Are there any free ways to increase the framerate of a video?

what about creating image sequences and then using somehting like ImageMagick to interpolate between the frames.

So (assuming bash, zsh or similar shell) this should work:

mkdir tempdir
mkdir outputdir
ffmpeg -i input.mov -f image2 tempdir/temp_%06d.png #create a png sequence
len=$(ls -1 tempdir|wc -l) #count the files in temp dir
for f in {0..$len}
do
    old=printf %06d $f #number of current frame
    next=printf %06d $((f+1)) #number of next frame
    new=printf %06d $((f*2)) #number of output frame from current
    newInt=printf %06d $((new+1)) #number of output frame from interpolation
    convert -morph tempdir/temp_${old}.png tempdir/temp_${next}.png outputdir/output_${newInt}.png #create the intermediate frame with imagemagick
    mv tempdir/temp_${old}.png outputdir/output_${new}.png #rename the old frame with a new number and move it to the output dir
done
mv tempdir/temp_${next}.png outputdir/output_${new}.png #move the last frame
ffmpeg -i outputdir/output_%06d.png <<codec etc. options here>> output.mov

basically that creates a temp folder, makes a png image sequence from ffmpeg, creates an intermediate by morphing the two frames into each other using imagemagick, and turns the output image sequence into a movie.

If this is too slow you could do a quick and dirty interpolation by just blending the two frames together. In that case you'd use

composite -dissolve 50 tempdir/temp_${old}.png tempdir/temp_${next}.png outputdir/output_${newInt}.png

in place of the convert -morph... line
Obviously you'll need to have imagemagick and ffmpeg installed, and you have to substitute your input and output filenames and preferred output video file format and codec etc options.


I'll start by pointing you to another answer I wrote before, roughly covering the different kinds of codecs.

(Nice edit on your question, by the way, removing the file size limitation helped figure out what you were after.)

My recommendation (again) will be to either use ProRes 422 or Cineform as your intermediate, probably via Magic Bullet Grinder or GoPro Cineform Studio respectively.

Either of these codecs will give you good decoding speed, and both will work with Vegas and After Effects.  Any workflow that involves transcoding and not capturing natively to your editing codec (such as with ProRes on an Arri Alexa or a Cinedeck), is going to sacrifice time for processing, but in your case, it seems like that's a necessity.


Any way to change properties of subcomp based on parent comp?

You can link properties in different compositions by using an expression like this one.

comp("Comp Name").layer("Layer Name")("Property e.g. Transform")("SubProperty e.g. Position")

If the property is more nested you just add another ("sub property") until you reach the property you need, just as you would click through the drop down menus.

Also helpful: VideoCopilot recently released a great free script specializing in pre-comping 3D layers in exactly that way. http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2014/08/free-script-3d-pre-compose-tutorial/

Edit: Regarding the clarification in the comments about using relative selectors for comps.
Unfortunately not possible per se. You can do it with layers by specifying the index number but a comp doesn't really have a unique parent which makes this rather hard to have a generic selector for comps. If you have a unique procedural naming based on your comp "depth" this might be possible with some advanced expression or maybe script but if you just named them "my cool comp" and "my other cool" comp you can't really make a script for that.


Does Vegas allow for rendering in frame rate different than source frame rate?

Yes, it does allow rendering in a format different from source media. Vegas works well with projects containing mixed media formats.

More likely, this may be an interpretation problem. In the Project Media window, right-click on the input video and select Properties (at the bottom). Check that the field order is set to Progressive (since your footage is 60p). Same for your project, and render settings.


In order to duplicate the display you would need extra hardware in your machine anyway, otherwise you will still get lag, so I would instead recommend simply upgrading your existing machine - it will be cheaper, and the spinoff is that you will have a better machine.

The machine I am currently writing on has a reasonable GeForce graphics card, quad core i5 and 8Gb of RAM - pretty cheap, but can happily use FRAPS on full screen (1600x1050) at >25 fps while playinng COD4 or MW2 for example.


Doubts about color spaces and chroma subsampling

Are YUV and YCbCr the same thing? → strictly, no. The former is applied to analog signals, and the latter to digital. But media apps (like Mediainfo) use YUV as the designated term.

It doesn't make any sense to say RGB 4:2:0, right? → Not theoretically incoherent, but I haven't seen any codec that implements subsampling for RGB pixels except for Bayer RGB streams possibly. Don't know its details.

What is the "raw sample" here? → a stored single value of a pixel component i.e. any of R,G,B,Y,U,V (or alpha).

Is the 8 bits value referred to the number of bits used for each component (Y, Cb, Cr) before doing chroma subsampling? → it is the resolved bits per individual sample i.e. a 12-bit value has to be stored as a 16-bit datum, so 12 bits is the raw sample size and 16 bits is the coded sample size. 4 bits are for padding.

how should I calculate how many bits per pixel → in terms of luma/chroma resolution, it's the raw sample size. In terms of storage space for a raw uncompressed stream, you sum up the counts in the sampling scheme and divide by maximum count. Multiply by (no. of components x coded sample size).

So, for 4:2:2, that's

(4+2+2) / (4+4+4) = 2/3 and then 2/3 x (3 x 8 bits) = 16 bits per sample


How do I edit video footage from an interview?

There is no one right way to edit anything. I've never watched a video of this kind so I probably can't give the best advice. But if I was in your position there are a few ways I'd consider cutting it together:

Edit it a bit like a 'behind the scenes' video. Begin with footage of someone talking and then use appropriate cutaways of the wedding. Cut back to different people whenever it is appropriate and put some music underneath, something that fits the mood.
This would be my preferred way but you'd need a fair amount of footage of the actual event and even some archival footage or photos would be very handy. Most movies have a behind the scenes on the DVD so I'd suggest watching one or two of those if this method sounds good to you.
The simplest way would be to show each interview one by one. So you'd show the first person's interview in its entirety followed by the next person's, and so on. Crossfade between them and have music underneath. This would probably be a boring video to watch in the end, but it'd do the job.
Similar to my previous suggestion, this would require only the interview footage (no event or archival footage). However, you'd intercut the interviewees based on topic. For example, if the bride talks about how she met the groom you'd intercut that along side the groom talking about how they met (assuming he does). This way you would be able to cut out a lot of the fluff that you get when interviewing people.

That's how I'd go about it anyway, mate. Hope that helps you out a little.


Which part of a computer is critic to work on 4k footage

The hard drive is usually the biggest factor when working with big footage files.
Upgrade his workstation with a reasonably sized SSD, I recommend atleast 500GB to ensure you can work on multiple projects without moving files around.
The SSD speed of course is the important factor that would speed up the workflow, so be sure to not buy a cheap but big SSD but one that has fast read and write speeds. Read speed being  more important than write speed.

When working with Adobe Products, a mid-range GPU can help a lot aswell when doing a lot of color correction and other "effects" work. Many effects and plugins nowadays are GPU accelerated and will be even more in the future.
I recommend buying a mid-range consumer or "gamer" GPU instead of a so called workstation GPU. They are incredibly overpriced with nearly no additional stability and usually worse performance. You only benefit from them if you have very special needs (like 10bit displays or frame locking) and need certain warranties or support from the Manufacturer.

Also as AJ Henderson mentioned, you should have around 16GB RAM or 12GB on 3 channel CPUs. 8GB or less will perform horribly with modern Adobe Products, they use a lot more RAM to increase performance since they switched to 64bit.


On the outgoing footage add a qucick zoom at the end, on the incoming
footage add a quick zoom at the beginning (animate the scale of the
clips using whatever tools your NLE has for this). If the outgoing
zoom is a zoom in, then zoom out, and vice-versa.
Add a dissolve between the two clips that is the same length as the
zoom. The whole thing needs to be very quick, 12 frames or so tops.
A radial blur can help as well to simulate motion blur.

I wrote a FCP (version 7 or lower) plugin that did this as a transition effect. I can dig it out if you want it.


After Effects - How to avoid annoying gradations if I render a mp4?

That's called: Banding. About Color Banding from Wikipedia:

  Colour banding is a problem of inaccurate colour presentation in computer graphics. In 24 bit colour modes, 8 bits per channel is usually considered sufficient to render images in Rec. 709 or sRGB. However, in some cases there is a risk of producing abrupt changes between shades of the same colour. For instance, displaying natural gradients (like sunsets, dawns or clear blue skies) can show minor banding.

In your case I assume that this is a compression issue. Movie containers like: mov, avi or mp4 only can have 8bit, but the preview is in 16bit or 32bit. If you render a image format that supports 16bit or 32bit (preferably exr, tga, tiff) instead of a video you should see no difference to your preview screenshot.

The simplest way to avoid banding is to add grain to your video.

One option is to use generated grain shipped by default with After Effects. Just typing Add Grain in the Effects & Presets window and apply this effect to your final comp. Note: A Intensity value of 0.37 or 0.4 should be enough to remove the banding and makes the effect not noticeable.
Another option is to use scanned film grain from real cameras


The old school way is stop-motion animation. You basically take snapshots of the paper at regularly timed intervals, where you remove you hand and take the snapshot, then compile a video from the stills. You can use interpolation to smooth out the framerate.

Another idea to remove your hand and pencil is to chroma-key your hand and drawing implement (green-screen). If you keep the hand and pencil away from the center of the frame, you might have some success with this, and touch up any problems with elements from earlier or later frames. Problems with this: reflectance of the mask color on the paper; cast shadows etc.

Lastly, and probably most difficult, is to use a secondary camera (such as a video camera with "night-mode") and an IR pass filter. Cover or disable the IR spotlight on the camera, and attach an IR LED (extracted from a tv remote etc) very close to the business end of the pencil. With the right setup, one might wind up with a dark video field with light area where the LED is shining. With some manipulation, and {magic}, you now have a mask of the pencil area.


How to trigger an aerender command from a web page

Depends on which scripting languages your web server supports.

Main requirements

The language should be able to execute the application
The language should provide secure access the files on the server or a network
The language should provide methods to assembly file paths (e.g. relative to absolute paths)
The language should provide interaction methods for connecting the webpage (user input) and your application, also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application_framework

Execute aerender via python

Assuming your webserver supports python, execute the app via python's subprocess module. You only have to make sure that you can call aerender from your command line properly.

# import subprocess module to call aerender
import subprocess

# create a aerender argument list
args = ['aerender', '-project', 'path_to_file']
process = subprocess.Popen(args, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)

In order to batch process a folder of .aep files you'll need to iterate through the files:

#import os module
import os

# set the path to your aep folder
path = '/home/user/Desktop/aep-files'    # linux or osx
# path = r'c:\some\directory\aep-files'  # windows, the r is important
# path = 'c:/some/directory\aep-files'   # windows (alternative)

# make sure the files are .aep files
aep_file_folder = [f for f in os.listdir(path) if f.endswith('.aep')]

# iterate through the list
for i in aep_file_folder:
    # setup correct filepath for aeps
    file_path = os.path.join(path,i)

    # call aerender with the correct arguments
    subprocess.call(['aerender', '-project', file_path])

Note: If there is no need to communicate (e.g. getting the output of aerender) you can simply use subprocess.call instead.


Best encoding to fit 10hours of 1080p in 30gb?

You can calculate the maximum total bit rate that would fill the storage:

30GB ≈ 30,720 MB ≈ 245,760 Mb
10 hours = 600 minutes = 36,000 seconds
245,760 / 36,000 ≈ 6.83 Mb/s

You need to encode to a video bit rate less than that maximum to account for the audio and any overhead. Plus, you probably want to leave some space free on the storage. I'd say that 5 Mb/s is probably a safe bet. From there, you should try out different codecs and settings to see what gives you the quality you want at that bit rate.


"Main 10" stands for 4:2:0 10-bit color, and I'm Pretty sure "Ma10p" is just another way of saying Main 10.


After Effects CS6 : Template Compositions

There are a few different ways you can do this depending on your scenario.  Normally, for things like lower thirds, I make one composition in which I enter just the lower third text and plate.  I then use that composition as an asset in another composition to do the actual animations.  I can then simply turn on or off any particular text I need to in the static composition and render the final composition to get the needed output.

Similarly, for a video at the beginning of a clip, you can have a wrapper composition that has the lead-in and then you can replace the contents of the composition that is shown after the lead-in plays.

Alternately, you could probably do a fair bit of it using expressions too, but I've yet to have any tasks that were complex enough to have bothering to setup something with expressions.


Is there any way to play corrupted .MOV video file

Trying using a program called VLC, a lot of times it will play corrupt video clips but it may crash/and or stop playing around corrupt portion


Export from Camtasia to Premiere Pro, with good audio

If all else fails, do two different exports, one with each audio track muted and then put them on separate tracks in Premiere.


After Effects: controlling slider in ExtendScript

I found out - .value after slider.effect("Slider Control").property("Slider") and it works.

var a = slider.effect("Slider Control").property("Slider").value


Is there an existing video format that records per-frame metadata?

If the frame-rate is not too high and you can associate a frame with a precise timestamp then the easiest would be to add the metadata as textual subtitles.

The other option is to mux the metadata as standard headers in .mp4 or similar container format. .mp4 can be broken down into multiple fragments, each one with its own header, and theoretically this can be done per frame. However, doing that for more than a few frames is extremely inefficient in terms of file size and performance. A variation of this method would be to extract every frame as an image (e.g. JEPG), and set its metadata.

Yet another option is to use stenography without any hacking, you just encode the metadata into a separate stream which is timestamp-synced with the main video stream. Most modern container formats, including .mp4, can accommodate multiple video streams in the same container (e.g., you can label the encoded metadata stream as the same content but in another language).


How to repeat an action against all clips in a sequence in Premiere Pro CC

Adobe has included a scripting framework in most of its apps, (you may have noticed a tool called extendscript toolbox, that's the IDE for it). Unfortunately they neglected to document Premiere's scripting API, so you have to work it out yourself / using the internet.

So yes, you could indeed develop a script to do this within Premiere. After all, why spend hours doing something by hand when in only a few weeks you can develop a script to do it automatically?


Waving flag in After Effects from vector

The simplest way would be:

Create your flag in Illustrator
Think about or simply test how many frames/steps are key for animation
Draw your frames/steps on seperate Illustrator layers in to get the same position for all of it
Paste your frame/path with CTRL+V on 1 solid layer every 4-20 frames by switching between After Effects and Illustrator back and forth - time depends on your animation

Explanation: Through pasting the masks at a different time, After Effects automatically creates keyframes of the mask shape property. All copied shapes become interpolated keyframes like a roto shape animation to get soft transitions.

Note: The only limitation is that the number of anchor points per vector image should remains the same to get soft interpolation between the shape keys.


I can answer your first question. At the same bitrate and transcoding from an 8-bit source 10-bit HEVC is better than 8-bit HEVC, because it hardcodes dither. https://gist.github.com/l4n9th4n9/4459997
I am still unsure, whether that makes 12-bit HEVC transcodes superior  to 10-bit, thats why I ended up here.


What is good software for video editing under Linux?

There are a lot of answers regarding open source on this answer: Good open source Video Editors?

If you specifically target Linux I'd suggest Lightworks or Kdenlive. Lightworks isn't open source yet but is announced to be after the mac release is finished.

Both a great option for video editing under Linux and fullfill your requirements. Lightworks has only one downside, that being you need to register it on the first start with a free Lightworks account. After that you don't have to connect to the internet again.

If OpenSource is the most important factor I suggest to go with Kdenlive.


After reading separate video and audio tracks (in Shotcut), just export a portion of it as one video

I am using Shotcut in version 17.03.02. There are probably more ways how you can accomplish this.

The simplest is to mark in and out points in you video after adding it to the playlist. You can do this using keyboard (I - for in) and (O - for out) also while playing the clip.

Then you can right click the file name in playlist and either Replace the clip with the new cut points or Insert cut, basically inserting a second clip with the cut points marked. Then you can append the file into the Video Track. Do the same with your audio file. Create cut points and append it to a new audio track.

You can do some additional trimming in the track editor. For example using the Split At Playhead and delete the parts you don't want. That way you can trim both files to the same length. Now you have to export the project.


What can be done with .CPI or .clpi files?

As Professor Sparkles has correctly pointed out (I've just checked and confirm) — the MediaInfo tool can extract some metadata from these files. Here is a sample output from one of mine:

General
Complete name                            : /Volumes/CAM_SD/PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/CLIPINF/00119.CPI
Format                                   : Blu-ray Clip info
File size                                : 502 Bytes

Video
ID                                       : 4113 (0x1011)
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 50.000 fps

Audio
ID                                       : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Language                                 : English

Text
ID                                       : 4608 (0x1200)
Format                                   : PGS
Language                                 : English

(But note that it can output more details in the --full mode.)

Also, it may be helpful to note that the AVCHD standard is proprietary and its spec is not publicly available. Attempts to reverse-engineer its components exist, and one of them is in this forum thread (from 2008): http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141361


One way to deal with different aspect ratios is to take footage that is not as wide as your output format and duplicate it in another layer. Increase the scale on this other layer and blur the image, then put the original over it. This produces a nice coherent effect where the area outside the original footage is filled with colors that are from the original footage, but are not distracting.

If you're working in FCPX, there's a built-in filter called "Photo Recall" that does this sort of effect. It shrinks the original image, but you can have it fill the frame instead. Other apps probably have a similar filter or make it fair easy to reproduce.


Why setting -r 30 still gives fps=15 in ffmpeg?

fps= 15 represents the encoding speed, not the output file framerate.


How can I ensure the white balance is correct?

It depends on your camera.  Some cameras, like the Blackmagic cameras only let you guestimate.  In this case, you'll just have to know that the color temperature of an outdoor scene is closer to 5600K, warm tungsten light is closer to 3200K, etc.  Then, you'd adjust the image in post to make it more accurate.  Using an x-rite color chart with software like Davinci Resolve (free lite version) can speed, simplify, and improve your results.

Other Cameras, like the Canon 5D Mk II and III will let you place a white or grey card in front of the camera, snap a photo, and internally analyze the color.  I recommend consulting your camera's manual to see if it supports this functionality.

But if none of the above work for you, and you're looking for something like a histogram to analyze the color, you could look into vectorscopes and waveform monitors.  Hardware versions can be pricey, but cheap software versions are available.  Scopebox is a good one for mac.  Maybe someone can comment on a good PC one.  With this solution, you will need a hardware device to convert your video signal to something your computer can read (HDMI to Firewire, SDI to Thunderbolt, Composite to PCIe, for example).  To be clear, this is just a monitoring solution.  In other words, a vecrorscope/ waveform monitor won't change the color of the signal, but it will let you adjust it accurately at the camera, much like you would use your camera's histogram to set exposure.


Free video editing software that supports panning with Bezier curves

Blackmagic Design Fusion 8 is up for the challange.
It is a very high-end compositing application.
Available on Mac and Windows, and as of now completely free.

You might need to find some tutorials to show you how to use it.


mp4 video exported from x265 does not play

It looks like the x265 codec needs to be installed for the App you are using to play the file with.

VLC does support x265 with a dd on codec but it seems the link on there site is broken
https://www.videolan.org/developers/x265.html which is not very useful right now.

there are some other players out there doing a quick Google brought up some results but I dont have a x265 file to play with to test them.

if you exported the file, have you tried exporting it again to see if the same issue happens ?


Audio/video sync software for Linux (preferably open source)

I assume that you have a sound channel recorded on the camera which is in sync with the picture. In that case you only have to find the offset between the audio channels.

This tool claims just that: https://github.com/bbc/audio-offset-finder

I never tried it yet, but I would be very interested on your experiences if you would give it a try.


It is quite possible to make, but think FPGA with 3 Gig SERDES (so probably a modest Kintex 7 or something similar) with a couple of SDI line IO parts (TI) and maybe a PLL from SI Labs, add some power conversion and a mess of VHDL, job done.

Maybe a few months work.

Obviously if you have LTC you can stripe that onto an audio track just using any old audio embedder, but I am guessing that does not really do it for you?

I would be a little surprised if YellowBrix or maybe Decimator Designs do not have a box that does this.

Regards, Dan.


What tools do you use for command line editing?

Video editing is a very visual workflow, you need to see your result at all times, instantly, to be effective in your daily job.
Working with a CLI is rather counter intuitive and makes it hard to make creative decisions.

Frameworks like these are great to make programs on top of them and to automate video processing but are tedious to use in standard video production and animation workflows.
It's a matter of what you want to do, not whether its a powerful tool or not.


Wavy screen and lines showing now and again in live streaming cam

That appears to be analog signal degradation resulting in a loss of frame syncronization.  You may need to add a video amplifier on the end near the camera to boost the signal enough to get it to your computer or possibly use a device that can convert it to digital and stream it over a network connection directly.


How to tune ffmpeg libx265 parameters for encoding old sprite based game video?

The CRF 22 sample looks fine to me at 1x size. The lower the resolution, the greater the impact a high quantization parameter will have. Suggest you stick to values < 24.

Since your video images are mostly static, slower presets won't be worth the extra time (unless you need to squeeze every bit of compression efficiency).


MP4 files don't have as much data as .JPEG or .CR2 files so there is probally no way to know. Your cpu is that fast and GoPro footage is hard for the computer to play.


Splitting and regrouping stereo's right and left channels (Stereo to Mono)

Using ffmpeg, a free command-line tool,

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v copy -af "pan=1c|c0=c0" out.mov

This copies the video over, and the audio is mono with the first channel of the input mapped for export.

Some players may not be setup to default to a stereo matrix. In which case, you can generate a faux stereo stream.

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v copy -af "pan=stereo|c0=c0|c1=c0" out.mov


A quick google search gave me dozens of options. You can use yellowduck for example. Here's a tutorial on how to use it. An alternative is promovgram. There really are a lot of options, so I would recommend just googling yourself.


Why to use lower case "1080p" and "1080i" but not capital "1080P" and "1080I"?

Here are my starting premises.

In the scientific community, There are some standards in the assignation of letters for units.
Normally a capital letter is assigned if the unit cames after the last name of a person, like Kelvin or Newton, and a lowercase letter in the case of just words like the case of a meter.

In the case of the liter, where it is not based on the last name of a person, the usage of capital L is permitted to avoid confusion with the number 1.

There are also some conventions on the usage of acronyms, where you should use Upper Case letters, for example, PPI.

And there are some more on the usage of abbreviates, where lower case letters should be used.

My assumption is that convention 1 and 2 are the most important in this case.   Although in this case, they are not units, the reasoning could apply.
p and i, in my opinion, are not acronyms, so the capital letter would not override the first 2 conventions. They can also derive just from an abbreviation so premise 4 would also apply.

Regarding the K in a 4K resolution, according to one note in the wikipedia it is just an informal way to say thousand, but with an implied unit, in this case the implied unit could be a pixel, 4kpx. It is based on the idea of the kilo but does not use the standard notation.
But something curious is that it is the common practice to denote a Kilobyte and not kilobyte. Probably to make it more uniform with some other prefixes in Uppercase, like Megabyte and Terabyte.
One idea about prefixes was that lowercase prefixes were used to define smaller than the base unit, and Uppercase to define greater than the unit... but the kilogram has a really strange history. Add that the unit for temperature is a big K.
It could also be just a gimmick. We were used to see the capital M (based on the standard prefixes) regarding resolution, for example, "a 24Mpx camera". Using a lower case letter probably has less impact than using a capital letter.
"Goodbye to the old 1080p, Wellcome the 4k"
"Goodbye to the old 1080p, Wellcome the 4K"


add text overlay and image background to a video

The comments all suggest using an NLE (I agree), but given that your question is tagged with ffmpeg, here are a few pointers to documentation:

You can accomplish text overlay with the drawtext filter.

  Draw a text string or text from a specified file on top of a video, using the libfreetype library.

For changing the background, you should look into the colorkey filter. From the docs, here's an example to "make every green pixel in the input image transparent":

ffmpeg -i input.png -vf colorkey=green out.png

As for timing, you should cross-reference if they support timeline editing.

  Some filters support a generic enable option. For the filters supporting timeline editing, this option can be set to an expression which is evaluated before sending a frame to the filter. If the evaluation is non-zero, the filter will be enabled, otherwise the frame will be sent unchanged to the next filter in the filtergraph.

Again, this is probably better suited for an NLE, but it's certainly possible with ffmpeg, and will likely render significantly faster (at the tradeoff of likely taking much longer to craft the ffmpeg invocation vs. using an NLE). Good luck!


Yes, you can preview effects using timeline preview rendering since version 16.08 (video tutorial):

Set in and out points using I and O keys for the area in which your effect is active.
In the main menu in Timeline/Timeline Preview press Add preview zone.
In the same menu, press Start Preview Render and wait until the red bar turns green at the top of the timeline.

Any change to the area - including moving clips or adding effects to clips in it - will result in requiring to re-render to regain the playback speed enhancement.

In case 16.08 or later is not available on Linux Mint yet, you might be able to install it manually (video guide):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kdenlive


Compress multiple videos at once on a Mac

Handbrake can queue up a batch of files.
FFmpeg is free and works on a mac, but you'd have to run it from Terminal.
You can install it using Homebrew for Mac.
Once Homebrew is installed, go to Termaninal and type
brew install ffmpeg

Then you should be able to change directory to wherever your files are by typing something like:
cd /Users/my.username/Movies

where my.username would be your username on that mac, and Movies would be whatever directory the files were in
Then you can convert them by typing something like
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.webm

Where input.mp4 is your source file, and output.webm is your output file.
To convert all the mp4 files in that directory you would enter
ffmpeg -i *.mp4 output.webm

More info on selecting different codecs etc.


Using multiple graphics cards in Davinci Resolve

The free version of Resolve doesn't support multiple GPUs.  The Studio (paid) version does.  However, combining multiple GPU cards generally doesn't increase VRAM (i.e., if you only have 4GB per card, a pair of cards presents 4GB of VRAM).  If you are thinking about a second card to increase your VRAM, it won't work.

Also, the general story from the Resolve users group forums is that multiple cards are really only helpful if you are using lots of temporal noise reduction (which eats VRAM very quickly). If that's the case, you need both lots of VRAM and lots of GPU compute capacity.


How to extract the "real frames" without rely on fps?

You don't quite understand how this works.
h.264 doesn't save single images, but much rather one image, than f.e. 4 estimations what should come after.

For example:
Imagine a ball rolling from left to right, you could noe either store 30 frames of the ball rolling, or you store 1 frame of the ball in the beginning and one in the end, and when you play the video, just take the first image, and copy the ball a bit to the right.

This means, that I Frame compression can be smaller, than single frames.


There are a couple of things I would check

The first thing that comes to mind, the aspect ratio is different from the output to the source. I would check that first (sequence settings)

The seconds thing that comes to mind
Set the crop setting in the export settings to 16:9. That might get rid of the black border for you.

Let me know if it worked.


How do make a layer visible only when overlapping other layers in After Effects

You can use a Track Matte. If your vertical lines aren't already precomposed, precompose them. Duplicate the Precomposition in your main composition. Place the shadow layer between the two precomps. Set the shadow layer's TrkMat setting to Alpha. (If you can't see the Track Matte [TrkMat] dropdown press the Toggle Switches/Modes button at the bottom of your screen).


Combine -vf yadif,format=yuv420p and -filter_complex for watermark

Use

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i logo.png \
-filter_complex "[0]yadif,format=yuv420p[main];[1][main]scale2ref=iw/5:ow*450/450[wm][vid];[vid][wm]overlay=W-w-W*3/100:H-h-H*1/100:enable='gt(t,30)'" \
-force_key_frames "expr:gte(t,n_forced/2)" -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a copy output.mp4


Correcting video flicker problem caused by camera's auto white balance

Probably not easily.  You might be able to try applying a better auto-white balance and hope for the best.  You could also manually adjust it repeatedly and adjust the interpolation between values (on the animation curves) but this is highly time consuming and still won't get as good of a result as reshooting.

If reshooting is an option, it's going to probably be the quickest, easiest and best looking solution.  If not, then your stuck trying some very painful and time consuming adjustments.


If you use the brush on a layer, it actually applies the "paint" effect to the layer. If you paint on a layer with the brush and expand the properties for effects>paint>brush 1> you'll see that there is a start and end setting that can be animated, allowing you to animate the stroke.


I recently encountered this exact problem and I was able to repair the file using Untrunc, a program created specifically to solve this problem, as suggested by sparrowt on SuperUser:

  For this method you need:

  another video file which isn't broken
  a linux installation (I used Ubuntu 12.04) and basic ability to use a command line.

  This is what to do:

  Install some pre-requisite libraries with this command:

  sudo apt-get install libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavutil-dev
  Download the source code for Untrunc from the github repo:

  wget https://github.com/ponchio/untrunc/archive/master.zip
  Unzip the source code:

  unzip master.zip
  Go into the directory where it's been unzipped:

  cd untrunc-master
  Compile the source code using this command (all one line):

  g++ -o untrunc file.cpp main.cpp track.cpp atom.cpp mp4.cpp
  -L/usr/local/lib -lavformat -lavcodec -lavutil

  (you can try skipping this step and using the ready-provided
  executable, but it didn't work for me)
  Then you can actually fix the video. You need both the broken video and an example working video.

  Ideally the video should be from the same camera & have the same
  resolution (mine was but it might work without). Also if it is at
  least as long as the broken one (preferably roughly the same) this may
  help.

  Run this command in the folder where you have unzipped and compiled
  Untrunc but replace the /path/to/... bits with your 2 video files:

  ./untrunc /path/to/working-video.m4v /path/to/broken-video.m4v

  Then it should churn away and hopefully produce a playable file
  called broken-video_fixed.m4v

  That's it you're done!

  VLC Media Player should now be able to play the file. However it may
  be reporting the wrong length information (Untrunc tries to guess/work
  this out, but doesn't always get it right). To fix this try
  re-encoding the video through another program.


I want to have 2.7K footage stabilised in Full HD

Well you won't loose pixels if you nest it.  Nest it. Then change the sequence settings of your nest to match your clip settings. Then run warp on the clip in the nest.

Back in your main comp you can set the sequence to full HD and just scale it down. You will get the extra sharpness of 2.7k as it will be in the HD timeline.

If you have a majority of the clips in 2.7k then it might be best to edit in 2.7k and drag that composition into a new composition with full HD settings and scale that instead of doing it on a clip by clip basis. Which can get tedious.

Or you can just edit in 2.7k and export in HD.

Side note: you always loose a little bit of pixels if you stabilize (this can be avoided to a certain extent if you adjust the settings albeit at the detriment to the actual stabilization). But downscaling to 1080p it won't be noticeable. Especially with gopro footage.

I've also have mercalli does better with some clips than warp. It's available as a plug in for premiere.


Continually Rasterize + Write On effect causes layer to disappear

I think the write-on effect causes a layer to become pixels (bitmapped), not vectors (I'm sure there's a better way to phrase this).


Is it possible to speed up a video using handbrake?

You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, to do this.

The basic command is

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf "setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)/30" -crf 18 output.mov

The 30 indicates the factor by which the video will be sped up.


"If I set it to 1/25 (shutter speed) does that mean absolute maximum (or lowest setting)?"
Yes, if it was a non-digital video camera. This rule applied to the old non-digital (film) video cameras where you cannot set shutter speed lower than the frame rate.

Meaning that one celluloid was exposed for the full 1/25th of a second. Assuming 25fps.

For digital video cameras each frame can be blended with the other. This technique allows you to film in low light situations at the expense of motion blur. It can be used to create what some called a dream like sequence.

You should just view this as another creative control that you have to managing low light situations or adding motion blur to your videos.

See example below:


In order to get a smoother timelapse you should shoot at a higher frequency. If you want you can always blend between two images results in somewhat more smoothenes.
The first video however is made with a totally different technique, there we only have a few videos and use morphing to get from one image to the next.

This technique interpolates the colours on one hand, but also the position of different points on the image on the other hand. This requires you to find some keypoints on both images in order to find a corresponding function. There are softwares that can do this for you, but I do not know any I could recommend.


How to bring a SketchUp Animation into After Effects

Not sure on the AVI but kept searching and found http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=18827

  What OS are you using?

  Vista 64 bit has codec issues, so if it is indeed a Vista 64 bit you need to export as a series of images (which is best anyway) and compile it in after effects.

I'm on Windows 7 so don't know why it was an issue to begin with but did the Export as Images instead. Then did a simple Import (Ctrl+I) which detected the jpeg sequence and that worked perfectly. Smaller file size then the AVI SketchUp exported too.


How can internal software clip the 'From Software' channel on my Apogee Duet?

It may be that it counts 0dB (i.e. full-scale) as clipping - I've seen this before.


How to help warp stabilizer focusing on the right object?

I use long workaround in Premiere and it works for all sorts of stabilizers not only for warp (I use 3rd party).

What I do is masking out unwanted object. But you cannot do that on same clip, since Premiere will serve naked frame to the stabilizer tool. So what I do is put some effect on clip that masks moving parts. It can be title, power window, crop, or draw a mask in newer Premieres. Whatever suits you and track with a shot.

Then you make Nested sequence out of this clip and put stabilizer on that. It will be served with image that is masked out. Not track clip. When done, just go back to original clip inside Nested and tick masking effect off (disable png, or whatever). It will be clean image again and properly done. If You need to change something and re-process it, just enable the underlying effect again.

It is dirty and fiddly but that is how I did it well before Warp was added to premiere with other tools. I would like that would be implemented in the tool itself. Free tools on internet all have masking, but premiums do not bother to serve us better.


Shutter speed and focal length are completely independent parameters, focal length determines angle of view (how much scenery you get in your shot). Shutter speed determines how long each part of the image sensor is exposed for, and therefore it determines the brightness of the image, and how much blur is caused by moving objects.

The quantity that most commonly relates the two is camera shake. It is often advised that to avoid camera shake the shutter speed must be 1/focal-length. This is presumably where you've gotten this equivalence from. The rule is a guideline only and depends on your technique and degree of enlargement in the final image. A better guideline is shutter-speed = 3/focal-length

FPS, or frames per second is the number of images per second recorded by your camera. It is related to shutter speed in that shutter-speed + latency < 1/FPS. If each frame takes more than a 60th of a second to expose, then you are not going to be able to cram more than 60 exposures in a second! There is a nonzero amount of time required to recock the shutter mechanism (if necessary) and readout and store the image, which is the latency. In stills cameras not designed for continuous readout the latency can increase as buffers become full, causing the maximum obtainable FPS to drop.

The formula shutter speed = 1/(2*FPS) relates to a shutter angle of 180 degrees, which is a concept from film cine cameras whereby the film can only be exposed for a maximum of half the intra-frame time, because of the rotating shutter. This rule is still obeyed by digital filmmakers to ensure "cinema like" motion to the image, compared to if shutter speed = 1/FPS which gives more fluid "TV like" motion.


Continuous smooth camera movement in post

As Duvrai mentioned, the docs for Final Cut's InertiaCam setting do say it will handle what you're talking about, but I've never tried it myself.

If you are familiar with the 3D aspects of AE as well as simple AE motion tracking, you could try the following technique. It's a little involved so it's usefulness depends on how important the shots are to you.

First turn the footage into a 3D layer and then apply an Animation->Track Motion to that layer. Change the Track Type to Stabilize. (This is how to access the older, simpler AE stabilizer, as opposed to Warp.)

Stabilize the footage using a position track point on a good spot in your panning shot. Pick a spot with lots of screen time during the pan. Apply the stabilization. Afterwards, if you switch to an alternate POV like Custom View 1 and scrub through your footage, you should see your footage slide left/right in 3D space synced with what your real-world camera did.

Next add a 3D camera layer and keyframe it's position to make it 'shadow' what your original camera did, but this time using eased keyframes instead of a tripod. This effectively creates a more ideal motion laid on top of your original real-world movement.

Obviously sometimes the original footage will go out of the 3D camera's view when the original doesn't match the ideal. To remedy, cleverly add a few more camera position keyframe to throttle the AE camera's velocity over time, or simply use scaling keyframes on the footage layer to smoothly 'zoom-in' occasionally.

"redpc post" -


How do I improve sharpness of foliage and distant objects during video recording?

You are most likely observing Optical Aberration - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_aberration and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defocus_aberration. Haze is also likely a contributing factor, see https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/93585/are-there-tools-used-to-remove-heat-haze-or-other-atmospheric-conditions-for-lon.
The further back you are from the subject, the more light dispersion / scattering you're going to be getting from the subject. Closing the aperture as much as possible will help (so long as there's enough light remaining for the sensor to get an image), if you test this, you should be able to see visible differences in sharpness between aperture fully open and aperture almost closed.
Haze you can probably do less about, you're basically talking about scattering of light due to imperfections in the air - adding more distance between you and the subject is also adding more imperfection. The stack exchange post above suggests use of different filters to assist, that's not something I've tried. I mostly film theatre productions indoors, and there's a definite image quality difference the closer I can get to the stage. But usually I'm stuck at the back (the show is primarily for an audience, not the video guy), and everyone accepts that shooting an extra 20m to 40m through haze in a theatre is going to result in an image that isn't quite as sharp as what we could get up close.


It is best to match the source dimensions with your recoding dimensions. Using a larger number of pixels requires more data or bandwidth to encode the scaled source. You wont be able to make a sharper image as there isnt any additional information being generated and in fact the scale up might make the image softer or add artifacts like aliasing.


What software can I use to make "stop motion" video from existing video material

You can use any non-linear video editor to make this, but you are in for a lot of manual work.

Time posterizing (or video strobe) is mentioned which can give you that "stop" effect, but it will not take care of the walk-cycle. For that you need to manually go in and choose each frame.

My suggestion would be to take the video sequences you need, go through frame by frame in the preview monitor and grab the frame you need according to where in the cycle by making the in and out point the same, then drag the cut (a single frame) onto the timeline. Repeat.

Now the only thing you need to do is to scale the timeline so that each image has a duration longer than 1 frame (probably around 10 frames or so). With this technique you can also fine-adjust a single "take" if needed.

The other approach is to convert video (or using photo still) as single images. Here you loose the advantage of fine-adjusting though (in relation to the walk-cycle).

Automatically detecting where in a walk-cycle a person is is highly specific task and AFAIK there exist no such software available to the public (some law enforcement agencies have access to software for behavioral analysis including walk patterns, but that becomes quite a different table- - so yes, it's possible, but not available).


How to speed up the process using VLC and Adobe Premiere for video compilations

Why not import the folder into PP and watch and sort them in PP? After all that is the whole purpose of the application.

As you watch them you add the ones you want to the end of a timeline (hit the . key). This is called an assembly edit. Then you can trim your selected clips later.


License for using background music in my video?

Having licensed music for videos I've produced; from having custom tracks re-recorded by one of Audio Jungles top artists (1 Million in Sales); to one hit wonders who had radio airplay; to even Katy Perry...

You need to find out what Label the album is under; meaning, who owns the rights.

Blackmill will have no say, unless they own the masters which I doubt.

The label information should be easilly found on the CD/Album info.

Contact the label; and they will either have a licensing department or they will refer you to their agency.

It is a time consuming process; there is a lot of back and forth, and it could be expensive. Very. If they are under a large label; and they don't have an agreement with a "licencing agency" like ExtremeMusic; which basically mass sells known artists and because they do so on a large scale basis they have a basic rate sheet; 1 song for x use for x type of duplication used in x such a way = this price;  if they don't have that track on a easy to buy list; it's going to involve a custom negotiation where money talks and if you don't have the money...  don't expect a return call.

Contacting Blackmill or even their manager/management is likely going to prove a waste of time.


Video flickering when recording a screen with a mobile phone

This should be a comment I guess but I don't have enough rep.

What kind of monitor are you using?

My iPhone records my 27" Retina 5k monitor just fine.

My guess is you have an LCD monitor and you are having polarizing issues (

            )


Usually dropped frames are down to processor or disk bottleneck issues. If the frame cannot be compressed or stored in time, most applications will drop in order to move on to the next one.

The solution is often simple - increase the processing power or disk i/o speed.


Are two videos "identical" if their decoded data is the same, but not the encoded data?

If the hashes for the decoded streams are identical, then the streams are essentially identical.
Differences can be due to bitstream encapsulation (Annex B vs length-prefixed in case of H.264/H.265) or packet arrangement or embedded parameter sets (for configuration). As long as the bitstream is valid, these differences won't affect decoding.


I don't know how to explain but it is about limiting audio

The second one looks hella clipped, isn't it distorting?

Anyway the effect you're after is unsurprisingly called a limiter. A limiter is a form of compressor, so a compressor can also be used, by setting the compression ratio high.

Premiere ships with a filter called hard limiter, and a compressor as well, but there are plenty more free and commercial VST limiter plugins out there, and scads of compressors if you want more knobs to twiddle.


How to achieve the "magic swipe" effect in this video?

Assuming you're using a layer based compositor (like After Effects) you need two layers. The top layer has the half-painted box with the hand swiping over it. The bottom has the fully painted box, and no hand, but everything else is the same as the first shot.

Now you need to make a matte that corresponds to the trailing edge of the hand, and extending (roughly) to the the top left of the screen and down the left side. As the hand moves across this matte will follow it, so that at the start it is not over the box, and at the end it completly covers it. the easiest way to do this would be to trace the hand, but there are other ways like rotobrush in After Effects. Apply this matte to the top layer so that it hides everything inside it.

Alternatively you could shoot the hand over a green background and use chroma keying to remove the background. Then use a simple matte to reveal the painted box, with the transition hidden by the hand layer. You could even get away with a single still image of the hand, animated to look like it was moving, if the movement is fast and simple enough.

It's certainly doable with After Effects, but You could use Blender or any compositor or NLE that has the capability to create moving mattes


Chances are, the corruption was just caused by a hiccup in the program while it was placing the effects into the project file. In my experience, all versions of Windows Movie Maker beyond the one bundled with Windows XP SP2/3 are incredibly buggy and should be replaced with a better video editor. Problems like this are ridiculously common in the Vista version of Windows Movie Maker.

To answer your question, you should try closing and reopening the file, and if it is still corrupted, you'll obviously need to start over. The issue may be that Movie Maker inserted malformed properties into the project file, causing Movie Maker to not be able to parse it correctly.


After much help above it looks like its because the camera I was recording on was recording in 50i but the project I had created in fcpx was set to 60p, this was causing issues with the final result as it tried to convert 50i to 60p...

I restarted one of the projects as 25p instead and copied in some of the source video again and a quick repeat of my normal output process (export as mov, use handbrake to convert to a reduced size mp4 for youtube upload) seems to give a much better result (I'm comparing the mp4 on my machine to youtube but there is 0 wobble and I don't think its youtube adding it in) so I think this is the solution, make sure your projects are set to the same fps as the source!

Thanks all


Places to look for sound tracks for videos

I've used AudioMicro.com and like a lot of their music. I hear good things about incompetech.com.  You can also just Google "royalty-free music sites" and you'll find several, each with different terms and prices.


Why Camtasia always produce video with a low quality, even if I record in 1280p, for example?

The quality of the images you posted look completely normal to me for what you are doing. You're taking a screenshot and scaling it down. That means that anything drawn as a single pixel in the user interface is going to become less than a pixel wide in the final video, making it seem soft.

You have a few options to deal with this. You can set your screen size to the final video size, or set it so the area you're recording is the final video size. Or you can leave the screen at full size and pan it around as the user moves the mouse. You'll still get some softness due to the compression, but it should be considerably less if you aren't scaling the video.


It depends, you can typically adjust a tolerance for the level of removal.  If the colors of green are closer than the next nearest color, you should be fine, if not, then you would have to do two keys, though I would expect you should be able to stack two layers to get the necessary transparency.  (Basically keying over a keyed image, since the result of a keyed image is a layer with alpha.)

Keep in mind that lighting will also be a significant concern and you could always paint the floor tiles as well to get the same color on everything.


Audio without video is OK, but WITH video it is delayed

You've to reset the timestamps:

[1:a]atrim=start=2.52:end=1:38.0,aloop=100:7700,asetpts=N/SR/TB[audio]


No, but if you have another computer entirely that it works on, then you know that the cable is good.  This means it must be the firewire card or drivers on the PC that isn't working that is messed up.  I'd first try uninstalling/reinstalling the firewire card and drivers and if that doesn't work, I'd try a new card.


Transferring old metal particle Hi8 tapes

You do need to play the tapes onto a capture card, yes. And the sooner the better. You don't just get one attempt, but you will get a slight degradation of quality every play, so you are best off aiming to do it in one pass if possible.

I recently captured about 50 tapes from the late 80's to the mid 90's and I did about half of them then cleaned the head then did the other half. Degradation wasn't noticeable, but I just thought I should do it just in case.

As to how long you can store them - is the safe place shielded from EMF, heat and humidity, then they can last for years, but due to the nature of magnetic tape, the magnetic field strength of particles affects adjacent particles, so quality will degrade no matter what.

When configuring your capture, set it for the highest quality you can afford - as there are utilities which can clean up some noise and speckle once the signal is digitised.


I'd bet cash money they don't know what they're talking about when they say h264 format. There is a raw h.264 bitstream format, with the file suffix .264, but it's pretty obscure (I can't duckduckgo any actual documentation on what it's for, possibly when dealing with live streams from cameras).

Give them an mp4 encoded with h.264 codec - it's a format you can be pretty certain anyone with software that's not completely obsolete can play. Conversely a .264 stream is fairly well guaranteed to be unplayable in all but rather specialist settings.

But if you have any doubts you could ask them if h.264 encoded mp4 is what they mean.


Screen recording definitely taxes laptop graphics cards and makes the fans whir. There's no easy way to avoid that.  I would instead try to use a mic that gets as close to your lips as possible (without popping), and move the laptop as far from your mouth as possible (external monitor / keyboard / mouse). The results will be better than trying to use noise reduction to improve the audio afterwards.  Noise follows an inverse square law, so a small increase in distance from your lips will result in a big decrease in noise, if your mic is much closer to the desirable source than it is to the undesirable source.


What determines video orientation (landscape or portrait) during playback?

If the video is meant to be played in a different orientation than its stored representation, then a rotation flag is set in the stream metadata. A compliant player uses that tag and rotates the video during playback.

A tool like Mediainfo will display that data (if specified) like here:

A tool like ffmpeg can reset the tag. Of course, you'll also want to rotate the video stream as currently stored so it plays in the correct orientation after the tag has been reset. ffmpeg's transpose filter can do that.


If Canon no longer has the part, most likely your best bet will be to find another used MV 750i that you can salvage the part from.  If you have a repair manual, you might checking what the part number it lists is and try searching if any surplus places have the part itself.  Some quick looking on eBay shows what appears (or at least claims) to be a compatible part for $20.


While there are tons of tutorials on the internet, which keep you learning your whole life (which isn't a bad thing) I would propose one option that I followed myself.

Lynda.com has good quality videos about all aspects of documentary filmmaking - technology, conducting interviews, storytelling, editing, ...

When I knew I had to take the next step in documentary filmmaking, I took one month off and watched these videos from morning to night. After one month I knew enough of all major topics and could cancel my membership. All in all I paid only US$ 25 for 30 days of intensive learning.

After that learning period you just need two things: Practice and errors. Because you'll only learn when something goes wrong. That's why I suggest that you only buy simple gear that you can upgrade after you found out what can go wrong.

Here's a small gear list: a video-capable DSLR, be it Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, ... Then a tripod and a microphone solution (e.g. a handheld audio recorder like the Zoom H2n). Light is not so important, if you can find bright locations.

When it comes to editing software, there is no single best choice. Some people prefer Adobe Premiere, because together with the other Adobe programs they have thousands of possibilities, but with a heavy price tag. Others find Final Cut Pro best to realize their creative visions. Edius is known to be a professional editor that runs fast even on slower computers. The free Resolve would be an option, if you want to do editing now, but later want to become a pro in color grading. There is also Sony Vegas and the free Lightworks,  ... What you will choose depends wholly on which direction you want to develop. The editing process is nearly the same with all of them.


Long video ffmpeg transcode makes audio go out of sync

After trying a few random things, I managed to make the audio/video sync by changing the rate of the audio:

ffmpeg  -i witness.mov -af asetrate=48018 resampled.mkv

The resampled.mkv has correct sync, but unfortunately the audio is shorter than the remaining video for a few seconds. Which means the problem is really that the frame rate is slightly slower than it should in the input file. According to my calculations, the problem is that the frame rate is set to 59.96, and setting it to exactly 60.0 would make the video match the audio. I tried using:

ffmpeg  -i witness.mov -framerate 60 resampled.mkv

But the video frame rate did not change.


I have not seen any movie that used any onset technqiuqes for this look. Of course you want the lighting to give away a certain mood to begin with but there are no special filters needed.

For the post production workflow, there is a great plugin for several video tools like After Effects, Premiere and Final Cut from Red Giant called Mojo that makes it extremely easy to achieve and fine tune such an effect. They also offer other tools to achieve specific filmic looks.

If you don't want to use a plugin or simply want to achieve a more "unique look", you can play with contrast and the individual color channels. I recommend using a "Levels" effect not a "contrast" effect, you usually have greater control with that. Then punch the blue channel up a bit and the green channel aswell but not as much. For some scene you may want to work with masks to strengthen the effect in some areas without overdoing it in others.

What can also help even more to achieve the color distortion but is not available in every video editor is to apply a blue (or other color depending on your desired look) layer over your footage with a blend mode like "Overlay" or "Vivid Light" (that's how they are called in Adobe programs) and adjusting the transparency of the color layer. This tints the image nicely in a blueish dark look.
Play around with different blend modes, you can achieve very interesting effects with that technique. Your video software just needs to support blend modes for that.

You also want a very sharp image, thats important for the effect to really shine and have this "harsh" feeling. Applying a very subtle sharpening effect could be benefical.

You can also add a vignette as used in your first set of screenshots.


concat files with ffmpeg and preserve exact frame timestamps

Audio codecs like AAC or MP3 have a priming sample before the first audio sample. The priming sample has a negative timestamp. For a 48 kHz stream, the timestamp will be -1024/48000 s = -0.0213s. What the concat demuxer does is add an offset to the timestamps of all files after the first one. The priming sample created in step 2 is affecting the timestamp post-offset.

If you skip audio during extraction and concat, and add it only at the end, you can avoid that.


Please tell me which tool I have to use to create a video?

After Effects could certainly do what you want, as could Apple Motion (only for Macs though). If you're on a budget you might want to look at something lower cost - or free:

Natron is an open source free compositor, that will be able to do that effect
Blender - as well as being a 3D animation package it has a compositor too

compositing is the technique of combining images and video, so if you want to research more, what you need to search for is compositing software.


Display one decimal point after a whole number after divided by 10

For recent versions of AE (AE 2019+)

you can use the javascript Intl.NumberFormat object, which does all the formatting for you without any tedious string munging and regex and all that carry-on.

var sliderVal = thisComp.layer("controller).effect("206")("Slider");
Intl.NumberFormat('en-AU', {minimumFractionDigits: 1, maximumFractionDigits: 1}).format(sliderVal/10)

the en-EN part is the locale string, and is your preferred locale, in other words, your culturally specific way of displaying numbers (en-AU is for Australia, and uses . for the decimal separator and , for the thousands separator). This makes it super easy to format, because it handles things like thousands separators, currency symbols and even what characters you want. You want it in Chinese decimals? Sure use 'zh-Hans-CN-u-nu-hanidec' and it will look like

一,六二九.二

The second parameter is the options, and here we get to specify things like minimumFractionDigits and maximumFractionDigits. You can also zero-pad the number with minimumIntegerDigits, so a zero-padded number with 5 digits and one decimal place would be specified thus:

Intl.NumberFormat('en-AU', {minimumIntegerDigits: 5, minimumFractionDigits: 1, maximumFractionDigits: 1}).format(theNumberToFormat);

Read the docs here

It's worth noting that the usual suspect for number formatting someNumber.toLocaleString(), which is much simpler, doesn't work for what you want. For some reason in AE's implementation of JS it always returns two digits and adding maximumFractionDigits as an option doesn't work.

For earlier versions of AE

Here's how to get the 1 decimal place after the number:

var n = Math.round(theNumberToFormat *10)/10;
(n % 1 === 0)? '' + n + ".0": n

The first line rounds off any digits after the first decimal, the second is for when the number is an integer (when n % 1 is 0, % being the modulus operator which returns the remainder of the first number divided by the second), which would normally display with no decimal. If it is, it treats the resulting number as a string and adds '.0' to the end of it. If you want thousands separators you need to do some further trickery, that's a common JS question on SO, e.g. here.

var n = Math.round(theNumberToFormat *10)/10;
n = (n % 1 === 0)? '' + n + ".0": n
n.toString().replace(/\B(?=(\d{3})+(?!\d))/g, ",");

The last line is fancy regex voodo, I don't know exactly how it works, it's got something to do with lookaheads and whatnot. But it works.


Effect that detects white object throughout entire video and blurs it, without manually running tracking mask?

Not really. Color detection, when you’re looking for a white object is really the same thing as what’s known as a “luma key.” So, you can try that, but you’ll quickly see why the VFX industry prefers chroma keys. You could try a machine learning based approach, and both Premiere and Davinci Resolve have ML object removal, but it’s less automatic, and more error prone than you’d expect, and requires certain conditions to be successful at all. Of course, the state of the art is advancing quickly, and this could change in the near future.


ffmpeg: white padding is light grey but not white

The end of the filter chain should output full RGB, like this:

Windows batch:

ffmpeg.exe -i "https://gooseberry.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/franck.jpg" ^
  -filter_complex ^
   scale=iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih):ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih),^
pad=852:480:(852-iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:(480-ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:white,^
format=rgb24 franck-padded.jpg

Linux bash:

ffmpeg -i "https://gooseberry.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/franck.jpg" \
  -filter_complex \
   "scale=iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih):ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih),\
pad=852:480:(852-iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:(480-ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:white,\
format=rgb24" franck-padded.jpg

The important part is format=rgb24 which keeps or converts the final filter output to the RGB pixel format, which allows full range values from 0-255. Without that final filter, ffmpeg will convert the filter output to the YUV pixel format where the range of legal values is 16 to 235 for luma (brightness) - 16 maps to black and 235 to white - and 16 to 240 for the chroma components (color). (The default YUV colorspace range is a legacy of analog television signals and carried over into the digital realm by the MPEG committee and hence still widely adhered to by most digital video formats)


How can I change the movie format from .MOV to .AVI in canon 650D

It is likely not possible to change in camera.  For power and efficiency reasons, cameras generally use dedicated encoder hardware to encode the video in real time (this is why your camera can encode h.264 video live, but when you try to encode it on your PC, it takes longer, even though your computer is far FAR more powerful.)  The caveat of this is that there are a limited number of options for how it can store the file.

Many Canon cameras record as an h.264 stream embedded in a MOV file.  While this isn't super convenient in your case, it also isn't the end of the world.  MOV and AVI are both simply container formats.  They store a particular type of stream within them that is based on a codec.  Since both MOV and AVI support an h.264 stream, you should be able to use a software package of your choice to take the h.264 stream out of an MOV container and store it in an AVI container and then your software should work fine with it.

I believe that QuickTime Pro offers a Save As option that will go to m4v or mp4 (which is more of a raw h.264 stream) if your editor supports either of those options.  It might support Save As an AVI as well, but my memory is a bit fussy on that since I haven't had to do such conversions in a while. (My editing software supports both.)  There are literally any number of other tools (including free ones) that can do the same thing as well.


Request for Camcorder and Tripod Recommendations for Occasional Amatuer Usage, With Emphasis on Good Sound Quality

90% of good sound quality is mic placement.  The remaining 90% is the microphone.  The 90% that remains of that is the preamp.  Because mic placement is so important, you either have to accept putting the video camera where the microphone sounds best, or you have to disconnect the two, placing and pointing the mic where it is best and then placing pointing the lens (and camera) at what looks best.  Alas, there is no "ease of use" when it comes to capturing good sound--you actually have to listen and adjust until it's right.  Which is almost impossible to do by oneself.  But perhaps you will find that putting a smartphone in a cradle arms-length from your face gives you both acceptable sound and video quality.  In which case, there's a no-cost answer to that part of your question.

As for tripods, if you are not using the camera for active pans or tilts, you don't need a fluid head.  All you need is something that is no so ridiculously flimsy that it will start to move when a whoosh of cold air makes it's way across the room from supply to return.  A typical margin of error is to read the rated weight of a brand you can actually look up on the Internet (Manfrotto, Gitzo, Slik, etc), cut that rated weight in half, and compare it to your load.  If your camcorder is 3 lbs, you need at least a rating of 6 lbs of capacity.

Note, of course, that recording a live performance may require as obtrusive a placement of microphone and/or camcorder as you had in rehearsal, which may be unacceptable.  Fixing that requires a whole new strata of cost and expertise.


Is Open-Source -film production possible with open-source tools?

The production group you refer to has a team of 20 guys ("no girls") and 40 computers. Do you think there is an open source for 20 CGI professionals and 40 computers too? This is a very real production company with a budget to get things done. They have created enough attention to fund the project 'Iron Sky'. No easy task.

What you are asking is like this, you see a beautiful Lamborghini Murciélago and want to know if you can make one of these with free tools and labor. By the way, what you are asking costs way more than a Lamborghini Murciélago. I would say that you have a very ambitious mind. However, there are no free open source tools that can do all the things these guys are doing and I would include the skilled labor of these 20 guys and the cost of 40 64 bit i7 machines as well.

Even if it were possible to replace all this great software with a free open-source version, where are you going to get 20 skilled and seasoned artists with 40 computers to do this work for you? I can't stress the importance of who the people are that run the programs and make the editing decisions. Software will come and go, but the imagination and talent of a skilled team is priceless and timeless.


Premiere - Easy way to extend last frame of a video clip

What I usually do ...

Locate the frame in the clip you wish to extend, hit C, the razor tool, cut the frame. Then right click on the cut clip and select 'frame hold'

A popup menu appears, Select hold on, in point (the start of the clip) and select OK.

Then just drag and extend the selected clip for as many additional seconds you wish to extend it for.

Normally I would also unlink the clip before cutting so I keep the audio separate.

Edit:
For CC there are a few more options in the menu to freeze frame the video
You can see here:
http://creativeclouduser.com/creating-freeze-frames-in-premiere-pro/


I think the problem is not the caching, but the fact that ffplay don't get a clean encoded stream.
With your yellow tunnel clip you can try this:
while true; do
    ffmpeg -i tunnel.mp4 -c:v mpeg2video -b:v 50M -c:a s302m -strict -2 -ar 48k -f mpegts -;
done | ffmpeg -re -i - -c:v mpeg2video -b:v 50M -c:a s302m -strict -2 -ar 48k -f mpegts - | ffplay -

And you see, that there is almost no glitches anymore. This is not a really nice solution, but the second ffmpeg instance would recompress the hole stream.
When is just about playing on desktop I would try more somthing like python-mpv.


what are the elements of a lavaliere mic system?

Most wireless lavalier microphones for video recording use are sold as single receiver + transmitter packages. I believe you can get receivers that take more than one input, but they are designed for AV production use (e.g. stage shows and so on) and are mains-powered and expensive. So if you want wireless you'll probably have to buy four transmitter + receiver sets. Wired microphones are certainly cheaper, but lapel mics and cables are problematic if your subjects want to move around. If they're not moving around, then maybe you don't need lapel mics.

Edit Someone has recently sent me a link to these Sony Bluetooth microphones, which look like a great low-budget option. You'd use them just like normal wireless transmitter / receiver units.

Audio recorders usually come with built-in microphones, but microphones don't usually come with recorders, if that makes sense. Given that digital recorders are fairly cheap these days it is tempting to use four recorders worn by each of the subjects with a wired Lavallier microphone, rather than four wireless sets, but the downside to that is that you can't set levels or monitor the input, so if there are problems you won't know until you get to the edit suite. And given that lapel mics are prone to such things as clothing noise or the subject accidentally hitting them you could end up with problems.

As far as your recorder goes, you could either get a four track recorder, such as a zoom H6, or a mixer to mix the four tracks into a stereo signal which then gets sent to a stereo recorder. Recording four discrete channels gives you the advantage of being able to re-mix the audio at a later date, and to edit around overlapping dialogue, but obviously it's going to cost more.

From the recorder transferring to the computer is trivial, most record onto CF cards or such like, and the recordings can be transferred via a card reader or often via USB. Synching is also easy, even without the clapper board: editing software such as Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere can synch audio tracks automatically.


FFmpeg Single Input, Seek to Multiple Outputs

There are two basic ways to do this:

1) feed file as multiple inputs and extract one image from each input

ffmpeg -ss 280 -i sample.mp4 -ss 300 -i sample.mp4 -ss 302 -i sample.mp4
-map 0 -aspect 1.7777777777778 -vframes 1 -qmax 9 -qmin 8 -bt 10000000 -y -pix_fmt yuv420p out1.jpg
-map 1 -aspect 1.7777777777778 -vframes 1 -qmax 9 -qmin 8 -bt 10000000 -y -pix_fmt yuv420p out2.jpg
-map 2 -aspect 1.7777777777778 -vframes 1 -qmax 9 -qmin 8 -bt 10000000 -y -pix_fmt yuv420p out3.jpg

This method can get unwieldy with many targets or if the input is read from over a network.

2) feed it as one input but only decode keyframes and output as one stream.

ffmpeg -skip_frame nokey -i sample.mp4 -vf "select='lt(abs(t-280),0.2)+lt(abs(t-300),0.2)+lt(abs(t-302),0.2)'" -aspect 1.7777777777778 -qmax 9 -qmin 8 -bt 10000000 -y -pix_fmt yuv420p -vsync 0 out%d.jpg

This allows a leeway of 0.2 seconds in identified keyframe timings.


Choosing the right program for video editing

Your goal is best accomplished with Premiere Pro!

They are actually completely different, though I didn't see the difference until I learned them both well.

Adobe Premiere Pro:

Clip video and audio together...
(Mix audio, mix video)...
Color Correct
Add nice transitions...
Add many different effects, with animations and keyframes...
easy.

Adobe After Effects:

Add explosions
Add other special effects
Add 3D objects
Add any 2D effect you can imagine
Color Correct to balance your effects (though the last color correction should be done when compositing in Premiere Pro)

Any professional DAW: (Only do this if you are intending to make a blockbuster.)

Make the raw video in a video editing program, and bring it over here to add the audio.
Do all the audio here.

Vegas Pro:

Mix audio (it was originally made as a DAW.)
Do a little bit of Adobe Premiere Pro stuff...
Do a little bit of Adobe After Effects stuff...
Do a little bit of DAW stuff.
easy.

That's it. Do the special effects in After Effects, and all the clipping and color correction in Premiere Pro. If you're new to video, then Vegas Pro is easier to do much of what you can do with Adobe. But when you've learned a bit, Vegas will be a obstacle in your way of creating what your imagination says. And as you already know After Effects and Premiere Pro, then you're good to go!


It is not clear to me what you mean by laying "one video over another." This could mean you want to show both simultaneously in the same frame. One way to do this is using a split screen. Another is to superimpose each over the other then reduce the opacity so you see both images. Yet another is to superimpose each over the other but use a mask on the top layer so only portions of the bottom layer are exposed.

Summary of possible overlays with links to examples.

1) Split Screen
https://vimeo.com/22564317

2) Double Exposure
https://vimeo.com/42863351

3) Compositing
https://vimeo.com/44747735

You will need an NLE that is capable of rendering multiple video tracks at once. Sony Vegas Movie Studio would allow up to 4 video simultaneously, while Vegas Pro will allow as many as your computer can handle (on my 3 year old quad core this can be up to 9 SD tracks or 5 HD tracks). Other NLE video editors to check out would be Avid, Adobe Premiere, and FCP.

Once you know which one of the effects I listed above fits your situation, you will be able to find tutorials on YouTube specific to the NLE you are using. For instance, here is a tutorial I found on YouTube by searching for "how to use split screen on vegas movie studio".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnsWKDXIxJA


In theory you could take screenshots and stitch them together. Any photo editor that has a panorama stitching feature can do this. The question is how sharp are those individual screenshots? It may be necessary to go frame by frame to find the sharpest.


Ask a lawyer. It will depend on the jurisdiction. But my distinctly non-lawyerly opinion? You have no rights in the footage.


How to get camera settings from video file shot with Nikon D3300 DSLR?

You can extract all the available metadata using a free Exif Tool which you can read about here. You need to bear in mind that you're less likely to extract as much Exif data from video as you are with photo.

This is due to things like ISO, shutter and aperture changing all the time during the recording of video, and therefore is not logged to a specific value/setting like it is with photo. However, you're likely to find just about all you're able to using this tool (and many of the others just like it).

A highly recommended tool known for extracting more data than others is Exif Tool by Phil Harvey


What is a good utility for trimming .dv files without losing metadata?

The following ffmpeg command will remove the first and last minute of a ten-minute input file:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -ss 00:01:00 -t 00:08:00 -c copy output.avi

-ss means start seek; that is, where the output will begin. -t means time; that is, the length of the output: so the above command will start at the first minute, and end eight minutes later.

With some video codecs, using these options with -c copy can cause issues due to I-frames (i.e. ffmpeg will cut to the nearest I-frame). This shouldn't be a problem with DV, though, sine AFAIK it's I-frame only.


How come my Adobe Illustrator file doesn't show up in After Effects?

Are you manually animating in illustrator and then bringing them in as individual frames in After Effects or are they independent assets?  After Effects treats Illustrator files as images that are displayed across multiple frames and the background is transparent.  You then animate them in After Effects itself by positioning and scaling and such.

If you have multiple layers in Illustrator, you also need to decide which layers are imported as your asset.  You can either flatten it or use individual layers when importing.


Completely depends on the video codec and container format, there is no general tool to fix corrupted video files.
Regarding avis with missing headers there is a good answer on this question.

The info there also helps with recovering other video formats.

To find more info about a certain file I recommend using MediaInfo in addition to ffprobe. It offers some more info about codecs and container properties than ffprobe and is easier to read.

If chunks in the video stream are corrupt it won't hinder playback of the stream you will just experience artifacts around these chunks.


Final Cut Pro X — Connect audio clip to another audio (not video)

Create a compound clip with the music on the audio track. This will fix them in place. Replace the individual clips with the compound clip.


Managed to dive in to it and root out the problem. Despite all the audio playing in the preview there was actually a channel solo'd in the audio mixer. I only noticed this when I ran an update on Premiere, de-authorised and re-authorised it (because of another issue that happened) the audio in the preview started to play back correctly as per the track solo status.

Thanks for those who looked at the question and tried to help.


How to make a video of an iPad (or other tablet) screen

From what I recall

The room should be dark, so the tablet is the light source.
Experiment with the brightness, but usually low is the way to go.
Camera doesn't need to be extremely close, but the more zoom you use the more obvious vibrations will be.
Put the DSLR in manual focus and adjust it so the tablet is just slightly out of focus - this will remove the moire effect.
You want a short depth of field. This is achieved with a lower F-Stop (larger aperture opening).

I attended a session by Hendrik Kueck (creator of Color Splash) at 360iDev on this topic specifically. It was called "Effectively using videos to explain and market your app". You can buy that video online for $3.50. It goes into a lot more detail and explains everything really well (and may even correct me on a couple points.) It is a deal at 10x that price.


How do video producers cope with matching or normalising inputs from multiple differing devices?

Apple's Final Cut Pro X includes a variety of auto-analysis and auto-correction features — stabilization, compensation for rolling shutter, color balance, et c.  It can also attempt to automatically time-sync multiple clips, which I've found does a pretty decent job at roughing out the timeline.

While I normally would feel uncomfortable relying on automated corrections, for a large set of variant inputs, it's the only practical solution I've found.


Good app / process for organizing video snapshots into a storyboard?

I ended up using Trello.  It was nice in that I can lay out shots scene by scene, with each scene as a list.  Dragging and dropping individual frames (as png's or jpegs) for card cover images was super handy, as was being able to move around and organize the cards later on.

Being able to write longer descriptions and comment on each card allowed me to document why I wanted to use a shot, or decided against it.


This does it for me (see the screenshots):

Set the cursor to the beginning of the audio event.
Drag the beginning of the audio event with the mouse to the beginning of the original clip (note: the cursor is still positioned at the cropped beginning) (screenshot 2)
Cut the audio event at cursor position (press S)
Repeat step 1 to 3 with the video event (screenshot 3)
Now you can easily synchronize video and audio by aligning the events (screenshot 4)
Delete the beginnings. (screenshot 5)


Can too many ffmpeg encodes at once cause loss of quality?

This is a very broad questions so let me try to answer it in a general sense.

Yes, it is more likely for corrupted files to appear when encoding more files. It is only more likely by a very thin margin though, so using a batch-render-queue is not something to "not do" - in fact, many big budget productions use render-queues to render many many sequences one after another, and I personally wouldn't demotivate you from doing it. However, encoding to mp4 (I assume h.264) always comes with compression, meaning that the file will be lossy and not as good as the original. The CPU being at 100% shouldn't cause any problems though if you didn't overclock your cpu or tinkered with the flags from within ffmpeg (which I assume you didn't do).


"The ugly CMOS replaced CCD" because of cost, complexity, power consumption, pixel density, light sensitivity, etc. In every regard — except of the rolling shutter artefacts, of course — CMOS sensors are better. They also do not exhibit the saturation trail effect, the vertical "ray of light" that occurs when pointing a CCD camera towards very bright light source.

You can find a 10-year old tapeless 3CCD-based camcorder on eBay for less than $100. For example, Panasonic HDC-SD5 or HDC-SD9, the latter records progressive HD at 24 fps. Better than Super8 ;-)


how to pipe:/// through a .sh or Python script, or use some sort of setting files with FFMPEG

I didn't find an actual answer, more a work around. As this was all part of a bigger, involving plex, I found a proxy (xteve) that includes ffmpeg transcoding, and I can set the options for ffmpeg.  That is good enough for what I was trying to do.

Hope this save someone else a little time.


This is pure speculation with respect to the movie Gravity, but when people use expensive cameras around water, they usually protect them from the water.  It's not very hard to do.  If you search BNH for "Camera Rain Cover," you'll see that you get results for under $10.  To protect the front end of the lens, often people will use a UV filter.

Also, when you imagine a typical movie camera, do you picture a black box at the front end? Ever wonder what that was all about?  It's called a Matte Box, and the black petals that stick out the front are flags, which keep stray light from hitting the front of the lens and causing unwanted lens flares.  But the other thing matte boxes do is hold sheets of glass in front of the lens for various reasons, most typically ND (neutral density) filters, but also polarizers, UV filters, IR, etc.  Just like the screw-on UV filters, these flat, square ones will protect the lens from water or debris.  As long as the rest of the camera is safe, you're good to go.

To me, this shot looks like the water droplet isn't that close to the front of the lens, so it's probably not hitting a filter that screws directly on the front.  Since there are underwater shots in the film, and since there are shots where the camera swims alongside the actress, my guess is that the camera is housed within an underwater camera enclosure.  These are usually relatively expensive, bespoke pieces of equipment, which can cost as much as the camera they're designed to house.

If you're on an indie budget, it's an item you would rent.  But if Sandra Bullock is your lead, and you've got the VFX budget for a movie like this, your studio probably already owns one, and they'd probably rather just let you use it than A) risk losing their expensive camera or B) spend VFX money on water drops instead of space action sequences.

Anecdotally, in the movie Children of Men, there's a fantastic long take, where some fake blood hit the front of the lens.  The director chose to leave the blood because he felt it added to the immediacy of the scene.


What are the advantages camcorders have over zoom digital cameras?

The video capabilities of even the best digital cameras are but a small fraction of these of video cameras. The gap is smaller now but only marginally so.

Where digital cameras compare very well is in terms of image quality, particularly when it comes to low light shooting. For almost everything else, video cameras trump digital cameras.

Camcorders have sophisticated and detailed control over audio recording. They can set levels and recording angle which almost no digital camera can do. You can plug an external audio source on some still cameras but that is about it.

The optical zoom of camcorders is specially designed for video. It moves silently and smoothly to give a natural look. Camcorder lenses are built with a continuous variable apertures so that the brightness of images can vary smoothly rather than in steps (only a handfull of SLD lenses can do that). The focus system works equally smoothly and quietly while most digital cameras record AF noise in the audio track.

Camcorders have tons of features which are meaningful to video. Fading, transitions and even video effects are the norm. They can also record for much longer both continuously and in sequence than still cameras. You can get up to a 128GB SDXC card for a still camera but it is costly while a camcorder can easily have a 200GB HDD built in.


One Word vs. Multi Word YouTube Channel Name

I don't think it really matters. People do both all the time. It really all just comes down to the content you provide, using appropriate tags on each video, and being consistent with your postings.


Is CABAC encoding lossy or lossless in ffmpeg?

Cabac is lossless, but h264 is lossy. The part you are missing is that cabac is not THE compression algorithm. It is just the final step out of hundreds of steps in video compression. By the time you get to cabac, all the lossy steps have already been performed, and a final lossless step is added to squeeze a few more bits out.


Slowing down footage with easing (like iPhone 5s)

You can do it by adding transitions between the speed changed clips as described in the documentation section titled Add Transitions Between Speed Segments. They say:

  When two adjacent speed segments are set to play at different speeds, you can control how smoothly the video switches between the playback speeds. When there’s no transition between the segments, playback shifts suddenly from one speed to another. By adding a transition between the segments, you can create a more gradual, or ramped, effect. You can also control how quickly that transition takes place.


Recording video and audio with external input to computer with Canon 600D

It should be.  You might end up with impedance mismatches that have to be dealt with, so it might take a few other (relatively cheap) steps to get there (devices called pads, which bring down the level), but it should work.  The quality might not be quite as good though.


How can I crop a section of the video screen in Premiere Pro?

You want to use an effect that's called a 4 point garbage matte.  It allows you to set 4 points which create a box and everything outside it is removed.
Here is a link to a tutorial on how to use the effect 4 point garbage matte.


Post-production workflow: VFX before color correction?

Any workflow that works for you is "correct".  I don't see any obvious problems with your proposed workflow, though I would think you would want to do sound after VFX so that it can be properly timed to the VFX.  Depending on the software you are using, you may not have to lock the shots but may actually be able to move directly in to working on the shots.

As far as low contrast and low saturation, I would personally disagree with shooting for low contrast/low saturation.  This limits the depth of your available color space too much.  Your camera has a limited number of colors it can describe, if you ignore a large portion of that color space, then you can't describe as many colors and the resolution of your color after boosting the saturation and contrast will be very greatly reduced.  That said, if you have issues with lacking detail in your shadows, exposing it up in to mid-tones can help since your format doesn't actually support using that portion of the dynamic range anyway, so you wouldn't be losing anything meaningful.

The key is that you want to make strong use of the color space your camera can capture and encode that way you have the highest possible use of the color space as long as you are careful not to exceed the color space (color clipping needs to be avoided).  It is always easy to make colors more subdued and to lower contrast as this is moving from a high color resolution to a low one, but you can't move the other way because you don't have the detail to fill in.

What flat means is not necessarily low contrast or low saturation, but rather that the colors are not heavily tinted and that details are well represented within the usable portion of the color space.  They can be fairly vibrant, but they have a neutral response and gamma.  In other words, you want it to evenly capture detail across the DR, but you also want the DR to be fully utilized.  Think of flat as the way the curve looks in the Photoshop curves tool.  Flat would be a straight line rather than a curved one.  It can still have very strong contrast and saturation since the DR is being fully used.

For the third part, it really doesn't matter.  Either you mix to subdued colors and boost everything or you mix to vibrant colors and bring it down.  Either way, as long as it fits at some point, it will fit when you adjust the color grade of the entire frame if it fit well before.


The technique is classically called rotoscoping after the original process done using projected film. If you google rotoscoping in after effects you should find lots of samples and tutorials.


This question has been answered in a previous post here.

The best way to do it is by using ffmpeg.

If you save the frame of video you want as the thumbnail in .png format, you can use the following command to apply the thumbnail to your file in ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp4 -i IMAGE.png -acodec copy -vcodec copy -map 0 -map 1:0 OUTPUT.mp4


FFMPEG RTSP -> MPEG-DASH Stops on Long Streams

Recently I've had the chance to research a bit in this area, and I've come across some rumors that ffmpeg's support for RTSP is somewhat buggy, i.e. it stops suddenly or yields mangled frames.
If you need only video, you can use openrtsp app from Live555 it can output stream to stdout to be consumed with -i -" in ffmpeg (Live555's client seems to be state of the art wiht RTSP)


FCPX Cross dissolve sometimes causes jump on stabilized video

Instead of using a crossfade transition effect, use opacity keyframes in the video animation menu.
Select your clip and press "control + v".


How can I add a transition between two cuts of the same clip in Premiere Pro CS5?

Well, I never got this to work, but for some reason, Premiere did allow the fade to black transition, so I used that one.  Not ideal, but it sufficed for this project.


Blackmagic RAW get Thumbnail in Windows Explorer

I've created a thumbnail provider available from here https://github.com/tom-gangemi/braw-thumbnail-provider/releases/tag/v1.0.

All you need to do is extract to your desired install location and run register.cmd.


how to create photos flying in to voids video effect

I would suggest working in reverse.  Start out by arranging all the images the way you want them to appear at the end and set position keyframes on all of them at the end of the sequence.  Then move to the beginning of the sequence and set keyframes on the positions and start dragging them all out of frame.  You can then drag the starting keyframes around to adjust when they start flying in and adjust the end keyframes to alter when they arrive in the collage.  Just keep moving the positions and the timing until you have something you like.


Is it possible to create an endless loop using concat?

ffmpeg concat demuxer supports nested scripts
 with the header "ffconcat version 1.0".

Example of endless recursive playlist script "test.txt":

ffconcat version 1.0
file 'video1.mp4'
file 'video2.mp4'
file 'video3.mp4'
file 'test.txt'

ffmpeg command:

ffmpeg -re -f concat -i ./test.txt  -c copy -f flv rtmp://....

Note: all file paths must be "safe",
  because the header "concat version 1.0" also resets the safe option to 1.