Find duration only with ffprobe in Windows

First, if you just want information about a file, you should probably use "ffprobe", not "ffmpeg". Otherwise you'll get an answer, but you'll also have an error return status.
As to your real question: By convention, ffmpeg reserves STDOUT for binary video and audio data only. Everything else, including all the possible kinds of informative text, is sent to STDERR.
So, try changing your code to:
ffprobe FILENAME.EXT 2| find "Duration:"  (for a *nix shell)
or
ffprobe.exe FILENAME.EXT 2>&1 | findstr Duration (for a Windows shell)


I am not sure about Filmora 9, but Google Motion Tracking. You just need to roughly track the sign and make a blur bigger than the sign, so it's allways covered. If you want to exactly censor the sign, you need to track the corners. But I'd think filmora can't do that


Screen capture AND audio recording in ffmpeg

The solution seems to be to use both a different video and audio encoder. This line works:

FFmpeg/ffmpeg -video_size 1024x768 -framerate 25 -f x11grab -i :0.0+0,0 -f alsa -ac 2 -i pulse -acodec aac -strict experimental output.flv

I couldn't get it to work without -acodec aac -strict experimental, contrary to the HOWTO on ffmpeg wiki.

The error message I'm getting is:

Output #0, flv, to 'output.flv':
    Stream #0:0: Video: flv1 (flv), yuv420p, 1024x768, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.34.100 flv
    Stream #0:1: Audio: adpcm_swf, 0 channels
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.34.100 adpcm_swf
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (rawvideo (native) -> flv1 (flv))
  Stream #1:0 -> #0:1 (pcm_s16le (native) -> adpcm_swf (native))
Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:1 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

Neither could I get this to work using:

FFmpeg/ffmpeg -video_size 1024x768 -framerate 25 -f x11grab -i :0.0+0,0 -f alsa -ac 2 -i pulse -acodec copy output.mpeg

which contains -ac 2 probably in the right place. The error I'm getting repeatedly is:

[mp2 @ 0x7faffc007da0] Header missing

This most likely is a bug/regression.

To sum up, I've found a probable bug in both ffmpeg and on ffmpeg's wiki. And it looks like I'll have to buy the promised beer for myself ;)


Controlling animation presets programmatically

Yes, that's perfectly possible, though it might be more work than just doing the animation yourself.

You'll have to find all of the changes that the presets apply to the layer and adapt them with expressions that respond to the value of the slider. To find all of the changed properties of a layer use uu (double tap the u key). You'll have to apply preset 1, find all of the changes it makes, and write an expression that mimics them, then revert the layer and apply preset 2 and do the same thing. Then in your expression for each changed property you'd have:

var ctrl = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
if (ctrl === 0){
    value; //use the current value of the property
} else if( ctrl === 1){
    // the expression that mimics preset 1
} else {
    // the expression that mimics preset2
}


There are a plethora of capture cards on the market in that general price range from numerous manufacturers.  There are two main things to worry about with these devices.

First, for analog inputs, such as component video, you need to consider the quality of the analog to digital converters as well as what capabilities they have for scaling and format.  Not all converters can handle arbitrary analog resolutions (or digital for that matter).  You want the highest quality converters to digital you can get for the resolution you need.  For SD feeds, that may actually mean getting an older, cheaper device that has good converters, but doesn't support HD (and doesn't need as advanced of a hardware encoder.)

Second, once you have a digital signal, the quality of the hardware encoder matters greatly.  HD video is very, very large in raw data, so heavy compression has to be applied to store it and make it playable.  This compression is generally a complex and time-consuming process, but specialized hardware can allow for real-time encoding that can keep up with a live feed.  The quality of the encoder will directly impact the quality and size of the end video.

As far as comparing between one device and another, looking for reviews or video samples from each is probably your best bet.  As there are many devices out there, you are unlikely to find people who have used both and can compare them directly for you.  You might have more luck with finding people with first hand experience of popular devices like Matrox's MXO2 or BlackMagic Design's Intensity, but those are (slightly) more expensive professional devices.


Adobe premiere is lagging in preview window

Premiere's preview isn't simply a viewer and can't make as much use of caching as it needs to be able to scrub quickly in any direction.  Interframe compression also trips it up for the same reason.  I believe it also processes the entire amount of data.  The video size you are using is pretty large and bandwidth intensive, so unless you are working from very fast disks (solid state) (or a fast CPU if it is heavily compressed) and have fast RAM to deal with the rate of uncompressed data, it is easy for the playback to fall behind.

The related questions talk a bit more about methods of getting around this (such as letting Premiere finish generating conformed versions of the video or reducing the resolution of playback so that not all pixels have to be rendered).


Is it possible to search all markers in Premiere?

You can use the Project panel search box to find your specific markers, and even save your search as a Search Bin by clicking the folder icon with the magnifying glass.

You can then search within each matching clip for the specific marker by first selecting that clip in the Project panel, then using the search in the Markers panel which you can open by going to Windows > Markers

You can find additional information about searching your project in Adobe's help documentation on finding assets.


Make Youtube live streaming available to another country after end streaming

YouTube can record the live stream so that it can be played back any time afterwards.

You need to select archiving of the live stream, and then publish that archive.

I'm pretty certain the default is to archive the live stream, so you should check it in your settings, in case you have disabled it for some reason.


Adobe Audition Exporting longer audio track than was originally given

What do Audition/Premiere show as the bit-rate of the audio file in the original source video? What do iMovie/Premiere show as the bit-rate of the audio file when imported back in?

Sounds like possibly the source video is indicating an incorrect bit-rate, i.e. actually recorded at 48kHz, but being identified/treated/exported as 44.1kHz in Audition, which ends up giving it a longer run time. The audio pitch should also be slightly lower when imported back to iMovie/Premiere, possibly not enough to easily notice.

I would check the audio properties in the various tools, and see if that's the issue. If you check the full run time of the clip vs how many seconds extra audio, it would be easy enough to calculate if this is the problem. I would create a project in Premiere where you import the original video (with audio), and import the modified audio as well, and line them up in the same sequence - you should be able to check the properties of the two audio tracks, and spot if the edited track is stretched out overall longer than the original, or if it is some other issue. If you play the project, you should be able to hear if the tracks go slowly out of sync, or if it's some other issue such as jumping out of sync at a specific point.

If this isn't the issue, maybe update the question with info on how the video was recorded, any other tools you might have passed it through, and the exact run times of the original video, original audio and edited audio. I've definitely seen this exact issue caused by 48kHz incorrectly processed as 44.1kHz and vice versa, although it's not an issue I've ever had with any of the Adobe products.


Can I create a "hyperlapse" video without using After Effects?

Not professional level at all, but the app "Hyperlapse" creates hyperlapeses. Instagram brain-child.


How to convert an MTS file without loosing quality?

What is your definition of huge and what is your definition of high quality?  Size is directly related to compression and compression is directly inversely related to quality for the most part.

Some amount of compression can be had for free using lossless compression or near free with more efficient pattern finding for lossy compression, but for the most part, there is a direct relationships between size and quality.

In fact, you generally have to actually increase the size to maintain the quality when re-encoding a lossy file as information that was already lost by the first can't be recovered, but other information may be lost due to the encoding process running again, so the combined error requires a higher data rate to avoid losing more.

MTS files are already generally based on H.264 (MPEG4) and are generally relatively small.  It should be possible to extract the MPEG4 from the container and repackage without any loss, but to reduce size would pretty much require a reduction in quality.


One way to do this is to export by clip - i.e., set your camera to angle 1 and export your first X frames (where 'X' is how many frames you want that shot to last for). Then, adjust your camera to angle 2 and export the next set of frames (however long you want that shot, etc.). These clips can then be combined in Premiere Pro (or After Effects) and you can easily add sound effects, etc. They are easy to timeline edit this way because they'll be already rendered and thus, you can work with the project in a much quicker way.


Calculate coaxial cable type/grade to transfer digital video signals to a known distance/length

Major cable suppliers such as Belden and GEPCO publish guides that correlate at least two factors:

Signal bandwidth or SMPTE standard (standard def, HD, 3G, etc)
Cable length

There are three other factors that make a difference: the quality of the connectors, the quality of the physical installation of the connectors on the cables, and the quality of the signal drivers (distribution amplifiers).

One industry best practice is to use the conservative numbers published in the guide,  using only the best-quality connectors matched with the cable type in question.  The cheapest and/or lightest and/or smallest diameter cable is then selected from the available options.

Another best practice is to use the "up to" numbers published in the guide and then measure whether or not the level of signal loss is acceptable for the given connectors, drivers, and receivers of your actual devices, using the cheapest, lightest, and/or smallest diameter cable that appears feasible.  This can be done before actual installation of the cable, but not before acquiring all the relevant video sources and sinks, and not before actually cutting a maximal length of cable(s) to test it.

Cable manufacturers publish their specifications. Steve Lampen explains about Belden does their calculations and what happens as you approach the high end of the cables maximum length. Best to use those specs for your calculations, not some random number that you find on wikipedia for a "generic" cable.


How does Premiere Pro keep markers on audio files even after export?

Markers are part of the XMP standard and are stored in the file. So yes, it's comparable to EXIF. You should notice, that immediately when adding a marker, the file on the disk will be changed, meaning the change date of the file should update. At least that's true on Windows. I don't know what file system a Mac uses and if that's behaving differently.
In the case of AIFF files (and probably any other file), the XMP data section is written at the end of the file. You find the markers in the XML element xmpDM:markers.
An entry for 1 marker in the marker section can look like this:
<rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
   <xmpDM:startTime>839040</xmpDM:startTime>
   <xmpDM:comment>Test Comment</xmpDM:comment>
   <xmpDM:name>Test Name</xmpDM:name>
   <xmpDM:guid>8e5a3759-fe4a-4804-91e1-956c5dfc47f0</xmpDM:guid>
   <xmpDM:cuePointParams>
      <rdf:Seq>
         <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
            <xmpDM:key>marker_guid</xmpDM:key>
            <xmpDM:value>8e5a3759-fe4a-4804-91e1-956c5dfc47f0</xmpDM:value>
         </rdf:li>
         <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
            <xmpDM:key>keywordExtDVAv1_90c13ac7-d433-487b-a9bb-da6330736178</xmpDM:key>
            <xmpDM:value>{"color":4292277273,"index":0,"name":"","payload":""}</xmpDM:value>
         </rdf:li>
      </rdf:Seq>
   </xmpDM:cuePointParams>
</rdf:li>

Since the file is mostly binary you may need a special editor that shows you the last part of the file which is human readable text, if you want to see that. On Windows I've used WinMerge. I don't know what can be used on a Mac.
P.S:
This only works with the preference "Write clip markers to XMP" enabled:


Concat two MP4 files (side by side) with FFmpeg

Use

ffmpeg -i activity.mp4 -i mobile.mp4 -filter_complex " nullsrc=size=2560x720 [base];[0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [upperleft]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [upperright]; [base][upperleft] overlay=shortest=1 [tmp1]; [tmp1][upperright] overlay=x=720" -c:v libx264 output.mp4

The shortest should be applied only to the first overlay.

Also, you can skip scale for the video which is already 1280x720. This output will only audio from one of the inputs.


How to create 3D video from two separate stereo images?

For creating a 3d image (from two jpeg images), this piece of software works pretty well:

http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/

Creating a full 3d video is a bit more difficult, so I'm not sure if I can help you there.


How to extend vertical video with the same duplicate size on its side?

A great free online editing software is WeVideo. In WeVideo, any video that doesn't take up the whole screen (like video shot in portrait mode) can be layered on top of any other video by putting the video you want on top by putting that video on the video track above the video you want below it. The way to get your video to look that way you want it to would be to have the blue square with the words on in Video track 2, and the black background and lightning bolt on the lower track. Then, you could double click on the blue box clip, and it should bring you to the transform menu  where you can drag the clip that you have selected around until it is where you want it in the little preview screen. This way you can have the clip in the second track be anywhere in the screen. Hope this was helpful!


Professional film makers generally use audio recorded separately from the video on dedicated recorders using professional mics (using XLR cables and the like).  3.5 mm audio connectors in particular are almost exclusively a consumer level connector.  So for a professional level, the answer is use something like a Zoom h4n, h5 or h6 and microphones of your choice (either headset, lapel or most likely for action footage, shotgun mics with boom operators).

If you want to be able to do it in camera, then you will need to look in to rigging.  Many consumer/prosumerish mics that work via 3.5mm jacks are designed to mount on DSLR hot/cold shoes.  You can use video rigging to connect your GoPro on one mount point and a cold shoe mounted external mic on a cold shoe mount point on the same rig.  This will keep them together in an easily handleable form factor while keeping the mic securely attached to the same rig as the GoPro.  Note that building such rigs isn't particular cheap unless you build it yourself though.  This link goes to B&H's selection of DSLR rigs to get you started.


Need to record videos - can I buy a PhotoCamera instead of VideoCamera?

TL;DR

If you have a camera of either type, use it. End of story. If you plan on taking photos as well as video, get a photo camera (I'd recommend a DSLR.) If you will only use the camera for video, get a video camera similar to the one you pictured.

Long Read

Video camera (camcorder):

Pros:

Design: Video cameras are designed to shoot video - they are built from the ground up to do exactly that, so all of the technology is focused on capturing video.
Ergonomics: video cameras are designed to capture video, and part of that design is the way the camera is meant to be held. Video cameras are designed to be easy to hold and control primarily with one hand. They often have a hand strap (small camcorders) or shoulder mount (large ENG-style cameras) where the user supports the camera with their right hand and the primary controls such as zoom and record are accessible with the fingers of the same hand.
Audio: Video cameras often have built-in microphones, microphone
holders or microphone ports (XLR, mini-XLR, or 1/8th inch).
Live-view video: Video cameras almost always feature both an electronic viewfinder and a rotating and folding screen, both of which can be used to view the video as you are recording it.
Accessories: Many video cameras have microphone holders, cold shoes and handles for accessories (a few cameras even have built-in LED lights). Some cameras have easy built in iris and focus controls, while some even include built-in neutral density filters.

Cons:

Stills: The biggest downside of these video cameras is they are often terrible at taking still photos, if they even do at all. There are a few reasons for this. 1) The sensor and processor are designed for taking video, so photos are often relatively low resolution (sometimes as low as 2 MP). 2) The form factor makes taking pictures awkward and often offers very little manual control.
Lenses: Most video cameras under $5000 USD have permanently attached lenses (not interchangeable), so if you want to zoom wider or narrower than the lens, you are out of luck.
Price: Video cameras are expensive! A very low end model will cost a few hundred dollars, a relatively good model will be about $2000-$3000 USD, and high end models can run as high as $100,000 (although I'd recommend a model at about the top of your budget (around $1000).

Photo camera (I will focus mainly on DSLRs)

Pros:

Lenses: The biggest advantage of a DSLR will likely be interchangeable lenses, which allow you to reach and focal length you want, assuming you don't mind paying for the lens.
Photos: DSLRs are designed to take photos. Their form factor and control placement makes this very easy. They will also shoot high resolution pictures (usually ~20-24 MP).
Audio: Often have internal microphones and 1/8th microphone jacks (but will never offer mini-XLR or XLR).

Cons:

Design: The SLR form factor has been around for many decades, since far before DSLRs offered video. Video is an afterthought on these cameras. It's added in as a bonus feature, but isn't supposed to be the primary function of these cameras. This applies to almost all photo cameras except, I would argue, the Lumix GH series.
Time restraints: Most DSLRs have a 20-30 minute video recording limit (depending on camera and quality). After this limit is up, you have to manually restart the recording.
Live-view video: Video can only be recorded while viewing as live-view on the DSLR screen. The viewfinder doesn't work. On top of that, many DSLRs (especially older ones) don't having tilting/flipping/rotating screens, making shooting at any angles difficult without an external monitor.
Price: These cameras aren't cheap, but good quality can be gotten with a $300-$400 body and a $200 lens (although I'd recommend a lens closer to $500). I'd also recommend an add-on shotgun mic (~$100-$250, depending on quality).

Please comment or edit if you think I missed anything.


daVinci Resolve: Split-clip shortcut on German keboard

It seems like this key simply doesn't work on German keyboards.

It's probably because you have to press Alt-Gr to get the "\" sign on a German keyboard, and the software doesn't accept that additional key.

You can, however, redefine this function to another key. In contrast to some documentation, this cannot be found in the project settings, but directly in the first main menu entry "DaVinci Resolve|Keyboard Customization".


Tool to find Duplicate Video files ignoring tags

It might be overkill in your situation since the videos aren't actually different resolutions, frame rates and or codecs, but still :
As with another answer https://video.stackexchange.com/a/33521/32436 :

You could check out https://theophanemayaud.github.io/video-simili-duplicate-cleaner/ (macOS binaries available) It's open source, based on vidupe and QT : https://github.com/kristiankoskimaki/vidupe (windows binaries available but no "auto deletion based on specific criterion")
The idea is to extract a few (eg 2, the first and the last) frames, and compare them. If the duration is close, and the frames look similar : you've got a duplicate.
It uses opencv for frame comparison, and ffmpeg for frame extraction (ffmpeg is also for video metadata which is very useful when trying to tell which video to keep !). Since it's open source, you can improve it to fit your needs !

Because it looks at the video data, you shouldn't have problems of tags or other metadata that has changed !


Using PTZ Optics 20x-IP with BlackMagic ATEM Studio 4k

Robert,

I too am thinking about buying this camera to use with my ATEM switcher. The ATEM can be quite finicky regarding compatibility. Have you tried it with straight SDI into the ATEM? If this does not work try adding a cheap sdi splitter from Kanex etc to the line.

The camera needs to be set to the exact right settings to work, for example 1080i. The PTX Optics manual says that "After changing the switch, you need to restart the camera to take effect"

You can check the compatibility of your Cat 6 conversion equipment at atemuser forum

and share your results.


What software is required to make a simple animation clip like this?

This was most likely done in After Effects.  Simple 3D extrusions like this can be done by making a shape layer in After Effects and doing a 3D extrusion.  It then looks like they added a lens flare to it and then started positioning that layer in 3D while positioning the camera and other text layers around it.


Video render size too large(Logitech c920)

60mb is already a ridiculously small size for a minute of footage. If you go even below that, your video will quickly look like one of those made with unregistered hypercam 3.0 back in 2009 youtube-era. Please don't. Hard-drives nowadays are incredibly cheap and I recommend just buying an external or internal one. You can get 1tb for about 50$. You could fit 16666 minutes of footage on there, which is over 277 hours. That sounds fair for 50 bucks. Please don't go below your bitrate, it's already barely intermediate.


It is possible and works in a similar manner. What's different is that normal pixel values in video are always positive, whereas it's normal for audio to go both positive and negative several thousand times per second.

If you have a copy of the axes without the spectrum, you can overlay the image with the spectrum on top of the image of the axes and set the blend mode of the spectrum image to "difference." That will subtract the image of the axes from the spectrum image and leave black where the axes were.

If you don't want black, but some other color, you can use an image mask that sets the axes to an alpha value of 0 and the rest of the image to an alpha value of 1 (or 255 if you're working in 8 bit per channel mode). Then put some other color underneath the masked footage.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the image of the axes alone should be black wherever you want the original image to come through. (Because you're then subtracting 0 from the original image in those areas.)


I'm not happy with Final Cut Pro (X). What are my options?

If you're not impressed with X then I'd suggest going back to version 7. Learning your way around a new program will be a pain in the arse.

I'm not sure how professionally you work but if you can be bothered, Avid is a great program once you get to know it.

Otherwise, man, I'd probably just get used to FCPX.


This command preserved the colorspace and also video didnt get darker after transcoding
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -color_primaries smpte170m -color_trc smpte170m -colorspace smpte170m -r 25 -crf 18 output.mp4

source: https://kdenlive.org/en/project/color-hell-ffmpeg-transcoding-and-preserving-bt-601/
more about colorspace: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/colorspace


How to route from mixer to PC when using outboard equipment

Since your question is not very clear, I will answer generally and then improve my answer if more information is supplied. First of all, it is important to mention that there are 2 types of audio effects:

Parallel effects -  used with the original signal, without changing it. For example if you use delay or reverb; your signal gets routed to the effect and then returned back to your mixing console. At this stage - you decide what will be the correct mix between the original signal and the effect.
Serial effects - affecting the whole signal, for example compression. Auxiliary channels in consoles are usually used to work with parallel effects. You send the original channel through aux to your effects processor and then route the processed signal(actual effect)  back to your return input.

I say that to imply that usually you will not use your auxiliary sends and returns to use them with external pre-amp. The signal has to be pre-amped before going into the mixer channel, long before it reaches aux send point.

Regarding your question about direct outs and aux returns - yes, both of them will output the same signal as long as the aux volume is at maximum since both of them are post-fader.

If you want to use your external pre-amp with your mixer, you can use the line-in input which, in most mixers, is skipping the built-in pre.

EDIT1:
In some mixers the aux send\return are utilized by only one insert point, however internally tip is used as send and ring as return. This is from your mixer spec:


Copying All Settings Of One Composition in AE

This is not possible to do in one step, it is only possible to duplicate compositions:

Select the composition (Import Footage Panel)
Press Ctrl+D (or go to Composition > Duplicate Composition)
As (almost) everywhere in AE, hit Enter on the selected composition to rename the duplicate

When you need to copy the properties of a layer:

Select the Layer
Click on the tiny Triangle > left beside the layers name to open up the properties
Select Transform, Effects or Mask
Press Ctrl+C
Switch to the Second Composition
Select the Layer
Set the playhead to the animation start frame (first keyframe)
Press Ctrl+V to overwrite all properties and insert all copied keyframes

To check the result, press U on the Layer, this will open up all animated properties of the layer.

Note: Copying the same properties of different layers is also possible by selecting multiple layers, open up the properties simultaneously, and select them by holding down Ctrl or Shift.

Related: After Effects: Shortcut for showing all transforming properties of a layer


From FFmpeg Documentation – Detailed Description:

  ffmpeg calls the libavformat library (containing demuxers) to
  read input files and get packets containing encoded data from them.
  When there are multiple input files, ffmpeg tries to keep them
  synchronized by tracking lowest timestamp on any active input stream.

  Encoded packets are then passed to the decoder (unless stream
  copy is selected for the stream). The decoder produces
  uncompressed frames (raw video/PCM audio) which can be processed
  further by filtering. After filtering, the frames are passed to
  the encoder, which encodes them and outputs encoded packets.
  Finally those are passed to the muxer, which writes the encoded
  packets to the output file.


Can I capture different native resolutions with the same CCD-Sensor?

No, there is physically only one 'native resolution' for any hardware sensor. It is the number of physically distinct light sensitive areas on the sensor chip and is set in silicone at the time of manufacture.

When OBS or any other software gives you a different sized image it is either re-sampling using the values available from the native resolution or alternatively changing the camera resolution which then puts the burden of re-sampling on the cameras internal processing chips.

(Unless you are working with RAW output then the information lost between using a native resolution and sub-sampled resolution is going to be swamped by what is thrown away by modern compression techniques such as JPEG anyway.)


Is there a buffer caching application that preloads streaming video?

Launch VLC. Go to Open Network Stream. After specifying the URL, select Convert in place of Play.  Choose Dump raw input. In destination file, specify somefilename.ts. Wait 10 minutes. Launch another VLC instance. Play somefilename.ts


How to resolve Shearing issue while rotating image in Adobe After Effects?

Make sure scale values are locked and set both to 100%:


The output file doesn't have any sound because there is no audio in the timeline that you are rendering.

The output format (MP4 vs. AVI) doesn't have any effect; both formats can contain an audio track or not. Checking the box to output audio only has any effect if there is already an audio track in the timeline. If there's no audio track, the output will have audio but it will be silent (as you're experiencing).

The solution is to add some audio file(s) to the project and then put it into your timeline.


Recording 4K H.264 from HDMI to External Media

Would you consider using a computer equipped with a 4K HDMI capture card like BlackMagic Intensity Pro 4K, to write to that SD card?

This will be cheaper than buying a recorder and you will have full control over how you capture this 4K stream over HDMI.


Here is how I would do it:

Track the cursor in After-Effects (using the tracking-panel)
Apply the movement to a Null-Object
Create a camera
Parent the camera to the Null
Change the focal length in the camera to achieve the zoom

Now your camera should follow the cursor.


YouTube's automated closed captions are actually getting better and better (and it's free!). Even if you don't use the automated (speech-to-text) captions in YouTube, it has a neat tool that pauses while you type a transcript (or lets you upload a transcript) and then automatically adjusts all the timings. You can find it in the Closed Captions section of any video you've uploaded.


How to change orientation of video in project?

What you are looking for is the aspect ratio of your width/height. Your current aspect ratio looks like 9:16, so probably 1080:1920 in pixels. Change this to 16:9, meaning 1920:1080. You can find these settings in the sequence settings of your sequence.


Transcoding 100+ files from H.264 to H.265

The whole one day I dedicated to testing various scenarios. The following applies to this particular series in this particular quality, so I don't say it applies generally. So in this case the following applies:

file sizes at the very same settings with only medium and veryslow preset changed vary negligibly: ~ -10 MiB on average in favor of veryslow preset
visual quality at a very close look is rather the same in either medium or veryslow preset

One thing solved. I have changed the preset to medium.

at a very close look, the source videos are not in such a high quality as I thought, that explains why x265 compresses to almost 1/4 of the original size

Another mystery solved.

Provided I now transcode at 25 fps, I have raised the RF to 20.

RAMDisk does not provide benefit in this case, both for medium and veryslow preset; I ended up with RAID6 as the source and SSD as the output drive

The inconvenience of moving files to RAMDisk solved.

To answer the question, the CPU time was not spent well at all.


Premiere’s new layered drawings are not in the Project panel

I haven't really tested the new Type and Essential Graphics functions yet, but I've played around with them a bit and I think I have grasped the essential functionality.

The text I create using the new Type Tool or graphic tools doesn't show up in the Project Panel for me either, as you described, so it stands to reason that this is the expected behaviour. I can't tell you why Adobe decided to build it that way. I can only assume it is to avoid visual clutter. The old functionality where you had to create one Title item/asset for every text insert in your video was indeed a bit clunky, so I would assume the new graphic items don't show up in the project panel to avoid cluttering and streamline the process. Also, having each graphic/text item appear in the project panel would create new design problems; for example, where would they go? If you prefer to have all your graphic/text items in one bin, do you have to sort the newly created items into that bin manually every time? Also, what part of the formatting/positioning is retained on the asset and clip basis respectively? How are point and area type handled respectively? And what about one graphic using multiple paths, how would the program discern between individual items and stuff that belongs together?

Again, I can only speculate as to what lead Adobe to make that design decision. If you don't like it, you can always contact them and ask for an explanation or for a change. Personally, I think I prefer a clean project panel over having it cluttered with myriads of individual path/shape layers, but that's very subjective I guess.

  What I want to do is copy elements from one timeline into another (many Acts in a single performance). Normally I can just copy/paste or equivalent mouse gestures from an expanded tree view of the Project panel in list mode.

I found two workarounds:

You can just select one or multiple clips from the timeline and copy them by pressing CTRL + C. Then move your playhead to where you want to paste them (in whatever sequence you want to paste them into) and press CTRL + V to paste them. Note that you can control what tracks your pasted items will appear in using the Track Targeting toggles.
You can select one or multiple items in the timeline and nest them into a sub-sequence using Right-Click → Nest…. The nested sequence will show up in the Project Panel and can be reused from there. Changes to the nested sequence will be applied to whereever you use that sequence as well.


Why is the audio delayed both in preview and render in after effects

I'd been stuck with the exact problem before and in my case it was an issue of VFR.

Apparently, Adobe products do not support videos with variable frame rates. So whenever you work with such videos the A/V goes out of sync.

Try re encoding the video to a constant frame rate using FFmpeg or handbrake.


File compatibility for Final Cut Pro 7 project files with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4

Yes, in Premiere Pro, you can export to Final Cut XML. In Final Cut 7, you can export into an XML as well. Then you can import the XML files into each program.

The only problem is that Premiere on windows uses the AVI wrapper, and Final Cut 7 uses Quicktime. It might work going from Final Cut to Premiere. But going back into Final Cut probably will not work, as Final Cut does not like AVI. Also, the file paths will be different (but you can reconnect the media, but you are looking for an easy way).

Unless there is a software that does this, switching in between Programs and OS is going to take time.


Trying to add text to a video file and save it as an mpeg to be played in a slide show

Either After Effects or Premiere will do this for you no problem.  I'd probably use After Effects for simplicity since it is easier to understand the layers there.  Either use a text effect or use Illustrator to make the text a bit nicer and import it in as a layer in After Effects.  Position the video that it is playing over as the bottom layer then import the text layer and position it over the background as necessary.

For the rotating diamond, you would need a rotating diamond that has a transparent background to the layer.  This is easiest to do with 3d graphics software, though you could also do it by rotating an actual diamond and keying out the background from around it.

On the other hand, the best looking approach (since a diamond refracts the surroundings) would be to bring it in to a professional 3d package and use the video as an environment map for the refraction to be correct and then export it as a series of images with alpha that can be composited back in as a source in After Effects.  Since the diamond will look like it is refracting the image it is over, it will be far more believable as a diamond in the scene.

I'm not sure if Blender (the most popular free 3d software) can support environment maps or not, but if it can, that would be your best bet for approaching that.  (Sadly, I use commercial 3D software so I've never learned Blender which is much more limited, someone else might be able to provide more insight on that though.)


How can I remove a crowd of people from a scene while keeping one person in the shot

Is the camera moving? If it's a still shot you could make a clean plate of the empty city in Photoshop and use a green screen for the actor. If you don't want the shot locked-off you can cheat add some movement to the frame in post, but big changes in perspective would require recreating the city in 3D.

Interestingly one of the earliest photographs of a human being was by accident — owing to the extremely long exposures required by the early emulsions, anything moving would blur out. In a photo by Louis Daguerre there was a guy standing having his shoes shined and he appears to be the only person in Paris. You could use the long exposure technique to get your background.


Using Google Image Search I have found the exact template you were looking for:
http://aedownload.com/wedding-invitation-2533538-project-effects-videohive/

The application you need to use for it is Adobe After Effects CS4, CS5


"ADIXXION sync." does not work wit XA1.

However, another app, WiVideo works with XA1. It is available for Android and iOS. For PC, the camera comes with Windows version of WiVideo.


Does HEVC Support 16-Bit RGB Color Format?

As, Sir Gyan Commented... HEVC Doesn't Support 16-bit....


ffmpeg cut same video to multiple pieces

Use ss/to as input options. This seeks at the demuxer stage, which is much faster.

ffmpeg -ss 00:22:23.345 -to 00:22:25.846 -i input.mp4 ...

You'll need a very recent build of ffmpeg (> Nov 19 2017)


I will answer this in a few parts

Cameras:
I assume you are looking for some kind of a web release for what ever media you are recording and I assume you want to go high def. For this most if not all of the current DSLR's from the big makers (cannon, nikon, etc) will shoot in both 720 and 1080 (i and p depend on the camera but for what you are looking to do I would say either will suffice). When it comes to video my only requirement is that the camera has an external mic input (I know the Nikon D series has them). The on board mics on DSLR's are not that great and an external one is a must. This would be your main camera.

Go Pros are GREAT and come with a wide variety of mounting options. They are also in waterproof cases (I have used mine in the pool a few times with good success) so I would think they could stand up to some puffs of steam although continuous steam will be an issue for any camera.

You can also troll ebay or tag sales etc. for used DSLR's for your overhead shots. You can usually find them cheap and be less worried about them breaking form steam/heat

Mounting:
Good tripods area easy to find. In this case I would look for something hefty but on the smaller side. I have a small Slik 504 that is small but really steady and has a smooth head. I also have a MeFoto for when Im on the road. These are much smaller than the Slik's but REALLY well made (all aluminum) and will not have a problem holding your DSLR.

Lights:
Theater/Video lights can be pricy as can their mounting hardware. For this I will offer a simple home brew hack. Go to home depot and pick up the double halogen with stand work light. They are constantly on sale and fit the bill really well. they are bright, cheap, and come mounted to a stand. They usually are capable of pivoting in all directions as well.

Steam solution:
I dont know much about this issue but one possibility is to mount a mirror over the stove and shoot the mirror. This puts the camera out of the line of steam and out of harms way. You can also get one of those shower mirrors that does not fog up in high steam environments.

Hope This Helps...


Sync Video to Audio in SonyVegasPro13 with multiple anchors

Short Answer

Split your Video track into separate Events;
Adjust the Events individually by dragging them along the timeline and stretching/expanding them;
Overlap the adjacent Events so that there were no gaps;

Long Answer

I find one of the most valuable features of Sony Vegas its ability to split the original tracks into Events and adjust them individually. As I wrote in another answer, playing with Track's Velocity or Velocity envelope appears to be inefficient.

Also, no plugin will detect the best moments in timeline for transitions. Doing this manually seems a bit boring at the first glance, but it will certainly give you the best result.

Full scale image here

Note, this image shows splitting of a single track, but in your case it would be two Grouped tracks, one is Video and another one is Audio.

Here's how I would align Audio and Video tracks to accomplish your goal:

Decide what Tracks are to be adjusted. Since you probably have a high-quality Audio and you worry about any distortions, let us assume your HQ Audio remains intact. Moreover, since the video is filmed in double framerate, there's no worry of possible artifacts appear after adjustments.
So, place both Video and Audio tracks to the timeline.
Note, if the Video track goes with some Audio, you will have three tracks:

Video
Its accompanying Audio (to be discarded in the future)
A high-quality Audio

Make a temporary adjustment of Audio volume so that you could hear both Audio tracks. It can be 50% for each, or you may set them to left/right channel, depending on the nature of the audio. You will revert this at the end;
Find the moments of any mismatches. The best way to do is by finding drums or some other sharp sounds. Zooming Tracks' height will also be helpful as it lets you see the audio peaks on the histogram;
At each moment of mismatch, split the Video event (along with its accompanying sound since they are Grouped); Don't do it straight on the peaks. ½ seconds earlier is a better idea.
Shift the Video to right or left so that it matched;
Note, Shift+dragging ignores grid, markers, fade-in/fade-out marks, and all other time points that otherwise would cause "sticking".
Repeat for the rest of your composition;
Now, on the Video track, drag the left/right edges of each Event and Ctrl+drag them to change the playback speed of individual Events. Your final goal is to make the speed matched firmly.
Manage the overlap of the Events. Make sure you have standard Fade as your Transition Effect, not another fancy one. Make sure the Transition is not longer than ¼ of second (at 60 FPS, it would be 15 frames), or otherwise you get video artifacts.
After you complete, simply turn off the original low-quality Audio track.

Also note that the split points are best when the picture movement is minimal. For instance, if you have a drum player, the best would be when his/her hands are in the lowest point of hitting the drums, not raised.


How do I keep a pattern overlay layer effect from moving around separately when animating?

Delete any motion or rotation keyframes in the overlay layer. Now line it up with the gear layer as you want, then make the gear layer the parent for the pattern layer.

To set a layer's parent you need to have the parent column visible in the timeline window. If it's not visible, right-click the column headings and choose it from the list. In the parent column you can then use the drop down to select the layer's parent or drag the pick-whip (the little spiral widget) to the chosen layer.


Advice on Creating Montage of TV Advertisements

As a person who works for TV and does commercials on a regular basis, I'm afraid to tell you that a youtube-rip is probably your best option. The progress for a commercial usually goes like this:

You've got your customer. The customer speaks to an agency. That agency usually hires a production-company that actually makes the commercial. After that, the final files (usually prores 4444, 422 or rarely an h.264) will be transmitted to the customer for approval, and then go directly to the TV-Station which will broadcast the piece.

So from someone who is not directly part of the creating-progress, it's virtually impossible to get your fingers on the final files. Your best chance would be to ask politely, but I can tell you that those files are almost always exclusive to the people working on it.

Your best option might be to record the signal directly from the TV via something like an elgato capture card. If that doesn't work (or you don't want to spend the money on the hardware required) youtube and reuploads are your only option.


Show current frame or display timecode (frames) on MPC-HC?

If the video file has subtitles (even fake ones, even not being displayed), you can go to View -> Subresync (or hit Ctrl + 6) and you'll see the timecode in the status bar displayed as {Hour:Minute:second.frame}.  As yet, I haven't found how to make this display format permanent, to appear even without a subtitle track.

EDIT:  In my own searching, I just came upon a post elsewhere stating that if you right-click the time on the status bar, in ANY video, whether or not it has subtitles, then you will see an option for "High precision".  You only need to select it once, and then the preference will be remembered for all subsequent files (even audio only).


How can I programatically identify video frames containing a fixed rectangular area of a certain color?

Identify a logo should be part of the CV. My suggestion is to use the idea of checking the logo from png (https://ai-facets.org/robust-logo-detection-with-opencv/) and modify the code to read a frame from a video (https://opencv-python-tutroals.readthedocs.io/en/latest/py_tutorials/py_gui/py_video_display/py_video_display.html)
Hope this help


Merging all files in a folder with an avidemux batch file

Ok I have found a solution using ffmpeg instead of avidemux. I made the following batch file. In this case, I had to know the folder where the ffmpeg executable was, and also i managed to convert the resolution to a different one
for %%f in (*.mp4) do (
    echo file %%f >> list.txt
)
F:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -vf scale=320:240 output.avi
del list.txt

This did the trick!


iPhone 5 video: continuous shooting without creating independent clips

At this time the iPhone 5 does NOT have that feature. The only thing you can do is download an application such as Qik or other recording in the appstore which they have a feature such pause or zoom.


How can I extend the ten minute video limit on a Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS?

I believe the limit is due to the file size, not the actual recording length.  This forum thread seems to confirm this for the T2i/500D, and Wikipedia agrees for the 5D mkII.  Also according to these sources, the limit for both cameras is 4gb.

For the PowerShot cameras, the file size limit is likely much lower. For the S2, it appears to be 1gb.

What all this means is that the time limit isn't a time limit, per se... but a file size limit.  So if you are able/willing to reduce the file quality, you may be able to extend the time limit.

If you can shoot in a lower quality video mode (say 480i instead of 720p), that will likely improve your recording time.  If you can reduce the frame rate, that may improve your time limit, as well.  Of course all of these things will make the video noticibly lower quality, as well.

If you can't get different equipment, you may be best off strategically stopping and starting the video during pauses in the action.


How were copies of movies meant to be distributed to theaters made?

Regardless of format; 16, 35, 65, etc... The studios would distrubute release prints. The prints were shipped (speaking about 35mm here) on 2000' reels; 5 reels to a can.

In the olden day's they would use two projectors and the projectionist would have to literally load reel one, and two to the other, and they would switch over. Back and forth. A typical movie in today's world (2 hours) would run about 5 reels.

So let's talk the 1990s. The theater receives a can of 5 reels. The reels would be sent up to the projectionist booth. The projectionist would then assemble the reels into one giant reel; on a platter; basically a large spinning lazy-susan. The platter can feed either from the inside; called the core (the core is roughly 10 inches; and has a center mechanism so with rollers in an assembly so the film never has to be "rewound".

The projectionist would first add blank leader, just black, typically 30 seconds; then they would use a film splicer and film tape to add the theater opening title, and each trailer which would play before the film. Some films; shipped with specific trailers on them. But most times; there would be racks and racks of trailers (small film reels about 6 inches (3 minutes) of film; and the projectionist would; whatever his preference or theater policy; add the trailers he wanted (typically matching action with action films, etc). Then any other small film reels would be added; "Turn off your cell phones". Etc.

Lastly; the projectionist would add reel 1, then 2, and so on; and the platter is motorized so it literally pulls the film off the reel which is setup on a rolling stand.

Each reel would need to be checked at the tails; and spliced and glued together.

The final reel would be a very large reel of film; roughly 5 feet in diameter, with a core about 10 inches in the middle.

Because this would be the "first run", the start of the movie would be on the inside, in the core; so the film would be pulled out of the core; through multiple rollers; and into the projector; and then fed to a take up platter either below or above the feed platter. (Typically there would be 3 platters so you could have more than one movie available on any given screen).

This setup would yield after the movie with the film left on a new platter, ready to be "re-threaded" through the projector.  Every showing required the projectionist to check the platter; and reload the projector threading the film over rollers with sprockets; through the gate, and then to the take up reel.

Release Prints were VERY expensive for the studios to produce. So many theaters had rollers for "Big Releases" - think "Titanic"; where one platter would run through the projector, then instead of going straight to a take up platter; it would be fed through a series of rollers down a long wall; to a 2nd or even 3rd projector; and they would have 3 screens starting all at the same time. The final take up reel would be at the last projector.

After the film was finished being run. The projectionist would then literally do the opposite of putting it together. Trailers typically discarded; and the film put back onto the 2000' reels. The film reels would be put back into the can; labeled for FedEx, and sent to a B-Theater; a less popular/lower income movie house.

This is why when you saw movies in the pre-2000s at say an old mall movie theater; there would be lots of scratches and dust, because the film had been played so many times and had been out for so long.

Now; you can find release prints on ebay; I almost bought a "Terminator 2" release print just to have... they were owned by the studio, and destroyed after use... so they are fairly scarce.

The projectionist would have to pay close attention during assembly and tear down; because you cannot rewind the platter.

I speak from being a projectionist for a year after highschool. One time I assembled a movie in the order of reel 1, 2, 4, 3, 5. So half way through the movie people got confused and came out and complained. With no way to rewind or fixed, the rest of the days shows had to be canceled, and the film reels taken back apart and put back into the same order.

Last note; you can typically see the change from reel to reel when watching a movie; either by seeing what's called a cigarette burn (small circle top right of frame), or simply, you notice a weird cut/shift in color/sound where the splice was... Because the release prints were made on multiple printers, color always didn't match reel to reel. Most times, you could at the least (if the film had an optical audio track); a small pop. Towards the later 90s... films went to digital DTS, and THX went digital as well. But before that, the film was a waveform optically printed on the left side of the frame. The audio, was optical.

In terms of how they did it "effectively". It's just how it was done for almost a 100 years. They were very very happy when things went digital. And theaters had to literally fight the studios, because most projectors in film houses were decades old... mechanical... and the studios wanted them all to upgrade to 20K Lumen 4K Dual Projectors (Digital); which run about $200,000 each.

Cheers!


What compression should I use for archiving VHS tapes to HDD?

DV has a something of a focus on simplicity, so it can be encoded with primitive microprocessors and decoded quickly in an NLE. In particular, it's intra-frame: a DV file is basically an array of still-image files.
That's useful for professional editing; it means however DV can't achieve nearly as high compression ratios as more complicated formats with P- and even B-frames – space used to be not so much of an issue since magnetic tape fits quite astonishing amounts of data.

So DV isn't really a great format for archiving, it takes up not 60 but easily 10 GB per hour. And that for SD quality, albeit with very little compression artifacts.

h.264 is much more space-efficient, and its higher computional cost isn't much of an issue now everybody has a fast, at least duo-core processor at hand. You can easily get VHS-like–quality files down to about 1 GB/s with h.264.

It's pretty much the canonical format now. The main alternatives I'd suggest are free alternatives, mainly

Theora. Reasonably well-supported, simpler than h.264, not quite as that good as that- but still pretty ok compression-wise. And
Dirac. Highly sophisticated, really good quality/compression, but computation-heavy and not supported by anything consumer-grade. Not too well by professional stuff either.

This so far applies to pretty much any kind of video, not just VHS. All of these formats support PAL resolution; Theora doesn't have interlacing, but switching to progressive-scan prior to compression is no big deal and might in fact be a good idea anyway. Just make sure you use a good deinterlacing algorithm.


After Effects is the preferred tool for motion graphics work like in this film.


Reduce File Size of Dxtory Video Without Causing Lag

The problem with compression is that it is a double edged sword. It can reduce the space required to store video, however it also takes processing time to perform the compression.

When you are running a game, however, the CPU and GPU are already busy keeping the game running smoothly. In order to shrink the file size, you must either reduce the quality or increase the compression. If you increase the compression, the computer has to take more away from the game and you start seeing lag.

The only ways around this are to:

a) reduce the resolution of the video you are recording.  Throwing
away information is free and will also make applying further
compression less processor intensive.
b) move the encoding to another system.  Some recorders can send the data to another computer and have that computer perform the encoding.  I am not sure if Dxtory supports this or not though.
c) Continue to use the uncompressed files and transcode the video after you record a clip.

Of these options, c is probably the easiest way to maintain maximum quality.  You can use a program like Handbrake to take the large file and compress it down to something of reasonable size, just so long as you don't have to record more than you have room for at a given time.  Note that this process can take quite some time depending on the quality level you choose and how fast your computer is.


Can you create a VR video that makes use of positional tracking?

You can use photogrammetry if you had enough different viewpoints to build a 3d representation of the scene and apply all necessary texturing and lighting.  The video would then play as an animated 3d scene rather than a traditional movie.

The amount of processing involved is high but it is possible.  Microsoft's Hyperlapse video stabilization actually does some of this by determining a point cloud of the scene from some basic photogrammetry.

Software like Destinations on the Vive already use photogrammetry for reproducing landmarks in a fully explore-able 3D world.  There are also several animated projects which are composed of scenes that you can fully explore.  8i also has done some early work in video like you describe.  The quality level still leaves a lot to be desired, but work is being done in trying to accomplish what you are talking about.

As an early Vive owner who has tried all these things first hand, I'd say "volumetric video" is at the interesting experimental phase, but not really that great yet.  I'm sure we'll see significant improvements in the future though as the technology is refined, particularly since it has implications outside of just VR and AR for things like computer vision.


Why is my Linear FOV GoPro Hero 4 Black video distorted at edges?

The distortion you are seeing has nothing to do with ProTune or other codec settings. Its perspective distortion caused by the wide focal length of the GoPro Lens + The low quality of the GoPro Lens itself.

When I say low quality, I mean that in relative terms. The GoPro lens actually produces a pretty amazing image for what it is. But even when you enable the Linear FOV mode, the camera's software can only do so much to reduce the tearing - specifically in the corners of the frame, that you are seeing. It does a decent job overall, but the lens on the GoPro in Wide FOV is roughly 17mm equivalent to a full frame lens.

If you want nearly zero distortion at that focal length... The Zeiss 15mm released a few years back is fantastic, but it's $2500 ish just for the lens itself.

The 16mm and 14mm Arri Master Primes are practically flawless in terms of edge and corner distortion, remarkable actually even at their widest f1.4 t-stop. But for that look, you have to rent or shell out $30,000 for the lens.

So that is basically the reason. You will only get "so good" with a cheap plastic lens on a $400 camera at that focal length. And there is only so much the in camera software can do to process that distortion out. Even doing a more detailed correction in post will get you so far.

The problem has nothing to do with the settings. Thats as good as it gets with the GoPro, in terms of it's wide angle ability to capture a relatively flat looking image. Flat in the middle, but the closer you get to the corners the worse it's going to get.

My recommendation is if you can't live with it, shoot from a farther distance and crop in in post. I think judging by the image had you just backed up perhaps 5 or 6 feet, you'd be able to crop in just a bit and remove "the worst of it".


Software to automatically detect (and if it possible remove) commercials from video files recorded from TV

Take a look at Comskip (https://github.com/erikkaashoek/Comskip). I use it with TvHeadend to mark commercials, which are then auto-skipped during playback in Kodi.
There is a paid-for, pre-built version for Windows, or if you are comfortable you can build it yourself from source code.


What type of media server software do I need to transcode in near real time?

FFMPEG is what you're looking for.  You can use it to transcode most anything, it can easily be integrated via STDIO, and there are a handful of library versions of it you can use as well.

I'd recommend hopping over to StackOverflow.com, where this topic has been heavily discussed.


Cut out an animation of a video clip and insert into an other

When you create a mask around a part of a video it is called rotoscoping. Premiere elements doesn't have the capabilities to do rotoscoping but there are other free pieces of software which do. The following bits of software are composting software which are designed for composting clips together.

The first software is Blackmagic fusion https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/fusion. Here is a simple tutorial showing you how to rotoscope in it

            .

The other option is http://natron.fr/. Here is a tutorial on how to rotoscope with it

            . This tutorial is for a slightly different software but should work fine.

Once you have made the clip in either of these bits of software then export it and import it into premiere elements as a new video file.


Cutting videos into individual clips - loss of quality?

Theoretically, encoding will always reduce the video's quality although it may not be noticeable. And it is not necessary to encode (use codec) in video trimming. But, if your video editor (Hitfilm Express) uses a codec to encode as default and does not have an option to do video trimming without using codec or encoding, the video quality will be reduced.


Best codec for playing unfinished files with VLC

You can use H.264 in MPEG-TS.

ffmpeg -i in -c:v libx264 out.ts

In Potplayer, I can play as well as seek. In VLC, as well, but timestamps are missing. Limitation is that you can only seek to keyframes. If you select a non-keyframe, then the video output will be frozen or corrupted till the player reaches a keyframe. Audio will work in any case.


Selecting and extending multiple image durations simultaneously

Select the images - use the select tool (A) to rubber-band them - and hit Control-D. Amend the duration and it'll be applied to all the selected images.


DVD burned through Nero has only .nrd file

I believe NRD is Nero's version of ISO.  Someone likely created the NRD file when authoring the DVD and rather than burning the NRD file to the disk, they burned the file itself on to a disk.  Try doing a burn image with Nero Burning Rom and select the NRD file as the image.


ffmpeg - Building video with audio in loop

Set the audio to loop,

-stream_loop -1 -i 1.mp3  \

If you don't set a duration limit like -t 30 \, add

-fflags +shortest -max_interleave_delta 50000


Smooth horizontal and vertical camera movement

Unfortunately, there aren't really cheap options to do this.  You can approximate it using a crane or a stabilization rig (like a SteadiCam Jr), but both of those is still going to cost you hundreds of dollars.

For horizontal movement, the cheapest option is probably to use a more basic track and roll it by hand.  You can use a motion control unit to get smoother motion, but a motion control unit itself is going to be over a grand normally.

For pure vertical, you need something called a camera pedestal.  Unfortunately, this is probably the most complex movement to perform in a controlled manner, so there simply are no cheap options.  There are some DIY approaches out there, but you're looking at expensive hardware if you want to do a pure vertical movement with good control.  (The cheapest commercial pedestal I know of is over a grand.)

That is just the way the market is for being able to do advanced moves.  They are all specialized, limited use devices and the cost rapidly multiplies with the weight of the camera.  That's why rigging costs so much, because the market is so limited and specialized.  It requires careful design, tight tolerances and a very limited market, that all adds up to big costs to the consumer.


Premiere Pro sequence adds black stripes on both sides of the video

Aj Henderson is right.
Your pixel aspect ratio is different in each video.
You can see that from the pool table, the one on the left is stretched out, while the one on the right is squished, it almost almost like you have 16% black bars on either end of the video on the right. Pixel aspect ratio, anamorphic 1.333.

2 ways to fix it:

1) Square pixels

If you wish to keep the pixels square
Crop the video (scale in) until the crop lines disappear, but of course you will also crop out some content on the top and bottom of the video

2) Create new sequence

Create a new sequence, I am assuming AVCHD, select 1080p folder and then select the item AVCHD 1080p24 Anamorphic (or the 25 frame one, dont know what video setting your source is at). Also note there is a little tab at the top called settings when creating a new sequence, you can click that to view your pixel aspect ratio.

That should fix the issue.


How do I make a news-like lower third in kdenlive?

Just use an affine transform for the title

Create a title with the text
Put the video on track 2
Put the title on track 1
Combine them with an affine transformation
On the affine transformation, add 4 key frames for a title of 5 seconds, at 0 / 1 / 4 / 5 seconds
Set the opacity for keyframe at second 0 and second 5 to 0. Keyframes at second 1 and 4 keep 100% opacity
Play. The title fades in for a second, stays for 3 seconds and fades out for a second.

Screencast: http://cweiske.de/tagebuch/kdenlive-lower-third.htm


The prediction comes in when actually adding the motion estimation to both frames t and t+1.  Consider a video of a ninja cutting a melon in half, but shot at a very short shutter speed, so as to freeze motion in each frame.  The motion estimator notices that the sword is moving between frame t and frame t+1.  (It also moved between frame t-1 and t, and also frame t+1 to t+2).  Frame t gets half the motion from t-1 to t and half the motion from t to t+1.  The latter half is the prediction.  Frame t+1 gets half the motion from t to t+1 and half the motion from t+1 to t+2.  In this way, the video does not appear to shift half a frame later than the audio.


Is it bad form to have a different number of audio tracks from video tracks?

I always avoid excess tracks.  You can add as many or few tracks of each types as you want in "Add Tracks..." Simply adjust the number of tracks to be added by clicking on the number.  It defaults to 1 video and 1 audio track, but that can easily be changed each time you add tracks.

You can also add an individual track to either by right clicking in the header area and saying Add Track.

As far as industry standards go, I've never heard of a standard and I've never known anyone to think anything of having unused tracks, but cleanliness is always a plus.  There is certainly no standard to intentionally use excess tracks, but in my experience nobody is going to think anything if there are a few excess tracks either.  Generally cleaning up after yourself does look a little more professional though.


How did they make the nice moving shots in this video?

It's two very basic tools in After Effects.  The first is simply either a perspective correction or a 3d transform depending on which way you want to do it coupled with an x/y movement across the frame.

There are also a few different ways you can approach the blur such as using a layer as the basis of the amount of blur and using a mask or using a filter that supports a blur that changes with the distance from center (I think there is a built in filter to do this under the blur filters, but if not, I'm sure there are third party ones.)


What is the right way to export videos with different FPS?

Generally, all of your assets should be converted to the same frame rate as your final output frame rate before you begin editing. If you do not convert them beforehand, you may have issues with timings. Things that are supposed to be one length end up being a different length. This is especially true if you export a variable frame rate file. Suddenly a 30 second file becomes 28 seconds, or 33 seconds, or some other length. The audio and the video end at different times. Things may play right in some places, but they may be wrong if they are processed and played elsewhere.

To summarize:

Convert all assets to the final frame rate before editing.
Set your project to the correct final frame rate.
Do not export a mixed or variable frame rate file.


Well, I'm an idiot, or was just really tired the first time I looked things over, because after taking another look today I realized that the shallow circular indentations at the corners of the face piece weren't molding marks, but screw channels with small, well-matched rubber plugs. I'll just leave this answer here for the next dummy... :D


Adobe premiere and After effects have a stabilizer plugin with a "no motion" setting that does what you want. These are commercial applications.

The free Da vinci resolve lite also has a "stabilize option" (but I have never tried it personally)


An und handled execption is never a good sign. That means its either a bug in the application, in that case there is usually not much you can do other than sending Adobe a detailed report about the crash. Another possibility can be a malfunctioning driver or a hardware failure.

Maybe you have recently installed something or updated a driver? Reverse that installation and see if the problem persists.
Also check your RAM, something that is the cause for a lot of random crashes is corrupt RAM.

You can check the health of you RAM with a tool like memtest86+. Best to run it over night as it needs many iterations to really ensure healthy RAM.


View list of installed plugins in Cinema 4D

There is a plugins folder in your installation directory. Whether you are on mac or a windows machine, all installed plugins are listed there.

Search for a tutorial, the manual or some images to identify in which area or viewport it's used.


The issue was with Camtasia 8's capture. Converting from the AVI format to a MOV format fixed the issue.


OpenCV is a good repository of computer vision resources. An example of how to select and track a region of interest is given here: https://docs.opencv.org/3.4.0/d2/d0a/tutorial_introduction_to_tracker.html

Also see an example blog post here: https://www.learnopencv.com/object-tracking-using-opencv-cpp-python/

More state of the art research results and code in visual object tracking are maintained at the following website: http://www.votchallenge.net/vot2017/trackers.html


Running ffmpeg WITHOUT editing path variable

I solved it. Silly me.

Turns out you have to use quotation marks around the file path.

"%~dp0\bin\ffmpeg.exe" -i "%%a" -map 0:s:0 -y "Temp.ass"

not

%~dp0\bin\ffmpeg.exe -i "%%a" -map 0:s:0 -y "Temp.ass"


Do Canon DSLRs and Camcorders use the same internal mics?

The mics are not all the same across all Canon products.  I can't guarantee that the same mics aren't used in some different models, but I can guarantee they use more than one different mic.  Additionally, even if they do happen to use the same microphone, the placement of the mic within the device as well as amount of noise the mic makes and the quality of the analog to digital converter are going to make a big difference on how it sounds.

In other words, internal sound quality is not directly comparable between devices, other than by actually recording and listening to how it sounds.


How to re-transcode sequence Encore CS4?

It sounds like your Premiere project is missing assets.  When you embed a Premiere project in to Encore, it will actually run a render in Premiere when you go to encode it in Encore.  If the Premiere project can not find assets that are used in the Sequence that you have embedded, you get a "media offline" image.

I would suggest opening the Premiere project and verifying that it has proper access to all the source files it needs.  I'd also verify that the Premiere project link itself is still intact.


Comparing PSNR/SSIM of two videos with different fps/bit-depth

PSNR and SSIM are image quality metrics. Their use on videos involves calculating the metric for each pair of frames and then applying some aggregating operation to the series of frame scores, typically the arithmetic mean. What this means is both inputs must have same frame count with each encoded frame paired with its source frame.  So, deterioration of subjective perception caused by downsampling the fps isn't measured. For a valid and useful comparison, your best bet is to downsample the source to the same FPS using the same methods as used on the distorted video before carrying out the comparison.

As for the bit depth, both operands must have the same pixel format of which bit depth is one factor. I would recommend converting both inputs to the higher bit depth. This will allow you to preserve the details in the distorted input if you applied any filters to it after the bit depth increase.


You don't do the flip while recording your video, it is done later as a transition effect in the video-editing program. Microsoft Movie Maker has several transitions to choose from, just as almost any movie editor whatsoever.


Is it good practice to have a film's supporters contact film festival program directors?

Informally, I would think this would be a bad idea - you really don't want to annoy the directors by spamming them with emails.

I speak to a lot of festival directors on behalf of my band (music, not video, but I feel the principle holds true anyway) and what they want to see is evidence of your following, examples of your work, and positive evidence that you will bring in a crowd.

So of high value are:

Social networking - creating 'the buzz' - on Twitter, Facebook etc - not just from you, but form supporters
Targeting high profile supporters or sponsors to provide advertising, merchandise etc
Providing a simple bio and materials for the festival to review and then use

And above all making it easy for them to put on your material and attract a crowd - don't annoy them, just show them why it makes sense.


Appear and disappear effect with camera movement

That is simply greenscreen compositing.

These days it is relatively easy to track a camera movement from a random video clip, you can for example film the yard and composite a 3D car over it.

On this case, I would film the person on a green screen room with markings and even render the yard itself.

One more complicated way to do it would be a robotic arm controlling the camera, some can even receive the movement from another source, for example, tracking from a handheld camera. The movement can be repeated several times, one with the car other without it.

But the equipment would be more sophisticated and expensive. I would go for the green screen and Blender.


How do I make something sound "cloudy" as though my ears are plugged using Ableton Live?

Do you have your kick on a separate track? If so, there is this cool plugin that will trigger a midi note depending on the sound input. You could use that to trigger a synth, or your own sample as Robert Harvey says.

As for transforming this sound:

First thing you notice is that there is a delay in the left channel. This reduces the impact as the sound is not heard simultaeously in both ears.

Second, the lows are cut. I'm guessing under 100hz things are not really happening. It's probably boosted a bit at 120Hz. Youtube is also having an affect on this. You should test this yourself with a high quality copy of this song in an analyser. AL (8?) has a pretty good one.

Third is there are not many highs. If your kick is a real drum kick, you'll need to eq the sound of the drum skin.

Fourth is some kind of FX: Maybe bit reduction and possibly some chorus. There are many ways to acheive this. If you want something warmer, you could also use some distortion.

However, all of this should really be applied reverse. At least the delay in the left ear should be added last so that the chorus (used to smooth out the harshness of bit reduction) does not sound like a "CHORUS".

They are using a constant delay on the drum kit. It sounds like a right-left-right delay. No center. AL has some FX for this. There is ping pong delay and simple delay. I'm not sure which one allows for panning (I'm not in the studio). But you'd want to delay back and forth between right and left channels with just enough feedback to only have three repetitions. Also the falloff (rate the sound volume diminishes) should be rather low, so that you continue to hear each successive delay clearly, rather that it getting quieter.

The beginning of the track, they've mutted the drum track on and off. It sounds like the kick and snare are being hit at the same time. You can automate this with envelopes in AL. This gives the impression that there is no delay and that the kick is sort of a double hit or has some kind of a reverse reverb on it.

If you want to make something sound like your ears are plugged, you'd need to cut out a lot of the mid-range and high-end, as that is what is blocked. Considerable low-end still gets though. Though, I don't think that is exactly the sound you want judging from your example.


How to automatically turn camera to follow speaker?

High-end sports productions have cameras that can pan, tilt, and zoom their way to tracking a golf ball when driven 300+ yards off a tee.  Such systems are well beyond the budgets of typical user groups.  A system called SoloShot costs less than $1000, and might have the spatial resolution needed for your application.

Recording in 4K gives you a 2:1 punch-in for FullHD and around 4:1 or 5:1 punch-in for SD.  The problem with a 2:1 punch-in is that it only cuts your peripatetic speaker's travel by 2x, which means if they are dashing 18' from one side of a 12' screen to another, their apparent motion will still be as if walking 9' across the view, which is still distracting.  If you are OK producing with SD-ish video, a 5:1 punch-in will keep their motion to reasonably within frame.  The open source software Blender has motion-tracking software that can effectively steady a camera around the subject of interest (your speaker).  But you should check that it has the video codec support you need.  Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve also has a tracker that can do this, but the free download version works only on Mac and PC, not Linux.

Another problem with using digital shot cropping is that at 24fps or 25fps, you might see lots of motion artifacts that seem strange: the speaker stays in the middle of the frame, but they are constantly blurring left or right, whereas the background is whipping back and forth but it's perfectly sharp otherwise.  Your eyes will tell you "that's backwards!".


Thunderbold to HDMI ---> HDMI Switch ---> Saeco projector = No Video

There are no real differences between HDMI 1.3 and 1.3b so I would blame either the switch (most likely), the cables (do you have the correct ones for each device), or even the configuration settings on each machine.

If you plug each one into the projector individually do they work? If so, it is your switch that is at fault.
If not, try replacing the cables and connect each one to the projector - does this solve the problem? If so, the cables were the problem.
If not, check your configuration settings for the display on each machine.


Ah yes, Canon lenses are a lot cheaper it seems than Sony lenses. With the A7s ii you an use both APS-C and FF (full frame) lenses. With an APS-C lens you have to enable APS-C mode in the camera and it will result in a crop, and in my experience, a slightly noticeable drop in quality/sharpness especially in low light. That being said, APS-C lenses shouldn't be completely written off.

With regards to this lens, I check and it is a full frame lens so you are good to go!

With regards to your choice of adapter. I've personally used the Fotodoix adapter and it works fine. Sure you won't get the extra stops of brightness as you would with the Metabones speedbooster, but its a good low-cost alternative.

Image stabilization. This lens has IS which means that you can turn off IS in the camera and use the built in lens IS, OR you can manually set the zoom distance (mm) in the IS settings of the camera and turn off IS on the lens. The latter can be a pain because every time you adjust the zoom you have to change the mm setting in the camera, but you can always use a custom key to shortcut to it.


How to trigger multiple canon cameras at the same time?

I've done this to combine the video onboard an aircraft with the video shot from the ground, and if both of my cameras were good quality, it worked pretty well. I tried to merge the videos using time codes, but that doesn't work even though they both had GPS- things with identical time-codes just weren't happening at the same time.

So, here's what I do now... (and this is only valid for video for obvious reasons)

Start all the cameras
Before the scene starts, use a clapperboard or your hands to record a sharp, short sound.

a. It is important to be equidistant from the cameras for this to work

b. If all the cameras can also "see" the clapperboard, that's better
After the scene ends, clap it again! This is very important! You may also want to create syncing sounds during the scene if it's a long one.

The last part is to deal with the fact that not all video plays at the correct speed. For example, when I mixed clips shot at 29.97 with clips shot at 30, they didn't line up after a few minutes.

The over-arching point here is, you will need to use something physically "in the video" to sync with, and in my experience syncing time codes or trying to start the cameras simultaneously just doesn't work.


Exporting a video from Premiere spits out incorrect quality

When you export with h.264 in Premiere it has two bars as you show. A target bitrate, and a maximum bitrate.

The target bitrate is after all, only a target, and if your video doesn't have enough movement or fast action then you won't get the full Mbps that you've set. Even lowering it enough to only export 12Mbps because your video doesn't have a lot of movement.

Exporting a video with more movement will yield 60Mbps or more, depending on your settings.


Blackmagic UltraStudio 4k Extreme recording through SFP

According to the B&H details, the SFP cages are for 12G-SDI over fiber. They can only be used for baseband video I/O, not for an interface to a computer or network.


Do you care about portability of metadata? You could just add some custom columns in the bin and add your metadata there.

If you've never made custom columns you just scroll all the way over to the right, click on the column header, and type in the column name.


Premiere Pro 2021 Refusing to Load My Project

Have you tried resetting preferences and/or plugin cache?
From here:

Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while launching Premiere Pro.
You can release the Alt key or Option key when the splash screen
appears.
To reset preferences and plug-in cache at the same time, hold down
Shift-Alt (Windows) or Shift-Option (Mac OS) while the application is
starting. Release the Shift-Alt keys or Shift-Option keys when the
splash screen appears.


How to stabilize exposure in After Effects?

The under exposed section will never have as much detail in the shadows as the correctly exposed section, so you will never be able to make the second section look as good as the first. Having said that:

You need to duplicate your layer, then correct the exposure in the second half using level controls, or colour correction effects.

As you correct, switch the layer on and off, to compare it with a good part of the first layer.

Once the second half is looking better, then work on the transition point.

The second layer should be on top of the first layer.

Make some Opacity key frames on your second layer, starting at 0% and building up to 100% when the poor exposure section has fully begun.

You may find that a dedicated application like Davinci Resolve (the free version) is better for colour correction than After Effects.


How to remove an unwanted dynamic object from a dynamic footage

If the camera and background are both stationary (or perhaps very near stationary) you should be able to extrapolate a background plate from looking for frames where the man and paper are not blocking that part of the shot.  Once you have that background plate, you can mask the newspaper and expose the appropriate portion of the background plate.

This works best if the camera isn't moving, though you may be able to do a camera tracking in the event of small camera movements and still get workable results by matching the position and angle of the background plate to the camera (though it will likely require far more advanced background plates to account for any perspective changes).  With anything more than minimal movement of the camera though, the perspective changes will become too severe to compensate for and you won't be able to build a background plate from previous/future frames.

At that point, you would actually have to build a model of the scene in order to be able to render out the background to fill in with perspective adjustments and that would be far more complicated than re-shooting.

Note that this also does still require frame to frame adjustment of the mask and requires building the back plate by hand as well.  It is still non-trivial, but isn't quite masking frame by frame in Photoshop since the rotoscope tool should work for it.

If shadows are visible on the background as well, then you may need to make some animated masks to emulate the shadows on the background plate as well.  Either way, we're talking about a pretty elaborate operation most likely depending on the quality you need.  If any shadows from the actor are visible though (particularly soft shadows against not flat objects) the quality level will drop like a rock and the complexity will go higher fast.

If you do get hit with shadow issues or background movement issues (and reshooting really isn't an option) you may actually be served best by replacing the background entirely).  If you build a fixed background plate that doesn't have any shadows from the actors, people are not super likely to notice the lack of shadow compared to a gap in the shadow or a reconstructed shadow.  It would involve even further rotoscoping, but might be easier than trying to build a believable shadow.

Reshooting really is the best option, even in the ideal case though.


AE Controller for changing layer into specific colours

Use a dropdown. Select Dropdown Expression Control from Effects>Expression Controls and hit edit to input the colour names.

Then use a switch to deal with the four possible choices.
let colourChoice = Math.round(thisComp.layer("White Solid 1").effect("Dropdown Menu Control")("Menu"));
switch (colourChoice){
    case 1 : [7, 250, 198, 255]/255.0;
        break;
    case 2 : [252, 12, 119, 255]/255.0;
        break;
    case 3 : [0, 0, 0, 0];
        break;
    default:  [1, 1, 1, 1];

}
N.B.:

Math.round on the firstline is to convert the numeric result returned from the dropdown to an integer, I'm not sure what kind of numerical value is returned from a dropdown, but just using let colourChoice = thisComp.layer("White Solid 1").effect("Dropdown Menu Control")("Menu") doesn't work.

Colours in expressions are four-dimensional RGBA arrays, because even if they don't use alpha they need a value for alpha.

And finally the / 255 after the array is to convert the 0-255 RGBA values into 0-1.0 floating point values for colour. You could do the maths beforehand, but it's more legible like this.


Do media containers contain multiple audio channels in separate streams?

Depending on the container format, multi-channel audio can either be in a single stream or in separate mono streams.

Most consumer formats allow both, but it's easier for the end-user to have it in one stream (it can be interleaved PCM audio, or encoded bit-streams as ac3 or aac). Notice that it doesn't prevent to have several multi-channel streams in one container (like several 5.1 mixes, each one being one stream, in ac3 codec in a single container)

The MXF OP1A often used in broadcast usually has several mono streams for multi-channel content. A 5.1 mix will then use 6 mono streams in the container.


What is the terminology for AR text in a video?

There's not much to it, the effect could be called "3D tracking Text" or something like that.

Open up After Effects. Load up your file that you want to put the text in. Use the camera tracker that natively comes in After Effects. Now, you can attach a null to one or more points that are automatically generated and detected, which will follow the geometry and movements from the footage. Once you're happy with where the null is positioned, you can create a new text layer and parent it to the null, so that the text is following its position, rotation and scale. That's it.

Creating a 3D-Text however is a different story. For that, you could use the element3d plugin for aftereffects, but that's quite expensive. Alternatively, you could track the camera and export the tracking data to a 3D-environment. I'd recommend using pfTrack for the tracking part. Then, inside the 3D-Program (like Cinema4D, Modo, 3Dsmax, Maya, etc.) you can import the tracking data which will give you a camera that matched the movements of your footage. If you then just place an object, like 3D-Text in the 3D-Space and render the footage from the perspective of the aforementioned camera, you can place that footage on top of your original footage and the object will stick.


Adding noise to a still photograph to make it look live

I suggest to use the very noise that your camera captures and blend it with the photograph.

point your camera against a white object (e.g. wall, door)
The automatic exposure should stop down the lens until the white becomes a mid grey.
capture as long as you need
In your Editor, blend the grey noise with the photo by using a layer blending mode like "multiply" or "overlay" (at least shotcut has blending modes)


Googling for "mp4 metadata editor" brings up lots of candidates. Many of these will search online databases for tagging DVD movie rips, a feature I don't think you're looking for, but they also let you add and edit tags in most common container formats like MP4. Two you might look at are MP3Tag (yes, MP3) and MetaX/MetaZ.


Does using an S-Video output via a SCART connector improve the output quality of a VCR?

The answer is probably no, unless the SCART socket on your VCR is labeled specifically as "S-VIDEO". The fact that SCART connector has S-Video pins does not guarantee that your VCR provides S-Video signal to these pins. A low-end model will simply transmit a composite signal over the luminance S-Video pin and nothing over the chrominance pin.
Even my DVD player having both S-Video and SCART sockets doesn't provide S-Video signal over SCART. Only component RGB.


Its impossible to say for sure, Because you dont say what your input format is, But there is most likely a color space/range conversion occurring.
You may may need to set the those values. you may need to specificity the agues to use for the conversion as well.
This post should explain it.
https://mux.com/blog/your-browser-and-my-browser-see-different-colors/
I don't cover color range in that post. But you most likely want to use full range.


I would probably start from the smallest orbit and work my way out.  If you adjust the anchor point for each object that is rotating, a simple rotation keyframe should make it rotate around the center.

Once you have the smallest thing rotating, you include that composition in another composition and adjust the anchor point similarly to make it rotate around the center of the new composition.

If you need oblong orbits, you can also use a path instead and animate it along the path.

You can keep nesting them indefinitely for as many nestings as you need. It isn't a 100% accurate simulation since the actual orbital mechanics are a bit more complicated, but it gives a simple simulation of them and can easily support various periods for each part.


They've done it via rotoscoping techniques in order to create depth information.

From fxguide.com about Titanic 3d Conversion:

  The team at Stereo D used no projection or automated solutions. The team isolated with multiple layers of roto each of the key elements of the scene, often many per person in the foreground and then these were used to derive a depth map. From the depth map normally a new left and right eye was created.

Also see the wikipedia article about 3d Stereo Conversion and The Art of Stereo Conversion.


H.265 disadvantages with video dimensions not multiple of 8

Since H.265 is computer intensive, encoding H.265 video will consume a lot of time, especially your computer is not power enough. You have to upgrade your CPU and GPU and download a powerful HEVC video encoder that is able to activate the GPU acceleration to do the task.


See here, specifically "Same filtering for all outputs":

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Creating%20multiple%20outputs


Setting points and doing a quick "snip", dynamically playing the video

The exact software I was looking for
https://mifi.github.io/lossless-cut
Please donate to the author if you can and will use it, his soft saved my hobby gaming youtube channel and lots of free time)


Is there a tool that lets me cut video with frame precision?

You may use free open source AviSynth+ — it's a scripting language with the very good documentation.

Example:

clip   = AviSource("MyVideo.avi")    # Reading clip from disk
clip   = clip.ShowFrameNumber        # Showing frame numbers of individual frames

part1  = clip.Trim(   0,  1000)      # Selecting frames with numbers 0 to 1000
part2  = clip.Trim(8000, 12000)      # --- similar ---

result = part1 + part2               # Joining two parts
return result                        # This will be the resulting clip

Note:

The second command

clip   = clip.ShowFrameNumber

is used only in working process to see frame numbers, in the final result you have to remove it.


Use a vector scope and waveform monitor to judge the difference, not your eyes.  Even if you're doing an XOR comparison, there are cases where your eye isn't enough.
Here, for example, I've taken this sample footage from BMD's SDK (available here):
 The original is 12bit RAW.  I then transcoded it to H.265, using these settings:

If I then superimpose the transcoded version over the original, like this:

... and set the blending mode to "difference," a.k.a., "XOR"

and then use the scopes to analyze the result, you can clearly see that the files are different.

The top half of the above image shows the timeline viewer, and the result of the "difference" comparison.  To the naked eye, it looks black, as if there is no difference.  The bottom half of the above image shows Resolve's waveform monitor.  Here's a detail of that same image:

There's clearly noise at the bottom end of the signal.  Other types of scopes will tell you different information about the comparison.  For instance, you can use a parade to examine Y'CbCr, and see that the transcode operation has affected the image's chroma more than its luma.
I know that you're trying to examine the difference between files that you've copied and not necessarily transcoded, but this example is meant to demonstrate that scopes can give you insight into the type of difference between the files, when that difference is invisible to the naked eye.


mp4 file expands wildly when shortening clip

Not sure what's happening, but, when you export your edited film, keep an eye on the data rate. That's really how you keep files small. The lower the data rate is, the lesser the quality of the video image though.

So, when you export:

For a 720p final file, make sure your data rate is no smaller than 5
Mbps.
For a 1080p final file, make sure your data rate is no smaller than
10 Mbps.
Codec: H264.
Field order: progressive usually (depending on your raw footage).
Aspect: square pixel usually (depending on your raw footage).
Audio: AAC, 4100Hz, Maximum Bitrate.

Note: I'm not familiar with Lightworks' settings, so some of the options mentioned above might not be available to you when you set up your export.

Let us know if this keeps your file small.


replacing audio of a clip after editing on a timeline in Premier Pro CC 2017

Your best bet is probably to replace the source of the clip in question with the timeline that has the changed audio.  There should be a "Replace Footage" option or something like that.  I'm only familiar with CS6 though, so I'm a bit out of date on exact specifics in the latest version of CC.


I'm trying to match a title effect, and can't work out how it's done? Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Looks like a standard preset from the Optical Flares Plugin from VideoCopilot. You have a lot of control with that plugin, shouldn't take long to replicate the effect with that.

https://www.videocopilot.net/products/opticalflares/


It sounds like you're tying to remove a watermark from a copyrighted image.  The best way to do that is to pay the copyright owner for permission to use their image.


Windows Server is very much the same as the Desktop Windows regarding the core of the OS, there is just some stuff missing and other stuff added that is usefull for webservers.

You shouldn't have any problems installing an After Effects render node, I used Windows Server 2008 R2 myself for an After Effects CS5 network render node.
Shouldn't have changed with newer versions of After Effects.


Create a Video File or PNG Sequence of Writing Out A Word

It depends on whether you need to to do this based on a raster image of a finished typeface design or if you are starting from scratch.
For both cases you can use flash like shown in the video you linked or you can use After Effects to have some more control over the look, doing this frame by frame is no that easy if you are after specific timing, instead you probably want to keyframe this.

After Effects is pretty great for this job, it has the so called "Stroke" effect where you can let After Effects draw a line based on a vector shape or "Masks" in After Effects.

You basically draw a vector path and the effect will draw along that path based on keyframes you set, you can also alter the line width of the "pencil" and have overall a much larger control of the look of the "writing".

Here is a small tutorial explaining the basics of the effect: