Source video has 1GB and the final version has 3GB or more

For web use h.264, there are lots of web presets in the export media dialogue, or in Media Encoder that you can use. The first or second one should do the job, but if not there's lots of options.

If you're planning on exporting different copies of the video, or you want a copy for archiving then a master in a lossless format or a high-quality lossy codec like proRes, GoPro Cineform or DNxHR is a good idea. Then you can re-encode from this master to the more compressed web versions without having to re-render.

As for rendering times, with an After Effects comp at the start of the encode it will often report that it is going to take a lot longer to render than it actually will - it assumes that the whole composition is going to take as long per frame as the intro does. If you're exporting to h.264 it will take a little longer than other less compressed codecs, generally the smaller the resulting file the longer the encode takes.

Import the After Effects comp using Dynamic Link, that way you don't have to create intermediate render files, and you can change the AE comp without having to recreate your intermediates. Just import the after effects project as you would any other media file, and then choose the composition from the dialog that pops up.


Is there a method (or tool) to convert video from a SWF container to another more portable format (e.g., H.264)

You should get a SWF decompiler (perhaps one of the trails for: Sothink SWF Decompiler   or Decompiler SWF) and use that to find the nested movie file, and extract that.


What software to use for lighting and rendering 3d animation shorts?

There seem to be a few basic misconceptions here.  For cartoons you don't need anything fancy as long as cell-shading is supported, which is typically a camera filter.

Lighting is actually done in your 3d animation software.  The job of a render engine like Mental Ray or V-ray is simply to process the scene you build to generate the final image, but it takes the geometry, light sources, materials, and cameras that you have defined in your animation software.

I'm personally a big fan of Mental Ray in general, but that's just because of the fact it is included with my 3d animation package of choice (SoftImage).  I thought it was included in most editions of Maya as well, but it might not still be.  I don't remember which render engines are included with Maya, but they should be more than sufficient for your purposes.  For cartoon rendering, you really don't need a hyper-accurate ray tracing engine that can do good physical simulation (which is the point of most of the third party render engines).

Lighting and rendering is also a complex and broad topic that can't really be covered in a couple of simple tutorials.  The basics are very similar to building your model, you just choose the types of lights you want and place them throughout the scene and then place one or more cameras to allow you to render viewpoints.  Lights and cameras can also be animated, just like your characters and scene.

Do your lighting in Maya and try rendering it out in Maya.  If you run in to any specific issues while working on trying to get the look you are going for, you can always post a screen shot here with a specific question and we should be able to offer more directed feedback about how to accomplish what you are trying to do.


How to add Photos in background to a Video using FFMPEG

I'm going to call the video/image on top, overlay, and the bottom one, the photo.

ffmpeg -i photo -i overlay
       -filter_complex "[1]split=2[color][alpha];
                        [color]crop=iw/2:ih:0:0[color];[alpha]crop=iw/2:ih:iw/2:0[alpha];
                        [color][alpha]alphamerge[ovrly];
                        [0][ovrly]overlay=0:0" output.jpg

I assume that if the resolution of the video is WxH then the resolution of the photo is W/2 X H. If it's not, add a crop filter to the photo and then use that result in the overlay.

If the resulting video has uneven dimensions, add a scale filter after the overlay to rectify that: [0][ovrly]overlay=0:0,scale=2*trunc(iw/2):2*trunc(ih/2)

If you have a sequence of images of the same resolution, then you can use the concat demuxer.

First, create a text file,

file 'image1'
duration 2.0
file 'image2'
duration 4.0
file 'image3'
duration 2.0

Then,

ffmpeg -f concat -i text -i overlay
       -filter_complex "[0]fps=25[bg];
                        [1]split=2[color][alpha];
                        [color]crop=iw/2:ih:0:0[color];[alpha]crop=iw/2:ih:iw/2:0[alpha];
                        [color][alpha]alphamerge[ovrly];
                        [bg][ovrly]overlay=0:0,scale=2*trunc(iw/2):2*trunc(ih/2)" output.jpg


Color shifts in Quicktime when playing h264 encoded movie from After Effects

Exporting to H264 will always introduce a slight colour shift due to a gamma tag in the file header. At least, I didn't find any solution to export without a gamma shift. Neither in AE nor in any other video editing program.

Maybe also have a look at this answer: https://video.stackexchange.com/a/10336/11423


How to cut and merge mp4 video segments without re-encoding?

Well, this doesn't solve the problem of the re-encoding, but at least it is an handy interface. Just use it (in Linux) with vcat -i inputfile1,inputfile2[start-end],... -o <outputfile> (it needs python3 and the moviepy package)

#!/usr/bin/python3

import sys, getopt, re

def printerror(errormsg):
  print("*** vcat - concatenate video segments using moviepy ***\n")
  print("ERROR:", errormsg,"\n")
  print("Usage: vcat -i inputfile1,inputfile2[start-end],... -o <outputfile>")
  print("Optional start and end points should be given in seconds. If files have spaces should be quoted (e.g. \"input file.mp4[5-30]\").")

try:
 from moviepy.editor import VideoFileClip, concatenate_videoclips
except ImportError:
 printerror("You don't seem to have moviepy installed. Install it with `pip install moviepy`.")
 exit(1)

def main(argv):
    inputfiles_arg = ''
    outputfile = ''
    try:
        opts, args = getopt.getopt(argv,"hi:o:",["input=","output="])
    except getopt.GetoptError as err:
        printerror(str(err))
        sys.exit(2)
    for opt, arg in opts:
        if opt == '-h':
            printerror("")
            sys.exit()
        elif opt in ("-i", "--input"):
            inputfiles_arg = arg
        elif opt in ("-o", "--output"):
            outputfile = arg
    if outputfile =='':
        printerror("Output file not specified")

    iFiles = inputfiles_arg.split(',')

    clips=[]
    for iFile in iFiles:
        subclip = re.search(r"\[([0-9\-\.]+)\]", iFile)
        if subclip is None:
            clips.append(VideoFileClip(iFile))
        else:
            dims = subclip.group(1).split('-')
            if len(dims) != 2:
                printerror("If a specific segment of a file is specified, this should be given as [startseconds-endseconds]")
            iFile = iFile.replace("["+subclip.group(1)+"]",'')
            clips.append(VideoFileClip(iFile).subclip(float(dims[0]),float(dims[1])))

    f = concatenate_videoclips(clips)
    f.write_videofile(outputfile)

if __name__ == "__main__":
   main(sys.argv[1:])

Disclaimer: I don't use Python by a while, so sure there could be better approaches.. bdw it's really nice to be able to do what you want to do in a few hours because of the enormous documentation you can find on the net about python..


You ask what it does: Speedgrade is a color grading / correcting tool. Davinci Resolve is another, and there are others still. They allow you to adjust the characteristics of a video on a shot-by-shot basis.

It's never necessary to use any color grading tool, but you'd do so when you want to match scenes from different sources or shot under different conditions, or to give your video (or one portion) an overall look. The usual use is for consistency.


I believe the problem lies in how FFMPEG does the RGB->YUV conversion by default.  This option specifies the use of the bt709 color space for the conversion, instead of the default of bt601.  This fixes it for me - though please let me know if I'm doing something bad here!

-vf scale=out_color_matrix=bt709


Seeking free and simple way to brighten a dark video

Windows:
If you are on windows 7/Vista, you should have Windows Live Movie Maker. You can open your video in that, go to the Visual Effects tab, and select the brightness button. Then you have to re-encode your video. This will decrease the quality.

Free Windows Live Movie Maker

The problem with Windows Live Movie Maker is that there are limited effects and no way to create custom effects. However, Windows Movie Maker from Vista (i.e. WMM 6.0) does support custom effects, etc.

You can download WMM 6.0 for Windows 7 here.

Blaine also provides an extensive list of add on effects here. Which includes contrast effects to increase the contrast.

Mac:
If you have a MAC and iMovie, I found this link. You hover over the thumbnail and a "sun" symbol should show up, clicking that should bring up color controls.

Hopefully one of those will work. If not, you'll have to dive into the world of opensource video editing tools, which is a nightmare.


Easiest way to create video with multiple videos on loop

You need a stage with an area for each instrument, and video yourself standing in that area while playing that instrument, then overlay each instrumental track onto a master track. It's a type of clipping, selecting portions of the video by reducing the frame width keeping the height, and glueing/synchronising them side by side.

Many of the newer Video editing software can do this. (Even some of the free ones)  It boils down to lighting and timing, to be the same for each instrument you play or the effect is spoilt.


Artifact in animation / horizontal lines & double images

This artifact is likely the result of interlacing. And to get rid of it, you can deinterlace it.


How to sync the dubbed audio to original video?

I've had the same problem where the video and audio were compressed separately and came out with as two different lengths.  Even just a half second difference will mean that the audio at the end of the video will be out of sync a half second.

I don't know what editor you are using, but I'm using Sony Vegas.  So I'll give you the steps for it then just adjust for your editor.

First un-group the audio and video files if they are grouped by pressing U.
Synch up the first sound or word in the video with the audio.  It will be out of sych at the end, but that's okay for now.
Convert the length of the video into seconds and the actual length of the audio into seconds.  For your example you said it was a 90 minute video (5400 seconds) and an 88 minute (5280 second) audio.
Now divide the larger file by the smaller file.  5400/5280 = 1.022727
Now you know that the audio has somehow become 2.2727% shorter somehow.
Now you can right click on the video in your timeline and set the playback rate to .977  - This will shrink your video down to match your audio.


Actors certainly have no rights to the footage itself, without other agreement, that would belong to the cameraman shooting the footage, however, just because they don't have claim to the footage doesn't mean they don't have claim to the contents of the footage.

The writers most likely have copyright for the script content they produced, the director has copyright for the influence of their directing, the actors may have copyright for their likeness and performance.  The makeup artists have copyright for the makeup they do.  Everyone acting in a creative capacity that is copyrightable in your jurisdiction will generally be the owner of that copyright unless otherwise agreed upon.

Thus, the actors have no claim on the footage itself, but they may possibly have a claim on their performance or use of their likeness.  They can't decide what is done with the footage without permission of the cameraman, but they can possibly restrict what can be done with their performances and image.

It really depends on local law and that is going to require a local legal expert that can review the case and any applicable agreements in detail.  The specific details of your situation aren't some simple case that can just be answered on an internet Q/A site, as copyright is a tremendously complex thing on any collaborative project.

This is also why it is important to do contracts for even relatively basic projects.  You don't want to ever have to rely on a contract, but problems do come up and it is important to be clear on who is responsible for what.


How to make a 3D animated video from video games as realistic as possible?

What you are talking about doing is an example of an art form known as Machinama.  It is where you use a video game engine to play out the actions of a script and voice over it to produce content.  One widely successful such project is Red vs Blue which is based around the game engines used in Halo.  There are also quite a few different examples of machinama based around the World of Warcraft engine.

For your particular objectives, you would want something that makes it easy to setup camera positions and position actors.  Gary's Mod, while a bit dated, is one option for such a sand box.  There is also the slightly more advanced Source Filmmaker which is based on the same engine (Source) which is what Half Life 2 was based on.  It's a bit dated by today's standards, but both are pretty easy to use and might make a good introduction.

Once you get comfortable with those, it would just be a matter of moving to a more up to date game engine that features realistic motion and rendering.  Crytek's engines are pretty well respected for their flexibility and I believe they have pretty good support for things like custom camera positions.

If these turn out to be too complicated, using something with multiplayer and an observer mode can work as a camera as long as you can remove the UI.

Video editing itself is unfortunately a crap in/crap out kind of process.  You can't magically enhance the footage you get from the game and make it look more realistic.  You can do color grading (adjusting white balance, contrast, color balance, etc) to try and make more realistic tones, but if the textures and lighting and motion are inherently unrealistic, you aren't going to make them look significantly more realistic after the fact in post.


Resize a live stream and overlay over another live stream for broadcasting

You can do this with OBS. I do it all the time.

The Mac, can with OBS take the feed(s) and arrange/resize them and then stream it to Wirecast(?, but not necessary) or directly to Youtube.

OBS handles both input from streams and from video cards, so you can have several inputs and combine them, very easily.


Chroma Key video software for command line

While not a direct solution, AVISynth supports creating a mask from a Chroma key using ColorKeyMask.  You can then use that mask to blend the two layers together by using Mask on the top layer and then Layering them together.

You could then just feed files in to the script and use FFMPEG or something similar to write out the frame stream from AVISynth.

Note that you will still need to adjust the color of the background and the tolerance if they lighting isn't really consistent between shots of the green background though.


Putting a Lower bitrate of my video stream in my current mp4 container

Answering the question as asked,

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map 0:v -map 0:a -map 0:v \
-c:v:0 copy -c:v:1 libx264 -b:v:1 <lower-bitrate> -c:a copy -movflags +faststart out.mp4

The lower-bitrate version of the video is the third stream. Players typically will play the original video which is the first stream in the output.


Does amount of display's pixels affects computer's performance on lower resolution settings?

Setting your graphic card to work at a lower resolution will provide a small increase in performance in the case you described.

For example:

1920 * 1080 = 2,073,600

1280 *  720 =   921,600

2,073,600 - 921,600 = 1,152,000, or 56% fewer pixels.

If you spend all your computer's time working to create text to fill the entire screen with new information then you would be able to do that almost 180% faster - but that is an extremely rare use case.

One way to understand how that's a rare use case is: when you look at this webpage it's the graphics card that updates your screen (and not your computer's CPU), for 1/10th of a second your computer will be faster and for the remainder of the time you will gain no speed increase (and suffer with lower resolution).

A more realistic way to estimate is that if 10% of the CPU's effort went into creating a screen full of text, each second, then you would speed up that 10% by almost 180%. Put another way, your computer would be 8% quicker if all you did was have text go flying past your eyes all day.

It's not a good tradeoff to suffer too low a resolution for a small increase in performance.

Don't confuse the above with watching videos. Watching videos involves decompressing a highly compressed data stream, most of the effort is running the algorithm to undo the compression; writing the pixels to the screen is the easy part. In fact a lot of compression algorithms rely on the fact that not every pixel changes constantly, deciding what can be skipped and what needs to be updated, along with how to reduce the data stream's size, represents most of the effort.

Going from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 is a much bigger jump, and in fast paced video games where everything is constantly changing indeed there's a lot of effort going on in the background to create new data to display (or decide if it would not be visible, and not display it).

Yes, you'll get a bigger jump in performance going from 4K to 1080p in a gaming scenario but at a huge loss in resolution (and enjoyment); it would really be a waste of money to buy a 4K capable computer and run it at 1080p and a waste of money to go halfway and have the components but not enough horsepower to run them - thus the big market for upgrades.

Your savings going from 1080 to 720 will be much smaller, and likely only increase your frustration with too small a screen, over any small increase in CPU performance.

If you had a 4K laptop and kept is at 1080P, and only bumped it up for watching videos or playing games, you would have more CPU power available, but that's not the difference you are asking about (you only want to go from 1080 to 720). AND since you're not doing intensive work at the lower resolution the savings gained is even smaller.

I hope that was clearly explained.

As a personal example: I want my cellphone to operate quickly, to save power, and I have a tiny screen that can only display up to a certain resolution; I'm not going to be able to see over 4K if I wanted to.

I run it at 2K all the time (and with Android there's no auto-switching resolution based upon what you're doing). I get an average of 20 hours per charge and my phone benchmarks as the fastest.

I don't need to go to 720p to squeeze more life out of the battery nor would I want the beautiful screen to operate at so low a resolution.

With such a fast CPU (SD845) I don't worry about scraping a small increase in performance out of my phone (and in my case my gain would be greater than what you are asking about).


You can only pad frames to a size as large as or larger than the source size. In your case, 16/9 multiplier of 1500 is 2666.66 which is rounded down to 2666 and hence smaller than source width. Since your source aspect is so close, just skip the pad.
"/usr/bin/ffmpeg" -y -f concat -safe 0 -i "/home/abc/def/data/tmp/gVQO7wUc.txt" -vf "scale=1920:1080:flags=lanczos,setsar=1" -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset veryslow -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart "/home/abc/def/data/tmp/964MX26P.mp4"


The effect you are looking for is Chroma Key, and it is supported by iMovie (according to this Apple documentation).  The color green is typically used (and the technique known as Green Screen) because green is not the color of human skin, and thus easy to distinguish.  When green is a color that must be used in the scene (for example, if your subject is Kermit the Frog), then Blue Screen is used (and the technique is known as Blue Screen).  Sometimes no color works, in which case, people use bright white or dark black.  Chroma key software can work for those, too, but technically it's a Luma Key in that case.

As for making it look real--that's a skill.  But now that you know the name of the technique, you can find articles that explain how best to do it, and the pitfalls to avoid.


Adobe Premier CS6 'Unable to open file' coming from Cineform

Simply update your Cineform installation and maybe also Premiere, this was a bug with Cineform and got fixed about 2 years ago.


Why do they deliberately (?) crush the quality for any video sent in by "normal people"?

Without an example it's hard to say, but I think perhaps sometimes people just hold up their camera and film, they can't or don't frame the shot or adjust the zoom, they're often standing in one place and can't get closer to line up a good shot. Also lighting is super important for good video, unless it's filmed during the daytime in sunlight, the quality really suffers.

If the image is cropped and zoomed for television, it will amplify camera shake (and most of these videos are handheld) and reduce the quality a lot.

I also think most people don't have high end phones. Even really good phones suffer terribly in low light. I think it's quite easy to underestimate how poor video looks when you view it back on a phone too - if you export it and view it on an external screen, the lack of quality becomes much more noticable.


Color is being processed strangely after uploading to YouTube

I see the correct color on Youtube. via Flash player on Windows 7.

Sounds like either a gamma issue with the errant players, not Youtube. Try VLC.

--or--

Your FCP output isn't properly tagged. Its colorspace is Rec 709 but it's tagged as Rec 601 (or something else).


Is HandBrake tune -still image applicable to videos with minimal movement?

My experience with handbrake mirrors Mulvya`s comment

I also get smaller file sizes with X264 Tune set to None on the Video Tab.


You can use shapes around that icon and animate it. Like enclosing the icon by a circle and animating the circle to reveal in clockwise or anticlockwise manner.

For description of that icon you can use some nice looking lower thirds and edit the the text of that lower third to describe the content.

You can search for lower thirds pack online and download for free. There are plenty of them available for free online.


Can I import an entire folder into After Effects and/or Premiere, in such a way that newly-created files will be imported automatically?

I think the Pro IO plugin allows you to have "live bins", so as you add a file, it appears in After Effects etc.. I haven't used it though.
https://aescripts.com/pro-io/


Is there a "fix" for Adobe Premiere Pro so it doesn't degrade sharp black lines and soften vivid colors?

First of all, as we've found out in the comments, you actually use Premiere Rush and not Premiere Pro. There is a difference, Premiere Pro is much more complex but it also enables you to take control of many more aspects of the video making process.
The problem is most likely due to compression with a target bitrate that's too low. Rush is optimized for quick social media video sharing and this means they expect videos to be about a person talking about something filmed in front of a mostly static background, for example. They didn't have videos as yours in mind that require higher bitrates to look sharp and clean.
Normally I don't use Rush, but tried it to check what can be done in your case. Unfortunately, I don't see any option you can try. Setting the quality to high is already the best you can do. Using the 4k preset may help if the original clip has been recorded at 4k.
Another option you can try is to install ffmpeg and use it from the command line. A question that deals with adding the crop effect, you need, is this one: How can I crop a video with ffmpeg?
Handbrake is a GUI tool, that uses ffmpeg and another alternative to try.
Or you could try Premiere Pro (if it's not in your subcription plan you could still try it for a number of days for free). However, both Premiere and ffmpeg are more complex.
It might be good to record another 5 min clip to save time when you try to find out the highest bitrate you need to make it look pleasant, yet still produce videos that are suitably small for upload to the web.


Camera for live feed-transfer to external monitor in adjacent room?

A Raspberry Pi might be what you are looking for.  It is a credit card sized Arm based computer running Raspbian (a Debian variant), and at $25 it may even be cheaper than buying several adapters.

You could simply attach a web cam to the Pi and attach the monitor or TV via HDMI or Component out.  To get to VGA you will need a converter which you can get for about $30.


How do you make orbiting text in Davinci Resolve 15?

I can put this in a video tutorial later if you need it but here is what I did to achieve an effect like that. I took an animated PNG and recorded a 20 second clip of it doing its thing on the my screen. The PNG was a bouncing Firefox logo and by default is was a transparent animation but I used IrfanView to play the animation, which gave it a solid black background for recording.

Next I imported the clip into Resolve, added it to the video track above the main video, sized and positioned it to the lower left of the screen. Next I went into the color grading page and removed all the black (background) from the animated clip, which left just the bouncing logo over the original video.

This end result is not perfect because I put this together fast to answer your question. But this is what I ended up with in less than a half hour of effort.

Bouncing Firefox Video


How to manage colour in After Effects to get precisely a desired colour in h264 output

Since I cannot use hyperlinks in comments, here is the gist of my research:
This answer on a reddit post suggests, that the reason for the color-shift is the way illegal and legal colors are handled. So maybe the "broadcast colors" effect can help limit the color-range to the legal range? I'd recommend giving that a quick shot.
If that doesn't work, it should certainly do the trick to use Resolve and select video-levels instead of data-levels and encode the 4444 to h264 from there.
Please do report back and good luck!


The filesize is determined by many factors. First, check your resolution. If you're exporting in 4k or 6k, your filesize might not be strange at all. Next, the framerate plays a big part in filesizes aswell. Check if you're exporting in 30fps (for most web-videos), 25fps (for tv) or 24fps (for cinema). It might just be that you are using something like 60 or 120fps, which bloats the file. Next up is the codec and container you are using. You mentioned trying the .avi and .mp4 container, but which codec were you using? For .mp4 files I recommend h.264 or h.265, which are the most common codecs for mp4.


How do I know if a YouTube video is available to license?

Generally, the only license that's built in to YouTube is the YouTube terms of service. That license is basically that you have to watch through YouTube. You cannot download, reuse, etc. That leaves you with two options: 1) Link to the video, or 2) use the YouTube embed feature, assuming it's been made available for this video. Outside of that, you'll have to ask the video owner.

However, some content creators licence their YouTube videos under the Creative Commons license (which is only valid if the uploader is the owner, naturally). If a YouTube video is under the Creative Commons or anything other than the standard YouTube licence, then it will say so in the video description. See the following snapshot:

Source

You can also filter YouTube search results to include only Creative Commons uploads.

YouTube also recognizes the "Fair Use" doctrine, and lists their understanding of it and how you may use it with regards to YouTube videos here.


what could prevents MPC-HC from opening and playing mov file?

ProRes is only one of codecs using for encoding / decoding video into / from the .mov files container. You need other codecs, too, to be able play back all .mov files.

The Quick Time Player is the native player for the Apple's .mov files, so it has its own codecs for playing back them.

For Media Player Classic you need the appropriate codecs to be installed in your operating system (Windows 10).

Probably the simplest and most reliable method is to download and install the free K-Lite Codec Pack - the decision between its different versions (Basic, Standard, etc.) is up to you, all versions will cause that all media players will be able to play back all .mov files (and almost all others, too).


How do I.T. conferences record and synchronise video, audio and slides?

It is a tall order because it requiters combining many different technologies however university I am studying at have this kind of service.
Here is their main website: https://vips.liedm.lt/en/
Here is an example https://vips.liedm.lt/vflash/klientas/2204/2207/false
Check out recorded sessions to get controls in English there is menu call "Kalba" just click it and chose English controls will change to English.

It was developed on Drupal 6 and uses technologies like Flex and flash it uses wowza and red 5 for live video streaming.


How to upload 1hr video to YouTube from fcpx

The upload speed to YouTube depends mainly on your Internet connection and has nothing to do with your editing software...

What you can do (if you can't get a better internet connectivity) is to create a smaller file by using higher compression settings.

I don't know how fcpx handles this process, what video format your clip is etc. But you can achieve decent results by compressing a clip to h264 with a bitrate of 10000-15000kbps and then uploading it...

EDIT: As Michael points out thats the Bitrate you are already using. So you need tackle this task from another angle: what is an acceptable upload time for you and what expectations do you have for the quality of the video? And maybe, video technology unrelated: why is your upload speed so slow (and do you have access to a faster connection)...

Then you need to find a compromise between these parameters (video quality vs time needed for upload). You can get a better compromise between file size and upload time by using a more efficient codec like VP9 or h265 which will lead to the same visual result at lower file sizes. This, at least in the case of h265 comes with the "cost" of having much longer compression times. Another option is not using FullHD resolution and just 720p and lowering the bitrate to 5-8000 KBits

Alternatively, export the video with the settings you have now, copy it to a thumb drive and go to a place that has better Internet connectivity for uploading.


How to get Youtube Editor spotlight annotations to show up once uploaded on Vimeo

You can't. Vimeo doesn't support such a feature like the YouTube annotations.
You also can't export your YouTube annotations, YouTube doesn't offer any method for that.


Resizing a video in Premiere without scaling

Create a sequence that is 720x720, drag the clip on to the timeline, and in the canvas window use the arrow tool v to double click the layer which brings up the layer controls. Position it the way you want, export.  I'm pretty sure Premiere doesn't scale non-uniformly by default.

If it does for some reason, you'll probably want to use the conform options to adjust how it is conformed to the sequence.

You'll need to use a custom sequence setting since none of the presets will match your 720 by 720.  You'll also want to make sure you use square pixels (1.0 pixel pitch) if you are looking for a perfectly square output.


This will get migrated but the short answer is that ALL-I stores every frame in it's entirety, whereas other methods store a certain number of keyframes in entirety, with the other frames stored as the difference to the keyframe.


Which settings • preferences • preset to use in Adobe Premiere when exporting in QuickTime (.mov) format to avoid lines?

Looks like you have interlaced turned on. Try a different method of frame blending


How to encode a video at 30 FPS from images taken at 7 FPS

Image inputs
Default frame rate for image inputs is 25. You can change it with the -framerate input option. Example for 24 fps:
ffmpeg -framerate 24 -i input_%03d.jpg -vf format=yuv420p output.mp4

-vf format=yuv420p (or the legacy alias -pix_fmt yuv420p) will ensure compatible chroma subsampling for MP4. Otherwise, ffmpeg will try to preserve color fidelity, but most players can't handle advanced chroma subsampling.
The output will use the same frame rate as the input. So you do not need to set an output frame rate. But there are a few reasons to do so. See Using a different frame rate for image inputs and video output below.

Video inputs
Use the -r output option:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -r 25 output.mp4

Using a different frame rate for image inputs and video output
Why? For example, you may want all images to be displayed for 1 second each (1 fps). But most players can't play very low frame rates (about 6 fps or lower). So you can make ffmpeg use a different output frame rate. The output will look like 1 fps, but will actually be a normal frame rate, such as 25 fps.
Example: input images at 1 fps, but make the output 25 fps.
ffmpeg -framerate 1 -i input_%03d.png -r 25 output.mp4

Frames will be duplicated or dropped to match the desired output frame rate.
The image demuxer uses -framerate, while the output frame rate is set using -r.

Error: Option framerate not found
The -framerate option:

Is not a generic option. It doesn't work for everything.
Is only an input option.
Only works with certain demuxers (including: images, x11grab, rawvideo).
You probably only need to use the -r output option. See the Video inputs section above.


MediaInfo gives you a way to check the file metadata, including the creation date for the video and audio streams. This is free, cross platform and open source and also provides a GUI for you to check.

If you're up for using the command line, with MediaInfo:

mediainfo in.mp4 | grep "Encoded date" | head -n1 | cut -d: -f2-

With FFmpeg's ffprobe:

ffprobe -v quiet -print_format flat -show_format in.mp4 | grep creation_time | cut -d= -f2-


ffmpeg: add 3 seconds of black to video head and tail

The basic method to join videos without re-encoding is to use the concat demuxer. This device requires that the files being joined share certain properties, like codec, framerate, video dimensions, timebase..etc

First step is to create the blank segment, which may be used both at the head and tail.

ffmpeg -i fullvideo.mp4 -vf trim=0:3,geq=0:128:128 -af atrim=0:3,volume=0 -video_track_timescale 600 3sec.mp4

Have to do one bookkeeping step for the full video. If not done, the combined video will likely run at the wrong speed.

ffmpeg -i fullvideo.mp4 -c copy -video_track_timescale 600 full600.mp4

Next, create a text file.

file 3sec.mp4
file full600.mp4
file 3sec.mp4

Then run

ffmpeg -f concat -i list.txt -c copy merged.mp4

My first step assumes that the video stream has the most common pixel format yuv420p. Which should be fine as this is the only pixel format supported by web players and smartphone cameras, consumer camcorders..etc. If it's not, the geq filter may fail.

I also assume, tacitly, that the full video does not use more reference frames than produced by preset medium of x264. It's a safe assumption for 95% of videos.

Finally, I assume the full video has AAC-LC as its audio codec. Expected to be true of most phone/cam/web videos.


What computer to buy for PrPro 2015? More GPU than RAM?

My setup: I am running a GTX 760 4gb RAM, i7 3930k overclocked to 4.2ghz (very stable), Sabertooth x79, 800 watt corsair PSU

I once read a really good article and I wish I could find it again to link it, but it basically talked about bottlenecks in an editing system and was supported by actual builds and real world tests. But the just of it was, that unless you are running dual Xenon processors with 64gb RAM the added benefits of a 900+ nvidia gpu was marginal at best. The recommend specs were thus an i7, around 16-32 gb of RAM, SSD's, and GTX 700 series.

This setup works pretty well for me, and I can recommend it. Instead of forking out extra money for the 900 series GPU, get one with more memory and more CUDA cores (something PP really utilizes especially with 3rd party plugins) in the 700 series. Cap the RAM at 32gb unless your going Xenon. But at that point your going to need a GeForce Titan to remove the bottleneck.

I have found that the mercury playback engine with cuda is considerably better at processing frames especially with effects, than the 'program mode' processing.

For reference I can play 85mbps DNX 1080p at full ress with magic bullet looks on with no lag. If I'm running of an external hdd, it takes some time to start the play head once its stopped (less than a second, but enough to annoy). SSD's are a must.


Simple video animation for teaching purpose

In the example given, motion graphics techniques are used. Motion graphics consists of Graphic Design and Animation, of course. In order to create something like that, you need a tool which includes typography, color and animation features, but actually it's key to handle and process all of your design assets, like flow charts, icons, images or backdrops, which created in other applications with animation in mind.

In general you can do this in many 2D animation tools, but In terms of flexibility and speed, I suggest you to use Adobe After Effects in combination with Illustrator or Photoshop. Almost every image and vector format is supported, so in this you don't have to deal with technical limitations. Also It's layer based and for this reason easy to learn for this kind of animation work.


Application for Screen-casting for Macintosh

I know you looked at ScreenFlow. Were you looking at the latest version--ScreenFlow 4? It does have some vectorial shapes (they're called Annotations):

Line (arrow)
Line
Square (filled)
Square
Circle

Now, that doesn't get you speech bubbles and other abstract shapes. For those, you can use a text box with an image fill--unfortunately, you've got to supply your own image in that case.

ScreenFlow also accepts PDF and other image types as layers. This makes ScreenFlow able to import vector PDF's as "shapes" that one can use to add annotations such as the mentioned speech bubbles.


Why is image stabilization in my smartphone so much better than in post production?

The smartphone has acceleration sensors it needs for various things: knowing its orientation (so that it can keep the display content upright), interpolating between GPS fixes in order to give better navigation (and compass readings) than GPS alone would.  These acceleration sensors tell it how much it needs to compensate.  Dedicated cameras tend to use the acceleration signals for then either moving either a compensation lens (optical image stabilisation) or the sensor appropriately which means that they can still work with long continuous exposures on the same pixel sensor and compensate for sub-pixel shakes.  I don't know whether smartphones do that kind of thing: they probably just shift by multiples of whole pixels and read out faster.

At any rate, they don't need to rely on image processing in order to get reliable data for how much should be shifted where in case both smartphone and observed scene are in movement (and if they weren't, why would we be recording a movie rather than a still image in the first place?).  They can just use their motion sensors.

Even if they do the compensation purely digitally, they will do it at a faster rate than the final frame rate.  And since you are recording not raw but with a motion-optimized lossy encoder, the encoder can well decide "I'll just record a smear here since people will not be able to tell the difference to the details of the blur I have".  Except that after motion compensation, the details of the blur might become the details of a static scene and if they have been thrown away, you cannot reconstitute them just because they would be more visible than the encoder reasonably expected them to be.

So for one, the smartphone has better information what motion it should compensate and what not.  And for another, it has the raw input before reduction to the frame rate and lossy perception-based encoding to work with.


As mentioned before Open Broadcast Software and or XSplit seems to be the standards. Both are fully functional with plugins to customize your live stream output. Though OBS is free to use and available of multiple platforms while XSplit has three different range for pricing depending on the functionalities you intend to use during production. For a more complete comparison between the two software please visit here.


If the files have no content then it's enough to key on size. A totally "empty" WAV file will have just a header and will almost certainly be less than 200 bytes. So it's probably enough to delete any files smaller than that. I would sort the folder by increasing size. You will probably see a sharp change from very low values to a series of much larger files. Bulk delete above that point (shift-select, delete).

If the files have some length but contain only silence, you need a more rigorous test. But from your question it doesn't sound like that's the case.


There isn't really a good way of doing this. But there is a way of doing it.

With the stroke on its own layer, from the align pallet centre the layer to the composition horizontally and vertically.

Now copy the layer's current position value. Then right-click the position property and choose reset,

Go the stroke's anchor point value (not the layer anchor point but the one inside Contents>shape1>Transform: Shape1.

Paste the original position value there, then click on the individual property values and subtract the value there from half the size of the comp (in other words whatever the position property is now). So if the comp is 1920×1080 and the copied value was [999,123] you'd type 960 - 999 in the x channel and 540 - 123 in the y channel.


I think most HW players that can play mp4/avi/mkv/etc files-in-a-directory will load external-file subtitles if you just put them in the same directory as the video.  Burn it to a data DVD, or put it on a USB stick, and you're done.


Wowza Media Server on Amazon EC2 is a really cost-effective way to do it, it's very popular among churches because of its on-demand nature and low cost. You spin up the server when you need it, pay a small hourly charge for it, pay for the bandwidth used, and shut it down.


use a loop

If you're a Linux or OS X user then you can use a Bash for loop:

mkdir outputdir
for f in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -vf scale=640:-2 -c:a copy "outputdir/${f%.*}.mp4"; done

Maybe a Windows user can add a similar example that works for that OS.

or simply cram it all in one command

ffmpeg -i 1.mp4 -i 2.mp4 -i 3.mp4 -i 4.mp4 \
-map 0 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 1_2.mp4 \
-map 1 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 2_2.mp4 \
-map 2 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 3_2.mp4 \
-map 3 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 4_2.mp4

You have to use -map otherwise the default stream selection will choose the same input for each output.


How to split video output signal from 1 PC to 40 projectors?

You can't use a passive splitter for this as the signal level would drop far too low, however it should be trivial to accomplish with some simple active distribution amplifiers.

There are two real solutions for this and the best bet really depends on the details of where the projectors are.  More than just splitting the signal, the amount of distance to the projectors may also be an issue as most video signals degrade over long distance cable runs.

If all the runs are fairly short or you are able to use either fiber or signal boosters, you can use a large distribution amplifier or matrix switch to feed one signal to all 40 outputs at one location.

Alternately, you could use a series of smaller distribution amplifiers to spider out from the middle.  As each DA will also act as a repeater, it should help you cover a longer distance and you only need a chain of about 3 to cover all 40 projectors if you are using 4 way DAs.  You'd start with the signal in the middle, run it in to a distribution amplifier and run each of the 4 outputs in to another distribution amplifier heading off towards your other projectors.  Those 4 DAs would give you 16 total outputs.  Each one of those would run in to another 4 way DA and give you a total of up to 64 outputs, which easily covers your 40 projectors.

Another option if exact timing doesn't matter and you already have a solid Ethernet network in place would be to stream the video over the network and have each projector play back the stream independently.

A final option would be to setup a short range broadcast using wireless gear, however this is probably the most costly and potentially most error prone of the options though it can also be the easiest to setup if the environment supports it as it doesn't require multiple splitters or any complicated wiring, however transmitters tend to not be cheap as the range gets longer and beyond a certain range, you start needing licenses.


Best low cost software for lightsaber effect on a macintosh?

You could try the HitFilm Express 4, they have the sci-fi pack (25usd) which contains the VFX you want and specific tutorials for lightsaber (https://hitfilm.com/express/the-force) and it works on mac :)
Link: https://hitfilm.com/store/hitfilm-4-express


Video compressed with ffmpeg is distorted when opened in cs6

I fixed this by using the flag -pix_fmt yuv420p, for some reason the default pixel format is not supported in premiere pro cs6.


Monetizing YouTube Channel with Videos Containing CC-Licensed Content

No, one offending video won't taint your entire channel.  At my workplace, sometimes the youtube algorithms will mistakenly flag some music to which we own the rights as copyright protected.  When such an event occurs, the video is automatically un-monetized, and we are asked to demonstrate that we have rights to the music. The video still plays, we just don't make any money off of it. The rest of the channel is unaffected.


Is it possible to make a movie with todays smart phone?

Most movie-makers use the best tools for the job.  For some people that tool is an inexpensive camera they can afford to blow up (crash cam).  For some it's light enough they can fly it on a drone.  For some, it has a large sensor so they can get shallow depth of field.  For some, it means being able to synchronize with other cameras so that edits are aligned to whole frames.  For some it means being able to use a specific lens that provides a specific look, or flare, or angle of view, or zoom ratio.

Merely capturing 2K or 4K resolution doesn't begin to describe the requirements for making a film.  The script, the actors, the wardrobe and makeup, the set design, the props, the lighting, the color scheme, the use of contrast, color, transitions, music, sound design, etc., are all as important, if not more important, than the camera.  When the time comes to bring all these elements together and make an actual movie, it becomes readily apparent what sort of camera, camera operator, and camera department will do the movie justice.


There is thumbnail filter just for that, and palettegen/paletteuse to create high quality gif.

Example command: "scale=vga,thumbnail=100,split[a][b],[b]palettegen=reserve_transparent=0:stats_mode=single[b];[a][b]paletteuse=new=1,settb=1/25,setpts=N"

Thumbnail filter selects one frame from set of 100 frames. To get gif of 3 secs, you will need to adjust this number to smaller or bigger value depending on source file number of frames.


I'm not a professional colorist, but I do care a lot about color. (I run a fully ICC controlled workflow.)  I would personally start with either noise reduction or color chart, depending on how noisy the footage was.  Reasoning being that if it is too noisy, then the samples off the color chart may be impacted.  It's also true that the denoise process may cause corruption of the color data from the chart, but if it is so noisy that the information effectively isn't there anyway, it isn't going to matter a lot.

Doing the noise reduction will impact the precision of information in the scene, but hopefully reduce visible artifacts.  I generally try to do it as late as possible but as early as necessary.  Each step of the process has a chance of making noise worse and at a certain point, it's going to become harder to deal with if you don't deal with it before making more changes, but that's a somewhat variable place depending on the type and quantity of noise and your level of comfort in dealing with it well.

Color charts are going to give you a decent baseline.  They are all about getting color in spec.  They aren't giving you a particular look, they are just getting you a starting point where certain known colors will match spec for whatever colorspace you are working in.

Primaries are going to develop the actual look and feel of your image to the way you want it colorized.  This is where you will do most of the fine tuning to get the tone you want after starting from a well placed baseline from the charts.

Saturation may be adjusted a bit while working on the primaries, but I largely find I work with saturation after most of my primaries work is done.  This will impact the strength of the color and may very well result in additional refinement being needed in the primaries, but the closer you can have the primaries before adjusting saturation too much, the faster I find my workflow personally.  It's also worth noting that if you know you will want a somewhat pastel image or a more vivid image, it may be worth messing with saturation to get it in roughly the right range prior to doing primary work as drastic changes in saturation will have a larger impact on your primaries work.

Sharpening is almost always at the end and generally after noise reduction, but it does somewhat matter what you are trying to accomplish and how noisy things are.  As sharpening looks to make edge contrast higher, it will tend to greatly amplify any noise, which is why it is generally done after noise reduction.  It is also done after coloring since the coloring will impact the edge detection of sharpening.

This only reflects my process and isn't necessarily shared by everyone, but I find it works well for me in getting good results quickly.  There's always going to be a degree of going back after the fact to correct things you notice later as you are further refining the image, but that largely will come from experience of working with color and being able to recognize what your goal is and what primary and side effects different adjustments will have.

Edit: Just noticed you were asking about node order, not adjustment order.  I'd go with Color chart, primaries, saturation, sharpening with noise reduction entered based on where it is needed.  Saturation would probably be reversed with primaries when doing a non-natural color look.


Final Cut Express vs. Final Cut Pro X vs. Final Cut Studio

FCPX, I've heard, is much easier but different. Its like a combination of FCPS and iMove: Simple, Elegant, Powerful, but overall different and in that sense incompatible with other FC project files. Its like OSX was at its time, or iMoive 8: "It breaks the line". If it's for good or not depends on you: how used you are to your workflow/plugins/etc.

Nevertheless, just like with iMovie or OSX, Apple wont go back and support whats old again, it will just keep improving, so I'd Final Cut X to be getting better with time whereas FCS is obsolete already. This plus the fact FCX is finally Cocoa 64bit and makes use of the latest Apple technologies might be enough for you or might not. It all depends on you.

Good luck!


What detailed research exists on the effects of aspect ratio on perception?

The most relevant keyword to add to your search is psychophysics, which is "the analysis of perceptual processes by studying the effect on a subject's experience...".

More directly, there's this SMPTE paper Searching for the Perfect Aspect Ratio.
The paper visits some of the research conducted on different aspect ratios and its take-away is

  The research for this paper found no clear indication of a preference
  for any particular aspect ratio for moving images nor any
  physiological reason to favor one over another.


Keep in mind that it is 14 bit color and there are 8 bits to a byte.  So the uncompressed data rate would be height * width * 14 bits per pixel / 8 bits per byte * fps.  That said, I'm not sure if they store it completely uncompressed.  RAW images are generally compressed significantly, they are just compressed losslessly.  I'm not sure if the MagicLantern hack uses compression or not though.

As far as screen size for noticing the difference between 720p and 1080p, it doesn't have to be big.  Viewing distance makes a bigger difference, but it's fully possible to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p even on screens that are inches in size as long as they actually support 1080p and are viewed from fairly close.

While I wasn't able to find a CC version, Carlton Bale has a nice graph on his site that shows the screen sizes and distances at which 20/20 vision can resolve the differences.  Note that someone with higher than 20/20 vision would see the differences further out.  It unfortunately only goes from 20 inch displays up though.

In closer, it might be easier to use a pixels per inch measure.  Photographs are typically suggested to be printed at 300dpi or higher when in close.  A 4.7 inch screen at 720p has around 312 ppi.  Uping that to a 1080p resolution at 5 inches or so has a PPI of 415.  At arms length, it isn't going to be noticeable, but when you get in close to it, say watching in bed with it a few inches from your face, the difference will become quite noticeable.

Thinking about it another way, it really all has to do with how big of an area of your vision the screen takes.  So using a 50 inch screen as a guideline, if the display takes up the area of your vision that a 50 inch TV takes when sitting 8 to 10 feet away, then you won't see better than 720p with 20/20 vision.  If it is taking more than that area, then you will easily be able to see the difference.


Avidemux shows better preview than VLC player

This looks to be a color space mismatch. You could be viewing a “clamped” (16-235) signal in VLC. This is a common issue with nVidia graphics cards.

See VSG:Video:Color washed out.


link multiple audio tracks to one video track in Premiere CC

You can link multiple clips as you would link two clips. First, put all the audio and video tracks you want in your timeline and arrange them using the timecodes, manual adjustments or however you prefer to align the individual recordings (I'm assuming you have a method for that, since you removed that part of the question in the last edit). Then select all clips that you want to link, right-click on one of them and select "link" (if some of them are already linked, you will only see an "unlink" option, in that case unlink them, select them again and then link them alltogether). You could also choose to group them, which yields a slightly different effect.

Check the Premiere Pro Support Page for more information on linking clips, as well as this page on linking and grouping clips in Premiere Elements (it's works quite similar in Premiere Pro).

One more tip: In the program preferences under "Generel", you have the option "Display out of sync indicators for unlinked clips", which will show you when clips you linked at some point are out of sync even if you unlinked them later on. This might be helpful for an editing process with several independent audio clips.


How to keep EXIF data in a DSLR video after editing / compressing with Photoshop CC?

I don't think any video release format allows per-frame metadata. The best you can do is per-file metadata, which won't preserve the info from individual scenes in an edited piece.

It's theoretically possible to construct a file in (say) AVI format which uses RIFF chunks. You could add text chunks at scene changes to tag the source. But AFAIK this is not something anyone has actually done -- you'd have to build it yourself.

What you might do is use an EDL to identify the shots by source and time, and use it to index a database that holds the extracted EXIF data from each source.


Use

ffmpeg -i file1.avi -i file2.avi -filter_complex "[0][1]vstack" -t 10 joined.avi

This will stack the videos vertically and play the first 10 seconds of each. Remove the -t option if the videos are longer and you wish to extend the output. This command also uses the default parameters to encode the video i.e. codec will be MPEG4 Part 2 (Xvid..). If there's any audio, the track from the first video will be used and encoded as MP3.


Why did a 10 minute video take up 32GB of space? (Canon 1200D)

For one thing, that chart doesn't list 1920x1080 @ 50 fps, which is what you're shooting.  It lists 1920x1080 at 24, 25, and 30.  You can assume that you'll get around half the recording time listed when you double the frame rate.   But that should still get you around 44 minutes on an otherwise empty 32 GB card.  The fact that you didn't suggests that your card didn't have 32 GB of free space.  You probably had other pictures, movies, or files on the card already.  To get the full available recording time, you'll need to follow the manual's instructions on "formatting" the card.  Formatting a card erases all of its contents, so make sure you copy anything you want to keep over to a computer first.


Smallest Possible Video File in H.264 Format

A one frame H264 stream would have to consist of an intra-coded frame, so there is a size floor in effect.

This ffmpeg command produces a 1.7 kiB file

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=blue:s=1280x720 -vframes 1 out.mp4

You can save ~200 bytes by lowering the resolution.


You didn't mention which version of PPro you are using; but in version CS6 and prior there IS a bug with cross dissolve which is a bit idiosyncratic.

The fix; move all of your video (select all) up one layer.

Then add black video; or a color matte (black) which is the length of your program to the bottom (first) video track.

This in essence resets all the preview files PPro has generated; (which I believe is where the problem is).

If this doesn't work; you could try changing the default transition from cross dissolve to film dissolve... the visual effect is not "identical" but I don't think it would be a deal breaker if my first suggestion doesn't work for you.

Last option; you can pull the clips in; and out; using Trim; and make sure you make sure the dissolve rests on a new different frame on the timeline. + or - 1 frame to the left or right.

But yes; I have seen this; and it's why all our editors now cut starting on layer 2; and the last step of the process; is we lay black under the entire program before output.


Libav has the tool avconv, which allows you to do that with the video filter setpts=PTS-STARTPTS.

I haven't tried this, but the following should do the trick for you:

avconv -i in.vob -vf 'setpts=PTS-STARTPTS' -c:a copy -c:v copy out.vob

For more information you can check out http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/avconv.1.html


I was going to recommend nesting the comp and use time-remapping actually, which of course you came up with as the solution.

I think, to be honest, this is your best bet, or time remap each layer in your existing composition.

Doing the time-remap on your original comp, has the advantage that the keyframes will in fact be at the correct place given whatever time-base you want to end up in. This will allow for, if say your time-base is higher, more discrete frames, or points, in which to place new keyframes.

Doing a remap in a nested comp will limit your ability to add keyframes in between what would be 2 frames... being your master comp (parent) only has 1 keyframe and therefor cannot be divided.

Try time-remapping the composition; after you adjust the composition settings to the correct timebase. I don't see why that wouldn't give you what you need.


Achieve a video warping effect, where it appears like the camera was shifted

This particular effect couldn't be done without some pretty advanced computer vision algorithms and a whole lot of processing.  Based on the screen shot alone, it appears that it tries to identify flat surfaces and objects within that space so that it can alter the camera's perspective.

Note that this is quite imperfect as you have no material for the actual side of people's heads and such.  Additionally, you can see that the system they were using doesn't understand transparent objects well.  It saw the net as a wall and modified it differently from the court, which is why we end up seeing that disjointed line where the net is.

I'm not aware of any specific system that does this, but I wouldn't expect it to be cheap and I really, really wouldn't expect it to be free.

If you don't care about cost, the fundamental start to it would probably be something along the lines of SynthEyes, as long as the camera does move some.  This can track where the camera actually moved and use that data to establish what depth things were at and what backgrounds looked like.  From that, it may be possible to create a virtual scene which you can effectively move the position of the camera in.

If the shot isn't moving, then I couldn't find any tools that would be helpful and your best bet might be to try contacting the company that produced the video directly to ask them what they used.  It appears to be something very specialized and not particularly well advertised as far as I can tell.


Style all open captions at once in Premiere Pro

This has changed in the 2017 release of Premiere CC. You can now change all captions at once. Plus Adobe has added some other enhancements to the caption workflow.


How can I insert a space between several clips in Premiere?

I believe I figured out a workaround to do this (based on the idea of using the speed duration from putting a gap between each clip)

Drag and drop all 20+ clips on to the timeline to add them.
Select on the clips and copy them onto a new audio track
Select all the new clips you just copied and right click and choose Speed/Duration.  Choose a setting like 50% and check Ripple Edit, Shifting Trailing Clips
Delete the clips on the new track you just copied and time stretched, leaving you with just the original clips.

The original clips should now be spaced out.  Obviously could be problematic if you have lots of other stuff on your timeline but you could lock those tracks.


Proper command to remux mpeg-ts to mp4 with FFmpeg?

Unless you know you have a specific need to preserve timestamps, there's no need to use -copyts. MPEG-TS, being a format, used for remote viewing, will have some start time offset, by default, to allow for buffering at the player's side. MP4 for local playback, doesn't need that, copyts will preserve it.


Looking for a laptop with the required performances to use the Adobe premiere software please?

HAdobe publish this information on their website - see this link or below: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html
It's pretty simple, personally I would use the recommended specifications as a minimum in a professional environment.  If it's for personal learning, then it's your call how much you spend, but don't get anything less than the minimum.  Enjoy!


What video codecs can provide "adaptive quality"?

You're on the right track with -crf and x264 (the best H.264 encoder), and it should provide the "quality threshold" that you're looking for. CRF is recommended if you want a certain output quality and output file size is of less importance. Conversely, performing a two-pass encode with -b:v is recommend if you are targeting a specific output file size and quality is of less importance.

Encoding HEVC/H.265 with x265 should follow the same basic guidelines. You'll generally get better compression in exchange for a longer encoding time.

1. Choose a preset

A preset is a collection of options that will provide a certain encoding speed:compression ratio. A slower preset will provide better compression (compression is quality per filesize). General usage is to use the slowest preset that you have patience for. Current presets in descending order of speed are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow, placebo. Ignore placebo as it is a joke and a waste of time (it helps at most ~1%). If it's encoding too slowly then use a faster preset.

2. Choose a CRF value

The range for x264 is 0-51 where 0 is lossless, 23 is default, and 51 is worst possible. A lower value is a higher quality. A subjectively sane range is 18-28. Consider ~18 to be visually lossless: it should look the same as the input but it isn't technically lossless. Increasing the CRF value +6 is roughly half the bitrate while -6 is roughly twice the bitrate.

General usage is to choose the highest -crf value that still provides an acceptable quality. That is if the output looks good then try a higher value and if it looks bad then choose a lower value.

3. Encode

Use these settings for the rest of your videos. They should all end up with the same quality.

Example

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -c:a copy output.mkv

Also see

FFmpeg Wiki: H.264
FFmpeg Wiki: H.265


Simple: Can HTML5 Play a .mpd Manifest File Through Its Video Tag?

no. video tag can not play mpd, and will not do adaptative bitrate. You must write that yourself, or use a free, or commercial implementation


After Effects: Importing Illustrator sequence?

I have tried the following steps with 4 layers, and it seemed to work.

Name the file with the state 1 set, your-filename-1.ai and the file with the state 2 set your-filename-2.ai. Make sure they are in the same folder
Open After Effects, click File -> Import -> File... and click your-filename-1.ai. Make sure the checkmark is checked as shown below:

To keep all the individual layers, set Import As: to Composition.
 3. Now you will have a composition in your project panel named your-filename and a folder named your-filename Layers that contains all the layers.
 5. Now you can open the composition and check Frame Blending -> Frame Mix for every layer that you want to tween.
 6. Don't forget to enable frame blending. The image below shows how to do this:

Now you have an animation from state 1 to state 2. To change the animation playback speed you can use time-stretching on a layer-per-layer basis.


Convert movie to pictures (1 second = 24 pictures ; so 1 hour = 86,400 pictures ; average 90 min. movie = 129,600 pictures). Colorize every individual picture using the DeepLearning API which gives decent results comparable to the hand-colorized movies of the late 20th century. The Solomon Society uses this to convert old newsreel footage and other curiosities with impressive results.
It sounds like a lot of work, and it is (actually the work is simple but repetitive & massive), but a modern PC with an upper class video card, maximal RAM and a ton of free disk space should be able to pull it off fine given some time.


Best Sony Vegas Pro 13 videogame footage rendering options for YouTube

Some considerations for coding H.264 videos for Youtube. I've created my own Sony Vegas rendering templates following those guidelines:

Bitrate

Youtube recommends a bitrate of at least 5.000kbps for standard, and 30,000kbps for high quality 720p video. 400MB into 12 min corresponds to 4,000kbps, which is close to youtube's minimum recommendation. Select variable bitrate to get the best possible quality. You can play and lower the bitrate as long as the resulting quality is OK for you. But below around 2,000kbps you may want to consider switching to a lower resolution (e.g. 480p)

Framerate

The framerate should match that of your footage. I would not recommend rendering a 30fps video into 25fps or something like that, as the resulting quality will be rather poor. But you can rather safely cut the framerate in half, converting 50fps into 25fps or 60fps into 30fps.

Interlacing

Interlacing is recommended to be off for youtube ("Field order: None (Progressive scan)"), but if your footage is interlaced, I would stick with the same setting.

Profile

Using H.264 codec, youtube recommends using high profile (which improves quality a bit, but increases rendering time). It's OK to switch to "main" if you want to have faster rendering times.

Codec

Finally - you have to decide whether to use Sony AVC or Main Concept AVC. I use Main Concept for no specific reasons. You can find some discussions about that topic here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/Forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=886487 .

What Youtube says:

Here you can find Youtube's encoding recommendations:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171


What is the best way to plan and sync voiceover?

In addition to @Mulvya answer I will suggest to use not Flash, but After Effects for animation, if possible. Then you will be able to make Dynamic Link to your AE project. Than will be easier to jump between applications.

But when you work with animation, you deferentially need to have voiceover first. Like in cartoon development.


After effects imports different pictures to same output

I believe the issue arises because of the naming of your files. When images have a number attached at the end of their names, after-effects assumes that you're importing an image sequence. Thus, it imports each "image" as a sequence, consisting of all 3 images. When you import your files, try unchecking the box that says "import as image-sequence".


How did cameramen manually focus in the film days?

Good quality film cameras have a reflex viewfinder system, where "reflex" means that you're viewing through the lens, and thus you can judge focus by eye.

To achieve this There are, er were, two basic strategies:

Split the beam of light from the lens with a prism or half silvered
    mirror, meaning that most of the light goes to the film, and a bit
    goes to the viewfinder.    Advantages: no shutter flicker,
    cheaper. Disadvantages: less light,    both for exposing the
    film, and a dimmer image in the viewfinder (in    low light
    situations it can make it difficult to focus or even see what's
    going on).    This is how my Bolex camera does it.

Position a revolving mirror between the lens and the film plane. While the film is being pulled down by the sprockets the mirror
moves into place, bouncing the light into the viewfinder, and once
the film is ready to be exposed, the mirrors swings around and the
viewfinder goes temporarily black. It's basically what an SLR camera
does, but instead of flipping up the mirror is rotating.
Advantages: more light for the film and the viewfinder, one less optical element in the light path, ability to vary the angle of the
shutter allowing for fine control over exposure without affecting
the depth of field. Disadvantages: More complicated
(=expensive), flicker in viewfinder (actually I think this is
something of an advantage, because you always could tell when the
camera was running, and also when filming video displays you could
make sure that the balck bar was visible in the viewfinder, and
therefore not visible to the film), some degree of rolling shutter.This is how my CP16 does it, as well as pretty much all professional
cinema cameras.

 the mirror is the thing that looks like a bow tie.

As you can see, both methods allowed the operator to see through the lens while filming, allowing for on-the-fly focusing. Video splits also allowed a live video feed to be set up, meaning the focus puller (and director etc.) could have a monitor, but this was relatively late in the piece. A video split is basically a video camera bolted on to where the eyepiece goes, or sometimes with a separate beam-splitter. Until video splits came along the focus puller checked the focus points in the rehearsal, made marks on the floor with camera tape, consulted their cinematographer's manual for the depth-of-field charts, and eyeballed it.

You'n whippersnappers don't know how easy you gots it. Now get off my lawn!


What factors influence how much of an online video people will watch?

There could be any number of factors as to why people quit watching a video, but if you want to entice them to stick around, there are a few tricks.

Yes, "content is king," but CONTEXT is arguably queen— and let's be honest, who really rules the castle? That is to say— even if your content is great, if you aren't getting it to the right audience, it won't matter. Make sure the people who would WANT to see your video are finding it at the right time and place. Context.
Pay-off. A viewer is more likely to stick around if they know the pay-off at the end of the video is worth it. What will they learn? What mystery will be solved? What's the burning question? etc. Give them a clue in the beginning.
Challenge? As a twist to the "pay-off" bit (and especially if your end goal is social media shares and conversions)... Remember the whole KONY 2012 thing? They got millions of people to watch a 20-something minute documentary, and then spread it virally. Why? Beyond just compelling content: they challenged the viewer to finish it at the very beginning. The first lines were similar to "The following video is a social experiment..." I.E. "Let's see who makes it all the way through and then cares enough to do something about it."

It was a challenge, and human nature led people to take it on.

So there's my 2 cents.


How do I create a fading effect in my videos?

While it really does depend on what software you use, I'll provide the steps on how you do it with ClipChamp Create (the software I use)
In the video editor:

Click on the element you wish to create a fading effect
Select the Fade option at the top of the screen
Adjust the sliders to your liking!

Hope this helps!


Davinci Resolve Fusion draw tail by track points

You can get that result with the trails node.  It echoes previous frames to make light streaks, smoke whips, and similar effects.  You could use a scale value of less than one to get the tail of the object to shrink toward the end.  Playing with the gain would make it fade out with age.  For a sharp tail, like the ones in your example, leave the blur size at zero.

Be careful though, trails is a resource-hungry node which isn't optimized well.  It's an easy, direct way to get the result you're after, and the first one that comes to my mind, but it's probably not the most efficient.  Also, it requires the playhead to be moving, and skipping around on the timeline will give you weird results, which is what the "reset" button is for.  Play around with it a little, and you'll see what I mean.

One final tip: use small value increments.  Hold the alt/option key when you're adjusting parameters with trails to do fine adjustment, because the results stack exponentially.


There are a lot of variables in this equation, and any one of them could be the culprit.  These include: the quality of the audio picked up by the lapel mic, the quality of the PA preamp, the quality of the PA signal output to the wireless transmitter, the quality of the wireless transmitter, the quality of the wireless receiver, and finally, the quality of the DSLR's audio preamps.

I would start eliminating variables by feeding a known test signal (such as an NPR podcast) into the DSLR audio port, and if that's good, feeding the same signal to the wireless transmitter/receiver pair into the DSLR.  If those, too, are good, then your PA system is the problem.  If, on the other hand, you cannot get decent audio into your DSLR from a known good source, you are not going to get decent audio into your DSLR from your PA.  Which is perhaps why so many DSLR shooters use external audio recording devices--not because they want to go crazy editing audio, but because they don't want to go crazy editing audio.

Regardless, the most reliable way to solve this problem is to introduce and eliminate variables one at a time.


How to tell ffmpeg to copy all streams except one audio stream (to encode)?

Use

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map_metadata 0 -map 0 -c copy -c:a:0 ac3 -vbr 3 output.mkv

See https://superuser.com/a/1219824 for an illustrated guide to how stream options are parsed.


How to swap sides of side-by-side video chat interview?

Using ffmpeg,

ffmpeg -i recording.mp4
  -filter_complex
     "[0]split[a][b];
      [a]crop=iw/2:ih:0:0[r];
      [b]crop=iw/2:ih:iw/2:0[l];
      [l][r]hstack"
  -c:a copy switched.mp4

Two crops of the video are made and then joined in opposite order.

Using swaprect filter,

ffmpeg -i recording.mp4 -vf "swaprect=w/2:h:0:0:w/2:0" -c:a copy switched.mp4


Theoretically
Current DSLRs use H.264 compression for their video. Optimizing an already compressed image without losing quality is something commonly done for GIF, PNG or JPEG still images, and while it's theoretically possible to optimise compression in existing video files, currently no one bothered to develop the software to do so. The only solution left for you is to recompress your video with your codec of choice.
Don't try lossless codecs
While you won't lose any quality, lossless is only useful if your source material has a very high datarate. You will probably not gain anything compared to your DLSR files. (Your files seem to be about 25Mbit/s. Lossless x265/x264 will give you at least 100-200Mbit/s)
Try almost-lossless
Still, it's good to know that the internal (hardware) codecs of DSLRs are inferior to what your current CPU can do with recent software. But you should also know that any lossy recompression will result in an image that is slightly worse than the original, even if you encode in a higher quality than the original. That being said, here is a list of modern codecs that can compress your files with minimal loss: x264, x265, vp9 and av1 (to be released in 2017).
x264/x265 Settings for recompression with minimal loss

Encoding mode: constant quality. It will encode in one pass and output the lowest file size for a given quality setting. Your new file will contain variable bitrate video — your original DSLRs files are probably constant bitrate files
CRF quality setting: Choose a value between 12 and 20 (quality difference will be between indistinguishable and fine-for-the-less-discerning), if the source material is compressed in low quality, you can sometimes go higher than a CRF of 20 without noticing any difference. Incrementing CRF by +6 means about doubling the file size.
Codec: Compared to x264, x265 compression produces about half the datarate at the same CRF, but it is a lot slower.
Speed/Compression ratio: Use the veryslow setting to get the smallest file. Warning: this might be very slow ;-)

Depending on the above choices and on the complexity of the image and on the efficiency of the codec of your DSLR, your recompressed file will be up to 10 times smaller (probably less).
Handbrake is a nice app that will help you achieve all this. If you prefer the command line you should definitely go with ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i DSLR.MOV -c:v libx265 -preset veryslow -crf 18 -c:a copy recompress.mp4


Is there a downside to increasing ISO and decreasing shutter speed

With an A7S, MkI or MkII; the camera is ridiculously incredible in terms of noise hint even at extreme ISOs; that's compared to just a few years ago when everyone was shooting on the 5D MkII.

My recommendation BECAUSE it's the A7s and because the visually acceptable level of noise to the viewer is really not noticed until you go into the extreme ISOs; would be to try to maintain a consistent ISO regardless of whether you are indoors or outdoors, or at least a fairly consistent range.

Shooting at 6400 ISO will have virtually no noise, and if you shoot all your material at a set ISO you will have a consistent grain/noise hint to all your footage. Just keep in mind you gain one stop of light each time you double your ISO.

Shutter speed can be adjusted, along with your aperture; to set exposure; along with ND Filters if you have them.

You should really shoot some tests at various shutter speeds to find the look you are happy with. The standard for film/video is a 180 degree shutter; which provides a slight amount of motion blur when shooting at 24-30fps (48-60 Shutter). When you have a higher shutter; your footage will be more "juddered", that is, each frame will have a higher sharpness value with each step up in shutter speed. This can sometimes be a little distracting.

A great example of this is the D-Day Invasion Scene from Saving Private Ryan; shot at high shutter speeds; there is virtually zero motion blur frame to frame; and it adds to the scene's frenetic; racing feel.


I would whole-heartedly recommend the Panasonic HC-WX970K 4K Ultra HD Camcorder for this purpose:

When shooting 4K video, you can shoot wide enough to capture unexpected or exceptional things that happen outside your normal framing area while still having plenty of resolution for an excellent 1080p video.
It happily shoots exceptional quality 1080p120, which is true slo-mo.
It is small so it can fit on a bench without great disruption.
It has built-in ND filters, so you can have your bench inside or outside and still use sane aperture and shutter speed combinations.
It costs less than $800.

n.b.  If you shoot at 4K with a consumer camcorder, chances are you'll be shooting at 24fps or 30fps, which means there will be motion blur.  But if you can tolerate that, you'll get gorgeous still shots you can crop to whatever size you like.  If you shoot at 1080p60, you will greatly limit motion blur, but you will also be more constrained in how much you can crop, and how good the image looks when frozen as part of a diagram.  But a 4K camera such as the above will allow you to experiment and find the best of both worlds.


I want to digitise footage from a lot of DV tapes - should I use my camera or buy a tape deck?

Another option is to rent an appropriate deck from an equipment supplier. I don't know your local market so I can't recommend one, but I'm certain there are some in London. With a pro or semi-pro deck you should get advantages of speed and quality for much less cost than buying, and with no wear on your camera. You also retain the use of the camera if you need extra shots etc.

As for the 'how', that depends a bit on what software and hardware you plan to use. Maybe you could supply more details.


Physics and Chemistry Animations in After Effects

There are a number of physics engines and related scripts available in the Physics Simulation category at AEScripts.

However, without a more specific question about what kind of animation you're looking for (that is to say, I don't know how the electrons in an atom are supposed to move), it's hard to point you to a specific answer.


Masking messes up in after effects after rendering

Once the Rotobrush tool has been selected to use (assuming you used Rotobrush based on the pink outline) a small box in the bottom right of the comp will appear and should say "Freeze." Literally just press that and it'll freeze the mask... fixed my masking render glitch and I hope it does for you too! Best of luck, happy editing.


vary the color of repeated shape in After Effects

I don't think it's possible with repeater. You could do this with expressions and multiple duplicates of the shape however.

Here's an example I came up with:

And here's how I did it:

Firstly make your initial shape. Now duplicate that shape (with the shape selected hit
ctrl / ⌘+D). You should see this:

Note that we'll be making as many copies as we want later, but for the moment only make one, and get it set up so that we can duplicate it and not have to apply expressions to dozens of copies individually.
For each of the properties you want to alter with every repetition we'll add an Expression Control effect, as a handy way to be able to control the whole thing from a single slider.
Say we wanted to alter the position, scale and rotation: we'd add a Point Control effect to control position another for scale, and an Angle Control for rotation. Expression controls are in Effects>Expression Controls>

For ease of use rename each effect suitably. I've changed "Point Control" to "offset" and "scale ctrl", and changed "Angle Control" to "rotation":

We're going to add expressions to control the transform>Position property, the Transform>Rotation property and the Transform>Scale property of each shape object. Note that this is the property inside the shape, not the Transform properties for the layer.

In order to increment the rotation and scale etc. for each duplicate of the Polystar shape we have to find its index, or its serial number so to speak. With layers this is relatively easy, each layer has an index property, but shapes within a layer are layer sub-objects so we have to use a bit of magic to get the index of each. This thread is where I got the info I needed to work it out.

the key bit of the expression you need is this:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;

The variable shapeIndex now gives you a unique index for each duplicate that you create. This index can then drive the value of the various properties.

  Skip this section if you're not interested in how it works

  The expression propertyGroup(2) returns the string "Polystar 2" and we
  use javascript string function split() to split it on the space
  which returns an array ["Polystar", "2"].
  We select the second member
  of that array (or member[1], since javascript numbers arrays starting
  at 0) which returns "1". If javascript wasn't so sloppy with types we'd have to
  explicitly convert the string "1" into the integer 1, but it does the
  conversion without even being told. Yay Javascript!

So to add an offset to each duplicated shape layer we then use the shapeIndex variable and the expression control.
Firstly we'll add an expression to the shape's Transform>Position property. alt-click on the stopwatch next to the property to set an expression for that property. It will look like this:

Delete what is there by default and paste in the shapeIndex variable definition mentioned above:
shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
hit return (not enter) to start a new line
Now use the pickwhip to get the value of the Expression Control Effect that we created for the offset:

Now we multiply that offset by the shapeIndex variable. The expression should now look like this:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
effect("offset")("Point")*shapeIndex

So if your offset is [20, 20], then the fist duplicate will have an offset of [20,20], the next [20,20]*2 which is [40, 40], then [60, 60] and so on. You'll be able to change the value of this point control and have the duplicates update as you do it, without having to type any more code.
The same applies to rotation:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
effect("rotation")("Angle")*shapeIndex;
And scale. Scale is a bit different because we want to increment the difference between 100 and the value of the controll - if the control is 110% we want to add 10% to the scale. And once we start adding vectors and scalars it gets more complicated - we have to unpack the array, and the integer and pack it up again. So we use this expression:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
[100+ (effect("scale ctrl")("Point")[0]-100)*shapeIndex, 100+ (effect("scale ctrl")("Point")[1]-100)*shapeIndex];

If we only wanted uniform scale we could use a slider Expression Control effect, and the the same sort of expression we use for rotation:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
(effect("scale ctrl")("Slider")/100)*shapeIndex;
Lastly we want to control the colour. Colour in AE is a four-element array [R, G, B, Alpha]. The individual components of the array are decimals from 0 to 1, where 1 is full on and 0 is off. So red is [1,0,0], yellow is [1,1,0] and mid grey is [0.5, 0.5, 0.5]. What you want to do with colour is up to you, but here's a demo. It fades out from red to green, with random variation on the blue channel.

Note that the shapeIndex definition in this expression is different. That's because the color property is nested down a level inside the fill property, so we have to use propertyGroup(3) instead of propertyGroup(2).

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(3).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
seedRandom(shapeIndex, timeless = true);
r=value[0]-shapeIndex/25.6;
g=value[1]+shapeIndex/25.6;
b=random()
[r , g, b, 255]

The seedRandom function creates a new, unchanging random number for each copy. If the timeless=true part is changed to timeless=false the random number will change with every frame. Another randomising function is the wiggle function, that softly changes values over time.
So now your shape layer should have two shape objects in it, and the second one will have expressions like this:

Here's where the magic happens
Now duplicate that second shape. If all goes well you should see new copies with offset, rotation and scale controlled by the expression control effects (make sure you have sane amounts for these values - the offset for example will default to half the width of the comp, which will move your duplicates out of sight. Try setting it to something like 50, 50 to start with). It should look something like the image at the start. Below is how the layer looks.

One of the cool things about doing it this way is that the expression is actually based on the name of the shape object. So the layer order doesn't matter. As you can see here, the copies are in front of the original, I can move them around so that they're behind, or individually move them up or down. Using the name is a little bit kludgy though. If I rename one of the shapes I might break all the expressions that control it.

If that's all too hard to read, here's the project


After Adding a few Clips to the timeline, audio is no longer imported?

Adobe has this concept of "target tracks" in the sequence window.  On the left side of the media locked/unlocked icon is the "source patching for inserts and overwrites".  On the right side of the media locked/unlocked icon is the "toggle track targeting for this track".  When off, the track name (such as V1 or V2 or A1 or A2) is gray and when on, it's blue.

Chances are good that you left those targeting features well enough alone, and the Adobe defaults are to indeed enable track targeting for your tracks.  When track targeting is blue for only empty tracks, inserting a new video clip does just what you'd expect: it puts the new video and audio into unused tracks.  However, if targeting is on for tracks that already have audio, then when you go to insert the new clip does what you might not expect: it just overwrites the audio clip of the targeted track and that's that.  It does not create a new track for your audio.  If you've inserted 15 clips, it's quite possible that you have audio only from the last clip you added, and that it overwrote the 14th clip's audio track which overwrote the 13th clip's audio track, etc.

There's an answer on VP as to how to restore the lost audio clips (Adobe Premiere - Restore Audio to A/V Clip After Deleting).  My answer explains how to not do that in the first place.


Take a look at using noise turbulence to displace the image. You can do this in after effects. There are lots of good tutorials on it. I recommend this one:

Maybe add some images so we can see what you have and what you’re going for.


How does media manage to co-host a show from two continents without latency?

There are two key ways to deal with the inevitable latency of live video from the other side of the world:

Ignore the video, at least for talent or guest queuing purposes. The person is fed mix-minus audio through their IFB. Since it is just audio, and historically was sent over a POTS telephone line, it can have virtually unnoticeable latency to the viewer.
Practice, practice, practice. For geographically separated anchors, they will rehearse until they can get the timing of things right. They'll know they need to start talking just that little bit early for it to be seamless to the viewer.

Other technical things that can be done are to rely on terrestrial (fiber optic) transmission of the remote location (significantly lower latency than satellite, but physics still prevents zero latency) and avoiding compression or using codecs designed for low latency and high quality.


How to create and film ghost special effects

There are so many interesting ways to do this.

One of the easiest ways (in-camera, no post production work) is to use a piece of glass. Film Riot did a tutorial on it, they explain it best, see below:

Or you could go with a bit of post production work, after effects being my go to tool that I use. Add a background video layer (without ghost), then add your ghostly image, same shot, but this time your ghostly image is brightly lit and everything else is dark. Then change the mode of the ghostly layer to 'add' (or other to create different effects) to create the ghostly effect. See tutorial below:

Hope that helps your ghostly scenes.


How can I use 50fps media in iMovie 11 and avoid a frame drop to 30fps?

While it is unfortunate that iMovie drops by default from 50fps to 30fps, it also upscales videos to 60fps if the project is started with a 60fps clip! I've ended making myself a one second 60fps dummy clip which I drag first into the project line. After dropping this dummy clip, I verify that the archive export dialog shows 60fps FullHD option, then add the other 50fps clips. At the end I remove the 60fps dummy clip and the project still allows exportation at 60fps.

In this situation iMovie will upscale the 50fps video to 60fps, generating a duplicate frame every five to compensate. Still, this is much better than dropping from 50 to 30 frames.

The most important thing to remember is that the option to export at 60fps is only available if the first clip dragged into the project is recorded at 60fps. If you already have a full project at 30fps dragging the 60fps clip won't help. So remember, drag always the 60fps dummy clip first!


get metadata for video start time with ffmpeg

You can use the companion ffprobe tool, which really is meant for machine-parseable text.
ffprobe -v 0 -show_entries format=start_time -of compact=p=0:nk=1 "input"

This will print a value with the form x.yyyyyy or N/A for formats without timestamps.


You can use awkward pause script as sample and this tutorial:

Or I can do for you this project for some money :)


Video files compatibility for Adobe Premiere pro CS4

Premiere handles a lot of video formats without requiring an intermediate (editing) file, so this is an uncommon problem to have.

As with other editing codec questions, I think a good place to start is by reading about the different kinds of codecs: The ProRes of Premiere Pro?

It would help us understand your problem better if you could tell us what you can see about the file format when you right-click to get "Properties", or ctrl-click to "Get Info" on the file.  There's a chance that we just need to get the right codec installed for you.

Since it's free to try, maybe download the GoPro Cineform Studio to try reading and transcoding the files.  If that works, then you'll be able to make a decision on whether to keep that workflow, or use a different conversion program.


Cut Loom screen recording at 39s, trim video around the edges to hide scrollbar and Loom stop button using FFmpeg

Cropping is carried out using a video filter. Also, a filtered video has to be re-encoded. So the command would be

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf crop=1824:1026 -t 39 -c:a copy output.mp4

See the docs for the crop filter for all options.


After transforming the position of a clip, how can I remove the side lines?

The problem that you won't be able to easily fix is the missing parts of the right hand in the foreground layer. But if you're ok with that there are a couple of ways to do this shot.
First you could key out the white part using a colour key effect. This is going to be problematic, because there are white parts of the image that you want to keep, like the highlights on the dress and her teeth. You'll probably need a combination of keying and rotoscoping (using a garbage matte and animating it to follow the motion of the character, otherwise known as a truckload of work).
The second way would be to feather the edges of the layer. You'll have to sacrifice a bit more of the right hand to do this, but the background plate won't suffer too much (in this frame; YMMV for other frames). In the opacity tab in the effect controls you'll see an elipse, a rectangle and a pen. Click the rectangle to create a rectangular mask.

Drag the tops and the bottoms of the mask well outside the bounds of the clip, then use the widget at the top or the numerical sliders to adjust the feather. In the image below I've turned off the background layer to see what I'm doing.

Do the same for the other plate.

You'll have to fiddle with this until you get a good compromise between cropping too much and making the feather soft enough. It doesn't really work with this random jpeg of a whippet, but it should be ok for your shot if you don't mind the disappearing hand.


ffmpeg: concat Results in "Buffer queue overflow" and Short Audio

Assuming there are no timestamp discontinuities in the audio, a simple atrim and a null segment should work.

ffmpeg -i DFW.mp4.mkv -filter_complex '
[0:a]asplit[a][b];
[a]atrim=0:1122.1[pre];
[b]atrim=1122.1,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[post];
anullsrc,atrim=0:1.1[seg];
[pre][seg][post]concat=n=3:a=1:v=0[a]' -map 0:v -map '[a]' -c:v copy DFW-1.mp4