Is there a "Lightroom for Video" product?

Short answer, there is not really any "Lightroom" for video. But there are non linear editing programs out there that do all the things you want to do with your footage. So, as someone else said here, you want to start using Premiere or some other editing program.

Learn how to organize your projects professionally. You're never going to make duplicates of files (except in some circumstances), but you are going to create duplicates of edits, string-outs, sequences, clips, etc.

So, here's a typical project organization, inside Premiere in this instance (make a clean version of this project, call it "Default", and simply open it and save it with another name each you work on a new project; that way you don't have to re-create all those folders all the time):

And here's an example of drive organization:


random updates at the sub-frame level (so its value actually changes even during a frame, for example when motion blur is on. You can see this as you zoom in on the graph editor of a property with a random value, it keeps changing as it zooms and the time is sub-sampled more).

To force it to update only once a second you need to use the seedRandom function, with the timeless attribute set to true, and a seed that changes every second. Using Math.floor(time) will return a value that increases once every second, on the second.

So something like:

seedRandom(Math.floor(time), timeless = true);
random(45,55);

will create a random value that stays constant for 1 second, and

var holdTime = 5;
seedRandom(Math.floor(time/holdTime), timeless = true);
random(45,55);

will stay constant for 5 seconds - you can change the value of the variable holdTime to control how long the value holds for. For example to change once every frame, but not during sub-frame intervals set it to holdTime = thisComp.frameDuration;


Looking for compressed standard definition file format to share footage between Final Cut Pro 7 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

Your best bet is probably MPEG2 or MPEG4.  Both are going to have quality loss compared to your high quality DV format though, but proportionally, they should be pretty good.  You should be able to use Adobe Media Encoder to make the transition to whichever format you want to use.  Simply setup a profile and drag all the files in to Encoder and let it rip.

As to the type of MPEG2 or MPEG4, it really depends on what you are trying to accomplish.  I would personally probably go with h.264 at a fairly high quality level, though there will be some amount of difficulty working with the format in an NLE since it doesn't store very frame.  You really have to choose a trade off between space and efficiency in your NLE.  Large, less compressed videos can more readily access a particular frame without hammering the CPU, but they take up more space.

Motion JPEG is an in-between format that compresses each frame individually (or you can use all I frame H.264) but both give up a LOT in terms of compression since they compress each frame individually instead of making use of multiple frames at a time (which complicates non-linear playback).

One final option, (which is likely what I would do in your shoes) is to not recompress at all, but rather move the DV format video to an MOV container.  AVI and MOV are just containers and while AVI may not play nice in Mac world, MOV should play nice in both.


Pair a raspberry pi with one of these 3.5 inch lcd displays and that should bring you under the cost of one of those handheld displays.

Finding a decent way to enclose it would be the difficult part.


In Adobe Priemiere Pro CC, export media window does not appear

Called Adobe support, and they quickly solved the problem.

The export media window apparently only appears if the currently selected/highlighted workspace panel is either the video timeline panel or the playback panel. If any other panels are currently selected instead, the window will fail to appear.


How do I add a synchronized clip/angle to a multi-cam clip?

One (probably dumb) way to do this is:

Select all 11 clips again and create a new, temporary Multicam clip.
Double-click the temporary multicam clip and find out the exact timecode where the new, 11th clip was added.
Copy the 11th clip.
Delete the newly created temporary multicam clip
Double-click the original multicam clip
Navigate to that exact same timecode
Paste the clip into that location


For subtitle timing, I would suggest Aegisub and save the subtitles file as *.srt, then you can add the subtitles and export your video with ActivePresenter


Handbrake :: Why is an RF value of 20 to 23 recommended for HD while a lower value of 18 to 20 for SD?

Resolution != quality, at least, not in the sense referred to by RF. What the RF primarily modulates is the quantization parameter (QP).

Let's say you have a 2x2 array of pixels and each pixel is represented by one floating-point value e.g. 3.98, 2.10, 1.05, 7.88. If your goal is to compress the video, then storing these values with full precision and fidelity will be more expensive than if you could store 4,2,1,8. Given the limitations of human vision, it turns out this is an acceptable compromise in the service of video compression. The greater the quantization parameter, the greater the 'smoothing out' of values. Such smoothing out reduces spatial detail i.e. sharpness and subtle color variation in the picture. Of course, this is just one strategy among the many used.

(The above is just a thematic illustration and not an example of the result of an actual quantization)

Before RF, video encoders would apply a single QP across the entire video, so a scene with a lot of diversity of visual forms would have the same smoothing applied as a simple scene. If the degree of smoothing is low, the bitrate will shoot up in complex scenes. If it's high, it will degrade simpler scenes more than desired. What RF does is analyze the video content and modulate QP so that visual details appreciated by the human eye are not highly quantized but neglected details are. The RF value determines how much latitude the encoder has to vary the QP.

Now, to your question. A group of pixels, say a 16x16 block, forms a larger part of an SD image than of a HD image, so it will play a larger role in the subjective visual perception of the image (and have greater variation within), so you ought to smooth it out less.


What counts as a view on Facebook are way different that what counts on YouTube. Facebook is famous for its defense on three second views. This is in contrast to YouTubes complex algorithm that determines a legitimate view or not. This is why you see such a large difference in views between the two platforms.


Methods of Amplifying Poor Audio from Camcorder Recording?

From your description of the audio, it is going to be hard to fix, as white noise tends to cover a very broad frequency spectrum and so is hard to get rid of without losing what you want to keep.
A decent starting point for you would be to use a freeware audio editing program like Audacity. Here is a noise removal tutorial using Audacity.

You can also use audacity to cut out sections where there is no background talking. Then you can use an effect called a compressor to attempt to raise the level of the speaking to a better level, although you may still find you are amplifying some background noise. Here's a description of the audacity compressor.


Make sure to render partially transparent clips with a codec that supports alpha. Try using prores4444 and set the colors to rgb+alpha like you did. This filetype and codec should give you a file with a transparent background.


Yeah that was actually the best opening ceremony ever...
Doing something like this yourself is a hefty task, but first, here's what you would need:

A software for tracking
A software for modeling / animating
(optionally something for compositing / color grading)

Luckily, Blender (which is free) can do all those things, but has quite a steep learning-curve. Due to its popularity, you will find many tutorials and guides though. Here's step by step how I would go about something like your example:

Find footage to composite the elements on. It should be at least 1920x1080 and with as little compression as possible (it's best to record your own).
Load the footage in a tracking-program. You can use Blender, After-Effects, Nuke or PfTrack - all are viable.
After tracking, you can create a virtual camera that flies around in your scene according to the movement of the real camera. Export this or work with it from inside Blender if you're only using Blender.
Now model out and animate your 3D-Assets and place them in your scene. Since the tracked camera matches the movement of the real camera, your 3D-Assets should stay in place and look like they're pinned to the ground.
Apply your textures and shaders (and I can't stress how important this is) light your scene properly. Try to observe where the light is coming from in your original scene and place virtual lights accordingly.
Render your scene, preferably as a .png or .exr-sequence, with only your virtual Assets visible.
At last, composite the background and foreground together. You can do this in Blender as well, but programs such as After-Effects or Nuke give you more control over your look (they're not free programs though).

If your tracking looks off, make sure to delete any floating tracking-points that might have picked up false movements. Try matching the white-balance in compositing (the shift from teal to orange and purple to green). For added realism, you can create a "shadow-catcher" which will itself not be visible, but render out the shadows cast upon it. Those shadows should be included in a separate "pass", so you have your foreground, shadows and background. This gives you more control over the darkness and opacity of your shadows if you want to adjust them. And at last, if you want to go all in, you can capture an HDR environment from the place you were filming at - basically a 360° image of the surroundings. You can add this to the 3D-Software you're using to accurately display reflections on your foreground.
I hope this helped you out, have a great day!


The good old ffmpeg gives you the power ;)

ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v libxvid output.avi

You can obviously fine tweak the command line with bitrate, audio in mp3 and so on.

es:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v libxvid -b:v 512k -c:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 4 output.avi

This is for a single bitrate use, where you use a constant bitrate for every frame.

Otherwise you could go for a 2 pass bitrate where the 1st pass is used only for determine where is the best for allocate more data...

But you can also convert in xvid/divx Mpeg 4 Layer 2 using a quality preset where you don't put directly the bitrate wanted but just ask for a minimum visual quality respected where you will be less concerned about the final file size (it will be discovered only at the end).

-qscale:v 3 instead of the -b:v 512k that i used above


I've answered a similar question some time ago. YouTube added a few codecs since then but all the info there still applys: How does YouTube encode my uploads and what codec should I use to upload?

Short answer: Yes if you are concerned about maximum quality a lossless codec or visually lossless codec is the way to go. Re-encoding always means loss of information if you re-encode with a lossy codec like h264.
Saying that videos will look better with compression is just a wrong statement.
Compression reduces file size, that's the only benefit you get from it. Best case you don't loose information with that compression but with most codecs like h264 you do because they discard information and re-arrange it in order to achieve a high compression.

Though different codecs do have an affect on the outcome, encoding a video with MPEG2 or h264 makes a huge difference. The former will usually have way more compression artifacts depending on your encoding settings than an h264 encoded video with similar bitrate.
So if your source is already having artifacts the second encode from YouTube won't make it look any better but worse.


How to remove empty space next to the video?

The basic geometrical facts are that if you want to see the full images you can't put two 16:9 images inside a 16:9 frame without some empty space left over. If you want to STRETCH the images it will fill in the blank space, but it will distort the images.

Alternatively, we commonly see an effect where you take some of the left (or right) edge of the image and "copy" it into the blank space, but blur it out. That makes it appear to fill in the space without confusing the viewer with a duplicate image.  For example...


How do you open multiple videos with multiple subtitles in VLC from command-line?

This is a workaround which converts the files to another container format. It happens almost as fast as your hard disk can write data because nothing is re-encoded.

use MKVToolNix (specifically mkvmerge) to combine the mp4 files and their srt files into mkv files (perhaps you can automate this with a loop). I never use this tool via command line and cannot tell you the exact command, but you'll find more information here https://mkvtoolnix.download/doc/mkvmerge.html
use vlc.exe *.mkv afterwards.

Maybe this question helps too https://superuser.com/questions/609113/how-to-add-and-remove-subtitles-in-an-mkv-file which should also work with an mp4 file as input.


iMovie comes free with a Mac, and it allows "Picture-In-Picture" images. You can create art with a transparent background, using a free program such as GIMP, then save it in PNG format (not JPG) and then drop it over your video in iMovie.

For emphasizing sections of your video, you can also create a whole image that is partially transparent (like a black image that is 30% transparent) and "remove" a section of it (so the transparency of the "hole" is 100%).  It will look like smoky glass with one perfectly clear part.  When you lay that over your video, it will look like the rest of the screen was darkened except for the part in the perfectly-clear "window". Kind of a nice effect. :)


Non-Linear Video Editor for Free or Cheap That Does These Things

Both kdenlive and cinelerra should do all you need. If you can't make them so, try the consumer version of Sony Vegas, it's also still in your price range.


If the audio track was from a video clip in premiere, and was not replaced by the after effects comp, it should still be present in your project, and you should just be able to use the Match Frame command to find and resync the video to your audio.

Even with thirty clips, it shouldn't take that long if you use keyboard shortcuts.

Something like:

Select the first piece of audio in your timeline.
Set your in point on your timeline "i"
Press "f" to match frame
Press "." to replace the video at the correct point

(and repeat)


What is wrong with my "new" camera? My playback looks bad

I would try cleaning the playheads (there are special tapes you can put in for cleaning) and/or checking the playback speed.  Those are the two most common causes of that issue on my GL2.


Add border to video, maintaing aspect ratio, and insert subtitles in the border

You can use FFmpeg, a free command line tool to do this:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf pad=1920:1080:0:140,subtitles=filename.srt -crf 20 -c:a copy out.mkv

The subtitles filter accepts ASS styling parameters, such as font size and margins.


Sony Handycam HDR-CX210 Creates JPGs Frequently While Shooting Video

The only function which does this is called Smile Shutter. Please have a look at the official manual at page 110.

You can disable it under:

Menu > Camera/Mic > Face > Smile Shutter


If you no longer need the virtual camera, you can uninstall the virtual camera plugin (whether it was installed as a separate plugin or as part of an OBS update) using the following commands in the terminal:
sudo rm -rf /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/obs-studio/plugins/obs-mac-virtualcam

Once that is done, make sure to close OBS and restart (quit and open) Firefox.


What is the best universal video format / extension so that it can be viewed on iPad and PCs

h.264 is very widely supported and can be found in multiple different types of container formats.  mp4 or m4v are probably the most widely used extensions, but particular support for files varies based on what players are installed on devices.

MP4 is the official MPEG 4 standard container format.  M4V is an originally Apple based container which also added AVC support, but is still a bit more open than MOV.  Most players will also interchangeably play a file regardless of an M4V or MP4 extension provided that they support reading both file formats.

MP4 probably has slightly better overall compatibility while M4V probably has slightly better compatibility on Apple devices, but that is also subject to change and is hard to measure accurately.


Sony TV RCA output into Yamaha HS80M input via RCA male to XLR male: Is it safe?

Not dangerous at all. You may have impedance matching issues though. And possibly lots of noise in the signal because of the unbalanced source and mis-matched impedance.

Start with the volume on the Yamahas all the way down and, with something playing on the television, nudge the volume up ever so slightly until you can hear the source. You want to make certain a too-hot signal from the TV doesn't rip your speakers apart.

For best results a DI with properly matched inputs for the TV would be my advice. Something like this would do the trick.


create subtitles track by automatic timing of existing text

If you select your clip and go to the Clip menu, then choose Analyse Content, Premiere will attempt to identify speakers and even attempt to dictate what is being said.  You can assist this analysis by providing a script file to it by adding either an Adobe Story Script file or a TXT file to the Reference Script option.  I don't have any experience with how well this feature works, but it's certainly worth a shot if you already have an accurate script file to try it with.


Creating a freeze frame type effect purely in post

Yes it is. The idea is rather simple - you want to create a parallax effect.

Basically you take an object of interest in the foreground and roto/mask the object/person out.
You then duplicate that layer and reverse the mask for the background. At this point it should look exactly as it did at the beginning.
Now what you do is turn the layers into 3d objects. Position the background far away in 3d space, and scale it up so that it matches with the foreground layer as it did during Step 2.
Now create a camera and you can pan slightly and zoom to create the desired effect. Note that this may take some playing around, perhaps by scaling the background or the foreground layers more so that there is no clear 'space' between them.

If you want to do this with moving footage I would say it's probably not worth it as you'd have to do a lot of roto. But assuming you just want to do this with a freeze frame, it shouldn't take you that long.

Site note: usually what sells this effect is if you have something else moving really really slowly with the still frame grabs. Such as a 3d object you can manipulate in space. See this.


Color correct to compensate for low blue

I am not very certain that I understand your question, but if you want to shift the color-grade of your image away from the orange, you can use the temperature to shift it towards blue, effectively making your image less orange. The temperature setting is available in any popular grading-tool, such as lumetri, resolve or nuke.
Another option might be to actually grade your footage using a monitor that is tuned to the blue-reduced setting. I would like to add though, that you will likely lose some brightness, since most blue-reduction methods simply take away from the value of the blue-channel. So additionally taking away from the orange-channel to compensate will likely darken your image. Also also: People who watch movies on blue-reduced monitors should not be your main focus when grading. Professional studios often grade on 10-bit, calibrated monitors that will look quite different from the average consumer-display. We still grade for the calibrated monitor though, to ensure the best experience on average for most the people who consume the product.


Error:-[libx264 @ 000001fa2ffdd080] height not divisible by 2 (244x207)

Use

ffmpeg -y -i audio.mp3 -loop 1 -i image.jpg -filter_complex "[1:v]scale=2*trunc(iw*sar/2):2*trunc(ih/2)[bg];[0:a]showwaves=s=1280x175:colors=White:mode=p2p,format=yuv420p[v];[bg][v]overlay=0:200[outv]" -map "[outv]" -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -shortest output12.mp4

Since the image is the base layer, its dimensions should be made even.


Best render settings for broadcast/4k TV

The reason for mastering out to an uncompressed / minimally lossy format is so that you have a master copy, which you can then use to make other copies, without generation loss, or having to re-render.

You don't have to use Animation. There, I've said it. While it's mathematically lossless, it's only 8-bit, so swings ± roundabouts. While I used to only ever render Aniamtion ever, these days I prefer DNxHR or Cineform with 10-bit colour, the file size is better and you have four times as much colour information. If you're on a mac ProRes 4444 is a good option.

But the first step is check with the broadcaster to see what their tech specs are. The broadcaster where I work mostly take ProRes, so I make proRes submasters from my master copy using ffmpeg. No seriously, check, because they will reject stuff that doesn't pass their quality control.


Why would you want your videos in the .3gp container to begin with? Its a very irrelevant format nowadays, there is practically no device that supports the 3gp container but not MP4 at the same time. Its nothing but a close derivative of MP4, they are very similar container formats holding the same codec. If you want to support a lot of devices using h264 in the mp4 container opens your website up to the majority of mobile an desktop devices, in addition vp8/webm offers compatibility to open source software that can't afford h264 license or doesn't want to use h264. With these two formats you are covering every relevant market.

http://caniuse.com/#feat=mpeg4

http://caniuse.com/#feat=webm

3gp is a depricated format for legacy phones, long before the Android and iOS era when YouTube was new and started to add a bit of mobile support and its nearly identical with MP4, some manufactures even name their 3gp files with the .mp4 extension (wiki)

Also note that having your files have the same meta information as those from YouTube is not an indicator if they are compatible or not, YouTube uses a different encoder than you and the encoder will write different information than x264 in ffmpeg. If your file meets the specs of a certain format than its compatible, easy as that.
If you want to go sure you don't use any fancy format features just use a low profile (e.g. baseline in the case of h264) to ensure compatibility with virtually any device, the lower the profile the less features are allowed.

If you REALLY need to use 3gp you can specify the container with the option -f 3gp. Using the BaseLine 1 profile is absolutely suffice.
Using a ffmpeg commandline like the following will get you what need:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=320:240 -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec aac -strict -2 -f
3gp output.3gp

Note the usage of mpeg4 instead of libx264. The mpeg4 encoder is the Mpeg4 Part 2 codec also known as h263. Again, extremely few devices nowadays do not support h264 and I can only advice to support h263 in the 3gp container when you are in dire need to do so or have an extremely large user base that ranks in the tens of millions of users.

Having 3gp6 instead of 3gp4 is irrelevant, you are targeting old devices so using the newest version of the standard doesn't make much sense. FFmpeg will use the 3gp6 container only when using the also newer codec h264 which release 6 is also meant for.

Here and excerpt from the 3gpp v6 standard:

Specific MBMS Rel-6 application codecs are introduced, like for example audio codecs Extended AMR-WB (AMR-WB+), Enhanced aacPlus and video codec H.264/AVC.

So unless you use h264, there is no need for using Release 6 and you can stick with Release 4 without running into any issues.
The opposite is actually the case, the older the version the more old devices you will support.


Original video sharper than editted (PP CS6)

I tried a subscription for Premiere CC, and it seems to be much better. So TravisO was right, CS6 is just too old.


How to convert video for viewing on Sony Ericsson C702?

Devices are often picky, and specifications are usually too uninformative so it's always trial and error. For example, your link indicates that the phone supports MP4 playback, but that is simply a container than can utilize several video and audio formats.
MPEG-4 part 2 video and AAC-LC audio
(partially based on the working video details you provided)
ffmpeg -i input -vf scale=320:-1 -c:v mpeg4 -b:v 400k -c:a aac -strict experimental -b:a 32k -ar 16000 -ac 1 output.mp4

Some recommendations:

Try increasing the audio bitrate since -c:a aac is not very good
for low bitrates, and because your build does not support better AAC
encoders.

Consider removing -ar 16000 and -ac 1. It's best to try to preserve the original file audio rate and number of audio channels if supported by the phone.

Try replacing -b:v 400k with -q:v using a value of or between 2 - 5 (lower is higher quality) to set a constant quantization parameter instead of an arbitrary bitrate.

Results may vary.
H.264 video and AAC-LC audio
ffmpeg -i input -vf scale=320:-1 -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -crf 28 -c:a aac -strict experimental -b:a 128k output.mp4

I'm unsure if this will work on your phone, but it's worth trying. See the FFmpeg and x264 Encoding Guide for more info on encoding with x264.


How to get peak audio quality and lowest video quality?

It's not entirely clear what you mean by improved audio, but here are three ffmpeg-based options that should get you what you need. Just combine the appropriate code below. I've included an audio conversion to high bitrate aac in all of the commands, but this will not actively improve your audio. If you're looking to optimize the audio for voice, check out ffmpeg's highpass, lowpass, and anequalizer audio filters to filter out unwanted high end and low end frequencies, and to enhance vocal frequencies (probably around 1khz and 5kz).

This line processes all of one file type in a folder. Just cd into the appropriate directory. Replace [original file extension] with your file extension, eg. for i in *.mov; do

mkdir output; for i in *.[original file extension]; do

Use that first line, plus one of the following

Option 1) -vn will ditch the video altogether. Consider just sending audio files.

ffmpeg -i [input] -vn -acodec aac -b:a 320k [output];done

Option 2) -vf scale will scale all your videos into a smaller size without messing with the audio.

ffmpeg -i [input] -vf scale=320:240 -crf 30 -acodec aac -b:a 320k [output];done

Option 3) The first line gets the duration of your video $t using ffmpeg. The second line creates black video to replace your video with, then uses -map to combine the new black video and the audio. Then it uses -ss and -t to set a start and end time $t. Replace [original file extension] with your file extension, eg. "$(basename $i .mov).mp4"

You should really only consider using this if your transcription service demands a video file, but either of the previous options is probably a better choice.

t=$(ffmpeg -i "$i" 2>&1 | grep "Duration"|grep -o '00:*.*'|cut -f1 -d","|awk -F: '{seconds=($1*60)*60; seconds=seconds+($2*60); seconds=seconds+$3; print seconds}');

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=2x2:r=1/1 -i "$i" -map 0:v -map 1:a -acodec aac -b:a 320k -ss 0 -t $t "output/$(basename $i .[original file extension]).mp4";done

Again, if your transcription service doesn't care about or even want video, you could shortcut all of this and just send them high quality wav files.
ffmpeg -i [input.mp4] [output.wav]


WMV is not lossless. As all distribution formats, it's highly compressed.

An AVI file can of course be uncompressed, but on the Mac version of AE, AVI is only available as a Quicktime export component (ie, it appears in File > Export) which is really not a recommended path to export video files from After Effects. Same for Flip4Mac.
So, yes, exporting a lossless Quicktime file and feeding that to an encoding application is a good idea.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/957757


Mix Voice to Video without losing video quality

You can use tsMuxer to simply switch out the audio in the MTS without re-encoding the video or audio. MTS is just a container format, it's the "housing" for the video and audio streams. Though your audio has to have the exact same length to be in sync with the video and the audio format has to be supported by the M(2)TS file format.


How can I remove ENCODE İNFORMATİON from mediainfo for H265 HEVC .mkv?

-x265-params no-info=1
!ffmpeg -y -i http://mirrors.standaloneinstaller.com/video-sample/Panasonic_HDC_TM_700_P_50i.mkv -c:v libx265 -x265-params no-info=1 output.mp4

would generate MediaInfo as

Video ID                                       : 1
Format: HEVC
Format/Info: High EfficiencyVideo Coding Format
profile                           : Main@L4@Main
Codec ID                                 : hev1
...
Writing library                          : x265 2.6:[Linux][GCC 7.2.0][64 bit] 8bit+10bit+12bit

-x265-params no-info=0
!ffmpeg -y -i http://mirrors.standaloneinstaller.com/video-sample/Panasonic_HDC_TM_700_P_50i.mkv -c:v libx265 -x265-params no-info=0 output.mp4

would generate MediaInfo as

Video ID                                       : 1
Format: HEVC
Format/Info: High EfficiencyVideo Coding Format
profile                           : Main@L4@Main
Codec ID                                 : hev1
...
Writing library                          : x265 2.6:[Linux][GCC 7.2.0][64 bit] 8bit+10bit+12bit
Encoding settings                        : cpuid=1173503 / frame-threads=1 / wpp / no-pmode / no-pme / no-psnr / no-ssim ...


I think I know what’s the problem is.

The compound clip isn’t working that way because you have probably a “Solids” generator in it.

Ignore the step of generating the compound clip and build the sliding box and text on top of the main timeline. That should work as you want.


ffmpeg - line_h option not found in latest version of ffmpeg

line_h is not an option. It is a variable that can be used in expressions and its value is the height of the tallest character in the text.


How to prevent chromatic aberration (green/purple fringing) on an After Effects export?

I can't see your images for some reason but I suppose this is intentionally added in the template project. To remove it you would of course need to figure out which effect within AE is creating this problem, which I can not do without looking at the file... however I would look for effects like "Optics Compensation" or "Transform" (the effect, not the property). Try turning off any adjustment layers one-by-one to see if that does it. There's a 99% chance that it is an effect on an adjustment layer at the top of your composition creating something like that!


To centre the video clip:
Select the clip in your timeline
Click on the Effect Controls tab in the left panel
Open the Motion section by clicking on the triangle, and adjust the position of the clip.
To make it central relative to your sequence, it will need to be half the values of the sequence.
So if your sequence settings are 1920x1080, you would need to choose a position of 960x540
To align the image on top, you can use the same method.


How can one resume an interrupted ffmpeg job or pause by design and save some kind of state file?

Depending on what shell you're using you can suspend a process (in posix shells it's with ctrlz, in Powershell you might use suspend-Job) and then resume it. This is true for any shell with job control. You can't quit and save the state from ffmpeg though.
A workaround would be to run the ffmpeg process in a virtual machine. Most linux distros have a minimal server version that would work for this. This would let you save the machine state, and restart the encode at a later date.


How to put this video effect of switching from one scene to another very rapidly?

In a nutshell: put one clip on top of another, and use transparency (or opacity) property to show / hide bottom video. For example, in Sony Vegas Pro you can use Composite Level envelope (there is also an extension to do it quickly). I am sure that other NLEs have similar tools.


Originally smooth unicolor background shows "steps" in the color gradient when exporting

The choice of codec will largely depend on what you're doing with the material. Your problem is that there just aren't enough colours in 8-bit colour space to give you a smooth gradient over the size of the frame.

Problem is that if you want to deliver it on the internet you're pretty much locked in to h.264 (or I guess webm or ogv, but same deal). You can encode h.264 in 10 bit, but almost no-one will be able to watch it, and certainly not in a browser.

There is a workaround which can help a little, which is to add some noise to your gradient. What this does is to break up the banding so that it's not as obvious. It's called dithering, it was big when 256 colour gifs ruled the earth. See this answer for a bit more detail.


How do I apply effects to a layer at its current resolution (scaled up by the layer's scale property) instead of its original resolution?

Well, the answer to the question in your title is to apply the CC Slant effect to an adjustment layer above your (scaled-up) sprite layer. The adjustment layer will have the same resolution as the comp.

But based on the description below the title, I'm not 100% confident this is what you want. Let me know.


Well, your calculations appear to be correct, but the only calculation that isn't exactly known is the pixel size of your camera sensor. Either your calculation of the camera's pixel size on the sensor (at least when filming 1080 video) is off, or their recorded circle of confusion of that sensor is off. Or both. Though I find it more likely that their stored CoC value for that sensor is based on what is "reasonable focus loss" not on the actual pixel size, and so they have a larger CoC value than what you consider to be reasonable, as your reasonable is that the CoC is no bigger than a pixel.

Either way, calculating the differences based on resolution shouldn't be an issue. In the spirit of better safe than sorry, use your own calculation of the pixel sizes (0.016mm with the DoF result ~1.31m) as a basis. If you're going to test for half the resolution of 1080 (being 540) then you'll double the pixel size calculation (0.032mm) resulting in ~4m DoF.

To calculate for 720x576 (which is 576 resolution, not 720 resolution. Careful with that) you'd do (1080/576)*0.013mm = 0.03 (new CoC for calculation resulting in 3.44m DoF).

I'm not sure how you got 146m as a result though. Perhaps you input the wrong circle of confusion value?


After effects: Adding visual callouts of currently playing audio files with a source text script

You are making your and your friend's job much harder than it would have to be. Try exporting an xml (if it's possible to read audio-xlms in protools) or, which would be much easier, your friend switches over to audition. That way you can simply load your audio-timeline into audition and it's all there. Trying to recreate your mix is a terrible idea as you will risk damaging the synced audio of dialogue etc.
Alternatively, if none of that works, assign each audio channel a role (such as vox, ambient, wind, punches, etc.) and export each track on its own. He could then import every track which will be in sync just the way you had it and slice the individual tracks up if he wants to.


Unintended change in AdWords Flash to HTML5 conversion

I would recommend to export as HTML5 from Flash directly instead of relying on Googles conversion.
This has to do with how the Google conversion is animating this. It's probably based on an HTML5 canvas which can have Anti Aliasing disabled in certain events to improve performance.
Google maybe also enforce this to have a pleasant web performance for users. Flash has generally very poor performance because of things like that.

You might want to ask this on Stackoverflow instead, this is more a web programming question.


FFMPEG Calculate Hash After Encoding Before Writing

First, a nitpick: you don't want to compute hashes on the encoded frame data before or while writing. You're testing the fidelity of the  lossless encoding so you need to compare the decoded frame of the x264 encode with the corresponding PNG.

So, first here's how to do what you specifically asked for.

Use the tee pseudo-muxer

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\%%03d.png" ^
-filter_complex "[0]{some filter here}[otherOut]" ^
-map 0 -c:v libx264rgb -qp 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 -f tee "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\lossless.avi|[f=avi]pipe:" ^
-map 0 -f framehash -hash SHA512 "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\original.hashes" ^
-map [otherOut] {some other encoding} someOtherFile.idc | ffmpeg -f avi -i - -f framehash -hash SHA512 %IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\decoded.hashes"

If your end goal is to check the fidelity of the lossless encoding, use

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\%%03d.png" ^
-filter_complex "[0]{some filter here}[otherOut]" ^
-map 0 -c:v libx264rgb -qp 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\lossless.avi" ^
-map [otherOut] {some other encoding} someOtherFile.idc

and then

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\%%03d.png" -i lossless.avi ^
-filter_complex "ssim" -f null -

If the result is lossless, the readout will say

SSIM R:1.000000 (inf) G:1.000000 (inf) B:1.000000 (inf) All:1.000000 (inf)


ffmpeg: How to cut 2 parts of a Video an Join them together in specific order

Here's the thing about modern video—most formats are actually designed presuming a varying frame rate. We like to think of them like digital filmstrips, but that model rarely works when we're streaming over a network or capturing from many kinds of devices. So, every frame has what's called a Presentation Time Stamp, or PTS.
The problem here is that, while you do indeed concatenate in that order, the PTS for each frame never changes. You can actually manually set the PTS of a frame with the setpts filter, which is definitely something to look into as panning video can get much more complicated than this, and it's deliciously flexible; but may require some reading to understand all of the parameters.
The fields you'll need to know are PTS, which is the presentation timestamp before the filter is run; STARTPTS, which is the presentation timestamp of the first frame rendered, and TB, which stands for Time Base and is basically the ratio between a PTS "tick" and a second; so if you know that your first clip is going to be five seconds long, and you want your second clip to start immediately afterward, you will want to add 5.0/TB to your new PTS.
So, I suggest (PTS-STARTPTS)+(5/TB) for your second clip; but this isn't the only way to determine it and feel free to adjust it if the result doesn't feel right to you.
We're going to use a complex filter here, as we're splitting our stream into two separate streams and concatenating them at the end. (Complex streams actually aren't all that bad, but do take a little getting used to.) One of the big differences with a complex filter is that you generally start each command by specifying a stream for it to use, and end each command specifying a new stream to write to, both in square brackets. When we begin with [0:v], that means to take the first input (input number zero from file input.mp4) and grab its video stream. What comes at the end can be used to identify it later when you want to filter it again.
Lastly, it helps to use the -map tag to tell FFmpeg which stream it is writing from. It's critical, as if FFmpeg wasn't aware of which one to use you could end up with literally any stream or combination thereof in your file; and an invocation can take a while to complete.
Your final command:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex " \
    [0:v]select='between(t,45,50)'[v1], \
    [0:v]select='between(t,23,30)'[v2], \
    [v2]setpts='(PTS-STARTPTS)+(5/TB)'[v2], \
    [v1][v2]concat[outv], \
    [outv]scale=720:-1[outv]" \
    -map [outv] output.avi

Remember that if you want to use this for any other file, you will need to adjust the (5/TB) part to match the end of your first clip.
While I'm a very experienced programmer, I'm relatively new to FFmpeg in-depth; so it's possible that someone else here will have more details for you to consider.


Canon 60 PC Adobe Premiere and After Effects Workflow

I've never noticed any codecs that run smoother in After Effects or Premiere. One thing I have noticed about Premiere is that if you don't have your source media in your main project folder (designated when you start the project), it lags. I assume the RAM gets overly taxed by searching all over the place to round up the referenced files. I haven't seen any documentation about this but have run extensive tests to prove it. I migrated recently from FCP.

Based on what you said, it sounds like you want to compress your footage before working with it in AE or Premiere. I think this is a bad idea. Your camera has already compressed it (using the h.264 codec). If you absolutely have to use another codec, I would go with:

quicktime animation
quicktime jpeg2000

They are uncompressed or the least compressed to my knowledge.

As I'm sure you know, when working with AE and Premiere, you want your raw material to be the highest quality possible and only compress it when you export your final project. For example you want to use AIFF (or something comparable) and not mp3 for audio. If you compress it before working with it in AE or PRE and then export it, you're compressing it twice and throwing away data twice. This will kill your quality.

Another factor may be your memory settings in the apps preferences.

Another possibility, if you're using an external scratch disk, make sure it's not USB. This will cause lag.

Finally, your graphics card and RAM need to be pretty hefty for a pleasant experience.

I run an imac with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM and a great ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB graphics card. It pretty much flies with any codec I use.


setup for recording full field sports unattended?

While not officially supported, it is not difficult to replace the lens in a GoPro knock-off. The lenses in these action cameras are using a M12 mount and can be replaced. So: you could try to replace the lens as a first step. Depending on what you are looking for in the video, details may become too small and two cameras would be a better option.

How To Replace GoPro Lens - DIY

I have done this myself with two cameras but replaced the lens with a lens that has a narrower focus. The lens costs less than 20 USD/EUR/GBP.

72 Degree 4.35mm 1/2.3 Inch Sensor 10MP M12 Lens


In VLC you have an overlay feature among the out-of-the-box effects (Tools->Effects and Filters->Video Effects->Overlay). The overlay can be a logo, de-logo eraser, or text. You can run VLC centrally and restream the TV channel, or you can run it in a Linux settop box and control it centrally via its internal built-in web server, via telnet, or via the Lua interface. You can also make more complex overlays such as PIP (picture in picture) but that requires some mastering of the VLC command syntax.


Create a compound clip of the clips you want to adjust the volume of by selecting the clips and pressing alt-G. The volume of the compound clip as a whole can then be adjusted like a regular clip.


Create an animation of a slider-crank mechanism system

The setup is reasonably simple, built in functions, trigonometry and some Pythagoras will get you there. Have a look at the diagram below:

The orange solid is the crank, with its anchor point shown at the bottom. Its rotation drives the whole thing (you could drive it from the piston, but this is probably easier(?)). In your diagram the crank isn't shown, so you can just use a solid, and make it a guide layer. Attached to the crank is a null called pivot, lined up to the where the crank and piston are attached to each other, with the crank as its parent. I use that to save myself a little bit of maths, The green solid is the piston, its anchor point is at the top, lined up with the blue solid.

Now to find the position of the piston we have to find Yc, x, and Yp. That will also allow us to find the angle ϴ.

First we need to find the position of the pivot. Fortunately we can use the built-in function toComp. That will return the absolute position of the pivot null. If we subtract the position of the crank we're left with [x, Yc].

Since we know the length of the piston—p in the diagram above—and the value of x, we can use Pythagoras' theorem to find Yp, because x² + Yp² = P², then it follows Yp = sqrt(P² - x²).

Putting it all together, plus some offsets to keep the piston lined up with the crank, we get this for the position expression on the piston arm:

var PistonLength = 200; //set this to whatever length your piston is
var crankPos = thisComp.layer("crank").transform.position;
var pivot = thisComp.layer("pivot").toComp(thisComp.layer("pivot").transform.anchorPoint, t = time) - crankPos;
var y = Math.sqrt(Math.pow(PistonLength,2) - Math.pow(pivot[0], 2));
crankPos + [0, pivot[1] - y]

Once we have the lengths of the sides of the triangle we can find the angle using trigonometry. We know that sin ϴ = x / P so ϴ = asin(x / P). Here's the expression:

var pistonLength = 200;
var crankPos = thisComp.layer("crank").transform.position;
var pivot = crankPos - thisComp.layer("pivot").toComp(thisComp.layer("pivot").transform.anchorPoint, t = time);
theta = Math.asin(pivot[0]/pistonLength);
radiansToDegrees(theta)

So in the diagram above these expressions are applied to the green solid on the position and rotation properties respectively.

The blue solid just has to line up with the green piston, but you don't want to parent it, or it will inherit the rotation. So just put this simple expression on its position property (obviously with all these expressions you need to change the names of the layers to match (or change your layer names):

thisComp.layer("piston arm").transform.position

Here's a screenshot of the comp, with all the expressions in place.


ffmpeg: Convert 4K 10-bit file to DNxHR 444

As stated in this answer (includes an example), as of ffmpeg 3.3.6, this is now supported.

The error no longer appears and you can convert to 444 without trouble.


Select some pixels from imported movie to duplicate and stretch

It is possible, but it might look a bit weird.  Video is constantly changing - even just a video of a wall will have noise in it, so static images tend to look a bit odd in comparison.  But Ii you stretch one pixel of the noisy moving image, you'll get lines of noise moving either side of your image, which might not look great either.

However, if you want to give it a go, duplicate your original image, use a mask to only show the edge that you want to extend, then adjust the scale in one dimension only (you'll need to click on the little link icon to only adjust the x-axis scale).

Alternatively, What many people do for a backdrop is to copy the image, scale it up to fill the screen, then blur, and darken it, and place it behind the original image.


How to change After Effects frame rate so that it doesn't speed up

If I get the question right, what you're wanting to do is add more frames to the footage to make it play smoother. You have to add the frames because your footage was shot at 59.94 frames per second, and you want to double(ish) the number of frames displayed every second to 120. So every frame there has to be an extra 60 (ish) frames to display to make up the shortfall.

Ok so the first thing to do is to make a comp containing the footage and set your comp to 120fps. You do that in the Composition settings dialog. ctrl/cmdk will summon that boi.

So now the composition has two frames for every frame of the source. Being the professional program that it is it will still display your footage at the correct speed, and by default it will do that by displaying every frame twice. This is pretty much the same as playing back your footage at the original fps. We need to make up some frames that don't exist in your footage.

To generate the in-between frames you have to turn on frame blending. This can be done in the layer switches for the layer (Hit f4 to hide/show them). Clicking in the frame blending square once turns on frame-mix blending , clicking again turns on pixel-motion blending .

There are two options. Cheap and cheerful frame mix basically makes a 50% blend of the previous and the next frame to come up with the new frame. The second mode is the computationally intensive, sometimes brilliant, sometimes very weird pixel motion. It uses all sorts of clever algorithms to create a new frame by looking at the motion in previous and following frames and warping your pixels to match. A bit like you added a morph between successive frames.There are also 3rd party plugins for time-stretching, notably Twixtor.

Now you won't see anything when you turn on frame blending for a layer, because by default it's not shown in the preview you see in the comp window, because it slows rendering down a bit. You can turn it on for the preview by hitting the frame blending button in the timeline window, as seen below. It goes blue when it's on.

You also have to make sure that frame blending is on in your render settings if you want the final result to render out with frame blending.

You should prolly read the documentation, it sounds like you're a bit confused about things like interpret footage and time stretching and so on.


target edge of null object rather than centre

You could do it the nerdy mathematical way by finding the radius of the circle r, then using trigonometry to target a point on the line between the two centers—the center of the start null and the centre of the circle—that is r pixels back from the centre of the circle. You do that by finding the vector of the line between the two layers, then finding the angle that line makes, and multiplying the original vector, minus the radius by the cosine and sin of the angle to come up with the vector from the original null to the edge of the circle.

This expression would do that (probably, I haven't tested it):

var r = <the radius of the circle>;
var overallVector = thisComp.layer("circle layer").transform.position - thisComp.layer("start null").transform.position;
var beamAngle = Math.atan2(overallVector[1], overallVector[0]);
thisComp.layer("start null").transform.position + [Math.cos(beamAngle)*(length(overallVector) - r), Math.sin(beamAngle)*(length(overallVector) - r)];

Or you could do it the quick and easy way, by making a circle solid the same size as the target circle, parenting it to the circle so that it is lined up with it, putting it directly above the beam layer, and then turning on alpha inverted track matte for the beam layer. That would make the beam invisible inside the circle. Boom!


Are there any good video editing programs with a command line interface?

Avisynth (wiki) is a script-driven app and in conjunction with filters should be able to do the work.


Is Davinci Resolve 16 good for beginers?

As far as I know, in Resolve you only have to pay premium for the cloud collaborative features.
Its not beginner software like iMovie or WMM, but rather comparable to Premiere, the cheapest rate for which is 20/month if you have a student email.  Among free software, Resolve is definitely one of the best options out there.
While it is a professional tool, it's very intuitive for basic functions and it has the core features you'll find in other professional editing software.
Edit: Free version includes 4k


FFmpeg - Synchronize external audio file

One way to achieve this might be to create an .MP4 with your audio and an all-black image, which should encode to something not much larger than the audio file but still have the same internal structure as the full video files.


Stretch or Change Timing in After Effects

The solution will be found in the Timeline. Scroll through the items in the timeline until you find the track for the text object you want to change. The duration of the text on screen is defined by starting and ending keyframes on the object's track.

Moving the last keyframe on the object's timeline will extend the duration of an object, so clicking and dragging the last keyframe for the text will extend how long it is on screen.


mov to mp4 conversion produces grainy results

You are indeed right about shades of grey. You're encoding in 8-bit 4:2:0 (standard h.264 settings) which means that there are only 256 possible shades of grey. Think about it. If your RGB* values go from [0, 0, 0] to [255, 255, 255] and the red green and blue channels are equal, because grey, then your pixels will be one of these values: [0,0,0], [1,1,1], [2,2,2]… [255,255,255]. Meaning 256 possible colours.

If your gradient went from full black to full white and was 256 pixels across there would be one pixel per colour, so you'd be fine. But if it was say, 1024px wide, then there would have to be four pixels of each colour next to each other, meaning bands. And that's a gradient going from full black to full white—a subtle gradient from 45% grey to 55% grey might only have 25 possible values available–it's going to be banding city.

And just to explain what is going on in your image–especially in the middle–there's an unfortunate optical illusion that makes those bands super obvious, by making the squares where the same colour is repeated look like gradients going the opposite way.

Two possible workarounds:

You can encode using 10 bit h.264, but a lot fewer people will be able to play it back, and you'll need to get a 10 bit build of ffmpeg or x.264 (I don't know of any other 10-bit h.264 software)
You can add some noise. Sounds crazy, but it will break up the bands into fuzz so they'll be less noticeable. Justify it to yourself by believing it gives it a more filmy look. It's called dithering, it was a big thing back in the days of 8-bit colour.

*Actually it's YUV, but that's not important right now.


You may want to use FFMPEG's lut3d filter. It requires you to provide a look-up table (a *.cube file). For example, if you have an ARRI camera you can generate these files using ARRI Color Tool or simply download a package with them from the linked page.

Once you have the files, use FFMPEG like this:

  ffmpeg -i "Input.mov" -vf lut3d="ARRIP3D65PQ108-33.cube" -s 1920x1080
  -c:v dnxhd -pix_fmt yuv422p -b:v 120M DNxHD_for_Editing.mxf

The important part here is the use of lut3d filter:

  -vf lut3d="ARRIP3D65PQ108-33.cube"

where ARRIP3D65PQ108-33.cube is the LUT file to use with the filter.


This requires a repetitive motion and good lighting.  You expose the position of the droplet on successive oscillation, but capture it at a slightly different spot on each.

Thinking about it from the perspective of a ball bouncing.  On the first photo, I take a quick photo of the ball on the ground.  The ball bounces up and then back down.  I then take a photo on the second bounce of the ball just a bit off the ground.  The ball goes up and down again.  I then take a photo on the third bounce of the ball just a little further off the ground.  That's why it is key that the oscillation of the object and the framerate be so close.  Each photo is only .06 hz worth of movement away from the previous at the time the photo is actually taken.

When I finish, I end up with a slideshow that shows a ball bouncing very slowly, but in reality, it was well timed photos of many bounces.

This is referred to as the wagon wheel effect because the gaps in the wheels could make it so that things would seem to move slower or even backwards because of the interruptions in vision and where things were positioned when vision was restored.  Our brains then would fill in the in-between bits in the wrong direction or assume it was the shortest distance instead of seeing what actually happened.


Most likely, it is the 'canvas size' setting under the top level Broadcast menu. If you are broadcasting at anything less than 1280x720, then try to keep the aspect ratio the same for the lower resolution, i.e. something like 640x360


Surroundings moves faster than the subject?

If you are talking about I.e. the effect used in this video by orbital: https://youtu.be/ymu_ogcXigg...  this is done by letting run the camera in time lapse mode and moving very slowly, making the surrounding appear very fast.


Fastest way to add a video event in multiple cuts

If by Video Event, you mean Video Event FX, then apply the effect to one event. Right-click and select Copy. Then select the remaining clips, right-click and select Paste Event Attributes. Note that all the original Pan/Crop and effects applied to the other clips will be overwritten with those in the copied clip.


How To add blank part in video for 1 hour

I don't know if the AE encoder can signal duplicate frames (which would keep the size down). You may be better off using ffmpeg, a command-line tool.

Suppose your source video is 1280x720 at 24 fps, then you would run

ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -f lavfi -i "color=black:s=1280x720:r=24:d=3600" -filter_complex "[0][1]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[v]" -map [v] -c:v libx264 output.mp4

To combine with text overlay,

ffmpeg -i universal.mp4 -f lavfi -i "color=black:s=1280x720:r=24000/1001:d=20" -filter_complex "[0][1]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[v];[v]drawtext=fontfile=FreeSerifBold.ttf:text=\'Hello World\':fontcolor=white@1.0:fontsize=16:x=w-tw-10:y=10:box=1:boxcolor=black@0.5[vout]" -map [vout] -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -profile:v main -movflags +faststart output.mp4 2>&1


VGA is RGBHV (horizontal and vertical sync) not YPbPr so without active adapting hardware, it isn't going to work.  The formats are not compatible as the addressing information is missing.    You might be able to find a dual mode monitor that has support for both formats on the connector (some video mixers do for example), but it would be luck of the draw and pretty rare.


Why do SRT subtitles fail to appear in my MP4 videos on iPhones?

Update with answer

It can be done. Run your source files through Handbrake, after importing the subtitle files you want. Then export as Mp4. I've read (a) you should put the SRT file/s in the same folder as the Mp4 on your server, and (b) the SRT should have the same name as the mp4. But (a) is probably wrong (in a text-editor, you can see the subtitles have been coded into the mp4 by Handbrake) and (b) is definitely wrong - two different language SRT files will obviously have different file names.

Testing... On iPhone, a little speech bubble appeared on the right side of the QT player control bar when it loaded my MP4. Tapping that popped up the two subtitle language options. So, it worked. But it only worked because first my tester had to enable "closed captions" in his iPhone's:

Settings > General > Accessibility > Subtitles & Captioning > Closed Captions + SDH

In other words, an extra chore for users and the result is crappy-looking subtitles anyway. And all this because, unlike Samsungs and most other mobiles I've tested on, the iPhone overrides the videojs player and plays your videos in Apple's own Quicktime player.


Encode MPEG-4 to DVD Format Without Doubling File Size

Well, the short answer is, you can't.

The longer answer: DVD uses MPEG2 compression, which is a lot less efficient than MPEG4 (aka h.264). In other words it can't get the same quality from the same file size as MPEG4 does.

So you can choose: similar file size, or similar quality, but not both.


What is the simplest way to cut and put together many parts (for which I know the timestamps) of many videos?

Cutting and arranging video material is the most basic thing that any video editing software has to be able to do. You won't find any NLE that can't do that. Titles are pretty basic as well, you can insert titles with software as simple as Windows Movie Maker (though of course more sophisticated software will always give you more control). So yeah, as Michael Liebman said, pick one.


Avid "Composer" window blank, won't resize

You can restore the default window arrangement and size using the main menu of Media Composer:

  Windows -> Restore to default


Are there any recent 64-bit VFW screen capture codecs out there?

You don't need a 64bit codec to use it in 64bit Software like VirtualDub or After Effects, a 32bit codec will work just fine.
For intermediate codecs I generally use either a QuickTime with PhotoJPEG compression or Animation like you suggested yourself. The latter is lossless and produces fairly big files, the former is lossy just like JPEG but offers visually lossless compression with a reasonable size and works very well in every software that supports QuickTime video.

Another alternative would be a JPEG2000 image sequence which can be be either lossless or lossy, though its a bit less fun to work with as you end up with thousands of files in a folder, though there are commercial JPEG2000 codecs out there that are 64bit native and integrate into Windows.

Another good (open source) alternative is Ut Video. It also features a native 64bit version of the codec and integrates into Windows aswell. It's completely lossless but produces files with reasonable size.


Premiere Pro: How to sync speed ramped audio with video from linked After Effects comp?

Adobe Dynamic Link is a great tool, but unfortunately at the end of the day it can be problematic as it has its limitations. As After Effects is almost entirely focused on video, it doesn't surprise me that audio would be one of these limitations.
Before dynamic linking existed, we always had to do round-tripping (sending files to another program, working on it there, and then sending a new rendered copy back to replace in the original program's timeline). Visual effects work in the Adobe Suite that hits these limitations with linking, such as this sound-related one you've run into, just means that you have to resort to this old-fashioned method as you've found.
In fact because dynamic link can cause problems, if I'm doing anything other than basic text or whatnot I only use the "Replace with AE..." tool to send clips to AE. After it's sent over, I hit Ctrl+Z (undo) in Premiere to undo the timeline, breaking the link and getting back the original clip that I just sent in the proper place/time.
Therefore, I'm always exporting a fresh clip straight out of After Effects to drop into the Premiere timeline. There's a few reasons for this:

Dynamic linked clips in the Premiere timeline use a TON of processing power because it's doing the calculations for the dynamic linked clip on the fly, like when you play it back in After Effects without any ram preview cached. You've probably noticed that it can stutter and struggle to make it through a linked clip when you're playing through the timeline, and sometimes slow you down even when you're not looking at it because it's anticipating. For anything remotely intensive, I unlink after sending to AE to avoid this problem, and round trip it back.
Similarly, round-tripping also saves you tons of render time on the video when you're rendering out the Premiere file. Let's say you watch your final render and notice you misspelled something in the credits or a cut is off-time. Re-rendering means it's going to have to recalculate all of the dynamically linked clips again, whereas if you had your individually rendered VFX clips in the timeline, it can breeze through them as it's just a normal video file.
The dynamically linked clip is Premiere's interpretation of the After Effects file, and Tthis can cause some issues and visual glitches with dynamic link rendering just as can happen when dynamic rendering AE files in Media Encoder. These are usually really specific issues with transparency, color science, plugins, and even sometimes referring to the wrong composition or a seemingly old version.

I know it's quite annoying, but you've clearly gotten the basic concept of how to round-trip it without the link. Here's a few things that could help or improve your workflow:

Like you said, you can increase the AE comp time to give you more working room. However to avoid having to do it multiple times, I suggest you just add more time than you know you'll need, and use the "trim comp" tool at the end of your process. Drag the work area range to where your final length should be, right click it, and select trim comp to work area.
To expand on your point on organizing, my suggestion is to create a folder (in your OS explorer) parallel to your footage folder where you can save your new clips. Use a consistent naming convention so that you can always match it with the original clip. For instance, original file: A002_C003.mp4 should be saved as A002_C003-VFX001.mp4 or some other format which distinguishes it as the modified clip, and also allows for revision files to be created without having to go "-VFX-ACTUALfinalfinal2," hahah.

Additionally, I'm sure you'll be able to find some other ways to shave time out of your workflow. If you haven't already, try to learn the After Effects hotkeys as it will save you a lot of time with even these steps you're describing.
I hope I helped at least somewhat! Sorry there's not a more convenient way, but I also recommend reporting this as a bug to Adobe, as it really should be a true functionality.


How to make a video presentation with the possibility to go to the next or the previous "video-slide"?

I recently saw this page:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/08/building-interactive-html5-videos/

Basically it uses the track element within the video element to make clickable "skip points" in the video. Javascript and html5 (with video) are pretty much amazing these days and with a little bit of experimentation I am sure you can get what you want. (Like on skip event pause the video if playing etc.)

Here is the relevant code from that page modded to your needs:

  <video width="480" height="204" poster="assets/sintel.jpg">
    <source src="q1fx20VZ-kNspJqnJ.mp4" type="video/mp4">
    <source src="q1fx20VZ-27m5HpIu.webm" type="video/webm">
    <track src="assets/chapters.vtt" kind="chapters" default>
  </video>

The contents of the vtt file look like this:

WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:01:42.000
Opening credits

2
00:01:42.000 --> 00:04:44.000
A dangerous quest

3
00:04:44.000 --> 00:05:50.000
The attack

4
00:05:50.000 --> 00:08:24.000
In pursuit

5
00:08:24.000 --> 00:10:13.000
Cave Fight

6
00:10:13.000 --> 00:12:24.000
Eye to eye

7
00:12:24.000 --> 00:14:48.000
Ending Credits


How is the audio for a TV broadcasted football match recorded?

The primary method of getting that "zoomed in" sound is using parabolic microphones. They are manually operated and usually carried by the operator listening just to the output of that microphone. The operator will isolate the specific player or object that they are to focus on.

Shotgun and other directional microphones are used to pick up more ambiance of the play while not picking up too much of the crowd. However, they aren't precise enough to capture a player's foot striking the ball.

Pressure zone microphones (PZM) are often placed on objects, like the goal, to capture the sound of the ball striking that object.

This article reviews mic'ing and mixing techniques for a few different sports, though not (non-US) football.


http://www.gettyimages.de/footage
https://www.shutterstock.com/video/
http://www.dissolve.com/
http://videohive.net/

to name a few, probably there are much much more.


There are several things to consider when purchasing and setting up lights.
As for the brightness, the brighter you're lit up, the less noisy your image will be. Brighter light will also allow your camera to reduce it's aperture. The smaller aperture will make the area that is in focus bigger, giving you more room to move around in and still be in focus. There are several factors that go into how bright you will be. When I shoot video for clients, I use 1000W incandescent to light up a room that is anywhere from 5x5ft to 20x20ft. Any bigger than that and I'll probably bring in more lights for the main light source. If you are using LED, 1000 incandescent (tungsten) watts are about equal to 167 LED watts.
As for the setup, if you are moving around in your videos and trying to make sure your space is evenly lit, I suggest pointing the light at the ceiling instead of at you as long as your ceiling is white. This makes the light even and look natural. When doing this, remember that the lit up spot on the ceiling is now your light source. Make sure the light source (lit spot on the ceiling) is in front of you and (in my preference) off to one side. Play around with the positioning to your liking, but look up images of "loop lighting" (off to one side) and "butterfly lighting" (centered) to see the styles of lighting I'm talking about. The most important takeaway from those is the small nose shadow on the face. Those two style are what's used for most photography and video of people outside of mood lighting. I always diffuse the light with the ceiling, a soft-box or an umbrella when shooting, unless there is good reason to use hard/direct lighting.
If you do not want to use the ceiling method, both softboxes and umbrellas work well. The one place I see people make mistakes with the softboxes is placing the box too close the subject which ends up making the light vary too much when you move around and makes the background a bit dark compared to the subject. Being too close with the light also makes the lite seem like a light you set up for the video and not natural lighting.
Now for incandescent vs LED. Personally I never use LEDs for video. There are several reasons for this. First off, LEDs are blinking lights. If you don't believe me, put one on a rope and swing it in a circle and you'll see a dotted path. What this will end up doing is making your strumming hand (and any other decent movement) look like it's a multiple exposure, where you have several sharp images of your hand instead of a smooth motion blur. Some newer LEDs have a refresh rate fast enough to make this a non-issue but they usually cost a pretty penny. The other big issue with LEDs is the color they put out. Incandescent bulbs put out a very wide gamut of color, meaning every visible color is being put out from the bulb. LEDs only put out a single narrow color, or in the case of some LED arrays, a group of narrow colors. The lack of a full gamut, means that some colors will look muted while others are very vibrant. Skin tone can end up looking dead-like. This makes color correction extremely difficult and something many musicians do not want to deal with. Of coarse the down side to incandescent is the heat it puts off. How much of a problem the heat will be depends on your space. A small room will heat up quickly. If you're in a living-room, you probably have enough space for most of the heat to dissipate and for the air conditioning to take care of the rest. If sweating becomes a mild issue, get some colorless power from a theater makeup store to apply before videos.


Guess the original poster found his way to do it - I found the following that worked for me, even though I followed a different procedure. I didn't want to convert the MTS files before importing them to iMovie into anything else and was missing too the additional index / descripition files. this is the source and works for Sony SW / Cams. Potentially with other HW / SW constellation a similar way is possible.
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/movies-video/263323-how-import-mts-files-into-imovie-have-been-archived.html

So what I did:
1. I added the folder with my MTS files on my USB drive with the Sony PMB Picture Motion Browser - in fact I used the more recent Play Memories Home edition
2. Now I marked the MTS files from that source and exported them to an external USB drive - but you can use basically any medium (SDHC, maybe even DVD if you think that's better for archiving)

And now the new folders created can be either imported directly from the medium, copied to the Mac or other location from where you again can import them as archive in iMovie.

Good luck.


Is it meaningful to raise frame rate, if so what is the best option?

Is it meaningful to raise the frame rate?

Usually, no. Exceptions are if you need to artificially generate slow motion using a robust tool like Twixtor.

What is the mechanism of -r 60 in the above command? Since there are only 30 frames per second in the original video, where do those additional 30 frames come from?

They are simply duplicates of existing frames. Without the use of specific filters, ffmpeg can only duplicate or drop frames when the framerate is changed.

Is there any better option other than the above command to 'smoothly' raise the fps?

ffmpeg now has a motion interpolation filter, which will generate new frames. It can also just do a regular blend if that mode is chosen.

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf minterpolate=fps=60 out.mp4


How to export a .AVI as a sequence of images in Avidemux

You need to downgrade to 2.5 since 2.6 does not support image sequence export.

Alternatively, you could download FFmpeg and run

ffmpeg -i input.avi -q:v 1 in%d.jpg

ffmpeg -i input.avi in%d.tif


Ok, this is a known bug in ssrr: https://github.com/MaartenBaert/ssr/issues/658

SOLUTION: You can use OBS, which is compatible with NVENC.


I think you should try CC-Search, however use this wisely as some sites that are linked, do not always upload non-copyright footage, though you should be good for the most part.


presenter (speaker) change detection from a video clip?

You can use the speech recognition function within Adobe Premiere to (kind of) do this.  It will analyze a long piece of video, and attempt to create a text script of the speech within the video.  If you tick "identify speakers" before it begins, it will write "[speaker 1], [speaker 2]" etc each time it identifies a change in speaker.

However, the success rate is not massively high.  Adobe claim about 75%, with high-quality audio, which seems about right, but is too low to make it a generally useful feature for most people.

There's a step by step guide on how to use it here:
http://layersmagazine.com/powering-search-with-audio-metadata-using-premiere-pro.html


How do I set up and use ffmpeg in Windows?

FFmpeg is indeed a powerful video encoder/decoder tool¹. It operates in the command line, as opposed to using a GUI. Command line is that black window you find by clicking [windows+r] and typing cmd then hitting enter. This is also called "command prompt". Once setup you enter ffmpeg commands in one of these windows to use it.
Here are the basic steps to "install" and use it:
Installation

Go to the ffmpeg download site and download the zip file that best fits your computer's specs. Choose the "static" linking and the "nightly git" version for the most current usability.
Create a folder on your computer to unpack the zip file. This folder will be your "installation" folder. I chose C:\Program Files\ffmpeg\. This is a good idea because you will treat this like a regular program. Unpack the zip file into this folder.
The folder should now contain a number of other folders, including one titled bin where ffmpeg.exe is saved. We're not done yet. Double clicking that file does nothing. Remember, this is a command line program. It runs in cmd.
Before you can use ffmpeg.exe in cmd you have to tell your computer where it can find it. You need to add a new system path. First, right click This PC (Windows 10) or Computer (Windows 7) then click Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab > Environment Variables.
In the Environment Variables window, click the "Path" row under the "Variable" column, then click Edit

The "Edit environment variable" window looks different for Windows 10 and 7. In Windows 10 click New then paste the path to the folder that you created earlier where ffmpeg.exe is saved. For this example, that is C:\Program Files\ffmpeg\bin\
![Add new system path Windows 10]]3
In Windows 7 all the variables are listed in a single string, separated by a semicolon. Simply go the the end of the string, type a semicolon (;), then paste in the path.

Click Ok on all the windows we just opened up.

ffmpeg is now "installed". The Command Prompt will now recognize ffmpeg commands and will attempt to run them. (If you are still having issues with Command Prompt not recognizing ffmpeg try running CMD as an admin. Alternatively, you can use windows powershell instead of cmd. If it still does not work double check to make sure each step was followed to completion.)
Updating ffmpeg
To update ffmpeg, just revisit the download page in step 1 above and download the zip file. Unpack the files and copy them over the old files in the folder you created in step 2.
Using ffmpeg
Using ffmpeg requires that you open a command prompt window, then type ffmpeg specific commands. Here is a typical ffmpeg command:
 ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -ar 44100 -ac 1 -b:a 32k -f mp3 audio.mp3

This command has four parts:

ffmpeg - This command tells cmd that we want to run ffmpeg commands. cmd will first look for ffmpeg.exe in one of the folders from step 6 in the Installation section. If it is found, it will attempt to run the command.
-i video.mp4 - This is an input file. We are going to be doing work on this file.
-vn -ar 44100 -ac 1 -b:a 32k -f mp3 - These are the "arguments". These characters are like mini commands that specify exactly what we want to do. In this case, it is saying create an mp3 file from the input source.

-vn - Leave out the video stream
-ar 44100 - Specifies audio resolution in hertz.
-ac 1 - Audio channels, only 1. This is effectively "make mono".
-b:a 32k - Audio bitrate, set to 32 kbps.
-f mp3 - Force to MP3 conversion. Without this command, ffmpeg attempts to interpret what you want based on the extension you use in the output file name.

audio.mp3- This is the output file.

As you can probably guess, this short command makes an MP3 audio file from an MP4 file.
To run this command, assuming you have an MP4 file to try this on, follow these steps:

Hit the Windows key + r.
Type cmd then enter.
Change the path to where the file is that you want to work on. Type cd [path]. It should look something like cd C:\Users\name\Desktop\.
Now type the ffmpeg command with the name of your input file. The command will run with some feedback. When it's done, cmd will be available for more commands.

This is the basic way to use ffmpeg. The commands can get far more complicated, but that's only because the program has so much power. Using the ffmpeg documentation, you can learn all the commands and create some very powerful scripts. After that, you can save these scripts into a .bat file so that you just have to double click a file instead of type out the whole command each time. For example, this answer contains a script that will create MP3's from all the MP4's in a folder. Then we would be combining the power of ffmpeg with the power of cmd, and that's a nice place to be when you have to do professional quality video/audio encoding on mountains of files.

As a point if technical accuracy, ffmpeg is itself not an encoder or decoder. It is a program that can be compiled with a large variety of encoders, decoders, muxers, and demuxers, based on user preference. All of these encoders etc, can be used without ffmpeg.


Video production at higher quality - alternatives and solutions

First variant:
You can try to set resloution of your display to 1920x1080, but I think that you will have scroll on your screen.
I know that with digital connect via DVI port on Windows PC with XP it was real. In the last time I didn't take any experiments.

Second variant:
You can buy FullHD monitor and don't have any problems with this. They are won't cost a lot of money, especially which sell as used.

Third variant:
I don't see what image see your viewers, but I can think, that problem can be in bitrate of image which won't allow to stream quality image. If your viewers view your stream in original quality and they are have problems with reading text, I think that you need to do bigger scale of your desktop or bigger scale of text in your coding software.

Can you show me the settings of OBS stream, screenshot from your PC and screenshot from your viewer?
Also it can be helpful if you will do recording of your screen for your viewers instead of streaming.


This suggestion might help you
https://video.stackexchange.com/a/26424/4426

It was relating to audio files, but the principle is the same.
You would make a text layer, then apply this expression to the Source Text field in the text layer:
thisComp.layer(2).name

Anything on layer 2 in the comp would then have its file name displayed in the text layer.


ffmpeg bgr vs rgb and other similiar pixel formats

While I always guessed that the big / little endian was more a matter of patents rather than performance,

Nope little endian was developed as a performance optimization whern moving to multi byte words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness#Optimization

Nothing to to with patents. Different representation have different advantages and disadvantage. Hence different situations may use different representations. Codecs suffer from network effect. Nobody wants to use your encoder if nobody uses your decoder. And vice-versa. So codec designers go for maximum compatibility, and often support several formats. But the usually don't support them all, because there are dozens. So they use a combination of the most common, and easiest to include into the design.


Overlay an Image onto a resized video. FFMPEG

I'll assume the window area is 1004x512. You can adjust the command below after getting the exact values.

ffmpeg -i video -i frame -filter_complex
       "[0]scale=1004x512:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,
           pad=1024:1024:10+(1004-iw)/2:10+(512-ih)/2[vid];
        [vid][1]overlay"  output

The 10 in the pad expressions represent the border thickness.


Why is Olympic slow motion footage sharp with little motion blur?

The MacCAM (used in Tennis back in 2004) used a 1000 fps frame rate and had just enough resolution to capture a tennis ball hitting (or missing) a line with reasonable resolution.  Today, a Phantom Flex 4K can do 1000 fps with UHD or 4K resolution.  Many high-end broadcast cameras can do 120 fps at FullHD or UHD resolution, which is probably what they were using at the Olympics.  That's 4x slow motion for NTSC-land and nearly 5x slow motion for PAL-land.  That is a great frame rate for anything but the fastest sports (badminton, ping pong, etc).

The Panasonic Varicam HS is a broadcast camera that does 240 fps.  I wasn't watching these Olympics closely enough to see whether this was the camera used for the gymnastics event, but wouldn't be surprised if it was.


You have two things going on here, both related.  The first is that the native resolution of the display you are filming is higher than the format you are capturing in.  You are immediately losing 1/3 of the image information on the iPad.

This is further compounded however by the natural anti-aliasing that filming a screen at similar or lower resolution produces.  Since the pixels of your camera don't line up with the pixels on the display exactly, each pixel of the camera's video file is going to have contributions from multiple distinct pixels on the display (as many as 4).  While the resolution of the video may be near 2mp, it is going to get information slightly blurred together as pixels become less sharp from this blending.

This isn't an issue when you are using much higher resolution because the amount of pixels in your image that are covering multiple pixels of the display are minimal and the majority of each pixel is sharply exposed, but in the case of a video that is 1/3 smaller, as many as 9 pixels on the display may be getting blended for each pixel in the final video.

The ideal way to overcome this is either shoot in a substantially higher resolution or use a direct output from the iPad that will preserve pixel alignment.  I believe there is an HDMI mirroring option and you could then capture the HDMI feed with an HDMI capture card unless they are using HDCP on the HDMI output.


Is it possible to charge a panasonic HDC SD900 while filming?

Yes, you can.

I first asked the question on a youtube video reviewing the camera. And I got the folowing response:

  Yes, it works. You can do anything while charging.

Now, I have bought the camera and tried it myself, and I confirm that Yes, is it possible to charge a panasonic HDC SD900 while filming.


The best resources I've seen for learning how to edit are on YouTube. A lot depends on what NLE you'll be using to edit, but most editing fundamentals translate well across all NLEs (which is what I believe you're asking for anyway).

One popular YouTube channel with a ton of videos on how to edit is Film Riot. They have 700+ videos on all aspects of production, but a search for "edit" on their channel shows they have a ton to offer on that subject as well. They typically stay in Adobe Premiere Pro, but they generally strive to make their tutorials work across any editing software.

Surfaced Studio is another channel I've discovered recently with a nice playlist of some beginner-level Premiere Pro tutorials. Unlike Film Riot, Surfaced Studio seems to be pretty specific to Premiere Pro - usually, explaining how to work within the PP interface.


Is it possible to customise Krita’s FFMPEG render?

As per the code, you need to set the profile in Video Export Options to high and Krita will force the pixel format to yuv420p. There also appears to be a Custom Options field where you could fill -pix_fmt yuv420p but if the profile is incompatible (like high422), ffmpeg will bail out.


Color changes after video to single frame images back to video using ffmpeg

Solved the problem by setting colormatrix conversion using swscale lib. Added to my filter chain:

scale=in_color_matrix=bt601:out_color_matrix=bt709

and

-colorspace bt709

to the output.

References

ffmpeg scale filter
ffmpeg colormatrix filter
colorspace on ffmpeg wiki
question on video.stackexchange

Credits

Found the advice on VideoHelp forum reply from 2017, which in turn references the question on this video.stackexchange.  Thanks again, Gyan!


No, you cannot, and this is a good thing for privacy reasons.

Using the YouTube Data API v3 you can get general statistics for a list of videos as part of a contentDetails structure:

 "statistics": {
    "viewCount": unsigned long,
    "likeCount": unsigned long,
    "dislikeCount": unsigned long,
    "favoriteCount": unsigned long,
    "commentCount": unsigned long
  },


Remove frozen parts from a corrupted video

If your video has fixed frame rate, you probably mean by “frozen part” the part with the same frame repeated many times.

To remove duplicate frames you may apply the mpdecimate filter.


How to compromise between byte rate, resolution and fps

Since bandwidth is fixed, first step to maximize quality is to full use that bandwidth so bitrate should be set to that number.

Frame rate will make a modest difference, once a fixed bitrate is specified, since typically x264 places keyframes 250 frames apart and so all or most frames in a random second are delta frames, so leave that between 24 to 30.

For keeping a given quality, size increases, but not linearly, with resolution. So 1080p, with 2.25 times the no. of pixels as 720p, takes around, say, 1.5 to 1.8 times to keep the same quality. This choice depends entirely on the nature of content. For live-action material, 480p is good enough. Remember, till the advent of HD a decade ago, American television audiences had been watching 480i feeds for decades. For 2D animation, with sharp edges, 720p may be a better choice.


How to Stabilize Hyperlapse Footage Like GoPro Hypersmooth?

These use a combination of sensory input to counteract movement and crop the video so it resides inside of a larger one allowing it to move around and remove movement. It's a software based gimbal. I'm not sure if there is any plugins for AE or similar yet to achieve such effects. As most software is closed source that does this.


how to have a project on a different location that its library in FCPX

As far as I know FCPX is not excepting external USB to work on your project. It has to be an internal or external drive. You certainly can move the project to an USB when you finish or to transfer between computers.

I also would not recommend to have your media on an USB for performance reasons as well.


The TV still has to translate the color information and format, so there is, in effect, still some decoding on the TV.  The difference is that it is uncompressed.  The output from the device matches whatever the source captured, in whatever image format the source uses, but there is no loss of detail from applying compression.

Compressed requires vastly lower data rates and is easier to transfer to the TV, but the quality is substantially lower.  Uncompressed requires a high quality source and a very fast data connection, but also provides the highest possible quality as the signal is not compressed with lossy compression schemes.


What free software can I use to speed up my video?

A good option is Davinci Resolve.

It has a specific feature called Retime controls, where you put a couple of markers and select the speed of that particular segment.

90 Minutes is quite long, you probably want to make some proxy videos at smaller resolution and then render using the original clip.


how to trim and render multiple sequences in premiere

I would honestly probably just punch in the range settings for each of the renders separately in Adobe Media Encoder.  It's likely the easiest way to go about it.  It's not that long or hard of a process to punch in start and end times for 30 clips.

The only other remote possibility (I don't think it will work though) would be to see if you can make a preset for the times to be rendered.  You could then apply that preset, but I don't think that information can be stored in a preset. (I don't have Adobe Media Encoder in front of me at the moment.)


Would this camera light solve a lot of my indoor shooting problems?

This light fixture will not solve your problems.  As a painter, you surely understand the need to transfer paint to your canvas, so you choose the correct tool for the job.  It could be a brush, an airbrush, a palette knife, your fingers, or you might just pour it on straight out of the bucket.  So, too, must you learn to transfer light to your scene.

A light such as an ARRI 300W Fresnel is a scale model of the Ur-light for video.  This design pattern scales down to 150W and scales up to 24000W, though it is difficult to work with more than the 1000W model in a home and more often than not you need dedicated electricity to handle more than 2000W in a commercial environment.

The basic Fresnel has good "throw", meaning that it gets a meaningful amount of its light onto your subject in a scene.  Because a Fresnel can be focused, you can adjust it from a meaningful flood to a meaningful spot (much more meaningful than a 75W light bulb from Home Depot that lists itself as spot or flood).  The basic Fresnel is also a standard input to many lighting modifiers, such as a soft box, which means that in addition to creating "hard" light (distinct shadows) you can create "soft" light (soft shadows or almost no shadows).

Straight-on lighting such as the above device will make your video look a bit like what a photo looks like when you use a flash (if it even has enough light to do its job).  Which is not pretty.  To light an interview, it is best to use Three Point Lighting as a starting point, and then creatively change from there.  You can sometimes ditch the rim light.  You can sometimes get away without fill.  You can sometimes get away without key (especially if you are interviewing a criminal who does not want their face shown on video).  But Three Point Lighting is the starting point.

Of course you can get fresnel lamps with other lighting elements than tungsten: LED, HMI, Plasma, etc.  But these are all more expensive than "hot lights".

For your living room, 300W may be Just The Thing, or you may need to step up (650W) or down (150W) a level.  But be advised that the way luminosity of LED panel lights is measured, it is much more about the source light level, not the level of light that actually reaches the subject 8' into the room.

Also, if you are getting blown-out highlights, it means your contrast levels (lighting ratios) are wrong.  Again, Three Point Lighting is the ticket for balancing highlights and shadows, and with a little practice you can dial in 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 ratios between key and fill, avoiding the typical 10:1 or more ratios you get with only a single key light.


how to put background or solid block of color on a video

I've not used Window Movie Maker, so I don't know it's abilities. However, the area where the text shows up is called a "lower third" because it's in the lower 3rd of the screen. If Movie Maker has the ability to add titles, it might have some named something like "Lower 3rd".

If it doesn't have such a title option already, you can easily create something like the one shown in the video above. Simply make an image in your favorite image editor that has the color bar you want in the lower 3rd area, and is transparent everywhere else. You'll need to save it with transparency, so a format like .png or .tif is best. Formats like .jpg don't save transparency.

Once you have the color bar with transparency around it, you can layer it over your video. (I assume Movie Maker has some way to layer video?) Then put your text over the color bar. Or, if you don't have that ability, you can bake the text into it in your image editing app.


Should I do color grading in FCPX or round trip do DaVinci Resolve?

Use Resolve, it is far superior to FCPX for grading.

This is my workflow, since I always shoot in RAW with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.  I know there are ways to do this using XML, but I've run into issues with that when I segment a larger clip in FCPX and then bring it back to resolve it will then have each of those clips as individuals, instead of the one larger clip.

Import the RAW DNG files to Resolve
Add all clips to my timeline (their order doesn't matter)
Apply a Blackmagic film to rec709 LUT and perform some basic grades
Export as individual clips. The format and codec you use are up to you, but for editing I use 422 proxy

Ensure that you export your clips using the source filename and save to a folder titled something like "Edit Media" or whatever you'd like

Import those clips from the "Edit Media" folder into FCPX and perform your edits.  Once you're satisfied with your edits,  go back into Resolve and perform the final color grades of the clips you wound up actually using in your video.  Render them at a higher quality (how high is up to you) and overwrite the clips in "Edit Media"
Open the project again in FCPX and render your video.  The clips should automatically be overwritten with the new ones you just exported from Resolve, as long as you keep using Source Filenames