be identical with recording and editing format.

I would not anticipate any issue with displaying a 1440×1080 frame on a 1920x1080 screen. Modern digital displays typically handle scaling (UP or DOWN) pretty seamlessly.  In any case, shouldn't it be easy to actually try it for yourself?  No amount of anonymous advice from the internet beats actual first-hand experiment.


All of my tags from WeedlLon's paid rig are missing when I reopen the project

Open the project that you want to insert the rig into.  Open the rig by using the "Merge" command under the file menu instead of the usual "Open" command.  This will place a copy of the content in the project upon which you are currently working.  For help with disappearing controls, I'd have to actually see the rig and how you're using it to know what's going on.  It sounds like maybe the HUD elements are only set to display under certain circumstances.  You can change this behavior by right-clicking on any HUD element and changing it's settings, but again, I'm only guessing that this might be your issue.  Any way you could upload some screenshots, or better yet, a video of how you're using the rig?  I could modify my answer to be more helpful.

*edit  I think the tag you're talking about is the Visual Selector Tool.  I found a video that might be helpful to you.


GoPro why high frame rate does not reduce time

The GoPro4 Silver model uses the same bitrate for 1080p-30 as 1080p-60 and hence the recording times are similar. This does mean that fewer bits are allocated per frame in the 60fps mode, although since the codec H264 uses inter-frame compression, the difference won't be as stark.


For live event video display, I would search for "VJ software."  Because (a) I'm a video editor who uses DaVinci Resolve in his daily life and (b) I sometimes make typos when performing internet searches, I've stumbled across a piece of software called "Resolume," which appears to be highly regarded in this space, although I cannot comment on its quality or efficacy.  https://resolume.com


Are the EV principles that are used in photography the same in video production?

Yes.  For things like exposure time, EV, f-stops, video is just the same as still photographs.  You just happen to be taking 24 or more of them per second.

The one difference in actually exposing a frame would be that still photography typically uses a mechanical shutter.  (You can hear it k'thwap when you take a picture on many cameras.)  But video uses an electronic shutter.  This could very slightly effect things like how motion blur looks, or how parts of the image are exposed over the course of the exposure time.  But that 99% doesn't matter, especially if you are just getting up to speed on the basics of things like f-stops.


Removing an overlay using green screen footage?

What you are looking for is called "Chroma Keying".

It works by sampling a color (in either 2D or 3D space, but you don't have to worry about that) and it, simply put, exchanges that color with the alpha channel - thus making the hue transparent. If you're working with Streamlabs OBS, regular OBS, After Effects or something similar, Chroma Keying is built into these programs. For a good result and knowledge about screen mattes, despill and other things to keep in mind while keying, check out the tutorials by andrew kramer.


Use MediaInfo?
About:
https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo
//
Downloads:
https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download
But you need to install it.
On Windows (haven't tested on mac), it shows up as option on rightclick


what you are looking for is a DAM (Digital Asset Management) software. There are many many options available some free some paid.

Most NLE's have this built in, again there are free and paid versions


If you have access to adobe premiere pro CS6+ or after effects CS5.5+.

Try using the warp stabilizer effect and see how well it handles it.
It would automatically attempt to stabilize the footage (and rolling shutter).
This is probably the easiest thing to try first before doing manual frame by frame tracking.

You can see a video by adobe giving a quick overview of it here:

http://tv.adobe.com/embed/902/12454/


do starting a youtube video production require huge budget

The simple answer to your question is "No, starting a YouTube video channel does not require a huge budget."  There are YouTube channels that consist only of videos made using smartphones.

If you want to shoot for higher production values than that, you should be more specific in your question and you might get a more specific answer.  But the simple answer is: if you have a smartphone with video capabilities, you can start a YouTube channel with just that.


After Effects: How do I add a Marker onto a layer?

Select Layer. Then from the top menu:

Layer => Add Marker

Or if you want to do it from your keyboard you can modify shortcuts using this article.


How to DISABLE--NOT REMOVE subtitle tracks from an MKV file from the command line?

What player are you using?

Unless you have the "forced" flag set, it's a player option whether subtitles are displayed automatically or not and in which language if you have several subtitle tracks.

First, set the "default-flag" to false:

mkvpropedit video.mkv --edit track:s1 --set flag-default=0

Then lookup your player preferences.

In VLC (2.0.8), I had to follow these instructions:

  To disable subtitles by default, select "Preferences", then "Show
  All". Select "Input/Codecs". On the "Subtitle Track ID" selection
  window, change the value to "-1".

and also set the preferred language to "none".

In SMplayer, uncheck Preferences / Subtitles / "Select first available subtitle".

Once your "default" flag is set to false for all subtitle tracks, it only depends on your player preferences.


edit after effects projects with aerender and extend script

Aerender does what it says on the tin: it just renders. It can save a comp after rendering if there's a post-render action like setting proxies, but AFAIK it has no other capability to modify projects (figures, because it is available to put on as many machines as you want, so they don't want to be giving away a program capable of editing .aep files).

To modify an After Effects project you have to have a licensed instance of After Effects running. You can do it with extendscript in headless mode, so AE will run, but won't show the UI, but you can't run extendscripts without AE installed.

A better way to do what you want is to use the new data-driven animation features. You can use an expression so that the content of the text layer is linked to an external data file. Changing this file (which can be JSON, a piece of JS or just plain text) will change the contents of the text layer.

Using that workflow you

Set up your template with AE,
set the data file with Node (or whatevs) render,
replace the data in the file,
move the previous render,
render again, change the data, render, and so on.

One gotcha with that technique is that you have to move the rendered file between renders, because you can't change the destination of the comp in the render queue so it will try to over-write the old one.

If you're using older versions of AE you can still use external data files to drive the contents of a text layer using eval() in an expression. The technique is explained here (full disclosure: my personal blog).


How to deal with this heavily underexposed footage

If this is no raw material, there is no additional pixel information to balance your colors and achieve a natural look. Only chance you have is to denoise your video and desaturate the colors. Try to find a good relationship between brightness and noise to get an acceptable result.

Unfortunately there is no good, free, build-in or open source solution at the moment. Denoising a video requires very complex algorithms, not only because every camera produces different noise types. Currently best approach are wavelet algorithms, but there are only 2 tools which use it:

Neat Video
Nuke's Denoiser

Note: In my experience Neat Video does a very good job and in some cases you are able to denoise the video twice without getting an over blurred image.


I think this image from Wikipedia says it best:

AVCHD is not a codec, but it is also not just a container.

Just like "every other" container, AVCHD features:

Video streams
Audio streams
Subtitles

But in addition, for example:

Playlists
Menu presentation (like in a DVD)

  Is it simply a specification that specifies a particular combination of pre-existing technologies?

Yes.

  But this would imply that AVCHD files could also be called something else, like "MPEG4 container with H264/AC3 inside".

But who would like to call it that? Several other specifications take already existing specifications, remix them, and they aren't called "Open Source Container format for XYZ".

I think it's a "one format fits it all" mentality, which is why you'll find AVCHD on many consumer devices.


Is there a way to directly save DNG Sequences to 16bit exr Sequences in Photoshop or After Effects?

Using After Effects this is not an issue. After Effects has CameraRAW support and by that also support importing DNG sequences.
You import them just as you would any other image sequence.

Then simply make the sequence into a composition and add it to the render queue.
AFAIK After Effects has the OpenEXR plugin integrated since CS5.5. In case I'm wrong you can get the great ProEXR plugin for Photoshop and After Effects from fnodware (I'm not affiliated). To do the same with a few more format options.


Export rotated video out of Adobe Premiere

You can simply transform the video to be vertical within the normal frame.  I'd do it using a nested sequence that way you can avoid having to alter your main full quality sequence.  Simply make a new scene, drag your existing scene in to it.  Click on the clip, go to Effects Control.  Expand Motion control and adjust the rotation, scale and position as necessary.


I Finished My Film. How to Get It to Theatres?

It seems odd that you'd put in the time, money and effort needed for a 'professional' film with no idea what to do when you're done. In any case, one route would be through the festival circuit, where several successful films have found distributors. Your film needs exposure now, and you won't get it unless you explore every avenue.

And you will need a distributor: no significant theater or group will take on your film without one. An agent can help you get to distributors. It isn't unusual for a professionally produced film to spend almost as much on promotion and distribution as on initial production. If you can't afford it, you have to make a deal with someone who can.

At the very least you'll need to create a DCP (digital cinema package) and DVD screener copies for any festivals or agents you contact. Check the web sites of the major and minor festivals to see their submission requirements. Good luck.


Ok, so I figured it out. Turns out you need to apply the "-mix" flag to the SECOND clip, and it will mix between the previous and current clip.

  melt test1.mp4 in=2340 out=2700 test1.mp4 in=4140 out=4500 -mix 120 -mixer luma test1.mp4 in=5220 out=5580 -mix 120 -mixer luma -blank 1500

This now works correctly, and adds a fade between the first and second clip, as well as between the second and the third.


Does bitrate also mean the internet speed I need to have?

Yes. But you should have a little overhead as well, so you probably need about 150Mbps for this. Something like huffyuv could give about a 50% reduction, or a lossy codec would give 95% or more reduction.


I have found a good tutorial explaining this.


For simple shape and best result you can do it frame by frame, drawing each morph state separately
For more complex shapes, I will advise:

Move second object (and maybe scale it from little size to normal) from behind first one
Bend part of first object outwards slowly, while new object appear (simultaneously with point 1)
In the moment, when second object is fully separated from first, first object shall rubber bend back with bash, as cartoon character, who was hit with the bat in the head, or as water surface, after water drop hit it.

To fully understand, what I mean in last point, look at this:


How to encode 60p MP4 video to play on TVs?

Unfortunately, smart TVs are still a relatively young market and the ability to play back video files is not yet uniform.  Each TV may support or not support a variety of formats, resolutions and frame rates.  Your best bet is likely to stick to formats used by popular services such as youtube and NetFlix as these platforms increase the likelihood that a manufacturer will support that specific format.

Alternately, if you know what model TV you are targeting, you can look at the documentation for the TV for the specific codecs and frameratest that are supported by the TV and pick one of them to match.


What is the camera used by the scientists at the beginning of Titanic?

For what it's worth, that's a Canon L1 Hi-8 camcorder. The L2 was very similar in overall shape, but had a significantly different button layout.


Problems editing smartphone clips. Audio seems robotic after saving in movie maker

Check your original & edited video file, right click on it, check for details.

The problem is maybe movie maker software already accidently reduced your audio kHz... Or your video original speed is 24 fps, you save it as 30 fps maybe (this wrong setting will appear double outlines). (These mistakes are very common happened around beginners.)

Try to use save as, select save movie/project as, .mp4 or h264, rename it, this setting will not reduce your video too much, you can publish it on youtube too, just a bit longer the time taken, some use save for High Definition for publish video on youtube.

Umm... I figured out now, issue is about Web reduced your Audio KHz, you need to correctly set Video & Audio Export setting for Web. .mp4 (H264) is the best format for web included Video and Audio. Set it to Published for Web or Youtube.

More technically, is Software "Recommended for This Project Editing Feature" auto-removed your Audio's noise, after noise removed, audio will become robotic. And, something is low spec.

Youtube Auto-edit is really awesome for People, but only who studied Video & Audio Editing know what the problem was and editing it, fix it. I really answered all issue why Audio like these, you won't understand it because it need to manual editing. I can't edit it for you here, I'm apologized. You can find Online Video Editing Service Designers edit for you. I just can answer why it happened.


The two principal reasons for shooting a region-specific frame rate are (1) reasonable synchronization with environmental electrical and lighting systems (thereby minimizing flicker) and (2) reasonable compatibility with playback devices and their assumed frame rates.

That said, there are reasons people want to shoot "off speed".  It is quite popular these days to shoot at altered frame rates and/or shutter angles for aesthetic purposes.  Such creativity requires a little knowledge about how those changes are going to be affected by environmental electrical and lighting systems, and how those choices are going to play when finishing the footage to be played at the given frame rate of a particular market.

Shooting at 120 fps in an environment lit with lights fed by 50Hz mains is very likely to result in unpleasant light power phase problems.  Shooting at 120 fps in sunlight and slowing the frame rate down to 25Hz will provide 20% more slow-down than shooting at 100fps, which might be desirable for your subject (and not a problem for other reasons stated above).  If you are shooting exterior night scenes lit by sodium, mercury, xenon, and/or neon lights, you are back in trouble again.


How to generate decryption key from m3u8 manifest? (OR) How to decrypt an excrypted MP4 using URI and IV?

You cant generate the key. You have to download the key. The URL is in the manifest. In this case it looks like you need to substitute some values first.

To decrypt, since this files uses AES-128 and not SAMPLE-AES, you can just decrypt each file using OpenSSL


320 kbps MP3 -> laptop sound card -> studio headphones = what is the bottleneck?

File format

Bit rate tells surprisingly little about quality in the case of mp3 files. There are old encoders where no matter how low you set the compression, there will always be audible artifacts. But LAME and the like have long gotten over this, and properly done 320 kBit mp3 is for listening purposes lossless, just like CDs are. Note anyway that mp3 is an outdated standard; I'd like to recommend switching to OGG Vorbis but practically this wouldn't gain you anything.

Network

What digital connection you use to transfer the file from the source to the DA unit has no influence on the sound whatsoever1. WiFi is fine as long as its avarage transmission rate can keep up, which should never be a problem nowadays (apart from complete dropouts if the connection breaks down somehow, of course).

Sound card

Laptop on-board sound cards are horrible, so off the top I'd say that's your bottleneck. However, the one thing they usually manage quite well is driving headphones. The main problems that such sound cards have are

Awful mic preamps.
Bad AD/DA units.
Insufficient (or no) shielding against interference from power supply bursts etc.

You don't need the mic inputs. Even low-quality DAs of today can actually reproduce properly bandlimited audio quite faithfully. And the interference issues mostly turn up when you connect to some other audio device (with ground connection), but not so much with headphones. The headphone amplifiers themselves aren't great of course, but since that's quite an easy job electronically they still don't have easily audible influence on the sound. One remaing problem is high volume levels, especially in mobile devices, for power-supply (as well as, possibly, heat dissipation) reasons.

You may try an external sound card, it might improve you listening experience; but perhaps not significantly.

Headphones

Like any kind of speaker device, those actually have more influence on the sound than any properly designed purely electronic component2. That's often not so much considered a flaw as a characteristic; HiFi speakers aren't really designed to transmit with flat response at all, but to transmit "nicely sounding", which obviously isn't quite well-defined.

Studio monitors and -headphones are, in principle, designed to operate as linearly as possible. Incidentally, this means they don't really sound "good": they're most of all supposed to reveal any issues in the material. Sound engineers value this, obviously. But again, mastering engineers anticipate that most listeners will use technically inferior speakers, and set up the mastering accordingly.

Music source

This, in a way, means the actual bottleneck is probably the orginal source; not the file format but the mastering. Indeed many of today's records are mastered quite horribly IMO, grossly overcompressed etc..

Of course this depends on what style of music you hear. Classical music and Jazz are least affected, Pop through Electronic and Metal are most. What can you do about it? It's nothing you could fix by buying better listening equipment; if anything you could get worse equipment to better match the master engineers' expectations.

Just try and be selective about what tracks you listen to, that's the advice I'd give you. A great recording3 over 30$ equipment is much more enjoyable than a bad recording over 1000$ equipment.

1Actually, that's only true for asynchronous transport, as in your case. If you need realtime performance, then there are sure enough a couple of issues in the digital transmission.

2Of course, I'm leaving out deviced designed to alter the sound here, like EQs etc..

3Sure enough, in the recording studio they will have needed expensive equipment. Recording has much higher demands (e.g. low-noise mic preamps) than listening.


If you do the math, you will find that a full-res video would need to process too much data per time - 22Mpixel x 30 frames x 3x14 bit color depth = 3+ GByte/second (done in my head, double-check!)

The camera sensor is probably able to provide this data, but neither the in-camera chip nor the memory card is able to process such a data stream fast enough; and the buffers would be full after 2 or 3 seconds of video. Therefore, the camera makers chose to not offer this mode.

I guess if you hack the camera software, you could it make record on that resolution for one or two seconds.


FFmpeg hardware cuda decoding and overlay picture

For 1st question - Most likely you're looking at not applicable error (the default yuv420p is not usable here - you may also need to get newer ffmpeg) - while using the hwdownload you need to tell explicitly to the NPP scaler the output format of the video frames. For your case the below command should make the trick:

ffmpeg -thread_queue_size 1024 \
    -hwaccel cuvid -c:v mpeg2_cuvid -deint 2 \
    -drop_second_field 1 -vsync 0 \
    -i "udp://226.58.24.4:2000?overrun_nonfatal=1" \
    -i /home/anis/logo/2mbps.png \
    -filter_complex "[0:v]scale_npp=1920:1080,hwdownload,format=nv12 [base]; [base][1:v] overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:10 [marked]" \
    -map "[marked]" -vcodec h264_nvenc -aspect 16:9 \
    -b:v 1808k -minrate 1808k -maxrate 1808k -bufsize 904k \
    -g 100 -no-scenecut 1 -forced-idr 0 -preset:v medium -vprofile main -level 4.1 \
    -map 0:#0x091d -acodec libfdk_aac -ab 192k -ar 48000 \
    -f flv rtmp://10.150.12.104/virginandtv/abr2k_test

If you could please always include full ffmpeg output as this makes debugging always easier.

For 2nd question - I wasn't able to find any way how to mix frames on the GPU using the current NPP library w/ ffmpeg. It certainly should be possible so whenever you find a solution let others know. I personally don't have enough time to read through all the NVIDIA docs and work on implementation but somebody else may get more time :-)


How can I export 1920X1080 to 320X240 without losing quality?

No matter what you try, you will lose quality as you are reducing the resolution significantly. So you are creating each new pixel from an aggregate of 36 - and depending on how you do that it can look okay or terrible, but it will not look anywhere near as good as the original. There is no way to avoid this.

Experiment with the settings for down sizing - for your video some may work better than others.


"A Must have" ND filter stops for filming with Canon 5D Mk2?

There is no "most used".  You use whatever is appropriate for the exposure conditions you have and the desired aperture and shutter speed (and ISO, though turning down ISO is almost always better than using an ND filter if it is an option).  The more light you have, the more wide open the aperture and the slower the shutter speed, the heavier the weight of the ND filter you need.


Why are there two ways to keyframe-animate geometric transformations?

The video transform tools in the edit page inspector window (zoom, position, etc) actually translate directly to the color page in the "Edit Sizing" window.  In your screenshot your color page is showing the input sizing window, which instructs resolve how to scale the image as part of the input process (very front end of the image processing pipeline).  If you place your mouse over the Input Sizing menu item, you'll see that there is also edit sizing (inspector on edit page), node sizing (associated specifically with the node you have selected in the color page), output sizing (how things get sent to video monitors), and reference sizing (lets you reposition/scale an image when using the wipe function to compare two clips in the color page).


I guess I'll answer my own question:

After a lot of searching last night, I found a YouTube video that demonstrated a method to animate the flip of video clips using a free plugin called MultiSpace from idustrial revolution.


After Effects added an extra move to the animation, how to get rid of it?

OK, I finally figured it out. This bug is known as "Boomerang Effect".

Reason: Bezier will cause After Effects randomly mass up the path of the shape.

So you can simply right click the keyframe than select "Keyframe Interpolation" from the menu, than set "Spatial Interpolation" to "Linear" instead of "Auto Bezier", it'll fix everything!

These two video tutorial helped me a lot: AE Boomerang Effect, Part 1 and AE Boomerang Effect, Part 2 they explain the principle of this problem.


What are some things to know and learn about the Canon 550D (T2i) when shooting movies?

Some things to be aware of when shooting video (this applies to most DSLRs):

Rolling Shutter

Because of the way the 550d records each frame you can end up with slanted video when combined with fast motion. This is because the camera recordes each frame line by line, so each line is recorded at a slightly different time causing a warped effect. Its not a problem for normal motion, but if you are doing moves like panning the camera quickly you will see the effect.

Recording Sound

The Canon 550d (and again most other DSLRs) dont have the best quality audio recording. This leads to two methods you can use to record audio for film work

1. External Recording

Most commonly, people will shoot using an external recorder like a Zoom H4n and then sync the audio to the video in post using software like Plural Eyes. The important thing to remember if you choose this method is to make sure you still have internal recording enabled on the 550d because you will need it as reference audio (there is never really any good reason to NOT record the internal audio, its always useful as a reference even if you dont intend on using the audio)

2.  Built-in Recording

The camera has a compressor built in so anything you plug into the line in jack will be running through the cameras compressor. The issue that can come from this is clipped audio if your audio suddenly jumps up in volume. Here is a good article going over recording sound specifically with a 550d and ways to avoid having your audio clipped.

Memory & Recording Time

A common problem with almost all the Canon DSLRs (not sure about the new ones coming out) is that they can only record around 12 minutes at a time. In my experience the amount is never exact. Its not a problem for any fictional work because its rare you would be shooting for longer than a few minutes at a time, but for documentary work (eg interviews) this can be a problem!

Its worth testing your memory cards before you shoot with them, I've had many experiences where some cards will record fine and others will stop recording after 5-15 seconds. Its always worth getting higher class memory cards which allow for faster transfer rates. Class 6 or Class 10 is often the standard choice for video recording (though the higher the class, the higher the price!)

Batteries

Shooting video chews through the battery life. For a single days shoot you would be very lucky if you didn't use more 3-4 batteries. Its always a good idea to have at least two batteries (ideally 3). That way when your battery dies you can use the spare battery while the other charges. But I wouldnt rely on this, sometime it takes longer for the battery to charge and you may not always have access to power depending on your location.

Good Resources

A good resource for DSLR film making is Phillip Bloom's website and also Vimeo's DSLR video school.

Good luck!


This is a tough question because there are a ton of different factors involved here, from complexity of the video to the equipment you're working with to the NLE you use. However, the default formula we use to give time estimates to clients breaks down like this (I've run a small video production company for a few years working for a large variety and diversity of clients):

Pre-Production

2 hours per minute of final product:
This is a number that can swing wildly in each direction, mostly depending on how much pre-production we have to do. For instance, if a client already has a script prepared, we typically don't have to do much besides potentially locking down a location, prepping a shot list, and lining up a crew. However, if a client comes to us and just says "I want a video to express such and such" (without a concept), we'll spend a large amount of time brainstorming, writing, etc. Typically we'll even send the client 3 fairly well-developed concepts to see which one they like best.

Production

1 hour per minute of final product: This is the number that stays the most consistent across all our projects, and really boils down to only a few factors. The biggest factor is who we're working with - if we get to use our own (experienced) actors in the video, everything goes smoothly. If a company or organization wants to put their own people into the video, it takes longer because (most of the time) these people don't have acting experience and thus haven't memorized the script, aren't strong in staying consistent between takes, etc.

The other main factor in production time is the equipment you're using and how complex the shoot is. More cameras cuts down on production time because you can grab multiple angles at once (we typically shoot with 2 cameras at a time). A complicated shoot involving a lot of equipment set-up/breakdown will take much longer than a shoot with just a camera on a tripod. Set-up and breakdown of equipment (especially large equipment like a jib or dolly) can take a ton of time.

Post-Production

1.5 hours per minute of final product: Like pre-production, this one can swing pretty wildly in either direction, but I almost never give an estimate of less than 1.5 hours/minute of final product. This one really depends on what exactly you're doing in your post-production workflow - are you just throwing clips together on a timeline and then exporting it? Or are you going through all the extra steps, like color correcting/grading, audio cleaning/mixing, adding titles, VFX, etc.? Typically, if we're on a deadline, we'll cut unnecessary steps from that workflow to get a video out on time (most clients may not care if you don't color grade a project simply because most people won't notice it if it's not horrible).

Total

This works out to around 4.5 hours of work per minute of "final product" (a 10-minute video would take 45 hours, for instance). Like I said, there's a ton of volatility to that number - we've knocked out a 4-minute video in 10 hours, but we've also spent 20 hours on a 1 minute video. The biggest thing I've learned while in this industry is that people who are unfamiliar with the process of video production always underestimate how long a video will take from start to finish. To do it right, it takes time.

In your specific case, it looks like your video has a decent number of angles, cuts, etc., and your production value is fairly high. Your videos are long, too, so I'd say 2-3 weeks of working 30-35 hours/week is definitely within the acceptable range.


A custom resolution of 640 by 480 with square pixels would work.  It's also worth noting that if you import the video and drag it on to a new sequence, Premiere should offer to automatically adjust the settings for the sequence for you.


Rotating the 3d object with the blueprint background

In this video does not appear as create showing only the outline, but it is already possible to have an idea of how to import the 3d object.

How To Import 3D Model In After Effects CS5


Is it possible to merge two ffmpeg commands into one?

Can't test the below now, but it should be

ffmpeg -itsoffset 2 -i original.mp4 -i watermark.png -loop 1 -t 2.5 -i intro.png -filter_complex "[2:v] fade=out:50:10:alpha=1 [intro]; [0][1]overlay=W-w-45:H-h-35[main];[main][intro] overlay=eof_action=pass [v]" -map "[v]" -map 0:a output.mp4


How can I recreate this overexposed effect from the last scene in 'The Lighthouse'?

You can tell by the shadows that light's illumination was increased. However, you can acheive a similar result (though not perfect) by just keyframing the 'Curves' effect in After Effects. (I had better results with 'Curves' as opposed to 'Levels') See below:

The curves were keyframed from default to:

The top point is to blow out the whites, the middle point lifts the greys slightly and the bottom point keeps the blacks from getting brighter.

Now, you'll notice that this has lifted the red values a little more than I'd like. This could then be fixed with a 'Tint' effect or by bumping the saturation way down with a 'Hue/Saturation' effect. Or even by messing with the individual RGB colours within the existing 'Curve' effect.


Are there any video programs to trim and export multiple videos at once?

If all you're doing is trimming the video, you may want to consider the command line tool ffmpeg.

The -ss flag will allow you to set the in point for your trim. You can also set an out point on with the -t flag.

For example, the following command will take "name_of_movie.mp4", trim the first 10 seconds off, copy the audio and video codecs, and output the file as "name_of_movie_trimmed.mp4"

ffmpeg -i name_of_movie.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:00:10 name_of_movie_trimmed.mp4

This should work for any format that ffmpeg accepts, which is pretty much all of them. If you'd like to script it, here's a starting point that I use for this very purpose. Edit the extensions for the type of file you use, and for the time you want, put it in a directory with the files you want to trim, and let it get to work.

#!/bin/bash
for file in *.mp4; do
name=${file%%[.]*};
ffmpeg -i "$file" -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:00:10 "$name trimmed.mp4"
done

There's a lot you can do with ffmpeg to automate some of the more tedious parts of working with video, so have a look around!


Old VCR Scanline Spash Screen effect (Bladerunner Ladd Company logo)

welcome to video.stackexchange

Try something like this:

Make the tree and line as a black image with a white background.

Pre comp your tree and line to make a single comp.

Make a green solid layer and put it beneath your tree comp.
Make the tree comp invisible for now.
Apply a Venetian Blind (or Grid Wipe) effect to the green solid layer, in order to get the small horizontal scan lines.  Don't keyframe it - the objective is just a tree made of thin lines.

Use a Track Matte on the green solid layer to reveal the shape of the tree layer above. Set it to Luma Inverted Matte.

Now you need to make the big blocks step in across the tree shape.
Make a new comp, and put a copy of your tree shape in here as a guide layer.
Set its opacity to 30% so you can still see it, but you can see everything else you're going to add.

Now we add some blocks:
To do this, I would use text squares in the correct shape around the tree, then animated using the Typewriter effect.
Do one set of these for the left to right blocks only, leaving a space for the right to left blocks.
Duplicate your "left to right" blocks layer, and scale its x-axis by -100
Make the two sets of blocks different colours so you can see what's going on.
Adjust the keyframes on the typewriter effect until they come in at the right rate.

Put your comp into your main comp (I called it "line draw ins") and make it invisible.
Go to the layer with your green scanline tree in it, and apply a Set Matte effect to it.
In the Set Matte effect, in the "Take Matte from Layer" setting choose your "line draw ins" layer.  This is using your typewriter blocks as a matte (like the track matte we did earlier but can be anywhere in your comp).

Add in your text layer in the right colour
set some opacity key frames on it
then add an adjustment layer to make it look glowy and noisy, in whatever what your want to... (there are many tutorials on how to make things look like VHS videos).  I put a glow and a channel blur on the adjustment layer.

Video example below:

https://vimeo.com/332475491


How to concatenate multiple videos with ffmpeg?

Sure. Command is

ffmpeg -i 1.mp4 -i 2.mp4 -i 3.mp4 -i bg.mp3
-filter_complex
"[0]trim=0:20,scale=1920:-1,crop=1920:1080:0:0[a];
 [1]trim=0:20,scale=1920:-1,crop=1920:1080:0:0[b];
 [2]trim=0:20,scale=1920:-1,crop=1920:1080:0:0[c];
 [a][b][c]concat=3[v]"
-map "[v]" -map 3:a
-shortest out.mp4

Skip the -shortest if the audio is slightly longer than 1 minute. Alternatively, adjust one of the trim endpoints to make up for the shortfall.

to play in the background of the final video -> I assume final here means the output and not the 3rd video.


There are several ways of doing this... really depends on the cameras you are shooting on & budget.  On set we sometimes use a piece of software called Qtake, which can record two video feeds from an HDSDI source, and play them back immediately, but it's really pricey.  Other ways to do it would be to use a HDSDI trigger to set both devices in to record mode.  Another way is to just make sure your TimeCode is in sync. What cameras are you planning on using?  If you are using Canon 5DII/7D's etc you could use the magiclantern hack and get a trigger record going, see the link below, then the files would correspond and sync up pretty well by the looks.

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=1088.0


How to make an effect last for only a certain amount of time

The correct way to do this is to animate the effect. Whatever effect values you are altering, those need to be set to zero or null result value 1 frame before your intended start time. In the next frame set it to the desired value for the effect. Set a key for the desired value at the last frame of your intended range. Then set a key for the zero/null value the next frame.

The crude way to do this is to split the layer at the start frame and end frame Ctrl+Shift+D. And remove/disable the effect on the layers outside the effect range.


Does transcoding or compression occur when importing and editing .mts (.mp4) video files?

You have control over this. If you use the correct settings, you will work on the original file.
When you setup a project you can define what Ingest Settings to use during import. Those settings can also be changed later. In your case you probably want to use Copy.

If you drag and drop a video from the Media Browser panel to the Project panel the video will be imported. By clicking the Ingest checkbox before dragging the video you can control if ingest settings are used or not. If the box is unticked, the video will remain in its folder location. If ticked, the ingest settings you have selected will be used, e.g. the file will be copied into the targeted folder location (as defined in the project settings under Scratch Disks). The wrench icon right of the ingest checkbox opens the ingest settings again.

Now to the second part: why not work on the raw file? Sometimes the codec of the source material is not suitabel for editing. If you transcode to suitable formats that use intraframe codecs you usually don't have to worry about the quality, but the video editing works overall better (here's a bit more on this).
Another reason why you do not want to directly work on the original file is if you're computer is too slow. For example if you edit 8k or 4k raw video most computers will become visibly slower at some point when they have to apply various effects. In this case lower resolution proxy videos are a great help. (here's a bit more on that topic). And don't worry, in the end, when you export your video the original videos are still there and all the editing is applied on these and so you export the good quality videos, not the proxies. You can switch back and forth between proxy and original video in Premiere whenever needed.


After Effects - Element 3D: Text arranged in a circle/ring form

Make some text
Draw a circle mask within it and set mode to 'none'
Go text's Path option and select mask You've created
Adjust mask or/and font to get desirable result

Continue to work with Element 3D as in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0p9gwKMSqk


Why would Blu-ray made with Encore CS6 be silent/have missing audio, no sound?

The only thing I can think of is that the audio channel may not be getting set on the timeline for some reason.  I would verify what audio track is associated by default with the timeline as a first step and try a simple case of a disk that immediately plays the timeline with the audio set to the default audio track.  If that still doesn't work, I'm out of ideas.  Your situation seems very odd.  Have you tried playing it in a stand alone bluray player by any chance?


Yup, don't know why datageist didn't expand, but it's called ducking.  The song or part of it 'ducks' out of the way of a signal, usually a big ol' kick.

You can insert a compressor into the signal chain of the track to be ducked, with a side-chain key input (as J.K says): meaning that the kick's amplitude/level will cause the mix to be compressed, i.e. reduced in volume.


Access a precomp as a CompItem not as an AV Layer

Well, I found my own answer. I just needed to access the source property.
var comp = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[0].source;
alert(comp);


How can I avoid Quicktime Vulnerability with h.264 encoded MP4 files?

You can strip most of the metadata off your files using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i oldfile.mp4 -c copy newfile.mp4

This will copy the first audio and video streams to a new mp4.


Can anyone recommend any good guides to ffmpeg outside of the official manual?

I found this site by coincidence yesterday! It explains things in a bit more human readable format, perhaps.

https://amiaopensource.github.io/ffmprovisr/


Setting timecode in Premiere Pro by using file creation date of clips

I'm not sure about how to set the timecode of the clip from the datestamp of the file but Red Giant have a fantastic plugin called Plural Eyes which does a great job of syncing multiple clips most of the time if the audio is even half decent.


How to cut part of MP4 file using FFmpeg without reencoding?

May you try
ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -ss 00:07:35 -to 00:14:01 -c copy output.mp4


How do you dramatically reduce the size of a video while keeping the quality as much as possible?

I'm not familiar with handbrake, but this is basically a math problem.

First, you have to decide on a codec. One of the 'best' codecs in regards to quality/filesize-ratio as well as device-compatibility is H.264, so I would recommed you go with that.

I've done a quick search on handbrake and it appears you can set the quality in two ways, either by choosing a Rate Factor (RF) or by setting an Average Bitrate (see screenshot, correct me if I'm wrong).

Source: Wikipedia

Since you want a ratio of 700 MB per 1 hour of video, let's do the math:

700 MB = 700 x 8 Mb =  5600 Mb
5600 Mbit / 3600 s = 1,56 Mb/s = 1560 kbps

So to achieve this filesize average, set your Average Bitrate to 1560 kbps. This is quite low for HD video, so make sure to check the 2-pass encoding option, which will increase the quality at the cost of a longer encoding time (it does so by doing a first check or pass on the video as to how high a bitrate is needed for every part of it, so the encoder can better adjust the bitrate accordingly over the course of the video).

One final note, the video you linked recommends you change the audio bitrate to 128 kbps. This is a bad idea. Given that we are already using up 1,56 Mbit per second for the video, the few additional bits per second that are needed for the audio won't make much of a difference regarding the resulting file size. And 128 kbps will sound bad; we are much better at detecting flaws in audio than in video. I highly recommend you set the audio bitrate to at least 256 kbps.


How to make sense of video file formats?

File formats are essentially wrappers, a container of sorts. The video information is encoded in a codec (Coder/Decoder). Some file formats only work with certain codecs. This is due (in part) to corporate/organizational pissing contests (or format wars - remember dvd+ vs. dvd -?). Codecs come with varying degrees of compression. The more compressed a codec is, the smaller your files will be, but they will also potentially be losing information, in the same way that a RAW file saves everything from CCD, and JPEG compresses the file by dropping repeated information. Also, most pro level NLEs (like Final Cut Pro (not FCPX)) play nicer with codecs that are less compressed. The more compressed it is the more the computer has to work to decode and re-enconde the information when you make changes (moving on the time line, cutting, adding effects etc.)

Recommendations:
For recording and editing (HD), pick a low compression, high quality codec such as DVCProHD, AVCHD, Apple ProRes.

To export for sharing I recommend H.264. It is supported nearly universally and is very good quality with relatively small files. BluRay videos are actually encoded in an ultra high quality H.264

One other note: if your camcorder saves files in a weird format (ie. not mov, mpeg, mp4), you will need to use a transfer process in your NLE. Be sure to save the ENTIRE folder structure from your memory card, not just the mts, mxf, or whatever files.

More tips: if you're not sure what codec a file is in, you can open it in QuickTime and hit cmd+i to open the inspector window. It will have all the codec information there.
Additionally, on Windows there is a small utility called G-SPOT which can show you what codec are you using on that file etc.


it seems to me that you are trying to overwrite an existing file. Try to change the name from your file (Test 1.mov) to something different and that is not already used on your Exports folder.
Let me know if it worked.
Cheers!


Is there any ffmpeg command for knowing max bit rate of a video?

That max_bit_rate is a a tag written by some encoders, when set by the user in the export dialog box. It is not an indication of the maximum bitrate found if you were to survey the encoded bitstream.

It's possible to get a good idea of the maximum bitrate of a stream this way:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -map 0:v -c copy
       -f segment -segment_time 1 -break_non_keyframes 1 folder\seg%d.264

This will break up the video stream into 1 second segments. Sort the directory listing by size to find out the largest file. That's your maximum bitrate. Not totally accurate as it's not a rolling survey but should be close enough.


Can I clean up Premiere Pro CS6 preview files like this?

You can delete Render files by going:
Sequence > Delete Render Files

Or by using third-party programs.


batch audio + picture slideshow video creation for youtube

Is there a tool that will do it, probably... is there a tool that will do it well and make it anything worth watching? No.

Making a quality slideshow set to music requires manual timing and ordering and a fair bit of effort on the editor's part.  It isn't something you can simply automate away.  If you don't put in the effort to make something good, it will just be adding a bunch more Youtube slideshow trash to the already large pile of Youtube slideshow trash.


Does Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 have a fullscreen mode?

I'm fairly certain there is no such mode.  It doesn't have the same kind of feature that lightroom does as the full screen video preview is really the closest in terms of being related functionality.

The full screen mode is helpful in Lightroom because it allows focusing on the photo with only basic controls.  Premiere is much more complex than LR and a significant portion of screen real-estate is taken up by those controls.  If you aren't purely focusing on the video, then the amount of lost and distracting space really isn't a big issue.

Note that if you really need every last scrap of screen real estate though, you can adjust the task bar so that you can make it only a small line on the bottom of the screen though.  You really are not practically losing any meaningful amount of screen real-estate.

The only functionality is the functionality that maximizes a particular panel or full screens the preview, but you already mentioned those are not what you are looking for.  That's the closest you are going to get though.


What is the colour range of most videos?

Most videos are limited range i.e. luma goes from 16 to 235, and chroma from 16 to 240.

Unless expressly set, FFmpeg does not scale the range from one to another. Whatever the source is, that's the output.*

However, many inputs don't tag this property in their metadata. So, the output doesn't get tagged either. In that scenario, players tend to assume conventional values. So, a 720p video will get treated as a limited-range BT.709 picture, irrespective of the actual encoding. And some players, especially web ones, don't seem to parse this metadata, and aren't provisioned to adapt to non-default values. So, they will always the treat the input as having conventional encoding.

For safety's sake, HD videos should be encoded to BT.709 Limited range and SD to BT.601 Limited range.

*unless the source only accepts a pixel format whose range is different.


Assuming you are satisfied with the chroma key quality from ffmpeg, it's just

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf chromakey={...} -vsync 0 out%d.png

where {...} is replaced with your chromakey filter arguments.


A few years ago, I invested in a Fig-Rig. The price is right (under US$300) and I love the look of the footage. Because it's hand held, there's still a little bit of the organic movement that you lose with the perfect stability of a GlideCam.

Versatility is awesome...high shots, low shots, travelling shots, I can attach it to a tripod, and most of my accessories...eye-lights, mic receiver paks, cabling...can attach right to the frame. Google for "Fig Rig Demo videos", & watch them to see what it can do.

I originally picked it up for my Panasonic DVX100B, but recently switched over to DSLR. For the latter, it's a wonderfully compact support package that does everything I need it to do except make coffee.  :)

Designed like a steering wheel where the camera creates a low center of gravity, it self-stabilizes like gyro stabilizer, without having to fight as much as you do against a gyro stabilizer.

Which should you get? Whichever one you like. Personally, I don't like SteadiCam/glidecam shots; they're TOO perfect. I like to see a little bit of human frailty in the image that reminds me of the hard work the operator puts into the film.

I'd recommend finding friends, rental houses or production companies in your area that may own these or similar devices. Try them out for a weekend by borrowing or renting them. Analyze the footage. More likely than noe, you'll find something you LOVE, and then you have your answer.

One thing that I will note, is that there are a TON of DIY plans on the 'net to make these things on the cheap. One of my first stabilizers was made for under $10.00 with iron pipe and some fitness weights.


Which decoder allows for fast seeking or how to configure k-lite codec pack?

Let me describe what the bottleneck in seeking is.

You didn't say what format are your videos encoded in, but I'm guessing you are using H.264 or maybe MPEG-2. Am I correct?

To maximize quality, these codecs have different compression formats, and each frame gets encoded differently. This is a brief summary of the compression types:

I-frames (I stands for intracoded) are frames that can be decoded easily, as they don't depend on any other frames.
P-frames (P stands for predictive) are frames that encode only the differences from one or more previous I or P-frames. To decode a P-frame you need to first decode all the I and P-frames that this frame depends on.
B-frames (B stands for bi-directional) are frames that encode differences like P-frames, but unlike P-frames, these differences can refer to previous or future I or P-frames. As with P-frames, To decode a B-frame you first need to decode all the past and future frames that are dependencies.

So now I hope the performance problem with seeking is clear. You jump to the middle of the movie clip, and chances are, you are going to land on a B or a P-frame. So the decoder now needs to find all the references required by that frame, decode them in the correct order and only then it can finally decode the target frame.

To achieve better compression and higher quality, encoders create a lot less I-frames than P or B-frames. The idea is that the compressed stream starts with a really high quality I-frame, and then for a number of frames that follow, smaller P and B frames encode just the differences. Of course if you go for a long time like this quality starts to degrade, so at some point the movie will include another big and nice I-frame and the cycle starts again.

When a movie clip is played from start to end, the different frame types appear sorted in the file so that when playback reaches a given frame, all its references have already been seen by the decoder. This allows for very efficient playback at 1x speed. Unfortunately when you play at other rates or when you seek the amount of work the decoder needs to do to find referenced frames is much larger because frames are read out of sequence.

So going back to your question, the problem isn't really in the decoder. If you need to improve seek time you need to use videos that are encoded to minimize seek time. In essence this means videos that have more frequent I-frames, also called keyframes sometimes. The more I-frames you have, the less references will be required to decode P and B-frames so the decoder will have less work to seek.

I hope this helped understand the problem.


Downscaling 4k to 1080p in Premiere Pro, Image Zooming 2x

Changing the preference doesn't change any clip settings retroactively.  But once you have set it, and then create a new project and a new sequence, and when you freshly import your 4K clip and drop that freshly imported clip onto your freshly created sequence in your freshly created project, it should work as you expect.  And if you right click on the clip, it should have a checkmark next to "Scale to Frame Size".


Blackmagic Cinema Camera: recording, bitrate and bitdepth

The Media Express software it ships with will let you capture video directly from the Thunderbolt port at 23.98p, 24p, 25p, 29.97p, 30p frame rates (from the tech specs page)

From the Wikipedia ProRes 422 page you will get 10-bit sample depth, and High-Quality comes in at 220 Mbit/s for HD resolution at 60i

Thunderbolt can handle 10Gb/s and SATA 3 can handle 6Gb/s so they will not be a bottleneck here.


Positioning subtitles in Premiere Pro CC

Do the math

If you want to align your text using percentage offsets or any other 'round' number in pixels, you just need to perform some simple calculations. For example, 10% from the bottom of a 3840 x 2160 canvas:

2160 - (2160/10) = 1944

Since you want your text to be vertically centered on the line at 10%, you will have to modify this by half your font-size, for example for a font-size of 24px:

2160 - (2160/10) - (24/2) = 1932

So if you haven't changed the default anchor point (0, 0) which is in the upper left corner of the canvas, set the text position to (1920, 1932). This only works with center-aligned text, since in this case Premiere uses the horizontal center of the text instead of the lower left boundary as the point of origin.

If you are using Legacy Titles or an older version of Premiere Pro CC which doesn't have the new Essential Graphics panel, each of your titles will be a singular clip in the timeline; in this case, use the Position Parameter of the Motion effect to position the text. If you're using the current version of Premiere Pro and have access to the Essential Graphics toolkit, you can use text as a part of any graphic layer, in which case you can use the Position Parameter of the Transform setting of the Text (see Screenshot for clarification).

By now you're probably thinking that you shouldn't have to do that much math to position your captions, and you would be right. Which leads to my main point ...

Don't do the math

It's tempting to use percentages of the screen or 'round' numbers to position things such as titles, but it's really not a good habit. No reader is gonna care that you aligned the titles pixel-perfectly, all they care about is that it's easily readable. The right alignment, size and safe margins for your text depend on your target audience (old people with bad eyesight need larger text), what kind of devices your video will be watched on (CRT-TVs for some reason? you better stay within the title-safe area) and factors like this, so those factors should be considered when positioning your text, not some arbitrary geometric value that doesn't have any significance.

Workflow

  However, we are stuck with a Premiere Pro CC workflow for the moment, which doesn't have the Guides feature.

Now this is just a question of streamlining your workflow. In Photoshop you might use manually positioned guides and have Snap to Guides toggled on so you can just drag and drop the text to the bottom and have it snap in place. With Premiere, you have several other options to make sure all your text is positioned alike (which is important indeed!), for example:

Copy the text layers and change the text, this way you retain all settings including position.
Copy just the effects and paste them over your text clips (this will work well with the old Legacy Title system).
Use Master Styles (Tutorials here and here; I haven't actually used the new Essential Graphics workflow much so far, so you'll have to play around with it a bit, but I'm sure you will find plenty of options to set different styles and defaults).

The optimal workflow for your title creation depends on the rest of your editing workflow, your version of Premiere Pro and your personal preference. Make sure to invest the time to find the optimal route based on those factors, even if the amount of time you save per added title is small - it will pay off over time.


Adding many sounds to a video file at specific frames

Alright, more googling found that ffmpeg is definitely the solution to my issue!

ffmpeg -i inputvideo.mp4 -i inputsound.wav -filter_complex "[1:0]adelay=leftchanneldelay|rightchanneldelay[delayed];[0:1][delayed]amix[mixout]" -map 0:v -map [mixout] -c:v copy -c:a aac outputvideo.mp4

This line allows me to easily determine where in the video (down to the millisecond, which is more than precise enough with each frame equaling 20 milliseconds) I wish to place the sound; wrap it in a loop inside a batch file (or whichever method you prefer) and off you go!

Edit: A more fully-featured solution written in Java, which only creates the audio file (to allow you to add it manually):

package javaapplication4;

import java.io.IOException;

public class JavaApplication4 {
static String delay;

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
    String a = "0";
    String c = "1";
    String temp = "";
    String basePath = "C:\\Users\\Desktop\\Stuff\\FFMpeg\\";
    String fileIn = "blockbreak";
    int[] delays = {2740,5760,51381,61040,84520,109600,113660,156640,311260,312820,314100,443800,735120,740540};
    Runtime.getRuntime().exec(basePath + "ffmpeg.exe -y -i " + basePath + fileIn +".flac -filter_complex \"[0:0]adelay=" + delays[0] + "[mixout]\" -map [mixout] -c:a flac " + basePath + "output0.flac").waitFor();
    for (int i = 1; i <= delays.length - 1; i++) {
        delay = "" + delays[i];
        System.out.println("" + (i) + "/" + (delays.length - 1));
        Runtime.getRuntime().exec(basePath + "ffmpeg.exe -y -i " + basePath + "output" + a + ".flac -i " + basePath + fileIn +".flac -filter_complex \"[1:0]adelay=" + delay + "[delayed];[delayed][0:0]amix=inputs=2:duration=longest[mixin];[mixin]volume=6.0201dB[mixout]\" -map [mixout] -c:a flac " + basePath + "output" + c + ".flac").waitFor();
        temp = a;
        a = c;
        c = temp;
    }

}

}

I increase the volume of the sound by 6.021db each time as ffmpeg seems to lower the volume when encoding; this isn't a perfect number, but it's close enough that the difference in volume between the first and last sounds in a file that's a few thousand sounds long ends up being around 1 db.


For editing, I would definitely get a desktop PC, and a custom built one at that, not one from the shelf, as the latter will always be more expensive. Also, this way you only have to pay for the parts you need and can avoid bottlenecks. For example, the PC you mentioned doesn't have an SSD, so hard drive speed will be a limiting factor. Also, the GPU is sub-par compared to the CPU.

Here's what I would recommend, should be doable with 1000 $ (Look out for assembling fees, some dealers will charge you up to 100 bucks, some will do it for 20. You could also do it yourself if you are confident enough):

An i7-processor. Since you should be getting a GPU anyway, you can get a Xeon E3 processor instead (basically an i7 without an integrated graphics unit, it's slightly cheaper). For example, I have the Xeon E3 V1231 v3.
An nVidia GPU with CUDA support. You could get a GTX 970, even though they are somewhat outdated. Alternatively, you could wait for the new Pascal architecture cards, however those will be much more expensive at launch. Alternatively, you could get an AMD R9 390, which only supports OpenCL but might be ever so slightly more powerful than the GTX 970.
A cheap HDD for storage as well as an SSD for fast editing. You don't need a Samsung Evo, it's a myth that those are better than the cheaper brands. For example, I have a 250GB Crucial BX100 and it's working perfectly fine.
At least 16 GB RAM.

It's important that you compare prices and different retailers.


How to Achieve Slow Motion Effect in After Effects as seen in Kygo's Firestone Video

It is called the "Time Warp" effect. You should check out this video from "Fenchel & Janisch" for a tutorial on how to apply this effect.


How can I sync two audio sources running at different speeds

Well, I sorta figured it out so I'll put it as an answer, although I hope someone comes up with a better suggestion.
I had to eventually cut one track into (approximately) 5 minute segments.  I placed my cursor at the end of each segment, held the shift key and did a click-and-drag with my mouse to perform a "time shift" until the tracks aligned.  Then, I moved the next clip up against the first and repeated the process.  I found if I did this with the entire track, it still went out of sync, so by chopping the track into (approximately) 5 minute intervals it kept it closer to sync.  That might be due to the speed of the source tape varying as the batteries got weaker.  I tried to cut the track near a large volume peak or valley to make it visually easier to align the tracks.
All in all, it was still much easier than trying to do this with something like Audacity or Sound Forge.


Change default audio track of Video file using ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i "input.mkv" \
-map 0:0 \
-map 0:2 \
-map 0:1 \
-disposition:a:0 default \
-disposition:a:1 none \
-c copy "output.mkv"

input
use video stream (0:0)
make 2nd audio stream (Hindi) the 1st
make 1st audio stream (English) the 2nd
use the new 1st audio stream (Hindi) as default
remove the default from the new 2nd audio stream (English)
create output without transcoding


Using the mask image below, you can use ffmpeg to crop and output a MP4 with the visual content bounded in the same elliptical shape as the mask
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -loop 1 -i 360mask.png \
       -filter_complex "[0]split[a][b]; \
        [a]crop=iw/2:1522:0:300,crop=iw*0.8:ih*0.8,scale=960:-1,pad=960:960:0:150[l]; \
        [b]crop=iw/2:1522:iw/2:300,crop=iw*0.8:ih*0.8,scale=960:-1,pad=960:960:0:150[r]; \
        [l][r]hstack[c]; [c][1]alphamerge[ca]; [1][ca]overlay=shortest=1"    vr.mp4

The video is split into two cropped halves to a rectangle which exactly bounds the visual area, then cropped to 80% along each of its dimensions, and then scaled and padded to a 960x960 canvas, rejoined to form a 1920x960 frame. Then the mask is applied to form the elliptical cut-out.
Mask

This is the basic technique. The visuals in your supplied image aren't centered, so I customized the crop expressions based on measurements within an image editor.


Video Capturing Cards - What to Buy on the Cheap for HD Quality?

The cheapest boards i know:

the elgato game capture HD.
the BMD Intensity series.

In that price-category you will need one board per camera.

You don't need additional HDMI- or FiWi-cards. These boards can capture via HDMI, so there are ports for that signal.

Edit:
Yes, this boards can capture the audiosignal too.


Can I use h.264 codec inside .mp4 container for my website

Use it. Nothing else can provide the the same quality per bitrate as x264 (the top-class H.264 encoder) while not taking 10,000 years to encode (x265 'n VP9).

Some tips:

Use a recent ffmpeg build since development is so active. Static builds are available and easy.
Add -movflags +faststart to your command. Once encoding is finished this option will relocate the moov atom to the beginning of the file allowing playback to begin for your viewer before the file is completely downloaded.
Because ffmpeg attempts to avoid chroma subsampling using -pix_fmt yuv420p is recommended to ensure a widely compatible pixel format.
Some devices may require you to use a more restrictive profile and level. You can do this with the -profile:v and -level options. Be aware of attempting to force a specific level on outputs that will not conform (such as trying to force -level 3 on a 1920x1080 video). ffmpeg will give level limit warnings in the console output if this is the case.
See the H.264 and AAC encoding guides for more info.


How to add an image from the video to the beginning of composition? (Just an image, not a clip)

In the menu (at the top or by right-clicking a layer) choose Layer>Time>Freeze Frame

Adobe have a user's guide, it's a good place to start. Read more here.


It's a toss up either way.  On the one hand AWB may help you get better footage without needing manual correction later, but on the down side, if you end up needing any correction, it will change uncontrolled on you and will complicate the process of color correction in post.  If you don't plan to color correct in post and don't have time to adjust white balance on the fly, then AWB is really your only choice.

Auto ISO has similar problems.  It should generally do a decent job, particularly if you set good edge boundaries for the ISO (which the 5d3 does nicely), but it will shift on you and make adjusting for brightness and contrast in post more difficult.

Ultimately the shot you get is better than the shot you don't though, so if you can't operate it manually fast enough to get the shots, then use Auto for what it is there for, getting the shot you wouldn't otherwise be able to get.


Action camera connected via two usb extenders and RJ45 doesnt work?

Unfortunately, given the models you mentioned in comments, the purpose of both of your ethernet adapters is to connect usb host devices, like computers, to ethernet network devices, like switches and routers.

There do exist purpose-built USB extenders (see: example NewEgg search), some of which have RJ-45 ports to operate over cat5 or cat6 cables just for availability and cost savings—but sadly, that's not what you have. They're also usually considerably more expensive. And they do not work with ethernet data networks, instead only as a matched pair. I'm afraid you'll need to work up another solution.


Probably the most dynamic and full control option would be to use taper stroke in after effects - just redraw the path and apply taper like here - https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jFBKMRncG80/maxresdefault.jpg
then you have a multitude of options to displace them (like wave warp, mesh warp, wiggle-shear, or even map the end points to nulls and use wiggle position).
Tapered stroke is only available in CC 2020 and 2021 if I remember correct.
Another option would be to expand shapes in AI and copy path into AE which you can then animate later, but it would be more time consuming.


best tool to use for vine production on windows

if you´re using Windows you can use / download MovieMaker, and just import your clip and start to editing in most commons formats & if you have a mac imovie does the job also , those are "defaults" software and are pretty intuitive and in a sort way "basic".


Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

This is an issue with your ffmpeg installation.  You have a mismatch between the version numbers of the libraries you are trying to use.  Most likely, your version of the webm libraries is not built on the same version of ffmpeg as you are using.


What determines the chosen bitrate with ffmpeg constrained encoding example?

think of it this way, your driving a car, and you have a target speed of 25, and a max speed limit of 25. Then you stop at a red light for 30 seconds and your average speed drops to 20. It is now impossible to reach an average of 25 again without going over the max. you would need to drive at the max speed an infinite amount of time to get the average back to 25.

When encoding the video, the encoder reached a frame that took less bits to encode than average (low spacial or temporal information.  For example two identical frames), so bitrate temporarily dipped, and now it can never reach max.

What you need is a way to say, if we drop below average, we are able to go over max for a small period of time to bring the average back up. This is called “vbv” and you should use that if you want to target a bitrate.


AfterEffect. Arrow with stationary origin, moving head

Use an easy path arrow preset like this one:
http://cinemaspice.net/product/path-arrow/
It’s “pay what you want”.


FFMPEG expand limited range to full range

Whelp finally figured this one out when I stumbled across the answer in another forum. Pretty simple really, just needed to study  up on filtergraphs. And for the record bwdif deinterlacing is FAR better than yadif! Not sure why anyone even recommends yadif anymore with bwdif out there...

-i inputfile -vf bwdif=0:0:0,scale=in_range=tv outputfile.mov


Matroska format's framerate is not accurate with certain values

MKV does not store a frame rate in its container. So ffmpeg/vlc looks at the default duration of a frame instead. It sees 33.333ms and does the math, which is where your weird number comes from.

For more information, see: https://gitlab.com/mbunkus/mkvtoolnix/wikis/Wrong-frame-rate-displayed

To test this out, you can run ffprobe with -show_frames. I think you'll find the presentation times for each frame are spot on.


Is it possible to "Blur a Transparent Background" in Adobe After Effects?

It's not possible. A generic blur effect relies on a function which smooths out pixel values within a specified radius. A mask combines the value of a pixel in the top layer with the pixel of the layer beneath, modulated by the corresponding alpha value of that pixel in the top layer.

So, in short a blur is a 'lateral' function, whereas layer compositing is a 'depth' function.


Is it possible to drop some specific frames when comparing SSIM by ffmpeg?

Use the select filter to drop unwanted frames.
This is the basic syntax:
ffmpeg -i distorted -i ref -filter_complex "[0]settb=AVTB,setpts=N[ds];[1]settb=AVTB,select='not(eq(n\,3)+eq(n\,717))',setpts=N[rf];[ds][rf]ssim" -f null -


Best softwares for heavy pan/zoom editing?

Go with After Effects, it's a tool that will most likely stick around. If necessary you can also take advantage of the more advanced tracking an compositing features.
If you end up editing in Premiere (which pretty much is the best option if you don't want to dive into Avid) the integration between AE and Pr is crazy useful. I find myself even making titles there because it's just a faster and lets me do prettier stuff.
Let me know if you have any questions.


Why does After Effects cut some last seconds of video in Timeline?

Try converting the video to Quicktime ProRes format, or another format that doesn't have intra-frame compression before you import it into After Effects.


Good Intermediate Format for Combining Videos

What you wish to do is somewhat convoluted. There is a path to achieving it in the 2 step process you propose, but I would just suggest creating a new folder where you copy all the input files and rename to form a continuous sequence.

Let's say you have 3 folders and the following files in them to be joined in that order

Folder A: a001.png, a002.png, a003.png, ...... a175.png

Folder B: b0001.png, b0002.png, b0003.png, ...... b1075.png

Folder C: c01.png, c02.png, c03.png, ...... c75.png

Also let's say you want to hold the last frame of B for 5 seconds

So, you rename a001-a175 to s0001-s0175; rename b0001-b1075 to s0176-1250; duplicate s1250 120 times (24fps x 5) and rename the copies s1251-s1370, and finally rename c01-c75 to s1371-s1445.

This method avoids issues of video generation loss. For audio, WAVE files of the correct length and order can be appended losslessy by FFmpeg and then converted+muxed with the output video.

Of course, I see from your history that you have access to Premiere Pro. The simplest way of all would be to load all PNGs and audio in the editor, assemble and take output.


Best way to dub the voice in a very low budget or no budget film

It sounds like you are using your laptop's microphone, and that your main problem is the lack of a quality mic. If you own an iPhone, especially iPhone 5 or later, I would recommend you use the voice recorder app, and email the audio files to yourself using the Share button. The iPhone's microphone is surprisingly good for audio. High end Android phones also tend to have good mics. Using your phone means you don't have to purchase any additional equipment.

If it helps, this guy measured the frequency response of the iPhone 3GS back in 2009, and it's a pretty safe bet that the newer models use mics of either the same or better quality.

Fun fact, the iPhone 5 actually has three microphones. The voice recorder app only takes input from the mic along the bottom edge.

Also make sure you're recording in a very still, closed-off room. If you are editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, syncing the audio to the video afterwards shouldn't be a huge problem!


flattening a sequence in Adobe Premiere (collapsing included sequences)

(1.) Open the master sequence containing the nested sequences.

(2.) MAKE SURE that the "Insert or overwrite sequences as nests or individual clips" selector (the leftmost icon under the timecode display in the sequence panel) is NOT highlighted. This will force a nested sequence in the Source Monitor to be edited into the sequence as the individual clips contained in the nested sequence.

(3.) Park the playhead in the middle of one of the nested items in the main sequence

(4.) Choose "Marker / MARK CLIP" (I have this programmed to "X" on the keyboard.") You need to make sure your track selection toggles are correctly set to target the track containing the nested item.

(5.) Choose "Sequence / MATCH FRAME" (I have this programmed to "F" on the keyboard.) This opens the nested sequence into the Source Monitor.

(6.) Choose "Clip / OVERWRITE" (I have this programmed to "B" on the keyboard, like an Avid.) This should have replaced the nested sequence CLIP ITEM with the clips contained in the nested sequence. This overwrites (from IN to OUT as selected in step 4) with the contents of the nested sequence.

(7.) move the playhead to the next clip and press X, F, B

(8.) repeat step 7 until you're done.

[This is tested on Premiere CC 2015.2]


Preview Aspect Ratio on Camera LCD Screen

Apply a screen protector to the LCD and use a permanent marker to draw the aspect ratio you want to frame for. Relatively inexpensive, easy to add, and completely safe for your screen. You may want to just draw a fairly thin line to mark the safe area; it can sometimes be useful to see the full frame.


It is possible but animations are much better suited for a speciality program like After Effects. Vegas on its own will only provide you basic video effects and nothing close to animations like these.


Converting a Video from 1600 * 1200 to 1200 * 900

Use ffmpeg with -vf scale=1200:900 option. For example

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=1200:900 -c:a copy output.mp4


Apparently I had to move the image to "Video 5" (if there are four video layers) to be able to move the image around. Obnoxious though effective enough. If someone knows how to still move images around while avoiding having to add tons of video layers I'd appreciate it though.


How to create a new stereo mix from one channel in Premiere pro cs5.5

Hey try the audio effect Fill left or Fill right!
(I use a zoom h4n and have to constantly do that )
http://www.mediacollege.com/adobe/premiere/pro/audio/fill.html !

Happy editing!
(remember fireballs always make video better!)


How blockbusters movie producers deal with 8K videos editing

The answers are easily discovered by reading trade publications and reviewing videos posted by industry insiders.  Industry professionals don't keep secret things as simple as how they deal with 8K workflows.
 Indeed, they talk about it so as to signal to prospective employees and customers that they are 8K-ready.

That said, your question is impossible to answer because it relies on false assumptions: I have an iMac Pro, and I can render 8K video in realtime or near-realtime (I don't have the most powerful model).

Your question is also vague, because 8K video can mean many things: it can describe the acquisition format, the exhibition format, or both.  Again, it is straightforward (with the right CPU/GPU/IO subsystems, costing less than $10,000) to render 8K source material to a variety of exhibition formats.  With the recently released "consumer" 8K displays (costing ~ $4000), Linus Tech Tips [showed how to hook up not one, but two 8K displays to a single GPU],1 further demonstrating that while it's not cheap, it's neither esoteric nor prohibitively expensive for anybody who can afford to spend sports car money on their computers.

Finally, and this may be the most helpful aspect of the answer to your question: proxy files remain the preferred way to scale video assets to gigabit network bandwidths and laptop levels of performance.  It is also preferred by VFX houses which may have hundreds or thousands of layers of textures, plates, effects, etc.  Compositing thousands of layers is not a real-time process, and there an 8K rendering pipeline can really gum up the works.  Again, the trade publications have many articles explaining the process for creating the proxies, applying the effects, and then rescaling to exhibition format.

As tools, techniques, and technologies are rapidly advancing, the best way to get the latest answer to such a question would be to search for "8k workflow".  Add "youtube" if you want to see a video that answers your question.  Add "vfx" if you care about that.  Add your favorite movie title and maybe that will hit as well.  For example: searching for "8k workflow vfx guardians of the galaxy" led to this article about Guardians of the Galaxy2, which covers in detail your question.


x264 Downsides of a high CRF (22) intermediary codec between conversions instead of lossless

We could do test runs, show comparison screenshots, VMAF scores, bitrate to quality charts, etc, but there is no other way to answer that doesn't essentially say "it will look worse".


How to set a specific ffmpeg Decklink device output format using format number?

I don't see any option in the source to set output format parameters via the serial number.


How to speed up/slow down audio along with video?

Unfortunately, kazanaki's answer is your only choice.

There are multiple ways to change the speed of a clip in premiere, namely:

The Speed/Duration panel that can be access via the context menu of a clip (right-click).
The Rate Stretch Tool (Shortcut R)
Time remapping using keyframes.

The first two do the same thing, that is change the speed of an entire clip by a constant amount. They are also intertwined, so if you change the speed and duration of a clip using the Rate Stretch Tool, the new values will also appear in the Speed/Duration panel.

Time remapping works differently from those tools, as it allows for speed changes over time. That is, you can set keyframes for 400%, 200% and 100% speed (as in your example) and Premiere will interpolate between those keyframes, creating a smooth speed transition. However, this has no effect on the audio stream of the clip. From the documentation:

  When you vary the speed of a clip with linked audio and video, the
  audio remains linked to the video, but remains at 100% speed. The
  audio does not remain synchronized with the video.

Source

I don't know if there is a reason why Adobe has designed it this way (I assume there are technical reasons for this), but at the moment there is no way to adjust audio speed alongside a video using time remapping.

If this behaviour bothers you, you can always write up a Feature Request for Adobe to consider for future releases of the software.

An alternative would be to cut your audio in Adobe Audition and use a Dynamic Link to import it back into your Premiere Pro projekt. If I recall correctly, adjusting the audio alongside the video as described above is also possible in After Effects, but don't quote me on that ...


Why aren't chapters being added to my m2ts using tsmuxer?

M2TS as a format / container is not able to store chapter information itself. On Blu-Ray disks, the chapter data is stored in the playlist files. Therefore you won't see chapters when you just load an M2TS file in a player.
I am actually a total newbie to this, so I have no clue whether tsMuxeR creates appropriate playlist files when producing the ISO file. If so, you should see the chapters when you load the playlist file into the player, not the M2TS file.


FFmpeg keep different sar and dar in multiple videos

Problem was in the source file (second input) that did not respect the correct scales and pads. I solved thanks to this answer https://superuser.com/a/991412. Credits to @LordNeckbeard


Every other frame corrupted when rendering with Adobe Media Encoder

As answered in this Q/A, the problem looks to be caused by the use of the CUDA renderer ("Mercury"). The solution is to switch to CPU-only rendering.


Are there any red filters that fit an SJ4000

there is a german speaking website that sells sj4000 fitting red and magenta filters if you are still searching:

http://www.magic-filter.de/artikelliste/gruppe/id-004-produkte-fuer-qumox-sj4000.html


What is this sun blocker in film making?

Given the angle, I'd say it's a reflector. The line of people on the right are standing with their backs to the sun, it's probably there to bounce a bit of fill light on to their faces, so they're not silhouetted.


What means "Data: Skeleton" in an .ogv file?

What is Ogg Skeleton?

From Ogg Skeleton 4:

  Ogg Skeleton provides structuring information for multitrack Ogg
  files. It is compatible with Ogg Theora and provides extra clues for
  synchronization and content negotiation such as language selection.
  The latest version of Skeleton, version 4.0, also provides keyframe
  indexes to enable optimal seeking over high-latency connections, such
  as the internet.

So basically the Ogg container can support multiple tracks of multiple track types types. However:

  Ogg does not know anything about the content it carries and leaves it
  to the media mapping of each codec to declare and describe itself.
  There is no meta information available at the Ogg level about the
  content tracks encapsulated within an Ogg physical bitstream.

Ogg Skeleton attempts to deal with these issues by providing information about the other streams that allows parsing and (de)muxing without having to decode.

What is stored inside such a stream?

  Ogg Skeleton is a logical bitstream within an Ogg stream that contains
  information about the other encapsulated logical bitstreams. For each
  logical bitstream it provides information such as its media type, and
  explains the way the granulepos field in Ogg pages is mapped to time.

See The "skeleton" meta information track for Ogg for more details.

Is it necessary to play the media file?

Continuing from the second quoted paragraph:

  This is particularly a problem if you don't have all the decoder
  libraries available and just want to parse an Ogg file (such as with file)  to find out what type of data it encapsulates.

For playback you are decoding.
You're using (libogg/libvorbis/libtheora and) the FFmpeg cli tools (or should be; I don't recommend Libav) to demux and decode. You have the various decoder libraries available. You can download a recent build of ffmpeg.
Your file is not complicated. It just contains one video stream, one video stream, and one data stream (the Ogg Skeleton). It does not contain multiple streams of video, audio, subtitles, etc.
Ogg Skeleton 4.0 can index keyframes for seeking in high latency situations. Given the information you (did not) provide I'm going to assume this does not apply to you.

So the answer here is: Ogg Skeleton is not necessary to play this media file.

You can test this by remuxing the file while excluding the data stream with a negative mapping:

ffmpeg -i input.ogv -map 0 -map -0:d -c copy output.ogv

Now try playing it.


Setting up (negative?) midi delay in ableton

Go to Preferences, the click on the MIDI/Sync tab.

Open up one of your MIDI ports, and you will see the MIDI Clock Sync Delay.

Mess with that.

If that doesn't do it, then Driver Error Compensation, under Latency in the Audio tab.


Yes, the videos are broken. They are created due to an overheat and some kind of built-in reduction of the recorded video to FullHD; but the resolution of the result is still 4K, and the last filled content of the 4K buffer is used to fill the bottom large part (hence the repeating).

Still, it's possible to get a FullHD video from the broken file:

FILTER='
[in] split [a][b];
[a] crop=1920:540:0:0 [ac];
[b] crop=1920:540:1920:0 [bc];
[ac][bc] vstack [stack];
[stack] il=luma_mode=interleave:chroma_mode=interleave'

if [ "$2" != "" ] ; then
  ffplay -i "$INPUT" -vf "$FILTER"
else
  set -x
  ffmpeg -i "$INPUT" -filter:v "$FILTER" $QUALITY_GOOD_H265 -c:a copy "$NEW_NAME" \
  && touch "$NEW_NAME" -r "$INPUT"
  set +x
fi


Google has supported 60fps video since 2014.  YouTube has a page that talks about video formats, codecs, framerates, etc., here.  It is up to the Browser and YouTube to negotiate what format, frame rate, etc., should be served for optimal playback.

If you only care about YouTube as a video display platform, and not at all about any other platform, then you have the freedom to choose any of its preferred formats, depending on what sort of upload traffic you can afford.  If you want to be able to play something on your local computers, TV monitors, etc., then you should pick the format most preferred by your most-preferred platform, and let everything else try to adapt to that.


Assuming that your video file does not have an alpha channel (an extra channel of information in the video file that defines which bits of the video should be transparent):

Place the text .mov on a layer in your sequence
Select the clip
Go to the Effect Controls for that clip
Under the "opacity" heading, set the Blend Mode to Screen.

Anything black should now be transparent.

If you think your file does have an alpha channel, check that the alpha is set correctly in Premiere:

Right click on your clip in your project
Choose Modify --> Interpret Footage
Make sure the Alpha settings are set as shown:


Whats the difference between a sekonic light meter CINE version vs non-cine version

If you're working with video, the cine model is the one you want. It lets you meter for motion, not just ISO, f stops, and shutter speeds. I've had the 758 for years... great meter.


What you are looking for is called “no-reference quality assessment”. Google can give you specific examples.


which digital format for old Hi-8 home videos?

Difficult to reply without knowing if you aiming for a full lossless codec or a lossy one can go too. You talk of H264, but this codec can also be used in a lossless way.

If it was for me, and storage doesn't matter I would go for a true (pixel per pixel) lossless codec.

Here, excluding some other "good but insane storage hungry" lossless codecs your choice is between:

FFV1 codec, a pretty good choice for archival purposes.
H264 codec used in loseless fashion, that take less than the above, but is also handled not so well by NLE out of there.

In case instead you want to retain only a good video quality (let's say visually lossless but not pixel per pixel) you can go for an H264 with a crf let's say about 16 or 18.

Obviously is pure nonsense use lossless codecs if you already acquired media with a poor mpeg2. My suggestion is referred to the first video capture itself. So you should capture and save directly in FFV1 without any intermediate steps, then decide to transcode in lossless h264 or lossy h264 or just keep the FFV1 based on your storage needings.


Which measurements can I take using which programs to exploit the already low quality and save as much space as possible?

There are a few video quality metrics available for you to use, primarily SSIM and also PSNR. You can use ffmpeg to convert the video and then compare the output.

Step 1 Convert the video

ffmpeg -i actioncamfile -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a copy -map 0 compressed.mp4

The CRF value modulates the quality. Lower values produce better quality but larger file sizes. Typical values range from 18 to 28, but absolute range is 0 to 51, but 0 being lossless, which will produce an exact looking file but will be bloated.

If you want to test with only a small section, say 20 seconds of the source starting from 15 seconds into the file, you can use

ffmpeg -ss 15 -i actioncamfile -t 20 -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a copy -map 0 compressed.mp4

Step 2 Measure the quality of the conversion

Run

ffmpeg -i compressed.mp4 -i actioncamfile -lavfi "ssim;[0:v][1:v]psnr" -f null -

This command output, at its end, will display lines like this

[Parsed_ssim_0 @ 000000000039ad80] SSIM Y:0.984483 U:0.980458 V:0.980921 All:0.983219 (17.751712)
[Parsed_psnr_1 @ 0000000000398320] PSNR y:42.63 u:43.19 v:44.09 average:42.90 min:42.07 max:46.16

You can aim for a SSIM All value to be at least 0.99, or set your own benchmark, based on what's acceptable.


Why are there missing frames in the Vegas Pro editing timeline?

Vegas is not showing you the actual framerate based measurement. Instead, it is showing you 30 fps Drop Frame Timecode, which exists for compatibility reasons and does have to do with NTSC video.

For purposes of alignment with ffmpeg, switch your display to SS.mmm i.e. fractional seconds rather than SMPTE timecode. No need to change the project framerate.

Right click on one of the times at the top of the timeline and you will see that SMPTE Drop is selected. You can change that to "Time" or "Seconds" for a convention that FFmpeg will naturally understand.


ffmpeg to convert and merge 3 videos to a single widescreen video

Quality-wise, it's better to use the original MOVs, but if the MP4-based stacking looks ok, that's the final arbiter.

ffmpeg -i left.mov -i centre.mov -i right.mov
-filter_complex "[0:v:0][1:v:0][2:v:0]hstack=inputs=3"
-c:v libx264 -tune film -crf 16 -b:a 256k triple.mp4

When using the originals, it doesn't matter whether you do it in one step or two. For streamlining purposes, I would do it in two - then the two encodes aren't competing for memory or CPU.

The stack filters are somewhat more efficient. They require all inputs to have the same size in the dimension normal to the join direction i.e. same height for hstack. Overlay is a generic filter, so it doesn't. Also, stack filters will freeze on the first and last frame of inputs which start late or finish early.
In digital files, audio and video are independent i.e. they exist within the same file and are synced via timestamps but logically they are distinct entities. ffmpeg relies on -map options to select streams for inclusion in the output. In the absence of any -map option, it picks one audio - the "best" - from among all the inputs. See https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Stream-selection
[1:v:0] ... "means 'second input, first video track only'?"  --> Yes.
Looks fine. The suitability of the tune value depends on the material.