Fixing audio/video out of sync when editing recorded broadcast

My DVB-T recordings always have this issue. Try MC-TVConverter2!

It is a (old but still reliable) graphical interface for several video tools. Try converting your original ts recording(s) using the MPEG2 HQ setting - I've found this option to be more of a repair than a re-encode, as the conversion is quick and the resultant file size is very close to the original recording.

There are numerous other conversion options, but the MPEG4 one takes a long time to re-encode, even with MPEG4 based ts files. It also has ad detection but I haven't tried it.

You're unable to use an ntfs formatted drive for recording?

Report back on how you go!

http://mctvconverter.vivolum.net/


At the very least, you are limited by the speed of the video decoder. But ffplay does seem to have some barrier to speed increase.

For now, a workaround is to pipe from ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i in -an -vf setpts=PTS/60 -f yuv4mpegpipe - | ffplay -


How make full width video screen of video

You are referring to resizing the video.If you are using Windows platform you can use Windows movie maker to do it.Add your media file and switch to Project Tab you can set the ratio. only the two mentioned are available.
Wide Screen(16:9) & Standard(4:3)

If you are looking for a fully customizable Space,the free program recommended program is Handbrake
.Download it,install and run the program.

Choose the particular video clicking on the source button and navigate to it.
Next choose the destination for the output
Click on the picture tab and choose None from the Anamorphic dropdown list
Then adjust your height and width (Make sure you untick "keep aspect Ratio")
Finally click Start then you will see the adjusted video in the folder you chose for the destination output.

Check the image:

You can reduce the resolution too(Reducing resolution) with this tool.

Thats it, Enjoy:)


What happens when you use a specific CRF value on a already encoded x264 video?

When decoding a file, the decoder attempts to recreate the source material with the information provided in the file. But it can not be a 100 percent accurate representation, so the decoder creates new pixels that are estimates of what was included in the source

When you encode for the second time with CRF 17, the encoder does not know these new pixels were generated by the decoder and were not necessarily faithful to the original material. But the encoder still does its job, and attempts to encode these new values accurately.

So it spends bits encoding pixels that were thrown away and recreated by the first encode, making the file larger.


FFmpeg - how to adjust video (clip) duration to sound duration if sound is longer, possible without re-encoding it with mp3 file?

You can hack this using mp4fpsmod (direct link to Win binary; C++ source at https://github.com/nu774/mp4fpsmod).

First step is to extract the timestamps of the existing video

mp4fpsmod -p vid_tc.txt vid.mp4

This will produce a text file like this

# timecode format v2
0
40
80
120
...
4880
4920
4960

Each line contains the timestamp of frame #N in milliseconds.

In this example, each frame is 40 milliseconds long and the last frame is shown at 4960 ms and hence the video stream is 5 seconds long.

Now suppose your audio is 11.34 seconds == 11340 ms long. Edit the last timecode to something just under 11340, like 11320.

# timecode format v2
0
40
80
120
...
4880
4920
11320

and then run

mp4fpsmod -x -T keep -t vid_tc.txt -o vid_new.mp4 vid.mp4

This will create a new file vid_new.mp4, which you can upload. The duration shown in desktop players or tools can be wrong, but playback should be as desired, except that the last frame is shown along with the end of the audio. This skips re-encoding and is quick. You can add -i and skip -o vid_new.mp4 if you want to edit the timecode in-place in existing file i.e.

mp4fpsmod -x -T keep -t vid_tc.txt -i vid.mp4

but I don't recommend it.


Parenting a null causes unexpected results

I think the problem there is that the expression is using the position value for the null. As you know when you parent a layer to another layer its position becomes relative to its parent. So if for example you have a null at [960,540] and you parent it to a layer whose position is also [960,540] the null's position now becomes [0,0]. This means that any expressions that use that value now are seeing [0,0] instead of [960,540].

So you need to feed the null's absolute position in world space to the expression. This is where the mysterious Layer Space Transform functions come into play.

Change the parts of the expression that have the null's position from

CellTower=thisComp.layer("startpoint").transform.position;

to

startPoint = thisComp.layer("startpoint");
//use a variable just to make the next line easier to understand
CellTower=startPoint.toWorld(startPoint.anchorPoint);

What that is doing is translating a point as seen from the relative coordinates of the layer startPoint to the world coordinates of the comp. The point that we're giving it to translate is startPoint's anchor point.


What's the best setup to transfer a digital or analog video over 100 ft?

A long VGA cable with a proper amp/spliter on the TX side, would be the simplest option. You can get good VGA cables up to 150' at modest prices from http://www.pccables.com .

Another good option is a CAT5 extender kit.
http://milestek.com/p-16209-vga-over-cat5ecat6-decora-wall-plate-set.aspx

Without a more detailed description of what you are trying to accomplish, it's hard to give a better answer than that.


Their main software tools are Pro Tools for audio and Final Cut Pro for video editing, on MacBook Pro.  Here's Jack's list of gear:  http://jackconte.tumblr.com/Gear

Jack and Nataly gave a tutorial on making videosongs at CELLspace in San Francisco for the Disposable Film Festival a few months ago.  Unfortunately only the song performances afterward have been posted to Youtube so far.  Perhaps if you contact DFF you can track down someone with video of the tutorial and Q&A session.

Perhaps another tool will be able to meet your requirements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_editing_software


How to translate face tracking offset values into a 3D null position

You can access the position of a point in a mask with expressions (in AE CC 2017+) with expressions. To access the first point of a mask called "Mask 1" on layer called "my Layer" you'd use

pts = thisComp.layer("my Layer").mask("Mask 1").maskPath.points();
pts[0]

note that the points are numbered from 0, so the second point is pts[1], etc.

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you';re trying to do, have you tried doing a standard motion track using the inbuilt motion tracker or Mocha?


Slowing down video vs higher framerate recording

By shooting at higher frame rate, you can achieve great looking and frame accurate slow motion. Interpolation is not going to happen. But if you want to slow down your footage beyond the frames you have, you can use the right tools in your video editor, or Twixtor plugin, but of course it will not give you as good results as a dedicated high speed camera. Absent frames are digitally interpolated. There are some more affordable Twixtor alternatives, such as Respeeder. These tools will give your video a smooth, high-frame rate look.


Your initial assumption about damage risk is a little too general.

I have taken thousands of photos, and a lot of video, having the sun within the sensor's image. No damage, and for good reason. There could have been under some conditions, so don't take that as a fully general statement. I'll explain below.

I have also driven thousands of miles with a (smart phone) digital camera sensor aimed directly at the sun (not actively taking a picture yet still aimed there!) No damage. The whole phone got hot and I had to aim car A/C at it, but that's a different issue :)

So what's going on? First, when IS it a problem?

The primary risk is to the human eye. You don't want to keep your eye looking at an optical viewfinder for long, with the sun in place.

The big photography risk is with a long telephoto lens. Use a 500mm to take a stitchable series for 360VR, and you'll be in trouble when it aims at the sun. Even 200mm requires care (I've done this.) But a normal 360VR setup? Nope.

What's the difference? Two:

First, our eyes, especially combined with big optical telephoto lenses, are analog and continuous: the sun's heat, focused to a spot on the retina, definitely causes damage very soon. Magnify that with a telescope or 500mm lens, and you've got tremendous heat. A DSLR only opens its shutter for brief moments under normal conditions. I'll discuss digicams/smartphones next.

Second, consider the light gathered and focused on the sensor.

In the case of a DSLR with a wide angle lens, it's not a big deal. The sun is only a tiny portion of the view. Very little heat gathered.

In the case of a non-SLR digicam, smart phone or 360VR, the lens surface is not that much larger than the sensor, and again the sun isn't the only thing in view. Hence, much less heat.

So, the sun IS a problem when a significant amount of its heat is gathered and focused on a point. True with our eyes, true with telephoto lenses. Not true with wide angle let alone 360VR. Not true with small lenses matched to small sensors (phones.)

Hope that helps!


This effect occurs if the cell is screened as bitmap. It should be able to avoid it if you activate 3D Rasterization. Click the "3D" checkbox in the Replicator Controls.


Converting MTS for best use in After Effects?

Use ClipWrap to convert the MTS file into a Quicktime Movie file (e.g. ProRes 422 codec).  There's a free version and a paid version - both will do what you need:
http://www.divergentmedia.com/clipwrap

Handbrake will also do this, I believe:
http://allmybrain.com/2010/01/05/handbrake-can-convert-mts-files-for-mac/


Are the properties (bitrate, fps) of my h.264 video OK for the web?

Sure - it seems ok. However, it is also a good idea to offer other types of video for browsers that do not support mp4 / h264. The usual best practice involves supplying mp4, webm and ogg as containers. This site is a good reference.

A back of the napkin calculation:

1000 viewers / month @ 7.4 MB = 7.4 GB / Month.

Which is probably within the acceptable range for a generic server, just make sure the traffic allowed by your server provider can deal with it...

Assuming your server has a gigabit uplink (which is generally a bit more expensive), you could "theoretically" serve this video to 5000 users concurrently, however this won't work with normal apache servers - and it is probably a good idea to host the media files at amazon AWS (or whatever) if you are expecting that kind of traffic.


Export - exported video but didn't look like the preview within Adobe Premiere

First of all, if you are using proxies, don't use Proxies, and see if that solves the issue.
If it doesn't, move on to the next step below.

The issue is that there can sometimes be a problem when the final export doesn't match the sequence created by dragging the source clips onto the timeline.

When creating the Sequence, instead of dragging clips onto the Timeline directly, create a new Sequence in the Project bin while at the Assembly page (by clicking on File option in the menu bar, New > Sequence, click on the Settings tab in the following dialog box, then change the Editing Mode dropdown to Custom, whic lets you edit all the settings), that has the exact resolution and FPS settings as you want in the export. Then double click this new Sequence to load it onto the timeline. Drag the clip onto the timeline and when Premiere asks if you want to change the Sequence settings to match the clip, select No. Now transform the clip from the Edit tab. Rotate and zoom or crop, whatever your operation is. This should hopefully solve the problem.


How to make Sony Vegas Pro 13 work on a 4K display

There's apparently a hack which alters the Vegas executable to solve this problem. There's a setting of dpiAware in the application manifest which falsely tells Windows that Vegas is DPI aware and will scale up text and icons on a HiDPI display. Vegas does not do this. So, the value should be changed from true to false.

The hack tutorial alongwith link to required tool is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvr0c5VHGIM

I haven't needed to do this so I can't vouch for the method but it appears to work.


Transfer Avid project from one machine to another

Your best bet for transferring any type of media file will be to zip it along with any session files/data first to preserve the file types. Once you zip your files you can use any external hard drive to make the transfer from one machine to another.


iOS - App To Change Aspect Ratio of a Video

Videon

It's a great app for the iPhone.

Not only does it have some great camera features; like stabilization, and manual exposure/WB, but you can also use it's post feature on any clip in your Photos folder.

You can crop, change aspect ratio, framerate, adjust rotation, pretty much anything... along with a ton of filters; color correcting tools and so on.

Very easy to use. And real time playback of your file as you correct it.

When finished, you can output your file by exporting it to a variety of bitrates and sizes.

A must have!


Record raw video with ffmpeg keeping the full color range

In this case, the problem didn't come from ffmpeg/avconv.

The rawvideo source I use offers different color formats to be used:

argb32
rgb24
bgr24
yuv444
yuv420
[...]

When I extract a png file (which was fine), the bgr24 color format is used.
When I capture a video, avconv automatically chose one of the yuv formats.
I guess the clamping to (16..235) did happen in the driver itself, that's why I couldn't influence it.

By giving the parameter -input_format bgr24 to the input device, I chose the unclamped value range and the capturing worked fine.

Final command line, with yuv420p as target format which produces even a Windows Media Player complatible output:

avconv -f video4linux2 -input_format bgr24 -i /dev/video0 -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -color_range 2 -crf 14 -t 120 -y out.mp4


Image blocks anything that's underneath it to be shown

I've had Resolve behave unpredictably when using PNGs as watermarks.  Does the same thing happen if you turn it into a JPG with the same resolution as your project?


Recording and playing video with variable frame rate

Are you sure the files your recorded have indeed a variable framerate? It sounds like you recorded with a constant framerate (even though you get a variable frame rate video feed) which introduced this "artifact" and the players then of course play it back with a constant frame rate even though they shouldn't.

To properly convert variable frame rate footage into constant frame rate footage you can reside to Handbrake. It's an easy to use tool for h264 encoding that lets you choose to convert your video to a constant frame rate.


I am sorry that I do not have an exact answer to the question on the title.
But here is the core of the question

I'm looking more for general principles and ideas.

So here are my two cents:
1. Focal length and aperture
Yes, I know. I started with something is not controlled by color grading, but it needs to be said.
2. Color correction
This is the first step, define what was the white balance and exposure and make them coherent.
On programs like Resolve, one node should be for temperature correction and another for exposure.
2.1. Shadows
Here is probably the first manipulation we need to make, Do we have a correct exposure of the shadows? Do we need to actually change a curve to show detail?
This is, for now, more than a creative manipulation but about Information. Does the shadowy part of the face of an actor need to be viewed clearly? Does he have a scar that does not show good enough and needs to be brightened?
3. Dynamic range, overall contrast
We are limited by the capabilities of the camera, but we can work around this, using illumination techniques, both positive and negative illumination.
Positive illumination is where you add light on dark zones where you have little light. One case is where you have a sunset behind the subject and you add a reflector to reduce the contrast.
Negative illumination is reducing the light of the bright part, either controlled by a filter or by shutter speed or something.
But when referring to color grading this element is more noticeable on one particular characteristic: Contrast.
So, you can play with the contrast. Sometimes reducing the blackness makes the image a bit more "filmish" or with a film substrate.
It is funny that you mentioned "Still Photography" because I will reference a post I made on that forum, no spam intended :o) https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/110840/whats-the-biggest-difference-between-these-two-photos-of-large-animals/110884#110884
See how reducing the contrast, by graying the black point, make the image look with a higher dynamic range... This is funny because it is the opposite.
4. Middle tones
You probably want to maintain the middle tones accurate to the color corrections you made in the first place. But this rule can be broken of course. See point 7.
Play with the saturation.
5. Color on the shadows
So we actually need to start creative somewhere. A typical teal and orange look starts here, change the temperature of the shadows. Normally a shadow is a bit cooler than the highlights.
6. Now the light
Change the temperature on the highlights, blow them on a desert scenario, gray them and cool them on a moody swamp.
7. Middle tones again
To change the overall mood, you know the typical matrix example with green tones overall...
8. Forget everything
I or somebody say and play.
9. A side note about "cliches"
Especially for region-based, or country-based color recipes, this is a country that has some deserts... Oh, All the countries should be painted orange!
The US has some pretty big deserts, and you should not grade all movies orange.
The UK, London has some foggy days, not every scene should be desaturated... (or should they? Lol, sorry... I could not resist)
Some red alert scenario... Dam, we need the best light to work on a red alert scenario, not a red light!
Sometimes the cliche is annoying if overdone. Forget cliches, or use them, it is your call.


Problem with video playback of AVI (Xvid) on Sony BDP-S186 [solved]

I changed the file system on the USB stick from FAT32 to NTFS. The video playback works now.


Merging two videos with hstack and play them back sequentially

The h/vstack filters are designed to pair frames so they will hold the first frame of an input if the other input isn't active. Use the tpad filter to add blank frames for the required duration.

ffmpeg -i left.mp4 -i right.mp4 -filter_complex [0:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[l]; [1:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS,tpad=start_duration=14:start_mode=add:color=black[r]; [l][r]hstack=inputs=2[stacked]; [0:a][1:a]amix=inputs=2[a] -map [stacked] -map [a] -c:a aac -preset superfast result.mp4

If you don't have the tpad filter available, a slightly longer approach is to use the drawbox filter with ffmpeg 4.0+.

ffmpeg -i left.mp4 -i right.mp4 -filter_complex [0:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[l]; [1:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS,split[rb][rv];[rb]trim=0:14,drawbox=t=fill:c=black[rb];[rb][rv]concat=n=2:v=1:a0[r]; [l][r]hstack=inputs=2[stacked]; [0:a][1:a]amix=inputs=2[a] -map [stacked] -map [a] -c:a aac -preset superfast result.mp4


Batch-importing images in sync with audio/markers

You are going along the right track, but the first step is not necessary.  You want to use the "automate to sequence" functionality, found under the Project menu, to set the images to the markers.  There are a variety of orders that you can have it insert the images in and you may need to do some adjustments to how you bring in the images to make them go in the correct order, but it will handle setting the start and end points at the markers and can even automate transitions if you so desire.


What does it mean to "check a waveform monitor to make sure that my highlights weren't clipping too much"?

A waveform monitor is used for video rather than still images. A modern WM has has many functions, but the one he is referring to is the equivalent of the ability to detect peak signal levels using a still image histogram. Wikipedia - Waveform Monitor

In a single still image you either have never exceeded maximum level (no pixels at max value) or you have in a variable number of cases. While the usual aim is to have no pixels which are "clipping" you can have a small number do so across the while image with limited loss of quality. Too many in one area and you get obvious flat spots.

In a video signal typically 24 frames a second are viewed and the occasional frame with a small percentage of "maxed out" pixels may be aesthetically acceptable (depending on how purist you are). Hence he says "weren't clipping too much" raher than "weren't clipping". ie he wanted to ensure that the signal had not pushed further into highlight clipping than was deemed acceptable.

FWIW- gross highlight clipping is sometimes acceptable or even designed in as part of the intended image in still and in video photography. A favourite example of mine in "video" is in "The Lord of the Rings" scene in Meduseld, "Hall of the kings of Rohan" in the village of Edoras. The hall is very rak and light strems in from a large open doorway. The camera points, as it never normally would, into the light and exposure is for the characters with the light behind them. As the characters cross to and fro the area behind them washes out completely and to a variable extent as the light streams across the floor. The cameraman knew exactly what he was doing - but a waveform monitor would have done him no good at all - by all normal standards the image was junk.


Understanding Video Formats and Attributes for use in FCP7

The codec question is the easier one: use ProRes.  It preserves quality very well and FCP likes to edit it.

As for what frame rates, image dimensions, etc. the general approach should be to go to the highest resolution of any of the originals so you aren't discarding any data.  So, upconvert to 50 fps rather than downconvert to 24 fps.  Similarly for image dimensions, conform to 1080p rather than 720p.

But I might moderate the advice above depending on what output format you are targeting.  An alternative strategy is to conform everything to a format that more closely matches the output characteristics.


Process for crafting disparate travel footage

If this was me, I would log all the tapes with notes and do a rough outline  (on paper) as to what I would like to have.

I would then go and do a rough cut (very rough tbh), putting all the content I want in a order that makes a bit of sense. you can then see how long it is, if its to long you know you can cut it down, if its to short then you might have to rethink your idea or find more footage to use.

I would choose some music (if you are going to have some) for background, montages etc then do another cut to the music getting closer to your final time limit-ish

Sit back give it a week or so go back watch it through and see if you like the way it is being told but have a open mind while doing this.

Do another refined edit of things you didnt like when you watched it back, move things around, change up the flow etc etc.

Watch again and keep doing the last step till your happy with output and story, making sure it wont bore someone watching or confuse them.

get a focus group (Friends, family) to watch it and let them be critical about it to see if they like, understand etc get there feedback and do a final cut.

Final stages are getting the sound levels and colours looking good then let people watch it

OR

get a editor who knows how to tell a good story and ask them if they will help you edit the footage down or get their help in the last stages to refine it all.

There is a good course called Inside the Edit https://insidetheedit.com/ it is a little pricey but it will give you what you want I think, If I have the money I would do it but I just go with my feelings and the above


What happens to frames when you speed up a video clip?

In the simplest case, half the frames -- every second frame, or all the even (or odd) numbered original frames -- are just gone, discarded. The frame rate of the resulting video does not change, it's still 60 fps.

It's possible to create a video where each new frame is a blend of two original frames but this is unusual and often not effective. Or in a field-based system where each original frame is composed of two distinct half vertical resolution images, you can discard half the fields instead of half the frames. But still, the result will be 60 fps.

If you were working in a 60 fps environment and imported a 30 fps clip, you could effectively double the frame rate of the original clip, but that isn't what you asked about.


Changing duration of multiple still frames at once (stopmotion animation)

You can use Edit > Delete Gaps

This will remove all gaps on all tracks. To exclude a particular track, you can lock the track before you Delete Gaps.

You can also change the default Image/Still duration before the import in the application Preferences > User  > General > Standard still duration setting


Make video from .png files in Hitfilm Express

You can import the folder as an image sequence. To do so, click on the small arrow next to import and choose import as image sequence. Then choose the folder that contains your frames and click ok. You might have to adjust the framerate to match your project in the media settings.


Lowering preview resolution for better on-the-fly timeline rendering in Davinci Resolve

I believe Proxy Mode is what you are looking for. You can find it in the Playback Menu.

Playback > Proxy Mode >


Adobe premiere cc 2017: Archive (clip) After rendering, gets too long, why?

First thing, when you want to export it your desired format(for example : H.264 format,H.264 is also known as MPEG-4 AVC. Developed for use in high definition systems such as HDTV, Blu-ray and for low resolution devices) you have to customize the export settings.

The two factors which determine file size are program duration and bitrate.  The longer your program is, the larger the file will be.

But the bitrate is, Choosing Uncompressed will have the highest bitrate possible.  Choosing an MPEG variant (MPEG1, 2 or H.264) will allow you to lower the bitrate (and hence create a smaller file) while still achieving acceptable quality.

Under the export settings you are getting the Preset.You can select a preset the way you want it.But keep in mind choosing the correct Preset with the FPS(Frames per Second).Choosing a lower FPS would reduce the quality of the video.

In this issue it's recommended to use the resolution of the Original video(which is 720p) in the preset.You can change the FPS and check for the quality.Here is how you check the FPS of a video in Premiere Pro.

Choose the exact resolution if you want to get the same file size Under the video tab in the export window.Change the level (which constrains encoding parameters bitrate range and FPS)and you can get the actual file size by changing it.You will see the estimated file size below. This is not recommended as it reduces the quality.

You can customize the export settings same as the original and you will get the file size you mentioned which is 27MB.That's how you got 27MB for the file size.

Note: Codecs do the magic!.


software for frame images to video with changing framerate?

This is a really late response but I just stumbled onto the question.

The software you're looking for is Adobe After Effects.

Inside After Effects, you'll end up using the effect called "Time Remapping".

Open After Effects
Import all your frames as an image sequence
Create a composition(whatever resolution/framerate you'd like)
Drag your image sequence into the comp(or timeline)
In the effects panel, find the time remapping effect and drag it onto your image sequence
Go to the effects tab and it should show you the time remapping effect.  Add a keyframe using the stopwatch
Add as many keyframes as you need and adjust them to the speed you want depending on where you're at in the video
When you're ready to move to the "graph view" select the "graph editor" button

If you're having trouble just google "Time Remapping in after effects" and "Graph Editor view in After Effects" and you should find what you're looking for.


Using gopro hero 3 white/black with 3d- anything to watch out for?

Ensure that you purchase the 3D kit for the current generation of GoPro Black Edition.  There was a 3D kit for the older GoPro HD (and they have a terrible set of similar names for all their products).  I take it you are thinking of the Hero3 Black, Hero3 Silver or Hero3 White and not the Hero3+ Black or Silver?  These are different products and it looks like the (more recent) Dual Hero System is designed for the Hero3+ products and not the Hero3 ones.  You should be careful not to purchase the older 3D Hero System, which works with the HD HERO2 & the Original HD HERO, but not the newer cameras.

I have only read reviews on using the older 3D system.  They mostly concluded that the 3D software was good and produced reasonable results in a reliable way.  It was observed that the cameras seem to start with a small offset (1 frame I think) and the reviewer summarised that the software might be designed to deal with this difference.  If you choose not to use the bundled software, you might want to check the timing of the two video sources carefully as you might need to take steps to synch them.


Grading Colour To Black And White In Davinci Resolve

There is actually a specific option for this in Resolve.

In your primaries pane (bottom left of the color tab) navigate to the "rgb mixer" tab.
In the top right of the tab, click the options menu (3 dots)
Check the 'make monochrome' command.

Now you'll see 6 from the 9 rgb mixer bars turn gray and you'll be able to use the other 3 to mix you black and white the way you want to.

Good luck!


One that comes to mind is Presonus Studio One vr3 It is about $50 and is a full featured digital audio workstation. There is also sonar, protools and ableton live but I believe they are all quite a bit more expensive.

Good luck!


supply video files to editor in another country

Fedex has the highest bandwidth around... Mailing laptop hard drives, SSDs or USB sticks is probably your best bet and may well be cheaper than upgrading your Internet upload capabilities.

Alternately, if you need a way to handle it over the Internet, I'd actually recommend getting a virtual private server.  You might be able to find a file sharing service that will fit your needs, but often for larger files, it may actually be cheaper to run your own server.  Running your own server also allows for uploading in chunks.

When I need to transfer multiple gigabytes of data over my Internet connection, I use Total Commander (my file manager of choice) to split the large files in to multiple pieces (normally around 100MB each) and then upload them via FTP to my server.  Once they are up there, I re-combine the files in to their original form and run an MD5 verification of the file integrity.  Then, it is easy for someone to quickly download the files.

I've used this for transferring 10 to 20GB of files at a time to people and it took a number of hours to upload even over my 5mbps Internet connection, but if you give it enough time, it is a viable option at lower speed connections as well (as long as your ISP doesn't cap you).  You might want to use smaller file sizes though as my experience is that slower connections are more likely to corrupt a file and smaller file splits means less needs to be uploaded again if there is a failure.


Decrease FPS of too-high FPS video or increase FPS of too-low FPS video?

I think the answer depends upon what frame rate you want to deliver your video at.

In general it is better to shoot at the delivery frame rate.

I agree they probably won't go far out of sync if the clips are only short (a minute or so).

If you do need to adjust them, I would frame rate adjust whichever clip is going to be on screen for less time in the edit (or is less important to you).


This really depends on your budget.

Low Budget:
Find a room which allready looks futuristic with a lot of tech or stuff that looks like buttons and displays. Like in your image, you could make a little bole eye windows with some salad dish, put a screen behind which plays space stuff.

High budget:
Build a little wood cage, also add a little window which shows space and adds natural light.
Then go to home depo and just buy a lot of diffrent knobs and buttons.


ffmpeg - Slow down video and loop/repeat audio

since there is no loop option on the mapped stream; therefore you need 2 steps

ffmpeg -y -stream_loop 2 -i https://www.learningcontainer.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/sample-mp4-file.mp4 output.wav
ffmpeg -y -i output.wav -i https://www.learningcontainer.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/sample-mp4-file.mp4 -filter:v "setpts=1.3*PTS" -shortest output.mp4

Note: stream_loop number is the ceiling of factor


fix a few videos with bad white balance?

I have used virtualdub with avisynth ColorYUV(autowhite=true)

it seem to have done an "ok" job


How do I get good at animation even though I'm not good at drawing and digital art?

Hard work. One does not become a god in animation overnight.

Learn to master Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects. That's virtually all you need for professional animation. Or go and look for programs that fit your workflow best and stick with them. Don't try to be "moderate" at every program, master your few.

There are great books and masterclasses and guides on sites such as pluralsight. Create something, realize it sucks, do it again, improve. That's the natural way all of us had to learn design, animation, compositing etc.


Adobe Software: Make low quality videos out of folder with videos

This feature is supported through Adobe Media Encoder (AME) which is basically the background rendering engine for a number of the cloud apps including Premiere and AE.

You need to set up watch folders. So long as AME is running, (I also believe you can have AME run as a background service now - but you may want to double check that) - and you have your preferences in AME correctly set up, any files placed into a watch folder will be processed based on attributes you specify - per watch folder. So you can have a folder where any files that you download or place there will be automatically trans-coded into XYZ format, only when system is idle, etc, then original file should be kept, or moved, or renamed.

AME also allows you to do a number of post processing on the files automatically, such as watermarking, basic image enhancements, etc.

Essentially you specify a watch this folder, then create a template to bake the files placed there.

Documentation for this is online at Adobe and countless tutorial videos exist on YouTube detailing basic and advanced setup solutions.


How is each type of video camera stabilizer different?

There are a very wide and diverse range of different techniques for stabilization.

At the most basic, you have pure software stabilization.  This uses no specialized hardware, but rather tracks objects within a scene and then clips the video such that it maintains a frame which it can keep more stable.  This has an apparent impact of subjects moving less, but often produces an awkward feeling wavy effect as motion blur is still present in the source footage and occurs while the subject doesn't visibly appear to be moving.  It can also be used in support of other physical techniques.  It can handle minor corrections, but isn't advisable for large scale correction if it can be avoided.  This can be applied either in post or directly during capture on the camera (electronic image stabilization.)

At the next level, we move up to optical image stabilization systems.  There are two main techniques here.  The first utilizes a motion correction element in the lens along with small gyroscopes in the lens to keep the orientation of the corrective element relatively static.  This results in a correction for shake in the lens' orientation, but doesn't correct for lateral movement.  A similar system can be accomplished in camera by moving the sensor itself to correct for movement of the camera.  Gyroscopes feed the data on how to move the sensor.

Moving past that, the next big step up is a hand held gimbal stabilizer.  Gimbal stablizers work using inertia to offset movement rather than gyroscopic forces.  A typical handheld gimbal stabilizer consists of a rod with a free floating gimbal about 1/3 of the way along the length.  The camera is mounted on the top and a series of balancing weights are added to the bottom.  The inertia of the combined and properly balanced system results in orientation changes being absorbed at the gimbal as the inertia keeps the camera rig pointed in the same direction.  These provide far better stabilization for orientation and also provide a fair bit of stabilization for lateral movements, however they are considerably more expensive and more difficult to use well than an optical image stabilization system is.  It can also still be used with the previous mechanisms.

The next step up from this is a steadicam like rig.  Steadicam utilizes a gimbal stabilizer, however, rather than hand hold the gimbal, it is mounted on a spring arm attached to the operator's chest.  The spring arm allows for much better weight support as well as better absorption of lateral movement, thus it is able to deal with situations such as an operator running while operating the camera.

The final upgrade is to move back in to active systems again.  The inertial systems are all passive and thus don't require independent power (the OIS systems are active, but the inertial ones are passive.)  By adding high powered gyroscopes to an inertial system, additional stabilization can be achieved by providing active counter-action to changes in orientation.  The upside is that these hybrids provide the absolute best possible stabilization, but the downside is they are generally heavy, expensive (thousands to tens of thousands of dollars), power hungry and complex.


ffmpeg fade in from center (with scale image)

Use

ffmpeg -i file.mp4 -i image.jpg -filter_complex "[1:v]pad=iw*2:ih*2:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2:c=black@0,zoompan='1+on/125':x='(iw-iw/zoom)/2':y='(ih-ih/zoom)/2':d=125:s=WxH,format=gbrap,fade=t=in:d=5:alpha=true:st=0[im];[0:v][im] overlay=x=10:y=10:enable='between(t,0,5)'" out.mp4

The image is padded to double width and height with the padding colour being transparent black. Then zoompan is used to zoom in over 125 frames (5 seconds). This result is overlaid on the video.

You have to replace W and H in the zoompan filter with the dimensions of your image.


After Effects distance between two points

Hate to spoil all your good work, but it's a lot easier to use the built-in length() function:

length(pointa, pointb)

e.g.

length(thisComp.layer(1).position, thisComp.layer(2).position)

or

length([682, 617], [310, 342]); //raw vector values as an array
length(thisComp.layer("foo").anchorPoint, [310, 342]); //a spatial property and an array
length([123,456,789], [10,9,8]); //works in 3D too.

It's in vector math in the expressions drop-down panel.


Working on multi-camera edits using proxy files in Premiere

If you globally turn on/off proxies in the preferences does that work?

Because premiere sometimes drops resolution while playing, it can be hard to see whether a proxy is enabled or not. You can test it by rendering a proxy with a watermark and seeing if it goes away when you turn off proxies.


Is there a process faster than masking frame by frame for cutting an animated character from a background?

You can also checkout some of the various keying techniques. I've been able to color key things pretty well in After Effects or Nuke - for After Effects you can either use "Change to Color" to create a matte or "Linear Color Key". Either way you're going to need to split up the video into a bunch of layers - each one keying in (or out) a specific color. The end result you're going for is a black-and-white matte which you can use to cut out the footage. Often times it requires a combination of all kinds of techniques - keying some colors, luminance based keying (which can be done with "extract" in After Effects), luminance based keying on specific channels (also "extract") and a bit of hand-made roto.

If you need a more in depth explanation let me know.


Unable to get T3i to shoot video in manual mode

Ok, I figured it out. It's a bit quirky little trick.

You do not turn the dial to M but turn it to the little picture that shows the video camera.

Now, though you'll be able to set the shutter speed and aperture, you won't be able to change the ISO.

To be able to change the ISO, click the Menu button to the top-left of the LCD screen, then from the menu, select Manual as the value for the Movie Exposure setting.

Now, you can change the ISO as well.

I figured it out by looking here and here.


FFmpeg: What is an acceptable value for the q= parameter?

Your rate control mode is CRF, so there's no target bitrate to hit. And for a value of 23, QP of 29 is what I normally see used. Ultimately, the test is whether the video looks acceptable.


Because software stabilization methods cannot compensate for the shifting parallax of a shaking lens, they will always produce less than ideal results.  In my experience, FCPX's stabilization is just as good as other software packages (I have experience with Shake and After Effects as well), and they all basically work the same way.

This is probably not the answer you want to hear, but the best way to stabilize footage is to shoot stable footage in the first place.  Software stabilization is really just analogous to fine grit sandpaper; It's a good final step to add polish, but you'd never use it from the start.

Physically steadying a camera can be expensive, but that's why audiences have learned to appreciate stable shots -- they associate stability with quality.  But of course you know this, or you wouldn't be asking.

But there are good, reasonably priced ways to physically steady a camera.  Where I work, we have dollys, sliders, shoulder mounts, tripods, brushless motor gimbals, camera cranes, clamps, arms, and pretty much you name it.  But in my experience, the most versatile, portable, practical, and cheap piece of kit that we routinely use is a monopod.  It doesn't allow for all of the fancy movements of the other stuff, but nice ones will at least let you do a fluid pan.

Sorry this doesn't help with footage you've already shot, but I hope it helps with future projects.


how accurate frequency does a PC speaker produce

The classic PC Speaker is a very simple system that was designed to be inexpensive and use off-the-shelf parts of the early 1980s.

The core problem is that the PC speaker system consists of a cheap speaker, a timer, and digital pulses. Using this system, you can get quite a lot of interesting sounds out that weren't originally intended. But you are limited to square waves and the harmonic content that comes with them.

  I don't think there is any spec I can read about frequency response.

The best you can find is specs for the timer and then run experiments with the actual hardware. The early IBM PCs had discrete timers, but at some point that functionality got rolled into the VLSI chipsets that PC makers used to build motherboards.

If you have an actual audio chip built into the motherboard (fairly common, these days, much less common even in the late 1990s), then it is likely that the PC speaker functionality is emulated there. So the behavior will be different from the original hardware.

Your integrated sound card should produce the most accurate sound. But at the upper end of the sound range, you may be limited by the physical capabilities of your laptop speakers. If you drive the speaker faster than it can move, then you won't get the sound you expect.


How to record screen with zoom in high quality?

You have 3 options:

find a software that supports recording with a zoom-in
on Windows there is the screen magifier (I hope there is something similar on Mac?) which can be used to magnify the relevant screen part
you record the video normally and then edit in post

If you go for the first option, it's easy to find several screen recording applications with Google, I tried the terms "screen recorder" "zoom-in" (just usign "zoom" spoils the search results with many hits for the Zoom meeting app. So use "zoom-in" with quotes). I can't recommend any software in particular.
My preferred method would be to do it in post, but that's a personal preference and of course your video editor has to support it. The feature, which you need, may be called a "crop" effect, whereas the zoom effect will animate the process of zooming in or out. Anyway, when you want to do it in post, make sure you can record a higher resolution than the output resolution, e.g. record in 4k and output to HD. However editing 4k video requires either fast hardware or a good video editor that can work with proxy files or similar resource saving alternatives.
That said, the edit-in-post option takes some effort. Option 1 or 2 may be the more economic way for you.


Unknown bitstream filter prores_metadata

The bitstream filter was added after 4.1.

Get a recent static git binary, like this one: https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/macos64/static/ffmpeg-20181127-1035206-macos64-static.zip


VMAF have changed their API yet again. Compile against 1.3.4.


ffmpeg repackaging AVI (h264) into mp4 gives choppy playback in html5 video on chromium

I ran into this same stuttering after remuxing to mkv and then playing the video on a Roku.  Solved the issue by first fixing the avi with the mpeg4_unpack_bframes filter, then remuxing that as mkv.
See https://www.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-bitstream-filters.html#mpeg4_005funpack_005fbframes
Posting here as this is the top Search result when searching "avi to mkv stutter".


What is the name of a portion of video between camera changes?

It sounds like you are describing shots.  A scene is composed of one or more shots covering a consistent location and time.  Each separate clip within the scene is simply referred to as a shot.  The shot changes any time that the camera position is moved.  Technically, if you are on a close up shot and cut to a wide angle and then cut back to a close up, they would both be part of the same close up shot if they were from a continuous clip, but I've never heard any other term applied to the smallest unit of continuous video.

If the shots transition directly from one to the other without any interlude, this is referred to as a cut.  The term comes from the film days when one would cut the film and splice it together with the first frame of the next scene.


Keying + Tracking onto Tablet/Smartphone with Green Screen Display in Adobe Premiere or After Effects

Trackers never hurt and there's almost no reason not to use them, but there's no substitute for pre-production and field testing. The only failure is failure to plan.

Ideally your markers would be high contrast, however you can place darker green markers on a green screen which can be entirely keyed out if the artist doesn't need them, but will still be useful if they are needed.

Since you've already shot this without markers, your best hope is a three-point tracker that can find and hold the screen edges. Since you say you have minimal motion, this shouldn't be too hard.


Premiere Pro sequence to Audition. Apply effect to all clips originating from one native video file

Don't apply the effect to the clip. That way lies madness. If all the clips were on the same track then you'd add the effect to that track, but since as you've said the clips are on separate tracks you need to send those tracks to a bus, and then apply the effect to the bus before sending that bus to the master track.

A bus is like a pre-mix, it's useful for grouping tracks with similar audio or audio that needs to be controlled together, or have the same effect applied, e.g. you might have one for all the dialogue, fx, or music. The ouput of a bus will go to your master track by default, but you could send it to another bus if you want and so on.

To make a new bus:

In the track editor window make sure that the inputs / outputs icon is highlighted

On one of the tracks, set the output to a new bus by clicking on the dropdown for the output (I always feel those arrows point the wrong way, but that's just me. It's the bottom one that says Master by default). Then set the output for all the tracks that have the problem to this bus.

You can also add a bus in the mixer panel.

To add effects to a bus / track

in the track editor window, make sure the fx icon is highlighted (next to the inputs/outputs one).

Click on the triangle in the effects rack for the track and choose your effect from the drop down (your list of effects will look different to mine, mine is full of every free VST plugin that money can't buy).

Similarly you can also do this in your mixer window, the UI is the same:


1080p60 will give better temporal resolution, which is key for tracking details that move within the scene.  If the scene is ridiculously simple, such as if the only object moving at all is a Mac screen on a swivel, and if you can control the speed of the swivel however you like, then framerate is no longer the sole determinant of temporal resolution.  You can achieve the same temporal resolution shooting a half-speed move at 30fps as you can a full-speed move at 60fps.  In that case, shooting at 4K will give you greater spatial resolution than 1080p.

In the normal case, temporal, not spatial, resolution is the big bug-a-boo for object tracking.


How to fix: ffmpeg: Picture size 32768x16384 is invalid?

The general limiting rule is ((Width * 8) + 1024)*(Height + 128) < INT_MAX. The rationale being, that all pixels of an image plane should be accessible using a signed integer index.

On a machine with 32-bit integers, INT MAX is 2147483647.

So, ((32768 * 8) + 1024)*(16384 + 128) = 4345430016 which is > 2147483647.

Now, it's possible there is a bug with the image size check, in that the factor 8 applied to the width is prematurely applied in most cases and can be skipped. You can raise a ticket at trac.ffmpeg.org if you want to explore that possibility. Else, you'll need to use another tool (maybe Imagemagick).


Final Cut Pro 7: File Error: Unknown file

Final Cut Pro may not recognize your file location. Did you change the location of the jpg after you imported it into the sequence? If so, you may have to locate it again.


Converting an MPG data file burned to disc to a burned "video disc" for set-top DVD players

Encore should work fine for your purposes.  When you look at the original source, what is the resolution?  Is it still 728 by 480?  Most likely the original image is using oblong pixels to make a 16:9 image with a non 16:9 resolution.  This is fairly typical and is called Anamorphic Widescreen.  The 16:9 image is compressed to a 4:3 size (720 by 480 is a typical .9 pixel compressed NTSC 4:3 image.)

When recording it to a DVD, you want to make sure that it is encoding it as an Anamorphic wide screen so that the DVD player that plays it back knows that it should scale it out to 16:9.  Your other option is to letterbox the original to a 4:3 size with black bars on the top and bottom.

I don't have Encore in front of me at the moment, but if you can't find the setting for anamorphic widescreen, I can look it up when I get home and let you know.


What software / hardware is used by TV companies to generate a live video feed that can be made up of smaller, live pieces?

In general, it is done with a production switcher/vision mixer. I believe CNN uses the Sony MVS8000. Specifically, it is a DVE or resizer feature that scales and positions the video. The video is played back from another device, likely a video server, under the control of the newsroom computer system.

They may also be using whatever software that does the real time rendering of the ticker to do the same thing that the production switcher's resizers do. Many broadcasters use renders from VizRT or Orad (now owned by Avid). Whether it is done in the production switcher or in the ticker software is a complex system architecture decision driven by the graphical requirements.


In Lightworks, there's the selective color correction tool.
By moving the sliders like this you can select the shadows (luma slider) and desaturate them:

By  clicking "Reveal" you can see which parts of the image are going to be changed.
With much thanks to the guys at the Lightworks forum.
Source: Lightworks forum: Desaturate shadows


Does recording desktop audio reduce quality?

Audacity would grab the digital data for recording in this case and since it uses a lossless format for recording you would not lose any information. I don't know about OBS but it would be surprising if they do things differently.

There will be a very slight loss of quality with 320 kbps mp3s. I doubt any human would hear a difference, though. This may become noticable at some point if you keep re-encoding the file again and again, for example for editing the audio later. If you use a low quality source, say 128 kbps mp3, the degradation will be much more pronounced.


All of the pro video editors have a means of animating titles to some degree, some are better than others. I am only experienced with Sony Vegas Pro 10, but I have seen my colleagues use Adobe Premiere with Adobe After Effects to create some mind blowing 'dancing' titles. Vegas has plugins available to boost their basic package but the basic package can do most if not all the effects you have in your example while Adobe's Premiere and After Effects might be able to take this to another level as in more 3d attributes.

I recommend a pro video editor over power point as you have tons of flexibility (avi, mov, mp4, m2t, etc) vs. only a ppt file. However, there are many products available to convert ppt files into video such as this free version I just found:

http://www.effectmatrix.com/PowerPoint-Video-Converter/Free-PowerPoint-Video-Converter.htm

Caution: I have never tried this product so I am uncertain on quality.

I should mention that animating titles is not the only thing going on in your example, there is some degree of track motion control and pan/crop as well not to mention compositing.

If you are seriously looking for a pro product, I would seek advice from professionals that already use these products in conjunction with trying out the trail versions if available. I do know that Sony Vegas Pro 11 is available for free download for a 30 day trail. Most of these products will cost between $500 and $2500 and the learning curve can be heavy.

Sony Vegas trial version:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/vegaspro?keycode=64506

This is a serious product that costs you both time and money.

I would recommend posting on the appropriate forum on creative cow to seek more inside advice.

http://creativecow.com/

Hope this helps


ffmpeg - output file is twice as long as the input

Assuming that's the unabridged command, I do see many puzzling things.

-threads 0 is set here for decoding the input and is set to 0 = auto. Which is the default. Removed.

-f lavfi is for supplying a filter-generated source, not for a set of image files. Removed.

-r 60 should normally be harmless here, but given the filter format and vsync later on, better to remove this confounding option.

-ar 48000 -acodec aac is for encoding audio, but no audio stream is supplied or generated, so inert here. Removed.

-shortest is needed when there are multiple streams being encoded, and you want the encoding to stop when the shortest stream ends, but there's only one stream, the image sequence, being encoded. Removed.

-strict experimental is needed if you are encoding audio using the internal AAC encoder AND your FFmpeg is older than Dec 2015. In any case, there's no audio encoding occurring. Removed.

-sn disables subtitles, but no subtitle streams are present. Removed.

-vsync 1 produces constant frame rate output but that's the default for MP4 output. Removed.

Use

ffmpeg -y -framerate 60 -i image_seq.%06d.tif
       -preset medium -c:v libx265 -b:v 7340032 -pix_fmt yuv420p
       -movflags +faststart output_file.mp4


How to make an onscreen timer graphic that counts down to different sections of the video?

This is a very simple effect that can be achieved using the Radial Wipe effect (which can be found in the Effects panel Video Effects > Transition > Radial Wipe)

Using the 'Transition Completion' set one keyframe at the start at 100% and the second keyframe for the end of the clip at 0%. To match the effect in the example you have shown, change the wipe to Counterclockwise and find a circle or ring shaped graphic to represent the timer.

In this case the static red ring should be place in the background with no effect applied and the moving white ring should be placed above with the effect applied.

You could even use the Video Effect 'Circle' under Video Effects > Generate to create the circle.


ffmpeg reducing 60fps to 30fps, but file size is larger

Did you actually get every second frame? My impression is that you got every frame, but you halved the framerate. Therefore, the length of the video in seconds is twice as long for the first compared to the second, and assuming equal rate controls (e.g. 1 megabit per second), the twice-as-long-file will thus be approximately twice as big, which is what you got.


If I understand the question correctly: yes! You can create a file that is a concatenation of different parts of the input video.
The script you're looking for is something like:
ffmpeg \
-i "$INPUT_FILE" \
-filter_complex \
"[0:v]trim=start=5:duration=10,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
 [0:a]atrim=start=5:duration=10,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a0]; \
 [0:v]trim=start=20:duration=10,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1];
 [0:a]atrim=start=20:duration=10,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a1]; \
 [v0][a0][v1][a1]concat=n=2:v=1:a=1[final]" \
-map "[final]" concat-video.mp4

You can read a little bit more about this on this blog post
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founder of https://mediamachine.io)
Hope this helps!


ffmpeg - Draw a box and scale its size with time

Thanks to @Gyan comments I've been able to come up with this solution, in case somebody else is interested:

color=c=red:size=1920x1080,
scale=eval=frame:w='if(gte(t*20,600),600,t*20)':h=20[cl];
[input][cl]overlay=x=0:y=0[finalOutput]

Just note that it is important that you download a current git version of ffmpeg because, from what I understood, previous ones do not support the 't' variable in the scale filter.


The domain: http://www.jahshaka.com/ is online and should be working. The SourceForge site has a support page for the software but it's currently incomplete.


In the example given, typical motion graphics techniques are used. There are several ways to achieve this animation in After Effects. Probably the easiest way is drawing a mask shape per letter on top of the 'logo layer' and keyframe the Mask Shape property. In most cases this is fast to implement and good enough, but in order to achieve a uniform motion I'd recommend to split up the logo into separate letters and use a trim path on a shape layer.

Instructions

Bring your Shape/Text from Illustrator into After Effects or simply use an After Effects Text Layer (If you don't want to switch between the applications)

Make sure that no layer is selected in your composition and hit G to enable the pen tool
Draw your animation path from the beginning to the end of the shape

Set the contour width of the new created shape layer to a value which covers the shape below
Set the fill color  to None by holding Alt and clicking into the color field
If you roll out the shape layer by clicking on the arrow  >  button left to the layer's name, there should be a appear another  > Add  Button in Track Mattes column. Click it to add a Trim Paths property
If Trim Paths is assigned to the shape layer go to your last frame, roll out Trim Paths property and click the stop watch of the end value, this should create a keyframe with a value of 100%
Go to your first frame and set the end value to 0% to get something like this:

To use the path animation as matte, set the track matte of the text layer below to Alpha

Note: Consider that the type in the given example is very suitable for this kind of animation.


Unhappy with wedding videography production - want expert opinions to provide an independant view

This is going to be a hard one. I am a wedding videographer myself and there isn't really a guild or similar (well there is kind of but there are no requirement to be joined to one in the UK).

Now this is the awkward bit. I am going to assume that you hired this company based on their previous work and that you were happy with how it was filmed, edited and sold to you via phone, email, website, in person, etc AND you have raised the issues with them and tried to get it resolved with them first.

Now assuming the above and the company has filmed your wedding and produced a product that meets the spec provided in your contract with them, it might be hard to take them to court, if they have not produced to the spec described in any of the communications with you and or contract that might have some options within to raise a complaint.

What is actually the problem with the video, is it not like ones on their website or what has been described to you? would you be willing to upload it to the likes of Vimeo and make it a private video for someone to look at?

they would need to know exactly what you are not happy with and or where to look for issues.

Also you might find in the contract there is a statement advising that the creative control with editing is down to the company and not the client or something similar.

I hope some of that helps


From the wikipedia entry on focal length:

  Due to the popularity of the 35 mm standard, camera–lens combinations
  are often described in terms of their 35 mm equivalent focal length,
  that is, the focal length of a lens that would have the same angle of
  view, or field of view, if used on a full-frame 35 mm camera. Use of a
  35 mm-equivalent focal length is particularly common with digital
  cameras, which often use sensors smaller than 35 mm film, and so
  require correspondingly shorter focal lengths to achieve a given angle
  of view, by a factor known as the crop factor.


FFmpeg crop (cut out) a view direction from 360° video sphere

Solved with this filter:
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#v360
See section "flat" and the second example to convert any 360 footage to a flat view.


Recommendable production codecs for Adobe video products

Ut Video is an editor friendly lossless video codec and is a good choice for in house production as an intermediary. It is fast, open source, actively developed, supports RGB(A)/ULRA (for your alpha channel requirement) and YUV colorspaces, and is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. You can install it on Windows and it will show up in Adobe Media Encoder, After Effects, etc. I don't know if it will fit all of your needs, but it is worth a try.


How can I create a 1920x1080p25 preset in Premiere Pro CS4?

I don't use CS4 but in CS5.5 you can do it this way: Open the Composition dialog, open the Settings tab, and choose Custom as preset (this should be the first entry). Now you can change all parameters. To save you preset, click the button Change preset at the lefthand bottom.


Fill shape layer with an image (after effects)

If what you want to have as an end result is a flag texture inside a non-standard shape, can I suggest instead that you import the flag texture, and use a matte to change its shape? If you've already created a shape that you want to use, you could convert it into your matte by adding a key frame to the matte's path control, adding a keyframe to the shape, copying that key frame, and then pasting the key frame over the matte's path keyframe.
This is probably easier than using unnecessary alpha channels etc.


White balance auto-adjusted half way through recording

A1: Links like these mention that ProRes 'bakes in' the white balance (as opposed to storing it as separate metadata): blackmagicdesign.com forum ; reduser.net forum ; reduser.net forum ; cinematography.com forum ; bmcuser.com archive

(I am surprised this is not more obviously stated on the web anywhere - it seems to be assumed knowledge)

A2: I did end up computing the least-squares solution that brings the 'bad' pixels over to the 'good' ones in RGB space. This gave me a 3x3 transformation matrix that could be applied to each pixel of the bad frames. After this their colour looked very much like that of the good frames.

In MATLAB this is as simple as reshaping one's image matrices into long 3xN lists of pixels (A = the bad frames, B = the good frames) and computing M = B/A, i.e. solving MA=B for M.


FFmpeg rtmp listen not working correctly: Connection Refused

Try to use static build of ffmpeg without librtmp. You can download it from the website, or build by yourself. I've got the same problem, but without this lib I could run ffmpeg listener. Also when I tried to stream to external rtmp host, I've got issue when streaming unexpectedly stop. As described in the end of this ticket https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/7547


Video size difference across different formats

You first need to tell us which software you're using. I'm assuming it's the adobe media encoder? Handbrake? ffmpeg?
Nonetheless, the filesize is determined by your resolution, framerate and bitrate. Try exporting the video with VBR with 2 passes and set the bitrate to something between 3 and 6 - that should be enough for a 1920x1080 h264.


tl;dr: Since Youtube reencodes all videos regardless of the upload format, it really isn't that important. Just export your video with a high bitrate to preserve quality. Also see my answer here regarding quality loss caused by Youtube.

Long answer: Each reencoding of a video to a compressed format lowers the quality. Usually, that means you'll lose quality at two points: When you export the edited video from your editing software and when you upload the exported video to Youtube, at which point it is reencoded to a highly compressed, streaming-compatible format. You have no control over that second step, so what you can do to achieve the maximum quality possible is make sure you lose as little quality as possible during the first encoding.
In theory, that would mean export to a perceptually (even though technically not) uncompressed format like Apple ProRes or DNxHD as you suggested. However, unfortunately, Youtube doesn't support those formats, so you'll have to use a compressed format. To minimize quality loss, set a high bitrate in your export settings (assuming rendering and upload time aren't an issue. If they are, you'll have to find some middle ground; exporting with a bitrate that is higher than the bitrate of the source material won't yield any more quality, so that is as high as I would go). If you do that, it doesn't really matter which codec you use, both are highly efficient regarding file-size/quality ratio (VP9 probably a bit more so, but that's more important when you're dealing with low bitrates). Youtube recommends H264, so that's what I would use. However, the best advice I can give you is to try out both, i.e. export the same video as both H264 and VP9 with identical bitrates/other settings, upload both to youtube and check which one looks better to you.


How can I ensure that DaVinci Resolve will detect and/or load my .mp4 / .avi files?

From your post I am not sure why Resolve wont recognize your files...but you should transcode your footage anyways before ingesting into Resolve.

Even if you start with highly compressed source media, you should transcode to something less compressed, and that will put you in 4:2:2 at least vs working with 4:0:0. ProRes or DNxHD codec will give you files that are much less compressed, and will yield the best possible results in color correction.


Output is shaky after exporting an edit of several clips in Premiere Pro

Maybe your footage are shaky, because you filmed it that way? Try to use effect "Warp Stabilizer".

If it will not work, try to described in detail what you mean by "shake from frame to frame".


How to lock and scroll image, using smartphone green screen mockup?

You will need to:

track the motion of the screen, using whatever tracking tools you have at your disposal. A 3D track or a corner pin type track will both work, because it's a flat rectangular screen. The quality of the track is what will sell this shot.
key out the green screen, using whatever keyer you have. Looks like a good key, so you shouldn't have too many problems
create the animation of the screen scrolling. This is probably best to do manually using keyframes, perhaps with the original video as a guide layer if your software allows it. There is no point tracking the movement of the fingers, as the scrolling continues after you flick with your fingers on a phone screen, so it has to scroll independently.
composite the app screen animation behind the original layer, using the tracking data to fit it to the original screen's position, size and rotation. You might want to add additional layers to the composite: e.g. a subtle reflection layer would help sell it.


At the moment, Adobe Premiere Pro struggles to run properly on the systems it supports--Windows 10 and Mac OS 10.10.  As of today, Adobe does not even recommend running it on Mac OS 10.11!  Premiere Pro does not run at all on Linux, and while you might be able to create some virtualized environment that can host a cluster of OSX or Windows instances on a Linux cluster, such virtualized environments are weakest where Premiere Pro needs them to be strongest: at the CPU/GPU interface.  In summary, not today, and likely not in the near future.

A far better starting place for your cluster project would be to select an open source video editor (here's a snapshot of the state of the art for 2015) and evaluate what sort of Raspberry Pi cluster is needed to compete with a typical modern GPU.


Timestamps are unset in a packet for stream 0. This is deprecated and will stop working in the future. Fix your code to set the timestamps properly

The usual solution for this situation: -fflags +genpts

It should eliminate the warning, but there's no guarantee your sync issues will be solved.


I read up a bit and made some experiments with lossless codecs, getting decent results. I'd be interested in comments on this, especially if there are lossless or lossy alternatives that I overlooked.
I tried the following codecs / formats in ffmpeg:

Lossless Motion JPEG2000 / AVI
ffmpeg -i test.avi -vcodec jpeg2000 -strict -2 -pred 1 test_jpeg2000.avi
compression ratio 19.59%

Lossless VP9 / WebM
ffmpeg -i test.avi -vcodec vp9 -lossless 1 test_vp9.webm
compression ratio 0.52%

HuffYUV / AVI
ffmpeg -i test.avi -vcodec huffyuv test_huffyuv.avi
compression ratio 37.42%

Lossless H.264 / MP4
ffmpeg -i test.avi -vcodec h264 -qp 0 -preset veryslow test_h264.mp4
compression ratio 0.53%

Since HuffYUV did not perform well, I excluded it from further tests.
I then tested playback support on Linux and Windows, trying mplayer, xine, vlc, chrome, and firefox on Linux (Debian testing) and vlc, windows media player, chrome, and firefox on Windows (8.1). I included browsers because WebM is specifically designed for web video. Results:

Lossless Motion JPEG2000 / AVI
plays on Linux with mplayer

Lossless VP9 / WebM
plays on Linux with vlc and chrome and on Windows with chrome and firefox

Lossless H.264 / MP4
plays on Linux with mplayer, vlc, and chrome, and on Windows with vlc and chrome

That a video "plays" means it is supported by the player out of the box, and playback is correct. I found several cases where the video was "supported" but playback was buggy.
Though Lossless VP9 has the best compression ratio (by a tiny margin), for the time being I decided to use Lossless H.264 because it has better playback support.


Is there a "Take Selector" in Premiere Pro?

There might be a smarter method, but here's what I did:

When structuring your project, I recommend you use the bins in Premiere frequently. For example, as a structure, you could have:

Footage

psd
cam1

A001
A002
A003
A004

A1
A2
A2b
A3
B2

T1

ffsa7b2t1.mov

T2

ffsa7b2t2.mov

T3

ffsa7b2t3.mov

T4

ffsa7b2t4.mov

B3
A005

cam2
gopro

Solids
sequences

Using this structure of something similar might assure that you exchange or look at different takes without any hassle.


Graphic music visualizer without after effects?

A free alternative for After Effects is Jashaka. It runs on every plattform and has some decent features. While it wont have the comfort of after effects for creating such an effect its certainly possible.
If you just don't want to spend all that much but still willing to pay a small price you can go for Apple Motion which costs 50$ and is a fairly powerful tool for animation and motion graphics for the price.
https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/motion/
Also here a tutorial on how make something react to music in Apple Motion: http://www.larryjordan.biz/motion-5-make-audio-move-video/
I personally have not worked in detail with both software so I can not give you guidance for actually creating the animation, expect for this tutorial.


Every decent video editor has built-in filters (like Color Correction, Film Effects, TV simulator, Color Curves, etc.) that can be used to achieve the desired 'look'. There are plug-ins and tools that contain many ready-to-use presets, such as:

Magic Bullet Looks
Film Looks SVP
Adobe SpeedGrade
DaVinci Resolve
etc.


How can I export RGB + Alpha in Adobe After Effects with Adobe Media Encoder (2020)

Click the output mode in the render queue, by default it says lossless:

use these settings, format: quicktime, video output channels: RGB + Alpha:

click format options and choose Apple ProRes 4444. The 4th 4 is the indicator that the codec has an alpha channel (this only applies to the Apple ProRes codec naming scheme).

That should fix your problem.

Edit: This was also fixable without changing the codec to Apple ProRes 4444, and could have been accomplished with opening one less window by just switching the color channel to Straight (Unmatted), however...

...knowing whether to choose Straight (no baked-in black) or Premultiplied (baked-in black) is somewhat abstract, and importing video with the default animation codec + aplha into other programs is just weird sometimes.

I've found that ProRes 4444 hits the "it just works" goal more often, and remembering that 4444 corresponds with RGBA(lpha) is easier to recall than the difference between matted vs. unmatted.


stitch rawvideo with ffmpeg - Picture size 0x0 is invalid

rawvideo has no metadata so you have to supply all parameters. Since your input is mjpeg (edit: sequence), just keep it as that.

ffmpeg -f image2pipe -vcodec mjpeg -i - -c copy -f mjpeg part_N

Generate a text file like this

file part_0
file part_1
file part_2
...
file part_N

and then

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -r 30 -i list.txt output.mp4

here -r is the desired framerate. Default is 25.


How to duplicate a generator below connected media?

I got the answer from someone at fcp.co. He made a video: vimeo.com/93836074

Basically:

add the generator to the timeline (don't worry about setting the duration since you're going to delete it)
turn it into a compound clip, delete it from the timeline (since it gets added to the event manager)
copy the image frames and paste them with the playhead at the first image
create a compound clip with all images (the ones in the bottom, so there's an actual image on top)
right click to open it in timeline
select the black compound clip in the event viewer and press x then d (black gets added)
press down arrow and repeat x then d

Pretty slick


I'm not sure if Audacity has this, but what you need is a compressor (actually an expander, but they're opposite things built into a tool referred to as a compressor). The compressor allows you to limit sound that is above a certain dB level, the expander limits sound under that level, called a gate.  You can set a gate with the compressor at a sound level, cutting out faint background noise but keeping your voice.  This will also cut out breathing noises you make at the beginning and end of syllables particularly Hs and Ss. This technique will not work if your voice is not considerably above the level of the background noise.

Another tool which can help refine your voice, but not entirely solve the noise problem is an eq (equalizer).  Look specifically for a parametric eq; these are the most intuitive. Essentially the equalizer loudens or softens sound based on its frequency.  You can use this to raise the level of your voice, but also soften background noise.  This works particularly well if there's a hissing sound that fills up only a small area on the frequency spectrum.

In terms of the recording environment, ideally you could build a sound proof room, but these are incredibly expensive.  Another slightly cheaper idea is to give your recording room an acoustic treatment, essentially coating the walls in acoustic foam.  This won't solve existing noise problems, but it will limit reverb.  Acoustic treatment is fairly cheap.  Generally you can coat a fairly large room at 50-75% coverage for under $100.

UPDATE: Audacity does have a compressor, but the GUI looks really ugly and unintuitive.  A parametric eq also requires an external plugin.  That said, it's still probably the best free program available.  Something paid and marketed as a DAW (digital audio workstation), would do the job much better.  Something like Adobe Audition, Apple Logic Pro, or Avid Pro Tools.


How to invert the color of a text layer with a sliding adjustment layer

Make the text only once inside one comp, but duplicate multiple copies of it in your main comp, so you will only need to create the text once.

Then set one of them to be inverted or whatever other colour setting you want.

Then make a layer that contains your moving mattes, and add a track matte to each of the text layers, pointing to your moving matte layer.

Mark does indeed look crazy :)


Check your GPU settings in AME prefs should be targeting your particular GPU. Choice of GPU can effect render time significantly. A GPU with a high CUDA processor count is best for these renders on a PC. On a MAC it should be metal with an appropriate card. Try and get a view of your system performance and buy a better card. https://www.cgdirector.com/best-cpu-gpu-render-benchmarks/


One big loss in converting VHS to DVD arises from going through the composite domain. Both VHS and MPEG2 use a separated chroma paradigm -- on the VHS tape are two signals, essentially luma and bandwidth-limited chroma. MPEG2 (the standard for DVD) also uses separate luma and chroma. But the standard output from a VHS player combines the signals in a way that means the MPEG2 encoder must do a rather imperfect job of unmixing them again.

One solution, such as it is, would be to use a VHS player that has separate luma and chroma outputs, called S-Video, and an encoder that can work directly with S-Video components.

I'm not saying you'll get beautiful results, because nothing about VHS is beautiful to begin with. But you would be sure of getting a conversion that doesn't suffer unnecessary losses.


Recommendations on Video Editors similar to Movie Maker

Avid just came out with a free version of Media Composer, looks very capable. "It's a fact that over 95% of all mainstream movies released in 2016 were edited on Media Composer. And so were most TV shows, too! Media Composer | First is a completely free version of the same video editing application, available on either Mac or PC. If you are an aspiring filmmaker or vlogger looking to get a start in editing, there’s no better way..."
Adobe Premiere Elements is in the price range you mention.


Changing QuickTime Conversion Default Settings for export

Why not set your sequence settings in final cut to the desired resolution and aspect ratio before beginning a project? Then you will just have to select "export to QuickTime" without having to select all the options each time.


Why is YouTube and VLC making a slight but noticeable mess of my video background?

This is a problem that drove me crazy...

Long story short; certain browsers; whether it's Chrome, Explorer, Firefox, etc, actually handle color profiles, embedded within the video file (such as color workspace), differently.

I believe if I remember correctly, Chrome uses Monitor Color, sRGB. Regardless of your video file's color profile/lack there of.

I ran into this problem consistently, and after a lot of testing, researching, my final conclusion is that there is no way to guarantee final color values of outputs when played within Web Browsers.

This also works backwards; because if you were to download the video file/rip using a rip tool (it very well might and include the color profile); which when played in AE or PPro would be recognized and applied; thus it would not match what you see in Chrome.

Your best bet is to make sure your Color Space is synced through Bridge, your monitor is calibrated, preferably with a spyder, but unfortunately, regardless of your file or your system, certain players; specifically browers; ignore coloremetry data; or worse, may convert or change your settings; with no work around. End users of course; you have no clue what they see... too many variables.


Is there any way to make text transparent when it is in a shape and make non-transparent when it is outside the shape?

It's harder to do than it should be, I guess because AE is layer-based rather than node-based like Fusion etc.

You're going to have to make a copy of both of your layers, parent each copy to the original layer – so you only have to move one of each – and arrange them so that your layer stack looks like

text
solid
solid
text

(or vice versa). Now make the bottom solid a track matte for the text layer, using alpha-inverted, so that the text is only visible where the solid isn't, and make the top text the track matte for the top solid, once again using alpha -inverted, so that it punches a hole in the top solid layer. The top solid will form the left hand part of the design and the bottom text the right side.

You could also use just the original layers and have one of them use difference mode, pre-comp them both and then use a extract effect to turn the black parts into transparency, but you'll then have to do the animating in a separate comp, which can make it harder to work with.

There is also the Set Matte effect. A lot of people struggle with this effect, it's a lot less intuitive than the slightly more complicated solutions above, so you'll have to do some research. A good explainer video here.


Combining two live RTMP streams into another RTMP stream, synchronization issues (with FFMPEG)

I got it working by adding -fflags nobuffer -flags low_delay -strict experimental before all the inputs.
Got helped reading this thread


Software advice - for creating animations

If you are a starter go for after effects, check videocopilot.net for subject of interest..

short:

new project, import your prerpared files, create new camera, drag your footage to the timeline, mark the 3d layer switch, set up the positions of the layers(x y z) and roll the camera ;)


Hardware and internet requirements for 1080/30p streaming, if video source is external

Connection Speed

For H.264 1080p30 streaming with typical compression (6 Mbps), I would recommend an Internet upload speed of around 10 Mbps minimum.

Hardware

OBS Studio suggests the following system requirements:

AMD FX series or Intel i5 2000-series processor (dual or 4-core
preferable) or higher.
At least 4 GB of RAM (recommended, but not necessary).

For Windows:

DirectX 10.1 compatible GPU.
Windows 7 SP1 or newer.

For macOS:

Intel CPU (PPC is not supported).
OpenGL 3.2 compatible GPU.
macOS 10.11 or newer.

As for mobile streaming, 4G LTE (between 2-5 Mbps) can manage 1080p30 - albeit with high compression.


The brain can process an image displayed for as little as 13 ms if the surrounding content is blank.  10 to 12 images per second is only the number of images that appear distinct to the eye.  Beyond 10 to 12 images a second,  the brain starts to try to piece them together, but it is doing a lot of work to make that go and the motion isn't as smooth as it could be.

Using higher frame rates means that the brain has to do less filling in the gaps and motion can appear more accurate and smoother since the brain is actually fully capable of processing images faster than 10 times a second.

The 12fps animation threshold is only a minimum to get the appearance of motion, not the maximum amount of information our brain can take in.  We can process far more images per second to determine motion, but require at least 10 to 12.

You can test this for yourself if you want by taking a 30 fps video and inserting a black frame at random in the video.  You'll easily notice the distortion from the missed frame because it abruptly changes to something other than the expected image.

Basically your brain knows what it expects to see and can recognize that it didn't see what it expected, it just can't recall exactly what it is that it saw that it didn't expect since it was taking a shortcut to reduce the amount of processing needed.

The Wikipedia article on frame rate is a good source of additional information on the topic.


Assuming your input is full range RGB when fed to the filter, then something like

geq=r='if(between(st(1,r(X,Y)+g(X,Y)+b(X,Y)),15,750),p(X,Y),if(lt(ld(1),15),C1R,C2R))':
    g='if(between(st(1,r(X,Y)+g(X,Y)+b(X,Y)),15,750),p(X,Y),if(lt(ld(1),15),C1G,C2G))':
    b='if(between(st(1,r(X,Y)+g(X,Y)+b(X,Y)),15,750),p(X,Y),if(lt(ld(1),15),C1B,C2B))'

Here the two colors are (C1R,C1G,C1B) and (C2R,C2G,C2B). with each component range being 0-255.

The 15 and 750 are the thresholds for selecting black and white pixels. The sum of the values of the three components for each pixel is compared to those values.

The st and ld functions are store and load functions with the first argument being the 'register no.'.

You can also try the colorkey filter.


Why would an ENG camera need 422 Chroma?

As far as I understand, before broadcasting, your signal will be converted and changed which leads to further loss. So by providing 422, the broadcasting company has more leeway to convert/compress.

See Why is the “broadcast standard” 422 and should we be concerned about shooting 8 bit 420?


Live streaming with Twitter and RSS information

You may want to look into Camtwiststudio for the mac. I work with Desert Bus for Hope doing a weeklong stream as well and we use it for just the sort of thing you're talking about.

Camtwist has built-in plugins for both Twitter and RSS, and can leverage quartz composer to make more complicated overlays.

It outputs a video feed for other Mac OS X applications to see it like a QuickTime video source, so you can use wireless or Flash Media Live encoder to do the actual compression and streaming.


Assuming DVD quality would be enough, you may consider archiving 720p mpeg-4 files with a bitrate of 2 Mbits, which would equate roughly to 1 hour = 1 GB data.

That would mean 27,000 hours = 27,000 GB = 27 Terabytes.
So you need to consider a 50 TB storage system (including redundancy and overhead) and a tape backup system as well (LTO-6 has an uncompressed capacity of 2.4 TB per tape, so that would be relatively easy and cheap, the entire archive would fit into 13-14 tapes).

Higher quality requirements would increase the bitrate, hence the GB/hour ratio, and all values should be adjusted accordingly.

The tough part is the actual acquisition... analog video tapes have to be read at normal speed so 27,000 tapes, assuming 1 hour each, means 27,000 hours = 675 weeks = almost 10 YEARS... !!! To hope finishing this in a reasonable time (say 2 years), your company would need to set up at least 5 acquisition stations each with its own tape unit and computer (and operator). The operators, while saving, should monitor that there are not problems with the cassette and fill the metadata into the DAM system.

DAM systems, there are many, also open source, the choice depends on the use that will be made of the resulting digital video archive.


Use of you tube videos in a church service

There are two sides to this question:

1. Does the owner grant permission to use it in the church service?

Before using a video in a church service, message the owner. Usually they will be happy to let you use it, and on occasion they will direct you to a higher quality download without ads. In general, YouTube is free to play.

2. Is the church okay with the ads that are likely to come along with it?

Youtubers make their money off of advertising, and they have no control over the ads that are likely to be presented. I recall a time when a children's church program (tee-totalling denomination) started with a beer advertisement because that what was shown with the video we had selected.

Further Considerations

If you are live-streaming or recording services for later playback on youtube, you have to pay extra attention to permissions on copyrighted material. Your CCLI license does not cover streaming, but the CSLP license does. Hillsong blocks re-streaming of their content, as do major networks (nbc, etc).


How to use ffprobe to obtain certain information about mp4/h.264 files

If you only want the information from the first video stream use -select_streams v:0:

ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=width,height,duration,bit_rate -of default=noprint_wrappers=1 input.mp4

Example output:

width=640
height=480
duration=10.000000
bit_rate=942704

To see a list all entries use -show_streams and/or -show_format instead of -show_entries.
See FFprobe Documentation: Writers for various output formatting styles.
See FFmpeg Wiki: FFprobe for more examples.


Console Audio and Commentary Capture - Is it possible to capture both?

There are numerous ways to handle this and none are particularly difficult, though some are mildly technical.  The most direct is through use of a mixer or a capture device with multiple audio inputs.  Most input devices only take a single stereo audio stream to go with the video input, so without buying a specialized capture device, the most promising way to do it live is with a mixer.

To use a mixer, you would branch off the audio from the video, feed the audio from the console in to the mixer while also feeding a microphone in to the mixer for commentary.  The output of the mixer (most likely a tape out) would then go to the audio input for the capture device.

Mixers add a decent amount of cost in most cases though, so if you want to avoid that, the easiest way is to dub after the fact.  You can record the video from the console directly and then record a separate audio track once you have the video edited however you want it.  The nice things about this approach is that it has no additional cost, allows you to fine tune your commentary to your final video, and allows you to substitute different commentary tracks over the same gameplay footage.


I think you should use the "Bad TV" plugin to achieve this effect.  It has a setting to glitch images, and make them look as though the encoding has broken:

http://aescripts.com/bad-tv/

An example:


Usually, the workflow goes like this:

Capture your plates, real, cg, doesn't matter.
Hop into Nuke, composite your plates, then render each shot individually.
Edit the shot in your editing-software such as premiere.
When the final edit is done, re-import each individually rendered clip into a grading software such as Resolve, apply your color grading, export again and replace the ungraded file in your edit.

So just for pipeline-purposes, it's often inconvenient to use a timeline in compositors like Nuke.


Concatenate clips with as little code as possible in AviSynth+

function SegmentedDissolve(string base, int first_val, int last_val, string format, int dissolve_length ){
    filename = base + string(first_val, format) + ".MOV"
    result = FFMS2(filename)
    return (first_val < last_val) \
        ? Dissolve(result, SegmentedDissolve(base, first_val+1, last_val, format, dissolve_length), dissolve_length) \
        : result
}

SegmentedDissolve("F:\_DSC", 1, 9, "%03.0f", 50).Trim(3600, yyy).FadeIn(100).FadeOut(100)

You would need to figure out what value yyy needs to be for the concatenated clip. If the first clip needs to be trimmed on both sides, then the first clip should not be included in the function (start first_val at 2), and instead get loaded, processed, and concatenated manually.
As a note, the FFMS2 function also loads up any audio found in the specified clip, so you do not need to dub it unless you are doing processing on it first.


I record conferences all the time, so I end up getting 10's of hours of footage at a time. I have a few tricks that help with syncing:

Run all cams all the time. If a full day shoot gets only 3 files per cam, that's a lot less work to sync than 25 files from each cam.
Stop and start all cams within the same few seconds.
Learn to notice key waveforms. Things like applause, audience chatter, and music have unique shapes. You can also watch for "um" and long pauses.
There's sync tools available, like PluralEyes, that analyze the sound from each clip, then syncs them on the timeline.
There's time code methods that many pros use, but I've never had any success with them.

I depend on 1 through 3 almost exclusively. I've gotten very good at reading waveforms and I only stop cams for breaks longer than 10 minutes. All my clips are 30 seconds out of sync at most. It's pretty easy to sync a whole day in 15 minutes. I've used PluralEyes, but found it took too long to process the material, and it was off by about a half second most of the time, so I had to go though and move all the clips anyway. I only use it if I have tons of clips to sync (more than 15), instead of my typical four or five. PluralEyes will get you close, then you have to adjust manually.


how to add video title without re-encoding the video

It depends a bit on your file format. But it is possible; if you create a title as a separate video you can concatenate (join) the title and the original video usng tools such as ffmpeg. Generally this will work best if they are the same codec with the same settings. For concatenation using ffmpeg see the FAQ.

Some formats, like MPEG2 program streams (like you get on DVDs) can actually be concatenated by simply adding the second file to the end of the first, eg. by using cat file1.mpg file2.mpg > newfile.mpg on the command line.


2000 hours to render/encode 45 minute video, what machine should I build to make this manageable?

Before you go out and spend a lot more money on hardware, optimize your process.  Run tests on short pieces of your video, and see what you can adjust to get faster results.

For example, H.264 is pretty taxing to encode, especially at higher frame sizes.  Experiment with writing to intermediate codecs first, and then transcoding to your delivery format.  Often, that method is faster than writing directly to the delivery format.  See how long it takes your setup to churn out a five second clip directly to h.264, then time the same export to an intermediate codec + transcode.

Another thing you can optimize is your disk caching strategy.  If your disk cache is on your system drive, try moving it to something speedy and external.  Some NLE's give you the option to use the disk cache at render time.  Experiment with these settings.  Also maybe try changing your GPU driver settings if your system allows (OSX mojave deprecates OpenCl.  Depending on your NLE/OS, Metal may be your only option).

Another small piece of advice, get a good process monitoring utility and use it to help clue you in on where bottlenecks occur.  I use XRG for Mac.  It's free, and provides more information than Activity Moitor.  If you notice that your GPU's are pegged, then think about adding GPU horsepower.  If they're not pegged, your CPU isn't either, but you notice a lot of disk activity, then think about how you might improve that.


Software to Remove a Person from a Video

You could export the video to still frames, then the problem is reduced to removing the person from pictures.

You can use Gimp or any decent paint program with a clone tool to copy sections of a good image to the image that needs correcting.  The clone tool is pretty quick to use.  But yes, at 30 fps if your perpetrator is in the scene for 5s is a lot of frames to tinker with.


How can I squeeze video of certain length into smaller length

This is generally done by retiming the video. Usually, if you're retiming by anything other than double or half, you need to use a professional application such as Final Cut Pro X or Premiere. They will have options for doing the speeding up in a number of different ways such as "Frame Blending" or using "Optical Flow".

For mobile, a quick search with these terms "app to speed up video iPhone" shows a number of results.


Liquids are always an interesting subject matter. Maybe sparkling water.


Windows Tool for Extracting enhanced images from video

If your actually looking to produce a single image from a number of temporally-local frames,  then your probably looking at doing some kind of superresolution or drizzle integration. There are tools that do this. I use them for astrophotography myself, such as Registax and AutoStakkert!! 2. These are designed to generate astronomy images, such as planets, the moon, the sun, from video sequences.

For these applications to work, they expect that the entire video sequence is generally going to be of an identical subject, and that only the quality of the contents differs. This implies that one has the ability to track or otherwise maintain identical subject framing. AS!2 is the one I use most, and it will sort the video frames by quality such that ones overpowered by seeing are dropped, and the best are kept and stacked.

The results can be quite stunning, detail can far surpass that of a single frame or even a high quality still.

I am not sure if this is what you are looking for, however it's the closest thing I can think of. Maybe the terms super resolution and drizzle might help in your search.