Video tutorials: how to add labels, comments, arrows etc

Camtasia Studio (and many others) is such a software (for Windows, you didn't state OS).

It's a screen recorder which in post allow you to add labels, pop-outs, arrows, text-boxes, zooms and pans etc, as well as letting you do basic editing.

I am recommending this one because I have personal experience with it, but that isn't to say other similar software isn't as good or worse/better.


SDR to HDR (High Dynamic Range) Converter?

I'd suspect anything purely automated is going to be pretty marginal.  There's a lot of complexity to getting a good curve with the right gamma, but there's a variety of possible levels of what would be considered "good results".  Personally, I'd rather try getting a good mapping manually with something like Resolve and then trying to see what scenes I could copy the curve to.  I'd suspect that minimal effort and reasonable competence would result in a better quality end result than most automated tools.  That's true for most Auto Tone, Auto Level and Auto Curve tools for standard dynamic range, so I'm not sure why it would be different for HDR.


How do I use get audio from multilpe screens using split-screen in Filmora

The only way to do it is by using PIP function, but it looks bad and won't allow you to split evenly and symmetrically like the split screen functions.  And Synching is nearly impossible, or I should say, cumbersome.


In iMovie you can change the speed of a clip by selecting it in the timeline and then clicking on the icon that looks like a speedometer:

Then click on the "Speed:" popup menu and choose "Fast" or "Custom". The "Custom" setting lets you choose how much faster to make it (like 200%, or 50%).


How do I convert anamorphic hdv video to normal h.264 video with ffmpeg? How to ensure square pixels in output?

You can use a combo of the scale and setsar filters.

ffmpeg -i hdv-input.m2t -vf "scale=iw*sar:ih,setsar=1" -crf 28 -c:a aac -b:a 80k -ac 1 -movflags +faststart h-264-out.mp4

The scaler width to set to current width x sample/pixel aspect. If it's already 1, it amounts to new width = old width. I've added a setsar afterwards to ensure the output SAR is 1.

For MP4 format, default video codec is H.264. If that's what you want, no need to explicitly set c:v.

(For bitrates < 128k, libfdk_aac is better than the native AAC encoder.)

-strict -2 is not needed for using native AAC encoder if your ffmpeg is from after Dec 2015.


How do I render each time increment on Premiere Pro CS5/6?

I would honestly suggest outputting the whole thing to a lossless format and then using another tool to split the file.  Depending on if you have audio, it could be particularly easy to do by exporting as an image sequence and simply moving and renaming the images for each 30 second clip and then encoding each.  If they have audio, then you'd want to actually use something like FFMpeg for splitting the file though.


See all video layers at once in a preview/program menu - Adobe Premiere Pro

The short answer is YES!  The specific Adobe documentation you need to read is here: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/create-multi-camera-source-sequence.html

But the general idea is simple: given a set of clips that are all synchronized on the timeline, group them together as a single object (a multicam clip or a nested sequence), and then set your viewer's display mode from "Composite Video" to "Multicam Viewer".  The multicam viewer will show, side-by-side, the 5 clips (in a matrix) and the presently selected camera angle.  When you play the clip, you can select which angle to switch to, and when.  The first time through you don't have to be super-precise about the when, because you can always slip the edit point earlier or later in the timeline as you need.  And you can later decide "I don't want Angle 2 because somebody is photobombing from that direction, so let's cut to Angle 5 instead".  It takes a little while to get the hang of it, but it's pretty easy, once you have your clips synchronized, grouped, and displayed in Multicam View.


zoom value is capped between 1 and 10.

I wish ffmpeg had some versatile capability of arbitrary zoom and positioninig video input without limitations

Patch welcome.


Convert video from 24 fps to 25, shortening length (no frame duplication), keeping audio pitch

If your input stream has no B-pyramid i.e. B-frames used as references for other B-frames, and your ffmpeg build has librubberband linked then use the following commands:

#1 Extract video to raw stream

ffmpeg -i in.mkv -c copy in.h264

#2 Retime and process audio

ffmpeg -r 25 -i in.h264 -i in.mkv -map 0 -map 1:a -af rubberband=tempo=1.04166 -c:a pcm_s16le out.mkv

If your H264 stream does have reference B-frames then you'll have to use mp4box as an intermediary.

i.e.

#2a Retime video

mp4box -add in.h264#fps=25 -new in25.mp4

#2b Process audio and add video

ffmpeg -i in25.mp4 -i in.mkv -map 0 -map 1:a -af rubberband=tempo=1.04166 -c:a pcm_s16le out.mkv


I believe you are referring to ffprobe:

ffprobe -of compact -show_entries frame=key_frame,pkt_pts_time,pict_type INPUT_FILE > OUT

You can use -sections to get an overview of what information is available:

ffprobe -sections INPUT_FILE


Modify a sample in a mix using the original sample

In theory, if you knew exactly what they did to the sample, you could produce an inverse wave and recombine it with the mixed version in No Homo.  However in practice, since it is unlikely that you will be able to match the frequency shift exactly plus whatever other effects they may have applied (like compression), you are unlikely to be able to make an inverse wave that satisfactorily cancels out the original.


How can one remove an image from a screenshare recording?

One way to do it is to overlay the relevant part of the presentation with another image (could be a blank image). This is called picture in picture, which is often used to overlay another video across part of a background video, but of course the same principle works for still images too.
You need a video editor that offers such a feature, any professional editor can do it and probably many free editors too.
Basically, you have the presentation video as one track and add the replacement image as a second track above it with the duration limited to the time segment where the problematic image is shown. This overlay track will hide the underlying image. You can resize the overlay image, so only the relevant portion of the presentation is covered.
The exact steps depend on the video editor you want to use. If you don't have a video editor yet, you could try the free version of DaVinci Resolve and check out YouTube tutorials on the picture in picture topic to see how it's done with this editor.


You may find that it is easiest to use file system utilities rather than look for a recording application that writes multiple copies.

You could run mirrored filesystems, which will provide copied volumes, or simply set up scripts to copy individual files to multiple locations.


After Effects: Increment a Variable over time

You can loop over the range of frames from the start of the comp to the present and calculate the value along the way.

function myFuncf(theTime){
 //whatever the function you're using to create the value, e.g.
 t=theTime + s.valueAtTime(theTime); //s is the slider
 return t
}

firstFrame = timeToFrames(inPoint); //if you want it to calculate
                                    //from the beginning of the comp
                                    //change this to 0, or maybe 1?
                                    //I'd check but I'm rendering ATM

mytime=0; //initialise the mytime variable

currentFrame = timeToFrames(time);
for (int i=firstFrame; i <= currentFrame; i++){
  mytime += myFunc(framesToTime(i)); //need to convert frames back into seconds
}

after the loop myTime should be the sum of the results of function myFunc from all the previous frames up to and including the present one (I'm not 100% sure if the loop should end when i < cf or i <= cf, you might want to test).

note first time I posted this there was a mistake. Where I called the function I was giving it frames (from i the loop variable), but it uses valueAtTime which expects time in seconds, so you need to convert: mytime += myFunc(framesToTime(i));

If you have a long comp or this is applied to lots of layers, this expression may become slow to evaluate and cause lagginess. If it becomes a problem convert the expression to keyframes.


Drawing a line over video that is camera tracked

Masks do not render in after effects, the lines and boxes are UI elements of the program. To render a mask you have to apply an effect such as the stroke effect to the layer, using the mask as the source.

You could also add a stroke as a drawing on a new layer. You can do that by using the pen tool when there are no layers selected. That will create a shape layer with the current fill and stroke settings, so you may have to turn off the fill.

The boxes around the points would also have to be drawn as individual elments. You could use the square shape tool to draw them as either a source for the stroke effect or on the shape layer.


How to turn off LCD on camcorder while external microphone is connected?

It's not possible to turn off the LCD panel when it is open, but you may do two things with it to save your battery:

reduce the LCD brightness to the its lowest limit, and
set the LCD Backlight to [L Dim]

Both commands are available from the Home Menu -> Other Settings -> Display Setup.


Gravity gimbal and effect from overall weight

Gimbals are nothing more than a ball bearing (or a complex series of ball bearings; or even simply a sharp point which rests on a surface which allows it to move on a 2 axis level), which using weights balanced correctly provide a "zero gravity" effect on both the camera and the counterweight.

This doesn't apply to electronic gimbals which use servos, a microprocessor, and sensors to electronically move the gimbal head.

That said:

Yes weight will play a role in the overall stability of the camera unit.

I have taught workshops on camera technique, and I often joke that if you want to get steadier footage from a small lightweight camera (think GoPro), gafftape it to a brick.

Mass requires energy to move. So the lighter the object, the easier it is to move. Try to shake a marble around with your hand grasping it with two fingers, then do the same with a bowling ball. The motion, if you tracked it, would be both smoother, and more stable - smoother arcs, turns, etc, with the object that has more mass.

So with a steadicam rig (which I used to own a full blown rig capable of holding cameras in the 30lb range); a heavy camera with a heavy counterweight, which is properly balanced with give you far steadier shots, SPECIFICALLY with vibration. As a large heavy object is hard to "vibrate". So the little shakes, will be minimized by the mass added to the camera.

What's most important, if using a steadicam type rig is that you have perfect balance, that is, if you turn the camera 90 degrees (thus shooting sideways) the camera will stay in that position.

You do not want to set it up so the unit is counterweight heavy, keeping the camera upright.

The camera should be able to "hold" any position, angle, on any axis, and not return to upright.

If the camera is not balanced this way, you will encounter what is known as steadicam wobble. This is where the balance is off, and by the operators movement the effects of inertia and momentum push and tug differently on the camera vs the counterweight.

Lastly, the term for non-motorized stabilizers is a camera stabilizer. There is no one term; but steadicam is a goto term used by most.

Now as far as motorized stabilizers, none of what I said factors in, because the motorized stabilizers I own and have worked with, do not use weights, rather they use servos, and tension systems which differ than their non-electronic counterparts.

If you are using a light weight camera, and non-electronic steady system; you will achieve better results by adding ballast to both the camera and the counterweight. The ballast you add can be steel plates with holes drilled, cheeseplates, anything that has weight, and that you get the unit balanced to where it is not bottom heavy.


Interpreting 50fps to 23.976fps in Premiere Pro

The recommendation from Adobe for slowing down motion is to use Optical Flow.  If you put a 50 fps onto a 23.976 fps timeline, select the clip and set Speed/Duration to 47.952% with optical flow, then you should get a good quality result.  And of course you are on your own for sound, because slowing things down 2x is not going to make any sense for the audio you recorded.

Shooting at 25 fps for a 23.976 timeline could be a 4.1% slowdown (in which case you might want to pitch shift your audio so you can keep it) or a re-interpretation (where you drop/optical flow frames) in which case you can keep your audio as is and mate it to the retimed video.

If you find yourself doing lots of 25->23.976 conversions, you may want to seriously rethink the idea of using a PAL camera do make NTSC deliverables and instead buy a camera that is NTSC-friendly.


The scale filter adjusts the aspect ratio, so that the display ratio remains the same. Assuming you don't want that.

Use

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf crop=1424:720:0:40,scale=1280:720,setsar=1 -c:a copy output.mp4


How do I round trip through premier without losing audio volume?

Premiere doesn't change the audio levels (volume or db) by default. So I'm not sure why you are experiencing loss in volume.

My guess would be that you have turned down the audio levels in premiere by accident. Or that you are incorrectly comparing the files (have you checked the waveform to see if they are different levels?).

If you changed the audio levels you either did it on the track, clip, or audio mixer. To check if you did it on the clip you can right click on it and check out the audio gain. The mixer settings should all be 0db by default. For web delivery I tend to keep max peaks at - 6db.

If all else fails than you are experiencing some sort of bug. You could always try adjusting the levels of the clip through the right click - > gain way on the clip.


Why is my camcorder creating 10:40 clips?

Most devices use memory formatted as FAT32, which gives you a 4GB file size limit, so a recording is broken up across multiple files. For Sony products, Catalyst Browse is normally the software used to re-combine the files:
https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/catalystbrowse

Normally you would import the files off the card using that, then select the files together and right click/combine. It should make a continuous single file recording from the source files, with nothing missing.


Adobe CC Post-Production Workflow (Story, Prelude etc.)

Your workflow is a little off from how it is designed by Adobe.

Step 1: Adobe Story: You build your script and can break it into shots that you need to capture before you even start shooting.  This can then work as the blueprint to plan out shooting of the project.

Step 2: Adobe Prelude: I believe you can preconfigure a shot list that needs to be captured with meta data about the scenes.  Prelude can either be used for live capture or can be used to Ingest and organize footage on site during shooting.  Think of it a bit like Lightroom for Video.  It's intended to organize the shots so that they can more effectively be reviewed and pulled up during shooting and post production.

Step 3: Premiere: Rough edit, start laying out clips and getting the flow of the piece together.

Step 4/5: After Effects: any touch up or effects work that needs to be done on individual clips can be processed through After Effects and sent back to Premiere.  This could also be done before rough editing, but is probably easier after/during.  This may also include color grading or SpeedGrade may be used.

Step 4/5: Audition: basically the same thing as After Effects, but on the sound track/audio side on a clip level.

Step 6: Premiere: Once assets are finalized, final edit can occur to produce the finished timings for the video.

Step 7/8: Audition: Mastering, finish the audio and sound-tracking for the entire finished video to make sure it flows well from one clip to another.

Step 7/8: After Effects or Speed Grade: Perform final color grading to ensure the entire film flows well together.

Step 9: Media Encoder or Encore: Prepare final output format, either encoding for the web or building a DVD and/or Blueray disk for release.


My first port of call was to look on videohive too. But in the end i ended up creating the grid of videos then using the parent tool to assign all videos to the central video as the parent and just apply a scale to that video which controls the scale of the rest.


I need to modify a movie's displayed subtitles and display as an image overlay

Ok great. So 3 steps really:
1. Make sure you have the .ttf on ur computer installed, if not extract it from the streams

ffmpeg -dump_attachment:t:0 OpenSans-Semibold.ttf -i input.mkv

In my case I had 4 streams and the .ttf was my only t stream so its 0. And the filename to be used is the one listed in the stream info which is OpenSans-Semibold.ttf in my case.

Take the sub file, .ass in this case out of the video container. and save it as a .ass file
Use this command here on the subfile. Open the subfile in a text editor and see the timestamps, and just change the text for a specific timestamp with the formatting you want. And write the time of that timestamps in the -ss. Then after you render out ur output. Just change the .ass in the text editor to have the new text you want. Save. And repeat the command changing the output to something new each time.

ffmpeg -ss 00:01:87 -f lavfi -i "color=color=white@0.0:size=1920x1080,format=rgba,subtitles=subfile.ass:alpha=1" -frames:v 1 out.png


According to Wikipedia ,Digital Cinema Initiatives originated the term 2K in 2002 for a digital film format of 2048 x 1080.  2048 is commonly referred to as 2K in the digital world.  It logically follows that when DCI went on to specify a resolution 2x larger in each direction, they called the 4096 x 2160 format 4K.  4096 is commonly referred to as 4K in the digital world.


55.58 is not a standard frame rate so it's the one that should be changed. Using the 23.98 video as a reference, pick a point late into the video where you can determine how many frames (at 23.98 fps) it's out of sync with the 56 fps video. Compute the ratio of the length in frames up to that point, to the number of frames out of sync. Then time stretch the entire 56 fps video --  either shorter of longer as needed -- using that ratio.


Video format to get my comp to export under 50Kb

After reviewing the PDF, I can confirm that you are misreading it.  They are looking for a flash animation, not a video.  You will not be able to use your After Effects assets at all.  You need to remake the ad as a flash animation in Adobe Flash using vector graphics in order to fit within their 50KB limitation.


What's the difference between 29.97p and 29.97fps?

A 29.97p (p = progressive) video is 29.97fps (fps = frames per second) but not all 29.97 fps video will be progressive. Some will be interlaced, (29.97i) having 59.94 "fields" per frame.

So there may be no difference at all. If Premiere doesn't indicate whether the files are interlaced or progressive, use a tool like MediaInfo.


You certainly could get a long way in camera. You might want to add a diffusion filter to your lens - or a stocking if you can't afford one, certainly a strong backlight, and by the looks of it maybe a touch of diffused fog. Then in post grade it up until the skin tone is starting to get crushed to white.


How to add captions file to video podcast?

Ordinarily, I'd create an Adobe AIR or AIR-for-iOS app to solve this problem. You'd just sychronize your captions to cue points in the video and make 'em visible or invisible with a programmed-in button. You could easily have multiple languages in this way.

Are iTunes podcasts just flat-out mp4 movies?


Each media segment file for MPEG-DASH is a full (.mp4) instead of fragment mp4 (.m4s)?

After studying the DASH spec, I'd say the fragmented MP4 is the must for media segment files. Therefore, it is not possible to use a full (or non-fragmented) MP4 in DASH.


I can't help you with the set lighting but the look of the video is definitely achievable in post and in case of a modern camera you definitely have to do a lot in post to get a believable "retro" look. After Effects is recommendable due to many great plugins that help achieving specific looks but any editor that has good color tools on-board, a blur filter and a good grain filter will do the job to get the desired effect.

Punch the highlights, deepen the blacks, you generally want high contrast but don't just use a contrast effect in your editor, that won't get you very far. Level Curves are always a nice utility for these kind of things. Play around a bit.
Add a very slight blur, 0.5-2 pixel blur should be enough. Try different blurring algorithms if more than one is available to you.

The shots are also out of focus a little in almost all scenes. If you can re-create that during the shoot you could possible spare the blur in post all-together and get an even more convincing look.

Use a tool like Filmconvert to add a subtle grain to the video. You can also use onboard tools in your editor though most plugins offer a more realistic film grain than the average simple noise generator.

Filmconvert offers also to match the colors to the colors of a certain "old" film camera, which might help you. An example of a B&W movie that used the plugin: http://www.filmconvert.com/Videos/Video.aspx?id=224&order_by=staff_picks&page=6

Keep in mind to not over do it, the border is thin between unrealistic and believable "retro look".

If After Effects is available to you I can recommend the RedGiant Color Suite (many of these products also work in Premiere and other tools). Though you can also use Premiere with Speedgrade (which nicely integrates into Premiere now) which will bring you similar results with similar ease of use as with After Effects if After Effects isn't your thing. Though After Effects offers a huge amount of editing capabilities which help greatly creating very specific effects.


Cross-dissolve in real time between end and start point of looping clip

You can't seamlessly loop a clip that wasn't designed to loop. Some suggestions below, but all require video editing software. No plugin for a player that I know of.

Option 1: Clip has a distinctive/necessary beginning & end that have to be seen, or has audio/narration that cannot be edited or shortened

The best option in this case would be to edit the clip to fade-in from and fade-out to black (and/or an identical image) at the beginning & end.

Now when it loops it at least appears the same (even if the player hiccups slightly). Black works well since most players go to black after finishing a clip.

Option 2: No audio, the clip's start/end location doesn't matter & you want a seamless loop

In this case you could try the following, using whatever software - iMovie, Premiere, After Effects, MovieMaker etc...

Place the entire clip on a timeline.
Duplicate the clip.
Find a point in the clip that has as little motion/change as possible.
On the top copy of the clip, move 1 frame to the left and trim everything after this point.
On the bottom copy, go back to the chosen frame and trim everything before this point.
Move the bottom copy left so it starts at the beginning of the timeline

Your chosen point now starts at 0:00:00

Shift the top copy to the right until it only overlaps slightly with the bottom copy.

The original start/end points are now overlapping somewhere in the middle

Add a cross-dissolve to the beginning of the top copy

The original end point will be obscured by the dissolve.
Experiment w/the length and location of overlap/dissolve to find a suitable result. It could work w/just a few frames, or might require a longer overlap to not look jumpy. How well it works depends on how different the original start/end frames are.
Ensure the dissolve only occurs during overlapping frames or else you'll see clips jumping on & off screen.

Trim the end of the timeline so it stops exactly at the last frame of the top clip.

Your edited video will be shorter by the length of the dissolve.
The new last frame is now exactly 1 frame before the new first frame at the beginning.

Export timeline to your required format

The result of this process is that the beginning and end now only  differ by a single frame, making a loop with minimal jump when you restart playback. The cross-dissolve in the middle takes care of the smooth transition that you don't currently have, at the expense of ~1 second of original length.

You could also flip the directions around so the top clip shows the original "end" point clearly & fades to the "start" of the bottom clip. Either way works...

There still may be a slight stutter no matter what, depending on the delivery platform. VLC is decent about looping, but iTunes and WMP have a noticeable gap even in a clip that should be seamless. If your clip is for DVD there might be a slight pause, but visually it would look the same.

If the video is for web or mobile use, it'll depend on the platform. iOS and Android are horrible about looping videos natively (there's always a noticeable gap while it restarts, if looping is allowed at all). With HTML5 video or Flash you could code it to seek to the beginning immediately before it reaches the end, hopefully preventing much stutter and avoiding the need to go to all this editing hassle...

I hope this helps!


Is there a cheap Teleprompter software that supports foreign languages?

If you have a Mac, Presentation Prompter had a few good reviews I found when doing some research.  I don't have a Mac to try it, but it appears to have mirror modes and is listed as having RTF support.

It is also worth pointing out you may be able to setup the necessary mirroring on a particular output desktop rather than having the prompting software have to support it.  This could possibly make the software that didn't have the needed mirroring option work for you.

If that doesn't work, MirrorScript appears to have a free teleprompting software that works with PC and international characters.  They also offer an entire list of alternative prompting software that might be worth looking in to if they don't meet your needs for other reasons.


VFX on a phone is much different than actually doing it on a computer. You might want to take stepping stones to VFX and start by editing videos with a NLE. One of my favorites is Premiere Pro (though, it's been buggy lately). Once you learn how to edit videos, you can then move onto VFX with Adobe After Effects, or Hitfilm for more simpler stuff.


instead of shape layer with outline use solid layer with masks to recreate the outline. that seems to work for me..


For gear, I like this list: http://www.desktop-documentaries.com/cinematic-documentary-gear-package.html

For software (I assume for editing), Premiere Pro is very capable and easygoing on beginners.  Download a trial and see how you like it!

Bear in mind, that both take time to learn in order to produce quality results, so unless you're a quick study, or your project is very simple, factor the learning curve into the cost of doing it yourself.


Stitching 2 videos into one (like panoramic photos)

If you are looking to NOT do any post editing.
And be able to see the whole field with one camera.

I would suggest the gopro.
A bit of a fishbowl effect, but it can work

You can see how it would look like, here is a school baseball game:


Optimizing ffmpeg settings for high-entropy / HIGH-DETAIL ANIMATIONS towards uploading to youtube

do i get you wrong about you want a lossless compression?
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264

Choose a CRF value
The range of the CRF scale is 0–51, where 0 is lossless, 23 is the default, and 51 is worst quality possible. A lower value generally leads to higher quality, and a subjectively sane range is 17–28. Consider 17 or 18 to be visually lossless or nearly so ...

or
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/FFV1
FFV1 is a video codec developed within FFmpeg. It is lossless, meaning that it compresses video without introducing quantization degradations.
or
you can google lossless compression


My AE was always like that. I believe you confusing Adobe After Effects "Effects Control" panel, with Adobe Premiere "Effects Control" panel, where you can find all basic effects.


How does green screening work with green objects?

For static shots they shoot what's called a background plate: the same scene shot from the same angle but without the foreground action. Then where the green is taken out the empty background shows through.

If the camera is moving this presents a problem. This can be solved by using motion control - basically a robot arm with the camera on it that can repeat the same camera movement with and without the foreground action. This technique is being used less and less, because today even a modest laptop running off-the-shelf software is now capable of tracking moving cameras in 3D. So that the computer works out where the camera was in 3D space, then the background–which can be real or CGI–can be composited with the camera footage.


Avoid Rendering in Final Cut Pro: Smaller Frame Size?

First off, there is no such coded as ProRes 411, so I have to assume you are using ProRes 422...which is a great start.

However it is not really worth the effort of trying to convert the clips so that you don't have to render within Final Cut, rendering in Final Cut is going to occur whether you attempt to avoid it or not.  In your case I believe it is a difference in pixel aspect ratio, if the PAR matches with a different frame size typically you do not have to render, however if they do not match even if both clips are 1920x1080 you would still need to render.


How to make a white background effect for video recording?

You need a white backdrop with the appropriate backdrop stands!  For the backdrop, you have two choices:

Muslin fabric.  Easily transported since you can fold it up and bring it wherever you need. But, it does have to be ironed/steamed until it's completely wrinkle-free.

OR:

Paper backdrop.  You don't have to iron/steam wrinkles out of this.  But it's a pain to transport it since it's a super-long roll of thick paper.

To light this scene, you'll need three lights: key light + fill light to light your actor, and third a Fiilex light, like this one, to place on the ground behind your sitting talent, and pointing upward towards the backdrop.

It's best to turn off all interior lights and block out the windows and only light the scene using these three lights.


How do I speedup encoding of a video that has just 1 static frame with ffmpeg and lib264 library?

Give this a try:

ffmpeg -i audio.m4a -loop 1 -r 2 -i image.jpg -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -shortest out.mp4

-r 2 sets the frame rate to 2 fps (some players seem to have problems with 1 fps).


How to download and encode a video from a MPD manifest?

Regarding your FFMPEG issue, you need to build/obtain FFmpeg with --enable-libxml2 configuration enabled to correctly parse a manifest.mpd file.

You can check whether your FFmpeg supports libxml2 by simply running it without any arguments. Here is the output from FFmpeg 4.1 I built with --enable-libxml2 (see --enable-libxml2 in the start of the 4th line of the output):

%./ffmpeg

ffmpeg version n4.1-10-g59e30c05d7 Copyright (c) 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 5.4.0 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.6) 20160609
 configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-openssl
--enable-libxml2 --enable-libssh --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx
--enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264
--enable-libx265 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzmq
--enable-libzvbi --enable-libopus --enable-libpulse --enable-gmp --enable-libmodplug --enable-nonfree
          libavutil      56. 22.100 / 56. 22.100
          libavcodec     58. 35.100 / 58. 35.100
          libavformat    58. 20.100 / 58. 20.100
          libavdevice    58.  5.100 / 58.  5.100
          libavfilter     7. 40.101 /  7. 40.101
          libswscale      5.  3.100 /  5.  3.100
          libswresample   3.  3.100 /  3.  3.100
          libpostproc    55.  3.100 / 55.  3.100
        Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder

Regarding your question above, once you have a working FFmpeg with --enable-libxml2, you can transcode the .mpd to .mp4:

ffmpeg -i manifest.mpd -codec copy out.mp4

Note: I use -codec copy above to avoid transcoding of actual video and audio.


Why my workstation PC is rendering too slow on Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019?

Have you read Adobe's system requirements for Premiere Pro? I think you'll find that a GPU is absolutely crucial for Premiere renders. Looking at your specs you seem to have got everything fairly well specced up except for the one thing that will massively decrease your render times for PP.

TL;DR: get the best GPU you can afford.


How do I change output file format in ffmpeg batch, when using drag and drop?

With Gyan's help I was able to get it to work.
%~n1.mp4 will get the filename and substitute the file extension with mp4.
To get the correct path as well, I added %~p1.
So all in all I now use %~p1%~n1.mp4 and it works exactly as intended.


are there any online Visual effect schools/courses?

It depends on whether you just want to learn animation or actually need a diploma. Many online sources won't issue one, so you will 'just' learn how to do it, but not have any trustworthy certificate.

If you just want to learn, there are so many good sites that offer courses and trainings (most of them commercially), it depends on what kind of animation you want to learn. In general, lynda.com is a great source for high-quality tutorials for software. A particularly useful branch of lynda is video2brain (if you speak German, French or Spanish, visit video2brain.com, there you will find localised tutorials in these languages).

The thing is, those trainings - even the good ones - will usually only teach you how to use a specific piece of software, but not include the aesthetical/artistic side of the craft. Of course, this stuff can be learned online, but it's harder to find good resources, and they are potentially much more expensive. The two sites you found seem to do exactly that, but it would appear they have similar entrance barriers (i.e. require application and are very expensive) as traditional university courses.

That said, you can learn so much online these days, even for free, but it will take much time and effort (even to find the right resources). There isn't one correct answer as to what you should do, it all depends on where you live (some countries have student fees, others don't), what branch of animation you want to learn, what industry you want to end up in et c. Since you seem to be willing to invest some time and money into learning animation, I suggest you put an respective amount of effort into finding a university/online course that will actually be right for your specific interests and needs.


Can I suppress ("blue-screen"?) the background of a video?

Well, white could get quite difficult, it would need to clearly differnce you from the white background. (Dark clothes, dark hair...)
Else I'd guess this won't give a good result.
It would be better if you hang a green/blue clothe behind you. Something like a bath towel will do it just fine enough. Make sure to hang it really tight and put some good lighting on it.


The first priority here is to determine the bottleneck, particularly on the encoding end first, then moving on elsewhere.

This is noted by the comment on the choppy video stream, indicating frame-skipping.

To do that, we need to isolate the task that takes up the heaviest CPU load.

Try running the FFmpeg snippet with audio encoding only, as you copy the video stream, then monitor CPU load:

ffmpeg -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -c:v copy -c:a aac -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

That omits the video encoding phase, so see the new CPU load.

Next step, enable the video encoder but copy the audio stream intact:

ffmpeg -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -c:v h264_omx -c:a copy -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

Now, with that snippet, monitor the CPU load again.

You're likely to observe that its' either workload (video or audio encoding) that takes up the larger share of the CPU load, and from there, you can then tune the encoder(s) as you see fit.

To see encoder options for the h264_omx encoder, run:

ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_omx

And for the aac encoder:

ffmpeg -h encoder=aac

Then tune the culprit with an acceptable preset and/or settings until an acceptable compromise in quality vs CPU load is reached. Note that some functions such as auto-inserted filters tend to run on the CPU, contributing to the heavy load on the encoder's end.

You can confirm this by running:

ffmpeg -loglevel debug -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -c:v h264_omx -c:a aac -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

And monitoring the output. Learn what filters are being auto-inserted, and see if modifying the filter strings (via -vf) assists with the processor load.


A normal 'pick-whipped' expression:

thisComp.layer("Solid 1").transform.position

An expression referencing another composition within your project:

comp("Second Comp Name").layer("Solid 1").transform.position

As long as the composition name in Project A is consistent, you could just reference it and include a fallback in case it hasn't been imported like this:

try { comp("PROJECT A COMP NAME").layer("YOUR LAYER NAME").text.sourceText; }
catch(err) { text.sourceText }

Reference:
 https://gist.github.com/animoplex/b426933ae6c896c79ea98a50855ff62e

I figured I'd give this a quick response since it's been a while and there haven't been any answers. Send me a comment if you have questions.

Hope this helps :)


What's the right project profile for my WVGA60 videos in Premiere Elements 10?

The advantage of rendering to uncompressed AVI is that you can render the project piecemeal and then join them together later on. So first, render only the entire project's audio to WAV. Then render the video (without audio) in contiguous chunks e.g. frames 0-200 to segment1.avi, then frames 201-400 to segment2.avi and so on. Once done, load the first AVI in avidemux and then do a file->append of segment2.avi and so on. Finally, from audio->main track, set source to external WAV and then browse & select the WAV. Now you can encode to final output from within AVIdemux.


How to add images to video at specific timestamps for a short time?

Use the color, scale2ref, and overlay filters. Include the enable option with an expression.

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=640x480:d=7200 -i iamge.png -filter_complex "[1][0]scale2ref=oh*mdar:ih[fg][bg];[bg][fg]overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2:enable='eq(t,8)'[v]" -map "[v]" output


Broadcast Television - Best specs to supply news footage

ABC, NBC, Comcast and others all have their own specs. What I've found is that 1080 progressive MP4 (h.264) at 29.97 fps (some rare cases need 59.94), with audio between 192-256 Kbps, usually does the trick. You'd obviously edit in ProRes, but to submit that codec to the stations is overkill. Some outlets will even reject specs that don't conform exactly to their specifications during the upload process to their FTP.


Generally speaking, it is not possible to use a camera flash as a light for video.  A true flash is a high intensity discharge bulb which produces a very short (1/100 second or shorter), very bright burst of light.  It is not designed to be used for constant light output and has insufficient power, durability or cooling to be able to operate as a continuous light source.

Some devices, most often smartphones, use LED light sources as a "flash" but actually are not flashes, simply constant output lamps that can be used for video or as a low brightness "flash" for still images.  This is very rare to see with a point and shoot or DSLR.  When it is included with DSLR flashes, it is typically as a separate, distinct light on the same unit, such as the video light built in the Canon's 320EX flash.


How can I import subtitles/captions into a letterboxed video like this?

You can use ffmpeg. Make your subtitles with Aegisub or manually with a text editor. ASS subtitles are fancier, but SRT are simpler if you want to manually make them.

Alignment & Margin

The default settings will likely work, but you can control the general location, or alignment, using the "keypad" coordinates. For example, 2 is bottom center. For more granular control you use the vertical margin. In Aegisub these options are available in Subtitles > Style Manager > Edit.

You can also choose the font and font size in this screen.

ffmpeg examples

Now run ffmpeg with the subtitles filter to make your hardsubs:

ffmpeg -i input -filter_complex "subtitles=subs.ass" output

Or if you want to avoid using Aegisub you can use the force_style option:

ffmpeg -i input -filter_complex "subtitles=subs.ass:force_style='Fontname=Arial,Fontsize=20,Alignment=2,MarginV=10'" output

Resulting in:

If you do want to use ffmpeg make sure to output from Premiere using a lossless format, such as UT video, because ffmpeg will re-encode it which is required when filtering.


What is the best settings in handbrake for 640x480?

One thing you can certainly do is lower the bitrate. 23 is quite a high bitrate, even more so for a h.264 .mp4. You should get away with a bitrate of 5-7. Also, you're encoding using the preset of 720p, which would be 1280×720 pixels. However, you stated that your resolution is only 640x480, so matching those settings will do a great deal in filesize aswell.


How to overlay 2 videos using depth layers

The main issue was, that the Z-Layer was not accurate enough, as Gyan said. Addtionally the condition needed to be changed from lt(A,B) to lte(A,B).


Video Output to TV is shutting down on full speed playback of video, or split screen display

Assuming that everything worked fine before you replaced the video card, did the software vendor recommend a video card for this set up? if not, does the software vendor provide a list of supported video cards? Does your new card fall in this list?

I highly suspect that the replacement card has a compatibility issue with the "capture" software. Have you contacted technical support for the software vendor?

It is possible there is also a driver conflict or that when you replaced the video card you did not provide the correct driver. Assuming this is a PC running Windows, did you check the 'device manager' to see if there are any yellow or red flags?

How to check the device manager, one way. Start-->right click on 'my computer', then choose 'manage' from the drop down menu, a 2 pane window will appear, click on device manager in the left pane, look for details in the right pane.


Canonical Way to Specify Readable text for TV feeds: Pixels?

Specifying text in terms of pixel size is the most independent way of specifying size. Where you know the vertical resolution (like 720 lines or 1080 lines) then specifying pixels is exactly like saying "a fraction of the total frame".

And in practical terms, 12 pixels is pretty much the minimum recognizable height for common western characters, especially if some viewers are watching on screens of lower resolution.


Is it still necessary to fill in gaps in sequence?

I don't think it has been an issue for some time.  I've been using Premiere since version 5 and don't seem to recall ever having a problem with exports though I don't recall my work area ever extending over a gap (though I certainly had many projects where there were gaps between work areas.)

I did verify that in CS6, it is no problem.


Rendered File with After Effects is very Huge

Short Answer

It's all codec related, AE export follows the direction and settings you give him.

Your choice could be to export a super high bitrate lossless file or a few kb crappy thing horrible to see.

You say h264, probably you used an high bitrate, that could be good but better at this point go for an Intermediate use codec keeping h264 for the final distribution.

Long Answer

It's all depending the workflow you want to follow!

My workflow generally consists in export the render with a true lossless (or if not possibile at least visually speaking lossless) very high bitrate codec in order to have a decent master.

Then i use that master to export the copies in the format i want with a tool like ffmpeg that is a super powerful command line tool that allows you to do all the transcoding and compression job.

Pros

You will not need to re-render again the AE Project saving tons of time.
You will not have troubles expecially as early user for not knowing too much about codec and settings. Compress in a lossy codec while rendering must have first of all a reason (like one only in my life render, target and never use the video again for something else) but also require knowledge obtained by lot of trial and errors that a pro have. If you start with a lossy codec in the rendering phase and you misconfig the settings you will end in a crappy file not good at all!

Cons

Video files will be bigger, but if you have at least a handy external drive all will be easier a nas could be better if you plan to grow and use this workflow for work.

Export your AE render with a Very High quality codec suited for post production or that could retain as much info as possible example a QuickTime movie contianer with Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD 120 or 185 Mbit/s.

Store your file and use something like:

ffmpeg -i rendered.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a libfdk_aac -b:a 192k compressed.mp4

To obtain a smaller compressed version of your movie.

If you already exported with AE the audio in aac or a format you would like to keep use

ffmpeg -i rendered.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a copy compressed.mp4

Note: If you download the ffmpeg binaries for windows normally the libfdk_aac is not available, so you could use: libfaac or aac or libvo_aacenc


How do you batch merge many clips in a premiere pro timeline?

There are at least two ways I have found to do this so far.

Out of the box method

The easiest possible way to speed this process up is to set a few keyboard shortcuts and close the project window.

Open the keyboard shortcut manager. Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts
Search for merge and set Merge Clips to a shortcut. I picked Ctrl+Shift+Y

Search for select next clip and set Select Next Clip to a shortcut. I picked Ctrl+Down

Close the project folder pane. This will make things 10X faster. Without doing this every time you merge a clip, focus will be given to the project pane. If you don't do this, the process will be. ctrl+shift+Y > enter > ctrl+down > click back to timeline. If you do this you never have to leave the keyboard you can just do ctrl+shift+Y > enter > ctrl+down > ctrl+shift+Y until the end of your timeline.

If you do all of that, and close the project pane, the process would look something like this:

https://i.imgur.com/7Yyy1T4.gifv

Super hacky, but I guess it works, method

While the above does work fine, and will probably speed up doing this with a mouse by a factor of ten. If you have a timeline with hundreds of clips, this is going to get really tedious.

So, all we need to automate this, is something to do these keyboard shortcuts for us while we go and... do something else

If you can't find a rocking bird. The next best thing is going to be autohotkey. I don't know what the MacOS equivalent of this is, but at least on windows the process would look something like this.

Estimate how many clips are in your timeline 100ish, 200ish?
Download and install AutoHotkey
Download this Autohotkey script

    ^j::
    Loop, x ; Set x to estimate of clips in timeline, 100, 200, etc.
    {
    Send, ^+y ; Merge clips shortcut
    Sleep, 100 ; Wait for dialogue
    Send, {Enter} ; Press enter
    Sleep, 100 ; Wait for merge
    Send, ^{Down} ; Select next clip shortcut
    Sleep, 100 ; Wait for next clip
    }
    return

Right click on mergeclips.ahk on your desktop > select edit script
Set x to the number of clips you want to merge. Save the file.
Double click on the script on your desktop. This will listen in the background for your keyboard shortcut press.
Go to premiere, make sure your project pane is closed
Make sure your premiere keyboard shortcuts are set to the ones I listed above.
Select the first clip on the timeline you want to merge.
Press ctrl+j to start the script :)

Demo: https://i.imgur.com/N4hD09d.gifv


It's not the container that 'knows' that, it is a player. And it is a good question how it managed to find the file in the different directory.

The only thing that the container does to help the player to identify the blocks is storing the Previous UID and Next UID for the files. It also stores the UID for the current file. So my guess would be that you have a player with some sort of 'library' capability, the player has scanned your drive and recorded the UIDs of the MKV files that it found, it then encounters the Next UID field in a file that it's playing and it will know where to look for the next one.


What is the best way to make Windows compatible with .MOV format?

.MOV is a container format, not a video format. As such it can contain media in any number of 'tracks' of audio, video, subtitles etc. In particular, video tracks may use any supported codec, not just Apple-specific ones. It's very common to see H264 encoded video in a MOV file, and H264 is widely supported on Apple, Windows and Linux platforms.

So if you control the encoding, use H264 and you'll have nearly universal compatibility. If you don't control the encoding, you have to insure that the target system supports the codec used, which puts you in a bind because there are dozens of codecs and a given system may not have yours installed.


How can I distinguish a freeze frame from the moving parts of the video?

Add a sound effect: the effect fades in, is audible at full volume shortly before it abruptly ends exactly when the freeze frame appears. The sound effect should be distinguishable from background sounds and overall be crisp and short (like 0.5-2 seconds). That way, the audience is given a clear indicator that the freeze frame is intentional. An alternative might be a sudden tempo/rhythm change in music - but I wouldn't stop the music.


Lighting for video in room with no windows, choose led or cfl

It's not just about lumens. Generally you get what you pay for when you're buying lights, and the difference between an expensive LED and a cheap one is not usually the power output, it's the colour fidelity.

White lights look white because they produce a range of colours which our eyes mix together and perceive as white. The better the light the smoother the graph of the intensity across the spectrum is - so there'll be a smooth line going from red up to violet.

Cheaper lights produce a more jagged spectrum. So even though they may look white overall, there will be certain colours that are less intense or missing, and other colours that are brighter.

Fluorescent lights, including CFLs are notorious for having a spiky spectrum:

The spike right in the green area of the spectrum can give the footage a greenish, slightly morbid look. This is quite popular in the shaky-cam horror genre, but it may not suit your film:

Cheap LED lights are less spiky, but the spectrum is still missing some areas. Even though this light might balance out as a warm white, it is not providing light across the whole spectrum. Anything cyanish will look darker and less saturated under this LED:

What this means for video is that some cheap lights are very difficult to grade. Skin tones will go from looking sunburnt to jaundiced with no happy medium. Some things will pop, while others will be undersaturated. The price of cheaper lights will be the cost of extra time spent making it look good.

Tungsten (hot filament / incandescent) lights however, even cheap ones have a very smooth spectrum. This is a standard household incandescent bulb. Although this light is very orange, it is probably possible to get an acceptable grade by adjusting the colour temperature in-camera:

Halogen lights have an even better spectrum, with more light in the blue end.
You can get halogen work lights that would do quite well as film lights with a bit of diffusion. They do however run hot as a lot of the energy they use is turned into heat. They have a smaller up-front cost, but cost more in terms of power usage and replacement bulbs, and because they use ten times the power you can't run them off batteries, like you can with LEDs.

Of course, for the average youTube face-to-camera type video the colour fidelity of the lights may not be such a problem, especially if you're reusing the same setup again and again - you can get the colour grade right using your tool of choice (most NLEs have pretty good colour grading tools built-in these days) and then keep the settings from one video to the next.

Read the article that goes with those graphs here, though it's talking about lighting for household illumination, not for video.


Calculate depth-of-field on BMPC 4K using a 50mm/1.8

You will need an app or chart for the calculation. There are apps on both iOS and Android for this. Just search depth of field calculator.

With a 50mm lens shooting at f/1.8 you're depth of field will be very shallow; more so the closer your subject is to the camera, with your DOF becoming deeper if your subject moves away.

Some lenses have a built in Hyper-Focal chart on the top of the lens; showing what your "Reasonably considered in Focus area is at" which changes as you change your aperture.

If you need a less shallow depth of field, you can always stop down the lens. Also keep in mind; the 50mm 1.8 is not incredibly sharp at 1.8 to begin with. Most lenses have sweet spots in terms of tack sharp; typically about 1/3 into the f-stop range.

The only lenses that will give you pristine tack sharp focus at apertures like 1.8, are for example the Master Primes by Arri; running $30k per prime.

Hope this helps.


how to Rotate a 3gp video without re-encoding

Rotate without re-encoding

You can add rotation metadata:

ffmpeg -i input.3gp -c copy -metadata:s:v rotate=90 output.3gp

-c copy will enable stream copy mode, so it will just re-mux instead of re-encode.
Player and device support for the rotate metadata may vary, so your player or device may not actually rotate the video. If that is the case you may have to manually rotate within the player, or re-encode.

Rotate with re-encoding

When re-encoding ffmpeg will automatically rotate the video. The rotate metadata/sidedata will not be copied from the input (which is a good thing).

ffmpeg -i input output

If it doesn't work for you then your build is too old. Refer to the FFmpeg Download page.


You would use FFmpeg for that.
It requires that you are a bit familiar with using command line applications but even if you are not its really not complicated.

The things you want to do have been covered in these questions (and probably others):
Why does quality degrade so much if just cutting video with ffmpeg? (different topic but the answer tells you exactly the two ways to cut in ffmpeg, the re-encoding one is the one you want).

Add an image in front of video using ffmpeg (watermark)

What you want to do is make 5 separate ffmpeg commands, 4 for your 5 minutes segments and one for your complete video.
Put those into a batch/shell/apple script depending on your OS and loop over your files replacing the input file name for each command set iteration.


Automatically restart ffmpeg on error from inside bash script

I found this method on serverfault.com and it seems to restart ffmpeg on error:

cmd="ffmpeg -re -thread_queue_size 512 -rtsp_transport tcp -i ${source_url} \
   -acodec libmp3lame  -ar 44100 -ac 2 -acodec pcm_s16le -f s16le -ac 2 \
   -i /dev/zero -vcodec libx264 -preset medium -s 1280x720 -g 6 -r 3    \
   -f flv rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/${youtube_stream_key}"

until $cmd ; do
        echo "restarting ffmpeg command..."
        sleep 2
done

without " " it is showing error: -re: not found


After Effects expressions to sum numbers and control charts_2

If you use random(50) for the first three numbers the average value of their sum will be 75. So you can simply make the last number 100 - (num1 + num2 + num3).
However there is a chance that the three numbers could add to more than 100—up to 150 in the edge case that random(50) gives the result 50 for each one, thus summing to 150. So you could make the third number random(Math.min(50, 100 - (num1 + num2))). This would mean that if the first two numbers added together were more than 50 it would limit the maximum value of the third number to equal or be less than enough to make the sum total 100. I'm not a statistician so I don't know if this would mathematically be perfectly random, but that usually doesn't matter for the purposes of motion graphics.
Which begs the question: why not just make all four numbers just random(50)? Over time the sum will tend towards exactly 100, it might just not add up to 100 at any one time.
But whatevs, the expression for scale would be:
Scale (bar1 )
r = random(100);
[ r, 100 ]

Scale (bar2 )
r = random(100 - thisComp.layer("bar1").transform.scale[0]);
[ r, 100 ]

Scale (bar3)
oneTwoTotal = thisComp.layer("bar1").transform.scale[0] + thisComp.layer("bar2").transform.scale[0];
r = random(Math.min(50, 100 - oneTwoTotal));
[r, 100]

Scale (bar4)
r = 100 - (thisComp.layer("bar1").transform.scale[0] + thisComp.layer("bar2").transform.scale[0]  + thisComp.layer("bar3").transform.scale[0] );
[r, 100]


What is the meaning of "channels" in an audio recorder program?

I am not sure about that particular software, but a channel is one of two sides of a stereo recording, and yes, a truly stereo microphone is in reality two separate microphones in one device.
Another option is to use two monoaural microphones connected to the same input device.

When a studio recording is being edited, a channel can represent this same; one of two microphones. There can be an even greater number of them, for example, a recording of an orchestra or they can be recordings from the same microphone made on different moments, for example, a solo artist that is recording his own chorus.


How to add notes/tags to specific times while watching a video?

This seems possible in Adobe Premiere Pro (CS6 at least).
From your question I understand you want to do three things, I will treat every one of them separately. The steps can be used to achieve your goal.
First, open a new project in Premiere Pro (PP) and import the media you want to add comments to.
Additionally, I found the Metalogging window lay-out convenient for this task (Windows -> Workspace -> Metalogging or Alt+Shift+6), but you might find another lay-out fit your needs better.
1. Play video at 1.5x speed
Double click the video you want to play, it will open in the Source panel.
Press Spacebar to play the video and use the L key to increase the playback rate and the J decreases it (credits to this answer).
2. Create a list of tags during playback
While the video plays hit the M key to create a Marker at the timecode currently shown in the Source panel (markers pointed out):

Make sure the Source panel is in focus (i.e. has a yellow line around the panel):

3. Add comments to the tags without pausing the video
Make sure the Markers panel (Window -> Markers) and the Source panel is visible (Window -> Source).
When you add markers during playback, these will show up in this panel with a comment field:

While the video plays, you can add markers in the Source panel and then add comments to these markers in the Markers panel. The video is not paused.
In your comment you mention you would like to export the markers to a file. Unfortunately I did not find a straightforward way to do this in CS6, however, PP Creative Cloud does have this option according to this tutorial.
The option can be found in File -> Export -> Markers and allows you to export an HTML file of your timestamped markers, including comments and a screenshot of the video at that time.


How to paste one specific attribute only?

There is no simple way to do this, as Position, Scale, Rotation, Anchor Point, and Anti-flicker Filter are attributes of the Motion effect that is applied to all clips by default. So even though the Paste Attributes panel allows you to paste effects individually, you can't paste the individual attibutes of the Motion effect.

You can, however, use a workaround.

In this case, a simple solution is to add a keyframe and copy that instead. If you have only one keyframe per attribute that holds the desired value, it won't change over time, thus it will be the same as not having the keyframe at all and just using a static value for that attribute.

Step by step:

Select a clip in the timeline and in the Effect Settings panel, set a value for the attribute you want to change (e.g. Scale).
Now press the Toggle Animation button (the clock icon next to the effect attribute designation). This will add one keyframe at the current playhead position that holds the value set in step one. If you want to change that value later on, make sure that the playhead is exactly on this keyframe, as it will create a new keyframe otherwise.
Select the keyframe by clicking on it and press CTRL + C to copy it into the clipboard.
Now select the target clip that you want to paste the attribute onto in the timeline and switch to the Effect Settings panel once more. Press CTRL + V to paste the keyframe. The keyframe still holds the value set in step 1., so you have effectively pasted just that attribute's value onto the new clip.

You can also do this with multiple keyframes (both within one attribute, in case you do want to change the attribute's values over time, or spanning multiple attributes). Just marquee select all the keyframes and copy them into the clipboard. The program will remember which attribute each keyframe belongs to. If you paste multiple keyframes with intervals between them, the intervals will remain and the first keyframe in the section will be pasted at the current playhead position.


Issue with Opening Downloaded ASF Stream files in Adobe Premiere Pro CC

The link you gave is for a streaming media file, not a download.  Most likely, whatever ripper you used to pull down the file did a poor job and produced a faulty file.  It may actually play back since most playback applications are rather permissive when it comes to errors in the file, however a professional editing package like Premiere will tend to throw errors if there are major problems in the file since it won't be able to generate suitable output from the file.  The best bet is probably to try and find a non-streaming version, particularly since the quality of the streaming version is VERY low.


H.264 encoder with CLEAR options for specifying minimum & maximum video bitrate?

From http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html , you can do this in CLI.. not sure about GUI.

  ‘-maxrate bitrate’

  Set max video bitrate (in bit/s). Requires -bufsize to be set.

  ‘-minrate bitrate’

  Set min video bitrate (in bit/s). Most useful in setting up a CBR encode

    Eg: "ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -b:v 4000k -minrate 4000k -maxrate 4000k -bufsize 1835k out.m2v"


How to create YouTube home guitar demos from parallel taken phone video and professional recorded PC audio?

Bonjour Pickardou!
What you want to do is absolutely manageable and done by a lot of people every day. First, let's talk about the "sync"-part.

On professional movie-sets, you might have seen the movie slate. It's essentially a board with some text on it that can make a slapping-sound. This slap is used exactly for this purpose of syncing. When you recorded both audio and video separately, you then load both in your editing software, find out where the "clap" is in your audio and sync that to the frame in which the slate claps. You could do the same by just clapping with your hands.

To the second question (switching from multiple cameras):
Yes, you can totally do that once you have a recording of multiple cameras - just drag all views on top of each other on a timeline (use premiere or sony vegas to give a few examples). So now you can just cut off the top-layer which will then show the bottom layer, which would be another camera-angle. Do all of that and you got yourself a nice music-video in no time.

I hope I was able to help, have a wonderful day :)


Is it possible to relight filmed footage with NUKE or After Effects?

I suggest build a real lighting rig and maybe stabilizing her neck.

If you decide to do it afterwards you have to:

Modeling the head and her hair (scan it if this is possible)
Tracking the shots with blender or pftrack
Replacing the head in your favourite package

There are some obstacles:

To get realistic shadows and highlights you probably need a better rendering engine for nuke
Detailed modeling is necessary to get the shadow right (espacially for the nose and the hair)
Modeling her hair can be a very difficult task


How does the h.264 encoder determine where to put i-frames?

This is a complex topic, with the exact algorithm unique to each encoder.

Below is a pseudocode explanation from a x264 developer. B-frames aren't accounted for, but basic logic should be similar.

encode current frame as (a really fast approximation of) a P-frame and an I-frame.

if ((distance from previous keyframe) > keyint) then
    set IDR-frame
else if (1 - (bit size of P-frame) / (bit size of I-frame) < (scenecut / 100) * (distance from previous keyframe) / keyint) then
    if ((distance from previous keyframe) >= minkeyint) then
        set IDR-frame
    else
        set I-frame
else
    set P-frame

encode frame for real.

scenecut is the scene change threshold value. 0 means current frame is identical to previous frame, and 100 means it is completely different.

keyint is the maximum permitted distance between two keyframes; minkeyint is the minimum.

IDR (instantaneous decoder refresh) frames are keyframes such that no future frame requires to refer to a frame earlier than the IDR-frame for decoding. Not necessarily true for plain I-frames.


I don't use Premiere Pro, so I don't provide the step-by-step instruction, but I know the basis of your problem.

In your original (compressed) video they are so-called intra-frames (aka keyframes), which contains the full info about the particular frame, and other frames (inter-frames) which contain — simply said — only differences from the previous intra-frames.

In other words:

every intra-frame is independent of others frames, while
non-intra-frames are dependent on the nearest previous intra-frame
(and — maybe — from other frames, too).

Let suppose there is 1 intra-frame every 10 seconds (i.e. at time stamps 0 s, 10 s, 20 s, etc.),
and the “other” frames are between them.

Now, you want to cut the 20 s video from the time 13 s (i.e. the range 13 s – 33 s).

The frame at the position 13 s is not an intra-frame — it needs the previous intra-frame (at position 10 s) to obtain the full picture.

So your software simply adds the 3 s part from 10 s in front of your request, and cuts-off the last 3 seconds. The result will be a clip in the range 10 s — 30 s.

But the situation is not so desperate. You have to force Adobe Premiere Pro to re-encode the 13 – 33 s part of original video, i.e. to first compute the frame at position 13 s, then mark it as intra-frame, and make subsequent frames dependent of this new intra-frame.

How?

As I told, I don't know the exact answer. But you have to avoid enabling properties as “Direct Copy”, “Fast Copy”, “Without Re-encoding”, etc.


How to read frames which are separated by a specific number ? [ffmpeg]

The direct way to do this is by using the concat demuxer, where the text file only mentions the selected files. Besides being a hack, you no longer get to use the image2 options. The better way is to combine your present commands.

ffmpeg -framerate 20 -i frame-%d.png -vf "select='not(mod(n,20))'" -c:v mpeg4 -y movie.mp4


How to find same video but with other format and resolution from very big video collection

Paid tools exists for this because it is not an easy job. With such a large library and the extent of your use case, you will need a budget to accomplish the job.


How to rotate a (vertical) clip for multicam in Final Cut Pro X

Paste the clip into the timeline, do the rotation and render it with a lossless codec. This will take much more space on the harddisk for the raw material, but will be an easy way to have both videos in the same format. If necessary, check for other format corrections to match both videos.


Platform used for creating following video

It is most likely simply a presentation program. The best known is PowerPoint, but you can get one free using Libre Office https://www.libreoffice.org/ or some web-based like google docs.
Libre Office has two programs that can be suitable. Impress and Draw.


Using technically impossible shutter speed when shooting video

Whether this happens inside your specific camera is not clear. However, it is possible to have a shutter speed slower than the FPS would naively allow. In practice, it's very unlikely that a camera would do this if uses a mechanical shutter for video, but it can be practical in electronic shutter cameras.

Imagine a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds, and a framerate of 4fps. Each 'exposure' lasts 0.5 seconds, but each frame's exposure overlaps with neighbouring frames - the frames are not the same, but they overlap.

Imagine:

A is the light value that arrives between 0 and 0.25 s
B is the light value that arrives between 0.25s and 0.5s
C is the light value that arrives between 0.5s and 0.75s
D is the light value that arrives between 0.75s and 1s
etc...

Then:

Frame 1 contains the light A+B
Frame 2 contains the light B+C
Frame 3 contains the light C+D
etc....


How to insert dynamic data into a produced video

You should try googling for something like green screen software or chromakey software

There is a wide range of free, cheap and very expensive applications to do this. Some of the free ones actually work okay - depends on your requirements.


Light settings for indoor shoot - Sony dcr sx60

You may actually be better off without the natural light.  The color is going to be different between the sunlight and the interior lights and will be much MUCH brighter.  It will result in strong shadows and some weird white points.

If you are shooting video, shutter speed isn't really much of an issue since you'll want to have it set at your frame rate to get as much light as possible.  Aperture you will want to set based on the desired depth of field for your shot, the wider the better to allow in more light and the ISO should be set to properly expose your image.

Options for dealing with the color mismatch between lights is to either gel the lights inside or gel the windows to alter the color of the sunlight.  Alternately, it might be possible to use a large white reflector (even white sheets can work in a pinch) to try to reflect light from the windows back on to the subject from a different angle, but that can be tricky depending on the angle that light is coming in at.

The key is that you want to have a light source that fills in the shadows that is near, but slightly less powerful than the main light and you want them to be the same color.  Your interior lights do not sound to be the right color or near bright enough to compete with the sun, so your options are really either shoot entirely with interior light or reflect the sun and shoot entirely based on light from the sun.

If doing entirely interior lights, (really in either case, but harder with sun only) a back light can also be helpful that is below and behind the subject to light up their outline and make them stand out more from the background.  That's what gives the "pop" to the image.  It is referred to as 3 point lighting (key - the main light, fill - the one that fills in shadows, and back - the one behind).


How do I change frame size, preserving width (using ffmpeg)?

using the scale filter will do it, but there is a bit more to it.

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf scale=720x406 output.mov

will create a movie with the required pixel dimensions, but if you look at the output you'll find that it adds information into the metadata so that it will play back at the same aspect ratio as the original, by using non-square pixels. So if you want to stretch the movie anamorphically to a new aspect ratio you need to manually set the pixel aspect ratio, called the SAR for "Sample Aspect Ratio", thus for square pixels use:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf scale=720x406,setsar=1:1 output.mp4

Alternatively you can set the display aspect ratio to whatever you want, thus:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf scale=720x406,setdar=16:9 output.mp4

What I'm doing with the -vf command and the x=y,z=a expressions that follow is creating a chain of filters. Filters can be quite complex, but in the most simple usage they take the form effect=parameter,nexteffect=anotherparameter, and they get processed in the order you write them.

You may want to put additional commands for the codec and so on, eg -c:v libx264 to use the x264 mp4 encoder, and something like -crf 20 to set the constant rate factor to 20 (usually a pretty good compromise between size and quality). So, a reasonably complete command would look like:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf scale=720x406,setdar=16:9 -preset slow -profile:v main -crf 20 output.mov

Main profile is good for device compatibility, the slow preset for the libx264 encoder is a pretty good balance of speed and quality, so this is a good general web-encoding workhorse. You can make it faster by using fast or veryfast or slower with veryslow and placebo will make it ever so slightly better than veryslow at the expense of a lot more processing time (hence the name).

BTW Don't use -c copy, that means just copy the video and audio streams without doing anything to them at all, so nothing you do in terms of scale, codec, bitrate etc will have any effect.


How to Monochrome, Haze video Effect in FFmpeg?

Monochrome

One method is to use the hue filter to desaturate.

ffmpeg -i input -vf hue=s=0 -c:a copy output
ffplay -vf hue=s=0 input

De-haze (increase contrast)

The curves filter has several presets including a few that increase contrast. You can also make your own curves in Photoshop, export the ACV file and use it via the psfile option in the curves filter.

ffmpeg -i input -vf curves=preset=increase_contrast -c:a copy output
ffplay -vf curves=preset=increase_contrast input


How do I make a space themed video intro?

First up you'll have to upgrade to a different Video Editing program that has more support for the custom effects that you'll need to create an intro. For professional-looking video intros, I recommend using Adobe After Effects. Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas Pro and Pinnacle Studio are also viable options.

Since you're new to video editing, I recommend looking for some tutorials on what you're trying to achieve. I found this tutorial on YouTube which seems to fit your description:

Take what you learned from watching tutorials, and use it to create the intro you that suits you.


Vinyl converter spins 35.3 RPM -- How to correct?

Just about any audio editing software should be able to do this for you.  You simply need a "stretch" or "speed" adjustment.  If you don't know of any software, Audacity is a popular free option.  It's probably overkill for your needs, but should allow you to stretch the audio out to slow it down.


How does QuickTime Player know when do play a video in HiDPI/Retina/@2x mode?

The specific atom is in the trak metadata. When the com.apple.quicktime.pixeldensity metadata has the value 0x30, quicktime will play it at double the DPI.
There is currently not very good support for transferring this atom when re-encoding the file. You may have success using the use_metadata_tags value for the movflags option if you are just copying the video.
Example:
# loses high dpi playback
ffmpeg -i retina_sample.mov -c copy new.mov

# retains high dpi playback
ffmpeg -i retina_sample.mov -movflags use_metadata_tags -c copy new_high_dpi.mov

Hopefully soon issue 7045 will be addressed to fix this.


So, you've got two targets there -- on one hand you said you want to go to DVD, and the other, you're encoding to H.264. Pick one. :)

Assuming you want DVD still, use -target ntsc-dvd

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i mylist.txt -target ntsc-dvd video.vob


What should I do to improve the quality of the screen capture?

Windows Media Encoder creates files in wmv format (I guess), which is highly compressed. Make sure you follow the YouTube recommendations


At first I did not understand your question, after you have supplied the example video I understood what your problem is.
The issue is that when you import the Images, Premiere Pro assigns a default Frame Rate to them, which might be different from what you desire.
Changing Sequence Frame Rate does not change Images default Frame Rate when you import them, to fix this you can do the following:

Create a new Project
In Project Window right click > import > select first Image only and check Image Sequence.

Right click on Image Sequence in Project Window > modify > interpret Footage.

check "Assume this frame rate" and set desired FPS and click OK.

Drag Image Sequence from Project Window to Timeline. Then Render/Export as usual and make sure the Frame Rate at export matches the one you set up earlier.

NOTE: Image Sequence imported, Sequence in Timeline and Export Settings have to have the same Frame Rate.
That is all. You should not have any Skipped or Extra Frames in output video.


Sony Vegas Pro 12 - 4/3 video wrongly considered as 16/9

I did not manage to solve the source problem, but I found how to overcome the consequences.

It is indeed possible to edit the aspect ratio of the rendered video using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i <INPUT_FILE> -aspect 4:3 -c copy <OUTPUT_FILE>


To me sounds like a lack of original codecs. Why don't you start by posting a ffprobe of the file? The container is AVI but we doesn't know anything about the codec.

ffprobe file.avi

FFprobe is a tool found in the FFmpeg package: https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html


Which sequence settings in Adobe Premiere for a YouTube video

There are presets for Youtube specifically already in Adobe Media Encoder.  I would suggest using one of them.  You can also find the technical recommendations from Youtube on how to encode the videos here, however I believe the presets already conform to these recommendations.


(ffmpeg - Audio) Two streams, One Channel, Two Languages

Hello erik and thanks for your answer.

Well, I finally (partly) succeeded to get a proper command. I had to precise the codec of the audio streams (MediaInfo).

So now, I have :

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:10:00.00
-i G:\input.MOV
-filter_complex "[0:a:6][0:a:7]amerge=inputs=2;[0:a:14][0:a:15]amerge=inputs=2"
-metadata:s:a:0 language="kor" -metadata:s:a:0 title="Stéréo - Version Originale"
-metadata:s:a:1 language="fra" -metadata:s:a:1 title="Stéréo - Français"
-c:v copy
-c:a pcm_s24le
G:\output.MOV

And it works as expected !!!

The only two small problems I still have :

1. [Parsed_amerge_0 @ 000001f8f0340240] No channel layout for input 1

I just don't know how to set a chanel layout...

2. In the output result, video became stream 3 and not first as it should properly be.

They are not big deals but if I want to be perfect in what I'm doing ;)

Thanks again !!


How to keyframe a crop in Premiere Pro CC

Before I start I'd like to mention that this would be much easier in After Effects. If you plan on doing this more often, you should consider learning AE to be able to do things like that faster.

So, to follow your approach I created a transparent layer, put the timecode effect on it and cropped it using the crop effect. It looks like this right now:

Since you want to resize and move it, you'll need to activate the animation for two parameters in the effects panel: The "size" parameter of the timecode effect and the "position" parameter under the motion effect (which is applied to each clip by default). You can do this by clicking the clock symbol next to the parameters name (see the next image). Make sure that your playhead (in the timeline) is at position 00:00, since activating the animation will create a keyframe at the current position.

Now, move the playhead to the point where you want the animation to end (i.e. the timecode has arrived at your desired position and size). First, alter the percentage value of the "size" parameter of the Timecode effect. A keyframe will automatically be created (see the small diamond shape in the timeline next to the effect settings panel). Then, adjust the "position" parameter of the motion effect. Again, a keyframe will automatically created. Adjust both parameters until you're happy with size and position. Then you're basically done.


Capturing speech audio and video with a smartphone?

Were I work we used an iPhone 7 and a Samsung S8+ for an experimental web series  to capture video. The result was awesome, specially when you use stuff like the DJI Osmo Mobile 2 Smartphone Gimbal. (The series is not yet released, will updated when the editing is finished)

At first we used Bluetooth microphones but there is a lot of issues with the range and sound quality. We used the Sennheiser ew 112-p and recorded the audio on a Tascam DR-05 . This is a little expensive, an alternative will be to use another cellphone and record the audio there with a wired microphone.

No need for a third party app, specially on the Samsung S8, where you can manually edit all the settings. You should consider the Samsung S8 has a 10 minute time limit when recording 4K video.


ffmpeg - mapping an audio file with 2 channels to a video file?

Channels are conjoint tracks within a single stream, so a stereo audio WAV has one stream which contains two channels. If this is what you have, use

ffmpeg -i video -i audio -map 0:v -map 1:a output

If they are distinct streams, then the above command will still map all the streams, but for explicit specification, use

ffmpeg -i video -i audio -map 0:v -map 1:a:0 -map 1:a:1 output


Import the footage into After Effects. Bring it into a comp and change the speed of the layer either with the speed control for the layer or with time remapping. Make sure the layer has Frame Blending turned on, and that it's on for your final render. Frame blending will blend all of the frames that make up a single frame, so if 20 minutes makes 10 seconds that's… er… 120 frames of original footage to make one frame of timelapse. This should mean that any quick motion in the original footage will blur away, and it should get rid of your blinks and breathing. If that's not enough you might want to try either the Time Warp at 100% speed with a long shutter time or even wide time effects to ad extra 'temporal blurring' to the footage.

Note that you'll have to render out the clips rather than using Dynamic Linking, because Premiere won't do the frame blends like AE does. Expect very slow renders.


TL;DR: Probably not.

I believe your camera records video on MiniDV. Video is written digitally but writing process is the only non-digital operation in the camera (involves magnetic head, tape, and tape scrolling mechanism). It's easy to determine if something is really become worn out because usually something mechanical is the only thing that can gradually degrade. If you observe too many digital artifacts in your fresh recordings (make sure it's not because of old MiniDVs) you can try to clean the head (google 'tape head cleaning'). If it doesn't help then almost certainly something is wrong with the head/scrolling.
Water or steam can get into your camera, condense there, and make the image slightly blurred (I had such an issue with my Sony camera that is similar to yours). If you are not 100 % sure that the image was less blurred earlier skip this point.

In both cases I don't recommend you to try opening/repairing the camera by yourself. Go to the official service. This brings us to the price of repair which is probably comparable to the camera's cost for such an old device. That's why I recommend you to invest the money in a new camera (progressive video, no need to buy tapes, less requirements for light and so on) or stick with existing issues. So the answer is probably not.


Voice is dropped in ads on cable channel via OTT

I don't have a definitive answer, but what you're describing sounds like phase inversion on one of the stereo channels. This causes cancellation when heard in mono of anything centered in the mix, as an announcer voice would most likely be. Someone listening in stereo would not hear much if any difference, so I assume you're listening to a mono feed. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a commercial is delivered in a way that would separate the main channels but leave the background sound.

Why only sometimes? Speculating again, there may be one misconfigured server in a group of servers, and playout of any given spot is randomly coming from that server. It's also likely that these are local insertions, since an issue like this would probably be detected quickly at a national level.


To stream with a camera such as the a7III via HDMI, you'll need another piece of hardware. An example of this kind of thing would be "elgato" which produce different devices for this exact thing. The simplest way is to buy a USB dongle which has a female HDMI and a male USB. Plug it into your pc, plug the camera into the dongle and boom. The camera will be interpreted as a Webcam and can thus be used in OBS, Streamlabs etc.
To prevent the camera from turning off: There's different answers I could find. Some say leaving the battery/cassette-slot open will prevent the cam from going to standby. Others say you need to disable "remote control" in the settings. Others again say it's not possible. My guess is that there's either a setting, a way to trick the hardware or a software-hack that can help you out.


How can I crop and export a video to be 480x480 in Premiere?

Downscaling video

By scaling down a video, you are essentially compressing an amount of pixels to a less amount, which per definition means quality loss. While modern techniques and algorithms are not bad at their job, scaling videos, especially to odd multiples, can give odd results. But if you are really sure that this is what you want, here's how you can do it in Premiere Pro:

Setting up the sequence

In Premiere, you first create a new sequence of the desired resolution for your video. In the New Sequence pop-up, under the Settings tab, select Editing Mode: Custom. Now fill in the Frame Size to 480 horizontal and 480 vertical. Fill in other values in the screen as desired and appropiate for the project.

Resizing the video

Add your video to the just created sequence. Now we need to calculate the values at which we are going to scale the video:

480 / 774 ≈ .62 as vertical scale value
480 / 632 ≈ .76 as horizontal scale value

So then we simply fill in these values in the Effect Controls of the video. (Make sure the Uniform Scale option is not selected, otherwise you wont be able to set a different value for the width.)

And thats it! You can now export the sequence, Premiere Pro will automaticly take over the sequence settings.


Stream video using FFmpeg with minimum writes reads to disk

I am not sure what exactly the limitation is; let assume you don't want using disk I/O; how about ramdisk? The link tells you how


How to delete folders from Library > Gradients in Motion 5

Select the Folder
In the Motion Menu (at the top) go under "Edit" then select delete.


How to fix Encoding Overloaded in OBS Studio?

Encoding overloaded means that your computer isn't fast enough to encode with the settings as they are now.

There are two options: 1) Encode via hardware (intel quicksync, AMD VCE, Nvidia nvenc) or set the quality of the encode lower (as in a faster/fastest x264 preset).

Without more information (CPU, GPU, Ram, OS etc) it is difficult to know what is the best way forward.


Sony Vegas VS After Effects for graphic / Keyframe editing

After Effects is definitely the right tool to use rather than Vegas for motion tracking / drawing on moving footage. Here is a classic tutorial that you can watch to get a sense for how to achieve face tracking & replacement.

Vegas is much better suited for editing. After Effects can often struggle to achieve real-time playback over extended periods of time and doesn't have the tools built in the same way as a NLE like Vegas, Premiere, or Avid.


Hardware to rotate a video signal 90 degrees?

I don't know of any cables which do it, but you have a simpler solution:

A few recent HDMI computer monitors will be able to do this in hardware - an example I quite like is the The Samsung Syncmaster C24A650X


The following resources show how to load a Bolex H-16 camera:

Instructional video for loading a Bolex (4 mins, Vimeo.com)

PDF of the manual (see page 13 - "Feeding the film into-the camera by hand")

You can also find instructions on loading this camera in the American Cinematographer Manual.


What is the maximum amount of memory Adobe Premiere Pro can efficiently utilize?

That entirely depends on what kind of footage he work with and how long his average cuts are. If we are talking hour long movies a bigger amount of RAM can be worth it.
Though 128GB would be completely useless if he only uses Premiere it just doesn't use that much RAM.
We built a high-end workstation once for huge 3D renderings that has 64GB RAM, the only times we utilize that fully is when working with gigantic 3D scenes in Cinema 4D or 3Ds Max. After Effects barley goes beyond 20GB unless you need an hour long RAM previews for some reason and Premiere is usually around 5-7GB even when cutting 60min plus movies.
So if hes only using Premiere, 128GB would be a complete waste of money. I would not recommend anything more than 32GB on a video editing only workstation.

When using Premiere a high-end GPU is a lot more worth performance wise, Premiere can render in realtime with a powerfull GPU making having a ton of system RAM a bit useless.

I can recommend using gaming cards instead of workstation cards, the only difference is support and drivers, the gaming cards are much more powerful and a lot cheaper. I have never experienced any stability differences in Adobe software with a Workstation card compared to a gaming card. A good mixture of gaming GPU and workstation GPU is the GeForce GTX Titan, its meant for CUDA development and other CUDA usage.

Alternatively in the latest Premiere version there is also full OpenCL support, so a high-end AMD card would also be a good choice.
F.e. The R9 290X or if he wants a workstation GPU for some reason the FirePro W9100 is currently the high-end model, though a waste of money in my opinion. You do not need 16GB Vram with Premiere. I would probably go for the W9000 or W8000.

Edit: As AJ Henderson mentioned, footage gets almost never fully cached in RAM so a fast SSD or maybe an SSD array will be much more beneficial than more RAM aswell.
Going for fast disk I/O and a good GPU is a good combination nowadays. Having a high-end multi core CPU and lots of RAM is getting less and less important in the graphics world.


Trying to import a file but AE imports the whole folder

How are you doing the import?  Press cmd+I to open the import dialogue, or double click in the empty space inside the project frame.  Then select the files you need.


Extend video clip in Davinci Resolve that has been slowed down/paused

If you use Retime Speed instead of Retime Frame, the clip can be extended.  Retime Frame gives you the ability to arbitrarily access the source media according to the curve, but there's no concept of time stretching--the clip in the timeline has a fixed amount of time and the only variable is what frame to play at a given time.  Retime Speed controls the concept of time.  If you slow the speed down to 50%, you get 100% more time for your clip to play.  When you slow the speed down to 0%, you get infinite time to play your clip (and interesting edge conditions--so keep it to something like 1%).


get the position of a specific vertex in an After Effects shape

As of 2019 you can access a path of a shape or a mask like so:

myShape = thisComp.layer("Shape Layer 1").content("Shape 1").content("Path 1").path;

The path property is an object containing collections of points, inTangents and outTangents. It has three methods for obtaining the vertex details, points() returns the vertices, and inTangents() and outTangents() return the tangent handle positions if they have any. Each method optionally takes a time parameter to specify what time the data is retrieved. e.g.:

myPoints = myShape.points(); //you can optionally specify the time, e.g. .point(t=123)
myPoints[0]

myInTangents = myShape.inTangents();
myInTangents[0]

In addition there are other methods for getting an arbitrary point on a path not at a vertex, and for finding out if the path is closed. It's a world of fun! Read the docs here


Have a look into the new Blackmagic Davinci Resolve, which includes an NLE and color correction tool. it is free and can output a maximum resolution of 3840x2160.


What is good software for camera recording under Linux?

I was going to recommend Kino which is the one I used when I needed to do that, but according to their web page the project is no longer mantained, so you can either use it the way it is or try the other software that is recommended on their web page:

Shotcut, Kdenlive, Flowblade, OpenShot, PiTiVi, LiVES, and LightWorks.


This will most likely require motion tracking.  In this case, you attach many tracking points to the character's arms and hands.


Final Cut Pro X editing multiple overlayed images

You could try to use a compound clip for the hand of one player with the cards inside. That would reduce the main timeline from look confusing with too many clips attached.


Techniques and technologies for synchronizing multiple audio and video streams

The professional way
Professionally done, all cameras and audio recorders will have a running (SMPTE) time code, which can be configured in 'free run' mode - meaning the time counter runs regardless whether we record or not (ie, STOP mode).
At the beginning of the shooting day, all recordists (cameras, audio) will sync their clocks. This is done either to SMPTE 01:00:00:00, or to the time of the day.
Then all video clips and audio files (broadcast wave files - BWF, which is just a WAV file with time code imprinted) will be 'timestamped' - the time at which the clip was recorded is part of the file header.
In addition, these recorders allow you to choose the folder and file prefix of the recorded clips. A simple case is when all crew (camera and audio) set this prefix based on the shooting day ('Day01' for example).
Then when the audio and video clips are imported to the video editing software, there's alway an option to 'spot' the clips to their original time code. This way, the alignment of video and audio happens nearly automatically.
The non-professional way
Before the days of digital equipment, the syncing between pictures to audio was done manually with the help of a clapper (clapperboard):

Upon the director's instruction 'Cameras', both the camera men and audio recordists will aim at the clapper; then the clapper is clapped.
Later on, each clip is brought consecutively into the timeline (clips are numbered - there's a way to know which came before the other). The sync is done manually, by finding the video frame at which the clapper jaws were hitting each other; on the waveform display, you can see a transient from the sound the clapper makes. So it's all about moving the audio transient to the clapping frame.
For your purpose - you can just clap your hand in front of the camera (although visual and auditory labelling can be of great aid later on, but this too can be improvised).
Note that in the professional industry, this practice takes place until today, even if all equipment can stamp timecode.


Is there a way to parent an objects position to another objects position in Nuke, so they move parallel to each other?

You can simply edit the expression values:

create a new Transform Node by hitting T
drag and drop the translation values by holding CTRL from original transform node to the new one (this should create a green line between that nodes)
right click the translation curve icon of the new transform node to open up the Edit Expressions Window
in this window you can do some math with the existing y or x values to move the the child node


How do I add an intro to a video without having to render the entire video again?

Using After Effects, I don't think there is.  But there are ways to make your life easier.
If you have a complex comp, if you've rendered the whole thing out to a format like ProRes (even though the files are large), it's relatively quick to drop in an extra intro and outro either side of your ProRes file, so you won't have to re-render the entire project again. You could also look at pre-renders to speed up your projects.


What approximate resolution did Beta SP correspond to?

The resolution is correct, but your understanding of how that is measured is confused.
Analog video consisted of a series of continuous horizontal lines. Don't confuse the number of vertical lines with "lines" of horizontal resolution. When you talk about horizontal lines you're actually talking about how many line pairs—or literally how many vertical black and white lines—the format could reproduce. To compare it to pixels, consider that it takes two pixels to reproduce a line pair: one black pixel and one white pixel. So double the analogue measurement to get the digital comparison.
So while line pairs is the measurement used for the horizontal resolution, the vertical resolution is locked to the television standard, 576 lines for pal, and 480 lines for NTSC.
The horizontal resolution can be calculated from the bandwidth using the rule of thumb for resolution of 80 lines per MHz of luminance* bandwidth. Betacam had a bandwidth of 4.0-4.5 MHz, which works out at 320-360 lines. This equates to 640-720 pixels of resolution, or roughly the same as DV.
TL;DR: Betacam's resolution was roughly equivalent to 720x576 for PAL, 720x480 for NTSC
*luminance had higher bandwidth than chroma, just as digital formats subsample the chroma information, usually at half or even quarter resolution.