What does an external video recorder like a Ninja offer?

If you record (typical AVCHD) sub-30 Mbps 4:2:0 video to a card and 220Mbps 4:2:2 video to an external recording device, you will be hard pressed to tell the difference when you view it back on YouTube.  Very, very hard pressed to tell the difference.

However, if you plan to edit the video--changing contrast curves, color, saturation, etc., and especially if you are trying to key any region (whether for green screen replacement or because you want to muck with certain color ranges in certain ways), or if you want to digitally zoom in a bit, then you are going to immediately notice a large difference in how the video behaves in your editing program.

What makes the low bit-rate recording work so well is that the compression algorithms are very smart about fooling our vision system, which is very easy to do.  But such smarts break down almost immediately as soon as you start treating the video as a series of images to be manipulated (which is how video editing programs ultimately "see" the video).  That's when you are going to wish you had recorded in a format that is more true to the digital workflow and less clever about how easy it is to fool our vision system.

If all you ever want to do are the simplest of cuts and fades, you can do that with low bit-rate video.  But if you want to push the image around more robustly, you will quickly realize the need for a higher bitrate solution, which is what the external recorders give you.


Looking for free program that allows PiP, and cutting/splicing

Every Mac comes with iMovie. Every PC comes with Windows Movie Maker.  Both of them do cutting & splicing. iMovie does one PIP at a time; you can't have more than one PIP onscreen simultaneously unless you do a workaround. I used iMovie for hundreds of short YouTube videos with LOTS of editing (and PIPs). I don't know whether Windows Movie Maker does PIP but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

(edit)

Just Googled "Windows Movie Maker PIP" and found out there are free add-ins that do PIP. (At least there were for the Windows Vista version. I bet the current O.S. has add-ins as well!)


Since you wish to alter effective length of the tag, skip the amovie looping and use the aloop filter after padding the audio to 10s.

ffmpeg -i main.mp3 -filter_complex "amovie=tag.wav,asetpts=N/SR/TB,apad=whole_dur=10,aloop=-1:1M:0[tag]; [0][tag]amix=duration=shortest,volume=2" -vn tag-out.mp3


Is it possible to do programmatic automation with Final Cut Pro?

Davinci Resolve and Fusion would be a better choice than FCPX/Motion if you're looking for something that supports standard scripting languages (lua and python 2/3).  From there, you can install whatever modules you need to get hooks into your data.  Adobe has their own ExtendScript for AfterEffects, which is based on JavaScript, but I can't really comment on it.  FCPX and Motion are probably the least script friendly of the major NLEs.  I'd guess that most larger studios probably use Nuke, which also uses Python, but if you're just starting out, Resolve/Fusion is a cheap entry point which scales well towards Nuke.

Automation of large file sets typically falls under the purview of a production's Technical Director (TD), who would be great people to befriend if this type of work interests you.


Adobe Premiere - Restore Audio to A/V Clip After Deleting

There's a semi-automatic way to do this – semi automatic because it involves only typing three keystrokes over and over: xf,, xf,, xf,… — you could train your cat to do it!
Here's how it goes:

make sure the audio is enabled for the tracks you want to restore (you only need to do this once)

park the playhead over one of the clips.

hit x (for Mark Clip) to set the in and out point to match the start and end of the clip:

hit f for Match Frame. This will display the current frame from the source clip in the viewer window – note that the in and out points will match those of the timeline clip

hit , to overwrite the clip. Note that this will add the audio tracks as denoted by magic sparkles in the pic below. The magic sparkles only appear if you really believe in them

The playhead will now be parked at the start of the next clip. If it's one you want to reinstate the audio for, then repeat xf, untill you're done, otherwise go to the next clip – down arrow – and repeat.

It looks a bit complicated but you can do it all by the keyboard just by typing xf, (and optionally down arrow) over and over. Note that you have to hit x before you hit f because once you hit f it sets the focus to the viewer window (you can jump back to the timeline by hitting shift3).
Note that this works with FCP too, except you replace , with F10, and you have to press the down arrow each time.
My goal with all NLEs has always been to edit completely from the keyboard, using the mouse as little as possible.


Why can't I select my grouped video clip to reposition it within the frame in Premiere Pro?

The video clip I'm trying to reposition has been split into three separate clips with the Cutting Tool and then Grouped together.

This is the key to your problem (emphasis mine).

In Premiere Pro, you cannot move a video clip around within the frame in your Program Monitor view if it has been grouped together with other timeline objects. The application would have to reposition each grouped item with relation to the clip you are trying to select and reposition. This kind of chained action simply isn't supported, so it just prevents you from selecting the clip within the Program Monitor to begin with.

You will have to select each of the grouped video clips on your Timeline, Ctrl-Click to bring up the context menu, and then select Ungroup:

You will then be able to reposition your video clips within the frame. You can re-Group the video clips when you are finished, if you like.


It sounds like a combination of two things from the comments discussion.  First, with the very high frame rate, your laptop simply can not handle the high data rate.  If you need to edit on the laptop, I would suggest re-compressing the video down to a smaller size and then when you are done, you can replace the low quality footage with the original for the final output.

The second problem is that it appears Premiere is interpreting the footage wrong.  There is an  Interpret Footage option if you right click on the clip and go to Modify, Interpret Footage.  You can confirm the frame rate is correct on the source.  If it is, then you also want to check the framerate on the sequence itself.  Right click on the sequence, choose Sequence Settings and verify that the frame rate is correct there as well.  If both of those are correct and you are still getting the issues, then I am unsure what could be happening.


Extracting segment from .mpg file using ffmpeg; why does result have video but no audio?

Until very recently (2018-02-17), ffmpeg wasn't able to correctly remux pcm_dvd streams in MPEG-PS. You'll have to upgrade to a recent version. Get a git snapshot binary from FFmpeg (under More Downloading Options)

You can also just re-encode using -acodec pcm_s16be


How to shoot a scene of someone riding a bike?

Well, its a bit of a generic question.
Almost like asking how to take a movie like shot using your camera.

The answer is equally generic.

Lighting, to prevent blowout or shadows take the shot when its cloudy, or near sunrise or sunset. (Unless you wanted a grunge harsh hot feel and maybe over exposed is the effect you are after, so take it at noon).
Make sure the light is behind you so you capture the image flush.
Make sure you take shots in scenes. A closeup of peddling (running alongside with a macro lens can work). Take a closeup shot. Take a shot that first places them in the scene (unless you are adding mystery and sometimes you place that scene at the end).
Tell a story, have an element in the foreground like a thumbs up to hitch a ride, out of focus is the rider coming up, then comes into focus the thumb is blurred. Then cut reaction shot, or maybe maybe headphones not seeing shot. etc, I mean just go with the story, and tell the story with your shots.
I guess I could also go with settings, I am a big fan of large apertures (low f stops) like f2.0 - f4.0. And high shutter speed 1/125th or higher to minimize blur on fast moving objects, again depending how you want the end result to look, all these rules can be broken. Large apertures (low f stops)  tends to create a bokeh effect (out of focus the background if focus is on subject) making it obvious to the audience what is the focus of the story.


For this kind of lighting, I would recommend going down to your local Home Depot (or equivalent hardware super store) and looking for construction lights. They are generally cheep and some run on batteries. They are also generally small and portable. You could also try some MagLights on D batteries (the ones the 5-0 use)

These lights are generally not that "warm," so I would also recommend picking up a piece of plywood and some paint. You can use this as a DYI reflector, and modify the color. More information can be found at Wikipedia

This is what a friend of mine did for lighting. It worked, but it was not the best. You just have to play around, there are many different ways of doing dirt cheap lighting, and you have to find the best. Hell, headlights and a reflector would work.


ffmpeg hardcoded subtitles from the top, bigger, with thicker stroke, on a dark background

Aegisub

Use ASS subtitles. Style them in Aegisub. You can style each letter or word individually, or apply the desired styling to all subtitles. See the documentation for detailed instructions.

Example ASS file:

[Script Info]
; Script generated by Aegisub 3.2.2
; http://www.aegisub.org/
Title: Default Aegisub file
ScriptType: v4.00+
WrapStyle: 0
ScaledBorderAndShadow: yes
YCbCr Matrix: None

[Aegisub Project Garbage]
Last Style Storage: Default

[V4+ Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, OutlineColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, Underline, StrikeOut, ScaleX, ScaleY, Spacing, Angle, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Encoding
Style: Default,Arial,48,&H00FFFFFF,&H000000FF,&H00000000,&H80000000,0,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,1,6,0,8,10,10,20,1

[Events]
Format: Layer, Start, End, Style, Name, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Effect, Text
Dialogue: 0,0:00:00.00,0:00:05.00,Default,,0,0,0,,Top of canvas. Bigger font size. Thicker stroke.

Without Aegisub

You can apply styling via the subtitles filter force_style option in ffmpeg. This should work with any format that the subtitles filter accepts.

ffmpeg -i input -vf "subtitles=subs.srt:force_style='Alignment=6,Fontsize=48,Outline=8'" output

Refer to the example ASS file for accepted force_style options, but it will not allow you to style each letter or word individually as you can in Aegisub.

Note that ScaleX and ScaleY values when used in force_style are a factor, not a percentage, so the accurate values would be 1,1 (not 100,100) in that case.

Transparent background

This can be tricky due to some limitations of libass, but it is possible. See How to set background to subtitle in ffmpeg?


How do you remove transulscent watermarks from videos?

Load the clip into After Effects and add a mask to the mark.
Add an underlying track with matching or near matching background content. The mask will hide the top layer to reveal the bottom layer.
Add blurs, softening etc to smooth the underlay.


How do I playout rtmp stream to SDI (Decklink Studio 4K) using FFMPEG command?we are using Windows 7 operating system

As the docs say,

  you need the Blackmagic DeckLink SDK and you need to configure with
  the appropriate --extra-cflags and --extra-ldflags. On Windows, you
  need to run the IDL files through widl

If so, run

ffmpeg -re -i rtmp://server/live/streamname -c:v rawvideo -pix_fmt uyvy422 -vf scale=720x576 -c:a pcm_s16le -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f decklink "Device"

where Device is to replaced with the name of 'Decklink Studio 4K' as indicated by ffmpeg -f lavfi -i nullsrc -f decklink -list_devices 1 dummy


The main reason is that while CMOS has made great strides in overcoming it's limitations, there are still some advantages that CCDs hold.  I wasn't able to find anything completely up to date, but this article from 2017 has a few examples.

There's more ability to get consistent results from each pixel and get higher quality analog to digital conversion with less amplification necessary on the CCD.  The cost is much higher obviously as CCD has always been a more expensive option, but it still holds some specialty advantages.  If you need those advantages and have the money, it's still worth buying.

Looking at the difference between that camera and the next model down, you can see that the CCD does have a low light performance advantage over the closest equivalent CMOS camera in that line.


What is the best tool to increase sound of MTS video without need to re-encoding this video?

The setup that i use for something similar is:

Step 1 - demux

avconv -i in.mts -an -c:a copy video.mkv -c:a copy audio.ac3

Step 2 - audio editing

For this i just open my audio.ac3 in Audacity and normalise the sound. At this time it may be a good idea to try to remove the noise. I reencode into Vorbis, but it is up to you what you wish to do. Let's say you save into audio.oga

Step 3 - mux

avconv -i video.mkv -i audio.oga -c:v copy -c:a copy out.mkv

Notes

Video was getting copied all the time. So no quality loss is possible from that.
You can drop the video demuxing, and just grab it directly from the original in the third step. But i find it just makes the process much cleaner when you know where everything is.


Adobe Premiere Pro / After Effects Hard Drive Scratch Disk and Cache set up in temporary situation.

Personally, I would ditch the usb3 drive for editing. Assuming you can't buy a third drive I would do your setup like this.

Do a two drive setup.
C: OS and media cache
d: (raid) Media, projects, previews and exports.

I've always followed the advice here and its worked great for me.

https://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-2906955-31395/Guideline+Disks.jpg


Audio playing at a lower pitch than original file with clicking noise

Restarted LightWorks and both problems seem to have disappeared.


That is way out of the h264 specs. According to Adobe After Effects the format constrains for h264 are at min. 10fps so even 2fps are (not, see below) out of spec and could result in issues with some players. So Avidemux seems to allow out of spec settings, that 1 fps isn't possible, is very likely an internal issue with how h264 gets encoded in Avidemux.

Edit: It seems this is indeed an Adobe only constrain and or constrain for MP4, when using the QuickTime format with h264 I can render with 1 FPS.

Still, I recommend you interpolate your video to be longer instead of decreasing the FPS unless you have very specific technical reasons for encoding with 1 FPS.
Showing every frame multiple times per second instead of just once per second doesn't make a visual difference.


Headphone for recording voice for YouTube

The quality of the headphones will only affect how the audio sounds to you, so you don't necessarily need to spend your money on that to improve the audio for a youtube video. I would suggest focussing your money on the mic itself.
This is a great roundup of relatively inexpensive mics, with audio clips so you can hear how they sound.
Gaming headsets tend to have relatively cheap mics in them, and you need to be really careful about the mic's position.  Too close and you get breath noise and popping sounds. Too far away and you get room noise and hissing on the audio.


What are the default export settings when I choose to upload to YouTube in Final Cut Pro X?

I'm not 100% sure this is the correct settings, but it does seem to be closer to the real thing since YouTube no longer shows the warning when you use these settings.

They key seems to use H.264 with the .mp4 format. The way to choose mp4, is to change the Format from Video and Audio (.mov), to Computer (.mp4):

This uploads cleanly to YouTube with no warnings, and also produces a video that is half the size of the .mov file (200MB instead of 400MB).

If you find yourself wanting to use this solution many times, you might as well create a new destination, Prepare for YouTube:

Note that the resolution settings are not 16:9 in the last screenshot (i.e. they are 4096 x 2160 instead of what is ideal on YouTube for 4K: 3840 x 2160). This means you'll need to manually choose this setting each time in the share screen.

Note: When you try to download the video on YouTube, you might expect it to download the original mp4 you uploaded (200MB), but you'll find that the video that is downloaded is much smaller (18MB). You can therefore not use YouTube as a way to backup your exported mp4. You should still store it on some other medium or service.


Transitions in Premiere Pro CC 2015 with After Effects Sequence

Often (and perhaps in your case) what is happening is the following.  Initially you have a clip that has plenty of content before or after your transition point.  You trim that clip to represent the content you actually care about.  If you do a fade at this point, the fade is going to use frames from the trimmed part of the clip that you don't necessarily see, but which are there (and which are used to complete the fade).  Now, if you send your trimmed clip through some external process, it doesn't send the /whole/ clip to the external process, just the frames you "see".  That clip that seems properly trimmed doesn't actually have the frames to allow the fade to complete the way you want it to.

To fix this, send a longer trim of the clip to AE, then, when it comes back, re-trim it to what you want.  You should find the fade working as well as it did for you initially.


Apply effects to multiple clips (automation/batch/macro?) in Adobe Premiere CC

you can add\modify the filters on one clip then from the effects tab select the effects > "save presets" and apply those to the other clips.


Transposing keyframes or recursive keyframing in AE

Duplicate your composition twice. Let's call these 1, 2 and 3

In 2, replace the embedded clip layer with 3. With Alt held down and the embedded clip layer being selected, drag 3 on top of it. In 1, replace its embedded clip layer with 2.

I assume that the dimensions of the source clip and the composition are the same, else some transformation will be required.


MKV and MP4 are container formats. AVC is encoding format. File size does not depend much on container type, although some containers allow for smaller file sizes, like MKV takes less space than TS because metadata is not repeated in the stream.

The single defining parameter of file size is data rate. Depending on the encoding format, frame size and frame rate you should select a reasonable data rate when encoding. Say, 5 Mbit/s for MPEG-2 Part 2 may be too low for HD video, but more than enough if you choose AVC/H.264.

Also, "mb" means "millibits". If you wanted to write "megabytes" you should have capitalized both "m" and "b".


Compress or convert .mov to lighter format

You didn't mention whether you're using a Mac or Windows, but...

You could use a tool like MPEG Streamclip to change the format of the video, or strip off the audio.  Works on both Mac or Windows.


Sigma 18-35mm, f/1.8 DC HSM ART Image Circle / BMPCC4k with 0.71x

Your calculations are right.

But if you take a look here: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1279757/0
The vignette is much stronger. With the images provided by Aloicious I get a vignette.


How do I create a solid black background in Premiere?

In the workspaces panel, right-click the background and choose New Item > Color Matte...
You can then select any color you want.

See Easily Create a Solid Color Background in Premier Pro 2019 for more details.


Object removal is usually done by masking, tracking and inserting a clean plate into the masked area.
Easier done in After Effects than in Premiere.

It looks like in the above video it is a different shot inserted into the mirror.


How to choose a VCR for pulling stock footage from VHS for theatrical release

I worked on a documentary project two years ago. The solution that worked best for me was a VHS Recorder, that had 6 heads and was able to play NTSC and PAL. I could not find a VHS Recorder with HDD or DVD recording unit, that played both formats.

VHS (and VHS-C) tape quality is limited. No matter how big your budget is, you will not get a full color-range HD video-material.


The cable of the tv antenna lies on the heater

It is very unlikely this would damage it - if it is a standard co-ax cable, then it can withstand much higher temperatures than your room heater will cause.

Mechanical failure is generally much more of a problem if you move the antenna a lot (wear on the cable as it enters the connectors is quite common)


4K Workflow in FCPX - crop down for multicam angles

I'm a little confused.  Perhaps it's the terminology you're using.  Are you really talking about cropping (throwing away the top, bottom, and sides of the image), or do you mean scaling?  Are you creating three angles from the same camera (which explains why you'd crop, but I can't imagine happening in an interview scenario), or do you have one BMPC and two other 720p cameras (which would explain why you'd scale the BMPC)?

In either case, you should probably skip the compound clips.  FCPX doesn't play nicely with CC's stacked inside of multicam clips.  Just make sure that when you create the multicam, it's the size of your desired output.  When you add higher-resolution footage to a lower-resolution multicam clip, FCPX scales the new clip down to fit within the smaller bounds automatically. But you can always use your transform tools to scale the image up afterwards, effectively cropping it.  There's no speed or image quality penalty for this type of operation because FCPX doesn't apply these transformations sequentially, it does them simultaneously at render.  For this reason, it's usually good to keep your multicam output size the same as your smallest angle.

I also wouldn't render any corrections beforehand.  Each render you do is going to degrade the image quality through compression and/or error.  If it's the NR and color correction that's slowing down playback, you should just disable them while you edit and re-enable them before you render.  If your computer bogs down with vanilla 4k prores LT, you could try working with proxies, but you'd save yourself some headache by just upgrading your computer.


Creating just a non-stereoscopic 360 capture setup is highly difficult, unless you are shooting vast landscapes with wide angle lenses.

The problems you will need to factor are far more than overlap.

Yes, you will need adequate overlap for adjustment in post production. But you also need to make sure all of the cameras are genlocked for sync. Shutter speeds will need to match, as will white balance and f-stops.

If you plan on having objects come near the camera (which would be why you'd want 3D), you will need more cameras; because for 360 you want to use high quality lenses in the mid to wide focal lengths.

Your issues will be focus, and mostly, warping as the objects move closer to the camera. Once in post, the objects, unless you are (factoring full frame plane of view) using 50mm or longer lenses, will distort due to simple physics. And will be near impossible to align in post-- especially so with a steroscopic rig.

Im honestly trying to envision your setup, and would think in order for anything like this to work, your camera ring would need to be fairly large; like 6 feet in diameter. Using 16 or more pairs (32 cameras) at the very least. Anything less will not produce appealing results.

The few 360 setups I have seen in person used 22.5 degree slices (16 cameras and 16 projectors).

Hope this helps.


VLC Alternative for fine review media with possibly frames control and detailed codec informations

I haven't used VLC as my primary player since 2007. I switched over initially to KMPlayer and then Potplayer. Potplayer allows fairly flexible splitter and codec assignment for decoding. It also sports a whole host of video and audio processing filters. In fact, I believe that one can use Avisynth filters to process the video during playback, too.


Is there a way of removing grain from a cgi animation in after effects? (not the video kind.)

As an alternative to the denoising method suggested by @CoinRocket, you could try to export the scene from Blender with less noise. If you have enough computation capacity, this will be a superior solution since post-denoising will always introduce some amount of blurriness into your video.

The noise in your example image looks like fireflies, i.e. artifacts that stem from the nature of the Cycles Engine in Blender which is based on ray-tracing. There are several ways to reduce fireflies, however depending on your settings and available hardware render times will become extremely long. A while ago, I exported a 15-second sequence at 1000 samples and 24 frames per second rendered for three days straight on my laptop. So be warned.

The easiest way to reduce fireflies is to increase the number of samples the program runs during export. This will correlate directly with rendering times.

There are several other settings that can affect the occurance of fireflies, but some of them are well-hidden. Here's an explanation of some of them. There are also some tricks and workarounds that can help with that, here's an article detailing some of them. You might find some more on the Blender.SE or through other sources. A while ago, I assorted some Tutorials on several techniques in Blender, you can find it here. The titles are in German, but the links in the first tile on the left side might still be helpful to you.


Since you're scaling 2x or more, your best bet is to upscale the DV again using Avisynth with the nnedi rpow2 filter, then scale, if necessary, to HDV.

(With some tangible details, I can provide an example script.)

Trying to sharpen the upscaled videos will produce worse results than the above method.


Rendering performacne of Vegas MovieStudio 14

It is normal, that different software outputs different results in different time ranges. Maybe the effect you use in AP Elements is much simpler than the one in MovieStudio. Or Movie Studio uses more ressources to run. Or the settings were not exactly equal.

In general you improve rendering perfomance with the following steps:

Close internet connection
Remove all media from the computer that is not needed for the rendering
Deactivate temporarily all programs in background (e.g. anti virus) that are not needed ( ATTENTION: Don't take any risks. "Maybe" always means "Leave it!")
Only open data that is directly related to the media you render. ( No other projects in background )
Leave the system alone during work
For Windows: Defrag Harddisk before rendering


Using FFmpeg -lavfi to calculate the SSIM of each frame

You have to perform all filtering in a single filtergraph.

ffmpeg -i .\a.mp4 -i .\a.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]setpts=N/FR/TB[v0];[1:v]select=gte(n\,1),setpts=N/FR/TB[v1];[0v][1v]ssim=f=stats.log" -f null -


Change to black and white (without greys) in AE

The effect that does what you specifically want is called threshold.


ffmpeg streaming to rtmp and extracting image periodically

Try

ffmpeg -hide_banner -loglevel info -progress /tmp/ffmpeg.log -i udp://10.0.0.150:8181?listen -filter_complex '[0:v]split=2[in1][in2];[in1]scale=640:-1,format=yuv420p[out1];[in2]fps=1/60[out2]' \
-map '[out1]' -map 0:a -framerate 30 -video_size 1080x720 -vcodec libx264 -b:v 768k -crf 23 -preset medium -maxrate 800k -bufsize 800k -g 60 -c:a aac -strict -3 -ar 44100 -ab 32k -f flv rtmp://<ustream url>/<ustream key> \
-map '[out2]' img%03d.jpg


It is in:
Creator studio => Video Manager => (Select Video) => Card (or "End screen & Annotations")

There you select time and click on "Add element" button. Now you can choose, what you want to add.


How to create slideshow/video from still images using a varying point of interest?

You can import all the images as a video i.e. an image sequence and then try to stabilize the "video" by selecting a distinctive part of the odometer as your target anchor. The result may still need some manual tweaking especially if there's a huge change in light, but it will be faster than doing it manually.

You might have to rename the images to form an unbroken naming sequence  i.e. img0001.jpg, img0002.jpg, img0003.jpg..etc. You can use Advanced Renamer to do this.


How to encode video to profile high using ffmpeg?

The ffmpeg build you have uses libx264 compiled for 10-bit. Apparently one can only build with support for either 8-bit OR 10-bit. So, you'll need a build where libx264 supports 8-bit.


Annotating sports video: design principles?

I'd think the best principal would be to ensure that motion always trump graphics.  Ie, any pixels that are detected as having velocity that is not equal to the velocity of the background should be rendered over the graphics.  This might be difficult to accomplish without purpose built software, but such an approach should keep the graphics from going over any action.  You actually already see this with things like American "Football" (not soccer) games where they render on lines for things like line of scrimmage and first down.  The perspective makes it look like it is simply graphics on the field even though they are actually added electronically.


I think the short answer (one you may have already found) is no! I'm in a similar situation: I write music to picture and used to receive clips as .movs. I could then add final audio myself for showreel/web purposes. Now those clips arrive as mp4 and are useless and unchangeable. I can merge files in QT pro for viewing, but no saves are allowed.

Editing software usually prefers 'linear' formats (aiff or wav for audio, .mov or similar for vids) whereas mp4 is heavily compressed and 'lossy'. Also, the key frame rate is very poor (300 I think) so that might explain some of your edit problems. The only workaround I can find is to open in QT and re-export, but the results are pretty ugly! Saving to mp4 for final product? Why not - it looks pretty and the file sizes are good. Working with mp4 in the edit? Hell no :)


ffprobe - why total bitrate is greater than sum of video and audio bitrates?

I don't know for sure, but the total bitrate may be calculated as size / duration, which would include the container overhead. IOW the actual bit rate would be the sum of the two stream rates, with the container overhead shown as distributed over the entire length.


How to save the phone rotation into a video?

I may not be able to answer this as fully as someone else, but I'd do the following:

Open the video file in (most) any video editor. (something as basic as Windows Movie Maker will suffice)
Split the clip at the point where the device rotates.
Rotate the newly-created second clip to suit your needs.


Can I use historical films from Weimar/Nazi Germany for research? (Copyright UK law)

Reach out to the European Film Gateway's FAQ and look for "May I use content found on the EFG for my own website or in other contexts?".

In addition to that you can ask for help in their contact form.


Technique: remove background by combining two images?

I believe the effect you're after is Difference Matte. Keep in mind your clean plate needs to be exactly the same, pixel for pixel, as in your shots. You'll likely need to do some manual clean up as well.


How to keep framerate but increase video duration with ffmpeg minterpolate?

I also asked this question on reddit and got a good answer, so I'll paste it here for maximum future search-ability of this problem:

minterpolate has multiple modes:

Duplicate frames as necessary
Blend frames as necessary
Actually calculate motion vectors and perform interpolation

The third option is the highest quality (if it works correctly, which
it doesn't for me, always produces weird artifacts) but it's
incredibly slow. Definitely not possible in less than 24 hours. So
option two is probably what you're after. That being said, 10,000
frames in 10 hours (36,000 seconds) equals a raw framerate of 10/36
fps (0.2777778), so I don't think frame blending will look very good,
but I guess you could try (I'm assuming your animation is stored in a
series of image files):
ffmpeg -f image2 -framerate 10/36 -i "frame_%05d.png" -filter_complex "[0:V:0]minterpolate=fps=25/1:mi_mode=blend[out]" -map "[out]" -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 20 -f mp4 -movflags +faststart "output.mp4"


Can't make a clip in FinalCutPro X longer

The red line is shown when there is no more source media left. You've dragged the end of the clip all the way to the end of the source file, so there's no more media to be added. Imagine a video 5 seconds long, of which you've added the first 4 seconds to the timeline, then you try to drag the end of the clip in the timeline beyond 5 seconds — you can't, because there's no more source media in the clip.

The end of the timeline when viewing your compound clip is greyed out because this section is beyond the end of the compound clip range in the containing timeline. The main timeline which contains the compound clip is only showing a portion of the compound clip, and the video in the compound clip beyond the greyed out area will not be played. To play this section, drag the end of the compound clip in the main timeline until the red line is shown.

To quickly show/hide the retime editor for any selected clips, press cmd-R.


how to add a gap between clips in adobe premiere pro?

The closest thing in Premiere is the nudge keyboard shortcut. Select the clips you want to move and hit ⌘ / ctrl← or ⌘ / ctrl→ to nudge the clips one frame forward or back, and hold the shift key  ( ⌘ / ctrlshift← or ⌘ / ctrlshift→ ) to make it 5 frames.

You can increase or decrease the amount it nudges in the preferences, so if you want ⌘ / ctrlshift← to nudge 5 seconds, open preferences then look for trim and change the Large Trim Offset amount to 125 (for 25fps, or 150 for 30fps).


How to change the transition point between two clips? (I.e. how to perform a rolling edit)

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to do this either in iMovie nor in Final Cut Pro (except for Multicam clips).

Even these two methods will sometimes fail when they should have succeeded because the two clips might have gotten so out of sync that iMovie no longer recognizes them as two versions of the same clip.

Method 1 - rejoin clips

One way you can do this is to:

Select both clips
Join the clips
Re-split them somewhere else
Re-apply all the filters you had

Notably, this seems to be the only way to do it in Final Cut Pro as the following method only seems to work in iMovie...

Method 2 - dragging clips

Another way to do this is to drag the clip as you did normally. Notice how there is now a "break" between the two clips:

Drag the other clip until this "break" disappears:

This functionality does not seem to be available in Final Cut Pro, so this appears to be one instance where iMovie actually helps you more than Final Cut Pro.


Convert mkv to mp4 (or webM) with the output file viewable in the process

This is possible for MP4, with a caveat. The command below will generate a fragmented MP4, which you can view in a browser while the conversion is taking place. However, only the fragments completely encoded at the time of launching the file, will be viewable. To view fragments encoded after that point, you'll have to reload the file/page.

ffmpeg -i input <encoding parameters> -movflags +frag_keyframe+separate_moof+omit_tfhd_offset+empty_moov out.mp4


There are a few different techniques going on in this shot.
First the text was all made in 2D:
The hand-drawn text was probably made in 2D first, then revealed with a mask either line by line or using a plugin like QuickDraw.
The printed text is being animated on character-by-character using text animators.
Then that 2D layer has a paper layer added behind it, some drop shadow added to it as a Layer Style maybe.
Then all of it is placed into 3D, with some camera moves on it (this is an old tutorial, but the whole set is great for getting to grips with After Effects)
There's other stuff going on in that clip, but that's the basics of the text effects.


IDK how well this would work. Prob. not at all for vids with differing GOPs, but you could try using something to mirror your keystrokes to multiple windows.

Autohotkey can do that on Windows.  On GNU/Linux, Terminator can send keystrokes to multiple gnome-terminal tabs at once, so you could control mplayer that way (since it reads the tty as well as accepting keystrokes to its windows.)  I'm sure there's a way to dual-box games on GNU/Linux by mirroring keystrokes to arbitrary windows, I've just never had occasion to go looking.

If any open-source player has the kind of histogram you're looking for, and an existing API for writing GUI frontends, then in theory it shouldn't be too hard to (pay a coder to) hack something up that sends seek-to-a-position commands to multiple instances of a player.  This could solve loss of sync problems after seeking, if you get that with blindly driving multiple players.

ffmpeg has a histogram filter. From an example in the ffmpeg docs: play a vid with a filtered version side-by-side: -vf 'split[a][b]; [a]pad=iw*2:ih[src]; [b]histogram[filt]; [src][filt]overlay=w'. I just changed deshake to histogram.


Which is a better choice for shooting classroom teaching, a DSLR or a shoulder-mounted video camera**?

Shoulder Mounted video camera?

I think that's a little over the top, A decent 1080p or even 4k video camera (Canon, Sony, Panasonic) would give you a decent image, your main thing would be audio, you want something that would give you decent audio, a camera with a XLR input and a shotgun mic to start with and then maybe mic yourself up using a wireless kit.

Obvisouly this would all depend on budgets, time, amount of editing you want to do, maybe if you want to live stream.

Other things like decent tripod, recording media, etc will affect your budget.


How to show multiple camera angles together in a Multicam clip in FCPX?

What you need to do is mark the edit points for the clip where you want the effect to appear. Then highlight the edited clip so that it is highlighted in yellow.
Now copy that clip by pressing Command+C.

Now menu over the clip and select “Lift from storyline”.

You will now have an empty grey clip on the Storyline.

Click on that Grey clip and paste the copy of the original clip on to it.
Go back to the start of the clip and then change the angle of the clip on the storyline.

Finally, change the size of the two clips to give the side by side effect.
Dependent on you snap options you may need to drag the clips back together to the right places, when you paste the duplicated clip onto the stroryline.


Convert video with ffmpeg to have the same quality

The differences between your "works" and "doesn't work" examples are:

resolution
framerate
Codec Tag
Codec Level

and you can set these using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg.exe -i /temp/input.mp4 -c:v mpeg4 -level 3.0 -vtag XVID -s 544x416 -r 25 -qscale 0 /temp/out.avi

Qscale 0 will produce a large file but maintain the best quality.

Please note that changing the resolution and frame rate will not produce the best output quality, so check if you can just omit the -s and -r parameters to maintain the best quality. Possibly you need to set the bitrate to 800kBit as in your "works" example to make it work on the target device of your grandmother.


Avid import wmv file, just audio no video

This is likely due to the video codec that you are using. First, an explanation of terms is required: WMV is a container format. These can contain one or more video or audio streams - with video this is normally one video & one audio stream; and these are encoded with various codecs (coder/decoder). I'm not very familiar with the WMV format - for editing I use proper intermediate codecs (Apple ProRes in my case; more in this in a moment), and I prefer MP4 as a delivery codec.

There are broadly three 'types' of video codec: capture codecs, that a video camera will use to record the video; intermediate codecs, that are more suited to post-production editing (they trade larger files for requiring less processing power & the ability to easily cut on any frame); and delivery codecs, that are more compressed (so they can be streamed over the internet, or so you can fit a decent length on a physical medium like a DVD, or for broadcast). There is some overlap between these (many DSLRs use h.264, which is designed to be a delivery codec, to capture video).

This stuff also applies to audio - though there you should use uncompressed PCM audio. However, since audio decompression requires far less processing power, some NLEs will allow you to get away with compressed audio.

I have never heard of the WMV format containing any intermediate formats, as far as I know it's a purely delivery format. That's probably the cause of your problem. I've never used Avid, so I don't know  exactly which intermediate codec you should use. Since it's designed by Avid, the DNxHD codec is a good bet for video (you should convert your audio to PCM audio while you're at it).

Your video editing software probably came with a media conversion tool. You could also use the command-line-based ffmpeg (wiki) to encode to DNxHD. For the following command, you would need to adjust the bit rate - here it is 36 megabits/second - see here for some information on what you should use. Note that the ffmpeg syntax used in that guide is somehat out of date; you should use -c:v instead of -vcodec and -b:v instead of -b. This following command will also convert the audio to uncompressed 16-bit PCM, for maximum compatibility:

ffmpeg -i input.wmv -c:v dnxhd -b:v 36M -c:a pcm_s16le output.mov


Software to edit .mov files from a Canon 7D

VirtualDub is a very powerful video editor. However, it's not very intuitive to use it and it has a steep learning curve. On the plus side, there's a large internet community that supports it, so lots of online resources are available.

For your specific problem I've made a short tutorial below. I've done all steps in Windows XP with two .mov files from a Canon 550D. Unfortunately I failed to find an easy way of adjusting white balance with VirtualDub.
I've used various on-line resources to compile this tutorial. There might be a more optimal way of doing this, but I found this the most straight forward.

Installing VirtualDub + plugins

Download the VirtualDub 1.10.3.
Download ffinputdriver to enable loading .mov files.
Drag the VirtualDub folder to a convenient location. You don't need to install the program, it's click and run.
Place the contents of the plugin folder of ffinputdriver in the plugin folder found in the VirtualDub folder.
Start VirtualDub
First you'll need to convert your video to AVI. That's what VirtualDub works with natively. A warning: my 1280x720 .mov file of 25MB became a 600MB .avi file.
The transcoding speed is dependent on your machine.

Transcoding .mov to .avi

File -> Open video file
File -> Save segmented AVI
Repeat for all your files.

Adjust Saturation

File -> Open video file. Choose one of the AVI files you generated in the previous step.
The video file opens in two screens. The left is the original, the right one is the processed video. At first they should be identical. You can scale the video views by right-clicking on them and choosing an appropriate zoom percentage.
Go to Video and check if Full processing mode is on.
Go to Video -> Filters -> Add -> HSV Adjust.
Adjust the saturation to your liking and hit OK. Hit OK again in the filter window.
Click File -> Save segmented AVI... and save the edited file somewhere.
Repeat the process for all your videos in need of saturation adjustments.

Combine clips into one longer clip

File -> Open video file. Choose the first file of your sequence.
File -> Append AVI segment. The selected video file will be appended to the end of the open file.
Repeat this with all the video files.

Export to smaller file

Follow the steps outlined here.
From a 25MB .mov file I got a 600MB .avi file, which got transformed to a 2.7MB .mp4 file with the steps given in the linked tutorial.


Too many arguments in ffmpeg, concat, filter_complex command, what I am doing wrong?

I finally found out how to do it!

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

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

BIG Questions:

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

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


How to apply opacity to one clip without being effected by the opacity of other clips?

When you set Opacity on a clip in the timeline, you can set it for the entire clip, or you can set it using timing markers, which Premiere will then gradually adjust to each Opacity as per the timing you've set within the clip.

Double check in the Effect Controls panel that you haven't set timing markers on your Opacity changes - this would result in the effect you describe. If you've got timing markers set, toggle them off, and then just go to the start of each clip and set the opacity you want for the entire clip.

The following help page may provide further info if this is the issue:
https://helpx.adobe.com/au/premiere-pro/using/adding-navigating-setting-keyframes.html


what graphics card features effect NVIDIA NVENC hardware encoding speed?

There are two main features in NVIDIA NVENC encoding:

Video memory if you need to transcode many streams.
NVENC SIP - than better this SIP than better encoding performance
is. It depends on GPU. You can find the best explanation related GPU
and NVENC SIP generation on Wikipedia website. Maxwell Gen 2 is the best at the moment(for 2016).

According to the license limitation: it's possible to run only 2 encoding threads simultaneously on the consumer level NVIDIA cards (any GTX card). It's regulated on the driver level, however it’s possible to remove this limitation. In this case, the value of maximum transcoding threads will depend on  video memory size and video engine utilization.
Video memory size which is necessary for one transcoding stream is various and depends on a video card model. For encoding SD stream on QUADRO K4200(4GB) is necessary 100 MB of video memory, but for encoding the same stream on GTX 980TI(6GB) we need 170MB.

My results in transcoding SD sources in real time are:

QUADRO K4200(4GB): one transcoding thread costs 100 MB and we can run in parallel about 36 threads, but the bottleneck is the video engine utilization. I can run about 30 parallel threads with "-preset hp -vcodec nvenc_264"
GTX 980TI(6GB): the bottleneck is the video memory. I can run about 32
threads (32*170=5440) in parallel. I did it for my education, of
course. But the video engine results is better then on K4200 in 2.5
times. These 32 threads with "-preset slow -vcodec nvenc_264 -vf
yadif=0" and video engine utilization are only 80%.
I also tested it on GTX 660(2GB, Maxwell Gen 2). It was about 15
parallel threads due to video memory.

My conclusion(for 2016): If you need to transcode no more than 2 threads in parallel, then  GTX 960 is a good variant. Also,  you can save some money to another hardware and look for another video card with Maxwell Gen1. If you go to the hack way, then GTX 960 is a good variant but only with 4GB of video memory.

UPDATE FROM 2018:
Nowadays the situation in this area has changed in  better direction. The card with the best encoder is Tesla V100, but it's too expensive. The best work variant is the video cards based on Pascal CHIPs. If you prefer the hack way then GTX1050TI(4GB), it will be perfect for your budget in 800$. Otherwise, Quadro P2000 doesn’t have license limitations and also very comfortable for the same budget.


How to set up Paid Live Streaming event?

It depends on the level of protection you want, but no, there isn't really a good way to do it with Wordpress.  You can paywall a portion of your Wordpress site, but a live stream isn't going to go over HTTP, it is going to run over an RTMP stream or something similar.  Paywalling your Wordpress site will make people pay to find out the name of the RTMP stream, but unless you have some type of authentication on the RTMP stream (or give each user a unique stream link), then you couldn't prevent sharing the link once one person pays.

What you really need is a stream server that provides either login to a stream (and only allows each user to access it once) or you need a stream server that can provide the same stream to multiple URIs and only allow one connection per URI. Both of these effectively do the same thing, they make it so that the connection details provided to a customer only work for that customer.

Alternately, you could use a list of authorized IP addresses and have your website add the IP addresses of paid customers as authorized viewers so that they can access the stream from their location.  In this case, you should automatically update the IP address list whenever they log in.


Quality loss when exporting motion graphics videos in Premiere Pro

There are 2 things causing this issue:

Chroma sub-sampling. This is explained pretty well in this answer.
Compression artifacts - For example, the mark above the "1"on the email notification is due to the way H.264 compresses data. This is known as "ringing" and is quite common with compression.

Some options for dealing with it include:

Avoid using saturated reds and blues especially in areas of high color contrast
Use a codec or codec settings that don't exhibit ringing (easier said than done when you're uploading to a video service that may recompress it)
Use settings to reduce how noticeable it is, such as turning on motion blur when exporting, so when things move, they exhibit softer edges

Unfortunately, the reality is that TV is terrible for pure motion graphics. The subsampling that occurs makes it impossible to have nice crisp lines in saturated colors. And unfortunately, most of the codecs that work on all platforms are made to deliver TV and movies to users.


How to create simple animation with transparent background?

All of the animations you want to do there are achievable with masks and the Stroke effect.

I suggest you start to generally learn to use After Effects, these are very simple things you want to do there and you shouldn't need any tutorial once you understand the very basics of After Effects.


In Windows, how do I find the geotags for videos shot in iOS?

Use exiftool, a command-line tool. GUI available from here.

Relevant feature:

  Reads EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, MakerNotes, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile,
  Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP, ID3 and more.

Should look like this, in readout:

  GPSCoordinates                  : 20.884100° N, 21.319300° E, 17 m
  Above Sea Level


How can I create an intro animation in Final Cut Pro X or Motion, with or without plugins?

You could easily create that in FCPX, no plug-in necessary. The various circles can just be still images that you apply rotation and scaling to. (I'd make them large and then scale them down rather than making them small and scaling up.) I'm not sure if there's a title that exactly matches what they do, but it wouldn't be too hard to do that sort of titling. Worst case, you can pick up Motion for < $50 and use the text sequencer to do it.


Digital cameras see black scrolling lines when filming light from my desk lamp

Cheap (to make) LED lights will flicker at twice the mains frequency. There are many ways of overcoming this in the design of lights, such as using a larger smoothing capacitor (which makes the light bulky), using a dedicated progressive LED driver IC (which turns off some of the LEDs but not all of them, so the light dims rather than going out every half cycle) or using a switched mode converter at a higher frequency (which is more complex than the more common capacitive dropper, but allows dimming - adjustable LED panels sold for use in photography will have this technology).

Put a different bulb in the lamp, such as the one that's in your bedside lamp. Generally the more expensive and branded ones will have better smoothing circuitry.


If you want the “best possible results” I would recommend the following workflow, or similar variation thereof:

Export your captured video source to a JPG Image Sequence. This will create a JPG for each discrete frame of the video. If you want ultimate color control, with no loss of quality due to JPG compression, you can export instead a TIF sequence, but the size of your output will be 30-50 times larger for HD content.
Second, using Photoshop, open a single frame.
Being your camera is a lockdown shot, choose your reference pixel to be used to determine brightness. I would recommend picking a pixel that has a luminance value of medium grey.
Save your Frame as “Reference.jpg”
Close the File.
Now open a new different frame from the JPG sequence.
Record an Action Sequence that:

1) Opens Reference.jpg. Then uses the Adobe Keyboard command for select previous document.

2) Uses the Match Color Edit Command -> Under Edit Tab

3) Grabs the color value on the open new frame (the one you just opened).

4) Matches the color value to the Reference.jpg file for the exact same reference area.

5) Youll have to play with the parameters adjusting Fuzziness, Threshold, Etc, to get the settings right.

6) Apply Match Color Command.

7.) Close Reference.jpg

8.) End Recording of Action Sequence.

Then... Use Image Processor within Bridge to Batch your JPG Sequence Files. Select your input directory, output directory, and check th box “Run Action on Processed Files” - Select the Recorded Action.

Run the Image Processor.

This will give you the best possible results, specifically if you use TIF and work in a 16 Bit Workspace.

Hope this helps.


Oh duh, add a color overlay layer style.


It depends what you regard as "true 3d" but there is a technique called "Light Field Display" which has been in development for some time now. Its essentially still a 2D screen but you can walk around and look at it from different angle as if it were an actual 3d object.
http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay/


Generate thumbnail images with alpha channel from a video which has an alpha channel using ffmpeg

I found this solution on StackOverFlow.com: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7742506/convert-flv-video-with-alpha-channel-to-pngs-with-transparency
./ffmpeg -i ../videos/video.mov -r 25 -vcodec png -pix_fmt rgb32 %d.png


What you're looking for is Motion Tracking. There are a number of tools which have motion trackers in them - Apple's Motion, Adobe After Effects, and more. There are also 3rd party trackers like Mocha, Core Melt Track X, etc.

The workflow will differ depending on which tool you're using, so I can't really get into details here. But you should be able to find tutorials on YouTube and at the vendors' websites.


Setting track points from Mocha to a solid makes it very small

Unbelievable,

Right after I asked the question I found the solution online.
After tracking in Mocha make sure you click the "Align selected surfaces" button.
I had to search for it but here it is:

After this you can copy your tracking data and paste it in AE.


The propose algorithm can be implemented using Blender's Compositor.

Here's a working project file:
https://is.gd/TeA4xC

You need to supply the same video file as input to three input nodes - each with a specified frame offset.

This is capable of removing flickers that last no longer than 1 frame.

I tried using this for my footage, but I had issues with A/V sync after remuxingthe result with the original audio, so I dropped the idea.

Here's how the example clip looks like after being processed with this file:

You can tell the flicker is much less pronounced. There are some artifacts, but they are way less distracting.

Hopefully someone will find this useful - I ultimately didn't :/

Enjoy.


There are a few things you are missing, and a few more you just aren't fully appreciating how much of a difference the things you mentioned make.

First, the S6 sensor is not over 1/2 inch, it is 1/2.6 inch, which is substantially smaller than a 1/2 inch sensor, particularly since sensors are measured diagonally.

Second, lenses matter a lot more than the sensor.  The inability to zoom optically is a deal breaker for what you are trying to do with covering speaking events.  Typically, video is a secondary concern to a live audience and camera positions will be far off to avoid impacting visibility.  Without strong optics, you will not be able to get the footage you need.

Third, most (all?) cellphones do not use a global shutter, while most camcorders do.  Global shutters ensure that an entire frame is captured at the same time instead of scanning line by line while the frame is exposing.  The lack of a global shutter results in the "jello" effect that you can see when you pan a camera quickly.  Global shutter is a bit less of a concern for fixed camera position shooting at a relatively static target, but it is still work mentioning.

Forth, reliability.  Smartphones are more likely to crash than a stand alone video camera, they are subject to recording length limits that may interfere with your recordings.  They will have lower battery life while shooting which may also cause issues and the S6 in particular does not have a replaceable battery at all, so when you are out of juice, you are done unless you have an external battery pack that can keep up with sufficient juice.  Even then, it's a disadvantage to the much more compact battery placement directly on a camcorder.

Fifth, stability.  While you can get tripod mounts for a smartphone, camcorders are built from the ground up to support tripod mounting in a secure way.  You can work around that on the smart phone with complicated cases and mounting systems, but those also drive up the cost.  When shooting off a tripod, camcorders also still have a stability advantage.  You can hold them up to your eye and form a 3 point support that is easily held steady.  Accomplishing the same with a phone would require expensive rigging running up in to hundreds or possibly over $1000 unless you want to try to do custom fabrication yourself.

There are probably a few other things I'm missing too as I've just been writing these from what has come to mind as I go.  Smartphones are up to the point where they can make a pretty decent (though less durable and more expensive) alternative to a go pro, but they are really not an alternative for a camcorder by any stretch of the imagination.


Simple editing without re-encoding from the GoPro AVC codec?

I know for sure that Corel VideoStudio version 7 and up can do straight cuts in AVC-encoded HD video, and then output without re-encoding. You must be careful to use exactly the same output format as input format. I don't know whether it can do the same with 4K. You can download a trial version and see for yourself.


Use ffmpeg to create a video from a few images

Use

ffmpeg -framerate 1/X -i img%d.png -r 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

e.g. for each image to show for 2.5 seconds,

ffmpeg -framerate 1/2.5 -i img%d.png -r 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4


Is mp4 or avi format convertable to raw?

No, if you don't record in raw, you can't get back to it.  That's why people go through the headaches of recording in RAW.  RAW is the actual photosite exposure data and isn't actually a usable image on it's own.  Imaging sensors don't pick up all colors on each individual pixel.  Some pixels pick up red, others blue, others green.  Some fancy designs may have one or more other colors as well.

The data about the values of each of these photosites (each of which will eventually be a pixel) is fed in to an algorithm that looks at neighboring pixels and figures out the RGB value for each pixel.  During this calculation, the information about the original values is lost and only the RGB pixel values are kept.

On some sensor designs, it might still be possible to work backwards if you had full bit depth RGB data (though many can't), full understanding of the filter and conversion logic and avoided certain exposure situations, however you have an additional problem that the video has been put through one or more rounds of compression in addition to being stored in a color format that does not preserve the full bit depth of the color data.

This means that the necessary color information does not exist anymore no matter if your particular camera happened to use an algorithm that was reversible (which is itself unlikely).

Practically speaking, there is no way to get back to RAW from a processed video.  If you want to work in RAW, you need to start in RAW.

If you don't have an option to work in RAW and are trying to maximize your color correction ability, shoot with the highest color depth you can and shoot log color to avoid losing information in the brighter and darker areas.  You'll end up with a little bit less color information in the mids of the finished product, but it will buy you a ton of room for tone adjustment in post (and if you are able to shoot 4444 and are editing to a final output of 422 or lower you probably won't lose a ton anyway.)


This tutorial can help you:

You will find there how to make dotted effect from scratch (use outlines of the map). Then you shall add some key-frames for animation.

To make dots appear more random, you can use Fractal Noise as animated mask.

Good luck!


Can I replace a layer with another in Adobe After Effects?

Yes, this is possible. Simply right-click your logo in the Project-Panel and select "replace file", then select your new logo.


What free video editing software is capable of moving/rotating a sprite atop video?

A great tool for this is Davinci Resolve: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve. It is very capable, has an excellent free version and can easily accomplish the desired tasks.

A quick intro to Animating a Spite/Image over Video is shown here:

             -- Davinci Resolve - How to Move Images (Animate Movement)

A quick intro to Masking can be seen here:

             -- Masks in DaVinci Resolve 16


YouTube Network Partnership Needed for Minecraft Tutorials?

For Minecraft you don't need to be on a Youtube Network.

Mojang says you can monetize your Minecraft Youtube videos.

Even if you use the game's music in it (however you can't use the music outside the video).

The Minecraft EULA says:

  If you upload videos of the game to video sharing and streaming sites
  you are however allowed to put ads on them.

And the Mojang brand guidelines says:

  You are allowed to put footage of our game on YouTube or any other
  website. In fact, we like you doing so.
  ...
  ...
  you may make money using your videos of our game by, for instance,
  through ad revenue, as long as you also add your own unique content
  to the video, such as audio
  commentary.


If cost isn't an object, I believe the higher end rack mount HyperDeck accepts an external timecode (ref in), but it's also quite a bit more expensive ($1000).


Why headphones doesn't work with mic out port?

Microphones output at mic level, which is a signal that ranges from around 0.001 volts to 0.01 volts. Headphones work at closer line level, which is around 1 volt. Based off that information, you can see there isn't enough power in the output of a microphone to hear it by directly plugging headphones into the microphone. Just because they have the same connector, doesn't mean that the signals are compatible. This isn't Sony design flaw, it is how all microphones work.

Instead of plugging the headphones directly into the microphone, you need to use a headphone amplifier. Connect that directly to the mic and then plug your headphones in to the amp. There are headphone amps available in a number of price ranges, depending on the features and quality you need.


What benefits can a pen tablet or control surface provide in video editing?

I am a filmmaker/photographer; I have the shuttlepro 2 and a wacom intuos5 pro small...The shuttlepro2 is twice as much as the express but I have found it to be incredibly useful - more buttons = more customizable keystrokes. And the larger size is more ergonomic which will help with the transition and gaining the 'muscle memory' so that its the natural and fastest thing to do. Aside from needing to click shift, option, or command, I can edit (adobe pr/ae) without using the keyboard at all. This will increase your efficiency like crazy.

I do not find myself using the wacom tablet for video editing, although I did try it...The cool thing is that you can set up the radial menu with like 8 commands/keystrokes etc - being able to 'right click' on the pen and have all of your most common commands in a floating menu is awesome...however I found myself not really liking the pen for editing purposes. I have a kensington trackballpro - is had a scroll wheel and four bottons, making it excellent for use in a timeline, and its also really ergonomic.

I had the intuos5 pro medium and swapped it for the small - unless you are artist that plans on using this for sketching, you do not need that much real estate. You can map the tablet to the whole screen or map portions of the tablet for the entire screen; similar to a mouse, its most natural to have it set so that without having to move more than your wrist you can roughly reach all corners of screen, again youll only end up using a small amount of the tablet unless you plan on doing things like digital art, hand lettering etc.

The tablet really shines with photo editing. it has taken my work and workflow speed to the next level. Applying local adjustments in Lr or Ps is natural and much faster. And the ability to feather effects with the weight of your stroke can make edits more natural much faster.


Can video have multiple streams (like it has 2 audio streams)

Yes. MPEG-4 Part 14 (the MP4 container format) supports any number of objects (e.g. video, audio and subtitle streams) and isn't limited to only one stream per content type.

In practice however, you seldom see a video file that has multiple video streams, because the range of applications for this is very limited. I would also advise you not to put multiple video streams into one file, as (a) users don't expect it, many won't know how to switch the video track or not notice there is a second video track at all and (b) many players (soft- and hardware) aren't equipped to play files with multiple video streams and either won't have any option to switch between streams or fail to play the file completely.

It is also more common to use Matroska (.mkv) containers for video files with multiple audio/subtitle streams, but even with those, you rarely see files with more than one video stream.


Saving/renaming a project and preview files

If you rename a project it continues to link to the old preview files. Any new preview files Premiere creates are saved in a new folder with the updated project name. So you'd be using media from two different folders at that point.

If you delete the old preview files then Premiere will just re-render them when needed.

I tested this by creating a project called test, adding some clips and applying effects and rendering. Render files were created on my scratch disk in a folder called test.PRV. Then I saved the project as test-rename. When I closed and reopened it the clips I had rendered still had the green bar above them, and played back fine, though at this point there was no test-rename.PRV folder in my preview folders.

If I moved the original render file from the test.PRV folder and re-opened the test-rename project the bar went red. When I rendered it the resulting file was saved in a new test-rename.PRV folder. QED.

Note that Premiere gets confused if you remove the render files while the project is open. It doesn't realise that the preview files are missing, and behaves erratically.


In your command,
-filter:v "select=not(mod(n\,16))"

does select only each 16th frame, as you have discovered. However, your output format is MOV, which is configured as constant frame rate. So, ffmpeg will duplicate frames if the timestamp gaps between frames from the filter output are greater than 1/fps where fps is the nominal frame rate of the stream, and drop frames if they are closer.
Add -vsync 0 to tell ffmpeg to not duplicate or drop frames.


Diminished effects in final rendered Adobe Premiere Pro CC video

Are you layering the ProcAmp Filter onto the same clip?

It's possible theres a bug with that... there are bugs.

You could try taking your base clip and putting it on a sequence. Add your ProcAmp.

Then right click the sequence in your Project window -> Create New Sequence from Clip.

Now you have a nested sequence of your original.

Try applying the ProcAmp then to that "clip" which is actually a nested sequence.

The results should appear the same, but you wont be applying the proc-amp to the same clip, rather, each nested sequence will have its own.

You can repeat and re-nest etc.

Secondly, you might just be better doing the effect in after effects, and using dynamic link to bridge the clip in. It acts much the same way but will add render time.


Transparent parts of image show up as black

The most likely thing would be that you are choosing different settings for the way the alpha channel is interpreted.  There are multiple options and some will not interpret it as transparent.  I believe there are 3 different choices if memory serves.  If it is actually defaulting to different settings, then I'm not sure what would result in that though.


Where are the After Effects workspaces saved?

According to Adobe:

Workspaces are stored in XML files in the preferences folder. With some caveats regarding monitor size and layout, these workspaces can be moved to another computer and used there.

Windows:

[drive]:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\[version]\ModifiedWorkspaces

Mac OS:

[drive]/Users/[user_name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/[version]/ModifiedWorkspaces


How can I seamlessly loop with turbulent displace filter in AE?

In order to get a fluid and seamless loop, it's key to enable Cycle Evolution and move the last keyframe 1 frame beyond the end of the composition.

Add the Turbulent Displace Effect onto the footage

Open up Evolution Options

Enable Cycle Evolution

Go to the first frame in the timeline

Click on the stop watch of the Evolution value:

Go to the last frame in the timeline and set the Evolution Times value to 1x, this is equal to 360 degree (one revolution)

Move the second keyframe 1 frame beyond the end of the composition:

Example

Composition length: 51 frames
First evolution keyframe value: 0x at frame 0
Second evolution keyframe value: 1x at frame 51

Note: This seems to work with all fractal effects.


Cannot mark my video with CC SA licence because Youtube Content ID found 3rd party soundtrack which itself is CC SA licensed

I am not a laywer, but my limited understanding of the situation is this.

I see two issues here:

When you upload a video to youtube you need to grant them certain rights. As Youtube is without any doubt a commercial plattform, beyond others you have to grant them the right to commercially use your video.
Unfortunately, as your soundtrack is CC NC, you didn't have the right to do so yourself. That's why Youtube is correct in complaining about the song.
"SA" means you have to share your work also as CC SA NC. As Youtube doesn't allow you to select that exact license, it's technically impossible for you to comply with that condition.
(When you select CC-BY in Youtube, an additional license claim anywhere else, e.g. in the video description, would probably not legally binding)

So after all - if you want to upload a video to Youtube, it must contain only material that

has been created or licensed by you
is under CC BY license
is public domain or CC-0


Correcting exposure flickering in time-lapse footage "in post"

The flickering you are talking about comes because you have chosen a too narrow aperture. Normally you can completely eliminate the flickering by choosing a wider aperture than f/8.

The reason is simple: The lenses are no longer controlled by a physical aperture ring. Today it's the camera's job to set the aperture, and if you choose a f-number higher than 8, the aperture has to move a lot in a short amount of time. This leads to an accuracy of maximum 96 %, thus resulting in 100-96=4, 4 in each direction: 4*2=8 %. This means that each picture can be up to 8 % different in exposure. (This percentage is of course dependent upon how good your camera and lenses are.)

But as you already have your footage shot you need to fix it on your computer. There aren't many programs to do this, in fact I couldn't find any, but a good one is Photoshop CSX Extended. The Extended version can work with video, thus making you able to correct each frame individually. But this leads to a lot of job!

Luckily for you there has been made an action for Photoshop CSX Extended to automate this process. (Think of it like a plugin for After Effects.) Just load your video and apply the action, and it will fix your footage completely!

The action is a part of a big action bundle called iNovaFX which only comes with this eBook: http://www.gmbooks.com/product/CS5.html. On this page you can see it in action!

I hope this will solve your flickering video! Have a good day!


How do you ADD color banding to video (using Adobe Creative Suite)?

Adding colour banding is also known as posterising (or posterizing if that's how you roll). There's a built-in (to AE, though I'd be surprised if it's not also in PP) posterize effect (Effects>Stylize>Posterize). It only has one control, Level, if you set it low you'll get something that looks like an 8-bit game, or a screen-printed poster (hence the name):

Or if you set it higher you get banding:

If you want a bit more control the Cartoon effect (Effects>Stylize>Cartoon) also give you pronounced banding. Set the render style to Fill (default is Fill & Edges), and then twiddle the knobs.


16 days in Thailand with GoPro Hero 6 Black [Help]

The important factor is not "battery life" as such. It's mAh (milliamp hours) which is how much current the battery pack can deliver for how long.

For example, my battery pack can supply 20,000mAh to one of my devices, which has a battery size of 4,000mAh. So I can fully charge it 5 times from the pack.

As to your other question - I have had days of 10 hours of footage, and others of under 15 minutes. It will depend entirely on what you do and see, the weather, your preferences etc.


if this meets the minimum spec for the software then that would be your answer, reading the min spec it will be fine to run the software

Mac OS X 10.8 or later
Intel® Dual Core™
  Recommended: Intel Quad Core™ i7 or better
Any graphics card shipped with Intel® Dual Core™ Macs or better
Recommended for 4K editing and playback: Intel HD4000 or better
4GB
Minimum: 5400 RPM internal drive
Recommended: 7200 RPM drive.
If external, use Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, Firewire or eSATA
Version 7.6 or greater

if there is something more specific you would like to know we would need the specifics then


Prevent video stutter / lag in h264 on iPad

From the look of the specs page, the current iPad (4) can handle up to 2.5Mbps MPEG 4 video at HD resolution (1920x1080) at 30fps.

Going above this will result in what you described. See discussion link below:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5012754?start=0&tstart=0


How was this magic smoke animation done?

If you want to do this from scratch you would need a software that has a particle simulation system. A popular tool for that is After Effects in conjunction with the plugin Particular from Red Giant. Its rather easy to use.

If you want even more realistic results you probably want to go with a more sophisticated solution often found in 3D packages like 3Ds Max, Cinema 4D or the the free and open source Blender.

If you dont want to render something yourself you can also buy stock-footage. A popular package is the Action Essentials 2 from Video Copilot. It offers pre-keyed (e.g. with transparency) footage from real smoke and fire and other misc. effects. You can easily colorize these to your liking and export them as a transparent png sequence.


premiere cc: LINK audio and video tracks greyed out

There are at least three ways to put things together in Premiere Pro: linking, grouping, and nesting.  Linking is the lowest-level, assigning audio tracks to a single video clip.  You cannot link two video clips together, regardless of how much audio they may want to share.

Grouping allows you to treat multiple clips of audio and video as part of the same group for selection, moving, trimming, etc.  If you have a bunch of related clips (video and audio) which you want to behave as a unit, but whose relationships you still want to be able to see, use grouping.

Nesting creates a new sequence with all the audio and video clips you want to behave as if it's just a single entity.  You can change the relationships (and of course edit) within that entity, but to do so you have to open up that sequence on its own timeline.

You probably want to use either grouping or nesting, not linking for this case.


ffmpeg greenscreen transparent while using color palette

Your command is attempting to place two streams into the GIF output (the output from paletteuse and the output from chromakey), but the GIF muxer supports only a single stream. To fix this your outputs from each filter should not be orphaned. See the filtering introduction for more info.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]chromakey=0xE700F4,split[v0][v1];[v0]palettegen[p];[v1][p]paletteuse" output.gif

For better results use the chromakey filter before creating the palette.
With the split filter you can avoid making a temporary palette file.


Optimize Filesize export from Premiere CS3

I've now solved this problem. I was using Export > Movie, when I needed to go to Adobe Media Encoder to find more extensive options. I kept most settings the same, but believe turning 'Bitrate' off may have decreased the data rate. I got the filesize down to around 120mb, which is much better.

This video helped me find the Adobe Media Encoder.


Would repeatedly importing and exporting H.246 video result in loss of quality?

Compression by default is removing information. “Lossless” compression, if repeated, will indeed result in degradation after a few generations.

Higher compression rates will degrade after fewer generations.


After searching forums and YouTube videos, I believe I've found the culprit:

My building's ultrasonic motion detectors.

They emit an ultrasonic chirp every few seconds that the mics 'hear' and turn the volume down (attenuate?) for that portion.

I've contacted Sony Professional Equipment support and I've been issued a Beta Firmware upgrade for the transmitters (that's where the issue is, apparently) that's worked on one of my UTX-BO3's and my UTX-PO3.

The other BO3 got the firmware but has developed an issue where it can't stay on for more than 2 seconds on battery power. So it looks like I'll have to send it in. I'll update once I hear more.


In the 'Deliver' panel, under the Advanced Settings, try enabling/ticking “Use render cached images”.


Simple video editing software that can handlethis

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

If your images are sequentially numbered i.e. img0001.png, img0002.png...

then

ffmpeg -framerate 10 -i img%04d.png -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

If they aren't sequentially numbered, then you'll have to create a text file of the following format:

file 'ThisOne.png'
file 'ThatOne.png'
file 'ThenThis.png'
...

You can use dir /b /on > list.txt to get the names in alphabetical order into a text file. You'll then have to prefix the file and add the quotes.

Then

ffmpeg -f concat -framerate 10 -i list.txt -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

Each image's duration is the reciprocal of the framerate value, which you can set to any value but for compatibility reasons 8 - 60 is a good range.

The command also assumes that all images are the same resolution. If they aren't, they will have to be made so. You can insert the following option after the input value into your ffmpeg command:

-vf "scale='if(gt(a\,16/9)\,1920,-1)':'if(gt(a\,16/9)\,-1,1080)',pad=1920:1080:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2"

This scales each image to fit within a 1920x1080 canvas while preserving proportion and then pads the scaled image to form a 1920x1080 frame.

The CRF value controls the visual quality. Lower value is better but makes larger file. -pix_fmt yuv420p is for producing a file compatible with most players.


There can be too many factors involved to properly answer your question. One is the image quality of the source footage, there are objective and subjective parameters influencing this. Examples:

proper lighting
set design
image framing

Etc.

Then there are technical parameters in the image aqcuisition involved:

quality of the cameras sensor
quality of the post production (grading etc)

Then there are parameters in the delivery:

delivery Codec
compressibility of the images

As for the "subjective" parameters, there are a lot of psychological things involved: a lot of people consider these things as "better" while really only being a matter of taste:

sharpened image
enhanced contrasts
less grain

So unless being more specific, your question IMHO cannot be answered.


Adding hard and soft subtitles to a video

You can do this via ffmpeg.exe.

For a guide to installing ffmpeg check the first part of this video here:

For hardsubbing you can check this video here:

Assuming the above is now known:
In your specific case you are going to want to make copies of the video stream and then hardsub the copies with the subfile desired.
To learn about mapping streams you can read here:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Map

All the information is above in those 3 links to get you going with ffmpeg for the purposes needed. If you need help formatting the command for your specific situation please provide a thumbnail of the streams in ur video you want to modify and I can help you with the specifics. Pay close attention to the specific tidbits mentioned in the content above, as there are many traps you can fall into along the way. I'll help you with those though if needed.


Does digitizing Super 8 film at 4K resolution make any sense?

Calling super-8 720p is confusing. There are no rows of pixels, only grains of emulsion, scattered in a random pattern on the base.
That said, film does have an upper bound on its resolving power, in other words, the smallest detail it can reproduce. Kodachrome could resolve 96-135 lines per millimeter, which can be roughly converted to 180-270 pixels per mm (it takes two pixels to resolve a line). A super-8  frame is 3.3mm high, so the vertical resolution is somewhere between 540 and 810 pixels. So as a back-of the envelope description of its resolving power 720p is a good approximation.
So if you capture super-8 in HD you will be getting enough resolution in your digital file that all of the image that is present on the super-8 frame will be preserved. Higher resolution will just give you more detail of the grain. It won't look worse, but it won't look a whole lot better.
What I would be more concerned about was the fidelity of the colour, and the quality of the transfer. A well transferred, lower resolution transfer will beat a poorly done higher resolution transfer any day. You can just project the film on a wall and film it, but it's probably going to look dreadful.


Can video be composited for live streaming?

The answer is yes, video can be composited fast enough to be streamed live.  The tool that does this is called a switcher.  Typically a switcher introduces a single frame delay from input to composited output.  By connecting the output to a streaming encoder, you can stream out your live, composited video.

For an example, see the Blackmagic Design ATEM System.


Audio is not my expertise, i try my best.
The problems of your source are

volume is low
speech is fast
sound is dull
bass is insufficient
treble is high

Therefore,

I use the command to find the max volume
ffmpeg -i source.wav -af "volumedetect" -vn -sn -dn -f null /dev/null
, which is -6.4dB, then i transform the max volume to 0dB by using audio filter volume=6.4dB

I slow down the speech by using audio filter atempo=0.8

I make it lively by using audio filter aecho=0.06:0.9:50:0.7

I boost the bass by using audio filter firequalizer=gain_entry='entry(0,24);entry(250,12);entry(500,4);entry(1000,2);

I decrease the treble by using audio filter firequalizer=gain_entry='entry(4000,-4);entry(16000,-20)'

In conclusion, the command is
ffmpeg -y -i source.wav -af "\
volume=6.4dB,\
atempo=0.8,\
aecho=0.06:0.9:50:0.7,\
firequalizer=gain_entry='\
entry(0,24);entry(250,12);entry(500,4);entry(1000,2);\
entry(4000,-4);entry(16000,-20)'" \
output.wav

Hope you like it, good luck.


The answer is no. You need lossless encoding. The good news is, the file size will be of a reasonable size if you use the H.264 encoder (and also H.265 or VP9, but those are not as popular and widely extended as H.264).

I am not used to that software you mention, but there must be an option called either "H.264" or "MPEG-4 AVC" or "MPEG-4 Part 10" (not to be confused with "MPEG-4 ASP" or "MPEG-4 Part 2" !), with the settings to "lossless" or "Constant Rate Factor equals zero".

Here are the settings in case you are using Blender:

Since you seem to be at the beginning of your learning curve, I recommend you switch to Blender. It is a professional alternative that was released as free software at some point and is maintained and upgraded by a very active and serious community. It is free, and there are awesome tutorials (Google for Mikeycal Meyers in YouTube).

Remark

You want to use lossless encoding only for the intermediate steps (e.g. cutting clips from other videos and putting them together as it seems you are doing). But once you are satisfied with the final form, for practical purposes you want to convert the last lossless compilation to a lossy format, e.g. H.264 with constant rate factor between 18 and 22 for visually good results. I use ffmpeg for this, although it can be done in Blender too.


Nikon D3300 supports AF-S and AF-F modes for video recording. AF-F helps you to keep focus without touching the shutter release button. This page says that you never touch the shutter release button in AF-F mode. Just turn live view on, switch your focusing mode to AF-F, and wait until the camera focuses by itself (unlike what you do with a normal autofocus system while taking stills). Once the camera has focused, you can press the record button. Focus will be updated automatically.

I usually use manual focus, and tried AF-F to answer your question. It works well, except under low-light conditions (that's the reason for some issues, I think).


Adobe Premiere Hide Clip Keyframes or remove the Adjustment line?

To do that, click the icon indicated by the arrow in the following image and select “Hide Keyframes” form the menu that pops up.

The icon is under the camera icon on your timeline.


How to export AviSynth project to video file?

Forget about output filters.

Use FFmpeg  (Linux, Mac, Windows) with this simple command

ffmpeg -i your_avs_file.avs  output.mp4

(or output.avi, output.mkv, ...),

or any conversion program which accepts .avs files as input, e. g. Any Video Converter Free (for Mac and Windows).

Note 1:

The Windows link points to the site for downloading Zeranoe's FFmpeg build. Unpack the downloaded file and use it — no installation is needed, perhaps only adding the path to ffmpeg.exe into your PATH environment variable.

Note 2:

If you want build FFmpeg by yourself, don't forget add --enable-avisynth option.

Note 3:

You may directly play back your AviSynth script files (.avs) with some Media Players, e.g. with Media Player Classic.


Can I output video from my DSLR to a smartphone or iPad or laptop?

You can to a laptop using an adapter (Blackmagic make some).

If you want something a bit more portable the Atmos Ninja (or similar) would be your best options.


Adobe After Effects labels: Project vs Layer/Timeline

Try clicking on the "Layer Name"/"Source Name" column title in the timeline.  It should toggle between the name in your Project bin, and the name you've given the layer in the comp.


Connecting T6i to Elgato Game Capture HD

Witch HDMI adapter are you talking about? You can only connect your Elgato to your Mac via usb, no other way. The delay in some frames is pretty normal in a MacBook Air.


BTW, this question might be better on stackoverflow, or maybe unix.stackexchange, or maybe serverfault.  This site is I think less focused on questions that don't involve decisions based on creative merit or at least perceptual video / audio quality.  However, I'm all about the tech details, so I'll answer.

FFmpeg uses multi-threading by default, so you prob. don't need -threads 0.  If your encode is bottlenecked on a single-threaded filter or decoder, you'll see full load on one core, and light load on many other cores.

One thing you can do is check mediainfo of your output video.  x264 leaves its settings in an ASCII string in the h.264 header.  So either strings -n20 or mediainfo to get:

...
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.051
Stream size                              : 455 MiB (89%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 146 r2538+1 d48ec67
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=6 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.70:0.10 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=4 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=50 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=22.5 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=3:0.60
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709

Note the "threads=4" in there.  I think I manually set that on my quad core i5 2500k, instead of letting x264 use the default CPUs * 1.5, since I had a CPU-intensive filters (hqdn3d and lanczos-downscale) running.

Anyway, libx264 with a preset like slower should have no trouble keeping a lot of cores busy.  There are some parts of encoding that are inherently serial (e.g. the CABAC encode of the final bitstream), so a high-bitrate video that doesn't spend a lot of CPU-time refining references (high subme) to multiple frames (high ref) might show a load pattern like yours (one thread using 100% CPU, others not).

I'm not 100% sure about faster presets being less parallel, but I know CABAC is serial.

To get massively parallel, libx264 could use a boatload of RAM to keep frames around, and keep doing lookahead for 2 or more GOPs, and encode those independently.  It doesn't have an option to operate that way, though.

One way to make use of MANY cores is to run multiple separate encodes in parallel, instead of just a series of single encode using all cores.  This only works if you have multiple input files that you want encoded separately.  You're trading off threading overhead vs. more memory capacity and bandwidth (with an impact on caching, unless this is on a multi-socket system with separate L3 and DRAM for each cluster of CPUs, and you have the processes pinned to cores so one encode is using the cores in one socket, and the other the other).


How to loop outer glow layer style in After Effects?

I'd suggest animate the 'Opacity' property of the outer glow:

Click to enlarge

Create a keyframe by clicking on the stopwatch of outer glow 'opacity' and set its value to 0%
Create a second keyframe and set its value to 100%
Alt-Click the stopwatch to create an expression and insert loopOut(type = "pingpong") to get an endless loop of both values

Composition length: 49 Frames,
2 Keyframes: frame 0 > opacity 0%, frame 25 > opacity 100%

Note: In order to create a less generic animation, you can also create 3 or more keyframes by using loopOut(type="cycle") expression instead.

To start the animation at a predefined time as well as stop the animation as you like, you can either duplicate the layer twice and remove the layer styles of both duplicates in order to concatenate all 3 layers by hand or write a simple condition like this:

// get the current frame of the composition
currentFrame = timeToFrames(time, 1 / thisComp.frameDuration, false);

// check if the current frame is in the predetermined range
if (currentFrame >= 20 && currentFrame <= 60) {
  // loop all keyframes
  loopOut(type = "cycle");
}
else{
  // if the current frame is not in predetermined range set glow opacity to 0
  thisLayer.layerStyle.outerGlow.opacity = 0;
}

Composition length: 80 Frames,
Loop animation range: Frame 20 - 60,
3 Keyframes: frame 0 > opacity 0% , frame 10 > opacity 100%, frame 20> opacity 0%

Official expression language reference


How to hold the last frame when using ffmpeg

One method is to use the overlay video filter. Assuming your video is 640x480, 30 seconds duration, 25 frame rate:

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i nullsrc=s=640x480:d=35:r=25 -i video.mp4 -i audio.wav -filter_complex \
"[0:v][1:v]overlay[video]" -map "[video]" -map 2:a -codec:a copy -shortest output.mkv

I set the duration of the nullsrc source filter to be 5 seconds longer than input.mkv.
The default behavior of overlay is to repeat the last frame of the overlaid source. See the eof_action option for other behaviors.
The audio in this example is being stream copied (re-muxed) instead of being re-encoded.
The downside is that this examples requires re-encoding since a filter is being used, but it may be simpler than other methods since it is just one command.


How do I create a zoom transition in Premiere Elements 9?

I'm no expert, but here's what I use. Right-click on the piece being edited. (I usually view them in Timeline rather than Sceneline.) Choose "Show Properties." The important property for this purpose is Motion. Click on the little clock at the right end of the Motion heading. That will show you arrows where you can go forward and back, to see what keyframes you have set. (You can also right-click on the image and choose Show Clip Keyframes, but what you see is not necessarily very informative.) Add keyframes at the beginning and end of a clip, for Position, Scale, and Scale Width. (To add keyframes, click on the diamond, not the arrows, under the Motion clock.) If the little dot on the Timeline disappears (assuming you have selected Show Clip Keyframes), that means you turned the keyframe off, not on. Arrow back and forth to make sure your keyframes have been added for each of those three parameters. Now go somewhere in the middle of the clip and drag your image around in the viewing window and/or use the Motion sliders. Get your image where you want it and add those same three kinds of keyframes there too. Now, optionally, click on the camera picture, at the corner of the viewing window, and add a still image of your zoomed frame. Hope that helps.


Ideal video format for Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker, being a Microsoft product, works with WMV files using the Windows Media Video codecs.  You can use the free Windows Media Encoder to encode the files.  I believe there is also a free version of Microsoft Expression Encoder that you could use as well.  Expression is a bit newer, but slightly less capable since they moved a lot of functionality to the commercial Expression Encoder Pro (the Pro version is unfortunately not free).


Do modern devices support decoding 4:4:4 pixel formats?

Most phones and tablets do not support 4:4:4