What's the benefit of Hollywood still using film for most major productions?

Is this an impression you have or based on statistics you read? My impression is the opposite: projects shot on film have become so noteworthy they get some press coverage for the fact alone they are shot on film. Then you have things like "interstellar" where the hype was about the 70mm or tarantino who says movies on digital are not sexy. What I heard is that unlike 5 yrs ago, the predominant tool in feature film has become the arri Alexa, while RED is going strong in advertisement. From the distribution side I know that (in Germany) the big multiplex cinemas don't have 35mm projectors installed anymore - they set them up on demand - and that at big film festivals like the berlinale, the amount of analog prints has changed from 9 out of 10 to less than 1 out of ten over the last ten years. Apparently it has become difficult finding a lab that can develop analogue film (in Germany) nowadays.

The reason for people still using film is probably that film automatically adds a lot of organic texture, like minor irregularities, grain etc. that a lot of people aesthetically prefer and which is not easy to mimick digitally in post-production. Using the "original" material also is a tribute to the history of the craft in a way... Going analogue all the way, even in editing (which is really not done anymore I think, even with the biggest fans of film stock) takes you back to a process which is actually destroying something (making a cut) to create something new, so there are some powerful metaphors in the original process ;)

Products like Blackmagic cameras are not used in big budget productions because the quality assurance, sensor quality etc. Is not up to par with cameras by arri or red. And for productions on an average Hollywood budget, the difference between I.e. 5000$ for a bm camera or 60.000$ for an Alexa is not really relevant, especially since a flaky camera ruining a shooting day can result in much higher costs.


The parasites you talked about is called noise. The setting you can change to get less is called the ISO. It corresponds to the old ASA value we had before the digital age.
We can't see a thing, we can only see light. That's the way the universe is built up. Same with the camera. It sees the light reflected off surfaces. So white objects reflects all light and dark objects no light. And absence of light, as you know, means darkness. Where it is dark it has to "work extra hard" to figure out what's actually there, because there is almost no information there given from the light. Therefore you will get some noise. A better camera will produce less noise.

Turn down the ISO as much as possible without compromising the aperture or "shutter speed" you want.
Remove the noise left in post.

It is also no problem to edit it away in post on your computer! The only compromise is that you will get smoother edges and blurred images the more noise you remove. I once saw a movie shot entirely by moonlight. It was full of noise but they removed everything in post!
There are two plugins you can use:

Neat Video's Noise Removal. I've never tried this, but you can use it with Sony Vegas. They claim to be the best in noise removal.

Red Giant's Magic Bullet DeNoiser. I've used this and am very satisfied with it. Does a really good job. I don't know if this works in Vegas, but it certainly works great in Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro!


How can encode video with images like these [overlay a video over a fixed image] with ffmpeg?

Asked and answered : How can encode video with images like these (overlay a video over a fixed image) with ffmpeg?

But you want to add coordinates to the movie file to scale to a specific area.

For the perspective/scale:
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#toc-perspective

For the overlay:
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#toc-overlay-1


ProRes444 Codec download process to Adobe Media Encoder

In Media Encoder you first need to select your destination format as Quicktime. From there you should be able to find ProRes 4444.


For action, you're probably going to need flat, even lighting. Builders' work lamps, bounced off white walls or reflectors, are probably the most cost-effective way of lighting large spaces.

You can make some changes to lighting and contrast when you edit, though it's no substitute for lighting your film properly. It's called colour correction. You can also apply an overall colour 'look' to your film, which is called grading. Most editing programs (e.g. iMovie) allow you to apply basic effects and corrections. Programs like Final Cut Pro X, the open source Da Vinci Resolve (free lite version), and (steep learning curve) Adobe After Effects let you do professional correction and grading.


Creating a "finger using device" effect like in iPhone app ads

ok.
lets start:

we need a 3d model of a phone, lets say, an iphone (properly modeled, textured), then we need a shot of a moving finger which we will use later on. lets say we have everything.

after we have the idea, what we should do with the finger(adequately having this shots on green screen so we can remove the background) we animate the phone in a 3d package, after we are satisfied with the result, we render the phone sequence out from the package (properly lighten and rendered with alpha channel - ready for compositing)
Open after effects or any other compositing software, we put the a white background as solid, then we put the phone sequence on top of the background, the sequence goes, we put the finger where we want him to interact with the phone, since our phone has no animations on it, we can put them in 3d or we can add them in after effects, a little bit of tweaking and there you are, you got your 3d rotating phone with a finger and a hand interacting with it.

if we want to comp anything with the phone in aftereffects, we need the rotation and camera information from the 3d package, lets say cinema4d, we can export ae proj file out, with all the info wee need, and later use that data in after effects to have the perfect sync. Other way around is to have a properly UV for the phone, and put in animation sequence on the screen material, the render it out, then we have just to sync the figer with the animation.
hope this reveals some magic ;)


Use Ffmpeg to Add Music Intro and Outro to Video

Step 1 Get the duration of the main file.

ffprobe main.mp4 -show_entries format=duration -of compact=nk=1:p=0 -v 0

This will print out a single value, like this

61.600204

which is the duration in seconds.

Step 2 Perform the concat

ffmpeg -i main.mp4 -i intro.mp4 -i outro.mp4 \
  -filter_complex "[1]trim=0:20,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[pre]; \
                   [2]trim=10,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[post]; \
                   [pre][0][post]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0[v]; \
                   [1:a][0:a]acrossfade=d=10[a1];[a1][2:a]acrossfade=d=10[a]" \
  -map '[v]' -map '[a]' out.mp4

Since the video and audio from the intro/outro are treated differently, in terms of duration, we perform two separate concats.

First, the intro video is trimmed to leave out the last ten seconds. The outro is trimmed to leave out its first ten seconds. Then those two trimmed segments are sandwiched with the main video stream in the first concat.

For audio, the crossfades are performed in two stages. First, the intro with the main audio. Then, that result with the outro audio. Duration of crossfade is 10 seconds.

In case, the intro/outro music and image are separate files, use

ffmpeg -i main.mp4 -i intro.mp3 -i outro.mp3 \
       -loop 1 -framerate X -t 20 -i pre.jpg -loop 1 -framerate X -t 20 -i post.jpg \
  -filter_complex "[3][0][4]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0[v]; \
                   [1:a][0:a]acrossfade=d=10[a1];[a1][2:a]acrossfade=d=10[a]" \
  -map '[v]' -map '[a]' out.mp4

Here, X should be replaced with the framerate of the main file. The images should be of the same resolution as the video.


I would find a cloud provider that can offer full VNC access to dedicated hardware... Even so, your experience is going to be pretty unpleasant unless you've got a really fast connection. Latency is going to make it really fiddly to go frame by frame, and most VNC connections reduce the colour depth to a point where it's hard to tell what's going on.  I guess you can render and look at shots, but it's going to be laborious.


Will lens softness be apparent on DSLR video footage?

Your theory is correct, video is much less demanding of resolution than stills (1080p HD is only 2 megapixels). However you'll never get a truly sharp video image out of a Canon DSLR due to the strange interpolation/line-skipping that is used to produce a video frame from the full image sensor resolution, the result is always a lot softer than you would get from a dedicated HD video camera (or strangely the much cheaper m43 Panasonic GH2).


Why is there an orange cross going through my clips in premiere pro

I am pretty sure this does not happen with every effect, just with those from Boris FX (Sapphire).
It's very likely you use a trial version and need to buy a license. Check here: https://borisfx.com/faq/sapphire-trial-watermark/
If you already have bought a license then something might went wrong during activation and you should contact them for further support.


What sorts of fabric/material give good results? Both general tips and specific examples/links are helpful.

Great Resources for tips on lighting and materials:
http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/alindsay/story/greenscreen_primer_part_1/
http://rebelsguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2432

Underexposure (not lighting enough) is your biggest enemy, followed closely by uneven falloff across the screen.  Always keep your talent/target a good distance from the screen.

  Is it possible to light it adequately without a full lighting kit?

Not easily, but don't dismay, it always takes a skilled hand to get greenscreen lit well, so in many cases, even with a full lighting kit, results will be sub-par.  It's a tough thing to get right, because lighting needs vary a lot depending on your shooting situation.  Your best bet for getting good, even light, is to have an on-set monitor setup (such as a computer with OnLocation), and test, test, test, before you start shooting.

  What sort of encoding is recommended when filming it? (i.e. is it possible to use a DSLR with h.264?)

Great question.  This is showing that you've done enough research already to be aware of the issues.  "Possible" isn't the word I'd use to describe your capture options, because it's more of a spectrum from good idea, to difficult to work with, almost entirely because of chroma subsampling

Difficult: DSLR on-camera recording, consumer capture codecs (AVCHD, HDV, all of which probably will be 4:2:0)

Better: Output to an HDMI recorder at 4:2:2

Good idea: Uncompressed S-Log 4:4:4 (from something like an F3)

  What software would you recommend for post processing the key? Does some work better with homebrewed screens than others?

Some ordinary options are KeyLight (in Premiere and After Effects) and Primatte (which is a real pleasure to use).  Keying tools won't care how you created the screen, just how well it was exposed, and how much color separation there is between subject and background.

Finally, a more-radical-than-it-should-be thing to consider is using a neutral gray background instead of green or blue, and relying on a combination of luma keying and roto.  One bad example I've always remembered was about the keying in Forrest Gump. Stu Maschwitz once explained the effects artists had to roto every single frame to take care of green spill and edges.  Their lives would've been easier if they'd just gone with a neutral gray.

Green does not equal magic movie effects, it's just one of many options.


Converting AE animations to SVG with bodymovin

If you have no alpha-channel and would like to run the animation on your website (as a background for example), I would highly recommend you encode it in h264 .mp4 format, with about 3-6 MBit/s and 2 passes VBR to lower the filesize further. Also take a look at your framerate, as you could get away with 20 frames for a slow animation. I wouldn't go above 30fps. I hope I could help you, if not, please comment on my post.


How to create “diagonal wipe” effect in FFmpeg?

Basic syntax is

ffmpeg -i old.mp4 -i new.mp4 -filter_complex
       "[1]format=yuva444p,
           geq=lum='p(X,Y)':
           a='st(1,(1+W/H/TN)*H/D);if(lt(W-X,((ld(1)*T-Y)/(ld(1)*T))*ld(1)*T*TN),p(X,Y),0)':
           enable='lte(t,D)',setpts=PTS+D/TB[new];
        [0:v][new]overlay" wipe.mp4

This will unveil the new video over the old starting from the top-right.

What this basically does is add an alpha plane to the new video and then manipulate transparency so that when overlaid a wipe is effected.

Two of the variables will need to be replaced with numbers by you.

D is the duration or the wipe, in seconds.

TN is the tangent of the acute angle between the wipe frontier and the vertical. This is the ratio of the horizontal wipe speed to the vertical wipe speed. So, TN = 1 represents a wipe at 45 deg and TN = 2 represents a wipe at atan (2) = 63.4 deg.


Do I have any sort of loss converting an M4V file to MKV?

Your command

ffmpeg -i "path/to/file.m4v" -c:v copy -c:a copy "path/to/file.mkv"

does do a lossless copy since no recompression occurs.

You have to note all warning or error messages during the conversion. The command below will only throw an error if the file properties can't be detected, like stream info.

ffmpeg.exe -v error -i "path/to/file.mkv"

Run

ffmpeg.exe -i "path/to/file.mkv" -map 0 -f null -

to see if the entire file decodes fine.


Video Editing/After Effects Forum To Ask For Help

I recommend the Creative Cow web site, specifically, http://forums.creativecow.net/adobeaftereffects. This will serve your need for getting help on AE, but this is not a site for posting to find some one to do the work for you. Hope this helps.


Dot matrix with depth cloud transition effect

poor's solution makes sense to me. Use Blender or equivalent to create a basic particle system with a distribution based on the illustration. Give the particles some jitter within z-space, match your shot between edited sequence and Blender and just move the camera along the z-axis into the particle field in Blender.

I was hoping for something built into After Effects, but while I think there would be some tinkering to get the initial settings looking good, this effect could be reproducible relatively easily across illustrations.


Is there a standard target level for spoken audio in a tutorial video?

There's no single answer - it's a series of trade-offs:

When you record your voice, it should be as loud as possible, but making sure never to go over the maximum level that can be recorded.  This is known as clipping, and sounds distorted.  Too quiet, and your audio will be hissy relative to the noise floor of your setup - too loud and it will clip.

In order to smooth out the overall levels, you can dynamically compress your audio (this is not the same as data compression), either before it is recorded (between the mic and recorder) or after it has been recorded.  This is effectively like having an automatic volume control, where levels over a certain threshold are turned down, so that the overall effect is smoother.  Too much compression can sound pumping and aggressive - like an FM talk-radio host.


You should be able to achieve this by prepending the source with stream_loop parameter and -1 value specifying indefinite looping.

Replace

-i "$SOURCE" -deinterlace \

with

-stream_loop -1 -i "$SOURCE" -deinterlace \

See https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Main-options


Here is the structure of a .sup subtitle file and a link to the splitter I created. Information is either from linked reference or my own research.

The .sup subtitle splitter I created. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1737122

SupRip github page with sup related code. You can read more specifics about each section here that I don't discuss.
https://github.com/peterdk/SupRip/blob/master/Bluray%20Sup.txt

The hex 0x50 0x47 are headers for sections in the .sup file, however there are multiple sections per subtitle line. There is always (in my experience) a 0x16, 0x17, 0x14, 0x15, and 0x80 flagged section for displayed subtitles. There can be multiple 0x15 sections if the bitmap data is large. There are also "empty" subtitles which are used to end a subtitle which only have 0x16, 0x17, and 0x80 flags. Subtitles only have a start time and no end time or duration, so a subtitle is ended by the next subtitle starting. So if two subtitle lines are separated by a time period, a blank subtitle section is used to end the first subtitle.

Referencing the linked page these are the flags each header can have.

TIMES = 0x16
SIZE = 0x17
PALETTE = 0x14
BITMAP = 0x15
END = 0x80

Hopefully explaining everything with hex code of a full subtitle should help. I separated each of the sections and truncated the palette and bitmap sections.

Header structure, always 13 bytes long

50 47        start of header
00 01 E3 E0  time code
00 00 00 00  second time code (normally zero)
16           flag
00 13        data size

To get the time code to a usable form take the hex and convert to decimal, then multiple by 100,000 and divide by 9 to get nanoseconds.

0001e3e0 -> 123872 *100,000/9 = 137635555 ns = 1.37635555 sec

start of .sup file
1st subtitle

50 47 00 01 E3 E0 00 00 00 00 16 00 13 07 80 04 38 10 00 02 80 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 05 41 02 6F   Times section of subtitle, gives the start time of the subtitle

50 47 00 01 E3 34 00 00 00 00 17 00 13 02 00 05 41 02 6F 00 81 00 37 01 02 40 03 CB 03 04 00 46   Size section of subtitle

50 47 00 01 CD 04 00 00 00 00 14 01 47 00 00 00 ...       Palette section of subtitle

50 47 00 01 CD 2C 00 00 00 00 15 0C 68 00 00 00 ...      Bitmap section of subtitle

50 47 00 01 CD 2C 00 00 00 00 80 00 00     End section of subtitle, denotes the end of one subtitle

2nd subtitle (actually blank which ends 1st subtitle)

50 47 00 07 E7 80 00 00 00 00 16 00 0B 07 80 04 38 10 00 05 00 00 00 00   Times section of subtitle, gives the start time of the subtitle. Previous subtitle ends when this "subtitle" begins

50 47 00 07 E6 D4 00 00 00 00 17 00 13 02 00 05 41 02 6F 00 81 00 37 01 02 40 03 CB 03 04 00 46   Size section of subtitle

50 47 00 07 E6 D3 00 00 00 00 80 00 00      End section of subtitle, denotes the end of one subtitle


Variable bitrate for AAC - how to reach it?

According to the wiki, you are likely to get worse results with the default AAC encoder when using VBR. See: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/AAC

One suggestion would be to use libfdk_aac. The other would be to demux the audio, re-encode it using a different encoder, and then remux that file back in to the video using ffmpeg.


Command Line Tool for Converting Image Sequence to Quicktime .mov Video

You can use wonderful ffmpeg for your desired workflow. There is a guide here on this page but once you have the ffmpeg installed, you can simply cd into your folder with sequence, and type in your terminal:

ffmpeg -f image2 -pattern_type glob -i '*.png' -vcodec qtrle -r 25 -s 1920x1080 test.mov

To understand the options, you can check the documentation but here is the explanation:

When importing an image sequence, -i also supports expanding shell-like
wildcard patterns (globbing) internally, by selecting the image2-specific
-pattern_type glob option.

In this specific command, -r is for framerate, and -s is our image size. -vcodec qtrle tells ffmpeg to use QuickTime Animation. For ProRes, you can use:

-vcodec prores -profile 2

Here -profile refers to ProRes Profiles (0, 1, 2, 3), 0 being Proxy, and 3 being High Quality (source).

Besides these, if you are going to use ffmpeg, there are lots of detailed bits of commands online, or we can figure out specific commands for your workflow here.


The way most stage laser effects work is by using a holographic plate or diffraction grating which splits the single beam up into multiple beams.

[image removed due to a DMCA request from copyright holder]

These then pass to further holographic elements to provide shapes and lines, and these can then be manipulated further with lenses or mirrors.


Using the ffmpeg hashframe muxer on encoded frames in real time

Use the tee muxer.
ffmpeg -nostdin -hwaccel auto -fflags +igndts \
-f alsa \
  -ac 1 \
  -ar 44000 \
  -thread_queue_size 2048 \
  -i hw:2,1,0 \
-f video4linux2 \
  -thread_queue_size 2048 \
  -i /dev/video0 \
  -map 1 -map 0 \
  -vcodec libx264 \
  -preset ultrafast \
  -tune zerolatency \
  -s 1280x720 \
  -r 30 \
  -acodec aac \
  -t 00:00:05 \
-f tee "[f=framehash]out/out.md5|[f=avi]out/out.avi"


Is you timeline setting the same as your video file, in terms of framerate and size? And you should also change the timeline interpolation to optical flow.


extracting keyframes from damaged video file

Try running the file through recover_mp4_to_h264, assuming video codec is H.264. You will need to supply a good reference file i.e. with valid header, of the same type as the damaged one.


Will multiple radiomic sets conflict with one another?

These wireless microphones specifically designed not to interfere with each other. They will automatically find their counterparts but can only send a signal to one receiver.
You should be OK.


Looking to get Youtube-quality video stabilization from a software based video editing application (on mac)

A coworker has just turned me on to using Warp Stabilizer. It's a built-in effect in Adobe Premiere CS6. Before using this tool, I also used After Effects to smooth and stabilize motion.

The difference is outstanding. Warp Stabilizer has worked faster, within my workflow, and more reliable than After Effects stabilization has. This has been huge for me. Here's a quick guide that outlines the effect: http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/premiere-pro-warp-stabilizer/

Another solution is Lock and Load. I've never used it, but I've heard it gets the job done. Might be worth looking into if you do not already own the Adobe Creative Suite. http://www.coremelt.com/products/lock-and-load-x.html


Can't capture video from dshow device. FFmpeg finish immediately resulting empty file

Either remove the -copyts or switch -t 06:00 to -vframes 9000


extract parts of images from a video and save it to a file

Sure. Command template is

ffmpeg -i video.mov -filter_complex "[0]crop=500:200:0:0[l];[0]crop=500:200:1000:0[r]; \
                                     [l][r]hstack" final.mov


I would like to answer my own question.
One thing tho is the file is quite large (370+ lines) so i have added it to pastebin
FF Fader on Pastebin
A few Notes:
I had errors popping up if the cuts were certain lengths like on a 30 sec video and I wanted over 10 sec  cuts it would work but toss up errors such as
Invalid number.  Numeric constants are either decimal (17),
hexadecimal (0x11), or octal (021).
Invalid number.  Numeric constants are either decimal (17),
hexadecimal (0x11), or octal (021).

this error would be cause form the calculations at lines:
218 to 229
lines 218 - 229 were added by another issue i found was if you did a 6 sec segments, the last cut was shorter than 2 seconds  so if that was the case i would need to concat that way cause it was concating (sp?) that last clip twice
If that is not correct way of answering the question here, please help me fix it b4 down voting me etc.  I am new here
I would love some input and if you see where it can be cleaned up that would be great too
EDIT:
Wanted to add that taking a 30 second video and cutting into 3 segments, then cutting those 3 segments into 3 sections.  add the fade in and fade out and then combine them all back into segments  took right at 30 seconds or less!
That is pretty awesome! I think maybe using "threads" on ffmpeg could speed it up  but I am not sure you need it any faster than that.  If you have a idea to speed up ffmpeg more let me know in the comments.


How to trim out black frames with ffmpeg on windows?

Here's a way to do it with the blackdetect and trim filters.

First, a better way to get the blackdetect output is via ffprobe because it is capable of writing structured data such as XML, JSON or one key=value per line.

You do this using metadata injection:

ffprobe -f lavfi -i "movie=/path/to/input.mp4,blackdetect[out0]" -show_entries tags=lavfi.black_start,lavfi.black_end -of default=nw=1 -v quiet
TAG:lavfi.black_start=0
TAG:lavfi.black_end=5.42208
TAG:lavfi.black_start=73.4067

As you can see it returns the start and end time of each black section. You use the returned info to trim the segments between each end and the next start:

ffmpeg -i /path/to/input.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]trim=start=5.42208:end=73.4067,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1];[0:a]atrim=start=5.42208:end=73.4067,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a1]" -map [v1] -map [a1] output.mp4

You can chain multiple trim filters in the same command. See this answer for a detailed example.

To automate this in Windows you can install and use PowerShell or another scripting language of your choice (PHP, Python etc).


How to convert an mkv file with hevc encoding to mkv with avc

ffmpeg, a command-line tool, can do this:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a copy -c:s copy -fflags +genpts output.mkv

Adjust the CRF for larger or smaller size (lower number produces better quality but larger size)

Download ffmpeg (32-bit static version) from here.


wrong subtitle start time when trying to hardcode them into video using ffmpeg

FFmpeg normalizes timestamps to start from 0 after seeking. So workaround is to copy timestamps and then set output ss to exclude unwanted portion of input.

ffmpeg -ss 01:01:00.0 -copyts -i input.mp4 -vf subtitles=input.srt -ss 01:01:00.0 -t 00:02:00.0 output.mp4


Davinci Resolve 16: Need to restore timeline to original aspect ratio

It's hard to know what's going on without knowing your project settings or what kind of footage you're using.  But the relevant settings are under Project Settings->Master Settings->Timeline resolution, Project settings->Master Settings->Pixel aspect ratio, and Project Settings->Image Scaling->Input Scaling->Mismatched resolution files.  Unless you're editing old DV footage or unless you used an anamorphic lens (you would know), Pixel aspect ratio should be set to Square, and Mismatched resolution files should be anything except "Stretch Frame to all Corners."


Does RCA or "interface connector" (VGA?) offer better video quality?

The 'interface connector' is (almost certainly) a serial control port, not a video output. LVD stored composite analog video, so there are no chroma or difference signals available to assist in digitizing the video.


Why does Canon 600D/T3i video quality drop dramatically once it's recorded — in comparison to what I see in Live-View w/ Digital Zoom?

I'm not sure what quality drop in the video you're referring to, but the video quality will never be as good as the image you see in the Live View of your camera due to the way it works.

Here's how Canon describes the Live View mode:

  When the camera is in [Live View] mode the reflex mirror is in the  up
  position, blocking the normal pentaprism viewfinder.  Instead, the
  image is projected through the lens and  directly onto the sensor,
  which in turn displays the image  on the rear LCD panel.

Source

So the Live View basically shows you the image that reaches the lense, taking focus and depth-of-field into account. It isn't actually a preview of your video recording quality.

Here's what you can capture with your camera:

RAW pictures. While normal low- to mid-end cameras usually only capture compressed images such as .jpg-files, the RAW format contains all information captured by the lens. This is why you can fully adjust settings such as exposure, white balance, temperature and tint in post-editing. No compression is happening between the information captured by the camera (lens) and the saved file.
Compressed pictures such as .jpg-files. The information captured by the camera is compressed into a pixel-based image using your current white balance and exposure setting to calculate the pixels color values. Canon cameras can generate compressed pixel-images with a high pixel count (for example, the maximum resolution of the Canon 600D camera is 5184x3456, about 18 megapixels). So there is some compression.
Video. Video capture quality is limited by the cameras image processing speed and, to a lesser extent, by the writing speed of your SD card. The camera can't possibly capture about 25 images per second (assuming 25fps) in a resolution as high as that of single images. The maximum video resolution of most Canon DSLR-cameras is Full HD, i.e. 1920x1080. So you have a much lower pixel-resolution, therefore there is much compression.

The Live View shows you the information captured by the lens on the (obviously pixel-based) LED monitor, so its quality is somewhere between the RAW-and JPG-qualiy. This is why you notice a quality difference between your Live View and the captured video.

There are professional video cameras that can capture RAW-video (e.g. Alexa cameras which capture ARRI-video), but they cost several thousand euro.

How to get rid of it

If you are seeing grain and artifacts because you're filming in a low-light situation, use better lighting. If you want a dark scene, do it in post-production.


Which software to batch join videos and add a chapter for each?

Ever since the fall of Visual Hub, there have been several generations of programs that have taken up the sourcecode and tried to remake the magic.  Visual Hub was awesome at stitching files together, sad it no longer works.  Film Redux was a fork of VisualHub, but has since been abandoned also. You can still download FilmRedux for free, however I can't get it to process any of my files. It may just be a configuration issue on my machine, you may have better luck.

Your Mac should have come with iMovie, otherwise it's at the Mac App Store for $15.  I found this comprehensive guide to iMove '09 and the section on markers is still relevant to iMovie '11.  The drawback is you'll have to add them manually, but that shouldn't be too much trouble.


What kind of effect is that? How can I replicate it?

This is a very simple animation, actually. Here's how you could do it the easy and cheap way:

Create a solid with the size of your composition
apply "fractal noise" to it
Set the transform, brightness and contrast of fractal noise so that you have small drops instead of large shapes. You might want to set the complexity to one and experiment with the settings until you like the look.
Click the stopwatch on the brightness and lower it so much that the solid is completely black
go forward about 2 seconds and raise the brightness so that the entire solid is completely white.
Now create a text-layer under the solid and type your text
Set the "Track Matte" of your text-layer so that it takes a luma-mask from the solid above

Now, the luminance of your animated solid determines the alpha-channel of your text-layer, making it appear piece by piece. However, the effect looks sort of cheap in my opinion. For a better result, I would recommend you try to use a particle simulation (such as particular, not a free plugin unfortunately) and use the text layer as your emitter. You let the Text dissolve into dust like in avengers, and simply reverse the sequence, so that the text is being built from dust.

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


A animated video with effects similar to Valiant Hearts

I found the software and effect I was looking for.
The Parallax Effect - Adobe After Effects.


'Seamless' loop hangs/pauses at beginning of clip

Within an editor each frame is complete in itself, but in the output formats you mention, the video is almost always compressed in such a way that only certain frames (called I-frames) are complete and independent. The rest are 'difference' frames that rely on information from surrounding frames.

At a loop point there's often a need for the player to start over, to refill its buffers and prime the engine. You can often help out by ending your segment with a I-frame. But the only sure way to replicate what you see in the editor is to output only I-frames. MJPEG is an example of a codec that always does this, but there are other codecs that can be instructed to. The downside is that the video will be considerably larger.

Try MJPEG and see if it does what you need.


How to fade in/apply transition as a node in Fusion to image in Davinci Resolve?

There are many ways fade in/out the opacity of a clip in Fusion, and which method you choose depends on your needs.

If, your composition only contains one MediaIn node, and you want the actual compositing to occur outside the Fusion page (to keep your edit flexible, for instance), then a simple method is to use a brightness/contrast node, and animate the Gain slider between zero and one.  Make sure the R, G, B, and A channels are all included in the operation by enabling the corresponding boxes at the top of the inspector.  The Alpha (A) channel is particularly important, as it is the property which controls the extent to which the colors of pixels mix when they are superimposed.  As an exercise, try disabling the R, G, and B channels, and animating A to see the difference between Alpha and Color contribution.  You'll see that Alpha isn't the same as the “opacity” slider in other areas of the Resolve interface.

In another case, suppose you have two media sources inside your Fusion composition, and you want to layer them together and animate a transition from one to the other.  A convenient way to accomplish this is included in the Merge node that you'd need to use to combine the images anyway.  However, if you try moving the alpha gain slider down, the results might not be what you expect.  You'll notice that the results of this action look exactly like the example above, where you only affected the alpha gain channel in the B/C node.  To get the Merge node to affect the R, G, and B channels as well as Alpha, you need to slide the Additive/Subtractive slider over to Subtractive.

Hope this helps.


You can choose "Kind" and set it to "Other" then type "Final Cut Pro Library" into the text field. Like this:


Free software for batch basic editing and down-sampling

I'm fairly certain you can do this with VLC 3.0+ or via the command line.

https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_HowTo/Transcode_multiple_videos/

This can be done using the transcode/streaming options via the file menu in the graphical app. You can set the in and out and select all te files to process, as well as the codec and container format.


Can you confirm the spec? If all 720 px are active, then setdar=4/3 is correct but without the setsar. If Rec. 601  is required,  as is likely,  then setsar=59/54 is needed without the setdar


Batch compress a folder of videos using handbrake (or other) - Without manually loading each video into the queue

I use HandBrakeBatch for doing the same thing on Tv series or shows that have been downloaded, quite easy to use and can point it to a folder which has folder inside and it will batch them all choosing a preset of your choice

http://www.osomac.com/apps/osx/handbrake-batch/


Add an image as frame of video using ffmpeg

Basic syntax is

ffmpeg -i 20190224_081118.mp4 -framerate 30 -i frame.png -filter_complex "[0]pad=1920:1080:576:0[vid];[vid][1]overlay" -c:a copy -movflags +faststart out.mp4

This pads the video to the size of the frame image, and then overlays the frame on top. You may need to adjust the horizontal placement of the video by adjusting the x value ib the pad filter, currently 576.


in Premiere CC, how do you create a TALL rectangular mask?

Finally figured it out (with some help). You can drag a whole side at a time! Here's how:

Click one of the 2 corners to (subtly) select it.
Shift-click-and-drag the other corner.

That will select the whole side between the two corners. It will also limit your "dragging path" to paths that are at 45 degrees or 90 degrees relative to the corner's original position. That enables you to keep your rectangle rectangular.


Can I get smoother playback by converting a video to a non-interpolation codec?

Many different factors can contribute to stutter in video playback.  It could be a CPU issue (check your CPU when playing the video) in which case, a simpler codec or a player that can leverage the graphics card for decoding would help.  It could also be data rate related though.  In this case, using a simpler format would actually compound the problem as less compressed formats (easier to decode) require proportionally more disk space to store the same quality.

If you are constrained by memory or disk I/O then you would actually make it stutter more by moving to a simpler format (and there would also be quality loss unless you made the file size much much higher due to loss of compression efficiency as well as a second generation encoding penalty.)


Auto-Orient, Wrong Rotation on Last Keyframe in After Effects

I found the issue. The rotation was caused by an expression I used to loop the animation

loopOut("cycle")


Why does a bright video feed send more data than a dark one?

Our eyes and brains are more sensitive to data in the bright areas so compression schemes generally throw out more of the data in the dark areas. If the video is mostly dark, then it compresses very well because they can throw out more data and you don't notice. But when it's bright (assuming it's not overexposed), less data can be crunched down without you noticing it.


I've had my fair share of matching. C100 with 5D MK III, 5D MK III with 7D, 7D with C100, 7D with a Sony Camcorder.

It's all a matter of getting two cameras that are similar in terms of resolution and how 'soft' the image is. For example, the C100 is incredibly sharp, like 4k sharp in 1080p, whereas the DSLRS I mentioned are quite soft. Although you can add sharpening, it doesn't have the same feel and really gives you the idea that two cameras were used.

That being said, staying with a DSLR within the same camera company means that the baked in color profile should be relatively consistent. The sharpness on the other hand my not be, but with DSLR's you'll never get really sharp images (excluding the GH4 and A7S) so I would say go for it.

You might see some subtle difference in color tone. Some casting more or less of a certain color in the exact same environment which is an easy fix with some general color correction. I'm willing to bet if you make a color correction present using footage shot in a consistent test environment you can make your workflow much faster. Its just a matter of watching your scopes for consistency. It helps if you use a similar lens, focal length, subject (go with a person you want to match skintones), and lighting setup (tungsten) for these tests.

Some color correction info another one of my answers: https://video.stackexchange.com/a/15998/10619


Why is my Premiere timeline scrollbar thumb non-proportional?

Well this is not my Direct Answer but tried this?:

trash the preferences and then create a new project. Then go to window>workspace and uncheck the import workspace from the project and reset it again. Then try opening your project and check.

My Buddy Google gave me that:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5796914

Cheers


Motion graphics consists of Graphic Design and Animation. Main focus is to deal with images, typography, color and illustrations, also it's key to work with design assets, like flow charts, icons, images or backdrops, which created with animation in mind.

However Compositing consists of Animation, Mathematics and Rating Pictures (eyeballing). Main focus is digital image manipulation - it's the art and science to combine (matching) images from multiple sources like film, photographs or 3d renderings into new (blended) images to create a perfect illusion.


Vertically shifted Image through RCA/Chinc connector

I solved the problem now. The Wii was configured to send out a 60 Hz signal, but my TV card could only process 50 Hz. By changing this in the Wii menu (which you could see a bit) the setup works now.


How to add audio to transitions in Final Cut

Your question is indeed very confusing.  What, exactly, is the corresponding sound to the circle transition?  Is it a cricket?  Is it a car honk?  Is it the sound of a particular church bell ringing?  Is it the sound of a glacier melting?  And what about the sound of a triangular transition?  Or the sound of a vertical vs. horizontal wipe?

These questions are rhetorical; there is no sound associated with these transitions, other than the sounds you creatively choose to associate with them.  Thus, the answer to your question is that you do need to choose those audio transition sounds, and audio transitions, manually.


in iMovie, does adding title at the start of a clip cuts the clip portion from there?

If you put the title before the video and put the video after the title, it will extend the length.  If you put the title over the video, it will simply be placed over top of the first few seconds of video and the length will remain the same.


Use sound.wav as your output, instead of sound.mp3.  Or if you literally mean raw PCM data with no headers, not just uncompressed, then try

ffmpeg -f dshow -t 10 -i audio="virtual-audio-capturer" -f s16le -y "sound.pcm"

Play it back with

ffplay -channels 2 -f s16le -i sound.pcm

Unless you really need headerless, I'd suggest WAV files for ease of use.  Sample format, rate, and number of channels stored in the file is a Good Thing.


Phone Video + 3D tracking spatial data for compositing?

The only one I know of is CV-AR from cineversity, which uses apple AR kit to capture facial animation, and works in conjunction with Maxon Cinema 4D.  I don't think depth sensing on phones is quite to the point where anything further than a selfie is very accurate, although I'm sure that'll change in the very near term if it hasn't already.


This is called "Inertial Bounce" and has a handy expression to do all the work!

https://gist.github.com/animoplex/aafd6a157282351c8dfeea385d969ef2

amp = 5.0; freq = 2.0; decay = 4.0;

n = 0;
if (numKeys > 0) {
  n = nearestKey(time).index;
  if (key(n).time > time) { n--; }
}
if (n == 0) { t = 0; }
else { t = time - key(n).time; }
if (n > 0 && t < 1) {
  v = velocityAtTime(key(n).time - thisComp.frameDuration/10);
  value + v*(amp/100)*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);
}
else { value; }

Here's a quick video tutorial as well:

Hope this helps you out!


How to convert large iMovie-imported videos preservig aspect ratio?

I spent my eveening but finally found a working software. That's not a freeware :( 69 boxes, but it works so I'll buy it. This is Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate.

Don't hesitate to edit this answer if you feel that my answer is too spammy.

Happy converting


Vertical Black Bars, Aspect Ratio Problem. NEED A FIX

You have set the wrong pixel aspect ratio (that has nothing do with the aspect ratio of your video resolution). Notice how you're source footage (the mpg file) has a pixel aspect ratio of 1.21 but you export it with a pixel aspect ratio of 0.91. Also your sequence is set to a pixel aspect ratio of 0.91 (that value in parenthesis next to your resolution in the export settings where the source specs are listed).

Change your sequence settings to the same pixel aspect ratio as your source (1.21 or simple the widescreen setting in the drop down menu), aswell as in your export settings. Though your might wanna export with a square pixel aspect ratio of 1:1 which is what youtube prefers. You will have to change the resolution for that though.


Thunderbolt 3 & eGPU viable for Video Processing?

I've looked into this recently myself, given that the MBP line is not exactly a workhorse when it comes to GPU processing.

eGPUs are actually being done now over TB2, with great success. I have a friend who purchased a similar unit to the Akitio Thunder2 (the Bizon-Tech version), put a decent GPU in it (I think it was the GTX960 or similar), and experienced almost 50% faster render time in Premiere (the latest versions of CC support GPU acceleration for encode/decode with some codecs).

The math gets a little funky, but actually this Tested article comparing PCI Express to Thunderbolt indicates that the Thunderbolt2 spec, in practice, provides almost the equivalent of a PCIe3.0 interface. The bandwidth speed lost will be minimal. Further, the article indicates that performance of the graphics card that is lost by a slower transfer speed is, for all practical intents and purposes, negligible (as little as 5% in most cases).

I'm certain that the performance gained by an eGPU box, even over TB2 on current-gen hardware, would vastly outstrip the current performance you're getting on a CPU-accellerated-only laptop.

And, the best part is, you're out only around $1500 for a box and a good graphics card.

For the record:

I don't know what notebook you're using, but I'll assume a relatively recent MBP. I'm working here from a 2014 15" Retina which happens to have dual GPUs (integrated Intel Iris and discrete GeForce GT 750M), and based strictly on CUDA cores, you'll have to pick up something in the K1200+ range if you want to see a significant improvement (the GT750M has 384 cores). However, it's relatively weak at only 2GB GDDR5 (roughly comparable to a K620 in terms of cuda cores and memory).

Improving both specs is important, particularly for 4K or RAW video. I would recommend something like a K2200 or K5000, or if you've had a good year, any of the Maxwell-class cards would be a beautiful, beautiful thing.

TechInferno - 2015 MBP + GTX970 + Akitio Thunder2 via TB2

LinusTechTips - 2012 MBP + GTX760 + Akitio Thunder2 via TB1

Bizon-Tech - Akitio-based custom enclosure for high-wattage GPUs

A useful comparison of top-end Kepler vs Maxwell NVIDIA architecture

Anecdotally, in 2014 I saw a live demo in NVIDIA's booth at NAB of what the K6000 card is capable of - at the time, mindblowing performance. They put dual K6000's in a Z820 workstation and did realtime 4k debayering of RED Raw, with scale and blur effects, in Premiere. So yeah, duh - it's a powerful card, right? Point is, you don't have to look at the latest Maxwell cards to get performance improvements in an eGPU setup - even a single quality card will provide much more efficient and expedient results than CPU-only.


There are several effects like this available today. If you're using Final Cut Pro X or Motion, you can use the BadTV filter.

There are also 3rd party filters for a variety of platforms including DigiEffects' Damage filters.

You could probably make your own by copying your input video, applying noise, maybe offsetting it, and then masking parts of the result to mix with the original.


If you're using a recent git build, use stream_loop and drop the loop filter:

-stream_loop -1 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -i Overlay.webm -filter_complex "[0][1]overlay=...

For older builds, you'll have to supply the loop filter with full details,

[1]loop=-1:C:0,setpts=N/FRAME_RATE/TB[bg]

where C is a value greater than the frame count of the file.


How to render videos with placeholders using API / command line interface?

You could write a simple shell script (either for mac or windows) which consists of basic if - then clauses to read the input of the user, then use ffmpeg by calling it from within the script. I believe that ffmpeg might be the most painless option, since scripting for Premiere and After Effects can be a bit tedious.


Where to get good music for corporate videos?

You should approach local recording studios and music production houses. A lot of them will have some sort of showreel and a shelf of original music. Some also offer CD's of copyright free music for a fair price. A quick google search in your local area should dig some out. My own company Broadwood Music Productions does this but I strongly advocate supporting creative writers in your local area.


How to change timeline scale in Davinci Resolve Fusion page?

You can change the preview scale using the numbers below the transport controls. When fusion clips come in from Resolve, Resolve determines the in and out points, based on where the clip sits in your timeline.  So changing the numbers to match a tutorial you’re following is probably not a good idea unless you’re using identical media, and have identical Resolve timelines.


Is there a good collection of examples of the different type of video cuts?

Wikipedia is not a bad resource for explaining the different types of edits in continuity editing. Some have examples using stills of the out and in points, or references to usage of the edit in a well known film sequence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_editing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-degree_rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30-degree_rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_cut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-cutting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutaway_(filmmaking)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_on_action
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishing_shot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeline_match
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insert_(filmmaking)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_cut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_take
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_cut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_reverse_shot


How to make the "wipe" transition with vertical line in Premiere pro cs6?

Depends on your idea. Simplest way is using a Linear Wipe Effect (on the strip above). For more complex transitions I'd suggest to animate a rectangular mask path in order to get most control, see the manual: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/masking-tracking.html


What is the maximum 2D video quality on Oculus Quest?

2560x2560 per eye

The maximum recommended video resolutions for Oculus Quest and Go are as follows:

3840x3840 30fps H264 H265

4096x4096 30fps ---- H265

5760x2880 30fps H264 ----

2880x5760 30fps ---- H265 (* see below)

2880x2880 60fps H264 H265

4096x2048 60fps H264 H265

taken from here


How to get closed captions to appear on a live stream

There isn't support for taking the closed caption data from SDI and embedding it in the video stream. That's why it doesn't work.


I've found 2 useful references:

LEVIN, A., ZOMET, A., PELEG, S., AND WEISS, Y. 2004. Seamless image stitching in the gradient domain. In European Conference on Computer Vision, 377–389.

and

PÉREZ, P., GANGNET, M., AND BLAKE, A. 2003. Poisson image editing. ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH ’03), 313– 318.


How do you reduce wind gust sounds from video?

Two possible ideas. When writing this answering I'm thinking in terms of the capabilities provided by Audacity but I think the same concept will work with other software.

Pick a silent part of the video with only the wind sound but no other sounds that you would like to keep, select that as the noise profile then apply noise reduction whenever there is the wind noise.

Apply a high pass filter to the audio. This will help reduce the effects of the wind noise. Again consider only applying this when there is wind.


How to light a set using coloured fluorescent lights

Try searching for "LED Neon Tube".  Nowadays LEDs are so common for venue lighting, maybe the set designers might went that route.

If this is fluorescent, they could be white fluorescent bulbs wrapped in theatrical gel roll material, such as this.  For the power supply (called a ballast) and housing, you can buy fluorescent bulb track lighting from any commercial lighting store. The ballasts for traditional T8 and T12 size bulbs are being phased out due to regulation.  But my local supplier still had a couple in stock a few years ago.

The bulbs could also be neon, producing a native red color without a filter.  I believe those would have to be handmade by a signage company.

Also, the shot has pretty obvious red stage lighting to the lower-left, and blue to the upper-right.  I'm judging from the red light and shadows striking the ceiling, and the diagonal blue light shadows on the actor's body.  My guess is that almost none of the light in the shot is from the vertical bulbs.

I'm a newbie at this too, but hope some of my information is accurate :)  I had a similar project for a party production a few years ago, which involved fluorescent ballasts and housings with vertically mounted blacklights.


Predict file size of a Huffyuv codec video stream

The answer is No. Besides the frame dimensions, there's the matter of content complexity. Without scanning the video and doing a first-pass as it were, it's not possible to predict the output size. A video consisting of a slideshow of very simple text slides will be much easier to compress than scenes of busy city life..etc.

The closest you may come to making some sort of prediction is to encode a few representative segments from the source file and compare those bitrates. If there isn't a large difference among the bitrates of the various encoded segments, then you may assume a bitrate in that range for the final output. Of course, this method can't account for anomalous segments in the video of very high or low complexity compared to the rest of it, so sample selection is important.


How do I deselect the Blade Edit Mode in DaVinci Resolve?

So you can just click Arrow button, or press "A". To select blade again, press "B".

Now that you know how to turn the mode on and off, you may want to learn a little more about what it is. The blade tool is very convenient thing to cut video instead of dragging by the end of footage.

I'd strongly recommend considering "Blade + select + delete" editing. It's working tool.

Now there are two ways to use interface in such editors:

Point and click.
Short cuts.


The picture on the left is a portrait video stored as landscape but with a rotation tag. So, the overlay image co-ordinates take effect with reference to the stored representation. For such cases, you should rotate the video beforehand by 1) adding the transpose filter before the overlay 2) disabling autorotate on the input video* and 3) manually resetting the rotation tag in the output, e.g.

ffmpeg -noautorotate -i input.mp4 -i arrow.png -filter_complex "[0]transpose=1[bg];[bg][1]overlay=X:Y" -metadata:s:v rotate=0 out.mp4

*not needed if your ffmpeg is from April 2015 or earlier.

To check the rotation tag for a video, you can run

ffprobe input.mp4 -show_entries stream_tags=rotate -v 0 -of compact=p=0:nk=1

You'll get an angle value. If it's 90, use transpose=1. If it's 270, use transpose=2


Canon DSLR that changes aperture in Video

With canon the first DSLR that can do that is the 550d (you need to set the movie mode to manual in the settings otherwise it will adjust automatically).

However i would suggest something with a swivel screen (600d and up) because it's very useful while shooting video. The 60d and 7d have more options for video (frame rate for one) but it depends on your needs and budget if those are an option.

Hope this is helpful.


loop all videos from folder to rtmp stream

You could do this by looping over the videos in a subshell, and piping to another copy of ffmpeg to generate the RTMP stream. For example:

(for j in *.mp4; do
    ffmpeg -threads 2 -re -fflags +genpts -i $j \
        -i '/c/Users/user/Desktop/ffmpeg_logo/mylogo.png' -filter_complex 'overlay=W-w-50:H-h-25' \
        -vcodec libx264 -profile:v baseline -b:v 2000k -r 24 -maxrate 2000k -bufsize 2000k  \
        -ac 2 -ar 44100 -g 48 -c:a aac -b:a 64k \
        -f mpegts -
done) | ffmpeg -f mpegts -i - -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -f flv rtmp://user:password@ip:1935/live/mystream

Notice the brackets around the for loop; that creates a subshell to run the first read & encode ffmpeg command. The output from that command is sent over the stdout ("standard output") pipe to the input of the second ffmpeg command, which generates the RTMP stream. The syntax for that is using - as the name of the input or output file.

I've had to include a bitstream filter aac_adtstoasc because I've used an MPEG Transport Stream as the format on the pipe as well.


How to concatenate multiple videos with fades (from- and to-black) in-between?

So here is what I came up with.
A not fully one-liner solution
1) Generate black clips
ffmpeg -f lavfi -i "color=black:s=1920x1080:r=30" \
 -f lavfi -i "anullsrc=r=48000:cl=stereo" \
 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -t 3 empty_3s.mp4

Use lavfi filters to generate your empty clip. Of course, change the parameters according to your videos and what you want to achieve. Especially:

in first (video) source filter:

s (size) should match that of the videos you want to concatenate.
r (frame rate) should also match your videos (especially if your want a constant frame rate output)

in second (audio) source filter:

r (sample rate) should match that of the audio tracks from the videos you want to concatenate.
cl (channel layout) should also match the audio from your videos

Output parameters (codecs for instance) should match those of your videos. Use -t to set the length (in seconds) of the empty clip.
2) Concatenate and fade your videos using a complex filtergraph
ffmpeg -i empty_1s.mp4 -i part_1.mp4 -i empty_3s.mp4 -i part_2.mp4 -i empty_1s.mp4 \
 -filter_complex \
  "[1:v] fade=t=in:st=0:d=2, fade=t=out:st=58:d=2 [1v]; \
   [1:a] afade=t=in:st=0:d=2, afade=t=out:st=58:d=2 [1a]; \
   [3:v] fade=t=in:st=0:d=2, fade=t=out:st=118:d=2 [3v]; \
   [3:a] afade=t=in:st=0:d=1, afade=t=out:st=118:d=2 [3a]; \
   [0:v] [0:a] [1v] [1a] [2:v] [2:a] [3v] [3a] [4:v] [4:a] concat=n=5:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" \
 -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac output.mp4

Explanation:

we first specify the inputs (-i) that we will concatenate
we then set a complex filter (-filter_complex), that we use to:

first, fade in and out our videos. To that end we use the fade (for video) and afade (for audio) filters. We specify the start (st) and duration (d) for each fade. We output the results with outpad names ([1v], [1a]...).
then, concatenate the black clips and the previously faded videos, using the concat filter. We specify the number of input segments n (i.e. the number of video+audio sets, in our case 5) we want to concat, and the number of video (v=1) and audio (a=1) streams for the output.

we map the final output to the output streams from the concat filter
specify the encoding parameters to whatever you want :)

Important notes:

your videos (inputs) must have the same characteristics (pixel and sample format for video, sample rate and channel layout for audio). See concat documentation for more info.
in the fade filter, we specify start time and duration in seconds, but you can use frames or samples as well with s and n (video) or ss and ns (audio) options. See afade and fade filters documentation.
you must know the duration of your videos for the fade filter, especially for fade-outs. See this question for hints on how two fade-out clips without having to manually specify start time.

True one-liner
If you really want a one-liner (and not having to encode empty black clips), you can use:
ffmpeg \
 -f lavfi -t 1 -i "color=black:s=1920x1080:r=30" -f lavfi -t 1 -i "anullsrc=r=48000:cl=2" \
 -i part_1.mp4 \
 -f lavfi -t 3 -i "color=black:s=1920x1080:r=30" -f lavfi -t 3 -i "anullsrc=r=48000:cl=2" \
 -i part_2.mp4 \
 -f lavfi -t 1 -i "color=black:s=1920x1080:r=30" -f lavfi -t 1 -i "anullsrc=r=48000:cl=2" \
 -filter_complex \
  "[0:v] null [0v]; [1:a] anull [0a]; [3:v] null [2v]; [4:a] anull [2a]; \
   [6:v] null [4v]; [7:a] anull [4a]; \
   [2:v] fade=t=in:st=0:d=2, fade=t=out:st=58:d=2 [1v]; \
   [2:a] afade=t=in:st=0:d=2, afade=t=out:st=58:d=2 [1a]; \
   [5:v] fade=t=in:st=0:d=1, fade=t=out:st=118:d=2 [3v]; \
   [5:a] afade=t=in:st=0:d=1, afade=t=out:st=118:d=2 [3a]; \
   [0v] [0a] [1v] [1a] [2v] [2a] [3v] [3a] [4v] [4a] concat=n=5:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" \
 -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac output.mp4

In that case we must beware of the input indices, as black video clips and null audio clips are separated inputs (I didn't figure out how to put them as two streams in a single input, if you have an idea feel free to share it).
Here I applied null and anull filters to those inputs to give them outpad tags, in order to use consistent identifiers in the concat filter. But this is purely optional.
Hope this helps, feel free to improve my solution with your insights :)


Assuming you don't need great quality and are ok with ip camera quality footage (which it sounds like you are), you could pick up several wireless ip security cameras and connect them via WiFi on the same network as a Mac laptop running Security Spy.


large px sized comp not rendering in after effects

So really wanted to be able to export from afx uncompressed but could not find a codec that would allow export of such a wide pixel width. I tried 'animation', that did not work for me. If you know of another codec that does work at the larger widths, let me know!

Anyhow, I ended up just exporting with H264 codec / compression which works even with the huge pixel width. Then used an older version of Apple's Compressor to reexport that to uncompressed AVI. It looks fine.


Audio not detected with Transparent Video Formats (Quicktime - PNG/QtAnimation- AAC/PCM)

Don't know PowerDirector, but I would try exporting as ProRes 4444 with alpha (sometimes called 'Millions of colors+'.
This works with Adobe Premiere, Final Cut, Resolve and other editors fine.


Are there Tripods to film the bottom when writing on a paper?

There are a number of photo tripods that allow you to invert the center column.  When inverted, the camera sits between all the legs and can be pointed down.  Another tripod design has a center column that can also be shifted to a horizontal position.  This allows greater flexibility in terms of distance from the subject (and it also means you only have to shoot between the front two legs, rather than inside all three).


Solution found regarding Sandisk Extreme Pro SDHC-1 U3 10
The card was formatted to FAT32, I reformatted the card to exFat (unit size 128kb, though I am not sure at all about the impact of unit size, that's something I'll have to check) .

What is really "fun" is that the camera itself can only format the card to FAT32 so I need to format it using a computer.

I'll keep this up to date.

Update:
Even re-formatted:  Samsung 64 Pro+, SDXC I 10 U3 look like the camera won't recognize it as U3.


fair use of copyrighted footage in language learning context

According to this site, Norway does allow exceptions to author's rights for educational purposes, but it does not expand on what said requirements are.  You should probably talk to a lawyer in your jurisdiction for up to date information on your local jurisdiction.


Use ffmpeg to extract 15 frames at specific intervals

The basic template is
ffmpeg -i inVideo.mp4
  -vf "select='between(t,30,30.5)+between(t,45,45.5)+between(t,73,73.5)'"
  -s 320x240 -vsync 0 out%d.png

The select filter expression selects all frames in each of the three ranges. I've chosen an endpoint 0.5 seconds greater than the start point under the assumption that the video is 30 frames per second. Adjust accordingly.
Frame sizing is an output option so it has to appear before the output it is meant for.


Yes, I believe the latest versions of Premiere CC can do this natively.  It's a little bit tricky since the video needs to be unwrapped, but it is a fixed distortion to be applied depending on the size of the sphere map.  360 videos are actually rectangular videos that are texture mapped on to a sphere.

Software that wants to convert can either look at the size of the sphere and use a fixed distortion to get the correct output or actually execute the spherical mapping and then shoot a flat image of the mapping in a 3d translation.  The later approach is more complicated by a bit, but allows for easy manipulation of the camera within the 360 sphere.

I'm not particularly aware of any other applications that directly support working with 360 video yet.  I know Fusion has VR capabilities now, but have not had a chance to work with the new features yet.


Editing 4k footage in 1080p project and rendering in 4k?

There is two option at sequence setting. Video and video previews. If the video set 4k, and the video previews set 1080, i shoud not be downscale at rendering.


Video rendering taking 13 Hrs to render for a normal video less than 2 minute

Rendering speed depends on a lot of factors. Things that slow the render down include

using a lot of CPU intensive effects,
lots of CPU intensive precomps,
effects which require multiple frames to be calculated, such as echo or time displacement,
using many source layers, particularly high resolution sources that take time to read from disk,
some effects are just dog slow because they've never been optimised that well,

and lastly, but probably most importantly:

memory issues: if you run out of RAM then it starts swapping to the hard drive, which even on a fast SSD is an order of magnitude slower than memory, so even simple compositions will take an inordinate amount of time.


What are the pros and cons of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for video editing?

As you mentioned, mobility would be your biggest pro by far. With the Surface Pro with highest specs (as you mentioned), you'll get a very competitive machine. The biggest thing you'll be missing (from my perspective) is a dedicated graphics card. You can probably still pull off multiple monitors, but it's not going to be pushing it for sure. The Surface Book actually does have a dedicated GPU, and could combine that mobility with a powerful graphics card (it does come at quite a bit extra cost, though).

The best thing I've found with my Surface (a Surface Pro 3, admittedly, but still in the same family) is that I can connect a mouse and external keyboard via Bluetooth (was never a fan of the Type Cover) and still have my USB port free.


Subtitles do not match spoken dialogue. Why?

This is an educated guess as I'm not sure anyone can give a concrete answer as to this particular show's specific reason, but since it was dubbed, there's a solid possibility that the subtitles are a translation of the English subtitles while the voice over may have been translated by the dubbing team and potentially altered by what the voice over actors could deliver with a decent dub.

In my experience, not all shows are run with a strict adherence to the script.  Changes sometimes need to be made for actors to deliver naturally and there is often some flexibility in exact lines.  If the same flexibility was extended to the dub team, then it seems quite likely that they would deviate from the exact script translation.

If they are using the same subtitle timing for multiple languages, then it might not have been worth having someone sit through it and dictate the subtitles and try to align them to the proper markers vs simply directly translating the existing English subtitles.


With ffmpeg how do I imply spatial position when mixing mono to stereo

This is something that we can't really give an absolute answer because we don't have your inputs and what is "best" will be fairly subjective.

You could just try using the pan filter with a bigger gain factor for one side. Something like:

pan=stereo|c0=0.8*c0|0.2*c1=c0

Depending on your inputs adding adelay may make it sound less flat:

pan=stereo|c0=0.8*c0|c1=0.2*c0,adelay=0|10

You can use stereotools filter if you prefer as it has many options (I completely forgot about this filter...can't keep up).


Davinci Resolve: How to easily add background-colour to text?

Use a Text+ for the title.  In the Inspector, go to the Shading Tab, and in the Shading Elements section, change the "Select Element" dropdown to "4" and check "Enabled."  Change the color of the background from the default blue to black, and if you don't want the black boxes to split between characters, then change Properties->Level to "Line" or "Word."
The numbered "Shading Elements," in case you're wondering, are preset slots, where you can save combinations of settings for Fusion Text+ nodes.  A few of the slots are pre-populated with commonly used defaults like this, outline, and drop shadow, for example.  Multiple elements can be active simultaneously.
I'm using Resolve 17Beta9.  I know that R17 allows more of Fusion's parameters to be published in the Edit and Cut page inspectors, but I don't remember if this particular control was new to those pages in R17.  If you don't see the controls in the Cut/Edit page inspectors, and you're using an earlier version of Resolve, switch to the Fusion page, and they'll be available there.
If you don't want to repeat the styling steps every time you want another title to appear, you can save a template by dragging the Text+ clip (after you've adjusted the look) from the timeline to the media pool.  Then, dragging the template from the media pool to the timeline will instantiate a new title, with the saved look, and you only need to change the text.  There are other ways to do this when you want to re-use the same style across projects, but this method is the simplest.


Creating a particle system explosion without a collision

If you want to use a physics simulation, your best bet is to have a collision but don't render the object that collides.  I haven't used 3DSMax personally in a number of years, but there should be an option to have the object physically impact the scene but not be rendered by the render engine itself.  Then you simply do the collision to occur at frame 450 and it should behave the way you want as it does in the tutorial you are following.


How to easily insert frames at the end of a video?

A quick Google search for the terms add photo with virtual dub shows this result. Quoting:

  save the titlescreen in bitmap (same size of video, obviously)
  import image in VirtualDub (with Open command)
  select the single frame you get after opening and copy it
  open your video
  paste the frame you copied in the desired position (every ctrl-v is a single frame, if your movie is 25fps, just paste 25 times to create
  1-second title sequence)

For your case you don't have a titlescreen but just a regular image.

You can select frames in VirtualDub as following:

Click on the timeline on the location where your frame that you want to select. In the image below I clicked on frame 30.
Click on the button where the arrow points to. This sets your beginning of the selection.

If you want to select one frame, click on the 31st frame (as in the image below) and click the button that is indicated by the arrow. This sets your endpoint of the selection.

You can also select a series of frames this way.


How to encode Apple ProRes on Windows or Linux?

As of December 2018, Adobe Creative Cloud aps, such as Premier, After Effects and Adobe Media Encoder give you the ability to encode in ProRes without any post-hoc conversion.
If you don't use Adobe CC aps or want a free, open source tool, ffmpeg can encode video using ProRes, and runs cross-platform. ffmpeg is a command line tool, which means that it can be automated.
There are a plethora of free GUIs for ffmpeg for those unfamiliar with the command line.
This ffmpeg command:
ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 3 -c:a pcm_s16le output.mov

will do the trick.
The -profile switch takes an integer from -1 to 5 to match the ProRes profiles:

-1: auto (default)
0: proxy ≈ 45Mbps YUV 4:2:2
1: lt ≈ 102Mbps YUV 4:2:2
2: standard ≈ 147Mbps YUV 4:2:2
3: hq ≈ 220Mbps YUV 4:2:2
4: 4444≈ 330Mbps YUVA 4:4:4:4
5: 4444xq ≈ 500Mbps YUVA 4:4:4:4

The approximate bit-rates are for 1920×1080p footage. All of the profiles are progressive, 10-bit, and little-endian (byte order).
The profiles are explained on the Apple website. There doesn't as yet seem to be support for RGBA encoding in 4444 and 444xq which the official Apple codec supports.
You may also use prores instead of prores_ks, which may be a little faster, but does not offer the 4444 profiles. For more background, please read this FFmpeg Wiki article.


Timeline isn't yellow above a section of a Multicam video

Looks like this one was a bug in Premiere. First, I noticed that the yellow bar was only missing for one of the clips that was part of the Multicam video. E.g. I noticed there were multiple "holes" in the timeline, but these only happened whenever the multicam sequence was trying to use "Video1".

I went into Multicam edit more by right-clicking the Multicam video in the project editor, and choosing Open in Timeline.

Not sure what fixed it, but I toggled both the Toggle Track Output (eye icon) off then on again, and also Disabled and then Enabled the clip in question. This resolved the issue.


Usage of Target and Maximum Bitrate with the H264 Codec in Premiere Pro

You seem to have a good grip on what these parameters are all about.

The target bitrate is what the encoder tries to average throughout the video.

The maximum bitrate is the roof for how high the bitrate can go. How high it can spike.

It's a good idea to leave a substantial amount of headroom, 5-10%, between the target and the maximum bitrate.

Best of luck!


Premiere Pro CC - Creating an interview video with multiple camera angles

Premiere Pro has a multicam-functionality which you can use. To create a new multicam-sequence, select the three clips of your three cameras in the project panel, right-click → Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence (you might also be able to do that within your existing timeline). Then, select which synchronizing method you want to use (audio works just fine most of the time).

Once you click OK, it will create a new sequence that you can insert into your timeline just like any other clip or sequence. Once you've done that, click on the screwdriver icon in the programm panel and switch from Composite Video to Multi-Camera. Then, press 0 to Toggle Multi-Cam recording (there's also a button for that hidden behind the button editor).

Once you've done all that, you can simply playback the sequence and switch between cameras while watching (either by clicking on the different views in the program panel or using the number-keys on your keyboard as shortcuts). Premiere Pro will record the the switches and insert cuts accordingly. You can also go back and change the cuts as many times as you want.

Note that this is only one possible workflow. For some other options and more a more detailed explanation, check out the corresponding manual page.


A few things to try:

Make sure your camera footage is at the same frames per second as your comp.

Instead of selecting a single track point, try drawing a lassoo around several points.  You'll get a target plane instead.  Make sure it's facing the right way (if it's not - redraw your lassoo around some different points).

Open the Advanced triangle in the camera tracker's effects settings, and check the box marked "Detailed Analysis".

Make sure you do your tracking at 100% zoom level in the display.  (This definitely used to cause issues - maybe they've fixed it now).

If there's something weird in your footage that will damage the tracking quality, try masking it out and precomping the footage before you start tracking.

Hope it helps.


How to align a shape to stick to another in AE?

The tool you need is Maths (or Math, if you like), specifically that most beautiful of mathematickal arts: trigonometry.

First set the width of the base of your triangle to be the same as the sides of your polygon. Since you know the radius of the polygon, and it's a hexagon, that's easy - a hexagon is basically six equilateral triangles so the sides are the same as the radius.

So once you've made your hexagon, make a triangle with it's base the same as the radius of your polygon. Hmm, that's a bit more tricky. The measurement for polygons is always the outer radius, and the base of a triangle is not the same as the radius. We're going to need Pythagoras, and his Persian mates.

Since we know the base (labeled b) and we know the angles (it should be obvious that the acute angle is half of the outer angle of the equilateral triangle - 30˚), we can use the law of sines to work out the base. Wikipedia states as did Abu Mahmud Hamid ibn Khidr Khojandi (but in Persian):

where a, b, and c are the lengths of the sides of a triangle, and A, B, and C are the opposite angles (see the figure to the right), while d is the diameter of the triangle's circumcircle.

We're in luck. The circumcircle of an equilateral triangle is its radius, so we can use d as our radius, and since we know b = half the radius of the polygon–lets call it p–and the angle B we can write:

(p/2)/sin(B) = d

filling in the numbers for B

d = (p/2)/sin(60) = p/1.73205080756888

where p is the radius of the hexagon. Now you can work this all out with a calculator, but if you change your hexagon you'll have to do it all again. Machines will do the work: use expressions to do the heavy lifting. alt/opt-click the stopwatch next to the outer radius property of the triangle and we put in this expression:

var p = thisComp.layer("Shape Layer 1").content("Polystar 1").content("Polystar Path 1").outerRadius;
0.5 * p/Math.sin(Math.PI/3)

Hopefully you can see that this is the same operation as above, but since expressions use radians instead of degrees we're using π/3 instead of 60˚. Now no matter what size you make your polygon the side of the triangle will always match it.

Onwards and upwards. Now we need to attach the triangle to the edge of the hexagon. First, we'll make the hexagon the parent of the triangle, so that if we want to transform the hexagon all the triangles will follow. It also means that we can calculate the position of the triangle relative to the hexagon, avoiding having to do a lot of unnecessary transforms.

So for the right side of the hexagon, we can work out how far along the x axis the triangle has to be to be lined up with the edge exactly. Once again trigonometry is the key. There's a right angle triangle who's hypotenuse is the outer radius of he hexagon and whose base is the distance we need to offset the edge of the triangle.

b/sin(60) = r/sin(90) = r

because sine 90˚ is 1, so

b=r*sin(60)

So in the position property of the triangle we put

r=thisComp.layer("Shape Layer 1").content("Polystar 1").content("Polystar Path 1").outerRadius;
[r * Math.sin(Math.PI/3), 0]

Now you can see that the anchor point of the triangle aligns perfectly with the edge of the hexagon.

Problem is, we want the base of the triangle to be the part that is aligned. So we'll offset the anchor point from the centre to the base. How do we work out how far that is. Yes, you already know, some more trig.

We know r, we worked it out before. and we knwo the angles so we can just give the Law of Sines another thrashing.

a/sin(30) = r/sin(90) = r
a = r*sin(30)

Look familiar yet? So to get r for the triangle into this equation we just grab the radius value (or you could put in the formula, that's probably more precise, but it's unlikely to make a difference). The easy way of plugging in the correctly worded value of the triangle's radius is to use the pick-whip:

With the expression editor for the anchor point active, delete the contents, then type [0, to open some square brackets and provide 0 as the X value, don't forget the comma, then to provide the Y value drag the pick-whip to the radius value, then type in * Math.sin(Math.PI/6)], don't forget to close the square brackets. The expression should be something like:

[0, content("Polystar 1").content("Polystar Path 1").outerRadius*Math.sin(Math.PI/6)]

Now we just need to rotate the triangle 90˚ to line it up.

Ok, now it's time to enter three dee land. Turn both layers into 3D layers. Everything should stay as it is, but now we can fold the triangle up.

If you activate the rotate tool you'll see the rotation handles for the triangle coming out of its anchor point. As you can see the one we need to rotate is around the x axis. Give it a try with the rotate tool and you'll notice that is actually affecting the Y rotation. This is because we've rotated the triangle 90˚ on the Z axis already. The reason I used the rotate tool is that trying to work out rotation transforms like that makes my head hurt too much. Now I know what property I need to add our next expression to, I just have to work a couple of things out.

Firstly, the triangle can't stay as an equilateral triangle, because it won't make a diamond shape that way, it will just fold perfectly flat on to the hexagon. we need to increase its scale, then we have to do some more trig.

Let's scale it an arbitrary amount. Whatever looks good for you. Imma just grab the drag handles with the move tool and stretch.

Now we have to work out what angle we need to rotate to get the tip of the triangle above the centre of the hexagon. Here's a screen shot from custom view, where I've approximated it by eye, and drawn the triangle we need to solve to work out our angle.

We know b, we don't know a, and we have to work out h. h will be the height of the triangle once it has been scaled up.

The height of the triangle can be worked out with the Law of Sines, or if you're bored of that you can also use the fact that we know the distance from the center to the base - it's the amount we offset the anchor point - and we know the distance from the centre to the tip - that's the outer radius. Multiply it by the scale/100 to get the final, scaled height. In expression form:

h = (transform.scale[1]/100)*(transform.anchorPoint[1] + content("Polystar 1").content("Polystar Path 1").outerRadius);

So, again with the Law-o-Sines, and the previous diagram. We know b, that's the distance from the centre of the hexagon to the base of the triangle, and we know that the angle A that we want to find out will be 90-B (the sum of the angles in a triangle being 180˚). So:

B/sin(B) = h/sin(90)  = h
sin(B) = b/h

so B is arc-cosine(b/h) arc-cosine being the inverse of sine, AKA asin.

in expression form:

h = transform.scale[1]*content("Polystar 1").content("Polystar Path 1").outerRadius/(100*Math.sin(Math.PI/6));
b = transform.position[0];
90+radiansToDegrees(Math.asin(b/h))

The 90+ in the last line is because it was 90˚ out when I tried it, there's probably a sound mathematical reason, like I should have used acos instead of asin, but whatevs, it works.

So now our triangle will always have the tip in line with the midpoint of the hexagon, no matter what you scale it. Here's how it looks from side on:

A thing of beauty. Now to avoid doing a whole lot more thinkination for the other sides, let's use a hack. Make a new null, make it a 3D layer and set its parent to the hexagon, placing its centre at the centre of the hexagon (hold the shift key while you drag the parenting pick-whip).

Now change the parent of the triangle to the null. Select the null and the triangle and duplicate them. Rotate the newly created null 60˚ on the Z-axis, and voila, your second facet. Rinse, repeat four more times. I'll leave you to work out how to get the bottom half of the diamond. Ok, all right, hint: rotate the seventh null 180˚ on the x or y axis.

Oh, WAIT Stop, before you do this, just one thing you might want to do. Link the scale of the new triangle you made when you duplicated the original one to the scale of the original triangle. That way you can scale them all easily. Do that by alt/option-clicking the scale stopwatch on the second triangle and dragging the pick-whip to the scale property of the first. Use this second layer as the source of all succesive clones and they will follow the scale of the first layer, meanign you could easily animate that.

Add some lights and fiddle around with the material options of the layers until it looks super special, and you're gold. Maths: it works, suckers.

TL;DR

Download the project file here.

Also, yeah, do this in a proper 3D program like C4D (since you've already got it with AE) or Blender (since free), unless you're nuts like me.


After Effects CC Audio Playback not working

If you're on a machine with a number pad, then by default num-pad 0 is the ram preview button. If you're on a laptop with no num-pad, then try crtl0.

If you look in the Window menu you'll find a Previews panel that will let you set the keyboard shortcuts and their behaviours. More if you want to RTFM here.


How do I encode videos into h.264 at 8k resolution?

Are you sure the 8k videos on your computer are actually h.264, and not h.265?  The max resolution of h.264 level 5.2 is still 4096x2305.  To convert beyond that in Premiere, you need to chose HEVC (h.265) as the format in the export settings dialog.  The HEVC stands for High Efficiency Video Coding, and you might have that confused with "advanced video encoding."  H.265 supports up to 8192×4320.  Upscaling your 4k in Premiere shouldn't be a problem, either.  I'd do it by changing the project settings to my desired resolution, then scaling the timeline video to fit, but you could probably also do it in the export settings dialog.


Why is my Time Ruler in After Effects displaying seconds like this?

I know that Cmd clicking on the time stamp in the left corner alternates between frames and seconds:

Thats exactly whats happening here.You switched to frames so After Effects is showing the frame count instead of a second count. Do a Ctrl / Cmd click on the time stamp and you will get seconds:

To see all time values in the timeline simply drag the zoom slider to the right or use Alt and the mousewheel in order to 'zoom in':


How can I convert large jpgs (15000 x 10840px) to video?

That's way more than h.264 can handle. The maximum resolution for h.264 is 4096×2304 with Level 5.1 or 5.2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Levels

There are lossless codecs who can theoretically handle this video resolution but it would make no sense to do this. There is no hardware capable of playing videos in this resolution at any acceptable frame rate.
Atleast none that is in any way affordable by a normal human being.


MP4 with AAC audio and h.264 video is definitely playable on the PS3, and since it's an extension of Apple's .mov files, it should work on all the iDevices too.

For maximum compatibility, use the h.264 'baseline' profile, and avoid AAC-HE.

Older devices (like some DVD players) may require XVID video and AC3 audio in an AVI container, but that won't apply to either the PS3 or iPad.


This depends on how much resources you are willing to invest into upscaling content. The default setting for libswscale in VLC seems to be bicubic, if you intend to use more sophisticated resizing filters and a particular target resolution then you should upscale the video during encode this way you also don't have to rely on the capabilities and customizing options of the player device or software.


Video editor with basic color correction for commodity hardware?

Finding non-linear editors on a computer can be really hard. The linear approach in the old days was actually a forced limitation due to the restrictions you had with tapes. You needed to add clips successively. Sure, you could make an insert but at the risk of messing up the time-base and other things.

That being said - the non-linear/linear is not the reason why editing struggle on a less capable CPU. To the computer it doesn't matter at all in what succession clips comes in so implementing a restriction such as linear approach has no point.

The main reason for what you experience comes from the the resolution of the video, its compression codec, the disk capabilities and memory available for caching the video/sound. If you work in HD the amount of raw data is many times that of f.ex. NTSC/PAL and naturally gets harder to process for a computer.

You will see these problems in any editor as the common factor is the computer itself. The Adobe suite and other professional suites can do a lot of things with a video, but as long as you don't utilize effects and so forth there is really not much load on the computer besides from processing the video itself.

The professional software has also addresses performance issues to get the most out of what is available. The risk is actually to loose performance with very basic software that do no pre-processing of the video and sound to enable it run smoother, implementing smart optimized caching, not to mention utilizing a GPU and so forth, and only relies on loading from disk as-is.

The (permanent) solution is to upgrade the hardware or run the software on capable hardware.

Tip to get around with a less capable computer:

Before starting to edit you can reduce the resolution of the original clips to a low-res version. Then edit with these in that resolution. When finished create a new project set to the resolution of the final product and import the original full resolution clips and an edit list. This way you can work with low-resolution on a less capable CPU.

See EDL files or OMF interchange files or AAF files (what suits best), and refer to the software's manual on how to export and import edit files. You might need to rename the clip names in the file to point to the full resolution of the clips so have a naming convention ready from the beginning when importing clips from the camera to make life easier.


First you need to extract the frame that you wish to freeze. This is easy:

avconv -i test.webm -vf "select='eq(n,1)'" out.jpeg

Then you want to put that frame for the appropriate time interval.

avconv -i test.webm -loop 1 -i out.jpeg -an \
-filter_complex "[1:v]trim=start=0:end=5[ol];[0:v]setpts=125+PTS[nv];[nv][ol]overlay=eof_action=pass[final]" \
-map '[final]' -c:v libtheora -q:v 8 outtest.ogv

Firstly you will see that i didn't want to mess with audio, but if you'll find it too difficult, let me know and i will look into the quick way to align it as well.

Now what i'm doing here consists of several strange things. Firstly i am taking that frame that was generated before and i am creating a continuous loop video from it. And afterwards i cut first 5 seconds of it with the first filter trim. Then i do a quick and dirty move of all the timestamps of the main video by 5 seconds (125 frames). And finally comes an overlay filter, which places the grabbed frame entirely over the blank screen that was generated by shifting the video 5 seconds into the future.

Tested with avconv version v12_dev0-680-g3a724a7 built on Jan 22 2015 18:13:02

How to build avconv:

In terminal go to any directory where you are comfortable to place libav's code
run git clone git://git.libav.org/libav.git libav
enter into libav direcotry
run --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --disable-encoders --enable-encoder=mjpeg --enable-encoder=flac --enable-encoder=ffvhuff --enable-encoder=libspeex --enable-encoder=libtheora --enable-encoder=libvorbis --enable-encoder=libxvid --enable-encoder=libopenjpeg --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libxvid --bindir=/home/USERNAME/bin

Note that here i am assuming that you have ~/bin directory, that is added to your execution PATH. If you don't just remove that option

Run make

It is possible that you will not have some libraries, if you encounter such errors either install them or remove "enable" options for those libs. Keep in mind that removing those options can make it impossible to generate files with some codecs.

Run make install (or if you chose to not place binary within your user directory, sudo make install).

Edit: Unfortunately due to a bug, video becomes shorter than it should have been. I have reported it https://bugzilla.libav.org/show_bug.cgi?id=858


How do I export video to crop size in Final Cut Pro X?

It is best if your timeline uses the resolution you want your export in.
Select the Project in your Library and click on "Modify" in the Inspector. Now you can change the resolution for the entire Project.
This will not change the crop of your clips though.


What are the most mergeable codecs? What is the best codecs for intermediate videos?

Mp4 with aac audio and h.264 video (mp4 isn't a codec as such, it's a container) isn't a good intermediate format. It is lossy, and the video is generally not all I-frame (meaning that to display a frame it references previous and following frames). h.264/aac/mp4 are great for delivery because they efficiently pack a lot of perceptual quality into a small file.

You're better off using an all-i-frame codec. Notable examples are Apple ProRes, Avid DNxHD and Cineform. These are all lossy, but minimally so. You can also use a lossless codec, like FFV1, but the speed and storage this requires might make it unworkable. Similarly you're best off using PCM (uncompressed) for your audio.

I'm not sure if that is going to affect the problem of the gaps. That might be an artefact of the way the video and audio are multiplexed.


In After Effects how can I generate the value of an opposite x position and then send that value to an effect on another layer?

I think what you're asking to do is simple using Expressions.
If you alt-click on the stop watch of any keyframe-able control you can write an expression to connect that control to another control.
So if you want to control the end of ramp's x position using the start of ramp's x position in your example, it would be:
x = 4480-(effect("Gradient Ramp")("Start of Ramp")[0]);
y = 1080;
[x,y];

The [0] indicates an array - it means "take the x position of the "start of ramp", which has two values, x and y, which can be called as [0] or 2 in the array.
To duplicate this in another layer, duplicate your first layer using cmd+D, then add an Expression to the start of ramp in the duplicated layer:

You can use the pickwhip to select the control you want to enter into the expression


What software can I use that provides easy to use art and animations to make videos like this?

If you are not an illustrator, or at least willing to tweak illustrations to fit your purpose, yes, you need to actually use the clips provided by one specific vendor.

There are some online tools like www.vyond.com (former GoAnimate) but it can become pretty expensive if you do not use it very often.

An interesting program is What was at some time Crazy Talk Animator, but is now Cartoon animator https://www.reallusion.com/cartoon-animator/default.html it has some built-in characters, but you need to buy some other models if you want to change the style, or you can create your own. Both options add to the price.

You also can use free programs like Blender and Inkscape with great results, but you need to invest in the time to actually create the assets yourself.


Do video containers influence the video quality?

The choice of container has no bearing on stream quality, which is determined solely by encoder parameters.

What may happen is that the stream could have non-standard or at least unexpected colorimetry properties and some containers can't store that metadata or may have stored them incorrectly. Also possible is that the metadata is correct but the player doesn't parse them correctly or at all depending on the container. This can lead to a difference in rendering, which you perceive as a change in quality.


DaVinci Resolve 16 shows black screen on imported media

I suspect you are using an unsupported codec.  Are you using the Linux for windows version?  What is the video you are trying to import encoded as?


How to avoid quality loss on yotube/fb when encoding images into video via FFMPEG

YouTube re-encodes whatever you give it. The process is lossy so there will be a quality reduction. All you can do is give it a very high quality:

ffmpeg -framerate 10 -pattern_type glob -i 'resized/*.JPG' -vf scale=1280:-2 -c:v libx264 -crf 17 out.mp4

Use -crf 17 or -crf 18 for higher quality.
Try without -pix_fmt yuv420p. I'm not sure what YouTube uses for pixel format conversion, but perhaps it will look better than the FFmpeg swscale if they are using something different.
No need for -profile:v high. Let the encoder choose. You usually only need to set a profile when your target device is limited in profile support.


Best rendering options for Sony Vegas 8 Pro?

I would go with a .mp4 format, if it is in HD, the AVCHD mp4 would be better compressed and better quality, but regular mp4 would be faster and compatible with more things, although I do believe that it is compatible with windows even without quicktime. I am not sure though if you can render AVCHD in sony vegas pro 8, I work out of both 9 and 10, but the AVCHD support may have come starting at 9, but I'm not sure. regardless, you should still have support for regular mp4 which would probably be the best option.


The XF-105 will acquire native 24p video, that is 23.97 fps.
3:2 pulldown is only added to the Composite/YUV and SD/HD-SDI signal interfaces during 24p, and 2:2 pulldown during 30p.

Can you upload the video seq somewhere, and I'll have a look at it for you.


Linux - looking for a way to produce analog effects for video

Have you tried compositing it with Blender? I think you can achieve pretty much what you want with it.

Look for tutorials but here is an example. This is a tutorial for creating a hologram, but you can take the part on how to create the horizontal lines from the cathodic ray TVs.


Improving speed for aerender.exe (Adobe After effects CC 2017)

I would try using a seperate ssd for your project files and assets. You'd have one for your os and software and one for the project.


Removing / Overlaying logo on mp4 video format with ffmpeg on linux

Your command is missing double quotes around the filter definition :

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "delogo=x=270:y=190:w=40:h=40" -c:a copy output.mp4

(as explained in FFmpeg filters documentation)

Nevertheless, this filter will decode and re-encode your video stream.


MediaEncodingCluster is an Enterprise Class, Video Cluster Environment with a Plattform Independent Client - Server Architecture for distributed video/audio converting/encoding tool over a grid Computing Network Design. more on http://docs.codergrid.de

Note: I haven't personally tried this yet. I'll update with some benchmarks when I do.

Sources:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bripper/

http://codergrid.de/trac/


First, this is the right place to ask this question.

Second, looking at iMovie, I think that the drop shadow is built into that particular title. Have you tried just using the "Standard" title and setting the font & color to the right one? It seems like that would fix the problem.


Converting container or transcode movies to iPhone from command line (os x)

You can use ffprobe (which comes with ffmpeg) to give you info about your movie files from the command line.

You may require some shell-fu to convert the output of ffprobe into something you can use though. I've done this in the past; basically I pipe the output of ffprobe to sed or awk to grab the bits of info I need, then use this to drive the parameters of ffmpeg.