Transcoding vertical video to an intermediate codec

Assuming your editor can rotate videos, use

ffmpeg -i "recording6.mp4" -vf "transpose=1" -vcodec dnxhd -r 60 -b:v 36M "recording6.mov"

This will rotate the video, so the 1080x1920 video becomes 1920x1080.


How Important is the 180 Degree Shutter Angle Rule?

The "180 shutter speed rule" you mention is only about setting your shutter speed at about double your camera's frame rate. It is not about actually shooting with a 180 shutter speed no matter what.
So, if I shoot at 25 fps, I'll set my shutter speed at 50 (because I like my footage to look more natural -- without the strobe-like effect that comes with high shutter speeds). If I were to shoot slow motion though, I would opt to shoot at, say, 50fps and set my shutter speed at 100 (to get crisper slow motion footage), and so on and so forth.
There is not relation between the "golden hour" and shutter speed. You can shoot during that time of day, or any time of day, with whatever shutter speed you pick, provided there is enough light.
ND filters are really used to control depth of field when using a wide iris/aperture on your lens in bright conditions (like an f2.8 or wider in the middle of the day).
This is a good, clear break down of shutter speed use in video:


Filter out calm parts of audio, let through really loud ones

Found it! From the [Adobe Premiere effects help][1]:

  Dynamics effect The Dynamics effect provides a set of controls that
  can be combined or used independently to adjust audio. Use either the
  graphical controls in the Custom Setup view, or adjust values in the
  Individual Parameters view. This effect is available for 5.1, stereo,
  or mono clips.

  AutoGate

  Cuts off a signal when the level falls below the specified threshold.
  Use this control to remove unwanted background signals in recordings,
  such as a background signal in a voice-over. Set the gate to close
  whenever the speaker stops, thus removing all other sounds. The LED
  display colors indicate the gate’s mode: open (green), attack or
  release (yellow), and closed (red). Use the following controls for
  Gate: Threshold

  Specifies the level (between –60 and 0 dB) that the incoming signal
  must exceed to open the gate. If the signal level falls below this
  level, the gate closes, muting the incoming signal. Attack

  Specifies the time the gate takes to open after the signal level
  exceeds the threshold. Release

  Sets the time (between 50 and 500 milliseconds) the gate takes to
  close after the signal level has fallen below the threshold. Hold

  Specifies the time (between 0.1 and 1000 milliseconds) the gate stays
  open after the level has fallen below the threshold.

  [1]:
  https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/audio-effects-transitions.html


video bitrate - how large should my video be?

The bitrate that you choose determines the quality of your video and the file size. The standard units for bitrate is bits per second, or bps. Sometimes bitrates are expressed in Kbps (kilobits per second) or Mbps (megabits per second). Do not confuse Mbps and Kbps with MBps and KBps. A lowercase 'b' refers to bits, an uppercase 'B' refers to bytes.

From your question it seems you are more concerned about size than quality, so I recommend that you pick what is a reasonable file size and deduce the bitrate that achieves that size.

For example, let's say you want your file to be 200MB. First convert this size to bits:

200 x 1024 x 1024 x 8 = 1,677,721,600 bits

You also said that your video is 11 minutes, which is 660 seconds. So now we obtain the bits per second:

1,677,721,600 bits / 660 seconds = 2,542,002 bits per second (approximately)

From the above, you know that if you pick a bitrate of 2,500,000 bps (same as 2,500 Kbps or  2.5 Mbps) then your file will end up being about 200MB in size.

So now what's left is to pick a resolution and frame rate. Once you know your bitrate, you have set an allocation of bits for each second of your movie. To get the better quality you should now pick the smallest resolution and slowest frame rate that works for your needs, as that will assign the maximum number of bits to each frame, giving you the best possible quality.

  If I create a video from 10 pieces that have a bitrate of X, can I create a video which has a larger bitrate?

You can use any bitrate you like, but if your source clips were encoded at some bitrate X in the camera, going to a higher bitrate will just waste space without increasing the quality, since you can't add detail that was not in the original recording.


How to do a video live stream through a VPS?

It varies a little from one server to another, but the basic components are an encoder/streaming client on the local client that takes input from the camera and turns it in to a stream that can be sent to the stream server on the VPS.

The job of the stream server (such as Red5) is then to provide a publishing point that relays the stream to viewers.  The streaming server can either pull from the client or the client can push to a target location on the stream server in order to provide content to the publishing point.

Each viewer then connects to the published RTMP stream on the streaming server and is provided with a copy of the stream that is being uploaded.  Note that every copy has to be sent out separately unless you are on a private network where you can use multicast, so bandwidth needs rise quickly, though it should be possible to do 50 SD or lower quality streams from a single VPS provided it has a reliable 100Mbps connection.

The website simply contains a viewer that hooks up to the RTMP (or similar) stream and is actually operating client side, not server side.

So to quickly recap, client uploads to back end of streaming server, streaming server replicates out to every viewer requesting to watch it and the web server simply gives users a client side viewer that connects to the video stream.

To briefly hit on what each one of the component you mentioned.

RTMP is real time media protocol, which is a common streaming protocol used for actually relaying the video stream content.
Red5 is a fairly popular free streaming media server software used for replicating out RTMP and similar media streams to clients.
Wowza is another streaming media server software, however it is a commercial, paid software product.  If you are limited to free software, Wowza is not an option.
FFMpeg is a popular open source video encoder.  It runs on the client and can be configured to publish a stream that can be sent to Red5 or similar streaming media server.

Additionally, you will need an end-point viewer capable of consuming the stream.  Software like Windows Media Player or Quicktime should be able to view a stream, but it is often best to include an embedded cross platform player in the website that people are going to for the stream.  There are many options for this component with different strengths and weaknesses, but any should work for your purposes.


Shortcut to remove all keyframes from a clip

You can delete the keyframes quickly by selecting them in the Effect Controls panel.

On the right side of the panel, you can see the mini timeline containing all the keyframes at their corresponding positions. First, double-click the bar at the bottom to make sure the entire clip area is visible. Then, you can drag a marquee selection with your mouse, or click anywhere in the keyframe area and press CTRL + A to select all keyframes. Then simply hit backspace on your keyboard to delete the selected keyframes. If you delete all the keyframes for an effect parameter, this will also reset this parameter to the last value it had before you activated the animation.

Note that this does not deactivate the animation for that parameter (i.e. the stopwatch icon stays highlighted). So if you change the parameter value after that, it will create a new keyframe at the current playhead position. Press the stopwatch icon to deactivate the animation for the corresponding parameter. If the parameter has no keyframes, the warning prompt will not pop up.


There are numerous different possible ways for a video stream to be done.  Generally video is streamed over a UDP streaming format such as RTMP or something similar.  It can also sometimes use a series of individual pictures (particularly common when refresh rate is not that high, such as IP security cameras.)

In the case of a home device acting as the source, a connection would have to be made between the client device and the home device, possibly using a third party server to help get across any firewalls or dynamic IPs.  The information would then be streamed the same way as any live stream technology.  The video would have to be encoded on the stream server and then passed to the client.

The reliability of the service would depend entirely on Internet connection speed of both the client and the server.  Streaming video at any kind of significant quality is a very bandwidth intensive activity and most residential connections are not capable of the necessary upload speeds for high quality video, though standard definition may be possible.  Higher end connections can cover HD speeds though.

As for multiple users, within a local network, multicast can be used to distribute UDP packets of a stream to multiple users, however, across the public Internet, multicast is not possible.  An individual connection has to be made to each client and the content must be sent once for each client.  (Two clients takes twice the bandwidth requirement of one.)  With sufficient bandwidth, there is no reason the packets can't be independently streamed to both, but that goes beyond the limits of just about all consumer Internet connections.


How much disk space does 1 mini DV tape digitised in HDV take?

mini DV is already digital format. The bitrate is 25Mbps.
So, 1 hour occupies approximately 11 Gigabytes


Premiere Pro CC: Multiple instances of a panel in the workspace?

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to do this in Premiere in my experience. As far as I know, the only panels you can have multiple of are the Project and Sequence panels.


Audio and Video out of sync when slowing down

The reciprocal of 75% i.e. 0.75 is 4/3 or 1.3333, so

ffmpeg -i combinedfullspeed.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]setpts=(4/3)*PTS[v];[0:a]atempo=0.75[a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" slow3.mp4


How to copy markers and regions between projects in Vegas Pro

It's a little counter-intuitive that Vegas Pro will not copy/paste markers and regions, but this is doable and it's not too difficult.

Here are the following steps to merge project A with project B into a new project C, copying all clips, markers, and regions:

Copy all the clips from project A timeline.
Turn on auto ripple on project B. Make sure to select "All Tracks, Markers, and Regions" in the drop down.

Paste the clips from project A (copied in step 1) at the beginning of project B. All project B clips, markers, and regions should have been shifted to the right. All project A clips are at the beginning of the timeline on project B, but the markers and regions have not been copied.

Save project B as a new file, project C.
In project A go to View > Window > Edit Details or type ALT+6.

In the Edit Details, select Markers or Regions, whichever you want to copy, in the "Show" drop down.

Select all the items by clicking the empty space on the header row in the first column.

Type CTRL+C to copy the items.
In project C go to View > Window > Edit Details or type ALT+6.
Select Markers or Regions, whichever you copied from project A in steps 6-8.
Select the first empty row, then type CTRL+V.

Repeat steps 6-11 as needed, to copy all markers and regions, whichever you haven't done yet.
project C now contains all clips, markers, and regions from project A and project B. Don't forget to save your work.

Optionally, you can re-order all the markers and regions in project C. Simply select all the rows by clicking the empty space on the header row in the first column, then type CTRL+X then CTRL+V.


Acceptable to adjust colour levels dynamically

What you're describing is color grading / color correction and yes, it's perfectly acceptable, almost mandatory for a good presentation. Usually it's done scene by scene, but it's not at all unusual to correct within a single shot, or even different areas within a shot.

To do it well you should explore a dedicated grading tool like DaVinci Resolve Lite.


you can use avconv (the ffmpeg utility replacement) and mp3gain to script extracting, adjusting and merging the files.

The advantage using mp3gain is that it does not reencode the audio but just adjust levels. So you don't lose any quality. It has a nice automatic mode that work descent although not perfect.


Editing Daniel2 Cinegy out of pendrive USB3, possible?

It depends on the USB flash drive, for example some have > 100 MB/s R/W capability and would be similar to working with a traditional HDD. However USB flash drives have chips which are not meant for constant use and lots of writing, and they don't have wear leveling like a good SSD. This means that the flash drive will go bad sooner and you will lose your data when it does.

I recommend using a portable SSD to work with your video projects. For example a Samsung T5 series.


I would use skype from the remote location into the local computer running wirecast then use their screen capturing option to capture the skype video.

The pro version of wirecast allows and input to be RTMP, Web streams and IP cameras. Assuming you have that, you could stream from the remote wirecast and bring it in as a source on the local system.

You may already be aware, but this will add a major delay in the remote feed. Because it will have to be encoded twice. Once from there to local then again locally on your main feed. Just something to be aware of.


How are traditional animated matte paintings made?

While I'm not aware of the process used for that particular film, one easy way to do it is to film the matte painting, then film the smoke against a green or blue background and composite the smoke over the footage of the matte painting in the computer.

I've also seen matte paintings where a large section is left unpainted. Then live action (or animated) things are filmed which exactly fill in the unpainted area. You could composite them either in the analog realm (by projecting both pieces of footage onto the same screen and filming that), or digitally by using compositing software.


Is there any way at all to use a microphone with Canon SX720 HS?

No - while this is a well featured point and shoot, it is not designed to accept external accessories other than those detailed on page 146 in the manual


Getting audio components from two audio streams to remove noise

So, you'd be inverting the phase of the noise signal, adjusting its amplification to match the level of the noise in the other clip, and then summing the two to obtain speech minus noise. You might find that adding EQ. to the noise signal as well as amplification might also help.

Any audio app that can mix two signals could do this, if you want a good free one Audacity is the most widely used.

This technique is used in a electomechanical sense in a lip-ribbon microphone, commonly used in sports commentary.


Video clip is smaller dimensions than project. How to change the color of extra space?

Unfortunately you can't create a project of any size. Larry Jordan posted a workaround, which doesn't solve you're problem.

There was a tutorial that showed how you can have sequence of any size in FCPX (and thus removing black bars), but I can't find it at the moment. (EDIT: I found it! Creative Cow) I remember what you need to do though:

Go to the event library and pick a clip that has the final clips' resolution.
Make a backup copy of said clip (right click, copy&paste)
Right click and choose Open in timeline.
Drag another clip into the timeline.

This creates what is called a compound clip. Compound clips can be handled like projects, but can have any frame size. A special icon in the Event Library shows you that the clip is actually a Compound Clip.
As long as there are at least two clips in the timeline, the clip's going to be a Compound.

If you really really really rather work with a project and want to have a custom background to cover up the black bars. I suggest to drag a solid color generator from the effects/generators section underneath your Main Storyline.


Add an image overlay in front of video using ffmpeg

You can do a simple image overlay using the following syntax:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i image.png \
-filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=25:25:enable='between(t,0,20)'" \
-pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a copy \
output.mp4

overlay=25:25 means we want to position the image 25px to the right and 25px down, originating from the top left corner (0:0).

enable='between(t,0,20)' means we want the image to show between second 0 and 20.

[0:v][1:v] means that we want the first video file we import with -i, in our case input.mp4 or how ffmpeg sees it video input file number 0, to be under video input file 1, in our case image.png. :v just means we want video 0 and video 1. [0:a] would mean we want the first imported audio track. Which would also come from input.mp4 but would point to the audio track instead of the video track in the mp4 file.

If you want a certain image quality/settings and not the settings ffmpeg chooses, add the image and or audio encoding options you want to use. The default video encoder will be x264. Check the H.264 encoding guide for possible settings.

The -acodec copy / -c:a copy that you have in your command f.e. would simply re-use the audio from the source file. Though you can't do that with the video of course (in this case), that has to be transcoded because we are creating a new video source.

If you want to transcode audio, remove the -c:a copy part. You may have to explicitly specify an encoder, e.g. -c:a aac -strict experimental. See the AAC encoding guide for more info.


Howto Repaire or fix the duration of a mp4 video

I had the same problem. I solved that by removing the audio from video.
This is why the video seems frozen but it continues to play it, due to audio duration.

For that reason, you may remove entire audio from video file using "-an" ffmpeg option. When it removed, no incorrect time in video exists. You may extract audio from the initial video file, match its duration time with the video duration, and then, you encode video and audio files together, resulting no frozen video frames play.

eg.

ffmpeg -i video_to_encode.MP4  -r 16 -crf 18  -vcodec libx264 -vb 10M -an  video_output.avi


If the 1080p encode has a high enough bitrate, one shouldn't notice a significant difference, else the BD source offers greater headroom to retain detail.


Merging sequences and files from one project into another in Adobe Premiere Pro

If you are using project , it is because all projects are built on a different system
With its features, the operating system is embedded. Therefore, while running the project on your operating system, you may encounter messages such as the image below, and you must act on the option that you see in the image.

By clicking this button you can search for your missing files, you can even create a file with missing names and paste it in the project
Also, if you need a sequence, enter the items of one templates in another premiere pro templates First you have to run the main project, then import the project from the file menu to get a message like the one below.

I hope I was able to help
Ask if you have any questions
Good luck


Allocate as much RAM to Premiere as possible (in the settings), and, as Kazanaki suggested, learn to use proxies (lower resolution copies of your master files).


Where are the Source Scaling Options in Adobe Media Encoder CS6?

If you're just looking for the h.264 match source settings preset, you'll find it in the Preset Browser under System Presets > Broadcast > H.264

If you have another preset that you want to use, or if you're wanting to customise one, then if you look at the presets in the queue item you'll see that you can click on the name of the preset to edit the settings—note the blue line when you hover.

Once you do that the familiar export settings window will appear, with the great big Match Source button.


Premiere Pro: How to match splits between two clips?

There are several ways this can be achieved:

Holding the Shift key while scrubbing the timeline marker with the mouse.
Holding the Shift key and using the up and down arrows to move between clips. This gives more precision over using the Shift key and scrubbing.
Double clicking between two adjacent clips. For me this can be quicker when there are many clips and cuts and no shortcut keys are required.

Ctrl + K will cut all selected tracks and Ctrl + Shift + K will cut all tracks from the playhead.


How should I mic dance instructors when video recording?

There is another option that is good to know about, the Crown PCC-160 boundary mic. This is a standard mic to put at the edge of a stage to get good quality sound from actors in plays.

"Supercardioid pattern with PCC boundary technology assures phase coherence throughout the audible spectrum" means that it is rejecting sound from behind, and the phase coherence means that voices are more clear than with normal mics, as long as you place them at a boundary like the floor or on a wall. Physics stuff.

Lavs will get you the most clear sound, but the Crown PCC will do better than a shotgun (unless you have the shotgun close with a boom pole). Rent a pair to try them out as backup, I think you will want to buy them after you see how effective they are.

Edit: Rereading your question, if the dancers are confined to a 5x5' area and they might be speaking with their back to the camera, lav is the best, but next best is probably a boom mic on a stand, with the mic positioned directly over the center of the area, pointed straight down. That should pick up a pretty balanced voice recording. A second shotgun positioned in line with the camera to get the front 'viewpoint' audio would capture a more natural-sounding voice when the speaker is speaking toward the camera. The Crown PCCs would have to be positioned all around the area, and they would pick up more of the dancer's feet sounds than the boom mic.


Scaling proportionally on After Effects - Shift + click does not work!

When I hold down shift, images and shapes scale proportionally. Just grab a corner handle and drag.

Alternatively:
Select the layer, press S to reveal the Scale parameter. Adjust that value. It will be proportional unless you unlink the x and y scales.


Can anyone recommend a good/safe free spectrum visualizer?

Foobar2000
Is what I use for visualizations.


Shapes overlapped in pre-comp, transparent fade in visibility

Pretty sure this is due to the little sun icon - the "collapse transformations" icon..
See more here: http://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/3d-layers.html

It's to do with what order 3D comp layers are processed when they're precomped.


It's the Phantom power.  I've done a lot of testing and the Phantom power adds a lot of noise to the NTG 2. I don't know why, but if you don't run it on phantom power and use it only with batteries, the noise goes away.


Shooting short clips vs. cutting long clips

You can do either method.

Short clips

Take up less file space.
Files are already cut.

Long continuous shot

Easier method when shooting, but more work in post.
Easier to sync a continuous audio stream such as from an external mic.


Is there a way to do both Extruded Text and Layer Modes natively in After Effects?

You can work around it using multiple compositions.  Do one composition to generate the 3d layer and then use that composition within another to handle the blending (or vice versa depending on your needs).


Want to set the in/out points but modified the existing clip

My best guess is they did some kind of ability to load a clip in to the source viewer to view the clip in it's entirety.  My expectation is that you need to load the clip from the project window in to the source window.  That should disassociate it from a particular edit.


Some background: when you want to use Camera in Android (as an application), you must setup it by specifying some constants. You must specify resolution, framerate, encoder options. This data usually used by internal CPU (DSP) for producing encoded stream in your hardware, you can't programm it. So, you must setup some options and get encoded stream for this options.

So, sorry, you can't use multiple applications at same time. At least, with different options (framerate).

But you can do workaround: you can decode HD stream, scaledown, encode again and stream to any service you want. This is very heavy task for CPU (in which apps works), so even if your phone can do it, it will very fast drain battery. Better way if to stream HD to some PC or server, recode it and re-stream to any other service.


how do I create 23 fps proxies for footage shot in 30 fps and interpreted as 23 fps

The solution was to delete the presets I was using in both Premiere and Media Encoder and start from scratch. Somehow these 2 had gotten out of sync and the presets in PrPro and Media Encoder we're not using the same frame rate. I didn't understand how this got out of sync unfortunately.


After Effects Opacity behaving differently from Photoshop?

I think it seems like you have added layer style to the text in Photoshop. The text in the photoshop has Bevels & Emboss. From this point, you may have some other effect added on this text layer. I tried myself with same red background and same white text, here is what on my computer:

Here is what it looks like in AE of 20% opacity:

And here is what it looks like in AE of 40% opacity:

So I think, it's only about how the software distribute the percentage of opacity, in After Effects, you should assign a higher opacity to the layer. I don't think there is a wired problem that in AE that you got a dark layer as you stated.

Hope this may help :)


If I have the music track and a music+vocals track, is it possible to seperate the vocals?

If the music track is identical to the music in the vocal+music track, then you could invert the phase of the music track and mix it with the combined track, which (algebraically, at least) is the same as subtracting it from the v+m track.

You may find that some additional compression, level shifting or EQ was done to the v+m track, which would make the subtraction less than perfect.


VirtualDub is probably the best tool for trimming/splitting AVI files (without recompression). For other formats, you should look for other tools, eg.:

Avidemux
AVS Remaker
etc.


You haven't mentioned what doesn't work, so taking a guess:

ffmpeg -i "aunt1.mp4" -vf "delogo=x=4:y=0:w=120:h=22, delogo=x=40:y=50:w=120:h=22" -c:a copy au1.mp4


Preventing letters from going to next line as title expands in iMovie

the easiest thing to do is to manually adjust the font size, use spaces to break up the text into several lines so that it starts out small enough and finishes expanding without jumping to other lines. Took me forever to figure out. Apple really needs to do an update that prevents this.


Correct way to normalize two audios before using filter_complex amix

One way to make the volume levels consistent is:
ffmpeg -i in.mp3 -i out.mp3 -filter_complex "[1:a]asplit=2[sc][mix];[0:a][sc]sidechaincompress[compr];[compr][mix]amerge" -c:a libmp3lame res.mp3

But this may not be the best way. Please let me know if there are better ways, and what are the pros and cons of the above method. thanks.


Is it worth it to buy a 50mm 1.8 lens if my camera has a 1.6 crop factor?

No one besides you can answer this question.
A Cinema Prime Set pften constists out of a 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm Primes (On Aps-C). It now depends on what you want to shoot. If you mainly shoot interior wides, the lens won't be of much use.

But a 50mm f1.8 is often a great - cheap option to get into blurrier shoots.


How to make 1:1 ratio video in Davinci Resolve?

You can do this by going to File>Project Settings...  Under the Master Settings tab on Timeline resolution choose Custom and change For 1920x1080 processing to For 1080x1080 processing.


Does increasing the framerate while not changing the content affects compression quality?

This depends on the specific encoder, and the compression standard, by itself, may not have anything to say about it.

x264, which encodes to H.264, takes frame duration, into account, in its ratecontrol algorithm.

From the source code (my emphasis):

  Ratecontrol lowers relative quality at higher
  framerates and the reverse at lower framerates; this serves as
  the center of the curve.

where this refers to the frame duration for the default fps of 25.

This is further compounded by the setting of buffer sizes, important for network streaming or hardware players, and which are defined in terms of media duration, not frame count.


Video effect - slowmotion to fastmotion?

The term your looking for is called a speed ramp. There are lots of tutorials if you search for that.

Here are basic instructions for one way of doing that.

Right click on the clip in your timeline
Click 'Show Clip Keyframes' then 'Time Remapping' then 'Speed'
You can then add Keyframes and drag the line on your clip to alter the speed


After Effects Mask is cropping down resolution


Recording in a training room with upside camera mount from the top

You can record video upside down, and then flip it using PC software. Eg. Avidemux, which is freeware can flip videos.

For sports or action, GoPro Hero is very good camera. I can stream to PC or Mac. It also can record upside down. And there are a lot of accessories to mount it in many places.


Change Text Animation Direction With FFMPEG

x=tw-min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-1)))*(tw+10)-tw\,w/3.5)

With this script I can animate text from right to left and stay in middle for a second and then go back to right side.


Why does Adobe Premiere CC change my "Ease Out" keyframe interpolation to "Bezier"?

This is the expected behaviour. It's a bit confusing, but as you can see in your screenshot, the Temporal Interpolation context menu is split in two parts. The part above the seperating line (see your screenshot) sets the keyframe type. From the documentation:

  Linear: Creates a uniform rate of change between keyframes.
  Bezier: Lets you manually adjust the shape of the graph, and the rate of change, on either side of a keyframe. You can create very
  smooth changes using this method.
  Auto Bezier: Creates a smooth rate of change through a keyframe. As you change a keyframe’s value, the Auto Bezier direction handles
  change to maintain a smooth transition between keyframes.
  Continuous Bezier: Creates a smooth rate of change through a keyframe. However, unlike the Auto Bezier interpolation method,
  Continuous Bezier lets you adjust direction handles manually. As you
  change the shape of a graph on one side of a keyframe, the shape on
  the other side of the keyframe changes to maintain a smooth
  transition.
  Hold: Changes a property value without gradual transition (sudden effect changes). The graph following a keyframe with the Hold
  interpolation applied appears as a horizontal straight line.

The two options below the seperating line – Ease In & Ease Out – are rather like presets or shortcuts. They switch the keyframe type (since easing in/out requires bézier curves and is therefore not possible in Hold or Linear modes) and set a smooth transition. If you open up the graph view in the Effect Settings panel, you can see the effect the two options have:

Linear.

Ease In.

Ease In + Ease Out.

You can still adjust the velocity interpolation manually using the Bézier handles seen in the screenshots above.


What output video format for Kazam requires less cpu power?

VP8 and H.264 should essentially be the same demand due to them being similar.

RAW is well, RAW, each specific pixel data, with no methods of reducing file space, this can cause very large file sizes, but is in theory the least intensive as long as your hard drive can record fast enough.

HUFFYUV is basically the same as RAW, however it uses some methods to reduce file size. Depending on the footage it can be about half the size, or even up to 1/10th the size of RAW.

Lossless JPEG, I believe is similar to HUFFYUV, however I don't personally use either of these lossless codecs.

I don't know if Kazam allows you to use custom codecs, but if it does, I highly recommend using the Lagarith Lossless Codec. It's what I personally use, and it has some basic GPU support, very nice file sizes without any loss in quality, and doesn't require any tinkering which some lossless codecs do.


Generally, MP4 is better for compatibility, whereas AVCHD provides the better quality. MP4 (which by the way can mean a million different things, in this case it probably refers to MPEG-4 Part 14) files will be compatible with most devices and media players as is, and will be smaller in size compared to AVCHD. This is the option I'd recommend if you wanted to film your vacation and show the recordings as is, without further editing.

If you want the best quality, go with AVCHD. Files will be bigger in size and won't play back on most devices, but you can import them into Premiere Pro and export your edited video to every format you want anyway. Chosing the AVCHD will also open up other recording options on your camera. According to the manual, the highest bitrate avaiable for MP4 is 35Mbps. For AVCHD, the highest possible bitrate should be even higher, though I couldn't find an exact value.

  Can Adobe Premiere CC work equally well with both file types?

Yes. MP4 will record, well .mp4 files. AVHCD will probably come as .mts or .m2t/.m2ts files, both of which Premiere Pro can handle.

  Which file type will give better image quality?

AVCHD with the highest recording quality settings. Keep in mind that this will fill up your SD card pretty quickly, according to the manual at about 4 GB per 20 minutes of recording. If this is a problem for you, MP4 might be the better solution, as it offers the better quality/filesize-ratio.

  Does a single AVCHD clip really comprise multiple files that I'll have to import?

Not really sure about that. Normally, it should produce one container file every time you press record. Many cameras will split the file at 4 GB or stop the recording when a continuous recording reaches that size. Since you already bought the camera, just try out both options and see what files you get. But Premiere pro should be able to handle whatever you throw at it.


What does the Multi-Camera Record On/Off Toggle do in Premiere Pro?

The record button has three states:

Record is disabled
You're not selected on a multi-camera sequence, or you haven't enabled the Multi-camera View button, so you can't record camera cuts. (You can still change camera on a selected clip).

Record standby
If you have a clip selected, and select a different camera, the whole clip will be changed to the new camera. If you are playing a multi-camera clip, in multi-camera view and change cameras, the changes will be recorded as cuts, nothing will happen.

Record enabled
Does exactly the same as record standby, as far as I can tell.
At this point, I think the blue circle must only be there because they though it looks nice. It's like the close button on an elevator door....
The rectangles around the multi-view cameras show:
yellow - which cut is active
red - a new cut that you have just written
As soon as you stop playback, the red rectangle highlights become yellow highlights.


How to record the movement of an image with the mouse?

This is a brilliant demonstration of yours I must say :D
This is possible in after effects using the "sketch movement". Just set the image as the target and record the movement.


Yes, you will need an HDMI capture card.  If you have a modern Mac, you can make do with this $145 device that plugs into its Thunderbolt port: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/ultrastudiothunderbolt/techspecs/W-DLUS-04


Yes, there are.

Let x:y:z is a chroma subsampling. Then

x = 4
So the begin of the notation is 4:.
y|x (y is a divisor of x)
So there are 3 possibilities for the first two numbers: 4:1: or 4:2: or 4:4:.
z = 0 or z = y
So there are 6 possibilities: 4:1:0, 4:1:1, 4:2:0 4:2:2, 4:4:1, or 4:4:4.
y + z determines the resulting color quality (higher is better).
So 4:4:4 is the best (as 4 + 4 = 8) while 4:1:0 is the worst (as 1 + 0 = 1).


FFmpeg Batch encoding error: CRF/CQP is incompatible with 2pass

2-pass is for video encoding when using an average bitrate target. When saving to MP4, default encoder is x264 whose default encoding mode is CRF where 2-pass is not applicable. The pass system also no connection with the use of filters, which is what scale and pad are.

In any case, you can carry out scaling and padding in one command.

for %%a in (*.mp4) do ( ffmpeg -i "%%a" -vf "scale=1216:684,pad=1280:720:32:0" -preset faster "output\%%~na.mp4"
)


FFMPEG demux .264 for burning in scenarist

The demuxed H264 stream has the same metadata content, however it is rearranged, compared to the directly produced .264 stream. So far, I don't see a way to rearrange it to match.

So, transcode directly to 264 and use mp4box to generate a stream inside a container

mp4box -add direct.264 -new muxed.mp4

You can then use ffmpeg to mux to MKV.

ffmpeg -i muxed.mp4 -c copy muxed.mkv

mp4box is part of the GPAC project. Get a nightly build from https://gpac.wp.imt.fr/downloads/gpac-nightly-builds/

To do this entirely within ffmpeg, you can use the tee muxer to pipe a AVI mux to another ffmpeg instance

ffmpeg -i input.mov -map 0:v -vsync cfr -r fps -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v libx264 -preset fast -tune film -b:v 20000k -maxrate 35000k -bufsize 30000k -level 4.1 -x264opts bluray-compat=1:open-gop=1:slices=4:keyint=24 -f tee "scenarist.264|[f=avi]pipe:1" | ffmpeg -f avi -i - -c copy -y playback.mkv

Verify the


Keep the current position in the center of the timeline in Adobe Premiere

Hold the Shift-Key pressed and move your mouse wheel to scroll the timeline horizontally. This works when not playing as well as when playing but only if the timeline is not auto-scrolling.
If you want to keep the playhead centered, go to Edit-Menu -> Preferences -> Timeline and select "Smooth Scroll" where it says "Timeline Playback Auto-Scrolling", see also the screenshot:
One more tip: the thin blue line marking the current position is called the playhead.


How can i create DVD menu with moving scene

You need DVD authoring software.  Any decent DVD authoring software should support this.  It uses video menus and chapter breakpoints to do this.

Adobe Encore (included with Premiere) does this in Adobe's product family.  DVD Studio Pro did this in Apple's product family, though it hasn't been updated since 2009.  There are also a number of over vendors who make DVD Authoring software capable of this functionality.


what is the best software that can crop and trim video?

For anyone wondering, Adobe Media Encoder is great for trimming and cropping large amounts of video at once. Drag video files into the window, choose a preset, and hit the play button. You can create your own presets to reuse.
However .mkv is NOT SUPPORTED.


One option, if you don't mind the actor keeping her head still, is to be partially lying down. She could be in a recliner, leaning back, with her head against the headrest so she never moves it.  She would feel the headrest behind her so she could tell if she'd turned her head, and it wouldn't "drift" left or right because the friction of the headrest would keep it in place.

Of course you would want to shoot all her lines in as short a session as possible so she didn't get uncomfortable - like 5 minutes for all the lines and retakes.


That's a tricky one since the background color is the same as the shirt shes wearing. This can be achieved Manually by masking your subject frame by frame, if there is no much movement and duration is little then this shouldn't be a problem, although you might have some difficulty with the hair.
Note: masking should not be very accurate in this case, make a fast one then feather it and increase the brightness of the layer behind "background" until it becomes bright white and see if you like the result.


What is the difference between a fishpole and a boom pole?

To be honest, man, I've never heard anyone use the term 'fishpole' in regards to video/film production. Recording audio with a microphone that is connected to an extendable rod is called booming. There are people in the film industry who make a living solely from being a boom swinger.
I think fishpole is just another word used for the same thing, although if someone referred to a boom pole as a fishpole onset they would probably get laughed at.

So yeah, unless you are getting filmmaking mixed up with the honorable profession of capturing sea-dwelling animals, I'd say there is no difference between the two.


Just some ideas.

1. Do not sync everything.

Define what out of sync is acceptable to you. Let's say 1/10 sec. (I would be way less "picky" and go for let's say 1/5)

Then calculate how many images you need to accumulate that out of sync, and only adjust that. This will be now adjusting only let's say one of every 10 clips.

2. Choose a "multiple" framerate

To reduce even more the out of sync, and retime later. Let's say you choose a framerate of 10x faster, then the out of framing could be rounded a bit more accurately. 279 frames. Then retime.


The following steps work for me for an arbitrary camera.

Create the desired composition.
Create a camera by going to Layer -> New -> Camera. For now just accept the default settings..
Position the camera as you desire by changing the Transform parameters or by dragging it to the desired position. Here below an image of the Transform parameters:

Make sure that all the layers are 3D layers.
In the bar between your composition and the timeline there is a camera dropdown menu:

Make sure that you choose the camera angle you wish to export. In this case it is Camera 1:

Go to Composition -> Save Frame As...


Encode video for html5 and javascript controlled playback

The Apple video uses a profile with fewer reference frames and also carries a streaming hint track.

The following ffmpeg command template should create a quick seeking MP4 file:

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -x264opts keyint=3:min-keyint=2 -{other video encoding parameters} -{audio encoding parameters} -movflags +faststart+rtphint output.mp4

Given the profile and GOP sizes set, compression effiency won't be great.


Create a MXF media with a video and audio clip at specific timing compatible with Pro Tools

The method in my comment still stands.

Let's say you have two audio tracks. Basic command syntax is

ffmpeg -i picsou.mp4 \
       -i audio1.wav \
       -i audio2.wav \
       - filter_complex "[1:a]adelay=30000|30000[1a];\
                         [2:a]adelay=35000|35000[2a]" \
      -map 0:v -map "[1a]" -map "[2a]" -c:v copy -shortest \
  out.mxf

The adelay filter here expects two channels per input stream. Channel delay values are in milliseconds.

On linux / OSX you may have to use single quotes around the arguments.


How can I create a video from an image sequence that is named with a date in the FFmpeg?

You can do it with scripting by renaming the files. I don't have a Windows machine at hand at the moment so I can't test this but this is what I would do in power shell:

First navigate to the directory containing the image sequence,  then

mkdir sorted_images;
$serial=0;
Get-childItems *. jpg | sort-object date | %{
Cp $_ (".\sorted_images\image_{0}.jpg" -f ($serial.toString("00000")));
$serial++}

That script should copy all the jpg images in the current folder to a new folder and rename them with a five digit serial number. Try it out on some test images first because I haven't tested it myself.


What is a description along the bottom of a video generally called?

It is often called a lower third because it is a bar often appearing in the lower third of the image.  Also sometimes a name plate or title plate.


How to fix invisible image cropping in Vegas Pro

The easiest way to fix this is to right-click on the pan/crop area and select Match Output Aspect.


FFmpeg Can't Capture Window Rendered with Secondary GPU

For capturing (NVIDIA GPU rendered) chrome window, GPU compositing must be disabled via --disable-gpu-compositing. Maybe you can also disable it in your application.


How to remove a rectangular region at the centre

You can use the drawbox filter to umm. draw a box on top of the video.

Basic syntax is

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "drawbox=X:Y:M-X:N-Y:c=black:t=fill" -c:a copy out.mp4

where X, Y are replaced with top-left co-ordinates of box. M-X and N-Y are width and height of the box. The value fill for thickness will make a solid box. This value was very recently changed, so if you have an older version of ffmpeg, use max instead.


Can I use unlicensed music in a birthday video and take money for my editing work?

I am not a lawyer and it may depend on where you are located, but generally speaking, even if you weren't being paid, this is technically a violation of copyright that you could be sued over.  It is highly unlikely that anyone would come after you for it if they only use it privately, but if it was, say, published to youtube, then there would be more chance of issues coming up and you would still be the person who sold them the video.  You would probably be liable under most jurisdictions copyright laws as this is a pretty major situation that copyright is specifically designed to prevent.

The intent or profit is generally irrelevant to most copyright law.  All that generally maters is the amount that it should have cost to make use of it (the actual damage is the money the author didn't get that they would have gotten for the usage).  So even if you gave it away for free (like many file sharers do), the damages are based on what the licensing for that should have been, plus a punitive penalty.  Whether you give away the work or sell it doesn't matter because it is still a work that the creator should have been paid for as it is their work.


Adobe AE with Element3D to work with Intel Graphics

You should check VideoCoPilot's website in regards to system requirements.

Based off first glance; your system is not cut out for working with Element3D in AE.

AE alone is going to strain your system. At the very least you're going to want to run E3D in AE on a i7 processor setup (preferably XEON); as many cores as possible, as AE can multi-thread; and not rely on an onboard graphics card.

I run E3D on a dual E5-2697 v2 (48 Cores HT), with 128 GB Ram; and a Titan Black GPU and I still wish it could be more responsive and faster.

At the VERY least; you're going to need to bump up to 32 GB ram; recommend 64; and a much better processor.

Your OS and system services are going to tie up 1.5 GB of your 8 GB ram; and AE alone will hog another 3-4 GB with no plugins running. It's my opinion you simply don't have the power to run this config on your system.


What Boom mic is compatible with a smartphone?

Most mics that are designed for DSLRs (such as many of those made by Rode) should be able to work with a smart phone as well (through the use of some adapters).  They just work on a standard line input like you have for a PC and through a splitter cable, most cellphones support the same kind of line input as a PC or DSLR has.

It is actually even possible to plug a full blown ASIO audio interface in to many android handsets and do recording from phantom powered XLR booms, but that probably defeats the point of using your phone for recording.


How can I make a cheap video with a train filmed from in front of the locomotive, while this is running?

I can think of two possible solutions:

You build some kind of rig similair to a selfie stick. Mount it somewhere on the locomotive and try to not get it in the shot or digitally remove it
Choose a place where a road is next to the traintrack, mount the camera to a car (Or other vehicle) and drive along the track.

I see a few difficulties with both tho.
For the first one, you will need to buy/create the rig which could be rather difficult, especially if you have a bigger camera. You also won't be able to control the camera, expect if you have wireless control. You would also need to look with a camera hanging out quite a bit from the locomotive, that there are no other trains, trees, signals, tunnels... which are in the range of the camera.

For the second option, you would need to first find that road which could be difficult especially if you can't change the track where the train drives.
Depending on the road, you would also need to get some stabilisation system, so that the image doesn't shake to much. This might be needed for the train as well.


How to duplicate composition and subcompositions?

Make all your duplications in the Project Panel, not in the Layer/Timeline panels.

Duplicate Comp A

Duplicate Comp B

Double click Comp A2 to open it in the timeline.  It will still contain Comp B. We need to fix this.

Make sure Comp A2 is still open and visible in the timeline

Select Comp B 2 in the Project Panel

Select the Comp B layer in your Comp A 2 timeline

Hold down the option key on a mac (alt on a PC)

Drag Comp B 2 from your Project Panel over the top of Comp B in your timeline panel.

Let go of the dragging.

Comp B in your timeline panel should now be replaced with Comp B 2.

This is a bit of a faff, but gets easier after you've done it a few times.


A specific MP4 file is not playable with avfoundation in iOS

The original video is an old, interlaced format.  At least, according to the line that says, "smpte170m/bt470bg/bt709."  The SMPTE standard is available for purchase here, but you can tell from the summary that it's interlaced.
The second ffmpeg command is copying the format without re-encoding, or handling the interlacing, which isn’t supported on iOS.  The first set of commands work because the video is being re-encoded. Whether or not the video is automatically being de-interlaced, I can’t say without seeing, but I doubt it.  See my answer to this question to judge for yourself.


What portion of m2t video file size is audio?

There are variables you don't mention, but you can make a quick estimate based on the video bit rate and the audio bit rate. With (say) 4800Kb/s video and 48Kb/s audio, the audio represents 1% of the file.


video chroma keyed background into Skype

If there is no plugin I never heard of, the only way you could do this is by feeding an already keyed signal into skype. You could try researching if realtime keying can be emulated on a virtual webcam, otherwise you would either have to stick with zoom or buy a live-keyer like the ones from black-magic (though they are very very expensive)


Can you see vimeo upload progress in Premiere CC?

No. There's no such thing. Vimeo will show you a gauge as soon as it starts processing your video.


Figured it out.

The shortcut is "Shift+R".

It's located in top options > timeline > current clip > cut clip.


open-source or free AVCHD conversion to image sequence

Wonderful ffmpeg command line utility is the solution. Just check their documentation, but something like the following will probably work for your case:

ffmpeg -i video.mts video%05d.png

This will take your video, and create video00001.png, video00002.png... files in the same folder.

You can find a lot of guides for ffmpeg, or ask here for a specific soltion. We can try to figure out.


Loop count in video clip settings, how to apply changes to composition?

I'm guessing your videos are of different durations. If no, just precompose the grid layers and loop that composition. If yes, worst case scenario is to precompose each video layer and loop those.


Audio recording: is/how a dedicated device better than laptop?

There's no quality difference to where the recording is stored - if you plug the same mic into different recording devices, it should record the same. Different quality mics (and recording environment) will give you more difference to your sound than anything else. Do make sure you are recording uncompressed (WAV) format though, using compressed formats will obviously reduce your resulting audio quality.

I have some external recorders, I use them mainly because you can plug in a large SD card, hit record, and the device will just sit there and do that job for hours, no issue. I don't have to worry about a piece of software or laptop crashing, they're portable and I can plug them in at the back of a sound desk or anywhere I like, etc. If you're recording lots of audio, they're just handy to have and use. Most external recorders do default to higher quality settings than what Audacity might (i.e. mine default to 24-bit/96kHz), but you can change those settings in Audacity as required. Portable recorders can also have other interfaces and features that come in handy if you're using them in lots of different environments - I almost always just use mine with the same standard setup, and most of the extras go unused!

For what you're doing, hooking the mic into a laptop and using Audacity will do the same job just fine. Just make sure to monitor things and check your recordings - make sure audio isn't being dropped due to inability of the system to keep up to speed, and that everything is recording as you expect (mic cable/connection good, levels good, mic close enough to the source to pick up the sound cleanly, etc).

You might also consider adaptors for your phone:
https://www.rode.com/microphones/sc6-lik

I've not personally used these, but there are various adaptors out there now to interface sound inputs direct to your phone, as well as dedicated external mics (the above adaptor gives you a more generic approach that you could plug anything into, but there are specific mic only devices for phones as well). I would just double check how the quality options would vary on a phone recording vs using Audacity dedicated on a laptop, which might not even matter for the types of recordings you are describing.


How do you install Adobe Production Premium CS5 on a different hard drive in windows?

After a long time of messing aroung I got it to work by tricking the software into thinking it was actually in the default location it likes at 'C:\Program Files\Adobe' by creating directory junctions. In order for it to work the hard drive must be formatted with the NTFS filesystem.

I used http://code.google.com/p/symlinker/ to create the directory junctions. You need to map the following folders to folders on the other hard drive you want to install the suite on. Run the symlinker software as an administrator.

C:\Program Files\Adobe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe

Make sure that you select Directory Junction in the dropdown for type of link otherwise it won't work.

In the symlink program the box which says 'give a name to the link' is the folder name. So for example to set up the first path you would enter 'C:\Program Files' in the top box. Then 'Adobe' as the link name and then '[New Drive]:\Adobe From Link' (as an example) in the third box and then do the same for the other 3 and they all need to go to different folders.

Then when you've done this and checked that the folders are being mapped correctly you can simply install the adobe suite into C:\Program Files\Adobe (where it wants to go) and it will actually set itself up on your other hard drive.

I know it's not common to even think about putting it on another hard drive but I had to and I hope this will be useful if there's someone else out there that ever needs to and will save a lot of time!


Clear and informative tutorial on video file formats

I don't think you will find a single clear tutorial as you are talking about a very very broad field and talking about multiple aspects of it.  Many, many, many tutorials exist for help with encoding for YouTube or encoding for Bluray.  In fact, most Bluray authoring software has pretty good walkthroughs in their help.

Youtube itself outlines the basics for getting the best quality encoding for it here, provides conversion settings for unsupported formats here and has links to numerous videos related to creating videos here.

As for understanding file formats vs codecs, I don't know that a tutorial would be much help as it is a conceptual thing not something you can walk-through.  I generally tell people that a video file format is a bit like a filing cabinet, it gives the general organization, but doesn't define the data held within.  The codec is like the filing system and determines how the data the file format holds is stored.

As far as choosing what file format to use or codec, again, with so many to choose from, they really are better covered in tutorials about a specific need.  H.264 in general ends up being by far the most common these days and the file format itself is more or less irrelevant as long as it's using an H.264 codec since it's fairly simple to move an H.264 stream from one format to another.

Similarly, CBR vs VBR 1 pass vs VBR 2 pass is again really more of a conceptual thing rather than something a tutorial can cover.  Most people seem to get it ok when you simply describe video as a bunch of photos and say that CBR uses the same amount of data for every photo, regardless of how complicated the picture is, VBR 1 pass uses less when it notices that a photo is easy to store and more when it is hard and VBR 2 pass looks through all the photos first to make sure that it makes all the photos the overall best quality they can be by spreading the data around to where it's needed.

Ultimately though compression in and of itself is a field that people spend their entire careers in.  It is very deep and complex and you really aren't going to find an all inclusive tutorial to cover everything.  It simply doesn't exist.  The closest I've ever seen was actually the section on encoding in one of the Premiere Pro manuals (I think it was CS2, but it might have been Premiere Pro 6.5 (pre Creative Suite).) but that content is a bit dated now as that was DVD era and prior to H.264 really taking center stage for most purposes.


This is a misnomer, if not pure marketing corruption of terms. The lens doesn't do anything to the "megapixel count", that's determined solely by the sensor.
At most the lens might have the capability to resolve details to a level where a sensor of at least a certain element density is required to record them, but then you'd still not have a number of pixels as the size of the sensor as well as its element density determines that.


Premiere Pro - How to make a slideshow/compilation

Premiere Pro has a number of default transitions under the "video transitions" tab in the effects pane (usually located in the bottom left of the window). Are those what you are looking for? If you have experience with After Effects, you could also use AE's more robust effects library to animate interesting effects for your videos.

Based on your included image, it looks like you might be interested in wipe transitions.


The current way to accomplish this is to either:

1) Toggle the menu [Workspace] > [Single Viewer Mode]

- or -

2) Toggle the [ ] / [][] button (top right of the viewer)

NOTE: Resolve will only enable the options and allow the use of two viewers if it has enough screen space (screen real estate) to do so. And that is probably the reason why opening/closing the Inspector affected the dual view.

(Resolve 15)


It works if you mix audio separately.

ffmpeg -y -i test.mp4 \
-f lavfi -i amovie=bg_sound.mp3:loop=55555 \
-filter_complex "[0:a][1:a]amerge, \
                 pan=stereo|c0=0.5*c0+0.5*c2|c1=0.5*c1+0.5*c3" \
output.flac


MP4 has not really an official meaning, but it adds a lot to the MPEG-confusion. MP4 refers to MPEG-4 which is a huge collection of video-related standards that has been growing for more than 20 years.
MPEG-4 part 14 container: takes an .mp4 file extension, therefore often just called MP4, if it contains audio, it can also have the .m4a extension, for video .m4v, and others (.m4p, .m4b, .m4r). the container format is a derivative of Apple QuickTime's container format (.mov).
MPEG-4 Part 2 video codec: Most often just called MPEG-4, sometimes it also takes the name of the encoder software: Xvid, DivX... Became the first de facto standard for web video.
MPEG-4 Part 10 video codec: also called MPEG-4 AVC and (ITU-T) H.264, and by the name of it's most popular encoder software: x264. De facto standard video codec today: video conferencing, smartphone videography, Web, Blu-Ray, TV, camcorders. Almost all video capable devices ship today with H.264/AVC hardware codecs by default besides newer but still less common codecs like VP9, HEVC or AV1. The successor for H.264/AVC has been coming since 2013, but just for fun they decided not to call it MPEG-4, but MPEG-H Part 2 also known as ITU-T H.265 or High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is often called MPEG-4 Audio. It is probably the most prominent amongst the many codecs standardised in MPEG-4 Part 3. It often uses the file extension .mp4 or .m4a
I'm not even going to start about all the other MPEGs :-)
TL;DR
MP4 could mean a video codec, a file that contains video and/or audio or even something else. It's not a clear term.


A program or script to overlay several video clips

While having some fun in Python programming language I found a library that allows users to write custom code to overlay (possibly) infinite amount of clips.

MoviePy

Hope this helps!


How do I create a library in FCPX 10.5 with Final Cut Projects and Final Cut Events folders?

If you click the dropdown in your library, you will see a folder named "Smart Collections" under that, you'll see Projects. Any and all Events will be under your Library hierarchy, these folders will be created automatically.


Software or method to detect sequences of non-black frames in a long video

You can use ffmpeg's blackdetect for that:
Let's say you are interested in blackscreen with a duration greater than 2 seconds (d=2):
ffmpeg -i "surveillance.mp4" -vf "blackdetect=d=2:pix_th=0.00" -an -f null -

output (example):
[blackdetect @ 0x7fac3b555380] black_start:40 black_end:53.44 black_duration:13.44


Special effects/post processing to make a black-colored light

I've got another idea, but it's a little kooky.  You light the WHOLE SCENE with spotlights - the fewer the better.  On the key spotlight, you add a gel that has an opaque black circle on it.  Then as you move that around, that section of darkness will pass over parts of the set/props/actors.

For a more focused spot, you could use a bright digital projector to project the image of a black circle on a white field.  Focus it based on the parts of the scene you're moving it across.


Using Secondary HSL in Lumetri on a masked part of a clip

You do need a second copy of the Lumetri effect, but you don't need to duplicate the clip, whether or not you keep the extra copy.  Instead of your current workflow, try using Adjustment Layers:

Perform your primary color corrections as you normally would on a single lumetri instance.  By "primary color corrections," I mean white balance, exposure, overall adjustments, and anything that affects the whole frame equally.  No matter what color grading software you use, it's best practice to keep these "color primary" operations logically distinct from operations which require keys, masks, mattes, windows, etc.  One reason for this is that keeping primary adjustments logically distinct allows them to be baked into LUTs (a topic for another discussion).  But as you've discovered, it also helps keeps your work organized so that local adjustments can be accurately targeted.
Add an adjustment layer.  To do this, make sure your project panel is active by clicking in it, go the the File menu, and select New->Adjustment layer.
Drag the new adjustment layer from the project panel to your timeline and drop it on a layer that's above your footage.  In a sense, Adjustment layers are "empty" because they don't contain any video information, but in another sense, they're "transparent" and let you stack effects.  It's because of this transparency that you don't have to duplicate the underlying lumetri primary correction that you performed earlier.  The white balance, exposure adjustments, etc, "show through" to the adjustment layer.
Draw your mask on the adjustment layer, and perform your "color secondaries" there by adding a new instance of the Lumetri effect to the it.  There, you can brighten the faces as you see fit, you can keyframe the movement of the matte if you need to (aka "rotoscoping"), and your color primaries will remain intact.
In this way, you can add as many adjustment layers as you like, and isolate as many different areas of the image as necessary, each with its own unique color transformation.  You can even use mask blending modes to perform boolean operations to the masks, generating complex unions, intersections, cutouts, etc.

There are some limitations and restrictions to Adobe's color workflow, which is why people turn to other software as their grades become more complex.  Tracking multiple masks is problematic, for instance.  However, for basic color work, Premiere is often a simple, quick, and effective solution.


There is a special NVIDIA API that allows you to encode to h264/h265 called NVENC. It's now integrated into ffmpeg so using it is quite easy.

But before buying an NVIDIA card you should do/know the following:

Check the NVENC hardware capabilities table from the NVIDIA VIDEO CODEC SDK APPLICATION NOTE - ENCODER cause h265 support is limited in Maxwell V2 card you've mentioned. You can also find average encoding speed (fps) there.
There is an artificial limit of two for parallel encoding processes for GeForce cards (check the previous link for more details). If you want more (actually around 30 simulanious encoding streams) you should buy Quadro or, according to this beautiful answer, one can hack GeForce (hardware in fact is the same as in Quadro) which is, of course, illegal.
With any hardware encoder you'll never get the same quality/size as you can get from x264.
Also there is Intel QuickSync hardware encoder integrated in some of Intel's processors (not in your Xeon unfortunately) which I know nothing about, so you have to research this part yourself.


Merging mp4 files and preserving subtitles

You may consider to use either

Subtitle stream of mp4, e.g. https://gist.github.com/xer-rex/913db0dcef06c0304acd1fcb3712cd04
or
Burn-in subtitle in video of mp4, e.g. https://gist.github.com/xer-rex/bc80b5fbd23d1b91bb4737439816d773


Is there a rule of thumb for transitions in video production?

A while back I ran some introductory video editing workshops. I used to tell the participants about a particularly cool effect that I once found in Pinnacle; it was a pinhata that came swinging into the first video along with a stick that hit the second video out of it and it unfolded across the screen.

The point of this anecdote is the following: Don't use transition presets. Like, at all. Sure it looks cool in the preview reel, but all those fancy swipes, wipes, slides et c. are just distracting and ugly. Of course it depends on what kind of video you're making, but I would always try if it works with no transitions at all first (i.e. hardcuts). If it doesn't, maybe try a simple, short cross dissolve (like, 0.5 seconds max) or maybe a dip to black. But keep your hands off all the other transition presets.

My rules of thumb are the following:

Don't use transitions.
If you have to use transitions, use as little as possible and be consistent.

The second point is particularly important, even if you're a fan of transitions. Be consistent with (a) what type of transition you use and (b) when you use them. For example, if you use a transition to visually seperate two scenes for the first half of your movie and then suddenly start using a transition for every cut in a scene, it's confusing and distracting. And if you drop different transitions every time, it looks like a crappy Youtube AMV made by a 12 year old.

For example, watch Star Wars (the prequels). They use those swipes and slides with soft borders all over the place. I don't really like those, but at least they're consistent with it.

  but some transitions between clips and stills just feel off to me

This may be opinionated, but in my experience a transition looks weird as soon as you notice it. The best possible transition is the one you don't notice, because a transition is a tool to better tell your story, not a story element itself. And the easiest way to have a transition that you don't notice is to not use one at all.


Video File (.MOV) Opens in VLC and Other Players But Not in Premiere

I had this same issue. I found 2 different solutions for my file.

The issue has to do with some kind of codec issue with newer versions of Adobe that no longer support certain .mov encoding types (or something like that)

Solution 1: Rename the file extension to .mp4

Believe it or not, this is actually working for some people. Read toward the end of this thread.

I tried it myself and was finally able to open the file in Adobe CS5. However, only the audio appeared in the timeline. No video.

Solution 2: Re-encode using VLC

There's a fix in this thread from Sasha L. (dated April 11, 2018) that involves re-encoding the file using VLC. I tried this and it worked. The steps once opening VLC are:

Click "Media" in the menu bar
Select "Convert/Save"
Choose your source file
Select your destination file type (click the toggle icon in order to access more advanced encoding settings)
Choose your destination file name
Export

When I used this method I was able to export a visual-only video (no audio).

Between the 2 methods I was able to export audio and visual and import them into Adobe Premiere so that they could be combined.

Best of luck!


Trying to stabilize a video with FFMPEG so that it looks like it was taken with a tripod

try google photos. surprisingly so good. not to mention free


I recommend not to host the video files on your web server, but to upload them to YouTube and only embed the YouTube link on your web page. You can even define that your videos won't show up on searches, but are only served when using the link (from your website).

The reason is that these videos add significant load to your web server and bandwidth. And if something goes wrong (like providing the wrong codec), then your users won't see any video at all.

But if you really want to do it, you can even take YouTube as measurement. Upload an HD video and then download the various videos that YouTube has generated from that source.

I use this tool, but there may be others for different browsers:

Downloader as Firefox plugin

You will see that YouTube offers a combination of different resolutions and different codecs. There is quite a complex logic behind which files to serve to which browsers. For ex. a small resolution will be served to mobile phones, but a bigger one to desktops depending on their screen resolution. Older browsers may need one codec, whereas modern ones accept others. YouTube does all that logic for you. But if you want to host the videos by yourself, you have to implement that logic as well.

You need then a tool like ffmpeg to convert your videos to these different formats and resolutions. Or, if you are lazy, just use the videos that you downloaded from YouTube, since they have the formats that you want.

Finally, you have to embed these videos on your web page. Here's the HTML video tag that you have to use. It's the new HTML5 standard, so older browsers don't support it.

As you have seen, these steps may mean a lot of work. That's why uploading to YouTube and embedding that link to your web page is the better choice.

Sorry that I didn't cover these steps in detail. This is just an overview.


What is the difference between VP9 and WebM?

VP9 is a video format. Another example is H.264.

WebM is a container format that VP9 goes into. It is equivalent to the MP4 container format for the H.264 video format.

libvpx is a video encoder (or codec) which outputs the VP8 or VP9 video formats. Another encoder example is x264 which outputs the H.264 video format.


Remove unwanted person from background of a shot?

If the camera's static, then it's totally doable. Start by making a clean plate image of the whole area, as I think you have done.

Put that on a layer above (on top of) your original footage. Whenever the problem people wander in to shot, cover them up by putting a masked area of your clean plate over them.

As you mentioned, sometimes this means the desirable foreground subjects get covered up by the clean plate. But there is a solution to this, (even though it is time consuming):

Duplicate your original footage, and put the duplicated track on top of your clean plate, so it's the uppermost layer. Whenever you have some "desirable foreground" subject overlapping your clean plate, animate a masked area of it on top of the plate. Use lots of feathering and careful key framing, and you should be able to get an acceptable result.

Here's a (non-video) tutorial showing how to remove an unwanted object:
http://www.surfacedstudio.com/blog/after-effects-how-to-remove-an-object

Here's the excellent video copilot series, showing how to animate a mask:
http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/tutorials/04.Keying/

Neither show the idea of putting another foreground track over the top, but should get you along the way...


How to autofocus a Canon T3i Rebel with AmazonBasics remote control?

I could be wrong, but my understanding of the AmazonBasics Wireless Remote Control is that it is only for remotely controlling the shutter (i.e., it only works for pictures). In photo mode, it will autofocus after you press the button. One thing to test would be to try enabling autofocus on your camera/lens, starting recording, and stand in front of the camera. Use the shutter to remotely take a picture (the T3i can take pictures while recording). After that, your autofocus should be set.

Once again, not 100% sure that this would work, but that is what I would try first.


It is unlikely that you will be able to do that.  To stream a high quality video over a home Internet connection is going to take a LOT of complex compression.  Compression is both memory, CPU and possibly GPU intensive and running a game is also CPU, memory and GPU intensive.  This is why the files that FRAPS produces are so massive.  They apply minimal compression to make sure that it doesn't have more of an impact on the game than necessary.

What you could do is play the game, record the video portion, compress it (possibly to a really low quality version so that you can stream it quickly), stream it and record both of your dialog, then mix the dialog back with the higher quality version of the video.


Adobe After Effects: Keying layers based on other layers

There is a way of doing per-pixel logic such as what you want, by using Blending Modes. Basically the different transfer modes in AE can be though of as Boolean logic operations that go on at the pixel level. The different transfer modes are spelled out here.

So I think I've worked out how you'd do it.

Here are the images I'm using: two depth maps and two colour maps:

Picture 1 and depth matte

Picture 2 and depth matte

As you can see, no expense was spared with the render.

OK so in AE I make a comp with just the depth mattes in it. I set the blending mode of the top layer to Darker Color.

The darker color blending mode does this logic on each pixel:

(luminosity of this layer < luma of layer(s) below)? This layer: lower layer

This means the darker object will appear wherever two objects overlap That gives me this result:

Now we have to turn this into a matte for picture 1, where the black will be opaque and white transparent. To get rid of the parts of the comp that aren't relevant to picture 1 I put this comp into a new comp, along with another copy of depth matte 1, which I put on top.

I set the blending mode of the top one to Difference which can be though of as:

(this layer == lower layer)? 0: abs(this layer - lower layer)

and this is the result:

OK, now I put this comp in a new comp with my colour images. This comp goes above image 1.

In this final comp I set the depth map comp as a Luma inverted matte for picture 1. Note that when you do that it turns off the visibility for that layer (see the eye icon is disabled on the top layer). This is the result:

Obviously there's a bit of a problem in that there are semi-opaque areas. So I need some sort of threshold. I could do this a few ways, but the way I like is with the curves effect. I apply curves to the top layer (the depth matte layer) like so:

I originally set this to be a hard step at 50%, but that makes the edges of the matte super sharp, so I made it slope a bit around the mid-point. You can play with this to get it right. That's the advantage of using Curves instead of say the Threshold effect.

Finally I got this result, with the figures correctly sorted on the "z" axis:

I hope this all makes sense, and that it works in real life. Thanks for the question, it was an interesting exercise.


Scaling "Stroke" Effect "Brush Size" while scaling composition?

Easy fix, you see the small sun icon on the imported comp layer? Disable that, that basically means that the comp should act like the layers within it should act like they are in the parent comp. It negates the transformation your are applying to it and the effect will just keep its pixel value its supposed to have, you are not "blowing it up" like you would expect.
If you disable it the imported comp will act like a rendered video.

If you have huge pixelation going on just go to full resolution in the preview and it will be fine, though the layer will not act like a vector, you will have a rasterized image so keep in mind to have a big enough resolution if you want to scale it up.
Better to have it bigger and scale it down than having not enough.


Automated speech to text layer subtitles in After Effects

Assuming it's a video you are happy to make public, you could publish it through youtube and gather the subtitles from there as an .srt file.

Be aware that automatically generated subs tend to have mistakes in them.

You could manually make subtitles using a free tool like Aegisub

Or you could pay a fee to a company like 3playmedia to generate the subtitles for you.

Once you have the subs as an .srt file:

Then to apply them in After Effects as burnt-in text, you could use a tool like PT_importsubtitles to convert the .srt file to timed text layers.


which are the good camcorder or DSLR to make video tutorials or MOOC to show on wide screen using projector?

The SONY HXR NX1 is a staple of capturing professional-grade content that can be produced on its own or incorporated into other productions.  Yes, there are higher-end cameras, but this is a solid choice for a pro-level classroom.  I have seen this camera in many classrooms.  With a good operator, and a decent sound-recording system, you will be in the top quintile of production.

The Panasonic HC-850K has a marketing gimmick of being able to produce two video views at once, such as a wide view and a zoomed-in view.  I have not used this camera, but its relatively low price and very modern technology make it a sensible choice for somebody looking to prototype a solution, learn the limits of the camera, and then buy what's really needed without losing too much investment.

The Logitech C920 HD Pro Webcam is suitable if the scope of your subject is basically just sitting in front of it.  If your talking head talks while seated in front of a computer, great.  But if your talking head talks and walks (such as in front of a lecture board), it won't suit.  Similarly, if your demonstration requires aiming the camera at anything more interesting than a talking head, you will likely find the ergonomics of the webcam to be not worth the hassle.

A Nikon D5200 24.1MP Digital SLR Camera (and any other SLR) is probably a terrible choice for your application.  These cameras really are optimized for still shooting.  Yes, they do shoot video.  Yes, the video sounds like it has a good spec.  But the reality is they come with all sorts of limitations (such as a maximum 29 minute recording time).  And you need to get much more expensive and much less capable lenses to fill a sensor size you don't need/can't use for video.  DSLR video is always at least one step below a similarly priced true video camera.  And the lenses cost extra, compared with many video cameras, which have them built-in.

The Kodak PlayTouch Video Camera (and similar) are popular for "flipped" classrooms.  I.e., classrooms where both teachers and students can contribute video content to the overall experience.  If your MOOC idea involves student-contributed content, then giving everybody a level playing field can be a good idea.  But if you want to "produce" something, the limitations of these cameras will drive your producer crazy.


Why do one pixel wide lines look like a twisted ribbon on this DLP projector?

Since the pixel grid that the projector displays is a rectangular grid of rectangular pixels, how do you display something that isn't rectangular? Think about a pixel where the outline of the line falls half-way across it—half the pixel is in the line, and half out. How does that pixel display?

There are a couple of ways of doing it. You could set a threshold at which the pixel is either on or off and switch between the two. This would create a staircase on the horizontal line, where pixels were close to the point above and below the threshold. This wouldn't look that great unless the projector was extremely high resolution, where the jagginess was too small to see. The projector in the picture is nowhere near that level of resolution, so another technique to smooth out the jagginess is needed.

The technique is called Anti Aliasing. Where pixels are not fully illuminated or fully dark they have an in-between value of grey, proportional to the amount that the line covers them (this is a gross oversimplification, there is a whole science of signal processing behind how it happens in real anti-aliasing techniques).

So a pixel that is half covered by the line might be 50% illuminated. This smooths out the appearance of the diagonal line, meaning that you get the appearance of a higher resolution and smoother image.

However the anti-aliasing is not always exactly right. The variations in response curves for viewing devices (screens, projectors etc) means that sometimes the in-between levels that you see aren't what they are supposed to be in theory, meaning that some of the pixels are slightly too bright or dark, adding artefacts to the result. That's what you're seeing.

To improve the image try adjusting or calibrating the projector or the device it is connected to, particularly the contrast or gamma.


Tool for cutting and joining multiple parts of a video

There are various tools that will do this, from the professional Adobe Premier type to Windows Moviemaker (or whatever the Live version is called now)

To be honest, a quick google will give you pages of apps from premium to FOSS. Give some of the free ones a shot, and if they don'tdo what you need, give one of the expensive ones a shot on its trial version, which most have.


Video Editors Supporting 5.1 Surround Sound?

Davinci Resolve 14 would definitely do this as it has all new audio, otherwise Adobe Premier will work


A way to create a moving graphic annotation

That is usually called "tracking" and there are several tools available to do that.
Many that are stand alone and export the data to be used in other software aswell as complete editing suites that enable you to do everything from the tracking of the video footage to the animation of the graphic.

Popular examples are Adobe After Effects, Apple Motion and Nuke.
The most popular being Adobe After Effects. It offers a fairly easy to use 2D tracker and is a very powerful animation tool.

Though if you want to analyze the global position of the car on the racing track over the course of several different scene you wont be able to achieve that completely automated. Those tools will only analyze the motion for a particular scene and wont make any sense out of the "global picture". While you can certainly track the position of a car in different scenes you will have to manually do that and tell the tracker in every scene what exactly you want to track.


What's a good camera to shoot a low-budget short film with?

The short answer is anything that works for you. IMO, the 550D is a fine choice if it works for you.

The long answer? Even if you need to postpone the film, make sure your script is FLAWLESS. Shooting with a Red can't save an awful script, but I've seen some ~awesome~ shorts & features shot with a Fisher Price PXL-2000 and the Flip.

Beyond that, understand lighting. Know where your light is coming from and how to use it to make your scenes less muddy or grainy (unless that's what you're going for stylistically). Consumer camcorders are less light-sensitive than their professional brethern.

Also, make sure you can record decent sound. In most cases, on-board microphones are crap. That being said, bad sound makes a mediocre script awful. amazing sound can make mediocre scripts a touch less painful to watch.

One other thing you may want to try: network with other filmmakers and see what they're using. See if you can rent or borrow cameras to see what you like to work with. Who knows? I've shot films and donated my gear to the cause because the script was AWESOME. You may run into someone who's willing to support your vision with a camera donation.

But start with your script.


How to realistically add planet in the sky using 3d camera tracker and avoid overlapping with objects in the foreground?

If the blades are rotating, and the camera is moving, you need to create a good foreground layer with anything the planet is supposed to be obscured by.
So from the image it looks like it will be obscured by the spinning rotors.
You need to find a good way to make a layer containing only the rotors.
You could make a mask and move it frame by frame, but if you have more than a few frames this method will take a long time.
You could try using a key - isolating your foreground based on hue (colour), brightness or saturation (how much colour is present).  The blades look like the whitest thing in the image, so this might work, but probably won't give you the result you're looking for...
Or you could rotoscope the blades.  This will take a while, but will probably give the best result. The new rotoscope v2 in the latest versions of After Effects is really amazing, and combined with some careful feathering / motion blur settings will probably work perfectly.  It will still take a while though.
To get the planet in the right position in the sky, you need to make a camera track of the scene, then place the planet as a 3D layer at the right distance and scale.


Can I get Handbrake to apply additional filters such as brightness/contrast?

Like you suggested yourself you might want to use FFmpeg instead. It can utilize x264 as well which is the library that Handbrake is using for encoding. While x264 itself can do some very limited color correction via color space conversion (which can be used in the Handbrake CLI) I wouldn't recommend it if you want advanced manipulation of the video look.

FFmpeg isn't hard to use and not all too different from the Handbrake CLI.
The advantage you have with FFmpeg is a lot more formats you can output to and read from and you have the option to use many advanced filters on your video aswell as audio:
http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#Video-Filters

It's a very powerful tool for automated video editing and conversion.
The downside to FFmpeg is that you don't have all that many excellent presets but you should be able to use the x264 presets from Handbrake aswell.
https://sites.google.com/site/linuxencoding/x264-ffmpeg-mapping


Why is ffprobe showing another bitrate than the one I encoded with?

Why is the duration changed?
MP3s may not display accurate duration, depending on whether a Xing header was written, and whether the MP3 encoding is Variable Bit Rate (VBR) or a Constant Bit Rate (CBR).

What is the difference between the first bitrate (from Duration: ) and the second one (from Stream: )?
The first one is the division of the total file size (including metadata) by the probed media duration. The second is the division of the media data size by the probed media duration.

Why is it encoded with 113 kbps (I used b:a 128k)?
The native AAC encoder does not have a CBR mode. It will treat the target bitrate as an average target. This is fine and more efficient than forcing a CBR mode encode.

If you insist on CBR, then get or compile an ffmpeg build with the fdk-aac encoder, which does do CBR encoding.


Well first off, the C100 Mk I DOES NOT offer an MP4 option, only a AVCHD option. I'm assuming you meant the MKII as you said 'recently bought'.

If you look at the specs of the C100 MK II you'll see in MP4 mode you can't record interlaced, but in AVCHD you can (but you don't have to if you are at 28 mbps). So basically you can't go wrong (aka get interlaced files) with MP4, with that being said, you can also use the AVCHD wrapper @ 28 mbps and not get interlaced files (look out for the 'i' next to the framerates).

People primarily use the MP4 wrapper in the C100 MK II because it has the capability of recording at a higher bit rate (35 mbps) which means you have more information to work with when you get into the editing room, its good for color grading, and in some cases has less noise. I also find that MP4 works better inside of PP CC.

Also shooting in MP4 will probably not have much an effect on jello (although its never something I've experience in my C100's) but not shooting in interlaced will definitely help due to the way interlaced works (capturing every other line).

I'm a C100 MK I & MK II user ;)


Whoever told you that was wrong.  "1080p" has 1920 horizontal pixels and 1080 vertical pixels.  "720p" has 1280 horizontal pixels and 720 vertical ones.  See this wikipedia page.  You would want to use 1080p whenever you want the highest quality your television is capable of reproducing.  The only reason you'd use 720p is if file size is a concern, or if your television doesn't really go up to 1080p.


How to output high quality 360 VR video with Premiere Pro?

Format: h.264 -> that's what makes it look bad.

h.264 is a codec in the mp4 container and always compresses, making the file smaller and look worse. For lossless exporting you use prores 4444 xq if you're using mac (or windows with the newest version of premiere) or DNxHR. I highly recommend prores 4444 xq though.


Don't use auto white balance and use manual exposure.

Auto white balance will guess at what is white and may shift while you are running video on some cameras (which makes sense since often people may move from one room to another while shooting or lighting conditions could change.

Manual exposure will preserve luminosity.  Auto exposure shouldn't change color temperature (which is what you are noticing) however it will change how bright things are and that can be just as much of an issue for trying to get accurate green screen footage.


Blur out an irregular shaped section of the frame using Sony Vegas Studio

Unfortunately you are asking too much from Sony Vegas my friend! In order to get a true effect you'd have to do something called "rotoscoping" which means you go into each frame and mask out the background.

You can do this in vegas by going into the pan/crop window on the video event. Look for "mask" and then you can key frame out the background with the pen tool there.

There is no way to automate this so you'll have to key frame quite a bit. Then once you have just the person visible you duplicate the track beneath it and uncheck the mask on the duplicate. You then can add lense blur or gaussian blur to create the desired effect.

Unless the clip is super short I wouldn't recommend doing it this way though. It takes a lot of time even for skilled maskers.


How to burn timestamp in video with different date format using FFMPEG?

i found my answer in this link:

strftime - format date and time

strftime(3) - Linux man page

ex: i use this command for demo and i made several other command for different date format

ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -vf "drawtext=fontfile=roboto.ttf:fontsize=36:fontcolor=yellow:text='%{pts\:gmtime\:1575526882\:%A, %d, %B %Y %I\\\:%M\\\:%S %p}'" -preset ultrafast -f mp4 output.mp4


Can I make m4v files "better" before archiving? (adding keyframes, or lossless optimization, or ?)

No and yes.

For one, you cannot magically pull out more information from the video you have. On the other hand side, you can try to use NVIDIA's AI-Upscaling, which works fine on documentaries and nature, but it turns humans into horrible creatures. The Ai practically guesses what information is hidden between the pixels, so it's not 100% accurate.

But just thinking about the problem at hand should make it clear, that there's nothing "hidden" between blurry pixels. There just isn't enough information in the stream and you cannot simply enhance the video like you see in csi:miami. You can try using post-processing, such as sharpening, upscaling to 4k using Red-Giant's plugins (which are expensive though) and enhancing contrast. All of that is just post-processing though, so if the file's a turd, you'll be polishing a turd.


Can I add markers in After Effects without stopping the playback?

Use the keyboard shortcut to add a marker

  Windows: * (multiply) on numeric keypad
  Mac OS: * (multiply) on numeric keypad or Control+8 on main keyboard

This works during preview and audio-only preview


Natron: how to resume a render that crashed

There is a nice solution (thanks Hank): just uncheck the "overwrite" parameter in the write parameter. That way, only non-existing files will be created.


Two things come to my mind: If you never operated or balanced a Glidecam before you will probably have a hard time. When using a Glidecam IS will not make such a big difference but nonetheless there will be one. So better have IS.

I am assuming that you are using a DSLR like the Canon EOS 5D Mk III.
Especially the 5D has quite good low light capabilities. Faster leses are generally speaking good but keep in mind that you need to pull focus manually and that you need several meters depth of field. So you might be good to go with what you have.


720p 60fps playing in slow motion need real time speed?

The reason it plays back in slow-motion is because you recorded it in slow-motion mode. From Kodak's web page (my emphasis):

  720p at 60 fps—for fast action and super slow motion playback

Your computer have no problem playing back the video if CPU usage is just 30% and have a full frame rate of 60 fps.

What you need to change this is to re-time your video.

You can do is in many ways - I would suggest a video editor such as Adobe Premier Pro (try their 30 days free trial if you don't have it already), select a project that fits the format (HD720P) but with 30 fps.

Then drop your video on the time line, right-click and select change playback speed (or something in those words). Set 200% or what will suit your video. Render out to final video and the problem will be gone.


Video Editor for syncing mult camera videos

Not sure if this can help you, but take a look at PluralEyes. It can automatically sync your videos based on audio.

As for video editor, I recommend Sony Vegas Pro


Those are interlacing artifacts. They become visible when the motion in the video is faster than the field rate, so that when both fields are combined into a progressive scan image, the movement is visible in a single frame. They can be removed with a de-interlace filter. I've never personally used one with Virtualdub, but several are available:

MSU
Smart Deinterlace
vddeint
Various older ones


What are the negative effects (if any) for leaving a prosumer comcorder powered 24hrs a day?

There could be some consequences to using the Canon XA10 24/7, although I don't think they are very likely to happen.

I can think of two things that might go wrong:

Even tough the LCD is off, the CMOS sensor inside is still working. This can generate significant heat and cause an overheat. However, most cameras have a built in protection that shuts them down in case of overheating, so it's not a real risk.
Depending on what you will be shooting it is possible that the sun will shine directly through the lens on the sensor for a long time. There's some debate on this on the Photo.SE site, but some think this can damage your sensor.


Is it possible to hook up an external mic to a Nikon D90 to get better sound for video?

Nope, it sure doesn't.  On that camera, its only got an internal mic.  Your options are:

Record sound otherwise and then sync up in post.
Buy a new camera like a D7000 that will take an external mic.
Use an actual video camera that takes an external mic.
Possibly tape some material to mimic a windscreen over the existing D90 mic, to help a little in some situations.
Live with the limitation.


Insert a single white frame and/or crank the brightness up very high for one frame.  A photo flash  is very fast (much, much less than a single frame) so the impact in video would only be for one frame of video.


I used Picture in Picture to display my orginal video, cropped, zoomed and where I want above another picture or video.


How can I examine Quicktime file internals?

The go-to tool of my choice is MediaInfo. It's multi plattform, open-source and can analyze a big deal of formats out there, including QuickTime. So far I barley found an unsupported format. You'll get a lot of very usefull information for debugging format issues from this tool.