With Adobe you can render most things through Adobe Media Encoder. AME has the ability to render one project file as different formats and you can actually create somewhat of a list and it will treat it as a queue.


Adding image to a video file using ffmpeg

According to Ogg specifications you can take two Ogg files and simply concatenate them together, so you can encode that single image as a single frame Ogg and then do the concatenation however you do that in your Operating System (you didn't state which one).

Unfortunately, while this is completely allowed by the standard, many players will have hard time playing such a file. Let's say you have two files that you concatenate, VLC, for example, will restart the time progress when it will get to the beginning of the second one, making it very difficult to control the position in the video. And some other players may completely freak out when they see that the file continues after it should have ended.

On GNU/Linux there is a oggCat inside libogg package, but i've had mixed success with it... sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. And to the best of my knowledge it's written in C++, so you won't be able to directly use the code from it anyhow, but it may give you clues of how to make it work.


Apple's Motion has a wide variety of useful effects for this sort of thing. It's not clear which iMovie filter you were using (a built-in one, or a 3rd party one?), but Motion offers a Channel Mixer filter, and includes a Levels filter which can work on individual channels. (You can see the docs for Color Correction Filters here.) In addition, Motion also supports 3rd party effects, and there are a ton of them that could do what you need. (It's hard to give exact details without more info from you about what you need, though.)


Generate travelleng matte from a nearly-white bright background?

The problem that you're going to have with this is that the colour of the screen is too similar to colours in the foreground. If you look at the levels on the highlighted part of the drummer's face they're very similar to the levels on the edges of the screen, and a similar colour, same for the drum skins and the pattern on his shirt. I had a go in AE with no success using keylight, colour range key and even extract, but nothing works. So a clean matte is going to involve lots of work rotoscoping.

One thing you might get away with, depending on your background content is to put it below the original layer, and set the original layer's transfer mode to darken. If your background layer is darker than the foreground it will show through, so as long as it's darker than the screen but lighter than the performers it will composite ok. You might help things along with some masks on the performer's faces and the other light areas, and you may get a bit of blending, but it might be good enough, without spending years roto-ing.


How to encode a video for the iPhone with Handbrake

Based on the link given in this answer on stackoverflow I will try to explain how to encode a video in an iPhone friendly format.

The steps below are carried out on a Mac, but the windows version of Handbrake should be similar.

Open Handbrake.
Go to File -> Open Source and browse to your video.
Choose MP4 File as container.
Input the settings shown below for the respective tabs:

  Picture tab:

  Keep aspect ratio - check
  Width - 480 (set to 960 if encoding for the iPhone 4)
  Anamorphic - None
  Cropping - Automatic

  Video tab:

  Codec - H.264
  Video quality - RF = 21
  Constant framerate - 30

  Audio tab:

  Codec - AAC
  Bitrate - 128
  Sample rate - 44.1

  Advanced tab:

  Add the following text in the textbox labeled Current x264 Advanced Options String: if you're encoding for a pre iPhone 4 device:

  cabac=0:ref=2:me=umh:bframes=0:weightp=0:subq=6:trellis=0:8x8dct=0:level=3

  If it's an iPhone 4 or higher the text should be:

  level=4.1

The Advanced tab should look like this (for the iPhone 3 encode):

Here's a MediaFire link to the converted video for iPhones before the 4:

http://www.mediafire.com/?tlyzcg1hyygq8zf


Set display time of individual frames in FFmpeg

It took me quite a while of Googling and trial-and-error but I finally figured out how to actually do this. Thanks to Gyan for pointing me in the right direction.

I tried to do more of the process as one-liners but it always turned into a non-functional, undebuggable mess. If you think you could script this, please do so, test it, and then post it as a new answer.

Print pkt_duration_time line and save it into a file:

ffprobe -show_frames input.gif | grep pkt_duration_time= >frames.txt

Modify the line to the format that FFmpeg's concat filter requires:

sed 's/pkt_duration_time=/duration /g' frametimes.txt >frametimes.txt

Print a list of your input files (frames) located in folder/ and modify the list to be the format FFmpeg's concat filter requires:

ls --quoting-style=shell folder/ >filenames.txt && sed -i -e 's/^/file /' filenames.txt

Combine your frame-time file and filenames file to a concat file that FFmpeg accepts:

paste -d \\n filenames.txt frametimes.txt > folder/concatfile.txt

We saved the concat file to where the input files are located because otherwise FFmpeg won't accept it. One more thing before we can encode the video: the data for the last frame needs to be present in the concat file twice for some reason. I don't have a CLI for that so just copy-paste it manually.

Now we can use FFmpeg to turn the image files to an animated video with correct frame times:

cd folder/

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i concatfile.txt -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -cpu-used 0 -tile-columns 2 -row-mt 1 -lag-in-frames 25 -threads 16 -crf 35 ../output.webm

The -safe 0 switch is required because otherwise FFmpeg complains about unsafe file names. At least it did in my case, possibly because the file names contained square brackets.
The -pix_fmt yuv420p ensures the correct color space is used. If you omit this, a color space that isn't standard for web video will be used and in the case of VP9 the resulting file will use Profile 1 which doesn't have as wide hardware decoding support as Profile 0. You could use -profile:v 0 to make sure that this doesn't happen without you noticing.

The rest of the parameters are quality and rate control features for libvpx-vp9. Remember to at least use -b:v 0, otherwise CRF won't behave as you'd expect. Also note that setting -tile-columns and -threads manually is required, otherwise encoding is limited to a single thread.


compressed vs uncompressed feasibility question?

As you can imagine, a file that is compressed from 1.96gb to 100mb has lost a lot of information. The question is what you need to do with this film now. If you want to make a version to be shown in cinemas, that's not going to work well since you probably will see compression artifacts etc on a big screen. If you need to create a Sd DVD from it, probably that's fine.


How to cutting a video and keep all format and metadata

FFmpeg only allows you to alter/override the major brand, not the minor.

Command is

ffmpeg -i input -ss 00:00:05 -t 100 -brand mp42 -c:v copy -c:a copy output

MP4box will allow you to override both.

mp4box -brand mp42:0 file.mp4

If you want to change the handler name as well, use

mp4box -brand mp42:0 -name 2="IsoMedia File Produce by Google" file.mp4

(2 is the track index i.e. the 2nd track)


You'd probably want to light it anyway, as it will make it easier to pull a key if it's properly lit. The farther you can keep it away from the objects or talent you'll be keying, the better. But light is essential to accurately capturing color, so if you can light it, you should. You want it to be evenly lit so that you don't have to choose too wide of a color range to key out.


2 h264/mp4 files does not merging in right way by mp4box

I believe this statement:

  I've a problem while merging 2 h264/mp4 files width the same parameters except length

is incorrect. In addition to length your video files have different picture dimensions, and that prevents the merge.

Your "input sample" shows a track size of 853x480. The output, however, shows that track #1 is 1024x576 and track #3 if 1280x720.

So clearly, the input file that you are showing in your example is not one of the files you merged in the output. There are at least three different files at play here, and each has a different picture size.

To be able to merge two files they must have the same picture size. As a test, you may want to try merging the same file twice.


Premiere Pro CC: Loop vertical frame edge on 16mm film scan

1) Select the clip in your timeline and in the effects controls panel just adjust the 'y' position value until the line at the top is out of frame.

2) Duplicate the clip on your timeline into the second video track, and make the same adjustment but in the opposite direction so that only the content above the line is visible at the bottom of the program monitor.

3) Move the clip on video track 2 forward or back one frame to match.

Obviously my test doesn't match quite right because I only had the frame you provided, but your results should look better. It looks like there might still be some extra stuff to cut off at the bottom, so you can then select both clips, right click and nest them, then either scale that footage up in the effects control panel to fit, or apply a crop effect to remove the extra bits for cleanup.


What tool do you use for showing the Audio bitrate?
Try MediaInfo to make sure that Handbrake is the problem here.
But as far as I can see, you aren't doing anything wrong (besides setting the audio bitrate this low ;) ).
The avcodec AAC encoder also has quality settings, you can try these out as well (Couldn't hear any difference for settings 3 and higher, but was able to hear some slight artifacts at 2, never tried 1).
For best compression use MKV container with opus audio and x265 video encoder.


How can I fix a dark spot on my lens in post-production?

If you shoot an evenly lit white frame you could invert it, adjust the levels so that the non-affected areas of the frame were completely black, and then add the result to the original footage. It might take some tweaking of the levels to get it right.


Why processor is "better" for encoding than GPU?

The article you linked is not very good.

Normally, single pass bitrate encodings convert your bitrate into a RF
value with a maximum bitrate limit and takes it from there.

x264's one-pass ABR ratecontrol is not implemented as CRF + limit.  He's right that 2pass is by far the best way to hit a target bitrate, though.
And he apparently doesn't realize that he could start x264 with threads=3 or something, to leave some CPU time free for other tasks.  Or set x264's priority to verylow, so it only gets CPU time that no other task wants.
He also mixes up threads=1 with using CUDA, or something.  No wonder you have questions, because that article has a TERRIBLE explanation.  The whole article basically boils down to: use x264 --preset veryslow --tune film --crf 26 in.m2ts --out out.mkv, or maybe use some light filtering with an input AviSynth script.  He actually recommends "placebo".  That's hilarious.  I've never seen a pirated file encoded with placebo.  (you can tell from me=esa or me=tesa, instead of me=umh for all the good quality presets, right up to veryslow.
He also doesn't mention using 10bit color depth.  Slower to encode and decode, but even after downconverting back to 8bit, you get better 8-bit SSIM.  Having more precision for motion vectors apparently helps.  Also, not having to round off to exactly a whole 8 bit value helps.  You can think of 8-bit per component as a speed-hack; quantizing in the frequency-domain and then compressing that with CABAC means that higher bit-depth coefficients don't have to take more space.
(BTW, h.265 gets less benefit from 10-bit encodes for 8-bit video because it already has more precision for motion vectors.  If there is a benefit to using 10-bit x265 for 8-bit video inputs, it's smaller than with x264.  So it's less likely that the speed penalty will be worth it.)
To answer your actual question:
edit: doom9 is up again now, so I'll tidy up the link.  Go to it for proper quoting of who said what.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1135399#post1135399
google only caches the stupid print version which doesn't properly show the quoting.  I'm not quite sure which parts of these messages are quotes, and which are attributed to the person themselves.

Highly irregular branching patterns (skip modes) and bit manipulation (quantization/entropy coding) don't suit present GPUs. IMO the only really good application at the moment are full search ME algorithms, in the end though accelerated full search is still slow even if it's faster than on the CPU.
-- MfA

Actually, basically everything can be reasonably done on the GPU except CABAC (which could be done, it just couldn't be parallelized).
x264 CUDA will implement a fullpel and subpel ME algorithm initially; later on we could do something like RDO with a bit-cost approximation instead of CABAC.

Because it has to do everything at single precision floating point
-- MfA

Wrong, CUDA supports integer math.
-- Dark Shikari

Dark Shikari is the x264 maintainer, and developer of most of the features since 2007 or so.
AFAIK, this CUDA project didn't pan out.  There is support for using OpenCL to offload some work from the lookahead thread (quick I/P/B decision, not a high quality final encode of the frame).

My understanding is that the search space for video encoding is SO big that smart heuristics for early-termination of search paths on CPUs beat the brute-force GPUs bring to the table, at least for high quality encoding.  It's only compared to -preset ultrafast where you might reasonably choose HW encoding over x264, esp. if you have a slow CPU (like laptop with dual core and no hyperthreading).  On a fast CPU (i7 quad core with hyperthreading), x264 superfast is probably going to be as fast, and look better (at the same bitrate).
If you're making an encode where rate-distortion (quality per file size) matters at all, you should use x264 -preset medium or slower.  If you're archiving something, spending a bit more CPU time now will save bytes for as long as you're keeping that file around.
side note, if you ever see messages from deadrats on a video forum, it's not going to be helpful.  He's been wrong about most stuff he's talking about in every thread I've ever seen.  His posts turned up in a couple threads I googled about x264 GPU encoding.  Apparently he doesn't understand why it isn't easy, and has posted several times to tell the x264 developers why they're dumb...


Easy way to preview 120 fps footage at 30 fps?

If you want to view at slower playback speed, would videoLan help?
Menu->Playback->Speed->Slower

then check if the speed at 0.25x is it what you want.


Loseless conversion from IphoneX HEVC for PC - PPro

Conversion always will involve some loss, only copy (-c) is lossless.

There are some suggestions for "lossless" encoding in this Q&A, but I can't test them on my phone. There are UpVoted and have an accepted answer: the intermediate and output file will be uncompressed, and huge.

You can minimize loss when converting your existing videos by choosing an excessively high bitrate, since it's a cellphone video it will be of a limited length and thus only expand so much.

The ffmpeg H.264 Video Encoding Guide claims to offer lossless encoding using the -crf 0 command. It also mentions that you should expect incompatibility problems with some programs.

The section: Choose a CRF value says:

  The range of the CRF scale is 0–51, where 0 is lossless, 23 is the default, and 51 is worst quality possible. A lower value generally leads to higher quality, and a subjectively sane range is 17–28. Consider 17 or 18 to be visually lossless or nearly so; it should look the same or nearly the same as the input but it isn't technically lossless.

Using '0' isn't so much a "conversion" as it is a decompression and wrapping up the uncompressed video, the so-called converted video isn't recompressed.

You can correct the problem at it's source (in future) by:

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Camera > Formats > change "High Efficiency" to "Most Compatible".


Lossless conversion of yuv420p10le to yuv420p

No this is not possible. Looking at this theoretically disregarding the codec you can not take away information and call it lossless, thats already a terminology problem.

Applying a new color space without transcoding is also not possible
It's not so easy to say whether this is even possible with certain codecs other than h264, it really depends on how you define certain terminology.

Regarding h264 its simply not possible in the way the codec works, color information is essential in how the codec encodes frames as its based on motion estimation and the color information between frames is what defines the in between frames that don't hold the information of a whole frame but only the differences between keyframes.
So just applying different color values to each existing pixel is not really possible. It would result in major artifacts.


How much video & audio bitrate do I need for dvd videos?

More than 'what do I need', you should ask yourself 'how much am I allowed'.

This page mentions an average bitrate of 4-5 Mbits/s, this is audio + video + subtitles. It also depends on the length of your content (as you also have a maximum capacity of about 4.7 Gb for a single layer DVD-Video).

FLAC is not supported on DVD-Video, common audio codecs are MPEG1-L2 and ac3.


Pinnacle Studio 23 - 'JPG Noise'/White border added to .png images

Turns out the problem only existed within the editor and when exported as HD 720p video. Exporting it as HD 1080p fixed the issue in the exported video.


How do I upload video but not have https://

I think that if you just use http:// instead of https:// in front of any youtube video it should work the same.


How to show a character in black and white mode with colorful background?

Have you already filmed your scene? If not, then the easiest way is to film your character against a blue or green screen, key out the background, apply a monochrome filter to the character, and insert your other background.

If you have already filmed it, you can try using a color correction filter on the character, but it's very unlikely you'll be able to easily isolate the character properly with just a filter, unless the background is a solid color which doesn't appear anywhere on the character.

So your other option is rotoscoping which is very difficult and often tedious work to look good.

What software are you using, by the way?


Fading in is no problem, because you start from the timestamp 0 (or from other known timestamp or frame number), e.g. use:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf fade=in:0:d=5 -af afade=in:0:d=5 output.mp4

for 5-second fading in from the start of your clip.

Ignore the error

  Only '-vf fade=in:0:d=5' read, ignoring remaining -vf options: Use ',' to separate filters

— see the answer of the question FFmpeg read, ignoring remaining -vf options: Use ',' to separate filters.

For fading out you have to subtract the time of fading out — e.g. 5 s — from the total duration of video or audio (you may find it with FFprobe). You got for example the timestamp 600 - 5 = 595 (from your 10-minutes long clip). Then add filters for fading out into the previous command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf fade=in:0:d=5,fade=out:595:d=5 -af afade=in:0:d=5,afade=out=595:5 output.mp4

Notes:

Filtering always require re-encoding.
As in and 0 are defaults, you may shorten the command to

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf fade=d=5,fade=out:595:d=5 -af afade=d=5,afade=out=595:5 output.mp4


How to avoid problems when filming in a bath house

Get underwater housings for your cameras. Since it doesn't sound like you will actually be dunking the gear under the water, you can probably get away with the cheap bag-type housings.

To avoid fogging up the lenses, let your gear warm up to the ambient temperature, then clean the lens.


If you cannot get your video to a wifi uplink; you will eat through your data very fast on your phone.

I speak from experience. Each carrier tower (a cel phone on a carrier only connects to a single tower at any given moment), is a standard T1 line.

One phone will not be enough, if call volume spikes; your uplink bitrate will be bottlenecked by your carrier.

The solution; if this is a serious project, is to build a streaming cel phone package. You want to use rather than phones, the 4G hotspots, which have both USB and wifi connectivity. Although phones work too.

Then you want a product like the Cradlebridge Bandsteering Router, powered off a portable 12v battery source.

The Cradlebridge Routers can use multiple network connections; my unit has 2 USB and 4 CAT5 + Wifi, which it can then, use multiple uplinks; steer the data, and make sure it gets there in the correct order at the right time. Literally, switching between your phones from say ATT, Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, etc; in case you get sqeezed off one or more of your uplinks.

At best-- best... you can expect a consistent 150-200kbps uplink on a single cel line over the LONG run. Thats not to say small uploads and videos don't go up in a snap, but a long run game... you will get squeezed out bandwidth wise. Again, doing a 20 second speed test is not going to give you realistic results for long uploads. The tower on one carrier will allow a burst, fast upload, for say 30 seconds, but then watch it drop.

So you tether 4 carriers together, each carrier will be working of a separate tower... and then use LiveStream to broadcast.

It's harder, and more frustrating, than you would think.

Lastly, do the math, on a single cel line at 200kbps x 1 hour... how many GB will you go through? Unless your data is unlimited.


Is wide-gamut video primarily an increase in saturation (for the layperson)?

Wide Gamut color space is primarily just an expanded color space that is capable of covering a larger range of values in the visible color spectrum. This, compared to sRGB and Adobe RGB.

The gamma and white / black points are roughly identical.

So yes this is primarily what Wide Gamut is designed for. Higher levels of vibrance.

The trade off is if the end user is viewing the material in an 8 bit environment, gradients can appear a bit posterized. Wide Gamut is designed to be used and viewed under 16 bit or higher colorspaces.


Frequency of refreshing for a green wall

Practical or most effective?

Green Screen work demands the following optimazation points to have it be effective.

flat even lighting, no hot spots, no dark spots.
no shadows,
no reflections,
the lighting has to be bight enough to register the green correctly, aka no noise.

Additionally, to help avoid hot spots, plan on a fresh drywall/plasterboard for that wall and when fixing, ensure sunk and smooth plastered nails. This will help you get a consistent surface for the green.

A curtain if it can be expanded to be absolutely flat with out any wrinkles might work,
but I think this will be very troublesome.

Painting the wall with the appropriate paint would be more effective.

When to repaint?

Establish a base-line video test, that is repeatable, same lights, same object(s), same camera. Run this in your post production chroma-key video track before each production use, and it should be obvious if the paint needs to be refreshed.

Paint source:
http://www.tubetape.net/servlet/the-5/greenscreen-screen/Detail

Disclaimer: I have not used this paint, it comes with no recommendations.


Is it possible to extract frames from corrupted mp4?

Try TMPG Smart Renderer https://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tmsr5.html
If anything is recoverable, this tool should work. If it can't pull anything from the file, I don't know of any other tool that would. The trial version should work fine for you to get what you need.


How to get battery status of aftermarket battery on Canon camcorder

By aftermarket do you mean generic? I.e. a battery made by a company other than Canon?

To the best of my knowledge, generic batteries won't give you a charge reading in the camera. Only original batteries will. That's just the trade off you have to live with when choosing generic batteries.


Video mixer from multiple sources into one

ffmpeg will do everything you request. It can capture both the screen and the video input, compose that to a single image, and stream it... You should look at it... Its a command line utility, but very well documented


Does Adobe Media Encoder support network encoding?

The most efficient way is to use the command line renderer in multi machine mode. That will mean each machine will render the next un-rendered frame independently. You need to set the output module to a frame sequence, like png sequence, JPEG sequence, etc. and you need to make sure that "skip existing frames" is on. Then in a command prompt, type /path/to/aerender -project ~/path/to/your/project.aep where /path/to/… is replaced with the path to the aerender executable, and your project (dragging the files onto the terminal is the easiest way to find the correct path). On my machine the executable is C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2019\Support Files\aerender.exe on a mac it will be /Applications/Adobe/Adobe After Effects CC 2019/aerender.

Alternatively use the render engine and set up a watch folder. This is slower than the CLI renderer, but doesn't involve any CLI use.

Media encoder doesn't do multi machine rendering. Probably because if you need rendering speed enough to use multiple machines you don't want to be rendering with it anyway. It's about 20% slower than the CLI renderer.


Finding a highest megapixel camera for PC

Your best bet is a DSLR with a lens mount for the microscope.  It goes in places of the eyepiece and generally does not have the diopter from an eyepiece (so magnification is a bit lower, but you can also zoom in).  Among standard size DSLRs, the highest megapixel one I'm aware of at this time is the Nikon D800 at 35 megapixels, but there may be bigger out there now.


Zooming in on one layer in After Effects

Thats simple, pre-comp what you have right now and create a camera layer. Then make you composition layer 3D. The look of you layer will not change unless you add lights or rotate the camera. Then you can pan around and zoom in your picture with the camera.

Thats how you do every sort of zooming e.g. camera animation in after effects. Animating the scale of layers is just a mess like you already realized.


How to extract only frames from videos that have certain levels of luminosity / content?

Here's the gist of the ffmpeg method: use the blackframe filter to identify frames with a certain amount of non-black content. Use the metadata filter to pass through those frames and discard the rest.

Inspection:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf blackframe=amount=0:threshold=92 -f null -

The amount (0) in the blackframe parameters refers to the percentage of pixels that have to be below the threshold (92) for the filter to tag it as a black frame. The way we'll using it, it won't matter what the amount is, so keep it at 0.

You will get a readout like this:

[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:1 pblack:35 pts:1 t:0.040000 type:I last_keyframe:1
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:2 pblack:35 pts:2 t:0.080000 type:I last_keyframe:2
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:3 pblack:35 pts:3 t:0.120000 type:I last_keyframe:3
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:4 pblack:35 pts:4 t:0.160000 type:I last_keyframe:4
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:5 pblack:34 pts:5 t:0.200000 type:I last_keyframe:5
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:6 pblack:34 pts:6 t:0.240000 type:I last_keyframe:6
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:7 pblack:34 pts:7 t:0.280000 type:I last_keyframe:7
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:8 pblack:34 pts:8 t:0.320000 type:I last_keyframe:8
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:9 pblack:34 pts:9 t:0.360000 type:I last_keyframe:9
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:10 pblack:34 pts:10 t:0.400000 type:I last_keyframe:10

The pblack value indicates that 35% of the pixels in frame 1 had a luminance value below 92 (out of 255, since I ran it on a video with 8-bit luma).

With some trial and error, figure out what threshold and pblack values will identify the frames you want to discard/keep.

Extraction:

With those values, use

ffmpeg -i in.mp4
       -vf "blackframe=amount=0:threshold=X,
            metadata=select:key='lavfi.blackframe.pblack':value=Y:function=less"
       -vsync 0 img%d.jpg

X is the threshold value you calibrated to identify black pixels, and determines the pblack value (out of 100) reported by the blackframe filter. The metadata filter then keeps those frames which have at most Y% of pixels that qualify as black. These frames are then saved as images.


Does alpha matte version of a clip allows to change the pattern

Changing the pattern of the paper will be too difficult, because you would have to map the pattern around the roll, too. But you can change the color with some Hue/Saturation/Value effect.

So, what are the black/white alpha-matte sections for? The author had to append them at the end, because in the process chain at Shutterstock the video could be transcoded and the alpha channel could get lost. In your own video editor you will have to cut these black/white sections out and re-apply them as alpha clip over your color clip. How to do this can be different in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, ...

But now the most interesting part. Why did the author append two alpha-matte versions, which seem to be equal?

Only after calculating the difference between the two versions I saw it. In this picture gray means that the pixels of the two images are equal, and black or white means that there is some difference.

This means that the first alpha-matte is for the paper including the white ripped edge, where-as the second one is for the paper surface without the ripped edge. If you want to color the paper, apply the effect just together with the second alpha-matte, and the edge will stay white.


FCPX 10.3 Audio multicam angles names to appear in main timeline?

Try and make sure Angles is checked:

This solution worked for me and I found it here towards the bottom of the post:
https://larryjordan.com/articles/apple-final-cut-pro-x-multicam-naming-weirdness/


How do I add a crosshair guide to a FCPX angle editor viewer window?

It is indeed impossible to put a title over a clip inside a multi cam clip... Unless you turn that clip into a compound clip. Then you can add whatever overlay you want to it.

So you will have:

keyframed clip with crosshair overlay
inside a compound clip
inside a multicam clip

Just right click your the clip inside your multicam clip and choose New Compound Clip ( ⌥  + G )


Minimising image noise within the recording of indoor office environments

The first thing is to make sure any gain is off.  Gain on a video camera is like high ISO on a digital still camera.  It increases the noise floor significantly and causes much more noise in even a good image.  This should make the camera make other adjustments to try to preserve the exposure with a lower noise floor.

If there is still too much noise, it may require that the dynamic range of the scene be reduced with properly placed lighting to eliminate dark shadows.  If you have particularly bright and particularly dark areas, the camera may attempt to get detail in the dark areas and result in noise.  Reducing this dynamic range will allow the detail to be captured clearly in all parts of the image.

It is also possible that there simply isn't enough light.  It can be very dark inside buildings.  Our eyes are exceptionally good at adjusting to a wide range of lighting intensities so we don't really notice it much, but outside is hundreds of time brighter than inside.  An average office hall lighting is about 80 lux.  A typical sunny day is over 10,000 lux with over 30,000 lux in directly sunlight.  That's a HUGE variation.  The camera you mentioned seems to have good low light performance for it's price range from the CNet review, but if you still have too much noise after adjusting the gain to 0 or have too dark of an image, then your primary option is to throw more light at it.  Good strong studio lighting should allow the sensor to clearly pick things up in such a way that the images will be suitable for computer vision with low noise.


Why does moving objects in some videos flicker or distort horizontally

This is called interlacing. It's a video artefact left over from the days when video signals for television (and domestic systems) sent every other horizontal line, then filled in the missing gaps, every half a frame of video that was sent.
You need to deinterlace the footage before you edit it.
If someone else has already uploaded the footage incorrectly to youtube, you may be unable to deinterlace their footage, depending on whether the scale and frame rate of the video has been altered when they edited it.


Film a 3D video using Genlock cameras or LANC?

Genlock would allow the capture of frames to be synchronized to a common external timecode.  It is only a feature on pretty high end cameras, so if you are trying to keep costs down, it really isn't an option.  The other question I linked to in the comment goes over a few possible ways to try to get usable sync for multiple cameras, but sadly, there aren't particularly good options for most cases.

There is a 3d kit for certain model GoPros that may be worth considering, but otherwise, you are probably best looking for a camera that supports lens splitting for 3d capture or purpose built consumer targeted cameras if you want things to remain fairly cheap.


Should I cut footage into clips whilst I'm logging it?

There is no right or wrong answer here.  I've done both before for projects of your scale.  There are factors that work in favor of both.

For recording whole tapes while you take notes by hand, the pros are:

Least amount of calendar time to capture and edit.
Technically simple.
Requires detailed viewing and review of footage, which may catch issues earlier. (Note, you still CAN review footage in detail for clip logging, but you also don't have to.)

Cons are:

Requires your attention for the entire length of capture to make sure you don't miss anything.
Doesn't allow for as easy use of DV tapes as a backup mechanism. (You can save the start and stop time for the whole tape, but can't import a single clip.)
Requires manual splitting of clips after, however this operation is fairly quick as you have a listing of time codes on which to split.

Conversely, for batch logging of individually logged clips the pros are:

You can fast forward through tapes to get the clip identification done more quickly that watching all the footage in real time during capture.
Allows you to easily go back and double check a missed transition's time without interfering with capture.
Requires only periodic presence during actual capture.
Since meta data for clips is electronic and based on exact time code, DV tapes function as an additional backup.  Footage can be re-captured in a frame accurate manner in the future.
Clips come out as distinct files with well documented meta data.

Cons of individual logging:

Requires more time overall.  You aren't actually capturing while you are identifying the clips and the extra time you spend up front is generally longer than you would have spent splitting clips after, both due to the seek time for tapes as well as the time to enter electronic meta data instead of simply writing it down during playback.
More complicated technically.  You need to actually fill out the meta data for the files to make most effective use of this logging technique and it is more complicated/time consuming than simply writing it down on a pad of paper.

Overall, it really comes down to how organized you want the data to be and how much time you have.  If you need the project done in the minimum amount of calendar time, capture it all and log as you go.  You can alternately do scene breaks as you go as well.

If you more calendar time, are sure of your captured footage, want some additional long term organization and don't want to have to supervise it attentively for 50+ hours, then use clip logging in advance and batch capture the tapes to fill out the clips.

I've moved on to a file based workflow, but when I was shooting DV, I would almost exclusively capture tape at a time for live events (needed fast turn around) and batch log for anything that wasn't a live event (wanted the organization).  I'd also typically still setup a batch log even for the full tape capture, just to maintain the DV backup of the video, even if it then required capturing the entire tape if I needed to recover the footage.


MLRawViewer has functionality that allows a range of an MLV file to be exported as a CNG. There is no ui for it, but when scrubbed to the desired start-point, i will set the in-point and when scrubbed to the desired end-point, 'o' will set the out-point.


Does FFMPEG benefit from SLI when using h264_nvenc?

There is not necessary to add a card in SLI. Is enough to buy another card to double the performance. By default NVIDIA supports only 2 encoding streams in parallel for consumer level cards. For your goals it should be enough.
You may buy another one GTX 1070, but it's not necessary as you need to transcode a vary large amount of video files in 2 parallel streams.
Will be better to buy another video card on the Pascal architecture. In this case you will safe some money and get very similar result as on GTX 1070. GTX 1050 should be enough, because the NVENC SIP which uses for encoding the same as on GTX 1070, as on GTX 1050.

In FFmpeg you can specify the gpu for encoding via -gpu key like follow:

ffmpeg -i video_for_gtx1070.mpg -vcodec h264_nvenc \
       -gpu 0 -acodec copy -f mpegts transcoded_on_gtx1070.mpg

ffmpeg -i video_for_other_card.mpg -vcodec h264_nvenc \
       -gpu 1 -acodec copy -f mpegts transcoded_on_other_card.mpg

We can use the nvidia-smi tool to find an index for each video card. Also we can check it via other tools like GPU-Z or any afterburner, but nvidia-smi is installing together with the video driver.

About overhead: you will get CPU load by decoding video as the video files be decode on CPU and encode on GPU, but you can keep CPU almost clean if you'll also decode the video on GPU. The same examples with decoding h264 on different GPUs:

ffmpeg hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -gpu 0 \
       -i video_for_gtx1070.mpg -vcodec h264_nvenc \
       -gpu 0 -acodec copy -f mpegts transcoded_on_gtx1070.mpg

ffmpeg hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -gpu 1 \
       -i video_for_other_card.mpg -vcodec h264_nvenc \
       -gpu 1 -acodec copy -f mpegts transcoded_on_other_card.mpg

If we need to decode other codecs then we can choose the appropriate one from the following list:

ffmpeg -decoders | grep cuvid
 V..... h264_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID H264 decoder (codec h264)
 V..... hevc_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID HEVC decoder (codec hevc)
 V..... mjpeg_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MJPEG decoder (codec mjpeg)
 V..... mpeg1_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG1VIDEO decoder (codec mpeg1video)
 V..... mpeg2_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG2VIDEO decoder (codec mpeg2video)
 V..... mpeg4_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG4 decoder (codec mpeg4)
 V..... vc1_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VC1 decoder (codec vc1)
 V..... vp8_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VP8 decoder (codec vp8)
 V..... vp9_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VP9 decoder (codec vp9)

Please make sure that FFmpeg configured correctly with support nvenc and cuvid. You can find correct configuration parameters on the
NVIDIA site (scroll down)

If you need to transcode a lot of streams|files in parallel then need to buy the video card(s) with unrestricted amount of encoding sessions. You can find the information there.
OR you can go by the hack way and remove the sessions limitation for the consumer level video cards. It's possible as this limitation managed on the video driver level. In this case I recommend you to buy GTX 1060 6GB or GTX 1070 as in this situation the amount of video memory is also very important. You can find more useful info about multiple streams transcoding in
this old answer.


Ideal projection solution for Kinect hack performance

As AJ Henderson mentioned, you program the Kinect with a PC using various software packages, either ones that support Kinect natively, or by using the Kinect SDK. One that we use often is Derivative TouchDesigner. There is a free educational version you can download and use for non-commercial work.

Projector wise, I'd recommend something of at least 10,000 lumens. Depends where you set up the projector, and how much throw you need. You can use this handy calculator to help you get closer to what you need.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/projection-calculator-pro.cfm


Questions about Customs/Insurance/Transport for your equipment?

I can only write from the experience of travelling from the UK to many other countries with kit a few years ago (pre-covid era):
In the UK, if you provide an equipment list to the airport customs desk before you leave, they will examine it, take a copy and stamp it.  The form is called a Returned Goods Relief Form.  This is to prove that you are taking valuable equipment out of the country for filming purposes, and plan to return with it (not sell it overseas and avoid paying taxes).
The list needs to show every item of equipment you are carrying and should have columns for: Manufacturer, Manufacturers Model, Serial Number, Value (£).
Print many copies of the equipment list, so that any official who demands one can take one.
Put a copy of each equipment list in each bag, Put a "lost luggage" note in each suitcase in the local language, and English.
Customs in the incoming country is another issue.  It depends on the country.  Research it carefully. Some countries need you to buy a "carnet".
Make sure no bag weighs more that the allowed limit by the airline.
With regards to batteries, the correct procedure a few years ago was to inform the airline that you would be carrying batteries. Make sure the weight of the batteries did not exceed their rules.  If they are Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries (often used in drones), carry them in LiPo bags which should reduce fire risk if they malfunction on the journey. Any exposed terminals should be taped over.
The airlines usually (and correctly) state that you should carry the batteries in hand luggage, so if they do malfunction, it would quickly become apparent - if they were in the hold, it would be too late to do anything.  Security guards in airports often aren't aware of this rule, and may try to get you to put batteries in the hold.  Allow time for this when you travel.
Officials love letters. Get a letter from the airline confirming that you can travel with the batteries. Take a letter from your employer confirming that you will be filming in x country for y days and address it "to whom it may concern".  Print many copies on headed paper.
Can't comment on insurance as it was handled by the company I worked for.  Large broadcasters usually have insurance, but often the excess is so high it is effectively useless. More important is the third party liability insurance, in case you injure somebody else during your work.
Also - use Peli cases. They're waterproof, fairly indestructible, and if they do get broken, they will offer you a replacement.


Breaking the 180 degree shutter rule when stabilising footage

I would invite you to experiment a bit and to answer your question yourself.

But yes, I can think in several cases where you should shot at higher framerate where this motion blur is actually a problem.

The first case is the one you describe. The camera shake will produce blur on directions we do not want.
Another case is time-lapse. You can have objects moving in different directions and different rates. Some programs process the images to produce different artificial blurs, so you could experiment on different shutter speeds-lapse ratios. If you want a cartoonish look you can simply shot at a fast velocity, for example, to give you a stop motion effect.
When you are shooting on a green screen to be composited later. A blur on a green screen is a pain to remove. Shooting at a higher speed will produce sharper edges on moving parts that will be easier to extract.

It is always easier to add blur than to remove it.

In my opinion, the best practices are the ones works for you.


Right click on the clip (or open the Clip menu with the clip selected) and select "Change Clip Speed". A popup will open:

Check the "Freeze frame" check box and then hit "Change". The clip can now be resized and it will only show that frame for its duration.


There are several websites that do that. For example, this one accumulates free stock photos and there's also a video section. However, your best bet is to use a designated search engine like the creative commons search site, which will allow you to find material distributed under creative commons licenses. Before you use any of the found material, make sure to check which license it's using - some of them only allow non-commercial usage or require you to share any derivatives under the same license.


ffmpeg concat videos, some have audio some don't

It looks like the first input's audio is corrupted, but it it hard to say without accessing to the input sources. Could you try to build the transcoding pipeline by following the tutorial here? https://www.bugcodemaster.com/article/concatenate-videos-using-ffmpeg
It might tell FFMPEG more clear which stream to choose to avoid confusion.


Directing actors is a technical part of film making. It's not easy, and if your actors don't give good performances, chances are you won't have a good film. People can usually forgive bland cinematography and clunky editing – but if they don't believe the characters then you're going to have no chance in engaging the audience.

I go to a film school myself and so I haven't really done a lot of research online. I suspect that you wouldn't be able to find everything you need to know just by looking online.
If you're serious about filmmaking then I'd suggest you take some courses. If you just want to take it up as a hobby then the best way to learn is to practice.
Buy a camera (a good DSLR if you can afford it), get editing software on your computer (would recommend Final Cut Pro 7 if you own a Mac or Adobe Premiere Pro if you've got a PC) and shoot  outdoors in natural lighting (cheaper and looks better if you can't light well).
Also, best way to study films is to watch films. Watch a lot of different kinds of cinema. If you like a certain director try and watch all their films, especially their early shorts if they have any.

Just did a quick google search and found a couple of sites:
for cinematography: http://filmmakeriq.com/2008/07/345-cinematography-techniques/
filmmaking in general: http://digital-filmmaking.blogspot.com/

Not sure if they're any good though, sorry mate.

If you're keen on getting a DSLR, this stackexchange site is perfect for information. https://photo.stackexchange.com/


Sony Vegas Pro 13 forgets to render some frames in my video

I know this reply is 4 years past, but hopefully its of some use to someone. But I found that matching your project/raw files to match your output fixes that issue for me personally, so if I have a 1080p30fps raw file, the final render needs so also match 1080p30fps, if you "upscale" to 60 fps, you'll have ungodly render times and paused/skipped frames.


Premiere: Add transition to trimmed clip

Delete the transition, click on the edge between the two clips, so it goes red like this:

Then apply the transition.
If you cannot, it's because one of the clips does not have any more frames to the other side of it with which to complete the transition.  ie if your transition is 10 frames long, you need five extra frames of footage on the left and right edges for it to work.


ffmpeg invalid argument. Which argument was invalid?

-stream_loop is buggy in versions older than 4.1, so upgrade.
Also, stream_loop won't work with movies opened via movie filter. Use it as a direct input.
ffmpeg -stream_loop -1 -re -i "snail.mp4" -f v4l2 /dev/video4 -report


I've used both Simple Screen Recorder and Open Broadcaster Software. SSP is really simple and easy to use, and I believe it's in the Ubuntu app store. OBS requires a command line installation and the installation of ffmpeg as well, which often has to be compiled. OBS is a little more complex to use and might be overkill for your needs, but it is very powerful.


Adobe After Effects vs. Final Cut Express for chroma keying

I haven't tried chroma keying in Final Cut Express, but I'm pretty sure it depends on your needs and workflow. If you use Premiere for editing movies than AE should be more integrated.

Yet, if you really want to get awesome results and have some spare bucks, I'd say you look at some plugins. After all neither AE nor FCE is specialized in chroma keying. There are plenty of companies out there that build specialized plugins that might give you better results, and they usually offer them for all video solutions (AE, Premiere, FC, etc)


How to make rendering loop selections work in Movie Studio Platinum 13?

Oh, I found it myself and leaving the answer here in case someone else will get confused by this because the solution is not obvious.

I was setting the checkbox here:

but if I use "Advanced options", Movie Studio ignores this setting!

I have to select it deeper in a hidden dropdown in the "Advanced options" window like this:

And later when rendering the full video, it is important to remember to open that dropdwon again and turn off the region rendering.

Oh, Sony, this is so confusing - two things doing the same, but effective only under specific circumstances.


Different FPS on different clips (premiere pro)

What you want to use to have a clip play back at a lower frame rate is the Posterize Time effect. It's pretty straightforward and self-explanatory. Just find the effect in the Effects panel under Video Effects → Time → Posterize Time and apply it to your clip. Then select the clip, open the Effect Controls panel and set the Frame Rate parameter of the effect to 8 (in your case). Then you're pretty much done.

To apply that effect to multiple clips at once, you can use an adjustment layer. Create a new adjustment layer (File → New → Adjustment Layer) and put it above your clips in the time line. Then apply the Posterize Time effect to the adjustment layer. It will affect all clips in all video layers below the adjustment layer.


The higher bitrate will store more detail in your video.  Most video cameras use file compression to throw away parts of the image that they think the viewer won't notice, in order to reduce the size of the file.  Even though both files would contain the same number of pixels, areas of low detail would be compressed more in the lower bit rate image.

Lossy compression of files is a trade-off between image quality and file size.

Wikipedia has a good example of what happens - the two files below are the same resolution, but one is much more heavily compressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact


What media can I legally include into my videos?

Preface: I am not a lawyer. These comments aer based on my personal experience navigating copyright law.

The general rule of thumb is that you can only use media that you have created.

If you have not created the media, it's best practice to get or buy permission to use it, and get that permission in writing as a release form.

That being said, something like IGN daily fix could likely get away with demo-ing games under fair use as part of a review or demonstration. There's also the fair use exemption for something "newsworthy". There's a little bit of leeway when you shoot the video of the game yourself rather than capturing the output from the console. There you start to get into derivative work.

Personally, I would get releases for everything. In the case of IGN, I'm sure they can go to EA, and EA is more than happy to provide amterials for their use. You can do the same. Ask for a press kit that includes video clips. Those are licensed for that type of use.

If you don't have a license, here's what you risk. Let's say Google wants to buy your videos and feature them for something. Their lawyer is going to ask for chain of title documentation. This is signed, verifiable contractual agreements that say you have permission for everything. Sign a release form for you own voiceover jsut to please the lawyers. People will sue Google because they've got deep pockets. The lawyers need to mitigate that risk by making sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed. Are you willing to potentially lose a deal because you didn't get permission to use a clip? I've made the decision NOT to risk that...but that's me.

As many people as I know who are under-the-radar enough to get away with a lot, I know enough people who've been "made an example of" that I don't want to play with that lit match.

I'd recommend a.) talking to an attorney and b.) asking permission for everything. You'd be surprised who says yes to the latter.


GeoGebra Math Apps is an awesome option to do 2-D and 3-D static pictures and animations.

You may do it on-line, or download individual applications into your PC or tablet / smartphone.

It partially supports LaTeX and is for free.


Why don't phones correct vertical filming?

There is indeed no technical limitation that would prevent us from preventing vertical videos in software. The issue is more of an UX/usability problem.
While the sensor would allow us to capture virtually any part of it (video has usually always a lower resolution than the sensor can provide, when making videos the phone just records a small portion of the sensor area) we kind of don't want an auto correcting orientation as its rather unintuitive. The emphasize is on kind of.

Your phone screen is 9:16 so in order to show 16:9 video on your phone screen you either need to turn your phone by 90° or show the video with giant black bars on the top and bottom, which would be very annoying when recording a video. It's quite unintuitive to record horizontally while in a vertical position, so from a UX design perspective you would say the user wants to shoot vertically when holding its phone vertically because thats what you would usually expect your phone to act like.
Hold it vertical you shoot vertical, hold it horizontal you shoot horizontal, a pretty intuitive concept.

Though its still no reason to not at least implement an option to auto correct this and my guess why phone manufacturers aren't doing this is probably largely due to increased engineering costs in the camera module (afaik it can't be done purely in software, you would probably need to alter the functionality of your camera module a bit).

Users who shoot vertically don't really care about the fact that they have a horrible aspect ratio as they mostly just watch their video on a phone anyway. Vine is a good example for that, it really promotes doing vertical video because the aspect ratio of the device that your video will be watched on most of the time has the same vertical aspect ratio.
So the demand isn't really that huge so far to warrant such a feature but I'm certain we will see this at some point.


I wonder if the original Citrix ICA or for that effect Nomachine's NX, Microsoft RDP or even VNC would be of your interest. From what I understand of ICA and NX that idea was really to be in between of window manager calls, giving it an ultimate access to 'small updates' opposed to complete framebuffers. By a bit of searching I found VNCREC. The biggest problem with the to 'vector' format is that most font rendering is very far from the original text, so you would need something very in between, maybe such as GTK Broadway which goes into HTML5.


Why is there a “2D” disc in every Blu-Ray 3D package?

Disk space.  The 3d content takes more space so there is generally not enough room for special features.  The 2d special features are only on the 2d disk.  They take up the room that the second eye takes on the 3d disk.  They could make a special features only disk, but this is generally more expensive since it requires another master and another production line.  It's more cost effective and better marketing to just include the 2D copy.


Invalid timebase converting videos from Galaxy S3

Specifying the framerate fixes the issue. I.e. adding -r 23.967 to the command.


Pinnacle Studio 17 vs Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Both Pinnacle Studio 17 and Premiere Pro CC will suit the needs you listed, but only Premiere Pro accepts .psd files, Pinnacle Studio does not. Furthermore, Premiere Pro has an option to directly export frames to Photoshop, edit them there, and import them back to Premiere Pro. That sounds like a feature you will find useful.


Similar to Gyan's overlay answer, a slightly simpler version can use a basic -filter_script with the "swaprect" and "crop" filters.  Move the crop target to 0,0 and then crop the target area at 0,0.  The target has to be swapped to 0,0 as otherwise the other swapped rect can overlap.  This worked with ffmpeg version 3.4.6-0ubuntu0.18.04.1

Make sure the frame numbers are relative to the offset passed with "-ss".

An example targeting 1280x720 crops from a 4096x2160 source.  The source is 24fps and the tracking info is 8fps.

crop-filter-script:

swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1568:594:enable='between(n,0,26)',
swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1552:598:enable='between(n,27,29)',
swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1565:583:enable='between(n,30,32)',
swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1603:576:enable='between(n,33,35)',
crop=1280:720:0:0

ffmpeg -ss [start offset] -t [duration] -i input.mov -filter_script:v:0 crop-filter-script -acodec copy out.mov


Embedding another video to "blend" with the environment

If you can use a tool like Apple's Motion or FCPX, or Adobe's After Effects, they all have the ability to put the 4 corners of a layer anywhere you want. With Motion or After Effects, you can even track the 4 corners and keep the "TV" image pinned in the right place.

In Motion, you can select a clip and open the Inspector. In the Inspector, press the "Properties" tab. There's a section in the properties called "Four Corner". If you twirl that open, it allows you to set where the 4 corners of the video go. You can put them wherever you like.

FCPX is similar - select the clip, and open the inspector. There should be a section in the inspector named "Distort". This will also let you set the 4 corners of the clip.

In After Effects you can select a layer and apply the built-in "Corner Pin" effect.


Update - this is the closest thing I've found, but you need to use Unreal and have a fast graphics card:


Windows 10 miniDV import using Movie Maker

DV is a compressed format to begin with. Unless you apply further compression at the time of capture within WMM, the captured stream is identical to that on the tape. The bitrate of the capture should be roughly 3.5 MB/s.

AVI is an old format, and for broader compatibility, you can store the video in Quicktime .MOV, but this will have to be done after capture, using a tool like FFmpeg. This process is quick since it's just rewrapping the data.

Command will be

ffmpeg -i file.avi -c copy file.mov


Question about encoding / rendering multiple times

The question's not entirely clear, but, yes, each new generation of the rendered file will lose some quality if you use the previous generation as the source, but not if you use the initial H264.

To elaborate, let's call your raw capture as Generation 1 or Gen1. Then your H.264 transcode is Gen2. Now, after editing with Gen2, your export is Gen3. Now, if you open Gen3 and edit that, then the new export will be Gen4 and will have lost some quality (certainly mathematically, maybe not subjectively). But if you reopen Gen2 and edit it in a different way and export it (with the same settings) then the new file will also be Gen3 quality.


Gstreamer offers the ability to overlay images on videos and has also excellent live streaming capabilities.

Some useful links:

https://coaxion.net/blog/2013/10/streaming-gstreamer-pipelines-via-http/

https://developer.ridgerun.com/wiki/index.php/Fast_GStreamer_overlay_element#Picture_overlay_examples


What are people using to connect SSD drives from a camera to Thunderbolt or Firewire?

HighPoint RocketStor RS5212 is a Thunderbolt Dock that will accept two hard drives or SSDs.

I would not use FireWire for SSDs, unless you don't have USB 3.0 and you're on a budget. USB 3.0 is often fast enough to get the maximum out of your SSD, FireWire not.


What happens when I upload a multi-audio video to YouTube?

Youtube will encode the primary or default audio stream.

Youtube doesn't support multiple audio streams. Neither does Vimeo.

Although, apparently, some videos like the 2012 Olympic streams did have it. Special handling by Youtube, I'm sure.


How to create a video so it can be displayed on 3 screens

I do this all the time at work, I'm currently rendering a 6 screen video wall for an installation. The easiest way to work is to create the video at the size of all the displays put together, e.g. for 3 × 4K displays it would be 11520 × 2160 pixels. This is so that you can work on the whole thing at once, and also so you can justify to your boss the insane amount of money they spent on your workstation (did I say that out loud?).

You can use standard video tools like NLEs, e.g. Premiere or Resolve, compositors and animation packages like Fusion and After Effects or 3D applications like Maya, Lightwave or Blender. All modern versions of this kind of software will have the capability to work at custom resolutions, but as mentioned, your hardware will need to be pretty good, you'll have to budget for render time, and your proxy game will need to be strong (proxies are low-res substitutes that you can use to work on, then swap for the high-res originals at export time).

Then you export, and encode into the playback format suitable for your playback devices. Some playback devices are able to handle large videos and split the playback into multiple screens. Small computer-based devices like Intel NUCs and Mac minis can be hooked up to multiple monitors and standard video players like VLC can be used to play the content full-screen across them all. Alternatively you can get multiple playback devices, one for each screen and synch them over a network. The output format will depend on the hardware you are using to play the material, so talk to whoever is setting that up.

To split the composition you re-compose the full composition into the screens that will be displayed on each monitor. In the installation I am working on at the moment there are 6 screens, but the material is being played as three parts, with each playback device playing to two screens. So I've split my 10800 × 1920 into three 3600 × 1920 compositions.

The tools above all have the ability to take one composition and nest it into another at a different resolution, but as I've found in my current projects you may have to re-edit the main composition to help with renders (I was hitting a GPU memory wall with some GPU-based effects, so I had to resize some of my layers and shuffle things to get it to render without choking).


Vegas pro will not show video for avi with mp4v fourcc codec?

I resolved this issue by installing VLC. Apparently VLC has some necessary codecs that Vegas Pro uses.

After installing VLC I was able to import the video and use it normally with no hindrances.

After some time, this issue cropped up on a different computer. Installing/reinstalling VLC did not work.

I installed AVI Codec Pack Pro v2.4.0 from Softpedia and the issue was resolved.

If Softpedia no longer has the file available by the time you are reading this, the file was titled "avi.codec.pack.pro.v2.4.0.setup.exe" and was 16.7MB (17,538,685 bytes). A google search at the time of update yields other sources for download, but some are concerned with malware imbedded in it. I haven't noticed any malware with the softpedia download.


Do movie makers shoot video from two different perspectives to create 3D movies?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  If it is shot "for 3d" then yes, they use either two cameras or a splitter to go through two optical assemblies to one camera.  Here are some sample rigs that have actually been used in large films.

There are, however, a number of films that are released in 3d despite having not been shot "for 3d".  In these cases, the films were shot on conventional cameras with only one lens.  They are truly 2d, however, by the process of image analysis, effects artists go in and assign depths do different elements of the scenes.  This depth data is then used to invent two perspectives to be used for making a 3d effect.  It involves a lot of guess work and creating new content to fill in the gaps where actual footage doesn't have a given angle.

Some 3D TV's even have a basic level of this as an automated process where it will analyse the film in real-time and attempt to guess at depth information.  The only difference is that the 3d extraction done professionally is an offline process with more time and effort spent to fine toon the end result and fill in some gaps by hand.  The exact process and effort at each step depends on the individual project and budget, but the results are always sub-standard to actually shooting for 3D.


Depending on which kind of animation you want to run, the "simplest" solution would be to build a Linux or Windows PC with 3 graphics cards and hook these up though 3 HDMI cables and then anything that runs on that PC can be shown on the 5760x1080 video wall...

As the TVs are 4K-ready, the above solution would also work for a 11520×2160 video wall.

If you need something small (a laptop would be too small), you can go for the MicroATX form factor with 2 Graphics cards for 2 screens and the on-board Intel graphics for the 3rd, but depending on the kind of animation that could limit you to maximum 5760x1080.


After Effects automation and annotation tools (scripts) for student work

As I've written on my blog, you can use the function evalFile to load the contents of an external file as data or executable code.

So if you have a file called titles.txt that looks like this

var titles={
    {startTime:1.23, endTime:2.23, textContent:"this is the first subtitle"},
    {timestamp:2.34, endTime:3.45, textContent:"this is the second subtitle"},
    {timestamp:4.56, endTime:5.55, textContent:"and so on…"}
}

…you can evaluate it as part of the source of the expression, so that the titles array is now available to the expression.

So you could do something like this with the source text property of a text layer:

try{
    myPath = “/path/to/my/titles.txt”; //obviously the path to the file
    $.evalFile(myPath);
    for (var i=0; i < titles.length; i++){
       if (time > titles[i].startTime && time < titles[i].endTime){
           titles[i].textContent;
       } else { ""; } //blank text
 }catch(err){
 “ERROR”;
}

What that does is:

load up the subtitles file,
scan through the titles and look at each one to see if the current time is between its start and end points
if the time is right for the subtitle to display then it sets the source text to the subtitle content, if not sets it to a blank string.

Other layers could use the startTime and endTime variables to drive other properties such as opacity or anything else you can animate.

If your subtitle time stamps are represented as smpte timecode you'll have to add a converter to the expression. There's one here.

You can use a capable text editor (notepad++, atom, sublime text, vim etc) to reformat the subtitles file, or you could use JS text processing tools (eg. regex, string.split, string.replace etc) in the script to parse the subtitles file. I'd recommend against the latter, they're going to be a lot slower. Remember that the expression is evaluated every time the frame is rendered, which includes reading the subtitles file from disk. If you have motion blur on, that could mean dozens of times each frame.


Making lenses (water and dust) splashproof?

It depends on what you mean by splashproof.

Rain covers are the absolute cheapest form of protection (as little as $5 or as much as $70+), though they generally leave the front element exposed and provide only minimal protection since they are not sealed.  They also are somewhat clunky to use as you generally have to reach under them or through sleeves in order to get to controls and you have to look through a plastic window to see the camera controls.

The next level up is water tight bags.  These cost more than rain covers on average ($60-$300), but they actually form a water tight seal around the camera.  This comes with a down side however.  With no way for water to get in, there is also no way for your hands to get in and you must try to operate the camera through the bag.  The objective is also covered, so it does reduce image quality, though models are available that provide an optical quality windows for the objective (though they cost more).  They are also limited to only a few inches to a few feet of water before the protection breaks down, though if you only care about dust and splash, they should do the job fairly well.

The next level up are sports enclosures ($350 to $1000).  These are similar to underwater enclosures, but without some of the over-engineering that goes in to making it withstand depth.  They are designed to handle similar conditions to the watertight bags, but are far easier to use and almost always have optical grade objective covers.  They are bulky, but they allow easy access to controls and are far more reliable in terms of simply placing the camera in to it and closing and latching the door.

Finally, the absolute best protection is the full blown underwater enclosure.  These units are extremely expensive ($1000 - $7000) and have to be assembled to a configuration specific to the lens and body being used (modular systems allow you to re-purpose it for different lenses by changing out parts of the enclosure).  They offer dedicated physical controls and optical grade objective covers.  They are engineered for even deep underwater and can often go 300 feet down or more.  They are probably overkill on land, but they will withstand just about anything you can throw at them without severely impacting your ability to shoot since they offer dedicated physical controls.  They are, however, not available for longer lenses.

Of course, the list wouldn't be complete without suggesting simply a weather sealed camera body and lens combination which would preclude most of this stuff being necessary.  Note that a weather sealed lens alone is not enough though and weather sealing.  The entire camera system (lens, body and battery grip if applicable) needs to be weather sealed and it is only as well sealed as the weakest component. Also, while professional weather sealing will handle light to moderate rain, it may not hold up to the worst of conditions.  I've done shots with my 5D Mark iii and 70-200 f/2.8 IS II in moderate to heavy rain, but had to promptly deal with some minor moisture issues after.  I suppose the cost of getting a 5D Mark iii and a 70-200 f/2.8 IS II is actually more than getting even a cheaper underwater enclosure, however you also get substantially better image quality from it.


Youtube 720p video has more MB than 1080p

I tried this with the video provided in the comment.
The reason why the 1080p video is smaller is because it has a lower bit-rate (327 vs. ~207 Kbps). In the case of this type of content its likely that the bit-rate for the 720p version is too high. Same for the audio the 1080p version has 96 Kbps and the 720p version has 144-155 Kbps.

A possible reason why this is the case, is how YouTube handles 720p and 1080p video. Unlike the 720p stream the 1080p stream isn't truly constant in it's bit-rate. For 1080p YouTube uses a protocol called "DASH" which adapts the bitrate of the video on the fly to meet the bandwidth constrains of the user which might change during streaming. You get lots of video bits from the server which might differ in bit-rate depending on your current connection. So if you download the same video on a very slow connection it will probably be even smaller.

In this case it saved you bandwidth while having better quality, in other cases the 1080p video could actually look worse than the 720p video, though DASH is pretty smart so usually you will probably end up with a better looking 1080p.


How to change lightworks project frame rate?

I haven't used LightWorks recently or extensively, and I am not sure how the whole EyeFrame converter works, but if you want to change your output frame-rate, I think this link will help.
In it (the link), user HammerHead says:

You choose the project-rate when you first create your project from the projects browser (the window that you see when you first run up the app). This governs the frame-rate that all your edits are created at in that project.
Once you enter that project/room you can then change the output rate in that project using the setting you describe on the project-card. So if you're in a 25fps project, the available playback rates will be 25 & 50.
To make a 30fps project, go back to the projects-browser (by clicking the arrow icon in the lower right corner), and fill in the details at the top.

I'm pretty sure that the sentence I took the liberty of making bold, is the answer. Also, the user was asking for a 30fps video but it should work for 25fps. Read the whole link for more details.
I don't think this is what you are looking for, but here is another link, just in case.


Is there an app that can automatically separate scenes/clips from a video file and export them?

Most professional quality video editing software has this kind of functionality.  You can take a look at DaVinci Resolve, which is available for free on Linux.  This article has more details about how to do it, but "Scene Cut Detection" is the name of the feature you are looking for and it's available when right clicking on a video file.


How to concatenate clips from the same video with ffmpeg

concat filter

This method is best if you need to perform additional filtering:

Use the trim, atrim, setpts, asetpts, and concat filters:

ffmpeg -i input -filter_complex \
"[0:v]trim=60:65,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
 [0:a]atrim=60:65,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a0]; \
 [0:v]trim=120:125,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1];
 [0:a]atrim=120:125,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a1]; \
 [v0][a0][v1][a1]concat=n=2:v=1:a=1[out]" \
-map "[out]" output.mkv

setpts and asetpts will prevent a jerky output due to presentation timestamp issues.
Make sure to use a recent version. See the FFmpeg Download page for links to builds for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

concat demuxer

Another method is to to create the segments individually and stream copy them instead of re-encoding (to save time and quality), and join them with the concat demuxer.

$ ffmpeg -ss 60 -i input -t 5 -codec copy clip1.mkv
$ ffmpeg -ss 120 -i input -t 5 -codec copy clip2.mkv
$ echo "file 'clip1.mkv'" > concat.txt
$ echo "file 'clip2.mkv'" >> concat.txt
$ ffmpeg -f concat -i concat.txt -codec copy output.mkv


Checkout videoblocks. They are a subscription based stock footage site.
Here is a clip I found that is similar to what you are looking for.
Consider using my referal link to sign up for videoblocks.

For sound effects, check out audioblocks (a sister sight to videoblocks).
They have sound effects for dolphins, whales, and lots of different water sounds.
Consider using my referral link to sign up for audioblocks.

P.S. I am not affiliated with videoblocks or audioblocks in any way.


How to prevent ffmpeg from dropping frames when trimming?

Try to place the -ss and -to after the input:

ffmpeg \
  -i input-original.mp4 \
  -ss 00:11:42 \
  -to 01:11:22 \
  -c copy \
  output-trimmed.mp4

According to @Gyan (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45004159/ffmpeg-ss-and-t-for-cutting-mp3)

  When -ss and -t are placed before the input, ffmpeg resorts to fast
  seek which relies on the index of the input to allow ffmpeg to start
  and stop seeking. MP3s don't have indices, so ffmpeg estimates
  duration via bitrate. This can be inaccurate.

  When -ss and -t are placed after the input, ffmpeg counts demuxed
  packets. This will be accurate.

If it doesn't work you can also try to convert your video to intra-frame format (try ffvhuff), trim it and then convert it back to mp4 but this will slightly decrease the quality of the trimmed output. Keep in mind that ffvhuff will create huge file in size so make sure you have enough free space if you want to go this way.


How to convert HDV to dvd full resolution 640 x 480?

Whenever you publish something to end-users you ALWAYS want square pixels, everything else WILL make problems.

So just convert your anamorphic video to a square pixel aspect ratio. Handbrake should automatically handle that, the settings you have right now should output a video with square pixel aspect ratio. Just add the vertical resolution.

Is there any reason why you would want to crop your video to 4:3? A down-scaled 16:9 square pixel resolution would equal to 640x360 for a "SD" resolution (bare in mind there are several different DVD standards) and I would suggest you to use that resolution and don't just crop your video unless you have an artistic reason for that.

If handbrake is unable to handle the non-square pixels you will have to reside to use either a full fledged video editor or alternatively FFmpeg.


This is not the auto white balance screwing up.  This is the way that SCUBA footage looks without artificial light.  Even shooting with my SeaLife DC1400 which has specialized underwater white balance settings, you get a strong color cast, particularly in green water.

Water doesn't block frequencies of light evenly and as depth increases, much of the red light is lost from the spectrum.  Unless you have an artificial light to put red back in to the color, there is no signal there to be had.  The color cast comes from the color of the light exceeding the sensitivity of the sensor to be able to adjust for the imbalance between the red, green and blue light.

Update: Ok, I just looked at your footage and it looks like there may have been a technical glitch with it.  That is extremely green, even for underwater footage.  That almost looks more like a malfunction, but there still isn't enough information there to correct.  It looks like red and even blue data is almost completely absent from the recording.  I guess maybe my SeaLife DC1400 does a better job than I thought with color if there wasn't a technical problem there.

As far as ways to try and salvage it, you could go black and white with it or could try reducing the amount of green in it using a hue adjustment, but it still is only going to look "less bad" not "good".  Wish I had better news for you, but it kind of goes with the territory of shooting underwater at any kind of depth at all without a light, particularly in colder green waters.


Did you watch the webcam feed? What did / didn't you like about the quality of that? For some applications, webcams do "just work", and that might be good enough. Installing a "professional" setup can get real expensive real fast.

For audio, if the PA system is of high enough quality, picking up the audio from where you pick up the video might be good enough. The webcam mic likely isn't great for this, but there's lots of mics out there designed for video cameras that will also plug into your laptop to improve that. Get a USB audio interface as needed (google audio interface as suggested, I've used the ATR2USB, works fine), there are more specialist devices like the Rode AI-1 available if you want to use an XLR input. Getting a feed direct from the audio closet will be highest quality, but based on the distance, you'd either need to run a long cable, or invest in a wireless transmitter / receiver. So it all depends on your current webcam quality, versus how much you want to spend to improve that.

For video, do you need more than one camera angle? Do you have existing video cameras available? Again, something that can get expensive quick, depending how far you want to go. You can interface via something like the ATEM Mini (haven't got one myself, and no one currently has stock!), some cameras do have direct streaming available as well. If it's a fixed shot and the camera doesn't move, the webcam might even be fine. Maybe post some more detail about what does/doesn't work with the current setup, to get some more specific suggestions.

Also try browsing this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/makeradventures - he's basically doing exactly what you are, and possibly has some content of interest.


Correct metadata for VR180 video on YouTube

Google's VR180 Injector should do the trick
https://arvr.google.com/vr180/apps/


How can I have a music track fade to a low gain/volume while I talk over it with a second audio track in Adobe Premiere Pro CC?

Ducking is a great solution for broadcast audio (for example, muting crowd noise when a commentator is trying to explain what's happening on the field).  In production, the limitations of ducking become apparent: sometimes it's too much or too little, sometimes it needs to be faster than the default, or slower.  These are things that are not necessarily obvious the first time you listen, but become obvious after the second or third listening.

Broadcast audio production presumes you hear things only once, so the limitations of ducking are acceptable.  If you are producing material that people might watch more than once, you really should do the ducking manually, setting audio keyframes and moving the volume manually to maximize not only quality and intelligibility, but also emotion and impact.


What are some GUI that allow me to cut sections from a video without re-encode?

LosslessCut is an open-source video cutting tool. Its interface is built using Electron, and its backend is ffmpeg. It's available on the three main operating systems (Linux/Mac/Windows), and also from the Mac, Microsoft and Snap stores.


Do they use books when studying Film at an university?

Yes, a good program should have books in at least some of the courses.  A lot of stuff is best learned hands on, but the history and why of things is very helpful to have good books as resources.

Unfortunately, the book choices tend to change over time because the pace of change is pretty high and while a lot of the why and older history stuff doesn't change, the practical side of it does, so books can change and be updated fairly frequently.  I was in college back in 2002-2006, so my books are all pretty old now and I don't remember what most of them were anyway.

At a practical level, you don't really reference back to any of the books from college much though.  It's more just background information and teaching you the way to communicate using the medium.  It all just becomes part of your toolkit and you don't really think about it too much after that unless you're dealing with someone without any of that background and having to explain it in your own terms.


Graphics card and video codecs: are colors stored in a linear scale?

If by linear scale, the (Cinelerra manual) "saying" means gamma = 1.0, then that's not my understanding of most video codecs.

GPUs, OTOH, probably do operate upon values decoded and stored as a linear representation of a higher precision than the source, which would be typically 8-bits per channel.


Who owns the RAW video, audio and photo footage in case the client does not pay the agreed price?

Copyright law here says that the person who shoots the footage owns the footage. The only way to change this is if you sign a work for hire contract which says that the production company owns the copyright and that they'll pay you in exchange for your work and copyright. If they didn't pay you then they breached their contract. If there was no contract then you own the footage and don't have to give them anything. Something as simple as an email could be considered a legally binding contract though. I suggest you contact a lawyer who knows entertainment law in the US.

Save everything, emails, phone call records, written notes, receipts, plane tickets, reservations, anything that demonstrates your working relationship with this company and how much they have paid you and how much they owe you or should have paid you.

Sorry this sort of thing happens.

See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire


Nothing really. All recent camcorders are more than enough for what you want.

Two things to look:

That shutter speed can change so that you can define how smooth motion you want
That they offer fast zoom/focus capabilities for sports.

Any recent cam-corder from major companies already covers this.

If you want quality sound you should also look for a camcorder that has an external mic jack so that you can connect your own microphone. This raises the budget a lot.

Unless you are a professional I would stay away from using a DSLR for sports filming.

I personally own a panasonic-v250. I also bought it for sports filming.


Recording a two speaker event with large audience

If I was doing it I would probably give both speakers a wireless lavalier (lapel) mic, and record each to a separate channel. I would have two cameras (at least), one generally staying wide (which can be a static camera if you don't have more than one operator), and one getting close shots, and following on the action or dialogue, so when one of the speakers is speaking it focuses on them.

You use the wide footage to cover the times when the close-up camera is switching back and forth. If there's a lot of to-and-fro dialogue between the two you could use a third camera, or frame the closer shot as a two-shot. If you can shoot in 4k and you're releasing in HD you can also shoot wider and use cropping to get close-ups.

You could also get audience reaction shots and as you said, the feed from any AV presentations should be recorded too. Keeping the cameras out of the way of the audience can be tricky, if you have long lenses that helps, because you can move them to the back, but it depends on the geometry of the auditorium and the gear you have available.

Lastly, the best way to edit the separate streams is to use the multicamera editing capabilities of your NLE. Premier, FCP, resolve all can do multicamera editing, and so do most of the other major NLEs. Using multicamera means that once you've synched the cameras (use the on-board sound from each camera to do this) you can watch them all playing simultaneously, and choose which angle to cut to with the keyboard, a bit like a live vision mixer. It means you can edit at close to real-time once you get the hang of it.


Plugin for generating the entire audio waveform seekbar?

I think if I was going to do this quickly as a one-off, I'd cheat.  I'd open the audio file in an audio editor, like Audition or Audacity, grab a screenshot, then modify that screenshot in Photoshop & AE until I got the look I wanted in After Effects.  If you need a scrolling line through it as it plays, just position a line at the beginning of the waveform, then add some linear position keyframes to move it through the waveform at the right rate.
It's an ugly hack but for a one-off, it's probably the quickest solution.


How to achieve the short particle bursts in this gif?

Generally its totally possible to achieve this with Particle World, just play around with gravity adn particle emission rate and animate them accordingly.

If you need a more advanced particle system use a plugin called Particular by Red Giant Software. Though its not free and costs money.


Scrolling rainbow when projector screen is in frame

You are seeing the scan line of the projector.  You need a camera with a screen sync feature in order to deal with the rolling shutter issue and depending on the technique used by the projector, it may not even be possible.

What you are actually seeing is what the projector actually does, it's just that it happens too fast for your eye to perceive it normally.  A video camera is however fast enough to catch it.

This is regularly a problem even for professional gear and it is not at all uncommon for video screens to be shot with the device off and the video on the screen composited in after the fact.


I use the Contour cameras, with a small transmitter-box connected to the camera. If you want decent quality footage, you should avoid cameras with built-in wireless streaming, as most really do not have the capability to transmit in full quality.


ffmpeg, first second of cut video part freezed

The order of the parameters is very important on ffmpeg.
Try this:

ffmpeg -ss 00:36:18 -i input.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -to 00:39:50 output.mp4

It seems that setting the -ss parameter before -i sets a keyframe at the beginning of the newly generated video.
Or so I understand from the Wiki page here.


Is there a program that can change monitor color temperature for lighting?

Here is a hack. You can use Blender and the Blackbody Node of Cycles Render Engine. Following example shows a realtime viewport animation of the color temperature in kelvin:

Create some geometry (e.g. a plane) as light emitter
Setup an Emission shader
Create a Blackbody node and plug it into the Emission Color
Position your camera
Switch your Camera by pressing Numpad 0
Set the Viewport Shading to Rendered or press F12 to render the image

blend file

Renderings

2000K

4000K

6000K


AE Error : Imager Buffers exceed internal limits. Decrease the memory requirements for the rendering of this frame. (12804)

It would be good to know what OS your machine is running and if it's 32 or 64 bit, and the resources as in type of processor (Dual Core, i3, i7?) and how much DRAM is on the motherboard. I am not an After Effects user (yet) but this error appears to be a resource error, which is common to many other video editors.

It would also be helpful to have you describe what you are trying to render in AE. For instance how long is the piece, how many video tracks, what effects are used, etc.

Without knowing your computer's resources is not a show stopper, here are some items to check.

Are you running anything else when AE is trying to render, if so try your render again with nothing running but AE.

If you have a 32 bit machine you may have a 2GB limit on the RAM, which is going to be an issue. Have you tried this on a 64 bit machine with more memory?

What resources do you have AE using besides the requested render? For instance do you have the preview screen on 'auto' size mode, you might try to make the preview smaller and in a 1/4 or 1/2 mode so AE doesn't have to figure out each display frame size thereby freeing up some cycles.


can I use ffmpeg drawtext filter as a passthrough/identity filter? (and/or performance question)

Yes, method 2 is suitable. Add something like enable=0


Pixelate effect when converting MOV to FLV via FFMPEG

You should explicitly specify a video codec using -vcodec as well as quality settings.

The problem is that ffmpeg's defaults aren't very sensible when you only specify a container format for the output, often choosing a sub-standard video format by default.

If you want H.264 output, try using the presets, e.g. -vcodec libx264 -vpre max. (To see what presets are available, try ls /usr/share/ffmpeg/*.ffpreset.)


How can I create Motion titles with fixed-length transitions?

You can use Build-In and Build-Out markers. If you right click (or control-click) on the top of the timeline, you'll get a pop-up menu with an option to add a marker. When you add it, you'll get a green timeline marker. Double-click it to edit it and choose whether it's a mandatory or optional build-in marker. Everything before that should play at the same speed in FCPX as it does in Motion. The area between the build-in and build-out markers will stretch to fit, and everything after the build-out marker will play as it does in Motion.


How can I prevent adobe media encoder from trimming the end of the video?

I can't read your screenshot, and in any case I don't use the particular tool, but I can say that some common reasons for this are: 1) the audio and video are different lengths and the particular encoding scheme or codecs don't like that; 2) the scheme or codec requires that the material ends in a full GOP (encoding quantum).

If these are your issue, possible solutions are obvious: make the streams the same length, and/or pad the streams out to a full quantum. Probably both...


FYI the Canon 70D can't record for more than 29 minutes, 59 seconds at a time. If you're just streaming, look into the BlackMagic Web Presenter. It can trick your computer into thinking that any HDMI or SDI source is a webcam.


It is basically the same.
In a movie, you should have a motivated camera.
Meaning that the camera itself has or delivers an emotion.

A simple example:
Place someone really small into a corner of the screen, darken the lights. The person will look depressed and pushed to the edge from society.

Place someone in the entire frame into the middle and film them slightly from below and they will look powerfull and important.

You don't need to allways use rule of thirds in film, but you should consider it.

For example bringin an emotion into walking scene:

Person in right thirds, walking to left; Looks like the person walks into an open world
Person in right thirds, walking to right; Wlaking against a wall, not comming further...

There can be much meaning hidden inside a camera framing/move


What software do I need to convert a DVD to common formats? And what are the recommended formats?

I ended up using Xilisoft and it works well for my requirements.


How to convert a 3D movie to 2D using ffmpeg

While you might be able to achieve this by manually using ffmpeg's crop filter, the stereo3d filter is designed specifically for this purpose. You didn't specify the exact 3d format you have. There are several possibilities as documented at the the stereo3d link above. Assuming that input.mkv is the relatively common sbsl (side-by-side left eye on left),

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf stereo3d=sbsl:ml -metadata:s:v:0 stereo_mode="mono" output.mkv

will result in a 2d (left eye only) output.mkv. I believe the reason -metadata:s:v:0 stereo_mode="mono" is required to remove the stereo tag is because the metadata isn't piped through the filter system, and ffmpeg otherwise tries to duplicate the metadata of the original. If you don't do this, some players may think your 2d result is still 3d and do weird things.

If you find that the result has the wrong aspect ratio, you can experiment with using stereo3d=sbsl2:ml instead which treats the input as half width side-by-side. If all else fails, you can set the correct aspect with -aspect 16:9 (or whatever you know the correct aspect ratio to be).


Those are interlacing problems it looks like. In the editor, it displays 'deinterlaced' previews so you won't notice this in the editor. In the clip, select "Field options" and then "Always deinterlace" then render your video again, it should be fine then.


Video format can't be played or converted

Use this ffmpeg* command:

ffmpeg -i "20151105-175532.dad" -c:v copy "20151105-175532.mp4"

*get 32-bit static build.


Technical name for this? (PIP picture in picture with transparent background via green screen, chroma key)

The technical name for this is a "bug". Usually the context is that it's an advertisement for another show on the same network, or it's a network logo rather than part of the content.
I'm not very familiar with Windows software, but Shot Cut is free and includes compositing functions.


I like your idea. You might be able to make a convincing smoke element to superimpose on your shot like this:

get a black sheet or piece of posterboard
cut a small, mouth-sized hole in the posterboard
paint the actor's lips black
have the actor stand behind the black posterboard, and blow smoke through the hole

The lighting would be pretty tricky. The best bet would be to have a light directly overhead, not on the black posterboard at all. The light would (hopefully) catch the smoke but keep the posterboard exceptionally dark.  It could be darkened more in After Effects when you're superimposing it (probably as a chromakey where the key color is black). In addition, you could create a traveling mask over the shape of the smoke.


How to time remap faster than 1000% in Premiere

Try nested sequences.  Insert your video in a sequence, speed it up the maximum amount.  Insert that sequence into another and then speed up the original sequence.  Note that the impact will be multiplicative, so if you make the video 10 times faster and the sequence 3 times faster, you'll end up with footage 30 times faster than the original.


What is the name of this type of treatment in video/audio?

It's also known as having an solid understanding of microphones and recording techniques, as well as sound audio editing principles. These types of videos are a great example of how awesome sound recording can enhance picture, and examples of the reason no filmmaker should skimp on sound. It's easier to mess up good sound for dramatic effect (say, adding EQ for distortion or making it quieter and adding reverb to make it sound farther away), but near impossible to clean messed up sound to make it usable.


What is the best workflow solution for editing a movie in FCPX and creating specific effects for it in Motion 5?

There's no really good workflow, I think, yet. The best way I found is to export the video out of FCPX and import it into Motion. Apple thinks that you don't need to work in Motion solely, you only go there to create an effect, title, whatever and then put that thing right on top of a clip in Final Cut.

The problem there is that sometimes you'd rather want to have all the editing options Motion offers and just want to see how the video's going to look like. That problem is, to my knowledge, not solved yet. I hope this is all going to change in the future.


Solved: issue was audio effect on the master that was causing the clip duration change lag. iZotope RX was the plugin causing this if anyone is interested!