Why do pro cameras still need to pull focus?

Well there's a number of factors that come into play, but first and foremost, the reason a camera operator pulls focus (if shooting alone) or having a 1st AC/2nd AC pull focus is because if you care about what you're shooting, you want focus to be tack sharp.

Focus pulling is required on today's full frame and large sensor cameras because the Hyperfocal is extremely tight/small due to the gate (sensor) size, especially so when using fast lenses, shooting at wide apertures, or long focal lengths. The Hyperfocal Distance is in today's digital cinema world, a very specific and critically narrow point in space, or better put, distance from the the camera's gate. Large sensor cameras also typically need faster lenses, due to the fact that the light entering the lens is refracted over larger plane than on a small sensor capture device. (More info below on that).

Many DSLR cameras have AF features, but they are relatively limited, and require the user to set a focus point, such as center, or another XY or pattern of XY points on the screen in which the camera would attempt to lock to.

Professional systems by RED, ARRI, and others, have 3rd party accesories which can assist with Auto Focus, but again, they are only as good as how you program them.

That said:

With a large sensor, shooting on a fast lens with even a moderately wide aperture at anything other than a "wide/medium wide" focal length will produce an image which has such as shallow depth of field that you have to visually adjust the focus based off the precise distance from gate to your desired focal point.

Do you want the eyes and eye lashes to be tack sharp? Or the tip of the nose? If you focus the camera to be tack sharp on the front/tip of the persons nose, the eye lashes and eyes especially, will appear soft, especially at 4K and above.

You can also focus too deep, which is a very easy mistake to make, making the hairline/front of ears tack sharp, again, leaving the eyes and eye lashes, and even more, the nose, soft and out of focus.

Even shooting a simple sit down interview with someone on a HD camera (not 4K), using a 100mm focal length, at f2.8, this becomes highly noticeable. Tip of the nose, ear lobes, or eye lashes... You want to focus on the eyes... because that's what viewers focus on when watching the footage.

Theres no way a camera can "know" exactly what you want it to focus on. Secondly, automatic systems never work perfectly. This happens often even at short focal lengths using wide lenses; where the cameras AF system will latch onto a brighter spot, such as a light bulb or candle flame far in the background behind the subject- so even on wide shots AF doesn't do a great job.

Lastly, if the AF system gets confused or if something moves in the frame, the AF system will fish for a new focus point, often times over and undershooting the focus point in the process. This fishing effect is highly distracting.

So in closing, if you're shooting anything with actors where their performance matters and you may not get a second chance to capture that exact moment or performance, you have to have someone watching and pulling critical focus on a monitor that is designed to do so (showing pixel to pixel or magnification on a specific zone).

Now with cameras that have a very small sensor, such as the old video cameras from the 90s and early 2000s, the sensor was so small (sometimes as small as 1/5"), that A.) The small gate/sensor size created a very deep depth of field/large hyperfocal, B.) The small sensor received a much higher level of light concentration from the lens (described below); and C.) The small sensor cameras in the past typically shot at lower resolutions and focus could be slightly off, and due to the low resolution it wasn't visually noticeable.

When shooting with a small sensor, the light entering the camera was far more concentrated on the small sensor area (think of a magnifying glass with the sun trying to burn a leaf). The smaller you focus the light into a smaller area, the brighter it becomes. If you pull the magnifying glass up the focus of the sun becomes larger, less bright and less hot.

I only mention this because this is why large sensor cameras require more light. Because the image entering in through the lens is being spread out over a larger canvas, and thus is not as concentrated / bright - requiring either more light, or shooting at a wider aperture. Wider apertures = shallower depth of field.

So the small sensor cameras can shoot in AF mode with greater ease- the reason being "everything" is in focus, due to the small gate, and the fact that the small sensor requires a smaller aperture/f-stop. These factors create a hyperfocal which is so large, that everything is reasonably in focus and there's no discernible difference between the tip of the nose and the front of the eyes.


How to trim / edit a video and save with original settings, without encoding


How to create a 1h long WMV file from a repeated 1 minute WMV many times over?

The ffmpeg concat demuxer can do this if the WMV video codec variant can be encoded by ffmpeg. Windows Media Video 7 & 8 qualify, Windows Media Video 9 doesn't.


ffmpeg converting Nikon .mov file to a format for Da Vinci Resolve Linux

I purchased Da Vinci resolve Studio Pro which imports all my files in their existing format so this can be marked as solved.


Live stream from GoPro to YouTube or another video service

No GoPro is appropriate for the job by itself.  Any of them (or even a basic webcam) could work as a camera, your problem is that you need something that can encode and send a stream by itself.  That is a specialized device and not something a GoPro can do.  You would want a either a device built for doing a direct stream (such as an IP camera) or you would want to have a camera with a clean HDMI (or other) output that can be fed in to a stand alone streaming device.

For the second half, recording quality and stream quality are completely and 100% independent of each other.  They are both two different captures of the same visual information, but the sensor is going to pick up maximum quality regardless of if you are recording in some low bandwidth format or not and the steam is going to run off the output which should be the high quality format regardless of what quality you are streaming at.


How to Merge Multiple MP4 videofiles using concat of ffmpeg while transposing 180 degrees two MP4 videofiles

I finally found out how to do it!

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i VIDEOFILES.txt -filter_complex  \
 "[0:v] fps=32, scale=1920:1080, vflip, hflip, setpts=0.25*PTS, fifo [v0]; \
  [0:v] fps=32, scale=1920:1080, vflip, hflip, setpts=0.25*PTS, fifo [v1];
  [v0][v1]concat=n=2:v=1[out]" -map "[out]" -crf 14  -vcodec libx264  -vb 20M  -loglevel error  video_out_01.avi

concat: concetrate files
VIDEOFILES.txt: video files with path
included, eg. file '/path/a.mp4' (including file)
fps=32, scale=1920:1080: drop to 32 frames, and reducing video resolution
vflip, hflip: 180 degrees rotation of the video
setpts=0.25*PTS: Four times speeder
fifo: a ffmpeg filter that it says to wait frame
to be fully processed before it is given to the next process --- due
to some filter process frame quicker than others e.g. due to frame
drop (?)
crf 14: High quality ensured (0 = uncompressed)
vcodec libx264: codec to compress the video file
vb 20M: video bitrate (a high one)
loglevel error: ffmpeg output information only errors will be displayed

BIG Questions:

A) I tried to reverse the order of filters eg.
[0:v] setpts=0.25*PTS, fps=32, scale=1920:1080, vflip, hflip,  fifo [v0]
However, it was extremely low.
The commands are executed seriasly? Then, why I must recode every frame, when only 1/4 of them will be kept? How can I do that in order to gain recoding speed?

B) Why I need FIFO eventually. This must be not the default behavior? All frames that are kept must be processed from all filters! Right? Why then ffmpeg drop frames without being processed? this is the meaning of FIFO? Right?

UPDATE: ffmpeg 4.2.3 freezes when multiple video files exist e.g. >5


Which PC software does live effects on video from a tethered camera?

If software is all you're interested in, here are a few options:

Quartz Composer
Pixel Conduit
Resolume
VDMX
Arkaos
Modul8

Personally I've only tried Quartz. It's hugely powerful and free, but the learning curve can be quite steep. It's more of a node programming language for video graphics, that's what makes it so powerful.
Some downsides are that it's not actively developed anymore and that it only runs on OSX.
I'm excited to try Pixel Conduit soon. It seems to be an attempt at a modern version of quartz, and the free version seems pretty powerful.
If you want to record the video as well you might have to look at a separate program called Syphon.
I used a Blackmagic Intensity Extreme box to get the live video from our Sony XDCAMs into my Macbook Pro. I had to use Black Syphon to get the feed from the Blackmagic box and send it into Quartz for live processing.
UPDATE
I've been using Resolume to do exactly that. It works really well and is way more user friendly than Quartz. Though you can also use Quartz in it. Resolume also can record the video to an output file out of the box.
Pixel Conduit didn't seem to have gained much traction unfortunately. So I never used it in a production environment, I only played with it.


Not sure about Set Matte, but you could try setting the transfer mode of the shape layer to Silhouette Alpha? That will cut out everything beneath that layer.

(You currently have the transfer modes hidden. Right click on the title bar above your layer names, click to Columns->Modes)


How can I add fade in and fade out effects to a video?

Windows Live Movie Maker is a free app that can do both audio and video fades (both in and out).  You probably already have this application installed on your computer, and if you need further help I would imagine you can find a number of YouTube tutorial videos.

Once you import your video, click on the Edit tab and you'll see the audio fades immediately.

Then, click on the Visual Effects tab, and click the down arrow at the right of the single row of effects to expand these.  Scroll down to "Motion and Fades".  In this group you'll find what you're looking for.

If you don't already have WLMM on your computer, there are a jillion places where you can download it.  Incidentally, the latest version is called "Windows Movie Maker 2012", for Windows 7 and 8, so you'll want to look for that unless you're still running Vista or XP.


FFMPEG has colorkey and chromakey options, it does something likes
Overlay a greenscreen-video on top of a static background image

Using a shell script to loop through your thousand images on the ffmpeg command would be helpful.


Webcams live in the universe of being devices plugged into computers, and switchers live in the universe of standard video sources being plugged into them.  These two universes only talk to each other via specialized interfaces (if at all).

Happily, there exists software that gives you switcher-like functionality as a software package for your computer.  One such package is manycam.  There are others you can find.

Trying to get webcam video out of your computer as video, into a switcher, then back into your computer so that it can be webcast is about 3x more difficult than it needs to be.  And it requires a lot more space on a physical desktop.


The problem is that your video files are encoded using variable frame rate, which is typical of screen recorders. Premiere is trying to kind of grunt through it, but on longer clips you'll probably notice that you get some synch drift with the audio.

Transcoding for a constant frame rate file, either going back to H.264 (where you might lose some quality) or to something more editing-friendly, like DNxHD. ffmpeg can handle this pretty easily. Just be aware of the limited number of video formats that DNxHD supports.


Premiere Pro audio muffled and distorted on export

Might be because you are exporting a stereo audio file which has one channel phase reversed, and then it is being played back in mono.
If you have an identical signal going to the left and right channels, but one of them is phase reversed, it means the waveform is inverted (upside down). When you listen to either channel on its own, it will sound normal.  When you listen to them both in stereo (Left channel to left speaker, right channel to right speaker) you may notice it sounding odd. Some people describe it sounding like the location of the sound is "inside their head".
But when you play back a stereo recording like this in mono (left channel and right channel both mixed togther to a single mono output) the signal will completely cancel itself out.
If the two channels are almost identical, but have tiny differences, only the differences will be audible.  This often happens with lossy file formats (like mp3/mp4 files), where the mono version of the phase reversed playback sounds tinny and lacking in all bass.
To test it out, try adding a channel mixer effect to the master output of you mix, and inverting one channel. Then export again and see if it fixes it.


What techniques are used to create this 1-minute motion graphic?

Okay, now that you have updated your question I think we may be able to answer your questions better...

But keep in mind this could have been done 100 ways and we are simply hypothesizing on how it could have been done.

The individual letters coming in like this could be done 100 different ways, it could be done via an effect in aftereffects, a preset in livetype, etc.  I most likely would simply make each letter its own layer and tie that to a slider via expressions and then be able to keyframe the slider to initiate and finish the animation...this allows me to change the speed of the animation easily and the in and out points of the animation etc.
My guess is that as the items are sliding in and out vertically there is a mask of white with a high feather so that as it goes from center to bottom or top...it is going beneath a layer of white that is feathered to solid at the tops and bottom and feathered to transparent at the center.
I am going to say this was also done with expressions, he had a gride of icons, in a circle...made the middle icons slide from the - in the z axis and arrive on 0, with a crossfade of an icon of the world.
This is more of an audio question, "how do you make music?" but I would say digital performer, or even on the super cheap side is garageband which is free with mac os, and theres millions between, burn-studios.audiotool.com is free, theres audacity, theres fruity loops

Hope this helps you a little bit


After Effects CC slant effect crops artwork

Depending on how you imported it, it is possible that it ended up nested as a nested composition or smart object.  If you applied the effect to the outer object but then dragged it within the inner object, you could end up dragging it off the edge of the outer object which would produce the result you are experiencing.

Effectively, you would have an outer object that is tilted and an inner object that is going off the edge of the outer.  Thus, the outer object displays only the half of the object you see and then the skew gets applied (which makes the otherwise vertical clipping to be angled.)

That's the only thing that occurs to me as a possible cause.

Even if that isn't it, a work around might be to put the original graphic in a composition and then apply the effect to the composition instead and then move the composition as you need.  This would probably work around whatever issue you are having here.


ffmpeg - Apply padding to input images while combining multiple images and audio track

If your output resolution is AxB, then your filters would be

-vf "scale=A:B:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,pad=A:B:-1:-1"


How to place a picture into an object and zoom into it to make it big? (After Effects)

There's a few ways to do this. The simplest is to make the castle layer the parent of the magnifying glass (use the parent drop-down or the pick whip), so that as you scale the castle up the magnifying glass scales up as well. This will let you move the magnifying glass independently, because child layers inherit the parent's transformation, but not vice-versa.

To scale up the castle:

hit s to bring up the scale property and with the playhead at the point you want the animation to start click the stopwatch to turn animation on
or hit alt / ⌥shifts which does the same thing, but ninja style.
move the playhead to where you want the animation to stop, and scale the castle however you want. This will automatically create a new keyframe. A lot of people get confused because they click the stopwatch a second time, which you might think would add another keyframe - it doesn't it just turns animation off.

Now if your castle is not in the center of the screen in the zoomed-out frame you'll need to either add keyframes for motion (same technique, just substitute p for s), or you'll need to use the pan-behind tool to adjust its anchor point so that it's in the right spot at the end of the zoom. Often it's easiest to do it in reverse, so you frame up the castle like you want and then move the playhead backwards and zoom out.

A slightly more complex (in some ways, but easier in others) way is:

make both layers 3D layers (click the 3D box on the layer properties column)

Now move the magnifying glass forward (hit p and increase the value of the third column, the z coordinate).
create a new camera (Layer>new>Camera or ctrl / ⌘alt / ⌥shiftc). Just use the defaults for now.
use the camera tool c to move the camera around. Set keyframes on its position (hit p to show it) and target property (hit a - a bit confusing, but it's like anchor points for normal layers). Put a keyframe where you want the camera to be at the start of the zoom, and another at the end.

For bonus points play around with the speed of the movement. A linear zoom in is going to feel a bit jerky, try adding ease to the keyframes to smooth it off, or even anticipation and follow through to make it cartoony.


Which of these two crude green screen lighting setups is better?

Well the 2nd is better. But the correct way is to light your Green Screen first, and you want to have it lit so it's a flat 70 IRE. You'll need a monitor with a Waveform option, and the waveform should pretty much be a flat and very thin line at 70 IRE.

You can't do that visually (eyeballing).

Then you place your talent so that they are separated as much from the BG as possible, casting no shadows onto it.

Light you talent with the same color temperature light as the green screen.

Hitting your talent with a hairlight that is gelled 1/4 magenta will help reduce edge issues.


FFMpeg set language as Unknown or unspecified in a QuickTime MOV

-map 0:v \
-map 0:1 -metadata:s:a:0 language=zxx \
-map 0:2 -metadata:s:a:1 language=eng \
-map 0:3 -metadata:s:a:2 language=fra \
-map 0:4 -metadata:s:a:3 language=kin


Syntax error when compiling vlc media player

I have solved this problem. An error happens due to environment variables.

I added :/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-i386 to etc/profile

export JAHA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-i386

Now , I can compile libvlc, but new problem arises:

libvlc:compileReleaseJava FAILED
*what went wrong:
Execution failed for task 'libvlc:compileReleaseJAVA'.
> Cannot find System Java Compiler. Ensure that you have installed a JDK (not just a JRE) and config used your JAVA_HOME system variable to point to the according dirctory.


Which filter and what parameters should I use to deinterlace this video?

It has nothing to do with filters. The only way to deinterlace this video correctly, is by having the original footage. Right now you are using a .mp4 footage, it was already encoded by Youtube (this encoding process includes a deinterlacing too). So, technically you already are using a deinterlaced video.

If you deinterlace it again, it is like you were trying to put an egg white and yolk inside the eggshell, sure you can do it, but you won't get correct results.


Cant change stroke Brush Size via Composition, only via top bar. AECS6

That happens because in the video path is added to the Text layer, but you have it on separate shape layer.

Try to move you path to the text layer.


How do I decide between 2 column layout and single page layout for script?

If you're writing a feature film, or television show, use single column script format. Why? Because that is the standard.

If you're writing a video script for a corporate client, you want to use Two-Columns.

Using two columns, audio for one, picture for the other, allows you to literally pace the video, like tracks.

It would look something like this, with line breaks between each video section and audio section. Also, it would bold things like titles, names, key elements, etc.

VIDEO                                  AUDIO
Black Screen...
                                       Music Track "XYZ" begins...

TITLE
"Video Name"                           We hear a helicopter approaching over the title.
fades to...

EXT. WHITE HOUSE SOUTH LAWN

We see Marine One Helicopter descend   V.O. "A new chapter in our Nation's history is
into the frame...                      begining...

                                       AUDIO SFX: Camera/Press cameras going off.

Close up shots of Marine One landing.

                                       V.O. "... A new president is arriving...

Shots of the press... on-lookers...

The wheels touch down                  V.O. "... A new direction unfolds..."

Shots of American Flag waving in
wind.

The reason this format works well is it literally reads "as the video will be produced". Secondly, it is easy for the client to understand... because they can put together how sounds will enter before/after picture elements.

The formatting is a bit more complex, you want to box each item (horizontal line), and different writers have different styles for bold/italics etc. But that's the general idea.


Video effects over the live webcam stream for a party

I think you are going to need something out of your price range to complete such a task. Video, is far more complex to process in real time, than say a photo, that only analyzes a single frame and looks for simple objects like eyes, nose, mouthlines, as anchors.

The NewTek Tricaster ($20,000) line would be an option for this, but you'd need a company to come in to do it, and with a workflow pre-established to make this work.

In short. No, there is no easy way.


After Effects Ratio Error When Using Puppet Tool

It's hard to tell for sure without more detail about your problem, but the final post in this Adobe Community thread appears to be having the same problem.

It looks like they restarted After Effects and created a new Puppet Pin and Puppet effect and then copied over their animation keyframes.  Not sure why the problem would be happening, sounds like it is probably a bug to me.


Enter the position for a guide in After Effects numerically

Sadly, no. I've wished for this many times myself.

Michael Szalapski wrote in a CreativeCow thread,

"At 100% zoom level in the comp viewer, guides move on full pixels, so you can place them on exact pixels right where you want them if you sit them on a null (or solid or whatever). Granted, it doesn't snap, but when I tried it just now, I got it right where I wanted it pretty quickly with a null as a reference. "

That's the best solution I've ever come across. Not what you asked for, I know.


What actually happens to footage that is upscaled or downscaled?

May i understand your question as

How do i have someone/something that understands the missing puzzles from
my upscaled images?

If so, you are talking some intelligence/experience in upscaling or AI-upscaling. Then, plz take a look of AI Upscalers; it mentions

An open source AI upscaler (super sampler) based on a generative adversarial network architecture.
An open source image enhancer that seeks to restore lost texture details from known types
Commercial super sampler that uses artificial intelligence

Good luck!


The DataVideo KMU-100 produces 4 1080p feeds (or 1 4k and 3 1080p feeds) from each input and has 2 different inputs.  It is possible to link the input on Signal Input A with the input to Signal Input B, but in this case, the connections for Signal Input B will not be used and the signal from Signal Input A will be sent to both splitters to make 8 1080p feeds.

If you want to have two feeds, you need to make sure each of the Signal Input sections is properly configured in DV Link.  You will want to make sure each camera is plugged in appropriately on the back.  There are 3 possible ways to plug your camera in to each bank.  Only one camera should be plugged in per input block (there's a square around each set of 1 HDMI and 4 BNC connections.)

If your camera is HDMI based, you will want to use the HDMI connection.  Note that if your camera is too far away, the HDMI signal may have trouble making it to the splitter and it may be necessary to get an HDMI to SDI converter for longer runs.

For single link SDI (3G, 6G, 12G) I would connect to the 12G BNC connector.  It should be backwards compatible with both 3G and 6G and should give you the least possible headaches.  The manual is a little unclear on this, so I'm having to make an assumption, but given that the other's are all 3G, they appear to just be there for dual and quad link signals.

For dual and quad link signals (where two or four 3G cables are used from a single input source), use the necessary number of connectors regardless of if they are 12G or 3G.  The manual isn't clear on which ones should be used, so presumably the unit can figure it out on it's own.  If you have problems I might try using different connectors for the dual link.

Once you have everything setup and the type of line selected in DV Link, the feeds should be detected provided that your cameras are outputting on a compatible video format.  It appears that the unit has it's own frame synchronization so it does not appear that video settings have to match between inputs, but if you experience problems, it couldn't hurt to verify this as well.


Use

ffmpeg -i INPUT -vcodec libx264 -g 2 -acodec copy -y out.mpg

As per the x264 docs, scenecut=0 disables scenecut evaluation.


Post production automated addition of text

You could do this by making subtitles from your data streams and then either playing them back on a media player that can display subtitles, or rendering them into the video.

Most subtitle formats are very simple ascii files — to demonstrate, here's an srt subtitle file:

1
00:00:01,046 --> 00:00:02,540
This is my home.

2
00:00:03,560 --> 00:00:05,110
I'm living here.

3
00:00:05,110 --> 00:00:08,640
My name's Nickel
Mundabi Ngadwa Nickel.

It is pretty easy to generate them from any data source, as long as you have start [and finish] times. You can then insert them into a video file as a subtitle stream using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i inputvideo.mp4 -i inputsubtitles.srt -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s mov_text outfile.mp4

Any player that is capable of displaying subtitles will be able to display them. SRT subtitles like these don't have formatting info though, so the format will depend on your player's settings.

Other subtitle formats have more formatting capabilities. Here is an Advanced Substation Alpha subtitle file:

[Script Info]
ScriptType: v4.00+
PlayResX: 1920
PlayResY: 1080

[V4+ Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, OutlineColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, Underline, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, AlphaLevel, Encoding
Style: Default,Univers,56,&Hffffff,&Hffffff,&H0,&H0,0,0,0,1,2,0,2,10,10,16,0,0

[Events]
Format: Layer, Start, End, Style, Text
Dialogue: 0,0:00:01.05,0:00:02.54,Default,This is my home.
Dialogue: 0,0:00:03.56,0:00:05.11,Default,I'm living here.
Dialogue: 0,0:00:05.11,0:00:08.64,Default,My name's Nickel\NMundabi Ngadwa Nickel.

so basically you have the style definitions in the [V4+ Styles] section and the content in the [Events] section, with timing info for each bit of text. You can define multiple styles, and you can add effects and inline formatting.

You can insert them into a video file (you'll need to use the Matroska video container because mp4 doesn't support .ass subtitles),

ffmpeg -i inputvideo.mp4 -i inputsubtitles.ass -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s mov_text outfile.mkv

or you can "burn them in" by rendering them into the video stream thusly:

ffmpeg -i inputvideofile.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -vf ass="inputsubtitlefile.ass" -c:a copy outputvideofile.mp4

So you can see it's not beyond the capabilities of a fairly simple shell script to do it.


I am on Premiere CC 2015, which has its own PluralEyes equivalent for synchronizing audio under the "Merge" function. (I think it was also on CC 2014 but I am not sure what version originated audio sync functionality.)

Select your two clips in your bin and merge them (it's under "Clip"). In the menu, under "Synchronize Point" choose "Audio" and make sure the "Track Channel" dropdown is set to a track that has audio on it. The Shogun material I was using had audio on track 3.


I think what you're looking for is to toggle the transparency grid.

You can do this by finding the checkerboard-looking icon in the toolbar below the viewer.


Are Mini DV and Digital 8 considered film?

Film is specifically a medium in which each frame is photographically exposed to capture the image.  It comes in a variety of formats, but the key property is that it must photographically capture the image through photosensitive film.

Magnetic media, regardless of being analog or digital, such as that used in MiniDV, Digital8, Hi-8 and even VHS tapes is not film.  It is tape.

Similarly, modern cameras now often go direct to disk, using either memory cards, hard drives or in rare cases, optical media to record to, thus avoiding the need for tapes which require running it from beginning to end.

The term filming is still often used when capturing video with these latter formats, however it does not make them film.  It just means that we reuse the common term even though the underlying technology has been replaced.  Technically it is video.


What's the best working format for video making?

The best format is using a temporal file of lower resolution.

Make a copy of your source material at half size, which will become 1/4 of the weight, then use some format that is compatible with your program and use it for the editing process, when it is ready, relink the videos to the original ones for the final render and done. Make some tests and see if the keyframes are working fine for small clips.

If you only want to change the source material to another format you are degrading your video.


After Effects 2020 shape layer path ignoring 3D orientation when used to parent a null?

The shape layer's path is in layer space. In other words the coordinates are relative to the layer, regardless of where the layer is in composition space. The contents of a layer are always at 0 on the z axis relative to that layer. So when you apply that path as the motion path to a layer in composition space, it will always move on the X/Y plane, at 0 on the z Axis.
To make the null layer use the same coordinate space as the shape layer, you can simply make it a child of the shape layer. Then the coordinates will be relative to its parent. If this is not possible, you could use the toWorld() layer space transform in an expression, thus:
thisComp.layer("shape Layer").toWorld(value);

and apply that to the position. What that does is take the position value and find out where that would be in the layer "shape layer", then give the value of where that is in comp coordinates.
There's a little gotcha, in that paths on shape layers are measured in comp space. Before copying the path to the null, you might want to set the anchor point of the shape layer to the center of the content, using ctrlalthome. Otherwise you can subtract its position from the value of the copied path:
thisComp.layer("Shape Layer 1").toWorld(value-thisComp.layer("Shape Layer 1").transform.position)


Upper field first is a form of interlacing. Interlacing divides each frame of video into two fields, with each field containing half of the scan lines of the frame. One field contains the first, third, fifth, and so on lines while the other frame contains the second, fourth, sixth, etc. lines. That alternation of lines is what makes it interlaced.

Different coding methodologies define whether the field that contains the first line of video is described first or second. Upper field first means that the field that contains the first line of video is sent first in a frame. Lower field first sends the field with the first line of video second in the frame.

Progressive video does not divide a frame into fields. Every line of video is described every time a frame changes.

The region and the specifications of the individual broadcaster will determine whether they want a progressive, top-first interlaced, or bottom-first interlaced vide. In general, HD video is always upper field first. SD video is usually lower field first, but it depends on the exact standard being used. These settings are true whether you are delivering to an over the air broadcaster, a cable service provider, or just playing your video on a TV.


.g64 is the extension of the proprietary video format from Genetec, a provider of IP video surveillance. Even 5 years after your question I have not found any library to open them or player to read them other than the official player. Not sure where to find it, part of their doc is behind a login wall. You might try http://downloadcenter.genetec.com/products/SecurityCenter/GenetecVideoPlayer/GenetecVideoPlayer.exe


Ok finally worked it out haha

Do not be a dummy like me and insert the memory stick upside down!

You will know when it is correctly inserted because a red light will come on indicating ready to record.


What is the point of the ethernet plug: SoundCraft Si Compact 32?

According their product page (download the PDF brochure) the ethernet port is for HiQnet connectivity, which is a protocol that allows for both control and monitoring of all connected devices.


How to split a large mkv file into parts with the *.srt subtitle file separated accordingly?

Add the subtitles to your large mkv file first. Then mkvmerge will split the file with the subtitles automatically.

To add the subtitles, the easiest is to use mkvmerge-GUI. It will also show you the command-line it uses. Or you can try something like this directly:

video="your_large_video.mkv"
st_en="english.srt"
st_fr="french.srt"
out="large_video-st_en_fr.mkv"

mkvmerge -o "$out" "$video" --language 0:eng "$st_en" --language 0:fre "$st_fr"

After that, splitting works fine and includes correct subtitles. I just tried it, and splitted by size and by duration. I'm not sure, but maybe the subtitle timing was preserved more exactly when splitting by duration (--split 1800s or similar instead of --split 500M).


If they are MOVs, the first thing I would do is find a computer with Quicktime correctly installed, to see whether they play on there.  If they do, it could be a codec issue on your machine.  Any Mac with Final Cut installed should do it.


If an image under a CC-SA license gets used in video - must video be CC-SA?

Yes, that's the core condition of the CC-ShareAlike license. Any derivative or work that contains the image has to be distributed under the same license for the entire video. Even if you create a long video with only one image that is licensed under CC-SA, you will have to use the same license. Using a different license would be a violation to the terms of use. This makes it complicated to use videos and images that were distributed under diverse licences, which is the main disadvantage of the CC-SA license.


Can ffmpeg overlays be combined into a single output stream?

scale2ref consumes two inputs and then emits them both.. In your command, the output of the reference input isn't provided a label, nor connected elsewhere, nor fed to NULL output, so ffmpeg automatically maps it as output.

Use

ffmpeg -i LOGO.mp4 -i VIDEO.mp4
       -filter_complex "[1][0]scale2ref=iw/2:-2[scaled][ref];
                        [ref][scaled]overlay=x=0:y=0[composite]"
       -map [composite]
       -y OUTPUT.mp4

The ref is now consumed by overlay and isn't left 'dangling' for ffmpeg to map.

As to your general query, just label the output of one overlay and feed it as the input to another, and you can combine them.


How to batch cut a folder of videos with a list of timestamps

You almost invented EDL files. It can be rendered with almost any NLE editor.

If you want cut out part of file, you can use ffmpeg:

     ffmpeg -ss 3:00 -i file.mp4 -t 1:01 -c copy file_00300_00401.mp4

As you can see, here -copy option, so cut points will be only on keyframes. No quality loss. If you want more precise, you must reencode whole video (and possible move -ss option after -i)

To achieve your text format/file naming style, you must write script in any language. Just parse input data and paste it as ffmpeg's options.


Creating series of instagram videos with the same templates in premieme pro

I would recommend creating a master template project which is setup with all of your folder hierarchies and the common assets you need to access for the edits.

You could save this project as "Master Project Template", and save it within it's own folder with all of the assets, or if the common assets you access take up a lot of disk space, you may want to have two folders- 1.) Master Project File, 2.) Assets. You'll want a 3rd folder where you have all of your unique project specific assets; 3.)Instagram Videos, with subfolders for each day, using a simple naming convention YYMMDD.

Regardless of whether it's one or two folders; to make sure you don't have issues linking project assets down the road if you migrate to a new system or drive; I'd set them up on a drive so they are one level above the root directory for that drive:

D:\Instagram Videos\Master Project Template\Master Project Template.prproj
D:\Instagram Videos\Master Project Assets\ (Here you can host all of your common assets in one folder or organized into multiple folders. I personally recommend if using multiple folders, to name your Premiere Pro Bins identically to the naming convention and folder structure so what's on the drive in your assets folder, can be found in the exact corresponding system folder).

Now that you've set up a "Master Project Template", you'll want to make your first "Project".

Copy the Master Project Folder, and paste it into the same directory. When prompted by Windows, select create a 2nd copy. Now you'll have a 2nd Copy with "copy(1)" added to the end of the folder name.

Now right click the "copy" and rename the folder.

Just my recommendation, but create a folder naming scheme either using a simple three or four digit numeric prefix "0001 - Instagram Videos", or use YYMMDD (Not DDMMYY), so you can sort the list of project folders by date correctly: "181013 - Instagram Videos".

You now have a new project folder which regardless if your assets are located in the master project folder, or in a sidecar folder (same root directory), which you can open and create your videos from.

You can choose how many videos per "master folder" you want to create, perhaps 1 folder per week, or month.

Final thought, for your master project "project", set up all of your timelines, including nested timelines, with all of your audio filters already applied, your adjustment layers already in place, etc, so you just have to drop your video assets in.

I would also recommend creating a simple TXT file in the master project folder named "README.txt" which you can write notes/add info on updates to the master project folder, such as adding assets, etc.

You'll want a 3rd folder in the root directory that contains your assets that are not common; organized likely by folder using a simple YYMMDD naming scheme. It would look like this:

D:\Instagram Videos\Online Assets\181013
D:\Instagram Videos\Online Assets\181014
D:\Instagram Videos\Online Assets\181015

This will keep everything organized, it will keep your Premiere Pro project file lightweight so you don't have performance issues, it will allow you to easily update the "Master" project file at any time, which for each time you copy for a new batch of videos, would thus include the new version with new added common assets.

Hope this helps.


How to do a "deep" / full copy of a nested sequence in Premiere Pro CS6? (i.e. constituent components are all copied)

I also have an idea, if your sequence and titles are too complicated you can save a copy of your project and then import a sequence from it to the main project.

It's best possible solution to copy title I've found with motion titles templates.


Automatically sync text to video for subtitles

What you're looking for might be something like ScriptSync. It used to be included with Avid's Media Composer. These days you need to purchase it separately.

http://www.avid.com/US/industries/workflow/Scriptbased-Editing


The blend filter requires both inputs to have the same resolution. You can use the scale2ref filter to resize the overlay.

ffmpeg -i dogs.mp4 -i red.jpg -filter_complex '[1:v][0:v]scale2ref[ckout][vid];[vid][ckout]blend=all_mode='multiply'[out]' -map '[out]' output.mp4


Let's try to make it work. :D

1) Place 'Alpha' layer above 'Ambient Occulsion',

2) Change setting in 'TrkMat' of the layer 'Ambient Occulusion' to 'Luma Matte'

if Luma Matte is not working, try with 'Alpha Matte' (I'm not sure about your alpha layer :)),

3) Precompose 'Alpha' + 'Ambient Occulsion' layers ctrl+shift+c,

4) Set precomposed layer to 'Multiply' Mode.

Done!


I just want my camera to focus on EVERYTHING when recording.. please help.

There are three answers to this question.

Number 1: use a much, much smaller sensor size.  Every factor of two smaller means you can use half the focal length and enjoy an effective 2 f-stops of depth of field at the same aperture value.  Thus 35mm to m43 means you can use a 25mm f2 lens and get the same depth of field as a 50mm f4 lens.  A 2/3" video camera (broadcast standard) means you can use a 12mm f2 lens and get the same depth of field as a 50mm f8 lens.  A 1/3" video camera (old prosumer standard) means you can use a 6mm f2 lens and get the same depth of field as a 50mm f16 lens.  And you still have the light-gathering benefit of an f2 lens.

Number 2: use a tilt-shift lens to move the plane of focus.  It could be that the "everything" you want can be achieved that way.  See this link for examples of photos and setups.

Number 3: be careful when composing images so that you never have objects closer to the lens than the closest in-focus point, and neither do you have objects further than the farthest in-focus point.  This requires you to actually have control over your scene.

But really, a FF35 camera is usually chosen precisely because it offers very shallow DOF.  You are fighting against nature to try to get a deep depth of field.


How is this basic 3D animation template created?

You answered your own question in your tags: use Animation in a 3D package like Blender.

But TBH your question is too broad to be answerable. To tell you how to make those 3D characters yourself we'd have to explain modelling, rigging, skinning lighting and rendering, not to mention the principles of animation. To give even a basic explanation of any one of those topics would be way beyond the scope of a Stack Exchange anser.

It's complex and takes a good while to master. If you want to do 3D animation, get a copy of Blender and start watching tutorials, reading books and practising. It's like any other skill set that has to be learned. There is no short cut... apart from buying templates.


You can brighten the footage, but it's doubtful you'll get anything out of the footage. Odds are, the areas you see as black are clipped which means they'll just turn into grey when you brighten the footage.


What does a phantom technician do on a production set and why would a director need one?

This was shot with a Phantom HD camera. It's a special high-speed digital camera that can shoot at up to 1,500 fps (which is what the creators say they were shooting at). So he's likely the tech who setup this camera rig.


On Windows, for free, your best (albeit complicated) bet might be Blender.

You could create a series of several plane meshes in the layout you wanted, in front of the camera. You'd then create a separate material for each of the planes, setting them to shadeless, and giving each a different video texture. You'd have to mix the audio separately (Windows Movie Maker, or Blender also has a built in video editor).

I'll note that using a 3D approach for something like this isn't ideal at all - a 2D compositing program like Adobe After Effects would be much better (Blender itself does have a 2D compositing component, but since it uses nodes instead of layers, it might actually be more difficult).


The VFX breakdown is right in the link in the video that you provide.
They break it down for you in the youtube video.

Its masking, feathering, desaturation or levels adjustment. If moving they also key it in 3D space so the images scale properly to objects in space.

Very well done piece.


How to cut a single clip in a Sequence into multiple clips for use in multiple Sequences in Premiere Pro

Here's the "Premiere" way to do it.  Create N sequences, one for each of the N speakers you want to create an output clip for.  Copy (by reference) the clip into each of the N sequences.  If you do this correctly, you will have N sequences and 1 clip in your project folder.

For each sequence, set the in and out points of the clip to bound the speaker of interest.  Name the sequence according to the speaker.  If you do this correctly, you will still have N sequences and 1 clip in your project folder.

Here's the magic: select all the sequences and hit "Export Media".  This will queue up the creation of N clips.  Each one will be exactly the speaker it should be, and the clip file names will be based on the sequence name (meaning something related to each speaker).

That is how to do it.


Little bit confused. The title of the question refers to workflow but then in the description you ask for advice on how to cut it together...

Might just do my best to answer both.

Workflow. You should shoot on your 60D mostly as that'll give you the better looking image. Use the point and shoot if you're doing anything that might compromise the safety of your gear, like skateboarding.
So you have your footage. Dump it onto the computer and convert it using MPEG Streamclip, I would recommend converting the footage to Apple ProRes 422. Import transcoded footage and audio from Zoom mic (if any) into preferred editing software. Edit it. Export to these parameters if you are uploading to the internet.

Interesting product. There are lots of techniques you could use to make a video interesting and it depends largely on the footage that you have. You haven't specified what style of travel video that you want to make and I won't sit here and explain all the different types (mainly because I don't know and secondly because it would take ages). But I will suggest two that stand out to me.

Think of it as a music video. Film things that look interesting, film the people that you meet (ask permission), film your feet – literally film anything that looks cool. You should of course film the landmarks if there are any. Get a large variety of shots: extreme long shots, mid shots, close ups, even macro if you can. In my experience, the more close ups you have the more interesting a video like this will be. And then, using the workflow I described earlier, cut it together. Pick a song that you think matches well with your footage and then cut to that. You won't have to worry about your audio if you choose this path as you'd just use the music and delete the camera's audio track in FCP.
Chat to camera... Pretty straight forward. Go somewhere quiet (and scenic if possible, but quiet is the main thing), set up your camera on a tripod, set up your mic and place it in the best position, hit record and chat away.

Hope that helps.


What parameters should I select to get a high quality voice .wav file?

A standard for WAV is 48K / 16 bit mono, or stereo if there's ambiance or presence you'd like to preserve. The last two parameters are a consequence of those choices and you can calculate them based on your selection. Then any compression you might apply afterward will have a good starting basis.

If all you're after is intelligibility, a lower sample rate may be just as good. 22K / 16 bit mono is good enough for many voice purposes. I personally wouldn't use a lower bit depth, but you can experiment with 8 bit to see if it's acceptable.


Premiere Pro: Curves for adjusting video effects and its keyframes?

You can toggle the display of the keyframe timeline by clicking the little arrowhead to the left of each individual effect in the Effect Controls panel. If you can't see the panel, you can open it from the Window menu. If you don't see any effects in that panel, make sure to select the correct clip from your current timeline.

Here's your image with the arrowhead encircled in red (in the top left):

For more information on setting smooth transitions using keyframes, check out my answer here.


video renders well on mac, but has bizarre effect on windows

Those horizontal lines you're seeing are what you would call Interlacing and it's usually done in an attempt to increase a video's frame rate without using more bandwidth (in other words, make it play smoother and take up less space).  You can easily get rid of this by running your video through a program like Handbrake and using their "Decomb" filter.

There are other, more advanced methods to clean this up as well.

I personally use Davinci Resolve and I've read that you can even do it in VLC Media Player, but I think handbrake is the quickest and easiest way to accomplish deinterlacing your video.


Premiere Pro: reducing/eliminating whiteboard specular glare

Add a lumetri colour effect to it. Then go to the curves. Click on the line quite near the top. Then click in the middle Then go right to the top and drag it down to reduce the brightness of the highlight. Then just experiment with the curves. This should help remove the glare because it makes it less bright.

Something like this


Auto split comp into separate render items?

There is a script called "rd_RenderLayers" from redefinery, maybe thats what you mean. It does exactly that, adding every layer to your render queue.

Unfortunately his website is on hiatus but the downloads still work, you can download the latest version here.


ffmpeg stops exporting images when using overlay

The final processed stream has to be cloned and mapped, so for the given command,

ffmpeg.exe -re -t 00:00:35.000 -i input.mp4 -i overlay.png -filter_complex "[0:v]scale=1200:720[scaled];[1:v]scale=150:-1[overl];[scaled][overl]overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:10,split=2[logo][preview];[preview]fps=4,scale=320x240[preview]" -map "[logo]" -map 0:a -c:a copy  -c:v libx264 -f mpegts udp://224.2.2.1:1234 -map "[preview]" -update 1 -y preview.jpg

(The issue corrected here has nothing to do with the updating of a single image).


How to use match group in Python to take a values and ignore comma mark

Instead of

            match = search(r"(\d*)\.avi$", f)
            if match:
                startframe = match.group(1)
                out = InsertSign(out, join(root, f), int(startframe))

use

            match = search(r"(\d+),(\d+)\.avi$", f)
            if match:
                startframe = match.group(1)
                endframe = match.group(2)
                out = InsertSign(out, join(root, f), int(startframe), int(endframe))


Injecting/embedding/adding/writing metadata to a .mp4 file so it's recognised as 360

Metadata is not the same as frame side data. FFmpeg tool currently cannot do this, you need to program own thing using available API.


Is there any way to find the video editing software or camera that created a video?

Different NLEs each seem to live in their own metadata world.  One common metadata element they all seem to preserve fairly well is timecode.  Almost all support a few common elements, such as REEL, SCENE, and SHOT.  But DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, and Final Cut Pro X each have metadata slots that are unique to them, even in cases where the metadata slot shares a common name.  MPEG, Quicktime, and other media formats do have slots for metadata, but nothing like the expansive and consistent world of EXIF.

In the pro video world, metadata is usually entered first via a slate, with the camera shooting the actual metadata at the start or end of a shot, and then what is now called the DIT (director of Imaging Technology) translate the slate data to metadata for the project.  Some digital slates actually create little databases so that at the end of the data, all the text the camera shot as video footage is also available to be uploaded to a (metadata) database.


How to merge video stream and two Stereo audio streams in 5.1 with a terminal command?

That depends on your video file format and possibly if you have a surround encoder.  Some file formats provide multiple audio channels that can be configured for different speakers, others rely on a Dolby encoding or similar to provide the speaker information in one audio stream.

Either use a file format that supports multiple independent audio tracks per speaker or use a Dolby (or some other system like MPEG Surround) surround encoder to encode the audio in to a single Dolby (or similar) stream that can be processed by a Dolby (or similar) receiver.

The encoding option would be the best one if you want to ensure compatibility with most players.  Encoders are available in most professional quality DVD/Bluray authoring software packages as well as for some better audio software packages.  You can alternately get a stand alone Dolby encoder, but licensing fees (1 time) for the encoder apply.


Rendering without quality loss in Kdenlive

To the command that kdenlive generates "acodec=aac ar..." add preset=slow. I'm not sure if kdenlive honors that but these presets are available for x264 in ffmpeg and avconf. They are good presets and are the same that you could choose from when you recorded your video (superfast in your case). Slow is generally a good option if you want to avoid visual quality loss.
If adding that line didn't work you can try to generate a script instead and add -preset slow after -vcodec but before the output file.
You probably want to delete the vb=%bitrate% bit, the preset will have its own value for that.

If you want to be really lossless in terms of video information you need to choose a lossless codec. I'm a bit puzzled that you have so few formats available. Maybe the "Show all profiles" checkbox gives you more options?
A recommendable codec for screen recordings would be QuickTime Animation or any other RLE based codec.
The Dirac codec from BBC is also a great lossless opensource codec, it can be found under the name libschroedinger in ffmpeg.


If you're asking whether you can use AE to increase the actual or apparent resolution of a low-res source, the answer is no. You can't create resolution where none exists. If you could, no one would ever spend money on hi-res cameras.

What you can do is 'sharpen' an image, which increases the contrast of edge detail and may increase apparent resolution a little bit. But this doesn't increase actual resolution; it actually reduces it slightly.


Re-encode with ffmpeg using libx265 - rawvideo

For files already encoded to AVI, you'll have to extract the video to a raw HEVC stream first:

ffmpeg -i in.avi -c copy -map 0:v -f hevc in.265

and then

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i in.265 -i in.avi -c copy -map 0:v -map 1:a -video_track_timescale 1k fixed.mp4

Replace the framerate value with the true rate of the video.

Encode new files to MP4 or MKV.

ffmpeg -i "$origFile" -map 0 -c copy -c:v libx265 -preset slow -crf 28 "newFile.mp4"


How to check video, AB test, on different screens: balancing colors, etc

The standard way to deal with this is to use color calibration.  Unfortunately, color accuracy on consumer devices tends to be all over the charts.  There is no way to guarantee that the color will be similar, even on multiple of the same model of device, or even on the same exact device over time.

Thus, the best practice is to setup a color calibrated environment that you can verify the content looks correct in.  You can then run your encodings for different profiles and compare them in an environment where you know the differences will show up clearly.  The results on end user devices may vary based on how good their screens actually are, but building to a standard high quality, calibrated display should produce the best overall outcome across devices.

If you want to get really advanced, you can also generate or obtain ICC profiles of the average for the device screen you want to display the video on.  This profile can then be applied to the video on a calibrated display to alter the colors to be similar to that produced by the device.  It still won't take in to account pixel density though.  If you want to know exactly what it will look like on a display, there is no substitute for actually sending it to that display since pixel layout and density, as well as the surface type and size, make a gigantic difference in the way the video looks.

Using the device itself is also helpful for ensuring that the video can decode and play smoothly within the constraints of the device.


Video Keywording, captioning and sorting software

Since you mention Adobe software, what about Prelude and Prelude Live Logger?  It's my understanding that these apps are tailored to ingest, logging, and metadata entry.


A quick google and the 3rd result is this article on how to write a product review...

Finding examples is easy, just do a youtube search or google "Canon 550d Video Review" or any other product event or service. Just add "video review" to the end.

I dont think you will find any specific tutorials or resources on how to produce review videos. Making good review videos comes from experience. Either because the producer has been educated in writing & marketing or because they have done it many times before and have worked out what 'works' and what doesnt. Just look at the reviews that are already out there  and model yourself off those.

Cost is simple: What equipment do you need?

Camera
Lights
Microphone
Editing Software (eg Final Cut)
Editing Hardware (eg Laptop)


It looks like you machine might just be too slow to live render the effects. The red bar on your timeline is an indicator of that. Try selecting the clip in the timeline after you add the scale keys, then from the menu bar choose Sequence > Render Selection. After that renders out, the red bar in the timeline should change to green, and you should be able to play the preview video.

If rendering each effect before preview isn't an option, or is just too slow for you, you could also try changing the playback resolution in the Program monitor. That's the small fly-out menu under the main preview area that currently says Full. You can change that to 1/2 or 1/4 and it can significantly improve the live render capability of your machine. Everything will look more pixelated during preview playback, but it won't affect the final exports.


Deinterlace by dropping even lines from command line

ffmpeg -i input -vf field,scale=123:456 output will do the trick, where 123:456 is your x:y frame dimensions for the output. The field filter just chucks away the fields it doesn't use. Documention on the field filter here. Note that you'll need extra stuff in the command to get good results - e.g. you'll probably want to specify codec details and so on.


Decreasing levels of other channels when voice channel comes in

"Ducking" is the canonical term for what you want, usually done with a compressor in the main program chain with the sidechain taken from your mic channel.

Audition 2018 has a auto ducking feature that may be of use, but really anything that lets you drop an audio compressor across the program bus and sidechain it to the mic input will work.


Codecs with allow fast backwards stepping frame by frame with mpv

As @Mulvya says it depends greatly on the GOP size, but you can insure that stepping is easy at the expense of file size, by using an 'all-I' codec like Motion JPEG. In such codecs every frame appears whole and entire so there is no dependence on previous or subsequent frames.


This may be useful:
https://www.illustrationhistory.org/essays/hanna-barbera-the-architects-of-saturday-morning

  For a standard Disney feature, the film would be projected at
  the standard 24 frames per second with each frame having different
  animation. Planned animation provided for fewer frames, so that
  instead of each frame having a new image, frames would be repeated two
  or three times, resulting in just twelve or eight different frames per
  second.

  This experimental approach is showcased in UPA’s most stylized
  cartoon, Gerald McBoing Boing, for which they won an Academy Award in
  1951. However, Hanna-Barbera adapted the technique out of necessity.


This YouTube tutorial explains how to do this:
After Effects Quick Tip - How to Add Auto Opacity To Layers and Footage

Add an expression to the layer's Opacity property by alt-clicking the stopwatch.
Paste this expression into the box:

fadeDuration = .5;
Math.min(linear(time,inPoint,inPoint + fadeDuration, 0, 100), linear(time,outPoint - fadeDuration,outPoint,100,0))

The layer will now fade in for half a second, and then fade out for half a second based on its in and out points.
If want to specify the length in frames instead of seconds, change the first line of the expression to be this:
fadeDuration = thisComp.frameDuration * 5;

Now the layer will fade in and fade out over a period of 5 frames.


What Animation techniques did Walt Disney Studios came up with?

I know Disney first make cartoon movie 60+ minutes (use public domain story) and created list of 12 principles of animation influence animation industry. But Disney Corp probably not first use these principles. 1914 Gertie Dinosaur animation use most principles already. Felix Cat cartoons from 1920s also use repeat background motion like Hanna Barbara, and use correct joint motion for characters instead hose style in later 1920s, animation cycles, and early 1930s (Felix Cat: Stone Age 1922). Fleischer Studio first use sound 1926, two years before Disney. Fleischer Studio also use real people with animation in the Out Of The Inkwell series (1918-29) and this series use limited animation method only redraw changing parts of characters (Hanna Barbara use this method from late 1950s).

Book Illusion Of Life tell about Disney animation invention and experiments with different animation effects (authors two Disney animators, maybe have bias). But I think Disney improve art quality and fluid motion in animation more than other company before.

Disney is probably first and best for cheat public domain (after take much from public domain) prevent their character become domain by buy politician in US Congress for extend their copyright (monopoly) two times.

Some modern methods at Disney Research (research paper):
https://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/


After Effects - EG Template: Of 2 keyframes I only want to change the 2nd in EG, help!

To use the keyframed value of a property in an expression, there is a value attribute. And properties also have the key() method to access their keys, as well as the numKeys attribute to find out how many keys the property has. Lastly, there's the global time attribute.

So now we've assembled the list of ingredients, here's how you could put it all together. This expression will use the keyframed value up to the last keyframe, and then hand over the reins to the result of an expression, in this case the value of the slider:

// link to your slider, or any calculated value:
var sliderVal = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
var lastKey = key(numKeys);
if (time <= lastKey.time){ // before the last keyframe
  // use the keyframe value before the last keyframe
  value;
} else {  // after the last keyframe
  // control using the sliders, or any expression
  sliderVal;
}

Of course this will jump from the keyframed value to the expression value instantly at the last keyframe. You can interpolate between the values by using one of the interpolation functions. So to interpolate between the keyframed value and the expression value between the second last keyframe and the last keyframe, you might use:

var sliderVal = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
var k2 = key(numKeys); //last key
var k1 = key(numKeys - 1); //second last key
// linear can take 5 arguments:
// time, start time, end time, start val, end val
// and interpolates between start val and end val
linear(time, k1.time, k2.time, value, sliderVal)

You could also take advantage of the ease(), easeIn() or easeOut() interpolation functions, which you can just substitue for linear().


How to take an object and pause it in a moving video?

In simple terms you split the video at the frame you want the objects to join up at, then also make a still image of the object at that frame (Layer 1 = video end of sequence, Layer 2 = still image Layer 3 = video beginning of sequence). If the camera is moving you will have to track the still object to match Layer 3. So the still image gets closer to the moving object as Video/Layer 3 plays, then when the objects join video/layer 1 cuts in and continues.


Video editing objects from black and white to colour

This will probably require a technique called rotoscoping, which involves painting a mask on each frame.  You would need to have two layers of video, one which is desaturated (to make the image black and white) and one which is full color.  You would then need to make a mask (a layer which effectively makes a hole in the black and white layer so that the color layer can be seen).  Since the mask may change based on camera movement and actors moving around the scene, you have to update the mask periodically (possibly every frame).

You can simplify the process quite a bit if the objects are stationary in the scene and the camera is stationary on a tripod.  You could also try using object tracking to maintain the placement of the mask roughly, but to get a satisfactory result, you will probably still need some rotoscoping.

After Effects can accomplish what you are looking for.  Any tutorials on rotoscoping and masking in AE would work to demonstrate the finer points of what tools to use to accomplish it.


Premiere Pro PC timeline only plays for a few frames and then no Audio after installing Miraizon DNxHD / ProRes Codec

According to Miraizon support this is a peculiarity in Premiere Pro handling of ProRes that causes it to interact "very inefficiently" with the the codec. There is an update forthcoming but until then they suggested this as a work-around:
Move the AppleProResDecoder.qtx from the /Quicktime/QTSystem/ folder to a temp folder.

I still get some inconsistencies with various files under these circumstances such as "Media Pending" messages that aren't resolved and spotty playback.
This is currently working for me:
For editing:
Leave the AppleProResDecoder.qtx in /Quicktime/QTSystem/ and move the MProResCodec.qtx from the /Quicktime/QTComponents/ folder to a temp folder. Restart PPro.
When I'm ready to export my ProRes:
Then when I'm ready to export to ProRes, I move the MProResCodec.qtx back to the /Quicktime/QTComponents/ folder and move the AppleProResDecoder.qtx into the temp folder.
Restart PPro.


What settings should I use when recording my child's play in a dark theater?

I think if you leave the settings on auto it should do the job just fine. Especially if the reviews say it performs well in low-light, I don't think you'll have a problem with exposure. Personally, I've never used that camera, so I guess I can't say for sure.

1080P vs. 1080i is just progressive scan and interlaced scan. I won't try to explain the differences fully – if you want to read up on it, have a look at this site. There are pros and cons for using both, but for your purposes I would suggest going 1080P, that way you won't have to worry about de-interlacing your footage.

Not sure what they mean by Digital Cinema Mode, but don't shoot 24fps. That's mainly for shooting film. Shoot 25fps (I'm assuming you live in PAL world?) if you're in NTSC land, shoot 29.97fps (or 30fps).


Scaling videos of variable size to a fixed aspect ratio

Use

ffmpeg -i "input.mov" -vf
          "scale='if(gt(a*sar,16/9),640,360*iw*sar/ih)':'if(gt(a*sar,16/9),640*ih/iw/sar,360)',
          pad=640:360:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2,setsar=1"
       -vcodec libx264 -b:v 1600k -bufsize:v 1600k -r 30000/1001 output.mp4

The scale filters use the conditional if(a,b,c) expression i.e. if a then b else c. I check if the video is wider than 16:9. If yes, I scale the width to 640 and scale height to preserve proportion. If not, I scale height to 360, and keep width proportional. Then the result is padded out to 640x360. The setsar is used to make sure ffmpeg registers the video as square-pixel.


Import Audio Markers or Cues to Audition CS5.5

And as I spent the last two days hunting down a solution, I'll share it with you right away:

tl;dr: Use this cross platform & open source tool by the US Government (ya, really) to stick XMP Metadata in the WAV File.
http://bwfmetaedit.sourceforge.net/

WAV Files support the "cue " chunk, and this chunk is written by Audition, but I couldn't make it read from this chunk, and related chunks containing the cue names.

But Audition also writes the XMP Metadata, including a somewhat redundant copy of the Cue chunk. And it will also read it back.

So, by generating an XMP file containing the cue information, and sticking it in the XMP chunk of a WAV file, you can import that data to Audition.

For example:

<?xpacket begin="" id="W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d"?>
<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c003 61.141987, 2011/02/22-12:03:51        ">
   <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
      <rdf:Description rdf:about=""
            xmlns:xmpDM="http://ns.adobe.com/xmp/1.0/DynamicMedia/">
         <xmpDM:Tracks>
            <rdf:Bag>
               <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
                  <xmpDM:trackName>CuePoint Markers</xmpDM:trackName>
                  <xmpDM:trackType>Cue</xmpDM:trackType>
                  <xmpDM:frameRate>f254016000000</xmpDM:frameRate>
                  <xmpDM:markers>
                     <rdf:Seq>
                        <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
                           <xmpDM:startTime>18645250f44100</xmpDM:startTime>
                           <xmpDM:name>Marker 01</xmpDM:name>
                        </rdf:li>
                        <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
                           <xmpDM:startTime>69088263f44100</xmpDM:startTime>
                           <xmpDM:name>Marker 02</xmpDM:name>
                        </rdf:li>
                     </rdf:Seq>
                  </xmpDM:markers>
               </rdf:li>
            </rdf:Bag>
         </xmpDM:Tracks>
      </rdf:Description>
      <rdf:Description rdf:about=""
            xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
         <dc:format>audio/x-wav</dc:format>
      </rdf:Description>
   </rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta>

The format should be self explanatory.

If you want to write your own tool to automate this, follow the XMP specs from Adobe concerning WAV files and the XMP chunk, which, ironically is named backwards:

  The XMP in […] WAV is in a chunk with the ID "_PMX", encoded as UTF-8.
  Note that the ID is backwards, due to a bug in the initial
  implementation concerning processor byte order.

Here's an iOS App that will generate Audition-compatible XMP files:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xmp-marker/id525322095?ls=1&mt=8


48 to 25 should be better because you have more frame information to interpolate, though the contents of the clips could also matter.  If all the 48 fps clips are high speed motion while the 25 is relatively static shots, then it will probably interpolate better.

The key is that frames are going to have to be guessed at and the less time that passed from the last frame that can be used for the guess, the better off you will be.  Since 48 frames much closer to the correct timings it should generally get a better result.

Ultimately though, I'd suggest trying both interpolations and see which looks better to you.  While what I explained is a good general rule, sometimes the content of the clips makes weird things happen and there's no replacement for trying it out to see.


You need your own stream server.  The problem with services like YouTube and Twitch.TV is that your stream has to go through a lot of processing and content distribution on their end before it goes out to viewers.  That processing takes time and results in lag.  You can send the exact same stream to your own stream server and have it directly related with far FAR less delay (sub-second to a couple seconds), but are limited to the capabilities of your stream server to meet demand.

I've only done this kind of thing with Windows Expression Encoder in the past using a Windows Media Streaming server which is pretty easy to use, but only works on WMV files and thus isn't really all that good of a modern solution for h.264 video in cross platform streams.  RED5 should theoretically be capable of relaying a stream for you and you could either set it up locally or preferably throw it up on a VPS somewhere that can do the relaying for you (as 16mbit will get consumed really fast sending a 4.5mbps stream to multiple people).

Streaming is unfortunately not particularly easy to get setup and going for yourself though and that is a big part of why services that simplify it, like Youtube and Twitch.TV, are so popular despite their massive lag times.


Adobe Premiere Video Size with static image

If you've got your sound file "input.wav" and your image "input.png" ffmpeg can make the movie without any need to go through an editor. FFMPEG is available for  free download for your favourite OS. If you're a'feared of the command line, duckduckgo for a GUI front end, there are lots out there.

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i input.png -i input.wav -shortest -pix_fmt yuv420p -tune "stillimage" -r 1 output.mp4

to break it down:

the ffmpeg application is controlled by specifying the options and values thus: -option value. Note the dash before the option. Some options don't have values, like the -shortest option (see below). Sometimes they are specified to apply to a particular stream, like -r:v sets the frame rate for the video stream, or -c:a sets the codec for the audio stream.
-loop will repeat the png frame forever, you specify it before the input so that fffmpeg knows you mean loop the input, not the output.
-i input.png means input, then you specify the path to your image. Easiest way to get the path is to drag the file into the terminal window. Pretty much any image format under the sun will work
-i input.wav is the sound, once again, pretty much any sound file will work, and you can get a correctly escaped path by dragginating it.
-shortest stops encoding when the shortest input ends—since the image is looped, and therefore infinitely long, it will literally go on encoding until your hard drive is full (or you hit q or ctrlc) if you neglect to add this
-pix_fmt yuv420p makes sure you're using 4:2:0 colour, as most image formats will be 4:4:4, so that will save some space
-tune "stillimage" tells the encoder (by default the fabulous x.264 encoder, which is way better than anything Adobe use) to optimise its settings for still images. There are a few other tunings like "film" and "animation", they save you having to understand all the arcane tweaks that you can do to get the most out of your encode.
-r 1 sets the fram rate to 1 fps for the video. You could perhaps go lower, I'm not sure if it would cause problems.
output.mp4 is the name of your output file. FFMPEG recognises the extension and automatically uses the right encoder and multiplexer, so you don't need to know what the difference between encoding and multiplexing even is. Since this isn't an option or value there is no - dash at the start.


How to add a title with a transparent background in iMovie?

drag the title over the clip you want to lay it over in the title track. the background in the title view is already transparent, defaulting to black if you do not lay it over a clip.


lavfi virtual device - the same parameters for ffmpeg and ffplay

The ffmpeg tool can work with multiple inputs and outputs so the parser looks for -i to demarcate input options. The lavfi device will read the graph from the input argument

Use

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i "testsrc2=d=1[out0];sine=d=1[out1]" test.mp4


What are the features you look for in an SLR when you mainly want it to shoot video

You will hear many responses, but let me make one point very clear.  If you are using an HDSLR for video, your primary concern will be your ability to focus or autofocus.  If we are using a true SLR - i.e. a camera with a reflex mirror, you will either need a loupe attachment or an attached LCD.

Here's the kicker - the 5DII, darling of the indie movie crowd, with the largest, highest res sensor in this class, only provides SD video output while recording.  Dear Lord, let me tell you, nailing focus on a 105mm at f/2 at 4 feet with a slide will drive you nuts.
I had a marking wheel.  I had Magic Lantern and peaking.  I had an external HD LCD.  I could not see what I was doing.  I did not have what I needed there: a 2nd pair of hands.

Oh, you saw House M.D. with really cool close up focus tricks?  That was done with a marking wheel and consistent focusing cinema primes, and a 2nd AC whose job it is just to hit the marks on cue.  Alternatively, it was a locked down shot with a lot of lighting, a decent f/stop for depth of field, and little or no focus adjustment or movement.  In this respect, the added DOF of a 7D and its ability to output HD video makes it a much easier camera to control.

SO: Much of this will depend on the style or intent of the video.  Autofocus may be acceptable for ENG or documentary work.  It probably will not be for dramatic work.  You need to be clearer about what you want to do.

You may be better off with a mirrorless camera - I love shooting with my GH1, far more than my 5DII - except for the crop factor.  We all love the output of the 5DII, its 1080p with full frame, but it handles like a schoolbus at Nürburgring.  Additionally, these cameras are typically better for video auto focus, but that is changing.  Still, the NEX series is a real price performance killer for many video and photo uses.

Most other issues are of less consequence.  If the video quality matches your expectations, don't worry.  Go to Vimeo to find some raw footage samples. Don't expect to edit video like your photos though.  Footage from these things is more like medium quality low res JPG than full RAW.

One thing I would tell you to completely ignore is audio.  Many make a big deal about manual audio levels and recording fidelity.  If sound matters at all, use 2nd system audio; on board sound should be used for video+audio sync and nothing more.  Seriously - a $200 recorder will do better than any camera not using XLR jack input.  If you're doing drama, you need to mic the actors and/or have booms anyway - and you don't run those lines into the camera.

If you refine the question, I might be able to point out a specific issue to watch out for or recommend a camera.

Finally - no matter what you do, learn how to light (and gel) for consistent color grading.  I cannot stress that enough.


Add multiple mp3 files to an mp4 file with ffmpeg

Use

-i /path/to/mp4File
-i /path/to/soundmp3File1
-i path/to/soundmp3File2
-map 0 -map 1:a -map 2:a
-codec copy -shortest path/to/output/fileWithSounds

FFmpeg will automatically select one video and one audio stream from among all the inputs. -map options are required to include all streams.


How can I put a VP9 video stream into a QuickTime/MOV container?

For my use case, it was enough to do:

ffmpeg -i file-with-vp9-video-and-opus-audio.webm -f mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec aac_at test.mov

This is cheating, really. The output isn't actually a MOV file, but rather an mp4, which uses a similar but not identical structure. Even so, it successfully coerced the program I'm using into opening the file.
Notably, outputting an mp4 and changing the file extension does not work, so the above command is producing output that's somehow different from an actual mp4. I obviously don't understand all the intricacies of how these containers work, but it was enough for today!


After Effects: Detect if Lines are Intersecting

The fifth null doesn't wander randomly, it just extends the red and blue lines off beyond their ends. You need to detect whether the intersection point is on the segment between the start and end nulls for each line.

You can test for it with this rather horrifying conditional: basically it tests to see if the intersection is outside the bounds of each point's x then y coordinates.

Replace the last line of your expression with this:

if ((x > p1[0] && x > p2[0])||(x > p3[0] && x > p4[0])||(x < p1[0] && x < p2[0])||(x < p3[0] && x < p4[0])||(y > p1[1] && y > p2[1])||(y > p3[1] && y > p4[1])||(y < p1[1] && y < p2[1])||(y < p3[1] && y < p4[1])){
    value
}else{
    [x,y]
}

Another version, does the same thing but with nice readable code, and a re-useable function:

function outsideBounds(samplePt, p1, p2){
  if (samplePt[0] > Math.max(p1[0], p2[0])) {return true}
  if (samplePt[1] > Math.max(p1[1], p2[1])) {return true}
  if (samplePt[0] < Math.min(p1[0], p2[0])) {return true}
  if (samplePt[1] < Math.min(p1[1], p2[1])) {return true}
  return false
}

if (outsideBounds([x,y], p1, p2)||outsideBounds([x,y], p3, p4)){
    value
}else{
    [x,y]
}


How to 2-pass h264 with CRF and maximum bitrate with ffmpeg?

What's the correct way to generate the highest quality possible file
  inside a bitrate constraint using ffmpeg with x264?

There is no "correct" way. This is still an evolving area of research, and about half the articles you have read on the subject are more marketing that they are science. The "correct" way may also be different for every video. Netflix for example just encodes the video a couple dozen ways, and keeps the one it thinks is best and throws the rest away.

The closest thing to a "best" single answer, would be 2 pass placebo capped CRF.


What is the difference between lossless and lossy formats?

If you imagine you have a video signal, and you want to capture all of it.. Let's say it is 1920x1080 at 25fps. You can store all the information about every pixel at full colour depth on every frame.  This would be lossless - you could full recreate the signal upon playback, and it would be identical to the original that you captured.
The downside of this process is that the files would be extremely large, and you may require relatively powerful hardware to successfully playback the signal successfully without dropping any frames.
So you may compress the signal or file instead in a number of different ways:  You might look at each frame, and try to spot areas where there isn't much detail (such as in an out-of-foucus background).  Instead of storing every pixel in this area of the frame, you could say "these twenty pixels are all about the same shade of blue).  The frame you have stored would take up less space on your computer, but when you come to recreate the frame upon playback, it would no longer be identical to the original.
Now you could also do this over time - this is called inter-frame compression.  So you can look at a number of frames over time, and spot where there is little variation in the image - and only record information where there is a significant change.
All of this involves working from a model of "perception" - what can the eye-brain combination see?  How clearly can it tell when something has been data reduced?
Lossy formats can store the same video at much smaller file sizes.  Or - another way to look at it - with a given amount of bandwidth, you can transmit a much higher quality video if it is compressed than if it was transmitted as a lossless format.
Recreating video from a lossy format also has performance overheads. So for a given system, you may find a codec that plays back well on one system performs very badly on another.
In general, most video files delivered on the internet to consumers are lossy.  This is for the reason mentioned earlier - you can deliver a perceptably "better" looking file using a lossy codec faster, than you could if the file was lossless.  So final deliveries to website such as YouTube etc are usually in a lossy format such as h264.
During the production process, this is not the case. If your camera can export it, and you have a fast enough computer, with enough storage space, you may want to use lossless formats for editing, or at least formats which don't use any inter-frame compression.  This is so that your computer doesn't need to "rebuild" frames that don't exist when you are scrubbing through your edit.  Each frame in a format like ProRes is fully described, even though there is still some data compression in the way the colour of each pixel is described.
Lossless and lossy formats both have their place. They're both useful tools when used in the right part of the production process.


Why this font layouts differently between AE and Microsoft Word?

This looks like you have the Faux Italic option activated. You can turn that option on and off using the switch at the bottom of the Character panel. Here's a screenshot of that panel with Faux Italic turned on.

You can use that option to simulate an italic (slanted) version of a font that doesn't come in that style. It's generally a bad idea to use this option, as it is subpar to an actual italic font style. The difference is that the italic style variant of a font-family is specifically designed for that purpose and differs from the regular style in more ways than just being slanted. The Faux Italics option merely distorts the individual characters, which can lead to unwanted artifacts such as illegible characters, altered grey values and aliasing.

Another possible cause of your distortion problem is any sort of distortion effect that is applied to the text layer or a superordinate adjustment layer, but I find that unlikely.


Why reencode MP4 to MOV for "easy post processing"?

On this page author reencodes MP4 from GoPro to MOV for "easy post processing". Why the processing becomes easier after that?

The author provides no explanation and does not go into any detail of what he means by "post processing". What we know:

The author's ffmpeg command is using the encoder mpeg4 which will output MPEG-4 Part 2 video (like the old Xvid video).
The format of the GoPro video is probably H.264.

We must assume that the author believes H.264 is slower to decode than MPEG-4 Part 2 video, but that is not necessarily true. Or perhaps he believes that MOV container has some advantage over MP4 container when used with these formats; I can't guess what the supposed advantages would be since the containers are so similar.

  The author also uses -sameq flag which is gone from ffmpeg without the explanation about what it did for H.264 blocks.

-sameq does not mean "same quality" (1)(2). The author's prodigious use of -sameq indicates that he doesn't really know what he is doing.

For H.264 specifically, when this option was still around (ages ago) it should have never been used when outputting H.264 because the option was designed for the "MPEG" quantizer scale which is not used by x264. Also, this option may have been ignored completely by libx264 at some time, but I can't recall exact details.


Good software for a simple, slide-show style video presentation?

So, I ended up using Prezi to run a presentation and camtasia studio to record it and render it to the video file I needed. Both were 30 day free trials, so that worked out nicely.

I put all the audio in Prezi (It lets you add background music for the whole presentation as well as voice overs on a slide-by-slide basis) but I could have just easily have done it in camtasia.

I needed the voice overs for timing in the Prezi, which is why I did it that way, but there's nothing stopping you from just putting them in anyway, and removing the sound when it gets to camtasia, and putting them in as separate tracks. You'd probably have better control of volume, etc, that way.


How to force ffmpeg to insert keyframe at first frame when downsampling a framerate of a video with x264 vcodec

To force a keyframe at the 00:00:00.000 time code, you should try using the following flag:

-force_key_frames 00:00:00.000


You have to feed all inputs to the concat filter, and set the correct number of inputs in n. FFmpeg input index starts from 0. So the fifth input has an index of 4 and would be fed as [4] in the concat filter.

ffmpeg -i body.mp3
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 16.368 -i frames/000000.PNG
    -i 1.mp4
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 3.959 -i frames/100100.PNG
    -i 2.mp4
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 6.574 -i frames/200100.PNG
    -i 3.mp4
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 5.134 -i frames/300100.PNG
    -i 4.mp4
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 4.559 -i frames/400100.PNG
    -i 5.mp4
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 5.351 -i frames/500100.PNG
    -i 6.mp4
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 4.390 -i frames/600100.PNG
    -i 7.mp4
    -framerate 60 -loop 1 -t 8.950 -i frames/700100.PNG
-filter_complex "[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]concat=n=15:v=1:a=0[v]"
-map "[v]" -map 0:a -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4


Faster deinterlacing with ffmpeg and yadif

Yes, you have the right idea.  If stib's suggestion of making multiple outputs in parallel with the same ffmpeg commandline doesn't quite do the trick, then use a temp file to hold a lossless copy of the output of any slow filtering:

ffmpeg -i src.mkv -vf yadif=3:1,mcdeint=2:1 -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -qp 0 deinterlaced.mkv

(never use ultrafast except with lossless, it's WAY worse than superfast -x264-params cabac=0, and not much faster.)  CABAC takes most of the CPU time at lossless bitrates, but it does save 15% bitrate vs. CAVLC.  If you have a ton of scratch space to work with, you could use an uncompressed output file.  Lossless x264 is about as fast to decode as ffvhuff, if not faster, but half the file size.  I think it's your best bet for scratch files (pretty good CPU usage, ASM-optimized decoders, and one of the best as far as compression ratio).  Simpler codecs like ffvhuff might have a place if you need to frame-step backwards without taking seconds per frame, or you could just lower keyint in x264.

Then do whatever you normally do, but with deinterlaced.mkv as your source.

I think I remember reading about someone having added support to x264 for making multiple encodes at different bitrates at the same time.  So motion-search, frame-type decision, and a bunch of other analysis only has to be done once.  I'm not sure if that was just for google's internal use, and it never got merged, or what.  Neither the vanilla x264 cli frontend, nor the ffmpeg libx264 wrapper, have options to activate a feature like this.  I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that in x264 --fullhelp output at some point.

If you have to do a lot of encoding, it'd be worth searching around to see if there's any way to get your hands on a publicly available implementation of this.

This is different from having ffmpeg feed the decoded/filtered video to multiple instances of libx264 in parallel, since each instance would still need to do all the analysis independently.

If you do use stib's suggestion of multiple outputs from the same ffmpeg, reduce x264's number of threads.  By default, each separate output file will auto-detect the number of CPUs in the whole machine, so you'll have 6 times the number of worker threads needed to saturate your CPU cores.  Maybe use 2 or 3 threads for the HD outputs, and single-threaded for the lower-rez outputs, since you want to balance things so all your available CPU time gets used, without having more threads than needed causing extra context-switching overhead.

For HD video with a lot of reference frames, each libx264 instance would take a good chunk of RAM, too.  Reducing thread count doesn't help with this much, since all the threads are reading the same data.

6 instances of libx264 at the same time, instead of multiple threads from the same libx264, will be competing for memory bandwidth / cache space.  They'll each have their own copy of the frames, instead of getting cache hits from each other.  This might or might not be an issue on your hardware.  If this or the RAM-size is an issue, use a temp file and do 3 outputs from one run, and 3 outputs from the next.

yadif (and mcdeint) are not multithreaded.

Or you could deinterlace and output to lossless + some of your desired output rezzes, then generate the rest of your rezzes in another pass of the lossless file.  If you don't have multiple videos queued up to process, this would let you pipeline things to get max use out of all your cores while still not doing all the encodes at once.

If you do have multiple videos to process, you could have a video deinterlacing while you encode another, if you think setting that up is simpler than multiple outputs + lossless from the ffmpeg that runs the deinterlace.  Run the encodes with nice -19 or something, so they don't take CPU away from the ffmpeg process doing the deinterlace.


FFMPEG: Make video with non-constant framerate from image filenames

The below answer was provided as a comment on the question by Gyan. I've reposted it as an answer so this question can be marked as solved.

  The image2 reader in ffmpeg can assign timestamps based on the modification time of the file, with nanosecond precision. Not possible on Win, AFAICT. So, on a linux box, you can parse the filename and generate a timestamp and touch the mtime of the file. The absolute timestamps don't matter, just need to make sure the deltas in the mtimes correspond to the desired deltas. Then rename or symlink the images to form a smooth numbered sequence. Once done, read as follows: ffmpeg -f image2 -ts_from_file 2 -i images%d.jpg -vf minterpolate=... – Gyan

This worked for me! I was able to use the touch -d command to set the timestamp on each file based on the filename, then use ffmpeg -f image2 -ts_from_file 2 -i %d.png out.mp4 to create the video. Interpolation ended up being time-prohibitive, but shouldn't really be necessary in my final video.


How to avoid sluggish UI in FCPX - more CPU, GPU, RAM or what?

Your hardware is NOT underpowered. I can run FCPX on a old MacBook Air using proxy media, with only 4GB if memory. That machine is much slower than yours. So it's not the MacBook that's the problem.

Have you tried to copy your media to a local drive just to see if you have issues with your raid system?

Another thing to check is running the Activity Monitor utility and see if your CPU is busy when you get the beach ball.

Before we know why you are having these issues it's hard to give a recommendation on what parts to upgrade.


This camera can't shoot RAW for still, not talking about video. And according to the specifications this camera can shoot 640x480x30 which is not very much by contemporary measures.

For shooting RAW video you should jump to much higher class cameras.

About DSLRs I found on this site sample table with cheapest DSLRs for RAW video:


Dash, Hls and pure Media Source Extension chunkless options

what you are calling inline fragmented videos are just the chunks concatenated into one file, The manifest then records the start position and length of the chunk. The "billions of chunks" tend to be more performant on a CDN.


You didn't specify keyboard, but sometimes it can be useful to switch USB along with the VGA signal. For this you'd want a KVM.


No. The video can be slowed down, but frames from an inter-coded codec stream (like H.264) can't be dropped without re-encoding.

Update:

The command below produces a file that plays in Potplayer and ffplay but not in VLC. It works for me on MP4s, Should work on MOVs. Doesn't work with MKV (you should be able to remux to MOV/MP4 and execute).

ffmpeg -discard nokey -i input.mp4 -c copy -vsync 0 I-only.mp4

Timestamps are retained. So each I-frame shows as a freeze frame till it's time for the next one. There may be a way to make this playable in VLC, but I'll try when I have more time.


Recorded video changes dimensions while play

Windows Media Player by default will re-size the video to fit the screen.  To get it back down to the actual video resolution you will need to press F11 to exit full screen mode.

If it is still not the correct size right click on the video and select 100% from the Video sub menu.

As for preventing the video player from resizing the video, I don't think it is possible.

(These instructions are for WMP 12, but should be similar to previous versions)


What is the best way to record from a single fixed camera?

There isn't really a good answer to that.  There isn't a whole lot you can do with a fixed shot and making adjustments on a live shot is always a danger of being distracting, even when controlling it by hand as an experienced operator.  Making adjustments via a Pan Tilt Unit while the camera is live is going to be anything but smooth and will be very distracting.

I'd recommend either recording from both to edit in post or picking up one of the Black Magic Studio ATEM's (under $1000 HD video switcher with built in H264 encoding).


Proper Microphone for Indoor Use & Filter out Ambient Noise

My two suggestions are:

Use a lav mic and don't worry too much about a small mic being visible.  Training videos don't have to look like Downton Abbey.
Use a shotgun mic, but also use an acoustic absorber behind the talent.  It is true that all the ambient noise that comes through the walls will bounce around the room, and if you don't have an absorber behind the talent, the shotgun will "see" the echoes of the ambient noise coming from behind the talent just as much as it "sees" them coming from everywhere else.  But if you can deaden the back wall, the shotgun will "see" a quiet wall with talent in front of it and can filter the noises coming from everywhere else.  The closer you can get the shotgun to the talent (using a boom) the better.