How to improve quality of a WebCam video?

More Light

You're seeing noise for two reasons. One is the tiny sensor of your webcam, but since you don't want to buy a new one right now, you can't do anything about that. However, the sensor size is only an amplifying factor of the real problem: Not enough light. Webcams are built for video chats, quick and dirty recordings, not really for high-quality video production. You probably have not enough light in your room and haven't noticed it since the Webcam just bumps up the ISO/Exposure until it looks well-lit. The problem is that increasing the ISO basically means amplifying the sensor signal digitally, which will also amplify the noise and artifacts in your video.

I assume you don't want to spent hundreds or thousands on studio lighting. So start small. Gather a couple of lamps from your house and use them to light up your scene. Be aware that they will probably have differing color temperatures, but that can to some extent be fixed in post. For the positioning of the lamps, start with a simple 3-point lighting. Then check the results for any over- or undereposed parts of your face/body/scene. Adjust the lighting to your liking, then rinse and repeat. You may have to adjust the angle and distance of the lamps. Increasing the distance between the lamps and the subject will reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor exponentially. However, the farther away (and the bigger) your light source is, the softer the shadows get. There's no 'perfect' setup, it all depends on what you want your video to look like.


The Timecode effect (effects>text>timecode) will add a timecode, but it's measured in HH:MM:SS:FF rather than milliseconds.

You could do it with an expression by adding a text layer, and applying an expression to the Source Text property. Below is an expression that returns what you want.

To apply it, alt-click on the stop watch for the text layers Source Text property and paste the expression in.

This expression includes an offset, because the time constant in AE starts at 0, no matter what your comp's timecode. So if you wanted the time on the dispay to be 0 at 1 second ten frames in your comp you'd subract 1.4 seconds (at 25 fps) from time on the first line. Or if you wanted to start the count at 1 second 234ms you'd add 1.234 seconds. Or you could precomp it if that's too hard. Here's the code to copy 'n paste:

offsettime=time //<--subtract or add a time offset (in seconds) here

//a hacky way to zero pad the end of the ms field to
//three digits, but easier than doing it numerically:
ms=((offsettime % 1)+"000").substr(2,3);

//zero pad the seconds if they're less than 10.
//"%" is the modulus operator, aka the remainder, so at 60s it rolls over:
s=Math.floor(offsettime % 60 );
ss=s>9 ? s : "0"+s;

//and so on. Thank you ancient Mesopotamia for our weird time measurement system
m=Math.floor((offsettime / 60) % 60);
mm=(m>9) ? m : "0"+ m;
h=Math.floor( (offsettime / 3600) % 24);
hh=(h>9) ? h  : "0"+ h;
//if whatever it is runs longer than 24hrs you're on your own

//now turn it all into a string:
hh + ":" + mm + ":" + ss + ":" + ms

note that the precision is limited by your comp's frame rate, so for 25fps the results will be just multiples of 40 ms.

Here it is applied (the red background is just the comp bg). Use normal text formatting to change the font etc (a monospaced one will work best).


How to use cloning effect if the clips are overlapping themselves?

If the character runs in front and then behind the other character then either a depth map or a manually adjusted mask is going to be necessary.  I'm unfortunately an After Effects guy, so I don't know how you would do that in Vegas.

If nothing else, you might be able to creatively do it by putting one layer of the character running around on top and another layer of the character running around underneath the character that is standing still and then cutting back and forth between them.

That is of course assuming that the animations have alpha channel support and that Vegas properly interprets the alpha channel.


How can I generate a color-correct h264/MP4 from a DPX sequence using ffmpeg?

I followed up on the yuv420p(tv, bt709) portion of the encoding and discovered that this refers to the Rec. 709 colorspace for HDTV. In ffmpeg, colorspace is defined by the colormatrix filter. However, you must convert from some colorspace. According to an ffmpeg mailing list conversation, the default colorspace is assumed to be bt601:

  ISTR that if you give ffmpeg RGB it assumes its full range, it also by
  default converts using 601 matrices. Although it has a number of
  colourspaces defined which can be accessed in the libs using the API,
  ffmpeg itself makes no use of them (Although I have a nagging feeling
  that that may not be completely true anymore either).

So the final ffmpeg command that worked was:

ffmpeg -y -start_number 0101 -i \\path\to\filename.%04d.dpx
-vf colormatrix=bt601:bt709 -pix_fmt yuv420p sample.mp4

The color is now correct, but there is no discernible difference in the output from ffprobe or MediaInfo. (In other words, the colorspace of the ffmpeg-generated file does not appear in the output.)


We have two teams across Asia and Europe, and plan to show a movie. Is there a way to connect them users to a common platform?

YouTube and Twitch are the most popular platforms for both Live Broadcast and not live broadcasts.

I'll recommend live streaming the video and making it private on twitch to prevent any copyright case.

For YouTube streaming you have to have some conditions fulfilled.

YOUTUBE TERMS FOR GOING LIVE


How to make video play with correct aspect ratio

For a H264 stream, use the h264_metadata bitstream filter

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c copy -bsf:v "h264_metadata=sample_aspect_ratio=4/3" out.mp4


Repairing brightness problems caused by auto lighting optimizer

Without knowing the exact result of this, if I where you I would give the GBDeflicker a shot (plugin for AE Win/Mac and stand-alone application):
http://www.granitebaysoftware.com/products/productgbd.aspx

This is a software meant to solve time-lapse flickering by averaging the luminance of the scene over time. For the video you showed as an example this would also be the case, unstable luminance.

You can probably isolate your background or the problem area for this plugin to work on, to achieve even better result.

You might need to adjust end lightness but after running the scene through this I would think that's just a matter of matching the first and last frame setting the keyframes for both.


Mask "shadow" showing up in the middle of the scene

During the time range in which the dissolve occurs, split the clip on A, place that segment on a track above B, and apply a mask on A so that C shows through. You can do this by creating a mask to show the C region and then invert it.


Is this jump video edited (time reversed)?

By comparing the original 5 second scene, with the time reversed video, produced by kapwing reverse video online, it's apparent that the last one is the natural and realistic movement.


How to scale a layer in pixelated fashion in After Effects?

It will scale like that, because every picture made of pixels (except vector graphics, but just don't use that)

You can force it with effect Stylize > Mosaic

Good luck!


How to open MP4 container video with mp42 codec in Vegas Pro?

mp42 is the container ID, which Mediainfo wrongly calls a codec id. It refers to MPEG-4 Part 14 spec for containers.

XDCAM is actually a Sony variant of MPEG-2 video. I've worked with XDCAM natively in Vegas, which were in MOV, I believe.

You can use FFmpeg to rewrap these files.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -c copy video.mov

Looks like MOVs only work on Macs. The command below also worked.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -c copy video.vob

(You'll have to switch to viewing All Files (*.*))


If you're using filter_complex, then all filtering has to happen within that complex. So,

ffmpeg.exe -f dshow -i video="screen-capture-recorder" \
           -f dshow -i video="Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000" \
-filter_complex "[0:v]crop=1280:360:0:0[v0];[1:v]crop=1280:360:0:0[v1];[v0][v1]vstack[v]" \
-map [v] -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset ultrafast 6000screen_take1.mkv

This stacks the top half of the webcam video below the top half of the desktop capture.

Having taken a look at the console output, you should actually try this:

ffmpeg.exe -f dshow -rtbufsize 9000000 -i video="screen-capture-recorder" \
           -f dshow -i video="Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000" \
-filter_complex "[0:v]crop=1280:360:0:0[v0];[1:v]scale=1280:-1,crop=1280:360:0:0[v1]; \
                 [v0][v1]vstack[v]" \
-map [v] -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset ultrafast 6000screen_take1.mkv


How to extend the captions to an earlier point in Premiere Pro?

There is a 3-step solution-

Insert an empty caption in the beginning
Move captions to 0 mark of your sequence
If you hold CMD/CTRL while dragging out the end of a caption, it ripple-shifts all the captions after it. So just grab the tail of first, empty caption and extend it to the mark where the text should begin


Microphone suggestions or software to avoid background noise in audio

Your most critical need is going to be a professional low noise analog to digital converter and pre-amp with a decent quality microphone to go with it.  There are a few options you can pursue for this depending on your interests.

Since you are currently working with a computer directly, you could go for any of a number of professional audio capture devices with XLR and phantom power capabilities, such as the X2U adapter from Shure that you were talking about or a device like an MAudio audio interface unit.

Since these only provide inputs you would also need a microphone.  Depending on how close you mind the mic being, something as simple as an SM58 would produce nice clean audio for you, this has the added advantage of being usable really close to your mouth and focusing the pickup in a cardioid pattern that mostly picks up stuff in front of the microphone, thus it will pick up less background noise.

Alternately, you could use a condenser mic or shotgun mic that could be placed further away, however a condenser mic would pick up more of the room sound and a shotgun mic would require careful aiming in order to make sure it picks you up and not the room.  A Lapel mic or LAV is also an option.  A lapel mic is a type of condenser that can clip to your shirt and therefore pick up a little less noise, but will still be in the shot, though it is less obvious than a dynamic mic like an SM58.

Yet another option to get additional flexibility is to go with a device like an H4n recorder.  This is what I use for my video work.  It is a stand alone recorder which can also be used as an audio interface for the PC and also has built in stereo condenser mics.  The device runs a little bit more expensive than an audio interface, but is normally a bit cheaper than an interface and a condenser mic pair.  It also can be used away from a computer for any project.

Additionally, the H4n includes XLR and 1/4" inputs so that it can be used with any of the mics you could use with an audio interface if you later decide to upgrade or change to a different kind of microphone for a particular recording task.


How to transition from Final Cut Pro 6 (or 7) to 10

A good starting point would be Apple itself.
Known for tutorials are larryjordan.com and rippletraining.com
A good book is from Ian Anderson


What's the difference between Behringer XENYX 1202FX and the Behringer Eurorack UB1202FX?

The telling part is in the name. If you are not aware, Behringer has had a longstanding feud with Mackie (among other manufacturers as well) about copyright and trademark violations. Behringer has lost at least one of these lawsuits and were forced to change their cosmetic design on many of their mixers.

Their Xenyx series is a not so subtle copy of Mackie's Onyx series preamps. The Onyx series were a noticeable step up from the vLz and vLz Pro preamps. Behringer decided to create their own premium line and call them Xenix. The problem is, I have yet to read a review that states a discernible difference between the UB and Xenyx lines. My presumption is that at this basement price point, it hardly matters.

If you could audition both (many online retailers have a return policy), I wouldn't bother trying to find qualitative differences...I'd just listen for noise floor differences.


After some experimenting it's clear this is a feature only available in Vegas Pro (Edit or better). Thankfully there is a trial version which I was able to use to confirm this is the case.


Record desktop at 1080p60 in high quality

Try lossless encoding with ffmpeg

First, with YUV444P

ffmpeg -f gdigrab -framerate 60 -i desktop -crf 0 -pix_fmt yuv444p -preset ultrafast yuv-cap.mp4

If not clear enough,

ffmpeg -f gdigrab -framerate 60 -i desktop -c:v libx264rgb -crf 0 -pix_fmt bgra -preset ultrafast rgb-cap.mp4

These will likely not be compatible with most video editors, but if the result is satisfactory, then you can transcode at leisure to a compatible codec like PNG in MOV..etc

You can add -draw_mouse 0 before -i desktop to skip recording the cursor.


How to save multiple QuickTimes but flatten audio tracks so that youtube/vimeo will accept it

Exporting is the only option from within QuickTime if you want your audio to be flattened down to the standard channels which most simple players will understand.

The problem you have is that your extra audio tracks are just ignored by YouTube, Vimeo etc.


Problems with rendering a Windows Movie Maker video

This assumes that all the material, all the video clips are on your local disk and your telling Windows Movie Maker to save these in the same folder. Do all the clips have a suffix that is acceptable to Windows Movie Maker (see below for a complete list)? e.g. are these all .avi files?

How many clips are in the video? One or more clips may be at issue. To isolate, first save your project as it is, then remove one clip and save this as minus one. Test? if there is no change then remove another clip, save as minus 2. Test? If there is still issues then proceed to remove each clip one at a time and save each of these versions until you find the clip(s) that are having an issue.

Once you locate the offending clip(s) take these to another computer, and see if you get the same results. Report back.

MORE info from Microsoft:

You can import files with the following file name extensions into Windows Movie Maker to use in your project:

Video files: .asf, .avi, dvr-ms, .m1v, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .wm, and .wmv

Audio files: .aif, .aifc, .aiff, .asf, .au, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .snd, .wav, and .wma

Picture files: .bmp, .dib, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .tif, .tiff, and .wmf


Is it worth re-encoding GoPro footage to H.265?

If your only goal is to save storage space and you never plan on editing or re-encoding the files again, you probably won't notice any change in quality.

However, if you plan to edit or re-encode to another format in the future, I'd strongly recommend against re-encoding to H.265 now. Every time you decode and re-encode video to the same or a different codec, especially highly compressed codecs like H.264 and H.265, you lose quality. With these highly compressed codecs, the generational loss and concatenation artifacts become noticeable to the average viewer in as little as one codec cycle.


Read error while copying VOB files from DVD drive to hard disk

I could tell you in Linux (ddrescue), but for Windows, I'd start out looking at apps that get data from broken disk drives. Something that will skip over sectors it can't read.


Can I use the videos marked as "youtube standard license" for a non profit video?

I know you probably already found this link, but according to Yahoo, you will want to contact the Uploader before you try to use it. Thats what I would try. I don't think I would want my youtube videos just used by anyone who wanted to. Seems this person ran into that problem.

If a video is only using the Creative Commons License you may use it, but otherwise contact the YouTube user before you use it.

Good luck.


Try adjusting the brightness and contrast of the picture on the projector. And it’s better to play with the light - direct only at yourself, not at the screen.


What is the file size difference between 8 bit and 10 bit raw video?

Instead of 8 bits per every channel and per every pixel you need 10 bits, which is 25 % increase of the raw footage.
Since the size of 8-bit raw footage is as such huge enough, 25 % of it is high enough price, isn't it?


Looking for suggestions on workflow/equipment: daily production of short presentation videos

There are camcorders that enable full-res uploads of their memory cards via WiFi.  Thus, if your room has connectivity to your intranet, you can leave the card in the camcorder, hit upload when you are done, turn the camera off when the upload is done, do your customer edits and uploads, then wipe the card for the next day's work, all without walking 200 meters away.

This $330 camera might do all you need: Canon VIXIA HF R60.

But any camera with WiFi upload capabilities will do--it's just a question of features, color matrix preferences, and cost.


I'm pretty sure it's impossible to hardcode subs without quality loss.

Unless there's a new technique developed in the last 4 years, the file needs to be converted to a lossless type then the subs need to be coded frame by frame and then compress again.

So: There is no technique that may be used to hardsub onto a compressed video without losing [more] quality.


How do you keep the silent part of a video?

Welcome to video Stack Exchange. This is an interesting question, and one that I have asked myself in the past!

If you are willing to spend money, check out the third-party Adobe plugin Awkward Pause (click here for demo video).
For a quick and dirty solution, you can try using this command-line tool I made last semester for a class. It is different from carykh's in the practical sense that it does not need to store png sequences of the images. (Therefore it requires less space.)

For your purposes: keep the first_speed = 1.0 and change the second_speed to a very high number, then compile in XCode.


Split video into equal duration segments

The issue with the frames are very likely the results of using h264 and not re-encoding the video. h264 usually doesn't have single frames (unless encoded with an intra profile) but groups of frames (GOPs), ffmpeg will cut at a keyframe position ie. at the end or beginning of a GOP. Or not in the case of your first approach, giving you issues with the affected GOPs.

The issue should be resolved by re-encoding (-vcodec libx264 -preset slow) or if that also yields errors transcode to a lossless codec like jpeg2000 (-vcodec libopenjpeg) cut your video and then encode into h264 again (or any other codec you may prefer).


help to animate an lower thirds that's positioned by expressions

There are some built-in functions just for this purpose. You'll find them in the interpolation folder in the expression drop-down. The simplest is the linear() function:

linear(t, value1, value2)

This function interpolates in a linear fashion between value1 and value2 based on the value of t, where 0 ≤ t ≤ 1. So if t=0 the function returns value1 and if t=1 it returns value2. It can also take five parameters, in the form

linear(t, tMin, tMax, value1, value2)

in this form, instead of using the range 0-1 for t it uses the range tMin to tMax.

Along with linear() there are also ease(), easeIn() and easeOut(). These interpolate with easing - meaning the animation slows down at the beginning or end, or both.

So in your example you could add this before the last line:

startTime = inPoint; //if you want the animation to start at the start of the layer
m = ease(time-startTime, 0, animationLength, 0, m)

this will smoothly animate from the layer's in-point for animationLength seconds to the calculated position.

Oh, BTW it's Javascript not Java. They are completely different languages. As they say, Java and Javascript are similar in the same way that "car" and "carpet" are similar.


Record video without Live View / Turning off Monitor while Recording

I can't record video using only the eyecup view

D5200 is an SLR, that is a single-lens reflex camera.

As opposed to mirrorless cameras, SLRs use a mirror which sends the image which passes through the lens to the top where, with the help of a pentaprism, the light is redirected to the viewfinder.

When you shot a photo, the mirror is raised, letting the light through. Behind this mirror is situated the film, or, in digital SLRs, the sensor.

Depending on the position of the mirror, the light arrives to either the sensor, or the viewfinder. Never both. You can, by the way, see it very easily: shot a photo at 1/2 of a second while looking through the viewfinder: you'll see that it becomes dark for half a second.

When you're recording a video, the mirror is raised during the entire recording: the light which passes through the lens hits directly the sensor. The same thing happens with Live View—the only difference with video recording is just that the signal received by the sensor is not recorded to the memory card.

Could you disable the LCD screen when shooting a video? I don't remember seeing anything like that in the options, and it wouldn't be particularly useful, since it's kinda useful to be able to watch what you're shooting. However, if you're using a remote controller (such as a tablet or a PC), then the LCD screen on the camera is turned off.

Why wouldn't the mirror move up and down constantly when shooting the video, letting you look through the viewfinder?

There are a lot of reasons for that, including the following:

The image will look darker, since a part of the light will need to reach the sensor.
Flipping the mirror up and down twenty-five to sixty times per second would make a lot of noise, and lead to camera shake.
Looking through the viewfinder when shooting a video isn't very practical.

The last point, specifically, leads me to another aspect. I imagine that your original question is motivated by the fact that it's difficult to view anything on the LCD screen in a bright day. For that, different accessories exist. Most popular ones are the viewfinder which fixes itself directly on the LCD screen like that:

as well as the external monitors which look like that:

There is a much less expensive alternative: use a tablet as an external monitor. However, the quality of a professional external monitor is much higher than a tablet, especially noticeable when you have to work outside on a sunny day.

  My problem is that, the monitor is one of the camera functions that drain most of my battery!!! I record three videos of 20 minutes and I it's dead, because the screen is always on.

No, it's not. While the LCD screen consumes some power, what actually drains the battery is the recording itself, i.e. the processing of the light received by the sensor into a video file on your memory card.

Note that there are accessories for that too. Power adapters make it possible to use the camera without battery, so if you're shooting videos in a studio, this could be an option.

For some DSLRs, Nikon also sells battery grips which are connected to the bottom of the camera. It looks like this:

However, it seems that Nikon doesn't have grips for D5200. There are third-party ones, but be careful when purchasing them, since low quality ones can damage your camera. High quality ones are usually rather expensive ($200 to $600).

Another solution consists of buying spare batteries. When one is depleted, you use another one, while recharging the first. Having three or four batteries is not that unusual.


Resolving timecode errors when capturing in FCP from MiniDV tape deck

Go into your capture settings and first try non VTR controllable device and if that does not work, there is a check box I believe for warn if there is dropped frames uncheck that, there may be another for stop capture if there is dropped frames, uncheck this as well


Okay thanks to @Mulvya I have found a solution how I can create CBR MPEG-2 TS with stuffing and constant constant bitrate and inside of it VBR VPID. The command for H.264 is:

$ ffmpeg -i <input> \
-c:v libx264 -x264opts nal-hrd=cbr \
-b:v 30M -minrate:v 30M -maxrate:v 30M -muxrate 35M -bufsize:v 25M \
-c:a aac -ac 2 -b:a 128k \
-f mpegts <output.ts>

This will create 35Mbps CBR TS and inside the TS the bitrate of the VPID will fluctuate a bit around 30Mbps, and also the bitrate of PID 8191 (null PIDs).
The command for doing the same but with HEVC is the following:

ffmpeg -i <input> \
-c:v libx265 -b:v 25M -muxrate 30M \
-x265-params strict-cbr=1:vbv-bufsize=25000:vbv-maxrate=25000 \
-c:a aac -ac 2 -b:a 128k \
-f mpegts <output.ts>

Here the TS will be with 30Mbps bitrate and the VPID will be around 25Mbps, this command will create also stuffing (null PIDs) around 5Mbps. Please also note that the bitrate after -x265-params should be in Kbps.


Using ffmpeg to convert files to OVG (libtheora) on Windows 10 results in corrupted Video Files

According to this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/ffmpeg/comments/fy2618/need_someone_to_test_libtheora_encoder_on_64bit/
The theora encoder is currently broken in the 64bits versions.
I tried this with the 32bits version and it now works as expected.

32bits builds can be found here: https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win32/static/

Greetings


Can continuous video capture damage my DSLR?

It depends on the camera.  Digital sensors such as those used in DSLRs produce heat as they capture images.  The main issue with extended video capture is the accumulation of heat in the sensor.  If it gets hot enough, it is possible that either a) quality can be reduced temporarily due to increased noise or b) at the extreme end, damage to the sensor could result.

In many dedicated video cameras, even high end professional models, fans or other cooling solutions are used to keep the sensor cool, but smaller sensors (such as in devices like gopros) are able to cool from simple convection.

Most modern cameras have temperature monitoring and can shut down when they get too hot, so you are unlikely to cause damage, but you might not be able to film as long as you'd like to.  The environment you are shooting in will also make a big difference.  If you are shooting inside in a cool room, it will be much easier for the sensor to keep itself cool than if you are shooting outside on a hot day.

Other than thermal issues, I can't think of anything other than just the general wear on the sensor.  Video obviously requires far more constant sampling of the sensor, so it has the potential to wear the sensor out more quickly, but the sensor was also designed for video and it's unlikely that the sensor will die due to use prior to the camera being significantly outdated, so it probably isn't a major concern unless you are planning on running it 10 hours a day, every day, for a long time.


Color correction/grading then editing in Premiere

In turns out all I had to do was grade in DaVinci Resolve and right click on the graded clip's thumbnail in the color environment and select Generate 3D LUT (CUBE).

Then in Adobe Premiere CC add the Lutemtri effect to an adjustment layer, expand basic correction, Browse for Input LUT.


How do I replace my organisation's event video camera?

Firstly, that camera has a 29 minute 59 second recording limit. If your speaker goes for longer than this it may not be suitable. Apparently this is due to some countries charging higher import duties for video cameras, but if it records less than 30 minutes it's not classed as a video camera. Yeah, I know.

The DSLR will probably cope better with low light due to its larger sensor, and it will give you a shallower depth of field, meaning that you can get a blurry background and sharp foreground, which has a more cinematic feel. Of course if you want the background to be sharp this may not be such a good thing, and it also means you will also have to be more careful about focus.

If you're filming from a long distance you might want to see which camera has the better zoom. At least with the t51 you can buy a longer lens.

Audio on that camera should be fine, you might want to make sure the level is set to manual, otherwise it will turn the volume up everytime the speaker pauses.

As for settings, that depends on how you want to shoot. You could set it to full auto and let it drive, or you could go full manual so that you're in control, or you could use something in between. The aperture and ISO etc. will depend on the light levels in the room, and how much depth of field you want.


What artifacts result from image stabilization in iMovie?

clabacchio's answer is generally correct but the major artifact you get other than loosing a part of your frame is that no image stabilization is perfect. Especially iMovie doesn't do the greatest job in tracking the camera movement compared to Premiere, After Effects or Nuke. In order to stabilize a video you need to "find" the movement of the camera and move the video frame in the opposite direction, if the algorithm doesn't do its job very well you will end up with an even weirder camera shaking, especially if you have very high amplitude shakes for a few frames, the software has a hard time to account for those and has to blend movement to make it appear less abrupt, its a quite complicated process as its not possible to remove certain amplitudes of movement without loosing absolutely everything of your frame.

Additionally if you have a lot of tilting going on you will have weird distortions in your video because obviously with a 2D video you can only correctly remove movement on the x and y axis e.g. panning of the camera.
These limitations are responsible for most artifacts in terms of picture distortion.


8 cores is nice but unnecessary. Adobe products rarely utilize all the cores unless you have multiprocessing enabling, which if you don't know: multiple frames are being rendered at the same time using different cores for each frame. But even at that I doubt you could get all 8 cores on board to do that because you need more ram dedicated to each cores processes.

An addition of .5Ghz for a sacrifice of 2 cores sounds like a deal to me! Plus if you choose to multiprocess you can utilize almost all of your cores, given you get the 16gb upgrade.

Now the video card is simply an upgrade according to benchmarks. With the +.5ghz on the CPU and an upgrade to the D700 it basically makes it render at an equivalent speed of a 8core 3.0ghz & D500

I know you didn't ask this but I think it changes everything: get an SSD (Solid State Drive). I have one in my PC and the boot up time is 5 seconds, I can only imagine the boot time with a light weight operating system like OSX. Applications open just as fast and finding files in your project/loading your project in a second. Not going to ramble on because I don't actually know too much about SSD's other than first hand experience. I do however recommend you go to this article, it has great visuals and explanations on SSD vs HDD!

In conclusion: I would get the 3.5ghz w/ Dual D700 and if possible, a solid state drive (ssd).


I'm having trouble scaling strokes in After Effects

If you created the shape with the rounded rectangle tool, then you won't initially have the same control over the transform as you would if you'd made the shape with the pen tool.  But there's a simple fix.  Just right-click on "Rectangle Path X" and convert to bezier path.  Now you'll be able to use the selection tool to draw a marquis around the individual corner points and animate them however you like (just tick the stopwatch next to "path" to create keyframes).

Just to be clear, don't animate the "Scale" transform property x value.  This will distort the lines, even after they're converted to a bezier curve.  Instead, animate the actual corners of the path.


How to apply track mattes to multiple layers?

You can use the silhouette alpha or stencil alpha modes on a matte layer, which will matte any layers below it.

Or if that doesn't work for the composition you can use expressions. Here's how:  make your first matte layer, with its mask, and then duplicate it and put it over another of the layers you want to matte. Now with both matte layers selected press m to show the mask path property for both. Select only the new layer, and while holding alt/option click on the stopwatch next to the mask path property to add an expression to it. You'll see a pick-whip (the spiral thing) next to the expression. Click and drag the pick-whip to the mask path property of the original layer. It should say something like thisComp.layer("the name of the original matte layer").mask("mask1").maskPath

To make those layers follow the original matte layer they shoul be parented to it as well.

Of course the simpler, faster to render way is to precompose the matte layer on its own and use copies of that comp as your matte layers. Why was it you don't want to precomp?


Is there any free video screen capture applications?

Open Broadcaster Software is a (good)

  Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.
  Download and start streaming quickly and easily on Windows, Mac or
  Linux.


Is in-canera noise reduction useful for video?

My general rule is to do as little in the camera as possible (exposure, shutter). Leave everything else for post. It's not expected that the camera will have the best available NR or compression etc, and if you do it while recording you can't undo it later.

Of course if you'll never do any post, do what gives you the best result.


FFmpeg tool graph2dot doesn't recognize some filters

The older upload did not cover those filters as they require GPL license and the older binary was built with a LGPL configure.

I've uploaded a 64-bit GPL3 Windows binary of graph2dot (with 4 dependencies) to http://www.datafilehost.com/d/6fcd14be

Source is at https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/master/tools/graph2dot.c

License is at https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/master/COPYING.GPLv3


Hitfilm has a free express version and a paid version.
It's a video editor and a compositor.


Producing a time-lapse video over 6 months or more

Finding specific models is outside the scope of this site as the ideal available models will change regularly, but you will probably want to look at a security camera to fill this roll.  Not a lot of cameras are designed to operate reliably in harsh conditions over long periods of time.  Outdoor security cameras are.

The next biggest problem is going to be the lack of power and the cold temperature.  Batteries do not work well at low temperature and if it is below freezing, you are going to see drastic reductions in battery efficiency making it difficult to keep the camera running.

You might also try outdoor hunting webcams.  They tend to be used to take photos at a slower rate and have more battery powered options. These might also work for your purposes.


Premiere Pro CC 2014: Select multiple items in media browser

That's the project window (not to be confused with the media browser, which you can use to browse your computer and import media assets into your project). You can add or remove assets to your selection by holding down CTRL / CMD while clicking on them.


What you are looking for is called a Broadcast Delay Processor. Unfortunately, these processors come as a hardware device that you feed your signal through, and therefore they are relatively expensive.

I did look around for a software based broadcast delay for you, but I was not able to find any.

Luckily though, you can use VLC (free and available on Linux and Windows) to stream with a delay. Check out this command:

  Display stream output

  --sout-display-delay=<integer [-2147483648 .. 2147483647]>
                             Delay (ms)
      Introduces a delay in the display of the stream.

In your case use it like with this value:  --sout-display-delay=30000

You can also record your webcam with VLC, see this article for details:
Recording webcam videos with VLC Media Player

In other words, using VLC with the provided commands you should be able to both record your webcam and stream it with a delay (at no cost).


If I use a normal build of ffmpeg how take advantage of video acceleration for scale?

The answer to your second question is yes. Change -c:v libx264 to -c:v h264_nvenc.  I use those builds as well.  If you use the option -encoders you can see a list of included video and audio codecs.
This is a good resource for encoding with FFMPEG.

See the warning on this question if you try this


Error when using the tee pseudo-muxer in FFMPEG

Use

-i input.mov -c:v libx264 -map 0:v -flags +global_header -f tee "output.mkv|[bsfs/v=dump_extra=freq=keyframe]output.264"

The required format of H264 bitstreams can differ based on how it is stored. Containers like MKV and MP4 require that the bitstream parameters be stored globally. Usually the encoder embeds them within the bitstream itself, which is how raw H264 bitstream (.264, .h264) is stored. Now, the encoder normally separates out this metadata or not based on how ffmpeg signals what the output muxer wants. But the tee muxer doesn't represent any container. It is an intermediate layer added to allow reuse of payload packets into multiple outputs. So there is no effective signaling from muxer to encoder.

In your particular use, the added complication is that the two output formats require different bitstream formats. The added global header tells the encoder to generate a MP4/MKV-compatible bitstream and then the bsf filter reinserts the metadata for the .264 output.


This is not something you should ever do in After-Effects. Primarily, After-Effects is a motion-graphics program, so it works in 2D 99% of the time. Something like this scene from ghost in the shell was probably created using a 3D-Program to model out the cylinder (Modo, Cinema4D, Maya or Houdini could have been used), and then send over to a compositing-program, of which I'm pretty sure they used Nuke. If I was to get a job like that, this is how I would've worked:

Track the original shot and create a 3D-Camera (using Pf-Track or something similar).
Create a mask around the Lady and export it as a matte-image-sequence.
Import the camera in your 3D-Program of choice and set the original Clip as your background, so you can see where the cylinder is supposed to be in space.
Model out the Cylinder and texture it accordingly.
Set the 3D-Kamera to fit the real camera, i.e. Lens-distortion, Chromatic-Abberation, Mono-Chromatic Abberation, etc.
Light the scene to perfectly fit the video-clip.
Cut out the back part of the cylinder using your matte-image sequence from prior.
Export the sequence as a tiff or exr with alpha-channel (the transparency)
Import the image-sequence into Nuke.
Add some finishing touches such as grain, glow, etc.


What factors are important for DSLR lenses for shooting video?

How important is sharpness? 1080p video is barely 2 megapixels, so it would stand to reason that an ultra-sharp lens is not really necessary to get sharp-looking video. Is this an accurate assumption?

It depends on the way the DSLR is capturing it's video from the sensor. The first method is the most obvious one, take the image and scale it, but there's also another; use only the pixels across the sensor's area that approximately "line up" with the pixels in the final resolution. I.e. in a 1080p image only every third or fourth scan line would be used resulting in one sensor pixel being used to produce one pixel in the video image.
I would hazard a guess that an "acceptably sharp" lens would be okay for video, though not ideal and probably for more reasons than image sharpness.

My approach for buying lenses for still photography has usually been to buy the best lens I can afford for the application I'm interested in. I'm wondering/hoping that it might be reasonable to buy a cheaper lens for video, and not feel like I'm sacrificing image quality, since the output resolution is so much lower than with stills. Is this just wishful thinking?

As my above answer suggested, there are other aspects of the lens you need to keep in mind when choosing a video lens and these may be:

Maximum aperture for low-light.
Fixed aperture for consistent exposure when zooming.
Image stabilisation is especially useful when not using a steadicam or other stabilising rig or device.
Ease of use, especially when it comes to the focus ring. Canon USM lenses in particular have a very smooth, usually well placed and grippy focus ring. Kit lenses aren't so good in comparison.

Obviously a large aperture is a bonus for video, since long exposures can't be used. But when shooting in low-light, again, it would stand to reason that I might be able to use a higher ISO to compensate for a slower lens, with less noticeable impact, since I'm recording at a much lower resolution than I would be for still photography. Is this also true? How fast of a lens do I need to be able to record in an average indoor lighting setting (no studio lighting), without a high ISO becoming noticeable?

I think you'll find with most typical video DSLR's is that the ISO performance for video isn't quite as great as you might assume, but it in no way bad. I'd say ISO 1600-3200 lives up to most expectations on the 18mp APS-C sensors, but beyond that it's quite noticeable.

Is image stabilization a pro or a con for hand-held video recording? I can imagine the sound of the motor might be a nuisance if picked up by the microphone. What impact does it have on the video itself?

For music videos and other videos where sound is not used, IS is fantastic and goes a long way to ensuring the video is jitter free, but if you need the sound and it's potentially a quiet environment, it might be prudent to use an external, higher quality mic attached to say, the hot shoe via a mount.

I'm guessing a USM for auto focus probably won't matter a whole lot, since what I've read suggests that live auto-focus doesn't work very well in video mode. But even so, I suppose a USM AF would be a bonus, if/when it does work.
The ability for a lens to retain focus when zooming seems like it might be of particular importance when shooting video on a zoom lens.

As above, Canon USM lenses (whether L or standard) have very usable focus rings. Provide good grip and are very smooth to focus with.

I personally use a Canon EOS 60D with an EF-S 17-55mm F/2.8 IS USM lens and find it a great combination at those focal lengths. The IS in that lens is quite remarkable and the USM focus ring makes it very smooth and accurate to focus. When I turn the IS off, I can instantly see the jittery movement from my hands trying to hold a 2kg camera setup.


I can't use more than one color in the same material in C4D

Moved from C4D a while back but It could be something to do with UV projection being set to a surface that isn't there.  Another reason for this could be flipped normals (in this case you would have to flip them back.  Have a look in the UV settings and change the projection type.  I'm not sure this is a lighting issue, you could always add a light to the scene but I'm under the impression there is ambient lighting by default.... Hope this helps.


If I understand your issue, it sounds as if you could duplicate the video to a second layer, apply whatever correction is needed to that layer, and reveal the layer where needed using a soft circular matte.


More recently I had moved to individual clip logging at the logging level and doing batch captures that would capture the individual clips.  With direct to disk systems, it also uses distinct files, so it's been a while since I did this.

That said, what I did for going through long sets of bulk captured footage back in the day was to place the clips on V2 or V3 in my timeline approximately around where I expected to use them.  If I thought they were interesting but didn't know where they would be, I'd put them in another sequence as a set of B-roll shots to pull from.

I then arranged them in to a rough cut, pulling in clips from my B-roll shots where needed.  This works best if you have a pretty decent familiarity with all your footage and a decent idea of your end result, but can also work (I'll be it kind of painfully) if you have less of an idea.  It just takes more culling passes to get it worked down and more video tracks to place clips on.

I also always shifted everything down as I built the rough cut and removed clips I wasn't going to use once I determined they weren't needed.


Choppy playback after rendering in Premier Pro CC

The first thing you have to do is to determine whether the choppiness is due to a bad source (your camera skipped some frames) or an inadequate playback system (your editor is demanding more from your hardware (most likely disk subsystem or GPU) than it can provide).  To do this, render out a small version of the video (such as 360p) and see whether that plays back with or without glitches.  If the render has glitches, you have a bad source file and fixing it will be very hard to do.  If that render plays back without glitches, the problem is likely that your hardware is not powerful enough to edit video as is.  In that case, you can try editing proxies, which are basically smaller versions of your original files.  Once you have all the edit decisions made, you can render out a full-res version.  But it still may not play back without glitches unless you have a good disk subsystem and a sufficiently powerful CPU/GPU.

To test the speed of your hard drive system (and to see what video specs it can support without glitching), run the Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test (if you have a Mac): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12 .  Or equivalent if you don't.


Encoding 720p 29.97 fps video, options in Adobe Media Encoder are 23.976, 24 or 59.94 fps

The Blu-ray standard doesn't allow this framerate with this resolution.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/622722

Your options are either upscale your resolution to 1080i/p or to change your framerate to 24fps.
The former will probably produces fewer artifacts.


Create a path with the Pen Tool first, copy the property path under:

  Contents > Shape 1 > Path > Path

Create a NULL object and paste the value you just copied to its position property.

You now have a NULL that follows your 2D path.

To enable the Z-axis of the NULL position, toggle the 3D Layer setting.

Click on the NULL position property and then get into the Graph Editor, in the bottom bar click the icon Separate Dimensions, this way you now have the 3 axis as separate properties.

You can see the Z Position is set at 0 without keyframes, despite the other 2 axis, play now with the Z Position and add keyframes as wished to give a 3rd dimension to your previously created 2D path.


Does a Content Management Tool/Software exist to help me quickly build video trailers from a large collection of content?

Convert all your transcriptions to subtitles (with timestamps) and save as one big plain text file, then just use ordinary search tools. This question more related to software for movies catalog.

But I think, you want not just keywords. You want "hot" places from your videos. I experimented a bit with automatic trailer creation:

https://files.catbox.moe/afoyu2.mp4
https://files.catbox.moe/hu91ip.mp4 (same, but other song)
https://files.catbox.moe/mzhc7v.mp4 (funny bug: credits as scene)

There videos was produced in full automatic way, including scene selection, beat matching and re-timing. As you can see, this is very cool, but not perfect. So, I not finished this tool.


How to use mouse drag gesture to position & size a still image in Premiere Pro CS6

Simply double click the Sequence Preview and you get handles to resize the footage and you can drag the footage around in the frame.


Some parts have audio out of sync after a master export

I don’t think you doing something wrong.
My suggestion is copy the sequence to a complete new and fresh library. This should load the clips again and hopefully get rid off any possible problems in the library.


Embedded Timed Text for closed-captioning? Is that possible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_17
"Timed Text" Format comes in many flavors

example tools would be ffmpeg, subler, mp4box


FFmpeg: Make video appear after x seconds

The timestamps of the overlay have to be shifted and overlay filter has to be told to delay start of overlay.
Basic form of command is
ffmpeg -i base -itsoffset X -i overlay -filter_complex "[0][1]overlay=enable='gt(t\,X)'" output

Audio processing and encoding will use default parameters.


AE Adjustment Layer Separate Effects on It & Its inverse

The easiest way is to use Track Mattes. This will let you use one layer to automatically 'mask' another layer without the need for manual masking.

Take your square adjustment layer and make any effect changes you want, then create a new adjustment layer (make sure its comp size to fit fully over the video). Place this new layer (background adjustment layer) below your screen adjustment layer.

Select the background adjustment layer and set the Track Matte to Alpha Inverted. This action will turn automatically turn off the visibility of the top layer which is normally the desired effect, but in this case we want to turn it back on. You should end up with a layer panel looking something like this:

What this has done is the background adjustment layer is using the screen adjustment layer as a window. So wherever the screen layer is, the background layer wont be visible.


Is Adobe Premiere Elements good enough for video editing?

In general, yes. It is a watered down Version of Premiere Pro for people that would be overwhelmed  by a full-featured professional editing tool and just want to cut their video easily and quickly.

This means that a lot of the features of Premiere Pro will only be available in a simplified variation, for example in the form of presets or complex effects being boiled down to a couple of easy to understand sliders and checkboxes that do most of the work 'under the hood'. You basically exchange precision control for ease of use and simplicity.

Checking the software's feature range

Look through the software manufacturer's website and documentation/manual to find out if it has all the features you want.

For example:

  color correction

From the Adobe Elements Features page:

  Pop a color for instant wow

  Get the effects you’re after with Guided Edits. Create visual drama by popping one or more colors in a scene and pushing everything else to black-and-white.

  Show your true colors

  Sliders let you adjust clip color as easily as adjusting the color in a photo.

The problem with this method is that Premiere Elements is a consumer-oriented product and not intended for professional video editing. So the marketing material is pretty inprecise as well. I have no idea what 'pop a color for instant wow' is supposed to mean. Ignore the marketing babble, use Google image search to find relevant screenshots or search for video tutorials to see the respective functions in action.

Looking for specific features

Google Search for [software name] + [feature designation].

For example, for video stabilization:

Google Search for 'Premiere Elements video stabilization'. The first result is this page which has a video that demonstrates the video stabilization feature in Premiere Elements. If you find no official links and instead get a couple of forum threads where people ask for that specific feature and get no useful answers, you can assume it isn't present in the software.

Also make sure that the results are up-to-date and apply to the current version of Premiere Elements. If you only get outdated search results, append the current version number/designation of the software to your search term or use advanced search to only find results that have been updated recently.


ffmpeg flash frames last still image in concat sequence

Based on the discussion at the bug tracker, this should be a workaround:

file path/to/001.png
duration 5
file path/to/002.png
duration 5.96
file path/to/002.png

and

ffmpeg.exe -f concat -safe 0 -i path/to/input.txt -vsync vfr output.mp4

The idea is to duplicate the entry of the last image. If you need the duration to be precise, then decrease the duration of the now 2nd-last entry by 1/fps seconds. For 25 fps video, that's 0.04s. If you don't do this, the output duration will be 0.04s longer.


Is firewire better than USB for live webcasting - Video

For the best quality and/or High Definition you want to use the fastest computer input you have that your streaming app will accept. That would normally be Firewire. Most online streaming sites will accept both USB or Firewire.

Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDxTalks/search?query=tedxsanantonio+2011. These are TEDx Talks we shot using a SONY PMW-EX1 with HD/SDI out and a few other SONY HDV cameras with SDI adapters ($200 each I think) into a Newtek Tricaster that was streaming and recording 1080i. The HD files were uploaded to YouTube.

Hope that helps


FfmpegGUI seems what you want: https://github.com/RomanSichkaruk/FFmpegGUI


FFMPEG - The result of converting video to hevc format lost audio (video only)

There is so much wrong with your command that it would take too long to list every issue. It will be simplest to just provide a corrected command:

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx265 -crf 28 -c:a aac -b:a 128k -filter:v "scale=650:-2,format=yuv420p" -tag:v hvc1 -movflags +faststart output.mp4

If the input audio is already AAC consider stream copying with -c:a copy instead of re-encoding.
Depending on the input format this may not be worth the time, energy, and effort. Results may not be satisfactory if you are re-encoding lossy content. The artifacts present in the input can complicate the compression and result in a higher than expected file size and/or lower than expected quality.

For more info see:

FFmpeg Wiki: H.265
FFmpeg Wiki: AAC


How to make flickering white spots and moving effects in After Effect

Stock footage. The spots and fast moving text are from old film leaders. When you are projecting film the first dozen feet or so is the "leader" it protects the inner film from dust and scratches, and lets you thread the projector. It often has the name of the reel written on it. That's what you're seeing over the video.

Prelinger film archive has plenty of old films with leaders, many of which are in the public domain. Composite one over your footage with the luma inverted, and adjust the brigtness / contrast and opacity until you get the look you want.

The "smoke" is probably ink in water. It's a common stock footage effect.


How to shoot my whole life from first POV?

I don't think that you really thought this through thoroughly. (what a sentence!)

On a serious note tho, it would mean that you always have to carry around batteries on you, enough for at least while you're awake, as well as storage devices which you'll want to backup, or at least have in a raid-system. All in all, it's firstly going to be very expensive.

Second, you will have to figure out a smart way to integrate a camera into your life. A simple solution could be to just strap a gopro to your head. This will be clunky, uncomfortable and not too pretty though. I believe the best option for you is to try and conceal the camera in some way, like buying glasses that have a camera in the frame or something alike.

Next, there's legality. As you already assumed, there are places and things that you are not permitted to film. There's also different laws in different states, countries and continents. If you go to europe, you (theoretically) would have to ask any person for a permit if that person is filmed in a way that he/she/it is distinguishable and doesn't get lost in a crowd. That will be a lot of work. Even in America, you will run into places and people you are not permitted to film more frequently than you might think. And: You will have to keep every document of permits you ever got, since you need the evidence in case someone asks you to show it.

And last storage. What you would want is probably a RAID-System, since it's way safer for your files which I assume will be very important to you. So, buying RAID-Servers with HDDs or SSDs for, say, 800-900tb? You usually run at about 100$ / TB with SSDs, which you'll probably need in order to write the video data fast. So the drives alone, excluding the RAID and server-systems at all, you'll run at about 100.000$ alone. That is not cheap.

Nonetheless, I am impressed with your ambition and hope you pull through, just know that it won't be a walk in the park.


How to animate the size (width and height) of a rectangle animation in after effects?

Why not just start with a full screen square and simply position it off the bottom of the frame.  You can then simply animate it moving up.  Even if you have something on the square, it will generally look better to slide in than stretch in.  If there isn't anything on the square, it will look the same either sliding or stretching in if I understand your scenario correctly.


Does Sony PMW-EX1R HDMI output contain audio?

HDMI does support audio, but it is possible that either the PMW-EX1R doesn't output audio over HDMI (which would seem odd to me, but is possible).  It is also possible that the settings are wrong on the Vidiu.  The Vidiu appears to support audio input from either the HDMI port itself or a line input.  If it is expecting signal on the line input, it might ignore the HDMI audio.

I'd check the documentation for the Vidiu to see if you can find anything about that since I don't see anything in the PMW-EX1R documentation to answer it.  You could also try plugging the PMW-EX1R in to another HDMI device to see if you get audio.  If not, you can also try running the audio output of the camera in to the line input of the Vidiu and monitor off of the headphone jack of the Vidiu.


Would rendering After Effects project in Premiere Pro decrease quality?

Importing from AE using dynamic linking and rendering in Premiere or Media Encoder will yield the same quality, but it does give you a little less control over the render settings.

While in AE you can choose whether to render with frame blending , motion blur, draft settings and so on, Premiere will always render your AE comp with the current settings. So when you're setting up your final render in Premiere, make sure you jump over to AE and turn on motion blur and frame blending and check that all your layers are rendering at full quality, not draft. Most of the time you won't want these on while you're editing because they slow down the preview so much.

As far as quality goes I believe that it uses the same render engine, so don't obsess about it. In fact re-encoding from an After Effects render is probably more lossy than importing using dynamic linking, because of the two compression stages. But you will never ever notice the difference one way or the other, trust me. Any miniscule losses due to things like quantisation errors and so on are going to pale into insignificance with quality lost in the compression to MP4.

Use the way that makes it much easier for you. For me that's importing via dynamic linking, allowing me to change things in the AE project without re-rendering all the time and having great big render files all over the place.


Does the screen resolution override the source resolution?

They both matter.  What really matters is the combination of the two.  Scaling always produces a loss of quality unless you are using an even multiple of the resolution.  This is because interpolation must occur during a scaling operation that isn't an even multiple or divisor of the original resolution.  This is due to the fact that some pixels must contribute to two different new pixels.

That said, it is even more complicated when deciding what to shoot with for your camera if it is coming from a camera.  The actual imaging sensor has a native resolution itself and will internally apply scaling to fit to whatever size you need.  In some cases, like DSLRs, all formats actually end up getting scaling applied since the actual sensor is much higher quality, but that also means the down-scaling can be more accurate if implemented properly.

If you know that you will only ever use output in a given resolution, start with that resolution as early as possible to make use of any source side optimizations that may exist rather than going to an unnecessary intermediate format that will only be scaled again (resulting in another interpolation).

If you are targeting multiple output formats, then use whatever the highest quality format you can is (even if it exceeds the maximum format you intend to output) since the more information you have, the more accurately you can downscale later.

The exception to this would be if the majority of your usage will be on the highest quality format that you will be distributing, then go ahead and use that quality for source since you will gain a little quality at that level at a cost of a little quality on the lower end videos.

As for the side question about screen size, yes, it can make a difference, but angle of view is what matters.  A 50 foot screen two miles away is still going to have less visible resolution than a similar pixel count screen that is 4 inches across and 3 inches in front of your face.  I touch on this in a little more detail in this answer.


AE - is there a way to import images via list and add random position to them?

Dump all your images into your timeline. Select one and alt-click the stopwatch on the position property, to add an expression. You need to write a javascript expression that returns an array of 3 numbers that will randomly position the image within the comp. This will do it:

seedRandom(index, timeless = true);
var x = random(thisComp.width);
var y = random(thisComp.height);
var z = random(thisComp.width);
[x, y, z]

IF you right-click the position property and choose copy expression only, you can then paste it to all the other images in your comp and they will scatter to randomly fill a cube the size of your comp (and as deep on the z axis as the width of your comp).

How it works

(read this if you want to be able to hack it to your own needs)

The seedrandom function sets the random seed for the random number generator, and we give it two parameters, index meaning the layer number, and timeless=true. By using the layers' index to generate the random number, each layer will have a different set of coordinates. Timeless=true means that the random number doesn't change over time.

var x = Math.random(thisComp.width) sets the variable x to have a random value somewhere between 0 and the width of the comp. If you wanted this to be a different value you could type in a number instead of thisComp.width. All three variables are set the same way.

The last line puts them into an array, which is what the position property needs.

To refine it you might want to use the guassRandom function instead of random - that will mean the images will cluster towards the centre, like a galaxy. You could also create a null and add three slider effects to it (in effects>expression controls). You could use them to control the width, height and depth of the cloud. To do that select the bit inside the random function that says thisComp.width, delete it and with the cursor inside the brackets grab the pick-whip (the little spiral near the expression twirl down) and drag it to the slider effect control.

The result should be that the line will now look like:

var x = gaussRandom(thisComp.layer("Null 1").effect("Slider Control")("Slider"));

Do that for all three dimensions using a different slider for each and once again copy the expression to all the layers. Now you can control how far they spread with the sliders, and even animate it, by animating your sliders, so for example they could all spread out from the centre over time.


A Sony Pro camera's spec shows it shots in 29.97fps, does it really mean it?

29.97 is shorthand for 30000/1001. There is no 29.970000... frame rate standard. FFmpeg will keep the native framerate (usually), so no need to specify an output -r value.


How to render MP4 using After Effects Script with Adobe Media Encoder

Better later than never.

Since After Effects CC 2015.3 (13.8) you can send your comp to AME queue and render it immédiate with the recently used template.

app.project.renderQueue.canQueueInAME --> false is there is nothing to render in AE
app.project.renderQueue.queueInAME(false); --> false = no render, true = render immedialty in AME

Adobe exemple :

// Scripting support for Queue in AME.
// Requires Adobe Media Encoder 11.0.
{
    if (app.project.renderQueue.canQueueInAME == true)
    {
        // Send queued items to AME, but do not start rendering.
        app.project.renderQueue.queueInAME(false);
    }
    else {
        alert("There are no queued item in the Render Queue.");
    }
}

My exemple of use :

var resultFile = new File(outputVideoPath + outputVideoName)
var renderQueue = app.project.renderQueue;
var render = renderQueue.items.add(comp);
render.outputModules[1].file = resultFile;

app.project.renderQueue.queueInAME(true);

More details : https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2230567


Can't extend image duration in Final Cut Pro X

Try this

At the end of your main timeline add a gap Option-W.
Drag and drop the still picture behind the gap into the main timeline.
Change the duration as needed.
Move the clip where you want it.

Your behaviour you described isn’t normal, it sounds like you do everything correct. Above is to eliminate any timeline issues from stacking and try to sort out the problem.


ffmpeg vf scale shifts colors to washed out

The video's color transfer characteristics (trc) and color primaries flags are not being set on the output video, which is causing the video player to use incorrect values for playback, resulting in washed out colors. When encoding, use the following FFmpeg flags to resolve this:
-color_trc smpte2084 -color_primaries bt2020

Note that these flags do not actually convert the the source material. These FFmpeg flags merely add flags to the output file that indicate to media players which values to use for these parameters. In this case, the question asker's media player chose incorrect values for these parameters since they were not set on the output video and displayed the video incorrectly.
For actually converting the video's content using specific transfer characteristics or primaries, see this wiki page on FFmpeg's colorspace filter.


I would use shell scripting thus:

find the creation date of the first jpeg and the creation date of the subsequent jpeg.
if the time difference is <= 1 second then we have the start of a sequence. If the files are named sequentially then maybe move them to a subfolder. If not then move (or copy) the files to create a sequence.
while the time difference is <= 1 second keep updating the last frame of the sequence
once we have a non-sequential file create a video using ffmpeg
set the new first frame to the non-sequential file
repeat for all the jpegs.
concatenate all the videos

ffmpeg can create a video from an image sequence where the files are named frame_000.jpg, frame_001.jpeg, frame_002.jpg… thus:

ffmpeg -i frame_%03d.jpg -r 1 output.mp4

the -r 1 option sets the frame rate to 1 per second. If the sequence doesn't start with 000 then you can use -start_number 123 to specify the first frame. more details here


How to remove video streams from .wmv with FFmpeg?

Apparently, I needed to specify pcm_s16le as the audio codec. Other files (not in the snippet from the question) where using aac, .wmv required me to specify otherwise.


Is it possible to set more than one motion tracking point in After Affects CS6 at the same time

Sounds like you need to track the camera in 3D. If you're using CS6 then the best thing for tracking the camera in 3D is the 3D camera tracker (who'da thunk it).

To fire it up Choose Animation > Track Camera, or choose Track Camera from the layer context menu, or choose Effect > Perspective > 3D Camera Tracker, or (because there's always 3 ways to do anything in AE) in the Tracker panel, click the Track Camera button.

After tracking the camera in you footage you have a virtual stage, where any 3D objects that you add will look as though they're in the 3D space of your footage, so if you move past them they respect the parallax of your camera's viewport. It makes it super easy to add elements to a moving camera scene.

Here be tutorial and the Adobe page about it.

Oh and to actually answer your question, yes you can have more than one track point per layer. For 2D tracking where I'm not getting steady results I often make a dozen or so track points and average out their position with an expression. This gives good results on difficult footage. To add track points, select the layer, choose Animation>Track Motion. Set the track type to Raw in the tracker panel. Then in the timeline you'll see the Motion Trackers property has been added to the layer. Expand that and you'll see tracker1, expand that and you'll see Track Point 1.

Select that and choose Edit>Duplicate or hit cmd/ctrl+D. The track point will be duplicated. Note that it will be right on top of the other one, so you'll have to move it in the comp window or adjust the feature centre properties. Repeat as many times as you need.

Now when you go to Analyze using the tracker panel it will analyze all your track points at once.

Oh and FYI here's the expression I use when I'm adding all the track points together. I apply it to the position of a null or whatever it is I want to move:

trackpoints=10;
vsum=[0,0];
for (i=1; i<=trackpoints; i++){
    vsum+=thisComp.layer("tracked layer name").motionTracker("Tracker 1")("Track Point "+i).featureCenter
}
vsum/trackpoints

trackpoints is the number of track points you're using. and "tracked layer name" is the layer with the points on it.


Position the anchor point in the exact center of the smaller circle

You can create a different file by filling in the desired region in red.

Go to website: WOLFRAM DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM

And enter the code below:

image=Import["C:\\Users\\Image.png"]
value={ImageDimensions[image]}-{Mean[ImageValuePositions[image,Red][[All,#]]]&/@{1,2}}

Enter the values offered for the anchor point. In this case: 386.995 and 173.982


Import editable Photoshop text layers into Premiere pro cc 2015?

You cannot bring them in directly, the way you describe.

After Effects allows you to import your PSD files from Photoshop, making use of editable layers and text.

Premiere does not.

However, you can get this to work by using Adobe Bridge, which comes with the CS suite. Bridge has a utility called Dynamic Link, which allows you to work in realtime in both PS and PPro. You then import in your PSDs with Dynamic Link / Abobe Bridge, and any updates made to the PSD title cards in Photoshop appear immediately.

This allows more than one person to work on a project, one on Chyron and one on cutting.

The only downside is you have to flip back and forth between the two- or use a multi-monitor setup, with PS on one and PPro on the other.

Only other option is to do you edits in AE, where you can bring in the PSDs as actual PSDs with Text, not just the layers.


how to do an amplitude modulation in Ableton Live

If you have Max4Live (included in Live9 Suite), it should be easy enough to build a Live device that does the amplitude modulation exactly the way you want.

Otherwise, look for Ring Modulator and Amplitude Modulation VST plugins. The easy way to write a Ringmod plugin is to just do amplitude modulation. So the free plugins are likely to do what you want. Actually modeling an analog ring modulator takes more effort, but maybe that is the sound you are really looking for.

If you happen to have Absynth, I'm pretty sure you can accomplish AM or ring modulation on arbitrary incoming signals with that.


Software that exports into multiple formats and sizes?

If you are looking something that can do that at the same time and is reasonably well developed, then you are probably looking at avconv. It has the same base as ffmpeg, which has already been mentioned, but currently doesn't have a GUI (to the best of my knowledge, i've not gone looking, since i have no need for it).

Let's look at an example of how you would go to create a file format that you have described there.

avconv -i video.mp4 \
 -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 3 -c:v libxvid -s hd720 -q:v 7 video720.avi \
 -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 3 -c:v libxvid -s hd1080 -q:v 7 video1080.avi \
 ...

You can just go on and on adding bits, and it will do encoding in parallel (which is much more efficient approach than sequential encoding on the modern multicore systems).

I didn't give you an example of encoding into WMV, simply because i've never done that, and i have actually recompiled my avconv to disable this, but it is possible if you feel that it is important for your system.

Depending on your operating system the installation process will be different. On Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux you do that by just typing:

sudo apt-get install libav-tools

But it may be necessary for you to build your own binaries. To do so you need to get the original source code from libav.org and then run:

./configure --prefix=/home/USERNAME/.local --bindir=/home/USERNAME/bin \
  --enable-gpl --enable-version3 \
  --enable-encoder=ENCODER

USERNAME is your username, and you can change bindir if you don't have bin in your execution path. You can also enable any encoder that you will need by checking which ones are available and adding them via --enable-encoder. To check available ones, just run:

./configure --list-encoders

But in all likelihood you will have no need to recompile unless you are doing something strange.


How can I color correct a footage from a 7D using the CineStyle Picture Style

The CineStyle picture style provides you with a flat, desaturated image: providing the best dynamic range of any of the picture styles for Canon DSLRs. Technicolor provide you with a file that you can apparently import into your editing software to help you grade your footage. However, I never figured out how to use it and frankly, I don't think one needs to. I think your time would be better spent learning how to color grade rather than learning how to import an .mga file. You don't need the file to grade your footage. I think it is more of a preset kind of thing – used to return the flat, desaturated image into a contrasty, attractive one albeit with more detail in the shadows and highlights than if you'd used any of the inbuilt Canon picture styles. However, this is something you can do yourself, and if done right, you will achieve better results than any preset can give you.

Most editing programs will have a color correction filter. Some programs have better than others but most should satisfy your needs. However, I will recommend a good piece of free software called DaVinci Resolve Lite. Like I said, it's free, and it's awesome.

Sorry I couldn't give you any help with the .mga file.


Is it correct to mix tripod and handheld footage?

You're asking for an opinion, because there's no rule book to consult here. So, IMO...

'Pro' movies are shot with all manner and mixtures of techniques, including dolly, mount, rig, crane, Steadicam, fixed, zoom, drone etc. I think many people would find a short film that mixed tripod with deliberate "shaky cam" to be a bit jarring without a good cinematic justification, but just mixing IS handheld with tripod should be no sin. Story trumps technique anyway -- if your viewers are watching how the camera moves, your story isn't compelling -- or they're film students. (-:


You're not going to be able to replicate the precise "look" of 59.94, even with special plugins. This, due to the fact that interlaced is in many ways like:

Double Frame Rate - Half Resolution.

Think of 59.94i at 1080 really as 119.88 at 540p.

Interlaced lines are scanned odd lines first, then even. So you technically have a first set of lines which are actually one frame, with the other set of lines missing. These lines are then displayed back to the viewer odd/even//odd/even//odd/even etc.

That said, you get smoother motion with i vs p. You are able to achieve better slow motion in post production with i vs p, however, p, is of course the preferred format to most. A single frame being a single frame.

NOW THAT SAID...

Looks aside, in order to output your video from PPro, all you will simply want to do is import the footage material in (original); right mouse click; new sequence from clip; make any edits/trims, etc.

It is really unnecessary to make any additional adjustments from the timeline in Premiere, because what you ultimately want to do is use Frame Blending when you export.

After you've made any adjustments, go to export, choose the format you need; 59.94i, whatever codecs they are requiring, many are already built in; others may need to be downloaded.

Ensure you turn on Frame Blending, IF your source material is progressive.

Frame Blending will force interpolation of the frames during the rendering of your new video outputs, using two side by side discreet progressive frames to create a new "quasi" interlaced frames, twice as many frames as your progressive source at the correct frame rate.

It isn't quite the same "look" wise as actual Interlaced source material; however, specification wise it should meet their needs; and to the average viewer most will not notice.

Do not however use Frame Blending if you are using Interlaced material. And do not double the effect by applying it to the clip in the timeline (which you can do by right clicking the clip; Under Frame Blending/Field Options); and then stack it with another Blend on export. Only one is necessary, and my recommendation is simply allow Adobe Media Encoder handle the p to i conversion.

Lastly, if you have material at lower resolution, AME will be upscaling it to get to 1080. If so, you can use the Use Maximum Render Quality Checkbox at the bottom of the export panel window.

Be advised this will likely increase your rendering time by multiple fold.

In regards to the audio; they have peaking requirements. You will need to apply a Dynamics and/or Limiter filter in the Audio Mixer Window Filter Dropdown. Limit to the specifications they have stated.

In regards to center safe, if you're given material that isn't center safe, you're going to need to talk with them about that, as you'll have to do a push in and do manual pan and scan using the motion filter, adjusting the frame position on the canvas to get it to 4:3 safe.


How to export source timecode and clip names as an overlay in Premiere?

I've finally found out the answer. It is possible, but fiddly.
For the source timecodes for every clip:

Duplicate your sequence.
Find the Timecode effects in the Effects panel and apply it to the first clip in the sequence.
Double click the clip and go to Effects controls and make sure the Timecode Source effect is set to "Media".
Then copy the first clip on the timeline.
Select all video clips on the timeline and then Paste Attributes, just the Timecode is needed, untick everything else.

You will now see all the clips have the original source timecode and this can be compared to the original master clip.
To show the filenames of every clip on a given track:

Add a transparent video layer.
Add it to the timeline.
Add the Clip Name effect to it.
Double click on the transparent video clip and go to Effects controls and select under File Name - Display choose - FileName
and under Source track choose the track that the clips are on on the timeline.
You may need to move this down a bit to avoid overlapping the timecode.

If you need to add filenames from another video track, just copy the Clip Name effect on your transparent video layer, and paste it below the existing effect, then adjust the position and size of each effect.


Should be mentioned that the 600D isn't exactly the best DSLR for video out there. The artifacts that you are experiencing in your footage are the result of high compression. Check your video settings if you can increase the bitrate or choose a different codec other than h.264/AVC if Canon offers one by now for their DSLRs.

This thread might be interesting to read: http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/280/8433

Also a possibility would be to install Magic Lantern on your camera. This enables HDMI output which you could capture (will have a LOT better quality than h.264 encoded footage) and you should have more options about the video codec. On the Canon 5D Mark II they even enabled raw video capture to the CF card but I'm not sure if this is available for other models yet.
Though apparently you loose audio capture at the moment, which might be neglect-able as the audio capture on DSLRs is usually pretty bad. If you capture with HDMI then you can use an HDMI audio injector which aren't expensive so you don't end up with a separate audio and video file that you have to synchronize.


Editing Audio after cutting into clips - Premiere Pro / Audition

If you're willing to use third party plug-ins: Alex Audio Butler (alexaudiobutler.com) is perfect for this: it'll create correct voice levels (even withing clips) automatically for you while you edit.

(disclaimer, I am the developer of this tool)


Is it possible to control GoPro recording without the official app?

For the GoPros with wifi (Hero3, Hero3+ or HD Hero/HD Hero 2 with a wifi bacpac), yes it is possible. They essentially work as a web server, so you can connect to that, and control the camera. It seems this is not officially documented anywhere, but a number of people have figured out how it works.

So turn on the wifi on the camera, then you can connect to it from your computer.
You can view the webserver by going to http://10.5.5.9:8080 in a browser. This will let you view photos or videos stored on the camera.

To control the camera, you can send HTTP requests. eg to turn the camera on: http://10.5.5.9/bacpac/PW?t=password&p=%01 (where password is the GoPro wifi password). And to trigger the shutter: http://10.5.5.9/bacpac/SH?t=password&p=%01

All of the commands are listed in this Github: KonradIT/goprowifihack

There are also several unofficial apps for connecting to and controlling the GoPro, some of these are open source. eg KonradIT/HeroProApp or moohtwo/Android-GoPro-Streaming.


After Effects render&preview doesn't match timeline

The first step if you ever suspect After Effects might have buggy behavior is to purge the Memory / Disk Cache (Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache).

You mention you already tried this, and that it cleaned it up at first, but then later on the buggy frames returned. In that case, you could consider temporarily disabling the disk cache completely:

  Choose Edit > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache (Mac OS), and select, or deselect Enable Disk Cache.

Other things to consider:

Are you using any unusual file formats or codecs in your project?
Are you rendering to an unusual file format or codec?
Does the same project file on a different computer / operating system work?
General sanity checks (you aren't running out of RAM, disk space, etc)


Best way to create external alterable configuration file to be read by After Effects and Java

I would look at Templater Rig to see whether this does a fair amount of what you need.
https://aescripts.com/templater/
You can also import JSON files directly into AE without conversion to CSV first:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/data-driven-animations.html


Does filming in 30p as opposed to 60p provide a brighter video?

Yes and no.  Shutter speed is what determines how long light is gathered for and is not the same as frame rate.  Frame rate does place a logical limit on your shutter speed as you need at least one exposure per frame in most cases, but there is nothing preventing you from using much faster shutter speeds than your frame rate.

Some video cameras will even allow for shutter speeds slower than the frame rate and will simply record the same image on more than one frame, though this arguably lowers the meaningful framerate (though faster frame rates will result in a closer match up to the exposure time).

As a general rule of thumb, it's best to use a shutter speed at least twice that of your frame rate, so you would use 1/60 exposure or faster for 30fps and 1/120 exposures for 60fps.

This is partially a throw back to old mechanical film cameras where the film advanced during the time that the shutter was not open.  They used a rotating plate and when the plate was over the lens, the film moved forward.  This is why you will see shutter speeds on some professional cameras measured in degrees.  This corresponds to the number of degrees of the circle that were open.  ie, a 180 degree shutter speed means that the shutter speed is twice that of the frame rate.  90 degree shutter speed would be 4 times the frame rate.

As long as the shutter is timed properly to the frame capture, there is no reason you can't use longer shutter speeds, but it may increase the appearance of motion blur and give an odd feeling to the footage unless that is what you are going for.

Reasons to use slower shutter speeds are to let in more light or to increase motion blur, reasons to use faster shutter speeds are to let in less light or decrease motion blur.

Reasons to use lower frame rates are to save space and to give a more film like quality.  Reasons for higher frame rates are for smoother motion and more video data to work with (better slow motion, stabilization, etc).


OpenDML is just a slight difference in the internal arrangement of an AVI file allowing it to go beyond the 2GB limit and supports a few other new features.  It shouldn't have any particular impact on the data within the file, though I'm unsure why one file was stored that way and the other was not.  Perhaps the software you were using only includes the extra format data if going beyond 2GB.


I'm quoting this from here:
Drive read offsets
Very few CD drives actually start reading data from audio CDs exactly at the sector requested by DAE software. There are drives that are off by over 1 sector (1/75th of a second), but most are off by much less (1/250 to 1/350 second). Most modern CD drives have "Accurate Stream" technology, so there's no "jitter", meaning in this case that the variance is consistent from read to read, and will tend to be the same for all drives of a certain make & model.
The AccurateRip database allows one to find out the read offset, which is normally constant for given make & model of CD drive. This number can then be used by DAE software to ensure that each track is ripped from its exact start to its exact finish.
The offset is given in samples. One "sample" on an audio CD is 4 bytes, consisting of a 2-byte left-channel value and a 2-byte right-channel value. There are 2352 bytes, or 588 samples, in each sector of an audio CD, corresponding to 1/75th of a second of sound. Therefore, an AccurateRip offset of +134 means the drive consistently delivers data from 536 bytes behind (earlier than) where it was asked to read from, so the DAE software needs to look that far ahead (hence the positive offset) in order to get the right data.
When offsets are taken into account, the DAE software might have to ask the drive to "overread" into the lead-in or lead-out portions of the disc, where there's no audio data. Some drives can't be asked to do it, some drives will try to do it and fail, and some will just return null samples (a stream of "0" bytes, a.k.a. digital silence).
If the drive can't overread, then there will be samples missing from the extracted track. The DAE software can correct for this by padding the track with digital silence so it's the correct length.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...
Basically both rips are accurate, since the DAE software should correct the situation


Yes. The companies Spatz-Tech, HDFury and Faroudja have products with that functionality in their portfolio. But there are selling restrictions in many countries.


How does YouTube convert between different videos resolutions?

Youtube stores whatever you upload and transcodes to other formats using their own versions of multiple compression formats including h.264 and webm.  All transcodes go from the same original file that you upload and are stored after transcoding.  Youtube may change the options used from time to time and save new encodes of the video.  Encodes are generally pre-rendered upon upload and then used from disk as far as I can tell.


How can I add video effects like these to my video

Everyone's clueless when they start. Dive in :)
I reckon this was made with Adobe After Effects.
It's a combination of shapes, masks, and text animating on, with lots of easing and bouncing on the movement.
This is a great but old free tutorial on the basics of after effects:
https://www.videocopilot.net/basic/
The easing and bouncing might have been done manually, but more likely using something like the Mt MoGraph Motion plugin.


Link audio to opacity effect of an image in After Effects

The easiest way to do this is to use an expression. First you convert audio to keyframes. Then set an expression on your opacity channel. If you drag the pick-whip for the expression to the audio keyframe property you'll get an opacity that bounces all over the place like crazy, so we're going to have to do a bit more to it.

First, in the opacity channel for your layer, set up a variable like so:

var audioAmp = thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider");

(the expression on the right of the = is just what you get if you drag the pickwhip to the 'Both Channels' property).

We want to sample that property over time, to allow for slow fadeouts.

First, to make it easier to tweak we can set some properties that we can edit until we get the best results.

var numSamples = 200;
var sampleSpacing = thisComp.frameDuration;
var threshold = 5.0 //<--you set this

numSamples is the number of times we sample the amplitude to get a smooth average. The higher it is, the smoother the result, but also the slower the script is. If you set it really high you may want to convert the expression to keyframes once you've got it working right. The values I put in here are just pulled out of my hat, you'll have to tweak them until they work for you. This is the main setting that you can tweak. Have a go at setting it really high, like 2000 or low like 10, and see how it works.
sampleSpacing is the time between samples. Setting it to thisComp.frameDuration means one sample per frame. You could do a smaller sample, but given that the audio amplitude property only has one keyframe per frame it might not really help.
Threshold is the audio threshold above which no fading happens. Again you will have to tweak this depending on the audio level of your material.

Ok, here comes the hoo-hah.

var sum = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < numSamples; i++){
  sum += audioAmp.valueAtTime(time - i * sampleSpacing);
}
avAudio = sum / numSamples; //the average audio for all the samples
//now decide if the audio is low enough to start fading
if (avAudio < threshold) {
  //normalises it to 0-100% where 100% = the threshold
  100 * avAudio / threshold;
} else { //audio is above threshold
  100;
}

Basically it just averages the audio out for the last numSamples samples. When you have a sound followed by silence the average will go from the volume of the sound to zero in numSamples * sampleSpacing seconds, or in this case 200 frames.


Errors in FFmpegSource2 plugin source filter for AviSynth

The short answer, if you're familiar with AviSynth

You don't need to use LoadPlugin(), if you copy the four files in the plugin:

FFMS2.avsi
ffms2.dll
ffms2.lib
ffmsindex.exe

to the plugins directory of your AviSynth installation (see below for its location).

That's all. Then you directly use it in your AviSynth script calling its function(s), mostly the function

FFmpegSource2()

(or FFMS2(), which is the same, or FFMS2("your_file.ts", atrack=-1)) in concordance with documentation, but not DirectShowSource().

The long answer

If you're beginning with AviSynth, the rest of the answer will walk you through the pitfalls.

AviSynth versus AviSynth+

AviSynth has two versions, denoted AviSynth and AviSynth+, at the homepage:

  Official builds
  v.2.6.0 ST, 32-bit at SourceForge
  ...
  Forks
  AviSynth+: new features, backward compatible.

AviSynth 2.6.0 is a very old version, in spite of its title as an "Official build". You're better off with the new version for FFMS2. Download it from the official Github repo pointed to from the homepage.

The directory of plugins for AviSynth+

When you install the Github fork of AviSynth+, check the box Customize plugins directory to find the paths without changing them. Copy the four plugin files mentioned above to C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins+ or to C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+, depending on your version of Windows. The + at the end of the directory is for AviSynth+ instead of AviSynth.

The file FFMS2.avsi in the FFMS2 plugin is the same for both architectures.

If you copy it to the wrong directory, you may see this in Windows Media Player:

Cannot load a 64 bit DLL in 32 bit Avisynth:
    'C:/Program Files (x86)/AviSynth+/plugins+/ffms2.dll'

which means that you should move those files to C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\.

Choose the appropriate media player

If you play the .avs file with Windows Media Player, you may see  a .MP4.ffindex file for each file that you use with FFMS2() and the .avs file shows no image and no sound, only a musical note that looks like standard Windows.

Windows Media Player is not able to play back .avs files. Use Media Player Classic — you may get it with very useful K-Lite Mega Codec Pack — simply download and install it. Be sure to select the Mega pack, because the Basic pack doesn't contain the player.

Convert the script to a media file

Another possibility is to convert the .avs file into a media file, for example with FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -i your.avs output.mp4

FFmpeg chooses appropriate codecs automatically by the extension of the output file) and play back the result in (almost) any media player.

You may download the ready-to-use FFmpeg from Zeranoe's page — just unpack the downloaded archive file and add the path to ffmpeg.exe into your PATH environment variable.


DIY 120fps video recording and instant replay

I believe the answer is no, no, and no, for several reasons.

First off, GoPro don't support their cameras as broadcast cameras.  They are person video recording devices.  I tried using the HDMI output of a Hero3+ camera to feed into a studio broadcast system, and when it didn't work the response was "it's not supposed to".  The Hero3+ (and I presume the Hero4) do have ways of sending video over wifi so that you can get a vague idea of what the camera sees, but it's nothing like full resolution.  So the first "no" is that you cannot really extract good video from the GoPro in real-time.  You have to record it and them dump the card.

The second "no" is that 120fps is just barely starting to be supported at the video transport layer.  Yes, people have been talking about gaming consoles that can achieve 120+ fps for some time, but actually driving that kind of speed to a monitor?  Very hard.  And impossible with the HDMI output of the Hero4, which is limited to 60p: https://gopro.com/support/articles/hero4-hdmi-output-information

The third "no" is getting that 120fps input into your computer.  There is screen recording software that can scrape 120fps output from your GPU, but recording 120fps of 720p (or greater) is still a very specialized thing that's outside your "cheap recording and instant replay system" parameters.  There are video capture cards that claim 120fps recording, but they are cheating: they are multiplexing 4 SD signals (thus really recording 4x 30 fps and calling it 1x 120 fps).


How to zoom in on (or pop out) particular screen area's

I think the person in the tutorial recorded, cropped and placed each individual element in his video.

You could give "ZoomIt" a try. It's a tool from Microsoft that lets you zoom while recording your screen.


https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/5339/match-two-sounds-with-a-level-of-certainty/5344#5344

Similar post, but the conclustion was that while the technology exists, it is mainly used to confirm what a song is etc...but you could for sure look into the Shazam or Soundhound APIs to see if you can create a code/script that would do it for you

However if the song, has a point in which the song is literally the only thing playing, you could use a software called pluraleyes, to sync your podcasts to that song, if they find a sync point, most likely it will be that song...

This may or may not work to some degree, there is obviously a high level of error while trying to make it match, the more of the song playing that is not mixed with anything else, the higher the likelyness of this working.