How do the super resolution filters in FFmpeg work?

I realise this question is pretty old now but it still comes up quite high in search results so I would like to document how I got the "sr" to work (August 2020) in case it can help someone else. Before proceeding it is worth saying that I was not overly impressed by the result. I felt on my test videos that lanczos did an ever so slightly better job. Bear in mind that my test was upscaling from 640x360 flv file to 1920x1080 mp4. I have not tested many other videos and I also have quite a lot to learn about SR like if I feed it different training material will I get a better result.
What you will need

A CUDA enabled GPU with a capability of at least 6.0. I worked all
the way through this once with a GeForce GT710 (capability of 3.5)
only to get to the final ffmpeg upscaling for it to tell me I needed
a capability of 6.0. It did proceed to use the CPU but was very slow.
I then went through it again with a GeForce GTX 1050TI 4GB card and
saw a noticable performance gain.
At least 70GB free disk space. The training scripts download about 42GB worth of videos and 9GB worth of images. The rest is used up generating the model.
Patience. Generating the datasets took a good few hours and training just one model took nearly the whole day.
I had a couple of spare computers (one server and one pc) so I was able to build this from scratch and let it run. First I tried it on Ubuntu Server 20.04 and 18.04. Final run through with the new GPU was on Xubuntu 20.04. The only reason I went with Xubuntu in the end was because I was also investigating a new USB capture device for VHS but the instructions below will work with Server.

Setup
THIS GUIDE IS OFFERED AS IS WITH NO GUARANTEES IT WILL WORK FOR YOU. PLEASE TAKE CARE AND ONLY FOLLOW IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
My starting point is a fresh install of Xubuntu 20.04. I have a GeForce GTX 1050TI GPU that is not my main GPU and there is no monitor connected to it. I do not think it should matter though if it is your main GPU or if there is a monitor connected.
FROM https://www.tensorflow.org/install/gpu
Add NVIDIA package repositories
wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1804/x86_64/cuda-repo-ubuntu1804_10.1.243-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1804/x86_64/7fa2af80.pub
sudo dpkg -i cuda-repo-ubuntu1804_10.1.243-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get update
wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/machine-learning/repos/ubuntu1804/x86_64/nvidia-machine-learning-repo-ubuntu1804_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./nvidia-machine-learning-repo-ubuntu1804_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get update

Install NVIDIA driver
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends nvidia-driver-450

REBOOT, then check that GPUs are visible using the command: nvidia-smi. Do not proceed if you do not see a table output. If you have a message saying there is no device then you need to troubleshoot this stage. For example in my first build the BIOS was set to use the onboard graphics card first and changing it to use the offboard card got it working. I didn't have this problem in the last build on a different PC.
Install development and runtime libraries (~4GB). Here we are installing both CUDA 10.0, 10.1. The training scripts and filter are a couple of years old now and we therefore need to accommodate them.
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends \
    cuda-10-0 \
    libcudnn7=7.6.5.32-1+cuda10.0  \
    libcudnn7-dev=7.6.5.32-1+cuda10.0

Install TensorRT. Requires that libcudnn7 is installed above.
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends libnvinfer6=6.0.1-1+cuda10.0 \
    libnvinfer-dev=6.0.1-1+cuda10.0 \
    libnvinfer-plugin6=6.0.1-1+cuda10.0

And now the 10.1 versions
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends \
    cuda-10-1 \
    libcudnn7=7.6.5.32-1+cuda10.1  \
    libcudnn7-dev=7.6.5.32-1+cuda10.1

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends libnvinfer6=6.0.1-1+cuda10.1 \
    libnvinfer-dev=6.0.1-1+cuda10.1 \
    libnvinfer-plugin6=6.0.1-1+cuda10.1

FROM https://www.tensorflow.org/install/pip#system-install
The guide above suggests to install venv here but this was not a concern for me so I left it out. If you are familiar with Python then go ahead and use venv.
sudo apt install python3-dev python3-pip
sudo pip3 install --upgrade tensorflow

Add some libraries temporarily to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. We will make this permanent a little later.
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib:/usr/local/cuda-10.0/lib64:/usr/local/cuda-10.1/lib64:/usr/local/cuda-10.2/lib64:/usr/local/cuda/extras/CUPTI/lib64

You will notice I am adding cuda 10.2 here as well but we did not install it. For some reason one of the library files (libcublas) when installing 10.1 is taken from 10.2.
We can verify with the below (check for errors). There is a lot of output, mainly information and you want to check that it has seen your GPU and has successfully opened all the libraries.
python3 -c "import tensorflow as tf; print(tf.reduce_sum(tf.random.normal([1000, 1000])))"

Add LD_LIBRARY_PATH to ld.so.conf.d
sudo vi /etc/ld.so.conf.d/cuda-additional.conf

Add the lines
/usr/local/cuda/extras/CUPTI/lib64
/usr/local/cuda-10.2/lib64

The other 2 paths are automatically added for us during install.
FROM https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#sr-1
Install the TensorFlow for C library. If you follow the link given at the above it shows you Tensorflow version 2.3.0 (or later), however, as mentioned earlier the filter code is old and requires version 1.15.0. So:
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/libtensorflow/libtensorflow-gpu-linux-x86_64-1.15.0.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf libtensorflow-gpu-linux-x86_64-1.15.0.tar.gz

FROM https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/Ubuntu
Now we fetch and compile ffmpeg. So install some dependencies first:
sudo apt-get update -qq && sudo apt-get -y install \
  autoconf \
  automake \
  build-essential \
  cmake \
  git-core \
  libass-dev \
  libfreetype6-dev \
  libgnutls28-dev \
  libsdl2-dev \
  libtool \
  libva-dev \
  libvdpau-dev \
  libvorbis-dev \
  libxcb1-dev \
  libxcb-shm0-dev \
  libxcb-xfixes0-dev \
  pkg-config \
  texinfo \
  wget \
  yasm \
  zlib1g-dev

mkdir -p ~/ffmpeg_sources ~/bin
sudo apt-get install nasm libx264-dev libx265-dev libnuma-dev libvpx-dev libfdk-aac-dev libmp3lame-dev libopus-dev libunistring-dev

cd ~/ffmpeg_sources && \
wget -O ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2 https://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2 && \
tar xjvf ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2 && \
cd ffmpeg && \
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib/pkgconfig" ./configure \
  --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" \
  --pkg-config-flags="--static" \
  --extra-cflags="-I$HOME/ffmpeg_build/include" \
  --extra-ldflags="-L$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib" \
  --extra-libs="-lpthread -lm" \
  --bindir="$HOME/bin" \
  --enable-gpl \
  --enable-gnutls \
  --enable-libass \
  --enable-libfdk-aac \
  --enable-libfreetype \
  --enable-libmp3lame \
  --enable-libopus \
  --enable-libvorbis \
  --enable-libvpx \
  --enable-libx264 \
  --enable-libx265 \
  --enable-libtensorflow \
  --enable-nonfree && \
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make && \
make install && \
hash -r

Notice that I have left out libaom and added libtensorflow. This has created new binaries under ~/bin and added it to your profile and path so it can be called from anywhere. If you do not want to replace your existing ffmpeg then be sure to change the bindir and paths as required.
Reload our profile
source ~/.profile

FROM https://github.com/XueweiMeng/sr/tree/sr_dnn_native
So now we are almost at the stage where we can start to generate and train the models, however, the scripts are old so we need to modify them somewhat. Get them first (you can specify any path to download it to or get it manually with GUI:
cd ~
wget https://github.com/XueweiMeng/sr/archive/sr_dnn_native.zip
unzip sr_dnn_native.zip
rm sr_dnn_native.zip
cd sr-sr_dnn_native

Now edit all python files that have "import tensorflow as tf", i.e.
datasets/prepare_dataset.py
datasets/prepare_div2k_dataset.py
evaluate.py
generate_header_and_model.py
models/model_vespcn.py
models/model_espcn.py
models/image_warp.py
models/model_srcnn.py
models/model.py
models/dataset.py
models/model_vsrnet.py
train.py

After the imports in each script add the line:
tf = tf.compat.v1

For example using datasets/prepare_dataset.py:
import os
import argparse
from tqdm import tqdm
import cv2
import numpy as np
import json
import tensorflow as tf
from PIL import Image

tf = tf.compat.v1

class SceneChangeDetector:

There is one other depreciated function we need to take care of and that is imresize.
Edit the file datasets/prepare_dataset.py
Replace line 8: from scipy.misc import imresize
With: from PIL import Image
Replace line 127: frame_lr = imresize(frames[k], (lr_h, lr_w), interp='bicubic')
With: frame_lr = np.array(Image.fromarray(frames[k]).resize(size=(lr_h, lr_w)))
We can finally start generating. Install some dependencies.
sudo pip3 install Pillow tqdm opencv-python

Generate (expect it to take a good few hours and you will likely see a lot of information output and warnings of almost depreciated functions, these are ok):
sh generate_datasets.sh

This will download 11 videos totalling around 43GB and images totalling around 9GB and can take a few hours to run depending on hardware.
And now for the training (expect these to take about a day each). The models after this will be found in the extracted ~/sr-sr_dnn_native folder if that is where you saved the Git zip file to:
SRCNN
sh train_srcnn.sh
python3 generate_header_and_model.py --model=srcnn --ckpt_path=logdir/srcnn_batch_32_lr_1e-3_decay_adam/train

ESPCN
sh train_espcn.sh
python3 generate_header_and_model.py --model=espcn --ckpt_path=logdir/espcn_batch_32_lr_1e-3_decay_adam/train

Once the training is complete you can use the filter. It seems as though ESPCN only upscales by a factor of 2 whereas with SRCNN you can specify 2, 3, or 4. I moved the models generated into the same folder as my videos for ease of use but you can simply point to the models wherever they are.
e.g.
ffmpeg -i <input_video> -vf sr=dnn_backend=tensorflow:scale_factor=3:model=srcnn.pb -q 15 -preset slow <output_video>
ffmpeg -i <input_video> -vf sr=dnn_backend=tensorflow:model=espcn.pb -q 15 -preset slow <output_video>

Here is an interesting video of this in use and was probably one of the only places I have seen anyone use this. In it he suggests it can only work on a single plane but I did not find that to be the case. His results actually appear to be quite good:

This is the ffmpeg command he refers to in the video at 14:44:
ffmpeg -i my_video_540p.mp4 -filter_complex "format=pix_fmts=yuv420p,extractplanes=y+u+v[y][u][v];[y] sr=dnn_backend=tensorflow:scale_factor=2:model=espcn.model [y_scale];[u] scale=960:-2 [u_scale];[v] scale=960:-2 [v_scale];[y_scale][u_scale][v_scale] mergeplanes=0x001020:yuv420p [merged]" -map "[merged]" -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -pix_fmt yuv420p my_video_1080p.mp4


Panasonic G7 - Low cost zoom lens for video

A common zoom range of Panasonic MFT lenses is 14-42(45)mm. As an owner of such a lens I found out it's quite a compromise for city videos. 14mm is wide, but often times not wide enough for buildings. 42mm is tele, but not enough for detail shots.

Here are some with a more practical zoom range:

Panasonic Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm f/4.0-5.8 ASPH./MEGA O.I.S.
Panasonic Lumix G Vario 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. POWER O.I.S.
Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 35-100mm f/4.0-5.6 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S.

I don't want to get more specific into prices, because they may change fast or be different in other countries.


How can you use ffmpeg's afftdn -sn flag to sample noise from a reference noise file?

Commands are instructions sent from an interface external to the filter, usually an external program using a ZMQ protocol. There is a filter that can execute commands which is what I'll use here.

Base syntax is

ffmpeg -i in -af "asendcmd=c='0.0 afftdn@n sn start; 1.0 afftdn@n sn stop',afftdn@n" noiseout.wav

To use another source for noise profile, you'll have to append it, measure noise, and then remove it.

ffmpeg -i in -i profile -filter_complex "[1][0]concat=n=2:v=0:a=1,asendcmd=c='0.0 afftdn@n sn start; 1.0 afftdn@n sn stop',afftdn@n,atrim=1,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS" noiseout.wav

Above, I assume the profile is 1 second long, which is removed with atrim after denoising.


Can't export .mov with premiere pro cs5.5?

Sounds like your Quicktime install has been messed up, possibly by iTunes or something else installing Quicktime.  Try reinstalling Quicktime Player or the whole of Premiere if you can face it...


Trying to improve choppy ipad screen capture

When your recording plays smoothly on one device, then the recording is unlikely to be the issue. What are the specs of your pc? Make sure that you have a powerful cpu and gpu as well as enough ram. Also, what container is the file in? Is it a quicktime (.mov) file? (at least I assume so given that you're using an ipad). If so, try loading up the footage with in the quicktime player instead of vlc. Also, try using premiere or a similar program that allows you to switch through resolutions for your preview (you can select an 8th of the original quality and see if it plays smoothly).

Once again though, when your file plays smoothly somewhere, but causes problems on your pc, it might be an issue with codecs (which I doubt since you got it to play) or with the periphery. Nothing wrong with the video though.


How do I do this Text animation in Sony Vegas (..or AE)?

It's called Kinetic Type generally (that link is for Templates). Depending on what you're looking to do you either need to do it manually or can use scripting to auto-fill a list of words. If you auto-fill with a list its generally more randomized, so if sequence is important. Like you want the Lyrics to appear in the order they're spoken you must do it manually.

You can use After Effects or Flash to create something like this.

Tools to help make Kinetic Typography (Video Stack Exchange for After Effects)
Using a Script to do it automatically with random words (Levitated.net for Flash)


Is there a text effect for Sony Vegas Movie Studio for light reflecting off metal?

Vegas Movie Studio or Pro versions do not have a text option already set up for this but there are a couple of ways to get what you want.

One way is to make a composite by creating two video tracks one with the text and the other with the image you want to bleed through the text, here are instructions on how to do what is called a 'masking track':

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/creating_masking_tracks_in_vegas


The easiest solution would be to record the presentation without the logo altogether using open broadcast, fraps or some screen recorder. You can then animate the logo in After Effects from within a precomp and simply exchange the images in the precomp to swap to another logo.

For demos of that sort you'd usually animate the whole thing though, but since you said that you're not an editor this probably isn't an option.


I have not ever heard of a TV that has this feature (I have encountered a few).  Some high-end monitors have this, it's called Display Port daisy-chaining.  As the name implies, it uses DisplayPort and not HDMI.  It's quite a hack; but, I think that your cheapest option would be to put a camera outside the booth looking back at the screen.  Amazon has some very good deals on decent performing cameras, look at Dericam.


Encoding Video For Archiving Using Premiere Pro CS6

The thing is, whatever you do you will still have to re-render your files, they have to be re-encoded. Some small amount of quality degradation/compression, however miniscule, is inevitable. My best advice would simply be to try and match you sequence and render settings as close to the original files as possible, find a file size–quality ratio you feel comfortable with and just go with that.

To give a more practical answer for you specifically: I'd choose "Quicktime" under "Format", "MPEG-4 Video" under "Video" > "Video Codec", click "Match Source" and also drag the "Quality" slider to a 100%. Don't forget to uncheck "Limit data rate..." under "Bitrate settings". Audio settings should be pretty straight-forward.

Remember, these settings are mostly a guess based on the information you've given and some tests I ran on my Mac using Premiere Pro CC 2014 with the codecs I have installed on it. Hopefully someone with more knowledge of codecs/video encoding will pop in and give a more fleshed out answer eventually; but for now I think this is your best bet.


What's the best way to visually compare codec compression?

I can only think of 2 perspectives: industrial and recreational.
Industrial: visual examination is super expensive, you may take a look of how Netflix do the comparison https://netflixtechblog.com/performance-comparison-of-video-coding-standards-an-adaptive-streaming-perspective-d45d0183ca95
Recreational: you may check out youtube with codec comparison e.g.

             or doom9

Hope this answers your questions.


Create middle lined mask in vector shape

In Photoshop (or Illustrator), in a new layer above the vector shape, create a solid shape of the mask you want (with rounded corners). Export that layer alone as an image and import into AE.

Use auto-trace to create a mask from it. See https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/creating-shapes-masks.html#create_a_mask_from_channel_values_with_auto_trace


FFmpeg for m2t and Sony Bravia - not working

Try

ffmpeg -i in -vf format=yuv420p,setsar=1 -g 25 -c:v libx264 -tune grain -profile:v high -refs 2 -x264opts bluray-compat=1:fake-interlaced=1:nalhrd=vbr:aud=1 -maxrate 20M -bufsize 20M -c:a ac3 -ac 2 out.ts

FFmpeg can't replicate Scan type, store method     : Separated fields but it may not matter.


How does shutter speed affect the video?

A high shutter speed can make individual frames look more crisp but make large motion look like it is stuttering. e.g. fast panning looks like it is flickering or jumping

A low shutter speed can make individual frames look blurred and make the motion look smooth.


The blend filter ignores alpha from second input. You will need to recombine alpha component back into other components somehow. This one works for me:

ffmpeg -i a.png -f lavfi -i color=gray:s=512x512,format=gbrp -i b.png -lavfi "[1][2]overlay=format=gbrp[a],[0:v][a]blend=all_mode=overlay" out.png


Screen Capture in ffmpeg with jerky movement

The rtbufsize is only affecting the audio.

Try

ffmpeg.exe
-thread_queue_size 512 -report -rtbufsize 100M -f dshow -i "audio=Missaggio stereo (Realtek High Definition Audio)"
-rtbufsize 1000M -thread_queue_size 512 -video_size 848x480 -f dshow -i "video=screen-capture-recorder"
-vf "crop=713:379:18:43,scale=848:480,setsar=1"
-vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -maxrate 6M -bufsize 12M -pix_fmt yuv420p -g 60
-acodec libmp3lame -b:a 128k -ac 2 -ar 44100
-f flv rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/xxxx-xyyv-0rrm-f9g2
-filter:v "crop=713:379:18:43" "c:\mbiWebTV\Capture\Capture_20170225_165829.mkv"


Fast blur is marked as Legacy in CC 2018. What's the best (and/or fastest) equivalent to use now?

Gaussian Blur is now GPU accelerated, and it's the one that they suggest as the successor to fast blur. They've even included a script to update old projects to use the new blur, look for it in file>Scripts>UpgradeLegacyBlurs.

If you want one that uses the same maths as fast blur, i.e. is the most visually similar, then I think Box Blur is the one.

The official announcement is here.


You do need to play the tapes onto a capture card, yes. And the sooner the better. You don't just get one attempt, but you will get a slight degradation of quality every play, so you are best off aiming to do it in one pass if possible.
First think about cleaning any metal particles from the read head, and then look at this technique archivists use where they bake old tapes when they shed is.gd/LxdRGH - thanks @stib.
I recently captured about 50 tapes from the late 80's to the mid 90's and I did about half of them then cleaned the head then did the other half. Degradation wasn't noticeable, but I just thought I should do it just in case.
As to how long you can store them - is the safe place shielded from EMF, heat and humidity, then they can last for years, but due to the nature of magnetic tape, the magnetic field strength of particles affects adjacent particles, so quality will degrade no matter what.
When configuring your capture, set it for the highest quality you can afford - as there are utilities which can clean up some noise and speckle once the signal is digitised.


Automate turning on and off Twixtor effect in After Effects

You could try making two copies of your footage, then disabling all the interpolation features within Twixtor on one of the copies - ie:

Motion Vectors = None
Image Prep  = None
Motion Sensitivity = 0.00
Frame Interp = Nearest

Keyframe the "speed %" controls on both tracks exactly the same, but then remove the appropriate track when you're running at 20% (maybe by keyframing opacity between 0% and 100%).

Let me know if it works.


How to extract a video frame using NVIDIA card

Since the video bitstream is being decoded on the GPU, CUDA upload isn't required.

Command with format conversion is

ffmpeg -hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -resize 1024x70 -i video_source \
       -vf "scale_npp=format=yuv420p,hwdownload,format=yuv420p" \
       -pix_fmt yuvj420p -color_range 2 -vframes 1 -y /tmp/frame.jpg


Joining / Concat DNxHR HQ *without* re-encoding

As long as the streams have the same properties - resolution, pixel format, timebase, reference frame count, then they can be concatenated by ffmpeg. Strictly speaking, FFmpeg will concat non-matching streams, only throwing warnings for discontinuous timestamps in the input streams, but that output will not be accepted by most (or any) players.


How can I make videos like Minute physics

He used this:

(source: monoprice.com)
He probably captured all of that with a plugin for After Effects and just added images and stuff.


If you have at least 300-500kps of upload bandwith available you can push an rtmp stream of your live event to a CDN like youtube, dailymotion, livestream ...

In terms of software I already used:

Livestream, which provides among other things a tool called procaster with which you can broadcast your desktop, or a section of your desktop. You can even broadcast a capture of your skype window ! ( it will not be very beautiful, but it works ). Livestream also has many tools which allow to make a chat during your live event with the viewers of the event.
Flash Media Encoder (aka FME ), which is a free tool provided by Adobe, which will encode to rtmp any video camera connected to your computer. You can then push it to a CDN like YouTube or DailyMotion.

All of this is free of charge, with sometimes some limits on the number of simultaneous viewer, and/on an ad-supporting scheme which will play an advertisement before your live video.


iMovie workflow for creating different versions or snapshots?

TL;DR

Use separate iMovie Libraries for each video project.
Duplicate projects for each version.

This is the current workflow I've come up with:

Very importantly, create a separate iMovie Library for each of your video projects (not to be confused with a Project in iMovie). This will make versioning and backup much easier. By default, iMovie has you saving everything in one giant Library, making it both hard to find what you need, but also hard to backup or share a specific project.
Create a new Project, and call it master. This will be the only Project you ever edit directly and will always represent the latest changes.
Start editing your Project. Once you get into a state where you want to "save" it as a version, go to Projects, and duplicate master. Rename it to v0.1 and optionally add a description. E.g. v0.1 - initial transitions done, still missing credits.
Continue working on master and creating more versions as you go along. E.g. v0.2 - before making large scale changes to the contrast of all the clips.
Once you're at a point where you want to share your video (e.g. via uploading to YouTube), create a major version number (E.g. v1.0). This will make it really easy to come back to the "YouTube" edit of your video, for example.
If you continue making changes, continue using the same versioning scheme to make v1.1 - Credits fixed, for example.

By duplicating Projects within the same Library, you save a ton of disk space since each project copy is lightweight and doesn't copy over all the video files.


how to simultaneously create rtsp and livehttp video streams in vlc from the same live source?

Your working livehttp command has double quotes, and your non-working duplicate command has single quotes.  Your shell is interpolating the variables in the double-quote example but passing them as a string literal in the latter case.  You can see what the shell is doing by changing cvlc to echo.


iMovie 11 starts with a black screen. How can we make this a white screen?

If there is an image with a white background at the start and end of the video, it should never export a black frame at either end.  (I've never seen it do that, and I've used iMovie '09 to edit hundreds of videos!)


At a guess, it will be a similar technology to HDRx from RED or Magic Lantern - 2 frames instead of one recorded for every single video frame.

Reference 1: http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/hdrx-high-dynamic-range-video
Reference 2: http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/a-simple-way-to-shoot-hdr-video-footage-using-magic-lantern--ae-20993

In Magic Lantern every frame is recorded at 2 ISO values, in the case of the RED camera, two frames are captured instead of one with different shutter speeds with the second frame "2-6 stops faster".
The selection of ISO/"stops faster" is carried out by the user in both case prior to recording.

All that has to be done then, is to blend the resulting "dual frames" into a single video frame for an HDR video.
Also, keep in mind that you do not need 3 frames for an HDR - you just want to cover a greater range than a single exposure can cover, this can be 2 frames or 200 frames. For video it is 2.


Software to Trim a Video into Multiple Files

Now I'm looking for an Alternative that can:

Trim one Video into Multiple Files (ideally with a single Watch true Selecting Parts with Shortcut I/O without the need to Stop Every Time to Export it Manually)

In the light of not fully understand the "a single Watch true Selecting Parts with Shortcut I/O", my suggestion would simply happens on ffmpeg, i.e
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss <start-time> -t <duration> part1.mp4

The Ability to Name the Trimmed Videos

The ffmpeg handles it nicely

No or little Quality Loss

You may consider the option -codec:v option or more options

It Should be Free to Use (No Watermark etc...)

FFMPEG is free.

Optional Export Queue to do the Time Heavy Stuff while I do something else...

scripting could help


Video recording using external microphone and smartphone

If the microphone is hooked in to the phone, then it should be an input to the camera app and it should record both at the same time.  If the microphone was not linked to the camera app for some reason but was recording separately, it isn't that hard to sync, just clap on camera and look for the spike on the waveform and align it with the clap.  I wouldn't expect it to be a problem though.


Are you trying for photo of video.  For video, it seems likely that this functionality is not well supported.  I took a look at the code for Pentax K-R and it is simply grabbing a buffered image from the camera for display, but this doesn't work well for video as it a) doesn't have audio and b) doesn't have reliable frame rates or updates.

If you simply want to capture still images, then using PK Tether as it currently is would work fine.

If you want video, your best bet is likely going to be to use HDMI out if it has it available and capture that output on your computer using an HDMI capture device, such as the Matrox MXO2 or Black Magic Intensity.  Alternately, if quality isn't a major concern, you could us AV out functionality and capture a lower quality feed.


Depending on the fidelity of the video you can try to do a high pass filter on the video, in essence it will sharpen edges of the scene and help bring it out.

The two steps I would do:

1) De-noise it (I use the neat video plugin for after effects)

2) Run a high pass filter (photoshop has this, but not after effects).
To emulate this:
a) Create a duplicate of the video (command D)
b) Drop the tint effect to turn it into black and white
c) Add the find edges effect (only the black areas will be sharpened)
d) Drop the levels effect onto it, adjust it to to bring in more black (to sharpened more) or bring in more white, to leave out areas not to sharpen.
e) If the edges are to harsh you can always blur it to shoften or feather the sharpening effect.
f) Add an adjustment layer, drop it below the duplicate layer
g) Change mode track matte of the adjustment layer to luma inverted (it would hide the layer above when this is done automatically).
h) Add unsharpen mask effect to the adjustment layer, put it 100, radius 2, adjust as needed.

You can already see that this type of work you can tweak a lot of things.
Hopefully this gets you going in the right direction

All the best,


Imported GoPro Hero4 time-lapse from bike ride does not sync with GPS data in VIRB Edit

A way to solve this is to first losslessly change the frame rate of the GoPro video to 1 frame/sec, which changes it from 4 minutes to real time (96 minutes).

This answer explains how to extract the raw bitstream from the GoPro video using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -y -i gopro.mp4 -c copy -f h264 gopro_raw.h264

.. and then remux it with a 1 frame/sec frame rate:

ffmpeg -y -r 1 -i gopro_raw.h264 -c copy gopro_remuxed.mp4

Import the remuxed file into VIRB Edit [VE], add the GPX file and add some G-Metrix gauges.  Finally speed it up again in VE.

VE can only speed up 800%, so the video has to be re-imported* after the initial export.  Speed it up and export again to come back to the original 4 minute length.  Not ideal, but it works.

* I actually had to use iMovie in the second step, since VE kept crashing


How do Apple do this? (iPhone 4 commercial)

It's a still. For commercial beauty shots like those, you hire a hand model and freeze frame the video once the phone is held. The screen is obviously just a Greenscreen or simply black so it can be replaced afterwards. Then, the finger swipes etc are recorded seperately (probably in front of a Greenscreen) and then composited onto the screen to fit the animation.


You are approaching the problem at hand very well, you have however not used the most quality-preserving solution available.
I recommend that you take your raw image files and import them into Adobe After Effects as a camera raw sequence. This will let you work with the files directly in their raw format and therefore retaining the most quality. From there, you can choose to export in a lossless format if you so desire.
Using this method, you should see a better quality from ProRes 4444 than ProRes 422.

Best of luck


Quality Full HD Camcorder - DSLR or dedicated one?

The Canon 5D mark 2 opened the world to the abilities of DSLR shooting video. But if you read the real world discussion, you will find that taking amazing video with it is a serious challenge. And it takes only about 15 minutes of video at a time, so your 1 hour++ is simply not feasible.

The 5D mark 3, just announced and $3500, doubles the video time to about 28 minutes.

Things like auto focus are a ton easier with a camcorder.


After Effects - Green Screen - Subject Was Filmed Using Different Lens Than Background Image

You can use CC_lense to change the appearance of your background so the focal length matches your plate more accurately.
If you have more time (and money) to spare, you can use software like PFtrack to follow the visual lines in both images to estimate the focal length. This would give you the opportunity to accurately distort the image so the focal-lenghts match on a more accurate scale.


Do i really need a Super-Computer to edit Videos?

Research how to use proxies. Proxies are copies of your original footage encoded at lower resolution, lower quality, or just in a less processor-intensive codec. You use them while you're working on your project, and then swap back the high quality files when you do your final export. A bit like offline and online video editing from the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

In your case for example, avoiding h.264 will probably speed things up. H.264 does a good job of making really small files at high visual quality, but it's awful for editing. So if you encode in an all-I-frame low-bandwidth codec, e.g. ProRes Proxy, or DNxHR LB the performance should increase markedly.

You can get away with much lower-powered hardware by using proxies, and you don't lose any quality in the process, because you go back to your originals at the end. A good guide, specific to the Resolve workflow, can be found here.


Premier Pro Audio Quality Poor and Muffled After Export

I think this is likely to be due to out of phase audio in one of the stereo channels.  Below is a copy of my answer from here: Premiere Pro audio muffled and distorted on export
(I have tried to flag this as duplicate, but cannot because the answer wasn't accepted).
This might be because you are exporting a stereo audio file which has one channel phase reversed, and then it is being played back in mono.
If you have an identical signal going to the left and right channels, but one of them is phase reversed, it means the waveform is inverted (upside down). When you listen to either channel on its own, it will sound normal. When you listen to them both in stereo (Left channel to left speaker, right channel to right speaker) you may notice it sounding odd. Some people describe it sounding like the location of the sound is "inside their head".
But when you play back a stereo recording like this in mono (left channel and right channel both mixed together to a single mono output) the signal will completely cancel itself out.
If the two channels are almost identical, but have tiny differences, only the differences will be audible. This often happens with lossy file formats (like mp3/mp4 files), where the mono version of the phase reversed playback sounds tinny and lacking in all bass.
To test it out, try adding a channel mixer effect to the master output of you mix, and inverting one channel. Then export again and see if it fixes it.


Recording Screens From Multiple Perspectives With Voices and Computer Audio

You could both record your individual screens and microphone inputs. In after effects (or another program of choice) you have the ability to separate the audio and visual so it is possible to change perspectives without affecting the audio. This would probably require a little manual adjustment of one of the audio layers given the lag of skype.

Good luck!


I found a helpful post on stackoverflow that addresses this issue: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21400416/377875

Apparently, it's a problem with color space. Something like this works:

ffmpeg -i "$1" -i "$2" \
-filter_complex "[1:0] setsar=sar=1,format=rgba [1sared]; [0:0]format=rgba [0rgbd]; [0rgbd][1sared]blend=all_mode='addition':repeatlast=1:all_opacity=1,format=yuva422p10le" \
-c:v libx264 -preset slow -tune film -crf 19 \
-c:a aac -strict -2 -ac 2 -b:a 256k \
-pix_fmt yuv420p "$3"

(substitute $1 with your actual video, $2 with your overlay, and $3 with the output file name)


Looking for a Video Program/Feature that allows smooth frame-to-frame skipping (when moving progress bar)

mpv has very good real-time scrubbing using the mouse on the on-screen controls.

It also has seek-while-paused, and accurate-seek (decode-from-prev-keyframe) for seeking backward by 1sec.  Also frame-step backward and forward.  (controls: , and .).

It also has an A/B loop keybind, where you can easily get it looping over a part of the video.

So basically it has a lot of features that are great for reviewing a video frame-by-frame looking for problems, or stuff like that.

It's still in active development, make sure you get an up-to-date version for the most features and bugfixes.  I've only used it on GNU/Linux, but I understand it works on Windows and OS X, too.


What do I need to take into consideration to take video of molten glass which I will later postprocess?

What this comes down to is what's referred to as dynamic range. The wider the dynamic range the more detail you will see between the darkest darks and brightest lights. The human eye has a very large dynamic range, much larger than a camera. Cell phones are alright but dont have a very large dynamic range compared to a dslr or camcorder.  (This is immediately evident if youve ever tried to take a photo with your phone of a beautiful sunset only to be underwhelmed by the resulting photo compared to the reality.)

It sounds like all you need to do is manually adjust the exposure down a few stops until just the glass is exposed. If you have a dslr try snagging a set of ND filters for the lens you'll shoot with. The ND filter (neutral density filter) works to allow you to adjust the exposure of the image if you are dealing with extreme brightness either from the environment or due to your aperture/shutter/ISO settings.

Hope this helps! Feel free to message me if you need any help!


Is there a standard resolution for Video Presentations?

If it's NTSC/standard def/4x3, 640x480 will be good. If it's HD/widescreen/16x9, 1920x1080 or 1280x720 (1080p and 720p, respectively). Premiere will likely have presets for all of these aspect ratios.

I would ask the projector owner for the pixel dimensions or pixel resolution. Likely, it'll match one of the above pixel dimensions. If the owner's not very projector savvy, ask for the model number and manufacturer, and look up the info you need on their website's support section or downloadable manuals.

The thing to keeop in mind is that the projection hardware is a fixed size...usually one of the pixel dimensions noted above, or something CLOSE to it for computer monitor resolution. Even if you feed a 1280x960 image to an NTSC display, it's going to interpolate it into a 640x480 display. On a projector, what makes it bigger is the lens projecting that tiny 640x480 pixel image to a 10' screen. My point is that if you know the maximum pixel resolution on the projector, you don't need to bother rendering anything MORE than that; it won't affect image quality.

good luck!


Can't apply "fade in" after "fade out" (FFMPEG command line)

What a fade out does is fade the volume from input level to 0 and then keep it at 0 for the rest of the track. Similarly, what a fade in does is fade the volume from 0 to input level and it mutes the volume from the start of the track upto the fade in start time.

When you applied the fade in after the fade out, the 2nd fade filter is working with a muted track, so the fade is from 0 to 0.

What you need to do is apply timeline editing to each fade filter so it operates from the start of its transition till the start of the next fade transition.

So,

ffmpeg -i ./input-file.mp3 -af "afade=t=out:st=5:d=2:enable='between(t\,0\,10)',afade=t=in:st=10:d=2:enable='gte(t\,10)'" ./output-file


I'm not aware of any that work directly in Premiere, however I can use my Spyder Checkr24 to either adjust my videos in Adobe Lightroom or DaVinci Resolve.  For Lightroom, I use the software that came with my Spyder Checkr to make a preset I can apply.  In Resolve, there is actually built in native support for working with the swatches.

There are also other third party tools available that I haven't really looked in to, so I can't say for certain that there isn't a way to do it directly in Premiere with a third party tool, but the way I've been doing it has worked well enough that I have not bothered to look any further in to doing it directly in Premiere.

For more details on how things work in Resolve, you can check out this video or if you have a decent idea about how to use Resolve already, take note of the steps in this screenshot.  Start with 0 by choosing the target you are using on the Color workspace.  Then select the color match grid tool on the preview screen(1).  Position the grid over your color target during a portion of the clip that has the target visible (2).  Finally, hit Match(3) in order to have it generate the color correction profile for the clip.


Video editing workflow : Shall I export small sub clips as individual files from the main clip before final output?

I've never used GoPro Studio, but there's no reason you should have to export out the sub-clips individually to use them in your timeline. It may make sense for you to do that if you want to send the individual files to other editors, but even then, you could just send the raw footage with the project file. Another reason could be if you only wanted to work with a few minutes of the footage. You could export out a sub-clip of what you will work on so that you don't have to work with such a large file. However, if you are taking sub-clips from many different spots in the raw file, just work with sub-clips of the raw file in your timeline.


Yes, they exist. They are called HDMI wireless extenders. Sometimes they are called transmitters/receivers. No, the good ones are not cheap. Further, I don't know of any where the receiver does not need external power.

Here's two examples, a better one and a not so better one:

IOGear Matrix pro (Here's a different offering)
Gefan Long Range Extender

I have no experience with either product and practically none with wireless HDMI as a whole. Personally, I would always use a wire for something like video. If you're only going 30 feet, it's really not a big deal to have a wire, and HDMI can go 30 feet just fine. If you need more distance, there's extenders of various wired variety that I would prefer over wireless options.

From your comment below, it sounds like you are wanting to move throughout the event, therefore making a wireless solution optimal, allowing you to move about on your whim.

If you do not have to stream the feed to the internet, I suggest that instead of running your video wirelessly, run the audio only. Get yourself a wireless audio transmitter and receiver, then carry the receiver around with you and the camera, plugging in the audio receiver to your camera. There are literally thousands of options and should be easy to find with google. Alternatively, get a standalone audio recorder and then mix the audio and video together in post.

The downside of these methods is that you must record to the camera's internal media and it may increase your post production time. The upside is that you're mobile while recording.


Anyone knows what kind of transition like this video?

What it is

There is no set name for this transition as it isn't a standard transition effect that you would expect to find as a preset in your editing software. It is probably a custom made transition sequence, however it's a rather simple one. It just takes the same image multiple time, applies different filters to them and uses a simple slide-in effect to iterate through them.

How to do it

Extract a frame of your video.
You can either apply the different filters in an image editing program or in the animation software. I think the first method is easier. The filters used in the video you linked are pretty simple; for example, there's a black-and-white converted version of the frame in there, an inverted black-and-white version and one with crushed blacks, increased contrast and overall lowered brightness.
Import those versions of the still frame back into your project, put them in the timeline in quick succession (about 0.5 seconds per image) and apply the same slide-in effect to all of them (you can do this with keyframes, but you will probably also find it in the transition presets of your software).
(Optional) Note that the two instances of the transition you mentioned in your question are not exactly the same, they use different filters and effects interchangeably. For example, in the first occurance there's a grain effect applied to one of the still images and the whole transition sequence has a sepia coloration. The second instance uses a faded film look/effect for the last image in the transition. So you can customize this transition using different effects to have it look however you like.

Why not to do it

Because it looks like crap. I have no idea what kind of video you are doing, but this transition will make you look like you just found out about Photoshop and decided to press all the buttons.
(cough Photoshop Philipp cough)

If you want your video to be taken seriously, use hard cuts or short, soft transitions only. In general, I wouldn't recommend trying to copy Hatsune Miku AMVs from YouTube, unless that is precisely the look and audience you want. Some more advice on transitions can be found in my answer here.


How to fit 720p video on a 1080p container?

You can make a clip scale to the resolution of the sequence by right-clicking on it and pressing Set to frame size (For older versions of Premiere, use Scale to frame size). To set this at the standard behaviour for new clips that aren't the same resolution as the sequence, go to Preferences → General and check Default scale to frame size.

However, keep in mind that upscaling a 720p video to 1080p won't yield you any more quality, worse case, it will look worse. Also, exporting to 1080p when your video is actually only 720p is kind of tricking the viewer. If you upload an upscaled video to Youtube and flag it as 'Full HD', I will so downvote your video ... So if your source material is shot in 720p, I would highly recommend you export to 720p.


How do I drop certain amount of seconds in VirtualDub?

Move the timeline slider to the start point you want and set the Mark In point. The Mark In/Out buttons are to the left of the frame count display at the bottom.


Change codec so seek bar works in Windows Media Player

The problem is probably not WMP but the Microsoft MPEG-1 codec. The straight forward solution other than using a decent player is to use a better codec pack - ffdshow, it feeds WMP through the operating system level. Besides the seek issue you'll probably get better playback performance, and it doesn't require any end-user involvement - they continue to use WMP as usual.

If touching the end-user's machine is entirely out of the question then you'll have to transcode the video to something else. You'll probably get the best results (file size, quality, compatibility) by transcoding to H.264/AAC (mp4), although the encoding process is heavier/longer than alternatives such as MPEG2. You'll need for that ffmpeg and start with:

ffmpeg -i mpeg1filename outputfilename.mp4

There are tons of options that will affect the transcoding quality and speed, and much of your success will depend on trial and error with your specific footage. All that said, your first choice should be to install ffdshow on the end-user machine.


Create quickly alternating clips in Premiere Pro

I would imagine that the music video you posted used manual edits to achieve that effect. However, there are a few automated beat detection utilities out there which you might like. One After Effects / Premiere plugin specifically dedicated to beat detection and music is Mamoworld's Beat Assistant. I haven't used the plugin (cost ~$40), but it should work with Premiere or After Effects. You can see a video tutorial and overview here.

For other ideas, Premiere Elements (but not Pro) does have a built-in beat detection feature. You could also investigate Trapcode's Sound Keys plugin, which might help you  more quickly place markers on beats by hand. If you can make cuts based on loudness of the music (as opposed to beats), you may be able to use the "Convert audio to keyframes" keyframe assistant.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if beat detection tools will be able to easily / perfectly recognize an accelerando or tempo increase like you describe. You may be stuck doing some manual editing to at least identify the beats. Using Premiere's "Add clips to a sequence automatically" could speed up your workflow when it comes time to assemble the clips in place.


Premiere: Renaming cameras in a multi-camera sequence

When you create a Multi-Cam sequence, the prompt will give you the option to name the cameras based on the track or clip name.

I don't believe there is a way to rename the cameras after setting up Multi-Cam.

One other option would be to put each clip into a sequence with a text layer as an overlay. After you have finished arranging your Multi-Cam composition, the text layer can be hidden or deleted.


Can a camera like Nikon D810 support 4K video with firmware update?

Yes and no.  Any camera with a sensor larger than 8mp (and the correct aspect ratio) is capable of recording 4k video frames.  Firmware can grab frames off the sensor as fast as the sensor can read out.  The ability to record video at a given frame rate is a limitation of the sensor's ability to read fast enough, the processor's ability to encode fast enough and the card reader that can write the data out fast enough.

Practically however, most cameras that don't have 4k are unlikely to have fast enough performance in all these areas to be able to hack 4k resolution in.  It's simply too much data to move and most cameras didn't design that kind of over-engineering to be able to deal with all 3 of those conditions.  Even the Canon 5D Mark iii, which is a high end professional DSLR which can be hacked to shoot RAW video at decent frame rates at 2 to 2.5k ends up having to be dropped down to around 12 or fewer FPS for trying to hack it in to shooting 3k or 4k video.

This is also partly compounded by the fact that most of the real time encoders are built for particular resolutions.  For example, the previously mentioned 5D Mark iii hack works by recording raw frames which takes a huge amount of data rate for storage.

So, in some cases, there may be ways to get some level of 4k support from a third party firmware, but for the most part, you are limited by what hardware was originally put in and often (most of the time) it simply isn't going to be possible to increase to 4k by third party hacks.

As for the Nikon D810 specifically, I'm not aware of any highly developed third party firmwares for Nikon bodies that are similar to Magic Lantern, so I don't think there is anyone really exploring that in depth at this time for Nikon bodies.  That series is similar in spec to the 5D mark iii, so it may be possible to get low framerate 4k video on very fast cards, but that's purely speculation.  I wouldn't count on seeing it any time soon or having it be highly usable though.


Can i do decimal custom speeds in final cut pro?

Yes...
Select the clip you want to speed up. Then hit Command-R (or “Modify” > “Retime” in the Menu bar) and the clip will get a green retime bar on top. Click in the little arrow down next to the percentage and choose “Custom” (or “Custom Speed” in the Menu bar).
Lastly enter your desired percentage or duration.


After Effects melting film strip in the old projector

I would try using a displacement map. You can use a solid with turbulent noise on it and use it as your map, then animate the evolution, contrast and brightness so it displaces the film accordingly. If your burn is a separate layer, you can also use this as the matte for the solid with turbulent-noise in it with the effect "set matte".

Also, you might want to try to using a similar turbulent noise layer as a matte for the whole comp, meaning that the spreading bubbles from the noise (you can spread it out by pulling up a mask and keyframing the mask expansion) effectively get shuffled into your alpha-layer. If you then duplicate all this, move it one layer below, shift it to the right in the timeline (so the lower layer is about 10 frames later than the upper) and then drastically increase the contrast and lower the brightness, you will achieve some dark edges to the burnt parts.


Remuxing a TS file to MP4 results in a less fluid video

There's lots of Invalid timestamps and Invalid DTS errors, but I'm not sure they're related to the problem.

They are, frames in video streams with B-frames are not encoded or stored in presentation order, so the presentation timestamps have to be correctly offset for fluid playback. In this TS sample, you have presentation timestamps earlier than decoding timestamps, which are invalid, and ffmpeg defaults to assigning the DTS as the new PTS.

Instead, use existing PTS as the reference.

ffmpeg -fflags +igndts -i all.ts -c copy all.mp4


Output file longer than source with ffmpeg

My best guess is that this is due to the length of a group of pictures.  h.264 streams are composed of 3 different types of frames.  I frames, which contain the full frame, P frames which contain the information that has changed since the previous frame and B frames which are bi-directional and contain information about the changes between previous and future frames.

These frames are used in a fixed order that is repeated.  That repeated set is known as a group of pictures.  Typical GOP lengths are generally somewhere around 15 frames.  At 15 or more FPS, you'll always finish your GOP within one second.  At half a frame per second though, it can take up to 7 seconds after your last normal frame for the GOP to finish.

That still doesn't seem to fully explain your 12 extra seconds, but it is possible you are using a longer GOP.  I can't think of any other potential causes.

It is also worth noting that under the hood, Handbrake is just a UI for other encoding libraries, one of which is FFMPEG, so that may also help explain the consistent behavior as well.


Your ffmpeg is old. Update it before doing anything else. See FFmpeg Downloads for links to builds for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Use -framerate instead of -r for input.
Change -acodec libvo_aacenc to -c:a aac. libvoaac_enc is a low quality encoder and support for it has been removed from FFmpeg.
Some players do not like a low frame rate. Declare an output frame rate with -r or the fps filter when the input -framerate is below ~5 fps.
Use -crf instead of -b / -b:v.
Output MP4 instead of AVI.

Example command:

ffmpeg -y -pattern_type glob -loop 1 -framerate 1/4 -i "folder/*.jpg"  -i "folder/voice.mp3" -c:v libx264 -preset veryslow -crf 22 -pix_fmt yuv420p -r 25 -shortest -movflags +faststart folder.mp4


1) If you're not going to deinterlace it then stick to the source's field order.

2) I wouldn't bother with the two pass encoding (if indeed it even does anything) - dnxhd will only encode at certain specific fixed bit rates anyway so you're actually pretty constrained for options.

3) You'll see some softening, but it's unavoidable.  ffmbc's filtering is ok though.

What software are you editing in?

And the 185M bitrate might be overkill if your source is HDV.  Try 120M and save yourself a bit of space.


How can a similar effect to the one seen here be obtained?

It looks like a mix of factors to me.  Certainly re-timing (speeding up and jumping frames around) is a part of it, but mostly, I think they had a lot of wind on a green screen and then cut it over an environment where it doesn't make sense.  It's hard to tell how much the excess blinking is the wind and how much is re-timing, but some of it does appear to be retimes.  They vary the retiming of the composited content while keeping the background constant though which gives your brain less to latch on to.

As far as retiming in sync with the music, there is an easy trick to pull that off for songs.  You simply slow down a recording of the music by the desired amount and have them play along.  When sped back up, things match perfectly.


JVC was first out of the gate with an affordable consumer 4K camera.
Sony is showing their first 4K "Handycam" prototype at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas...

So, I think the answer is YES :)


Use bitstream filter filter_units with ffmpeg 4.0 or newer.

ffmpeg -i INPUT -c copy -bsf:v 'filter_units=remove_types=6' OUTPUT

P.S.

/* NAL unit types */
enum {
    H264_NAL_SLICE           = 1,
    H264_NAL_DPA             = 2,
    H264_NAL_DPB             = 3,
    H264_NAL_DPC             = 4,
    H264_NAL_IDR_SLICE       = 5,
    H264_NAL_SEI             = 6,
    H264_NAL_SPS             = 7,
    H264_NAL_PPS             = 8,
    H264_NAL_AUD             = 9,
    H264_NAL_END_SEQUENCE    = 10,
    H264_NAL_END_STREAM      = 11,
    H264_NAL_FILLER_DATA     = 12,
    H264_NAL_SPS_EXT         = 13,
    H264_NAL_AUXILIARY_SLICE = 19,
};


Video artifact removal and restoration - How can it be done? (Really?)

If I understand you correctly, then most of the restoration goals will be impossible to be reached. While my knowledge of existing videos tools is not extensive, I am still pretty sure such a software does not exist. As a software developer I have a good grasp of what is impossible and what is possible and what effort you need to do that.
When details are lost, they are lost. How should an AI restore these? Well, any AI has to be trained first and this needs to be done with pairs of a master video in highest quality and its heavily-compressed export in the target codec. The problem is that the export video has less information than the master and there is no way to define a sensible bidirectionaly mapping. Imagine the master contains a scene with a machine with little screws. Another scene shows a machine with rivets. But after a heavily compression you cannot see a difference between screws and rivets in the export video. Due to loss of detail, both screws and rivets now look like grey smudges. How should you decide what is correct if you only have the compressed video? You can only make a guess. And that's what the AI would do. This means you get a restored video that often shows quite different details than the original video, however now and then the AI will make correct guesses too. This is of course theoretical, I highly doubt there is an AI based software for this job as it would be extremely expensive in development and with only a few potentional customers the price tag would be enormous.
Discolouration is also hard to solve because often there's no easy way to differentiate between intended de-saturated areas and compression artifacts.
Macro-blocking can be fixed in theory by applying a blur effect. But you have to sacrifice sharpness. Fine artifical noise can be added to gain a bit of sharpness again. Anyway, this can be done and such a function is probably available in some tools.
Colour bending can be solved in theory without too much effort but I don't know if anybody does offer such a thing.
Update: As has been pointed out in the comments, DaVinci Resolve can do de-bending. Both Premiere and Resolve use some AI based tools to restore a video to fix dust, scratches, de-interlace. But if I infer correctly this does not help much with your problem of restoring a heavily compressed video.
All in all, you cannot undo the artifacts of heavy compression.


Need to locate documentation of FCPX XML ver 1.9

Apple didn't update all the documentation. Found it only here: Link


What do you consider "normal" filming?
I've filmed a lot in theatres with audiences, usually in performances that are primarily for the audience, and the video recording is a secondary consideration. Usually the camera in this scenario is back far from the stage (behind the audience, so you're not in anyone's way), and the camera positions are fixed. You're capturing the performance live, and don't know exactly when/where the performers will be, so framing is usually paying attention and a bit of guesswork. The focus is usually fixed in the right general area, which is fine for wide shots from up the back of the theatre. If anyone on stage has a mic, usually there's a clean audio feed to the camera of that, as well as any music (although you can also re-dub anything from a pre-recorded source later). Other than that, there is also usually an auditorium mic for the camera, to pick up any other audio (non-mic voice/singing, any other live sounds). Lighting is also usually for the "live" show, and from a camera point of view you're just having to adjust on the fly, and cope with whatever you're given.
There are various pros and cons to filming without the audience.
Pros: From a visual perspective, with no audience you can bring the camera much closer, which will give you a better (sharper/detailed) image. Your perspective is usually more in line with the stage (level) than what you can get from further back. You can also start choosing from more camera angles - if the material calls for it, and depending on how much editing you want to do. During COVID, I saw a few people film more in the style of TV production - you can block out exactly where everyone is going to be, and get in close (even on stage) with DSLR setups, different lenses, etc. It's a whole different look than what I normally do with video cameras from the back of a theatre. You can also control the lighting to be camera friendly, and make sure lights/colours that are unfriendly to cameras aren't in use. Being up closer means better sound recording also, and no audience sounds getting in the way.
Cons: DSLR filming is a different skillset to using a Video Camera. I'd be comfortable guiding anyone on video camera setup for a live show, if you handed me a DSLR to film a non-live setup, I feel it would be like starting with almost no experience - I'd need some guidance myself! Remember to consider that the two scenarios are different, so if you train someone only in filming up close with DSLR setups, they can't directly just swap over to filming a live show with a video camera, and vice versa. Secondary to that is the lack of audience - if you film without any audience sound (applause, laughter, reaction, etc), your performance will sound dead. If you break items up into scenes, and then re-dub your audio track later, it won't sound like it was recorded in a theatre "live". It will depend on whether you want it to still look/sound like a production that was recorded "live", or if you're happy for it to look/sound like it was performed for camera only. I filmed some dance numbers without an audience - the director decided that with no audience they could therefore give stage direction during the items, because I could just use the music audio track only, and didn't need to use the live mic sound - to me the final product looks like it was filmed in a theatre, but doesn't sound like it - it sounds like a studio recorded track, not a live theatre performance recorded track - any sound of any footwork is lost, etc.
Hopefully that gives you enough to consider. As always there is no "correct" way to do this, it's largely a bunch of trade offs to consider, which affect what the finished product looks and sounds like versus what you want to achieve.


How to edit the DeNoise parameters for all cut parts of a clip?

If you need to apply the same effect to a whole clip, you can use Master Clip effects:
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/master-clip-effects.html
That way, you apply it to the file, and any clips from that file that you place into a sequence will have the same effect applied.  If you need to adjust it, you only need to do it once to the master effect.


How to cut large video without video editing software (Windows)

If you need to make multiple cuts and then join them or edit those cuts, you'll need a video editor to do it efficiently. Try Shotcut.


Does it make sense to upgrade my set up to 4K from a (Canon) 70D set up?

It all boils down to "Do you need it"

If you are shooting corp promos and your clients keep asking or are insisting on 4K then Yes you can look into it as you can justify the purchase as the work is going to pay for it in the end.

If it is just an odd job here and there that they want 4K then hire one as it will be much cheaper at £££/$$$ for a day or two compared to £££££/$$$$$ plus upgrading cards and all your other kit to compliment the new camera.

I had the same thought but only upgraded to a Canon C100 from my Canon 7D and didnt have to upgrade much else but did get rid of a few obstacles as well.

Put the money back into some decent glass and or upgrade other elements which could make your productions better, ie Audio, Lighting, Tripods, Lenses etc camera bodies you can swap and change but good accessories will last the test of time.


You can use ffmpeg, and you currently have a choice of four video filters that can blur: boxblur, sab, smartblur and unsharp. These filters can use the enable option for timeline support, so you can apply the blurring effect to a certain duration if desired. You can view what filters have timeline support with ffmpeg -filters.

Example

This example will apply the blur from 22-113 seconds, then again from 275-286 seconds:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -vf "boxblur=enable='between(t,22,113)',boxblur=enable='between(t,(60*4)+35,286)" -codec:a copy output.avi

You can enter seconds or have it calculate seconds for you as shown in the example.
Expression evaluation is not my best area. You may find a method to declare the filter just once.
Note that, since you only want to modify the video, the audio can be stream copied from the input to the output without re-encoding. This is faster than re-encoding and will preserve the quality. This is something most editors, such as Premiere, do not support without additional shenanigans.

Preview

If you have ffplay you can get a preview instead of encoding, watching, re-encoding...

ffplay -i input -vf smartblur

Getting ffmpeg

Builds are available for Windows, Linux, and OS X users. See the FFmpeg Download page, but of course you can always compile ffmpeg too.


It appears that this is the 'expected behaviour'. Certainly not what I expected.

It seems that ACR doesn't play well with Premiere. So you can't pre-grade your footage before edit. Adobe expect you to use Speedgrade for your grading, despite the fact it isn't a patch on ACR. Your only option appears to be to bring the image sequence into After Effects which allows you to use ACR on import or by editing original at any point. Of course you then lose the speedy rendering of Premiere and all the other good stuff.


How can I record from do multi iPhone cameras

There is nothing free, i can't suggest you purchase anything to fit your scenario; nonetheless i suggest you take a look of How to Use Your iPhone as a Webcam for OBS Live Streaming (Not Free Anymore) and Google OBS


First off, I recommend you use davinci resolve for grading (it's also free).
There are two options that you have, you could either draw a mask on the part you want to affect, track that mask to follow the motion and apply the grade only inside of that mask.
Second would be to pick the colour of the area you want to change and only alter this spectrum, which can lead to artifacts, especially when not working with original files tho.


How can I increase the resolution of a mobile clip?

Unfortunately, no. Increasing the resolution of a video after recording is impossible. You can upscale the video, but that will simply copy the pixels and maybe interpolate a bit, but the result won't look any better than the original. If, as I presume, whatever you saw there is just a bunch of colored pixels in your video, there's nothing you can do to change that.

Whatever you saw there, maybe it was just not meant to be caught on tape ...


FFMPEG is not trimming the audio to the length of the video

In the process of submitting a bug report, I tested the same input samples on the nightly build of FFMPEG of 11 February 2020, which fixed the problem. That nightly build had version:

ffmpeg version git-2020-02-11-f15007a

To install a nightly build, I suggest using the compiled binaries from Zeranoe. Beginners should choose "Static" libraries, which includes the required libraries in the build.

I suspect that the problem is due to the input samples being slices of an hour-long footage, which is longer than the EU restriction on camcorders. Using the nightly build avoids this case of sound and video out of sync even with shortest clip trimming.

For the EU restriction, see Filesystem that records longer than 4 GiB, or one hour without interruption or Why is there a limit restriction to the 1080p film video?.


Converting a Adobe Premiere CS6 project to a CS5 one

It seems that I have solved my problem.

All I had to do was to import the CS6 project file into a brand new CS5 project. That did it for me.


Camera flash produces unwanted artifacts on the video

This is actually a collateral effect of the concept of rolling shutter. Most video devices do not expose all the frame area at once. They expose starting from one side and (up or down) and move from there. (The example has the camera rotated 90° so the effect is on the sides of the frame).

This can be either a mechanical element that moves or rotates or an electronic system.

As the flash of a camera is a really fast burst of light, it can sometimes be captured in one zone of the frame, by the time another part of the frame is streaming the data, the flash burst is over, so this zone of the image is transmitting the non-illuminated scene.

On still frame photography, this is the reason you have a minimum sync speed.

Frankly, it is really hard to avoid this situation in an environment such as the example posted, because you can not sync your camera to that flash.

On a controlled environment, like lighting in a movie, you could add the lighting in post-production, making one full frame white, and probably some other just a bit exposed.

Another way to control it is by using a slower burst of light. Rather than using a flash that lasts about a thousandth of a second (which disappears really fast), you use some system that flashes on tenths of a second. This way the burst of light has time to be captured by the shutter of the camera.


How can I automate creating a sequence from a set of clips?

Apparently createNewSequenceFromClips was not available in my version of Premiere Pro (v14.0.1). When I updated to v14.4 all worked as it should.
This example script using that function works as expected.


This is very easy with most video player software included with your computer.

In Windows 10, your computer comes with "Movies and TV" app, which can easily do this for you. Follow these steps:

Copy all your video files to a single folder
Rename them so they alphabetically sort in the order you want them to play
Highlight all, right click on one of them, select open. From there, the first video will start playing. If a different player is your default player, it will open in that instead. Just change your default player before this step.
To set a video on repeat, click the menu button in the bottom right corner, then click Repeat.
You can advance to the next video when you are ready by clicking the advance arrow that overlays the right side of the video.
When you advance to the next video, you have to set the repeat again or it will auto-advance to the next video.

Other players like WMP, VLC, and iTunes will all do this about the same, but may have different ways that you would have to set it up. For example, WMP and iTunes will only play multiple files in succession if you add them to your Library first, then a playlist.

All three of those are free, so you can fiddle with them and see what you like best.

For a robust professional experience, you need a software that offers "instant replay". My first thought would be vMix, but it's pretty pricey and more geared toward capture, though it has a "replay" function. These kinds of software will show you all the videos you've imported for the instant replay and have all kinds of functions like repeat and advance. They are designed to do exactly what you are looking for, but none of them are free.


If I use Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing, does it matter what screen capture software I use?

If you are going to use Premiere for editing, there is no point in looking at the editing advantages, they won't be higher than Premiere's capabilities for sure.

Some polls have Filmora lower in rating, but the only issues were with editing.

I was making screen capture for programming videos, and on Mac, I wasn't using anything but quick time player, since 100% of editing goes to Premiere, where you can do literary everything.


How do I trim text/video in smaller increments? (for Kinetic Type Video)

This behaviour is normal because a title element is bound to the video frame rate. All visual elements must start/end in "between" frames. In your example GIF you zoomed enough in and even can see the markers. Note the line just below the timecode.
The reason sound is not bound to this is because sound has a much greater Samplerate. If you think of Samplerate and Framerate as Data points over time then you understand video has commonly 24 or 25 (higher fps becomes more common) data points in a second, sound usually has 48000 data points per second.
Have your title element start at a frame what feels the best.


How can I efficiently convert MOV / MPEG-4 files for long term storage?

Although @stib's advice is sound, I disagree with "to get an appreciable size reduction you would have to throw away a lot of quality". Cameras have to compress on-the-fly, so they use constrained baseline mode, which is to say, they skip most of the tricks that H.264 codec uses to efficiently compress videos. If space isn't a pressing concern, keep them as-is. But if you'd like to recover some space, you can use ffmpeg, a command-line tool, to compress them while generally retaining quality.

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 12 -c:a copy -c:d copy -map 0 compressed.mov

CRF values in the range of 12 to 15 will give you a smaller video stream, generally by 25 to 40%. Perversely, if your scene has a lot of fine texture detail like a forest or pebbles or embroidered cloth..etc, then compressibility won't be high and using these CRF values will likely produce output which is larger than the source. Skip compression in these cases. For most scenes, filled with smooth gradients or nearly-flat shaded surfaces, compression should yield a smaller file with good quality.


How to convert a black and white video to a APNG file while setting a color as transparent?

I finally found how to do that in one ffmpeg command, using colorkey:
ffmpeg  -y -i /dev/video0
           -f lavfi -i color=0x6a6a6a:s=640x480
           -f lavfi -i color=black:s=640x480
           -f lavfi -i color=white:s=640x480
           -filter_complex 'threshold,colorkey=white'
           test.apng


What is the best way to combine two audio sources into a single audio output?

I misspoke in my original question, I've fixed the sentence so
  hopefully it should be clearer. I'm just wanting to listen to the PC
  out, while simultaneously listing to the Mic out as I record it.

If you using Windows, then just go to the

 Sound (Right click in notification area) > Recording devices > Chose you device > Properties > Listen > Listen to your device

That would allow you to hear your recording device input in your playback device(speaker).


This is a fast way to copy the clips in succession.

Copy the video clip CMD/CTRL + C
Target ONLY the track that the loop will be on
Then swiftly insert it multiple times by just holding down CMD/CTRL and pressing V multiple times in a row


Is it feasible to create a true multi-language video file with visual localization?

I can't give you a complete answer, but it's certainly possible in theory to create 'playlists' (for lack of a better term) that call out a sequence of clips, most of which are common to two or more lists, with localized clips being different in each list.

This would require a player that understands these lists, so it wouldn't work for general distribution since no common, general purpose player I'm aware of can do this. But I've written such players -- not for this purpose, but with the same result -- so I know it could be done. Audio sync might be the trickiest part.

I hope someone else has an off-the-shelf solution. There's a whole lot out there and more every day. Good luck.

EDIT:

It later occurred to me that this is exactly the function of an NLE (non-linear video editor) when previewing: create a timeline onto which you place audio and video clips, then play out the result without creating a new file. If this suits you, there are free or low-cost NLEs available, including LightWorks.


ffmpeg encode in all-i mode h264 and h265 streams

For H264

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -intra output

For H265, seems no alias or preset has been set yet

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx265 -x265-params frame-threads=4:keyint=1:ref=1:no-open-gop=1:weightp=0:weightb=0:cutree=0:rc-lookahead=0:bframes=0:scenecut=0:b-adapt=0:repeat-headers=1 output

H265 code stolenborrowed from here.


Change props of subcomp based on parent comp

The layers in a pre-comp don't have access to information about the comp(s) they're nested in AFAIK, but I can think of a workaround in this case: apply a fill effect to the nested layer and drive its colour value using the name of the parent comp, e.g.

if (thisComp.name == "Blue"){[0,0,255]}
else if (thisComp.name == "Red"){[255,0,0]}…

and so on. Or you could name the comps by their colour values— something like 255-123-001—and use js string methods to extract the colours from the comp name.


Delta Keyer not working with Clean Plate

With one exception (Garbage Matte), the Delta Keyer doesn't "remove" things.  What it does is create and/or apply masks and mattes so that keyed areas can be replaced by other things (either within the given Delta Keyer node or downstream in the Fusion composition).  Therefore, to get an effect you want, you need to provide the Delta Keyer with an image or a solid color that you want to use to replace the area of the key you have defined.


Using smartphone sensors to stabilise DSLR video in post

SteadXp works like you describe, although it is still a product in development.  Also, it uses its own accelerometers, rather than using your cell phone's.  Presumably, this is simpler than relying on the myriad protocols of various cell phone manufacturers.


I have never filmed a wedding, but here are some tips on shooting video in general.
1. Get a good tripod. This is critical if you are doing panning shots. I use a 3-way fluid pan head.
2. Don't zoom or pan too fast. If you feel like you are panning too slow, that is about the right speed. Even though it feels really slow, it won't be when you are watching it later. When zooming, make sure your zoom are even and steady (no bursts of zooming). I usually set the camera's zoom speed so that it is not variable. Don't zoom in, then immediately zoom out to correct the zooming in, unless you have two camera angles.
3. Get two (three if you can) HD cameras if you can. HD makes post much more flexible as you can make minor in/out changes. Two cameras makes also makes post "easier". If you are only using one camera and you accidentally bump it, it's hard to correct. Two-three angles make filming much more reliable.
4. Use 16-bit audio on the camera(s) that you are recording from. The default setting is usually 12-bit, which can slowly drift out of sync towards the end of the video.
5. Film in 16:9.

I hope this helps you out.


Animating between mask paths in After Effects

Like @stib said above, masks interpolate in a straight line. However, you can also use tools like the Smart Mask Interpolation panel to tell After Effects to re-examine how the masks are interpolated between each other and find a better route, but this creates a TON of keyframes (one per frame actually) so if you plan to make additional changes to the masks later, this isn't the best option.
If it were me, I would just do each line as its own animation, and use a 10-15 frame hand animated loop, so you have control over each individual line itself...once the first crease in the flag moves from one end to the other, you can just loop that part over and over...
More info on Smart Mask Interpolation here:
https://www.provideocoalition.com/managing_moving_masks/


Decreasing the size a little won't help much, decreasing it a bit more induces a fair bit of aliasing (unless it smooths it also) butchering the quality without much gained.

Cutting the size 50% will reduce errors and double the jaggyness and be easily enough to save a lot of space, question is: Do you want 360P Video? You really wouldn't want any smaller.

So while that is one way to save space for Archiving I would recommend using 'Q' at 40 to test one file at 720P (output) and see if you can tolerate the quality.

H.265 has superior output quality as well as an approx. 50% reduction. Decreasing the resolution in half means an approx. 25% reduction alone, along with approx. 50% from H.265 your going to be under 15% WITH the same quality.

So decreasing the resolution from 720P will be either too drastic or induce greater errors in the output (it will begin to look like mush). Best to try using 'Q' alone as see where between 30 and 40 you can stand.

Here's an example from one particular Video YMMV.

Note that going from 24 to 40 gets you down to 10% (in that one example).


from reading:
ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_nvenc

and the nvidia nvenc examples at (https://devblogs.nvidia.com/nvidia-ffmpeg-transcoding-guide/), I've arrived at:
ffmpeg -vsync 0 -hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -i test_input.mp4 -c:a copy -c:v h264_nvenc -b:v 0 -cq 1 test3.mp4

where:
-b:v 0 over-rides the default 2mbps bitrate as noted by Gyan
-cq 1 means target quality level 1 (highest)
 range of 0-51.
 0 means automatic (in my case around 15mbps)
 1 gives about 15mbps, 26 results in around 5mbps, 51 results in 0.5mbps


How to get 'outer' composition's current time?

If you change the inner text layer's source text to this it will work:

thisCompLayer = comp("outer").layer(thisComp.name);
thisCompLayer.time + thisCompLayer.startTime

You just offset the time to cope with the later start time.

Looks like when AE calculates values from another composition it just calculates them for the current comp's time. It makes sense, because there could be multiple copies, or no copies at all of the inner comp in the outer comp.


Update keyframe animations only every third frame in After Effects

I don't know if there is an easy way to do it directly.  You could do some modular math in a script for the keyframe positions, but that's kind of complicated and non-user friendly.  An alternate approach would be to do an additional nested composition.

Make an animation composition for your character that is at 8 FPS, perhaps bring in the main composition as a backplate while putting it together, then remove the backplate and import the animation composition at 24fps as a stationary composition.


If the environment being captured on a video stream becomes less complicated, does the bit rate and latency decrease?

so all that is captured in the live video stream is a red light bulb
  and a black background

No. You can't get black background. You will get any possible type of noises, many shadows and all kinds artifacts of camera's matrix.

  will the new bitrate be less than X?

No. As GoPro writes constant bitrate (CBR)
No. As new noises can require even more bitrate than static image.
Yes, if you will fill background with black color in video editing software and select non-CBR mode for compression

  Will the new latency be less than Y ms?

No. Delay causes by some buffers. Buffers for N frames, buffers for N bytes. If you lower bitrate, you can INCREASE delay in some cases (actually, it's true to very low bitrates).


GoPro Footage with Adobe Premiere is stuttering

The reason Premiere runs just fine with a massive file but struggles with a smaller file is the issue of data compression. Many people (logically) believe that the two tradeoffs between high and low compression codecs is information vs. space, and that codecs with more information will take more processing power to process. This is actually not the case. While more compression will cause a loss of visual information, it also makes the data more difficult to process because the CPU (or the GPU in the case of accelerated hardware) has to decompress the codec information before it can be displayed. This means that codecs like h.264 and VP9 are more difficult to process than DNxHR and Prores.

If you can give more information about your CPU and GPU, I can adjust this to be more useful to you. The main issue I see in your specs is a mediocre CPU and GPU. The all-intra bit encoding (all-intra isn't technically a codec, just a means of storing data within h.264) uses single-frame compression. This helps retain more information and improves scrubbing performance within a video editor, but it makes playback more difficult than a normal h.264 encoding. While I'm no expert on the subject, I imagine that any hardware h.264 acceleration your computer has may not be able to process all-intra.

My personal recommendation would be to upgrade your GPU to something like a GTX 950 or a GTX 960, or simply convert your files to a visually lossless format such as DNxHR before you begin editing.


Reset timecode in source footage to 00:00:00

You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, like so

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c copy -map 0 -dn output.mov

The -c copy sees that there's no re-encoding, the -map 0 copies everything over but the -dn disables data tracks - the timecode being a data track.


Cleaning tracked keyframes in After Effects

Just select all the keyframes you want reducing and use the built-in plugin called 'smother' which will convert your set of baked keyframes back into a bezier curve.


Rearange order of audio tracks in Premiere

As you have discovered Premiere Pro doesn't let you move the tracks as easily as that (I wish it did!)

Fastest method would be to create 1 or 2 empty tracks (right click on a track label and select Add Tracks) then use the Track Select Tool  ('A' on the Keyboard) to quickly select an entire track:

(Click and hold lets you select and move the track at the same time).

You could also select an entire track, Cut it, move your other tracks around, then Paste it back into a new track (you can choose which track it gets pasted into by clicking on the Track labels, Premiere will paste into the top most highlighted track)


If you’re up for building your own server, and have some coding skill, then you could look at setting up a nginx server running the RTMP extension that can capture an re-stream live or on demand video. It can also do near realtime transcoding or "at completion of capture" transcoding using ffmpeg.

For the system I setup, I send live video in using an IP based camera system from multiple sources that can do RTMP streaming, or if I want to capture desktop content like a video game I use OBS to do the streaming to the server.

The actually user website itself runs from a node.js based system that has access to the content recorded by the nginx rtmp capture.

OR

You could look at a pre-build solution like Kaltura which has both a open-source community version and a commercial version. Think of it as your own YouTube server setup that has a tone of features ready to go out-of-the-box.


concat requires videos to have the same sample aspect ratio as well as the same resolution.

So, in this case,

ffmpeg -i s1.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=c=black -t 10 -filter_complex "[1:v][0:v]scale2ref[wm][base];[wm]setsar=1[wm];[base][wm]concat=2" output.mp4

or

ffmpeg -i s1.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=c=black -t 10 -filter_complex "[1:v][0:v]scale2ref[wm][base];[base][wm]concat=2:unsafe=1" output.mp4


How to monitor system sound and mic using Rode Podcaster?

In general, I'd say don't bother. Just do a bit of pre-recording testing to make sure your input levels are good. You're not going to want to tweak the input levels a bunch while you're recording, anyways. That would just be distracting to you and the other people that are recording.

But if you really want to, and you're on a Mac, check out "Line In" from Rogue Amoeba: http://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/ - I just tried it out, and it works great.

If you're on windows, this may work http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-pictures/how-to-get-the-microphone-sound-through-speakers/1643d977-5dfb-4eca-9330-3b16370e7646 though I haven't tried it (don't have my windows machine ready to try it out). There are other options, as well, like software packages you can purchase.

One thing you need to know, though, is that you'll end up with a small delay between your actual voice and what you're hearing through your headset. It's not much of a delay, but it is noticeable. This can be confusing if you're not used to it. You might accidentally start to slow down or pause or get mixed up because you're hearing yourself slightly after the moment that you are speaking. It tends to make people think they are interrupting someone else, and can cause stumbles in speaking.

If you've done any studio recording, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. But if you've never done anything like that, it can be disconcerting. So if you're going to go down the path, be sure to practice recording yourself with this feature on. Get used to the way it works, and the output levels that you need for the recording vs what you are hearing.


What exactly do the sequence settings do?

The entries for the creation of a new sequence are only presets.  They load things like pixel pitch, resolution, color depth, etc.  Many of these can be changed after creation, particularly if you haven't added anything to the timeline yet.  You can also make additional presets if you have frequent use of settings that there isn't already a preset for (or you can even manually select all the settings and not use a preset.)

This is the actual sequence settings:

As you can see, the framerate(timebase), frame size, pixel pitch (aspect ratio), fields, display format, audio sample rate and audio display format make up the primary settings.

There are additionally settings for how previews are rendered, which particularly matters if you intend to use previews in the rendering of final output, otherwise it just impacts what you see during editing (after preview renders have finished.)

While you can export in different formats, that will result in scaling if the resolution differs.  The sequence settings determine how the video renders, the export settings determine how the rendered frames are saved in to a final output.


I'm not a copyrights lawyer, but I think you can consider your use of the video just as much a violation as 'A's version.
When someone claims the rights to YouTube, you will also receive a notice and the video will be deleted.


How do I change FPS in a sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

When you set the number of frames per second of the sequence, you are describing the rate your rendered footage will playback, whatever that footage may be.  If you have 600 frames and you set the sequence to play 60 frames/sec, you'll get 10 seconds of video.  If you set the sequence to play at 6 frames per second, you'll get 100 seconds of video.  60 frames per second is a speed that players like YouTube (now) accept, but 6 frames per second is not.  So if you render a sequence that's supposed to play at 6 fps, you might create something that most players will not honor.

Instead, set your sequence frames per second to what you actually want to play the video at, likely 24, 25, or 30 fps (but maybe 60 fps or 120 fps if you are part of the HFR vanguard).  Inside the sequence, look at all the little (violet) boxes that represent your individual images (JPG, PNG, TGA, whatever they are).  Select them all, right click, and choose the menu item "Speed/Duration...".  That opens up a dialog box.  Change the 00:00:05:00 default to 00:00:00:02 (or however many frames you expect each image to last).  In the world of stop-motion, it is common to make a movie that plays at 24 fps but in which each image is repeated (so 12 images per 24 frames).  If you didn't do "twelves", then use 00:00:00:01.  Select the box "Ripple Edit, Shifting Trailing Clips" and choose OK.  This will create a tiny, but correct, sequence of images that can then be rendered to play back at a sane speed that all video players (including YouTube) will honor.


Recorder for 2 HDMI Signals into MP4/MKV with 2 Video Tracks

FFMPEG takes 2 -i input options (can a capture device) and uses -map to select the input streams then uses -program to define program name and -st to define output streams to a output file. i.e.
!ffmpeg -y -i https://mkvtoolnix.download/samples/vsshort-vorbis-subs.mkv \
-i https://github.com/Matroska-Org/matroska-test-files/raw/master/test_files/test5.mkv \
-map 0:0 -map 0:1 -map 0:2 -map 0:3 \
-map 1:0 -map 1:1 -map 1:2 -map 1:3 -map 1:4 -map 1:5 -map 1:6 -map 1:7 -map 1:8 \
-program title=vsshort-vorbis-subs:st=0:st=1:st=2:st=3 \
-program title=test5:st=4:st=5:st=6:st=7:st=8:st=9:st=10st=11:st=12 \
 -c:s copy mpts.mkv


How to make the smoke become a mask layer?

Grab a pre-keyed smoke element from somewhere. Mask the smoke element as desired.
Copy that mask onto the text or you can parent the mask as an adjustment layer. Keyframe opacity of text, linear wipe with feather in a gradient/ramp solid for the background.

The "sparkling" effects are lens flares (see JJ Abrams)

The curtain moving effect could be just another preset with the layer style set to overlay. Or you can generate your own layer like that using fractal noise.


How do I install Adobe Premiere Elements on a computer that's isolated from the Internet?

Using Google, a popular internet search engine, the Adobe help page that discusses this topic is easily discovered.  In particular, it explains:

You must connect to the Internet when you want to install Adobe Creative Cloud apps, such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Once the apps are installed on your computer, you don’t need an ongoing Internet connection to use the apps.
You can use the apps in offline mode with a valid software license for a limited period. The apps attempt to validate your software license every 30 days. You receive a reminder to reconnect to the Internet to validate your license...

You can read more details on that web page and decide whether or not your online/offline behavior fits within those parameters or not.


What are display and pixel width reported by mkvinfo?

The pixel values refer to the actual number of samples stored per frame. The display values refer to the dimensions that the player should render the video at. The ratio of 853/704 = 1.212 is the pixel or sample aspect ratio. This is an example of  non-square pixels, a legacy of analogue video signals and usually seen in digitized forms of NTSC/PAL format signals.


For real time output you only have hdmi (the USB is for file transfer) so all you need is an hdmi input card for your PC.

Then you can grab that input as a source for applications.


Best file format workflow for Final Cut Pro 7 on Maveriks

Likely your issues were stemming from trying to edit with H264 files.  This is something that FCP hates!  Convert all your h264 footage to ProRes before you start editing (using Compressor, MPEG Streamclip, or the awesome Magic Bullet Grinder) and then edit with the ProRes files.  Output your final 'Master File' as ProRes and then use Compressor to encode that file to various formats for delivery.


How to auto-tune the audio track of a video file to produce a modified video file

Start by looping the video so that you get the timing right - so you end up with that single bark hitting the correct beats for the song.

For the audio, you'll want to then use a DAW or other tool to pitch shift each sample to the desired new pitch. All major DAWs have this functionality built in, or you could use the Pitch Shift effect in Audacity if you like a free option. If you don't know the notes for Happy Birthday, you can easily find them online.

Very quick and easy to do, and you don't need any expensive software or hardware to do it.

And you are right - you are not the first. There are hundreds of these online. Check out this example.


(Efficiently) Extract multiple clips from a long video, possibly with ffmpeg

According to @Gyan, the referenced command does an efficient job, and won't read through MP4s but use an index to jump to the inpoint. So there's no real need to optimize.


Switch between 18-?? hdmi PC sources for live production

Only the 4K models of the Atom switchers support 1080p in 60 fps, like the ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K.

Although a software control panel is included, I would prefer a hardware panel. Switching between 18+ input sources will be so stressful, that you don't have time looking where the mouse pointer is. A hardware panel has big buttons and knobs that you can operate without looking at it.

These switchers all work with SDI, because HDMI only works with cable lengths up to 10 meter, whereas SDI cables can be up to 300 meter long. See this comparison.


ffmpeg scale and overlay then output yuv got corrupted video

I suspect this has to do with lack 1-1 correspondence between the frame timings in the color and video, but in any case, you can just run

ffmpeg -y -hide_banner -i 1.webm
       -vf "scale=w=640:h=480:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,
            pad=640:480:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2"
       -an -f rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p 1.yuv


SBS - Australia's Special Broadcasting Service has an extensive and international reputation for quality subtitles. from http://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/faqs/index/id/120/h/Subtitles

  SBS subtitles the majority of its non-English language programs in-house. The distinctive colour, font and size of subtitles were adopted after extensive research. For the majority of our programs, which are broadcast in colour it was found that yellow letters with thin black borders provide the maximum degree of contrast. For black and white material we use white subtitles with thin black borders.

Madman is an Australian distributor (originally of anime) their subs match SBS:

  Most of the time Madman uses Arial, size 36. The yellow is straight-up no frills yellow: R=255, G=255, B=0.

A similar match is these settings (obviously size depends on your video aspect ratio).

Font: Verdana, Regular
Size: 22
Primary Color: Yellow
Outline Width: 1
Shadow Depth: 1
Border Style: Outline + Shadow