why ffmpeg changes video stream from interlaced to progressive when it is set to copy the the stream I have a large video file that I try to chop into smaller pieces. The command I use is
ffmpeg.exe -i VideoTape-2007_09_09_19-20_05.avi -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:00:00.000 -t 00:10:33.761 VideoTape-2007_09_09_19-20_05-01.avi

According to MediaInfo, the original file is interlaced:

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : DV
Commercial name                          : DVCPRO
Duration                                 : 56 min 22 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 24.4 Mb/s
Encoded bit rate                         : 28.8 Mb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Standard                                 : PAL
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Bottom Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 2.357
Time code of first frame                 : 00:02:26:16
Time code source                         : Subcode time code
Stream size                              : 11.3 GiB (100%)
Encoding settings                        : ae mode=full automatic / wb mode=automatic / white balance= / fcm=manual focus

after cutting, the output file has the following info:

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : DV
Commercial name                          : DVCPRO
Codec ID                                 : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint                            : Sony
Duration                                 : 10 min 33 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 24.4 Mb/s
Encoded bit rate                         : 28.8 Mb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Standard                                 : PAL
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Original scan type                       : Interlaced
Original scan order                      : Bottom Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 2.357
Time code of first frame                 : 00:00:00:02
Time code source                         : Subcode time code
Stream size                              : 2.12 GiB (97%)
Encoding settings                        : ae mode=full automatic / wb mode=automatic / white balance= / fcm=manual focus

Why is the Scan Type changed from Interlaced to Progressive? I just want to split the video.

I have also noticed that the resulting file in disproportionally large.

Looks like it is a FFmpeg bug.

I tested to remux an AVI with DV to AVI with latest FFmpeg, and the resulting "video properties" chunk indicates progressive, even if the source AVI has the right "video properties" chunk:

010F4   Video properties (76 bytes)
010F4    Header (8 bytes)
010F4     Name:                               vprp
010F8     Size:                               68 (0x00000044)
010FC    VideoFormatToken:                    0 (0x00000000)
01100    VideoStandard:                       0 (0x00000000)
01104    VerticalRefreshRate:                 50 (0x00000032)
01108    HTotalInT:                           720 (0x000002D0)
0110C    VTotalInLines:                       576 (0x00000240)
01110    FrameAspectRatio Height:             3 (0x0003)
01112    FrameAspectRatio Width:              4 (0x0004)
01114    FrameWidthInPixels:                  720 (0x000002D0)
01118    FrameHeightInLines:                  576 (0x00000240)
0111C    FieldPerFrame:                       1 (0x00000001)
01120    Field (32 bytes)
01120     CompressedBMHeight:                 576 (0x00000240)
01124     CompressedBMWidth:                  720 (0x000002D0)
01128     ValidBMHeight:                      576 (0x00000240)
0112C     ValidBMWidth:                       720 (0x000002D0)
01130     ValidBMXOffset:                     0 (0x00000000)
01134     ValidBMYOffset:                     0 (0x00000000)
01138     VideoXOffsetInT:                    0 (0x00000000)
0113C     VideoYValidStartLine:               0 (0x00000000)

It should be

010F4   Video properties (108 bytes)
010F4    Header (8 bytes)
010F4     Name:                               vprp
010F8     Size:                               100 (0x00000064)
010FC    VideoFormatToken:                    0 (0x00000000)
01100    VideoStandard:                       0 (0x00000000)
01104    VerticalRefreshRate:                 50 (0x00000032)
01108    HTotalInT:                           720 (0x000002D0)
0110C    VTotalInLines:                       576 (0x00000240)
01110    FrameAspectRatio Height:             3 (0x0003)
01112    FrameAspectRatio Width:              4 (0x0004)
01114    FrameWidthInPixels:                  720 (0x000002D0)
01118    FrameHeightInLines:                  576 (0x00000240)
0111C    FieldPerFrame:                       2 (0x00000002)
01120    Field (32 bytes)
01120     CompressedBMHeight:                 288 (0x00000120)
01124     CompressedBMWidth:                  720 (0x000002D0)
01128     ValidBMHeight:                      288 (0x00000120)
0112C     ValidBMWidth:                       720 (0x000002D0)
01130     ValidBMXOffset:                     0 (0x00000000)
01134     ValidBMYOffset:                     0 (0x00000000)
01138     VideoXOffsetInT:                    0 (0x00000000)
0113C     VideoYValidStartLine:               1 (0x00000001)
01140    Field (32 bytes)
01140     CompressedBMHeight:                 288 (0x00000120)
01144     CompressedBMWidth:                  720 (0x000002D0)
01148     ValidBMHeight:                      288 (0x00000120)
0114C     ValidBMWidth:                       720 (0x000002D0)
01150     ValidBMXOffset:                     0 (0x00000000)
01154     ValidBMYOffset:                     0 (0x00000000)
01158     VideoXOffsetInT:                    0 (0x00000000)
0115C     VideoYValidStartLine:               0 (0x00000000)

I have open a bug ticket at FFmpeg tracker with an example about how to reproduce the issue.

Note that the DV stream is correctly remuxed only (it is still interlaced, no conversion), the issue is only a piece of metadata in the created AVI file, reason you see both "progressive" (from AVI) and "interlaced" (from DV) in the MediaInfo output.

Jérôme, main developer of MediaInfo.


Where to get good music for corporate videos? I'd like to find out your go to places for music to license or royalty free for corporate videos. I find it takes ages to find music that actually comes close to what I need..
Any good links?

Cheers,

Rick

You should approach local recording studios and music production houses. A lot of them will have some sort of showreel and a shelf of original music. Some also offer CD's of copyright free music for a fair price. A quick google search in your local area should dig some out. My own company Broadwood Music Productions does this but I strongly advocate supporting creative writers in your local area.


ffmpeg setting not working for x264 compatibility in television I'm having some files in MKV format (x264). Some files work flawlessly in my non-smart TV, but others are not even opened at all or crashing.

I tried the following command in FFmpeg to convert it to the mp4 format since it has wide platform compatibility in TVs.

ffmpeg -i input.mkv out.mp4

But its still not playing in my TV, please help me with the correct ffmpeg parameters.

notworking.mkv is 10-bit H.264 (yuv420p10le). I'm guessing the TV can't play that. You'll have to re-encode to the more common yuv420p for the TV to be able to play it. Basic example:

ffmpeg -i notworking.mkv -map 0 -c copy -c:v libx264 -vf format=yuv420p output.mkv


Is it still meaningful to have 29.97fps under ATSC standard? According to this video, we use 29.97fps under NTSC standard.

But now we have ATSC standard, do we still need 29.97fps in order to broadcast under ATSC?

Is it still meaningful to have a newly created video with 29.97fps?

The non-integer HD frame rates (interlaced 59.94 and progressive 29.97) exist to facilitate easy downconversion to Standard Definition (SD) that must operate at 29.97. There is no technical reason that the non-integer frame rates must be used in ATSC or other SMPTE 292 systems, just the compatibility reason.


Export rotated video out of Adobe Premiere I am creating a video in portrait orientation but the TV I am putting this on cannot rotate the video while playing, so I need to export the video in landscape format. Is there a way to rotate the video when exporting or rotate the entire sequence?

You can simply transform the video to be vertical within the normal frame.  I'd do it using a nested sequence that way you can avoid having to alter your main full quality sequence.  Simply make a new scene, drag your existing scene in to it.  Click on the clip, go to Effects Control.  Expand Motion control and adjust the rotation, scale and position as necessary.


How do I add a synchronized clip/angle to a multi-cam clip? I selected a 10 clips of the same event and created a new Multicam clip. The videos aligned perfectly via Use audio for synchronization. I edited the entire clip and chose different angles at the exact times I want them to show. Everything is great.

Problem is I just found another clip that should have been added, but I forgot to add it (i.e. I should have 11 clips in the multicam clip, not only 10). I want to add this 11th clip and tweak the multicam clip a bit to show it at certain times. I don't want to restart the process as 90% of my work is already done.

I know I can add a new angle and drag the clip in there, but the problem is I would have manually "synchronize" it, by dragging it in the correct location. I don't see any way to choose to synchronize it (e.g. via audio).

I see Clip > Synchronize clip, but that is disabled, and I wouldn't even know which two or more clips I should choose.

How do I add a new clip/angle to an existing multicam clip, and have it automatically synchronize its position via audio?

One (probably dumb) way to do this is:

Select all 11 clips again and create a new, temporary Multicam clip.
Double-click the temporary multicam clip and find out the exact timecode where the new, 11th clip was added.
Copy the 11th clip.
Delete the newly created temporary multicam clip
Double-click the original multicam clip
Navigate to that exact same timecode
Paste the clip into that location


How do I know if a YouTube video is available to license? I am looking at a Video from Germany that was posted to YouTube 2014 and I want to know if I can license it? How would I find this out?

Generally, the only license that's built in to YouTube is the YouTube terms of service. That license is basically that you have to watch through YouTube. You cannot download, reuse, etc. That leaves you with two options: 1) Link to the video, or 2) use the YouTube embed feature, assuming it's been made available for this video. Outside of that, you'll have to ask the video owner.

However, some content creators licence their YouTube videos under the Creative Commons license (which is only valid if the uploader is the owner, naturally). If a YouTube video is under the Creative Commons or anything other than the standard YouTube licence, then it will say so in the video description. See the following snapshot:

Source

You can also filter YouTube search results to include only Creative Commons uploads.

YouTube also recognizes the "Fair Use" doctrine, and lists their understanding of it and how you may use it with regards to YouTube videos here.


Streamable Container for HEVC (H.265) flv is a container which can be used to stream videos while they are being encoded. flv supports h.264 codec.

However, flv doesn't support hevc codec. Is there any container for hevc which is streamable?

MPEG -TS. See here:

  All MPEG-2 TS operations from GPAC (client and MP42TS) are supported on
    HEVC. MP42TS can be used to generate TS files usable for DASH or for
    injection in modulation chains; it can also be used to send the TS over an
    UDP or RTP stream in unicast or multicast mode


Player support for video DVD stored on a CD-R? I want to produce many playable DVDs using a few burners (setting up a computer lab with each computer having an image of the same)

I have close to no budget for this and am curious if a standard CD (the kind that have around 700mb) can be formatted as a DVD, and then played in standard DVD players?

Obviously it would have to be a short and or low bitrate encoded video.

But will this work?

(This is based on the idea that bulk CDs being an older technology can be obtained in bulk for less money than the same of DVD-5s)

If you're authoring DVDs to be played on DVD players, then this won't work. I checked it out way back when there was a significant price difference between CD and DVD media.

If the end users are all going to be playing on computers you could send them instructions on how to open the DVD media folders, but realistically what you'd save (if anything) on media costs would be eaten up in time spent answering queries from disgruntled users who can't get it to play.

Just for reference - the first site I saw when I searched for "bulk DVD CD media" has 100 DVDs for $19.90 and 100 CDs for $18.90. So the difference in price is 1¢ per disk.


Are there any good video editing programs with a command line interface? I am currently looking for a video editing program which I can control via the command line. The main feature I need is the ability to add some overlay text. Is there anything out there that can do this?

My ideal platform would be Linux, but I would be open to using Windows or OSX if need be.

Avisynth (wiki) is a script-driven app and in conjunction with filters should be able to do the work.


All of my tags from WeedlLon's paid rig are missing when I reopen the project Okay so for some of you that may not know, there is a YouTuber named weedlion. He does minecraft advanced rigs and such. So I bought his advanced rig with moving teeth, a moving mouth, moving eyebrows, moving eys and such. So I bought his rig, in the right there are the tags. When I insert the rig into cinema 4d the tags come up great. They work fine (btw the tags, when I double click comes up in a new window and I can click on the picture and and select what body parts I want to move and such. But when I save it, close out, and reopen, the tags are gone. I can still open the window, but either way the tags are not there. Can someone help me figure out what's happening so I can import that rig into another project?

Open the project that you want to insert the rig into.  Open the rig by using the "Merge" command under the file menu instead of the usual "Open" command.  This will place a copy of the content in the project upon which you are currently working.  For help with disappearing controls, I'd have to actually see the rig and how you're using it to know what's going on.  It sounds like maybe the HUD elements are only set to display under certain circumstances.  You can change this behavior by right-clicking on any HUD element and changing it's settings, but again, I'm only guessing that this might be your issue.  Any way you could upload some screenshots, or better yet, a video of how you're using the rig?  I could modify my answer to be more helpful.

*edit  I think the tag you're talking about is the Visual Selector Tool.  I found a video that might be helpful to you.


Problems editing smartphone clips. Audio seems robotic after saving in movie maker thank you for clicking on my thread!

I've recorded a video with my phone (android), after trying an edit with movie maker (Weather I click "Save for youtube" or "Recommended for this project"), the audio seems choppy here and there. It's almost as if it's a robot speaking. If I say, "hello", it will be "H-e-e-e-ello". Also, it seems like it's echoing, a bit, tho that may be because of the source file.

When I try to save it in a different format, the problem strangely enough shifts. I mean, sometimes this part of the video is affected but another one isn't, whereas at other times, that part is affected but this one is not. It appears to be random. However, the image looks good and the audio is synched in.

What can I do to fix this issue? The original file does not have this problem.

I don't know what else I can say, except that I will add that it's frustrating that youtube removed it's free video editor, because for a beginner as myself, that thing was a godsend!

Check your original & edited video file, right click on it, check for details.

The problem is maybe movie maker software already accidently reduced your audio kHz... Or your video original speed is 24 fps, you save it as 30 fps maybe (this wrong setting will appear double outlines). (These mistakes are very common happened around beginners.)

Try to use save as, select save movie/project as, .mp4 or h264, rename it, this setting will not reduce your video too much, you can publish it on youtube too, just a bit longer the time taken, some use save for High Definition for publish video on youtube.

Umm... I figured out now, issue is about Web reduced your Audio KHz, you need to correctly set Video & Audio Export setting for Web. .mp4 (H264) is the best format for web included Video and Audio. Set it to Published for Web or Youtube.

More technically, is Software "Recommended for This Project Editing Feature" auto-removed your Audio's noise, after noise removed, audio will become robotic. And, something is low spec.

Youtube Auto-edit is really awesome for People, but only who studied Video & Audio Editing know what the problem was and editing it, fix it. I really answered all issue why Audio like these, you won't understand it because it need to manual editing. I can't edit it for you here, I'm apologized. You can find Online Video Editing Service Designers edit for you. I just can answer why it happened.


How to make the "wipe" transition with vertical line in Premiere pro cs6? How to make the "wipe" transition with vertical line dividing the image during transition in Premiere pro cs6?

Transitions like that is most often used in the demoreels, showing process of creating shots "in layers"?

Thanks in advance!

Depends on your idea. Simplest way is using a Linear Wipe Effect (on the strip above). For more complex transitions I'd suggest to animate a rectangular mask path in order to get most control, see the manual: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/masking-tracking.html


HQ screen video capture I'm trying to create a video out of what's shown on the computer's screen. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get it in high quality, and since there are small fonts on the screen - the HQ is important.

I'm using Microsoft Expression Encoder 4. When I view the captured video before encoding (xesc) - it's fine. But after encoding - the encoded file (wmv) is not.

I've tried setting the size to "source" (doesn't help), simply renaming the file to ".wmv" (the text is clear but most of the screen is "grayed out"), and some other ideas. Nothing works.

I'm open to using different screen video capture software. (Preferably free.) I've researched about video editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro, but it seems not to include video screen capture.

I would go with either jing ( http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html ) free or Camtasia ( http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html ) both from Techsmith.

Camtasia allow you to zoom in on part of the screen after recording but before rendering. This basically solves your problem and is great when you need to create video to a resolution that is less than the recorded resolution.


Music video lighting with small budget? I'm shooting the main performance and possibly some other scenes of a music video for my band (I'm not in it) and the scene is like this:

In a field or in a forest (some variation thereof).
Guitarist singing and playing acoustic (not looking at the camera).
Lighting needs to be warm, dramatic and background to be quite dark (easily done at night with lower sensitivity). Almost "camp-fire" like.
I need to be able to hand hold at least one light as I want to constantly change the angle of the light on the subject during certain takes.
All lights obviously need to be similar for white balance / grading purposes.
Will be primarily shot on Canon 60D's with 50mm F/1.8 at 23.976fps 1080p with some slo-motion takes at 59.94fps (60p).

We can spend some money on lighting but as musicians we are dirt poor (shock horror). I understand lighting fully (being a photographer) but I fear our budget is probably going to make things... interesting.

Are there any DIY or basic solutions to lighting a video such as this? The main issue is that we'll be shooting in a field with no mains nearby so we'd need a generator or other power source to power the lights. I suspect it to be a few hours of shooting.

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

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

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


What is the origin of 4K term? According to Wikipedia:

  The name “4K resolution” refers to a horizontal resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels.

However, I believed that 4K is called like this simply because it has four times the resolution of a 1080p video, like this:

and, well, 1080 is practically 1024, which is a round number 1K.

Personally, the Wikipedia's explanation doesn't make much sense to me: the resolution of a piece of video is usually specified by two things: height and ratio; it is very unusual to see any mention of the width.

So what is the real origin of “4K” term?

According to Wikipedia ,Digital Cinema Initiatives originated the term 2K in 2002 for a digital film format of 2048 x 1080.  2048 is commonly referred to as 2K in the digital world.  It logically follows that when DCI went on to specify a resolution 2x larger in each direction, they called the 4096 x 2160 format 4K.  4096 is commonly referred to as 4K in the digital world.


How to expand stroke width in one direction am trying to scale the stroke width of a shape in AE in only one direction instead of all direction equally. Please assist

you can't scale the stroke in AE it's fixed. But you can adjust it's stroke thickness.

However the stroke thickness is also fixed. So if you increase the number it will be applied to all sides. So if you want to increase the TOP thickness that's not possible

In addition: By defaul AE allows you to adjust the scale on all sides but you can adjust the scale by not affecting other sides(constrain proportions)

just unclick the link icon(see image below) and adjust

The first value allows you to adjust the length of the shape

The second value allows you to adjust the height of the shape

Adjusting the position of the anchor point has a different result. Positioning the anchor point to the end points allows you to increase or decrease that specific end point

In the picture below the anchor point is positioned at the mid bottom end point. Increasing the second value will increase the TOP HEIGHT without increasing the BOTTOM HEIGHT. Moving the anchor point on top MID end point will have an opposite effect..

Same goes for positioning the anchor point on the side


How to write more than 7 digits in effect ("slider control") because his stop in 6 number How to write more than 7 digits in effect ("slider control") because his stop in 6 number in after effects

You can right-click on the slider and select Edit Value. A dialogue box pops up. You can enter a number up to 1000000. If you need a bigger number, consider adding some text to the value using different units or extra zeroes.


How would describe this editing technique I am trying to write about the editing techniques in this clip here:

and at the 0:39-0:41 section I want to describe what editing technique is used where the scene stays the says but the character changes but I can't find any terms that describe it.

Thanks for any help.

(The film is what I made for college, it was not great as the camera we used was terrible and we ran into a lot of issues)

It is a jump cut (creating a short video loop) followed by a match cut.


Simple Prowl notifications for After Effects render completion I want to be able to receive push notifications to my iPhone when After Effects completes a render.

I used to use Prowl v1.5.2 & Growl v2.1.3 combined with this script (.jsx file)to do this, but I can't get the script to work now.

I can get growlnotify to send a notification from the terminal to Growl, and successfully pass it to Prowl on my iPhone, but when I tried this script, it fails at line 24.  I've added the API key, and chosen growl as the notification type.  Growlnotify is in usr/local/bin and my appname is set to Adobe After Effects CC 2015.

I don't need background rendering, just a simple notify when renders complete.

I'm using OSX 10.11.1 and iOS 9.2, and After Effects CC 2015 v13.6.0.165

Here's a script example, it's only two lines:

app.project.renderQueue.render();
function(){system.callSystem(“Open growlnotify")};

First line renders the queue (without any safety checking)
Second line should open growlnotify to send a default message

First line works, second line doesn't - it returns "Syntax Error".  I've also tried:

app.project.renderQueue.render();
function(){system.callSystem(“growlnotify")};

The script extract you include:

app.project.renderQueue.render();
function(){system.callSystem(“Open growlnotify")};

has a dodgy opening quote.  “ is not the same as " - this is why you are getting the syntax error.

app.project.renderQueue.render();
(function(){system.callSystem("Open growlnotify")})();

works (the (..)() calls the anonymous function). You need to add the parentheses so that the anonymous function gets called, or simply do system.callSystem("Open growlnotify"); without the anonymous function.

You also need to activate "allow scripts to write files and access network" in Preferences/General, otherwise callSystem is blocked.

In the full script you post, when you replaced type = "web" on line 24 to use growl, the same error probably slipped in.  Check your keyboard autocorrect settings to ensure that you've not got curly quotes.


Unknown bitstream filter prores_metadata When I type the following ffmpeg command:

```
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v prores -profile:v 3 -c:a pcm_s16le -bsf:v prores_metadata=bt709 output.mov

I have the following error:

Unknown bitstream filter prores_metadata

However this bitstream filter is documented here: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-bitstream-filters.html#prores_005fmetadata

My ffmpeg version is 4.1 downloaded from Homebrew on macOS 10.13.

Any idea what is going wrong?

The bitstream filter was added after 4.1.

Get a recent static git binary, like this one: https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/macos64/static/ffmpeg-20181127-1035206-macos64-static.zip


is there a way to manipulate (pad, slice) a computed PTS timestamp within ffmpeg / drawtext? I've been able to get most of the manipulations I want on various PTS/timestamp things.. except this one.  I have a case where we have a running PTS that gets stamped via drawtext.  I currently use the %{pts:flt} which outputs millisecond accurate seconds.  This is great, but I ultimately need to format this in the format SS.ff, by which I mean we always keep only the last two digits of the seconds, and we ONLY print two significant digits of the fractional (micro/milli) second portion.
I've been through a truckload of various gmtime/strftime() attempts, and I'm stymied in part because it appears that only flt provides the fractional seconds part that I want, and it doesn't look like strftime() has support for width/padding/truncating?

The FFMPEG does not support strtime %f option; therefore, the fractional second works with AVTB only. The parameter is
-filter_complex "drawtext=fontsize=90:x=20:y=20:text='pts=%{pts\:gmtime\:0\:%S %f} AVTB=%{eif\:trunc(t)\:d\:2}.%{eif\:(1M*t-1M*trunc(t))/10000\:d\:2}':box=1"

and the result is


ffmpeg buffered recording need some advice to solve the problem

ffmpeg is receiving the nonstop live stream (rtmp source) from camera monitoring entry gates

after trigger is fired (gate/door is open) I need to create the 30sec videofile saved to HDD

I mean this 30 sec as 25 seconds of video before trigger was fired and some 5 seconds after trigger

the similar idea is covered by ffmpeg wiki (https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Capture/Lightning) but I can't get this working in any command configuration

I was playing with filters, buffering etc too but still no luck ;-((

any ideas would be appreciated

What you can do is add a blank 30 second segment in front of the camera stream, and then use the method in the ffmpeg wiki.

Basic template is

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=black:WxH:r=FPS:d=30 -i camera_input \
       -filter_complex "[0][1]concat[v]" -map "[v]" StreamingOutput

WxH should be set to the camera's resolution and FPS to its framerate.

And the 2nd command which is run 5 seconds after the trigger.

ffmpeg -i Streamingoutput -t 30 snippet.mp4


Using triplehead2go with ATEM 1 M/E We have a triplehead2go digital edition that we would like to use with a ATEM 1 M/E video mixer.

We tried setting the th2g to 3x 720 50p and the ATEM to 720 50p, but it didn't work.

This was our setup:

Computer -> TH2G -> Projector
                 -> ATEM -> Projector
                 -> Projector

Connecting the ATEM directly to a computer with the 720 50p works, and the TH2G works also.

Have anyone tried this?

So you set the resolution of your TH2G to 720p50? In that case you don't get 720p on every output but 1/3 of that vertically. You have to set your th2g to 3840x720 so you get three 720p signals on your outputs.

I also recommend using the Matrox App for setting resolution modes instead of the windows/osx display manager.


Timeline skimming while pointer is red or white Using Final Cut Pro X 10.4.5 (Macos Mojave 10.14), I notice that sometimes the timeline pointer is white, then red. With the timeline pointer I mean the point in the timeline where I've clicked, and where a vertical line appears. I don't know the proper name for it.

Anyway, when this line is white, skimming the timeline works. When it's red, skimming doesn't work. If I click on the film strip, selecting it, then the line goes to white and skimming does work again.

I don't know why the line goes red. I suppose I do something that changes this, but I have no idea what it is.

Make sure you are not have Transform, Crop or Distort icon active under the player. This disables skimming until you deselect it.


Video render size too large(Logitech c920) On exporting a captured video via Logitech c920 webcam , the size of a 1 minute clip is approximately 60Mb .Note that this is only a webcam capture and doesn't include a screen capture.I was planning a 4hr shoot ,but with such large render size,it would be very difficult.

Render format -mp4
Render settings - 30fps(Priority- FrameRate)
Openh264(Cisco)
Video-Hd1280x720 (7400kbps)
Audio-Stereo-48Mhz (194Kbps)
White balance-60%
Image adjustment -Turned Off
Antiflicker -60Hz

Is their any way to get a render with a reduced size ,without affecting the current quality and without using a postprocessing external compression software

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.


Looking for a Video Program/Feature that allows smooth frame-to-frame skipping (when moving progress bar) Does anyone know of a program, or feature in VLC, that allows you to skip smoothly from frame to frame when dragging the progress bar? Right now, when I drag it in VLC, it jumps several frames.

mpv has very good real-time scrubbing using the mouse on the on-screen controls.

It also has seek-while-paused, and accurate-seek (decode-from-prev-keyframe) for seeking backward by 1sec.  Also frame-step backward and forward.  (controls: , and .).

It also has an A/B loop keybind, where you can easily get it looping over a part of the video.

So basically it has a lot of features that are great for reviewing a video frame-by-frame looking for problems, or stuff like that.

It's still in active development, make sure you get an up-to-date version for the most features and bugfixes.  I've only used it on GNU/Linux, but I understand it works on Windows and OS X, too.


Can I record directly to a computer with the HC-V250? I'm considering purchase of the Panasonic HC-V250, but my primary use case is recording directly to a folder on my computer. (I do a lot of post-production editing, so I need all the files on my computer.) The HC-V250 can stream via UStream, but I don't know if this means that it's also capable of recording to a computer. (I'd assume not.)

For reference, I'm using a Windows 8.1 computer. This detail also does not appear to be stated in the manual or any reviews on various sites I've found this product on.

Is it possible to use the HC-V250 to record directly to a computer, or do I have to record to the memory card and then (painfully) transfer the files?

I have the same camera. As far as I can remember it can be used in "web cam" mode where it records straight to the computer.


What cable do I need for this connection I have a monitor with 2 connections labeled as output. CVBS1 and CVBS2 look like This. Looking at them I'm not a hundred percent on what kind of cable I need to use.

After trying to search online I'm fairly sure its a coaxial cable with a BNC connector, but I would like to find out for sure before I order a cable.

It is a composite signal being output via BNC connection.  This connector is used in most professional applications as it is heavier duty and can lock to the connector so that it does not accidentally come detached.  I'm not 100% certain if this standard is compatible with RCA connectors (I started working with BNC with component video and mostly with SDI, so I'm not that familiar with composite on BNC), but it may be possible to run this in to a normal component video input (the little yellow RCA connectors on VCRs for example) via an adapter.


Downsampling 4K footage for an increase in chroma sub-sampling We have a Lumix GH-4 camera, which can shoot in 4K with 4:2:2 color space.
I'd like to be able to convert the footage to 1080p 4:4:4 color space.
I've read that there some ways of doing this:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?330608-GH4-Downsample-4K-to-1080p-10-bit-4-4-4
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1483696

But I can't find a definitive step by step way of doing this.
I have the following tools:

Adobe CS6 After Effects & Premiere.
Final Cut X or 7.
Davinci Resolve v10

As I understand it, ffmpeg creates a raw image buffer with the input files it is given, then applies effects such as scaling and then encodes. So if you use ffmpeg to do the scaling and encoding to a 4:4:4 codec it should do what you want:

ffmpeg -i "my_gh4_422_4k.mov" -vf scale=1920:1080 -c:v prores -profile:v 4 -c:a copy "my_prores_444_1080.mov"

It would be interesting to test this, but I don't have any 4:2:2 4k footage on hand. I believe ffmpeg also does dnxhd 444, but I can't find any documentation on how to specify it.


link multiple audio tracks to one video track in Premiere CC I shoot TMZ-type webisodes, where multiple people are throwing jokes around a news room.  I'm considering buying 4 lavaliere mics for my 4 performers so I can isolate their audio during editing.

I want to keep the 4 audio tracks synched with the video track as I cut and rearrange the footage. Using Premiere CC, how would I link the multiple audio tracks to the single video track?

You can link multiple clips as you would link two clips. First, put all the audio and video tracks you want in your timeline and arrange them using the timecodes, manual adjustments or however you prefer to align the individual recordings (I'm assuming you have a method for that, since you removed that part of the question in the last edit). Then select all clips that you want to link, right-click on one of them and select "link" (if some of them are already linked, you will only see an "unlink" option, in that case unlink them, select them again and then link them alltogether). You could also choose to group them, which yields a slightly different effect.

Check the Premiere Pro Support Page for more information on linking clips, as well as this page on linking and grouping clips in Premiere Elements (it's works quite similar in Premiere Pro).

One more tip: In the program preferences under "Generel", you have the option "Display out of sync indicators for unlinked clips", which will show you when clips you linked at some point are out of sync even if you unlinked them later on. This might be helpful for an editing process with several independent audio clips.


Is 18 mm enough for video? Do I need a lens that is wider than 18 mm to make a professional looking video (which should be wide enough to give us some space, so the audience doesn't feel like claustrophobia)? I'm going to make a movie filmed with 1080p and a wide ratio.

 ___________
|           |
|           |
|___________| <--- HD.

 ___________
|           |
|___________| <--- Wide ratio.

What you're referring to is the aspect ratio. 1920 by 1080p is HD video, you would have to letterbox it in post production to achieve the 'wider' aspect ratio (I'm assuming you want 2.39:1).

As for the lens, 18mm is a pretty wide lens. If you have a 35mm sensor you may experience some barrel distortion – which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just as long as it's used well.

Not too sure what you mean by your audience feeling claustrophobic. However, a 50mm lens on a 35mm sensor closely replicates the field of view of the human eye as does (approx.) a 30mm lens on a crop sensor.

So to answer your question: no, you don't need a lens wider than 18mm to make a professional looking video.

EDIT: You mentioned that you will be using a kit lens. Typically kit lenses have a low build quality and are rarely used by professional cinematographers. Obtaining a better lens will make your videos look more professional due to the superior build quality and glass.

A good way to look for good lenses is to, firstly, figure out what focal length you require (8mm fisheye, 50mm, 85mm etc.), search online for different brand's lenses (you have  a Nikon but there are many companies that make third party lenses such as Tamron, Tokina, Sigma), look online for reviews of the lenses and test footage (Vimeo is a great place to find test footage) and then you can make an informed decision on which lens is best for you.

I'd recommend obtaining a good 50mm prime lens. Primes have less glass and generally produce a sharper image. Not too sure what Nikon lenses are like but you could try purchasing a 2nd hand lens off eBay and then buying an adaptor to get it onto your camera. This option is usually pretty cheap and if the lens is in good condition you will most likely be impressed with the result. I bought myself a Carl Zeiss 50mm f/1.8 for $80 and an adaptor for $5 – now it's one of my favourite lenses (and definitely the cheapest).


Loop image over audio, as AvidDV codec with ffMPEG I have been trying to understand ffMPEG and outputting a file with the DNxHD codec.

I keep getting an error [swscaler @ 0x7feec601a200] deprecated pixel format used, make sure you did set range correctly

Here is what I've been working with:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.jpg -i audio.mp3 -shortest -c:v dnxhd -b:v 120M -s 1920x1080 -pix_fmt yuv422p -r 25 -c:a pcm_s16le -ar 48000 out.mov

But I was wondering if it was possible to make an AvidDV SD version of the output? 1024x576 or 720x576 at 25fps? I know you can make other codecs, but an Avid one would make for fast import.

deprecated pixel format used

This is a warning, not an error, and you can ignore it.

DNxHD

The FFmpeg DNxHD encoder only supports valid DNxHD profiles. ffmpeg will output the list if you attempt to output unsupported width x height, frame rate, bitrate, and/or pixel format. Or view the list at another answer.

DV

FFmpeg can output DV, but I'm not quite sure why you would want to. This is an old format and there are better, modern, lossless alternative intermediate formats for editing such as UT video (ffmpeg can encode and decode that too). Like DNxHD it will only output certain DV profiles, but it can use the -target option to make it arguably easier to use:

ffmpeg -i input -target ntsc-dv output.dv


Reduce quality percentage wise I have several movie files in a mkv container.

ffmpeg -i filename gives me the following output:

Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1280x720, PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: dca (DTS), 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 1536 kb/s (default)
Stream #0.2(eng): Subtitle: [0][0][0][0] / 0x0000 (default) (forced)

Unfortunately the file size is pretty big. I was wondering, if there is a way to reduce the file size percentage-wise? Something like: "Reduce file size by 10%"?

I would prefer command line tools, such as ffmpeg/avconv or similar?

There is no switch to set a file size in percentage but there is the -fs switch.
This switch can bet set to let ffmpeg try to get to a specific target file size set in bytes (for example -fs 52428800 to get to 50MB).
You can write a script that takes the original file size and calculates your new desired file size depending on your specified percentage value and passes that calculated value to the -fs switch.
The resulting file wont be exactly at that file size though, ffmpeg will try its best but depending on the source file and your desired file size it wont be possible to reach that file size.

Even with the worst possible bit rate you can't produce a 20byte sized 720p mkv with 1 hour runtime. You get the idea, there will always be a certain error margin with the resulting file size.

If you simply want to reduce the file size by a good portion I recommend just using presets. Generally using the normal preset for x264 will give you a lot smaller video with no or very little quality reduction.
Remuxed or encoded Blu-rays or camera recordings usually have a crazy bitrate which results in these huge file sizes.

In your case if you are not interested in 5.1 sound you could also convert the 5.1 DTS sound into stero AAC or MP3 sound which will reduce the file size quite a bit aswell without hearable quality loss (for most human beings) in the sound.


How can I draw my own textures for my 3D objects? As the title says; how can I draw my own textures using softwares like photoshop?

There are many ways this can be done.  Historically, the main way was to paint the area of each surface and then create a texture map in the 3d software that would take the portions of the image and project them on to the geometry.  You simply had to know the shapes of your surfaces.  (Sometimes the software could even output a template to fill in, but it depends on the 3d software you are using.)

Now, with modern versions of Photoshop, they've simplified the process a bit as long as your 3d software supports exporting and importing a compatible format.  Photoshop now actually supports loading a 3d geometry and will let you paint directly on to it.

While the specifics depend on file format and version of Photoshop, the relevant help documentation can be found here.  Basically you load the geometry in to Photoshop, go to 3D and 3D Paint Mode and then use Photoshop fairly normally to paint on to the geometry.


Combining wiggle with position AE So I have a null controlled named "diamond_control", I'm trying to control position and wiggle using sliders, separately. This is the code that I have come up with, but it doesn't seem to work. The penultimate line seems to be overwritten by the last line:

x = thisComp.layer("diamond_control").effect("Horizontal")("Slider");
y = thisComp.layer("diamond_control").effect("Vertical")("Slider");

wiggle_x = thisComp.layer("diamond_control").effect("wiggle_x_pos")
("Slider");

wiggle_y = thisComp.layer("diamond_control").effect("wiggle_y_pos")
("Slider");

[wiggle(1 * wiggle_x/100, 1 * wiggle_x/10)[0], wiggle(1 * wiggle_y/100, 1 *
wiggle_y/10)[1]];

value + [x,y];

Is it not possible to control position and wiggle in one expression?

Thanks in advance.

Expressions can only ever return one result. In your expression the two last lines both return a result, so the last one is what the value will be.

Wiggle is a little bit confusing, in that it is not a function like Math.sin or random, that takes the value to be wiggled as a parameter. It is actually a method of the property, so when you call wiggle() in say, the position property, what you're actually calling is someLayer.transform.position.wiggle(). This returns a 'wiggly' value based on the value of the property, it doesn't actually change the value of the property itself.

So to use the result of the wiggle expression in combination with other values you have to get the result of the wiggle expression, and use that in your final result. There is no need to add value to the wiggle result, because it is already added. Also, there is no point multiplying it by 1, that does nothing.

ctrl = thisComp.layer("diamond_control"); //just for neatness
x = ctrl.effect("Horizontal")("Slider");
y = ctrl.effect("Vertical")("Slider");

wiggle_x = ctrl.effect("wiggle_x_pos")("Slider");
wiggle_y = ctrleffect("wiggle_y_pos")("Slider");

w = [wiggle(wiggle_x/100, wiggle_x/10)[0], wiggle(wiggle_y/100, wiggle_y/10)[1]];

w + [x,y];

I'm not sure why you use the wiggle_x_pos and wiggle_y_pos slider for both the amplitude and frequency parameter of the wiggle. The first two values you give to wiggle are the amount of wiggliness and the frequency of the wiggle. Your expression would increase both frequency and amplitude together, that might be what you want. In the expression above this would then be added to the value given by the horizontal and vertical slider, which would be an offset, so that if x and y are equal to 0 the layer would wiggle around its base position. This seems a bit back-to-front.

If you want a set of controls for the rest position, the amount and the frequency of the wiggle I'd set up the 'diamond_control' layer with two point expression control effects on it and one slider control. The adfvantage of using a point control is that you can control both parameters with a single control, right from the comp window. So given that setup you'd use this:

ctrl = thisComp.layer("diamond_control"); //just for neatness
amplitude = ctrl.effect("Amplitude")("Point");
basePos = ctrl.effect("Base Position")("Point");
freq = ctrl.effect("Freqquency")("Slider");
w = [wiggle(amplitude[0], freq)[0], wiggle(amplitude[1], freq)[1]) - value;

w + basePos;

You can see that on the second line I subtract value from the wiggle result, this means that it just returns the wiggle offset, not the original base position. So that means the base position will be only set by the Base Position effect control.


How to edit video like this? How they manage to dissolve text only and not themselves??

In some videos text even go over there hands but still texts dissolves and they remains intact..

Example is in this video please go through it 1st is at 4 seconds then at 1:30.

Sit behind a sheet of glass, write, flip video, key dissolve.


Best render settings for broadcast/4k TV I see a lot of tips for getting h264 renders onto web streaming sites in 4K but not much on TV. Should I just go with Animation/lossless for my “master”? seems crazy for a 22 minute program but HDD is cheap now so it’s doable. The content consists of detailed animation including 3d rendered scenes source material.

Would 4k on h264 5.2 be adequate? Any artifacts going h264 -> broadcast?

The reason for mastering out to an uncompressed / minimally lossy format is so that you have a master copy, which you can then use to make other copies, without generation loss, or having to re-render.

You don't have to use Animation. There, I've said it. While it's mathematically lossless, it's only 8-bit, so swings ± roundabouts. While I used to only ever render Aniamtion ever, these days I prefer DNxHR or Cineform with 10-bit colour, the file size is better and you have four times as much colour information. If you're on a mac ProRes 4444 is a good option.

But the first step is check with the broadcaster to see what their tech specs are. The broadcaster where I work mostly take ProRes, so I make proRes submasters from my master copy using ffmpeg. No seriously, check, because they will reject stuff that doesn't pass their quality control.


What's the difference between open Subtitles and open captions in Premiere Pro CC 2018? The only difference I've spotted is that you can edit the font in open captions but not in open subtitles. But i'm sure there's another point to it.

ok, I found out that the difference is in the export options of this type of caption, aside from in editing the subtitles. You can export open subtitles as a sidecar file with the same formats you get in teletext, while you can only burn open captions into video.


Ingesting professional sony beta and sx tape into iMac thru Canopus ADVC 110 I'm trying to capture sony beta and sx tape into my iMac. I know I need a device between the deck and computer. I believe that device is the Canopus ADVC 110 converter (have yet to purchase this.)  Will I be able to cable from that converter directly to the thunderbolt port on the iMac? There are no firewire ports on my iMac. Pretty confused on this process. thanks!

If you have firwire device but no firewire port you need an adapter. Apple offers one:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapter

If you tape deck is offering an output that the Canopus supports you will be able to capture your tapes that way.
Alternatively you might want to look for a USB based solution that might be cheaper than using this device with an adapter.


What is the meaning of "channels" in an audio recorder program? I compiled and ran this audio recorder program derived from JUCE: https://gitlab.com/DamienAuvray/simpleaudiorecorder
I can see that it has the options of selecting channels. I am a newbie in this area.
What do those channels represent? Do they represent different microphones? Selecting many channels means that we can use more than one microphone for recording?
Please explain.

I am not sure about that particular software, but a channel is one of two sides of a stereo recording, and yes, a truly stereo microphone is in reality two separate microphones in one device.
Another option is to use two monoaural microphones connected to the same input device.

When a studio recording is being edited, a channel can represent this same; one of two microphones. There can be an even greater number of them, for example, a recording of an orchestra or they can be recordings from the same microphone made on different moments, for example, a solo artist that is recording his own chorus.


Premiere CC uses vertical aspect ratio in multi-camera shot I have 2 clips. One (from an iPhone) was accidentally shot with a vertical aspect ratio. I want to make a multi-camera sequence from them. Adobe Premiere CC is giving the multicam sequence a vertical aspect ratio (1080 width X 1920 height) instead of landscape.  If I rotate the vertical clip in the timeline so it's horizontal, the sequence is still vertical and the left and right edges of the clip get cut off. I tried a few other things with no luck. (Can't remember where I found them.)

Any ideas how to rotate the multi-cam sequence and that clip?

I have to thank @ProfessorSparkles for getting me to this solution, which doesn't require saving and reimporting, or making a duplicate of the source footage.  Here are the steps:

1) I started with the 2 clips I'm using in the same bin.

2) Drag the landscape-oriented clip to the timeline.  That creates a sequence with landscape orientation in the bin.

3) Select the clip in the timeline and delete it.  (The sequence is still in the bin.)

4) Select both of the clips within the bin.

5) Right-click and select "Create multi-camera source sequence...."

6) In that dialog box, click "OK".  Premiere will synch up the 2 clips.

7) When I first did this, it asked me a question before creating the sequence.  It was something like, "The settings on this sequence don't match the existing sequence.  Do you want to keep the source sequence settings?"  CLICK NO.  That will make your new sequence match the settings (landscape orientation) of the existing sequence!

8) You can then select the blank sequence you created a minute ago and "Clear" (delete) it.

9) Drag the new sequence to the timeline.

10) Hold down Ctrl or Cmd and double-click on the new sequence in the timeline.  A new sequence will be created that shows each clip separately.

11) In that new sequence, select the clip with portrait orientation.

12) Go over to "Effects Controls".  In "Motion", rotate the clip either 90 degrees or 270 degrees.

What a relief it was to figure that out!!!


Is there a program for automatic clip creation from scene detection/recognition result? I want to parse a large set of movie/advertisement mixture in one video file, i.e. some hours of video, and separate not only movie and advertisement, but also split/cut different advertisements into clips (I'm only interested in advertisement clips separated into different files). Is there a tool which allows to do such thing without interaction (most tools, e.g. kdenlive, have great scene recognition, but only split the clips into logical units for editing in the GUI)? Of course, scene detection isn't deterministic and some clips will require cutting, but that shouldn't matter.

The important thing is the separation of clips into files and the automatization (might be done within the program or on the console with Linux command pipes or an API for - lets say - python).

The program should run on Linux and be FLOSS software.

I had a similar need as yours - to produce shorter videos with different scenes from a single large video. I came across PySceneDetect which provides two kinds of cutting method:

threshold scene detection (detect-threshold): analyzes video for changes in average frame intensity/brightness
content-aware scene detection (detect-content): based on changes between frames in the HSV color space

More information can be found on their website.


How to remove a small 2 second portion of audio from an mpeg video file in Mac? I currently have a 1 minute long video where in the beginning of the video someone says something inappropriate. I was wondering what the easiest way to silence that part of the video would be. I am wondering if Quicktime or iMovie can do the job in Mac.

Use ffmpeg (terminal tool).
https://github.com/fluent-ffmpeg/node-fluent-ffmpeg/wiki/Installing-ffmpeg-on-Mac-OS-X
Copy the audio into a separate file.
Then use ffmpeg again to silence desired part (https://stackoverflow.com/q/38180809/2792138 or https://stackoverflow.com/q/29215197/2792138).
Then merge new audio file with the initial video file, replacing old audio track.


How to automatically enrich a video stream with dynamic overlay (text, images, ...) In my company, we are currently looking for a solution to enrich a given video stream (which is being broadcasted via RTMP) from a remote webcam with some dynamic information, such as current date/time, special measure values which are available on a server, or the most recent entries in a database.

Basically we want to achieve a simple, dynamic on-screen display, as - for example - TV stations are using. The modified stream should then be restreamed, for example to be viewed in VLC Player or on YouTube.

So far, I came up with the following ideas:

Using OBS with some own scripts and plugins - that's disadvantageous because we would like to run the solution on a high-network performance server 24/7 without a GUI. Basically I'd need a fully command-line based version of OBS.
Using FFmpeg: I know that there are text filters available, but they are mainly static (or periodically polling a file with text) and don't allow for any design adjustments other than font, font size and color. It would be great if there was some way of overlaying a Webkit browser view onto the stream, because this would allow us to design the overlays in HTML5 and CSS and using WebSocket technology for updating the data.
The overlay could be captured with PhantomJS, but how should we unify it with the stream and would it be fast enough to render 30 FPS?

Are there additional (preferably open source) tools we could use? What would be the best strategy to implement this without buying expensive TV broadcasting software?

Have a look at CasparCG. It should be able to do what you want.

An alternative would be to create something using MLT and, say, Python, but that requires some programming, though it should be mostly assembling modules together.


Clip that plays fine in WMP is cut off in Sony Vegas I imported a screen recording into Sony Vegas. When I play the original clip with Windows Media Player, it looks the way I expect it, with the whole screen visible. But when I play the clip in Vegas, it's zoomed in on the left side and the right side is just CUT out. Trying to change the crop or resize doesn't have any effect, everything on the rest of the screen is just gone, it's not there.

https://imgur.com/a/1zr3S

In the first image, you can see the original clip and everything is visible.
In the second image, you can see the clip inside of Vegas and how it's cut off.
In the third image, you can see that after i crop/pan it doesn't matter the clip is just cut off inside of Vegas.

How can I import the full screen?

This isn't a Vegas issue. The recording application has registered the video resolution as 1024x768 in the MP4 global header (../stsd/avc1) but the full 1080p stream is captured and stored.

Vegas is using the header metadata to crop the video stream at the stage of loading the file. So, any Vegas functions/plugins downstream to this stage don't, know of, or have access to the full image data.

However, the full resolution is correctly stored in the metadata (SPS) of the video stream itself. So remuxing the file with ffmpeg will resolve the issue as ffmpeg constructs a new global header, based on reading the stream metadata.

ffmpeg -i recorded.mp4 -c copy fixed.mp4

Get a FFmpeg Windows binary from https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/


Premiere CC Button Editor Unaligned Above is the Screenshot of the results of adding new buttons using the the Premiere CC button editor. For the life of me I cannot get these buttons to align to center or align to anything at all. It's just arbitrarily looking like crap.

Any tips?

Buttons will automatically allign to other button ontop or under existing buttons.
Right now they are not aligned because you are missing a spacer after the first two button in the bottom row. Or remove the spacer in the top row by dragging it into the editor window.


Which software application did they use to create LHC data processing animation? I would like to know which software application did CERN use to create the LHC data processing animation?

I have some ideas for demo 3D animations and would like to follow the style used by LHC video.

Thank you!

This can be achieved with almost any 3D suites out there.
Your options are 3Ds Studio Max, Cinema 4D, Blender (free and open source), Maya, Lightwave etc. etc.
These are all software suites that enable you to model, animate and render videos like this one.
Ontop of that they used a 2D animation software like After Effects for scenes like the earth overview animation at second 251.
Though the 3D scenes are very likely one single render without much post processing (except for the text overlay).

The style is simple, you have a rather flat shading without much reflections with Ambient Occlusion turned up a notch to get these shadows in the corners.

Going by these particle effects I'm rather convinced that they used Cinema 4D for the 3D animations, though they could have also made those with After Effects and a plugin called Particular from RedGiant Software, a very popular tool for particle animations.
Though Cinema 4D is very popular for motion graphic animations like this one, so it's likely they used that.


Is it possible to raise H.264's QP without fully re-encoding the video? Is it possible to lower the H.264 video quality and bitrate without fully decoding and encoding it?

Are there H.264-specific algoritmhs that can create a video with higher QP based on encoded video with lower QP?

What conversions are in general available for H.264 content? Is there a tool for lossless conversions like jpegtran for JPEG?

A similar question came up before.  I posted some of the same thing in my answer there.

  Is it possible to lower the H.264 video quality and bitrate without
  fully decoding and encoding it?

H.264 B and P macroblocks reference frames that have already been processed by the deblocking filter.  The deblocking strength is adaptive to the QP.  I'm not sure, but I think this would lead to problems if you just re-quantized the DCT coefficients.  In any case, I think it would just be a speed-hack that gives worse quality than full decoding + encoding.  And I'm not aware of any implementations.

Nobody's even implemented a bitstream filter to losslessly convert h.264 Baseline to CABAC.  :(  It has been talked about, though.

However, this paper does have an implementation that partially decodes h.264, modifies it (for data-hiding), and re-encodes it.  IDK what software he started with for the implementation, but his code, if available and appropriately licensed, might be a good starting point for other bitstream filters.

  What conversions are in general available for H.264 content? Is there
  a tool for lossless conversions like jpegtran for JPEG?

jpegtran only works because each DCT coefficient block is completely independent of all others.  Even  h.264 I frames predict from other blocks within the same frame.  (Intra prediction, as opposed to inter prediction in P and B macroblocks).  Lossless rotation or flipping probably isn't possible.

(Although phone cameras for example can just indicate with metadata that the player should rotate the video on playback, if they are held vertically while recording video.)

ffmpeg has a bitstream filter for h.264 that does something about converting how the h.264 stream is stored, or maybe something about the headers?  IDK, I haven't had to use it, or read up.  From the docs:
ffmpeg -i h264.mp4 -c:v copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb -an out.h264

This isn't anything like what you're asking, though.


ffmpeg concatenation introduces video stutter but does not affect audio I've gone through several different variants of this process and it always causes me problems.  I've gotten it working sometimes but it doesn't seem to be consistent.

I have a video camera which records AVCHD to MTS files, it splits files at 3.89GB.  Since its microphone is crap, I also record audio separately and have to sync them back up before editing.  The problem I have is that the audio recorder doesn't break files at the same times so I'll usually end up with 3 video files and 1 audio file.

So I'm wondering where things are going wrong in this process:

Converted all the H264 MTS files to ProRes MOV files.  The editor handles ProRes better than the compressed files so I convert. ffmpeg -i 00000.MTS -vf "yadif=3:-1:1,mcdeint" -vcodec prores -vprofile 2 -ar 48000 1.mov
Concatenated the 3 .mov files together.  At this point I have a file with video stutters every ~32 minutes, but the audio stays in sync with the video. ffmpeg -f concat -i mylist.txt -c copy full.mov
Extracted the audio to FLAC.  Imported into audacity, lined up the external audio with a clap and trimmed to length.  At this point both audio tracks line up, the external track is still in sync with the camera audio at the end.  Export the new external audio matched to the start and the length of the original audio. ffmpeg -i full.mov -aq 256k full.flac
Recombine the large .mov file with the new audio.  At this point the audio that was just in sync with the original audio from the video files now goes out of sync when the video stutters. ffmpeg -i full.mov -i full-tascam.flac -map 0:0 -map 1 -vcodec copy -ar 48000 full-tascam.mov

What do?  I've had the same problem before introducing ProRes, just concatenating the MTS files into MP4 copying the video stream and adding the new audio.  Is there anything I can set while concatenating to remove the stutters, or to prevent them from throwing the new audio out of sync when I'm adding that track?

For some reason I think this is avoided when using ffmpeg's concat PROTOCOL (ffmpeg -i "concat:...") rather than its concat DEMUXER (ffmpeg -f concat -i mylist.txt).  Oddly, it's also slightly more convenient since using the demuxer requires me to create the text file with the file names in it while with the protocol I can just specify them on the command line, eg: ffmpeg -i "concat:00001.MTS|00002.MTS|00003.MTS" -c copy output.mts

I'll need to confirm this later, I'm at the wrong computer but something brought the question to my attention so I decided to update it with new information.


If I shoot in H.264 is it worth it to export the product in ProRes? I shoot video in H.264. I assume that my footage is forever compressed really small and that exporting to ProRes in FCPX would do nothing but make my file bigger. Is this true? Or am I missing something? Would exporting in ProRes give me better quality than I started with?

The 2 formats have different uses. H.264 is mainly good as a playback format. It's supported widely, compresses very well, and can be decompressed by relatively low-powered devices easily. It's also supported in some video cards making it hardware accelerated on those devices. While it is possible to edit with H.264, it's not ideal as it's a Long-GOP format. GOP here is an acronym for "Group of Pictures". Typically, Long-GOP formats contain 1 keyframe followed by several frames that are differences from the keyframes every so many seconds. So if you want to cut on a frame other than a keyframe, you need to decode the keyframe and all frames from the keyframe up to the frame you want to cut on, making it slower to edit.

ProRes, on the other hand, is intended to ensure the fidelity of the frame through numerous edits. While its compression is good, it focuses more on quality so the amount of compression is less than that of H.264. (In fact, in ProRes 4:4:4(:4) you can have lossless compression with ProRes.) Many devices will not playback ProRes because there's no codec written for them. I think that it's also a higher bit-depth than H.264. (There are higher bit-depth versions of H.264, but I don't know how widely supported they are.) It's also an intra-frame compression scheme, meaning that you don't need any previous frames to decode a given frame. That makes the compression less, but makes it easier to decode any given frame.

So ProRes is better for editing because it preserves fidelity, is faster to decode frames, and offers higher bit depths (or at least offers them more consistently). H.264 is better for playback because it's supported on more devices, and the compression ratio is higher.

You can think of it similarly to audio sample rates. For playback, nothing over 44.1 kHz can make any audible difference to humans (despite what marketing may tell you). But for the purposes of editing, working at 96 kHz can be useful for preserving fidelity through the addition of effects, various mix downs, and mastering.


Copying Effects from Photoshop to After Effects I was wondering if it was possible to copy effects settings from photoshop to after effects?

Let's say I have a simple effect like "Levels" and I want to have the exact same values for the effect in after effects like in Photoshop without having to switch windows to copy the values one by one.

The best way to achieve this is to import the PSD into After Effects, which converts the PS effects to AE effects automatically.

Make sure your effects are all on adjustment layers before importing, and make sure your document mode is set to RGB. If your PS document is a different resolution than your AE comp, you may need to move the effects from the auto generated layers to a new solid inside AE. This will not work if you are using layer masks in PS to manipulate the Adjustment Layer visible regions.

Hope this helps!


Editing text in Premiere Pro I have a project in Premier Pro.

I added lot of text and clips to my timeline and when I have returned to it the next day I can't seem to find a way to edit the text anymore, all I am seeing is yellow and red line on top of the timeline indicating where the text starts and ends but no way of actually grabbing it to edit it.

Try Selecting your Text Tool... the Capital "T" in the tool bar. Using that Click or double Click on the text you want to edit. That should get you there.


Making the camera travel through a hole in a letter I need to know if there is a way for a camera to travel through a hole in a letter or something flashy like a portal in After Effects CC.

Here's one idea for the effect, which you can even do in Premiere:

Get a live-action camera shot where the camera is slowly trucking forward.
In post-production, create a title that has at least one letter with a hole in it (A, B, D, O, P, Q, etc.).
Lay the title over the top of the trucking-in shot.
Animate the scale and position of the title over several seconds, so that the title gets larger and larger, and the hole stretches towards the edges of the screen. Since this is happening while the camera in the live-action scene is trucking forward, it will appear that the title is hovering in the air within the live-action scene.
When the hole in the letter is larger than the screen (because of the increasing scale), the animation is done.  At that point, it will appear as though the camera has traveled "through" the hole in the title, and is continuing to move forward.  (You can cut the title from the timeline at that point.)


Adobe Premier CS6 'Unable to open file' coming from Cineform I just transformed a MP4 file coming from my GoPro into a MOV file using CineForm studio. It works great in MAC.

However, when doing the same on Windows, and transforming from MP4 to AVI, when trying to open the file on Premiere, I get an error saying 'unkown file or damaged file'.  I am guessing Adobe Premiere doesn't know how to open that AVI file, but at the same time it's weird because I can open it with Windows Media Player.

Anybody has experienced this or knows how to solve it?

Thanks

Simply update your Cineform installation and maybe also Premiere, this was a bug with Cineform and got fixed about 2 years ago.


Wanna learn to make videos that use documents I want to make videos that are documentary, and will often have documents and images in them.

I figured out how to do simple animations and Ken Burns Effects with Motion. Just wondering if I am going to end up making every scene in Motion and exporting it to drop into Final Cut Pro, or if there are easier ways to do it.

A good example would be suppose I want to show a document. I might want to swipe it in, then zoom to one part of it, then highlight some of it. I think I could do that with Motion. Wondering if instead though I should be finding or making effects in FCPX instead, then just dropping the document into it, reframing the zoomed portion, and where the highlight goes.

Here is a good example:

of some types of effects, although I think some of these are a little hokey. I just wonder if they are making each zoom and animated transition. Thinking no.

When you want something to happen on screen, at the very minimum, you need to tell it:

When to start
When to stop
Where to be

Motion lets you create templates for generators, transitions, and titles.  So you'll build the details of an effect in Motion, and then apply, and re-apply that template in FCPX as often as you need.  You can also decide which parameters you'd like to retain control over while designing your templates in Motion, and make them available to Final Cut, so that you can tweak elements as necessary.

Designing the movement of these graphic elements is the domain of a profession known as "Motion Graphics."  Like any other artistic practice, being a good motion graphics designer requires much talent, dedication, and practice.

Often, motion graphics designers will sell their designs, so that people who are less practiced can apply a polished look to their own projects, the same way a typographer might design a font for licensing to a broader audience.  If you search the web for "Apple Motion templates," you will find many of these pre-designed packages, complete with built-in controls for tweaking various elements to taste.


Discrepancy between VirtualDub CPU usage and Task Manager, Lag resulting So I'm trying to capture footage from my PS2 at a low resolution (720x576 if memory serves) through Virtual Dub. I'm on Windows 7 64 with an 8-core i7, 8GB RAM, 150G SSD and an EZCap capture card. When I start to capture, Virtual Dub says CPU usage is 80 - 120%, I've messed with the settings and got this down to around 40-60% usage, meanwhile Task Manager says I'm using around 10%. Because of this or some other reason I get lag and dropped frames every half-second or so.

All I want is to be able to capture without lag with this or some other program. I've tried some other forums and people there were stumped. Can anyone help please?

EZ Cap is an extremely cheap capture device and may be dropping frames itself.  You may also want to check if things are spiking any.  Can it play back video without recording it and if so, is it still dropping frames?  If so, then it is likely a hardware problem.  If you are plugging it in to a non USB2.0 port, that could also cause problems.

I would recommend trying a low compression codec and see if that will work.  It will use lots of disk space but take a minimal amount of CPU.  You can then encode the intermediate format to a good quality high or moderate compression format to save on space.


Color Correcting & Color Grading I'm curious if anyone knows of a good tutorial on color correcting and/or color grading in After Effects(original effects, magic bullet looks, or any other program). Preferably, but not limited to, on YouTube due to its seemingly long process.

I just want to learn more so anything you have to add on the topic is appreciated.

I found the free (and paid) tutorials at Color Grading Central very helpful.  Using a dedicated color grading application is (in my opinion) usually the way to go.  The basic version of Davinci Resolve is free, incredibly powerful, and offers a lot more control than grading in After Effects with plugins, in my experience.

For more on the theory of color grading, the Tao of Color Grading is a useful video on vimeo, (although the lighting is terrible). (part two is here).


Why a color grading suite needs high CRI lamps? I'm building a color correction suite. Among the requirements, I read that it needs to be lit using 6500K lamps with CRI 90 or higher. Which are pretty hard to find in my location.

I totally understand the 6500K requirement but why do I need a high CRI lamp? How does seeing the walls and the other stuff in the room in it's "full glory" affects my perception of the stuff on the screen?

The truth is that you do not need them... unless you do of course.

You only need good CRI for the ambient lamps if you need to compare colors with real-life things, probably the skin tone of someone, or want to prepare the color for a tomato that looks healthy but not oversaturated.

Another reason is that you can not work totally isolated from ambient light, your eyes will stress a lot. So the ambient light will hit your hands, your keyboard, and things on your desk. Having a low-quality light illuminating this could alter your perception of colors and force you to make wrong adjustments.

If you need lights with good CRI get some on an online store.


Is it possible to store subtitle srt files in an m3u playlist file? I have a folder that contains around 51 videos and another folder with their respective subtitles.

I don't want to merge the folders into one folder so I was wondering if there's a way to store subtitle srt files location (or at least a folder location for all subtitles) in an m3u playlist file along with the video files locations.

Note: Video file format is flv.

m3u playlists only contains links to the media itself that you're playing.

It doesn't actually consider the srt file at all. If the software used to play back the m3u file support srt files it will look in the same folder for the same file as the video only with the extension switched to srt.

You will therefor always need to store the srt together with the video file.


gource and ffmpeg reduce video size I try to create video with gource. I succeed with the following command line:

gource $LOG_FILE --log-format custom --stop-at-end --caption-file ${FILENAME}_captions.log --caption-duration 3 --title $TITLE --seconds-per-day 0.7 --auto-skip-seconds 1 --date-format\
 "%d/%m/%y" --hide "mouse,progress" --user-scale 0.6 --caption-size 20 -1380x950 -o - | ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420\
p -crf 1 -threads 4 -bf 0 $FILENAME.mp4

But the video are too big, 9Go for 4 min. How can I reduce the size with ffmpeg?

I use Fedora.

-preset

Use the slowest preset that is fast enough that it does not drop frames. You can see if ffmpeg is dropping frames in the console output (if I recall correctly). Presets are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow.

-crf

Use the highest -crf value that still provides an acceptable quality level. Range is 0-51. 0 is lossless, 18 is generally considered to be visually lossless or nearly so, 23 is default, and 51 is worst quality. Using a value of 1 will likely result in a huge file.

Also see:

FFmpeg H.264 Video Encoding Guide


How to release the work anonymously under the free licence? The goal is to release the work anonymously, but not into the public domain or as CC0, but rather under the Share-Alike licence. However, most of the licences require reusers to identify the original creator of the work, which they will be unable to do.

The route that most people take, is to release it 'pseudonymously' rather than anonymously. So you just make up a pseudonym and use that in the copyright/licence statement.

A better approach may be to use the little-known CC-SA 1.0 licence, which was unfortunately retired by Creative Commons due to it not being used a lot. This licence requires a reuser to publish their altered versions with the same freedoms, but does not place the requirement to find out who was the original author.


Dual display with final cut pro I have a MacBook Pro 13” 2019, and until now I have used a single external monitor for Final Cut Pro x. I just bought a new monitor, and when I select the dual display in fcpx, the second screen goes to my mbp instead of the second screen.

Could anyone tell me how I can set the second display for fcpx to a different screen?

Thx

In the system preferences, in the display arrange dialogue you will see a menu bar. Move this bar to the monitor representation you want FCPX to have its main window.


How can I distinguish a freeze frame from the moving parts of the video? Im wondering whats a good way for distinguishing (marking) a freeze frame from the moving parts of the video so it will not look like a problem that stopped the video player app?
I prefer keeping the freeze frame as clean as possible with minimal effects and markings.

Add a sound effect: the effect fades in, is audible at full volume shortly before it abruptly ends exactly when the freeze frame appears. The sound effect should be distinguishable from background sounds and overall be crisp and short (like 0.5-2 seconds). That way, the audience is given a clear indicator that the freeze frame is intentional. An alternative might be a sudden tempo/rhythm change in music - but I wouldn't stop the music.


How to stack frames of a video together using lighten blending mode? I want each frame of video to get added on top of the previous frames. I don't want any of them to fade out. I am shooting locked down with a black background. A model moves through the frame with a light. I want to stack the frames one on top of the others so that the light moves through the frame and the last frame shows the path taken as a light trail.

What is the easiest way to add each new frame on top of the rest? I would like to avoid putting a separate layer for each frame manually.

Use "Echo" effect. I believe it will suite you.

You need adjust it. Make number of echos equal to your frame count.


Launch a AfterEffects rendered in background with cmd update I am trying to find scripting code that allows me to open a CMD in Windows and lauch AE render of the current project queue in background.

Also, if possible, to get the output back in that cmd window.

Thanks.

After Effects has a seperate executable for the render engine.
Have a look at this article from Adobe for some usage examples and an overview of the commands.

http://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/automated-rendering-network-rendering.html

aerender -project c:\projects\project_1.aep -comp "Composition_1" -output c :\output\project_1\project_1.avi

As you define the output file yourself you already have the path available. As soon as the command finished you know your file is done rendering and you can process it further.


Compressing of DSLR video I m recording full HD video in 1080p /30p format with my Nikon D5200 but i find the size of video is to high i.e. 10 GB for an hour. Now i want to compress it to lesser size in the range of 1-2 GB without affecting even a bit of quality so that i can archive it without exhausting my storage drive. I want it in 1080p format with lesser size after compression. As i have recorded 200hr video and still keeping RAW video with my storage which has exhausted it. Is there any software or any solution so that i can convert it to lesser size? Pl help as i havnt found any full proof solution for this. Ur suggestions will heartly be welcomed. I have to use these videos on my large screen tv for teaching purpose.

Theoretically
Current DSLRs use H.264 compression for their video. Optimizing an already compressed image without losing quality is something commonly done for GIF, PNG or JPEG still images, and while it's theoretically possible to optimise compression in existing video files, currently no one bothered to develop the software to do so. The only solution left for you is to recompress your video with your codec of choice.
Don't try lossless codecs
While you won't lose any quality, lossless is only useful if your source material has a very high datarate. You will probably not gain anything compared to your DLSR files. (Your files seem to be about 25Mbit/s. Lossless x265/x264 will give you at least 100-200Mbit/s)
Try almost-lossless
Still, it's good to know that the internal (hardware) codecs of DSLRs are inferior to what your current CPU can do with recent software. But you should also know that any lossy recompression will result in an image that is slightly worse than the original, even if you encode in a higher quality than the original. That being said, here is a list of modern codecs that can compress your files with minimal loss: x264, x265, vp9 and av1 (to be released in 2017).
x264/x265 Settings for recompression with minimal loss

Encoding mode: constant quality. It will encode in one pass and output the lowest file size for a given quality setting. Your new file will contain variable bitrate video — your original DSLRs files are probably constant bitrate files
CRF quality setting: Choose a value between 12 and 20 (quality difference will be between indistinguishable and fine-for-the-less-discerning), if the source material is compressed in low quality, you can sometimes go higher than a CRF of 20 without noticing any difference. Incrementing CRF by +6 means about doubling the file size.
Codec: Compared to x264, x265 compression produces about half the datarate at the same CRF, but it is a lot slower.
Speed/Compression ratio: Use the veryslow setting to get the smallest file. Warning: this might be very slow ;-)

Depending on the above choices and on the complexity of the image and on the efficiency of the codec of your DSLR, your recompressed file will be up to 10 times smaller (probably less).
Handbrake is a nice app that will help you achieve all this. If you prefer the command line you should definitely go with ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i DSLR.MOV -c:v libx265 -preset veryslow -crf 18 -c:a copy recompress.mp4


queuing multiple encodings with different edits Is there a way to queue multiple encodings with each being a different edit of my video?
For example:
I want to queue up 2 encodings.

is for youtube
is for instagram

I need to disable certain tracks on each. So, is there a way for me to disable those certain tracks for 1 and then queue that up? Then do the same thing for 2 and then queue it up? So, they are both building at the same time but with certain tracks enabled and disabled?

The way I would do it is just duplicating my timeline, make one for each type of encoding I want (clip_001_youtube, clip_001_instagram,...), then use Media Encoder, just publish them all and then let ME do it's thing of batching them.
I find it helpful to make a bunch of timelines that are almost the same. Sometimes, I use nesting to make it easier also.


Wavy video export in Premiere Pro I've exported a video within Premiere Pro & certain areas of the video produce wavy lines or it comes out distorted. What could be the cause of this and how can this be fixed?

See below for an example.

Exported Video:

Same clip within Premiere Pro:

Those are interlacing problems it looks like. In the editor, it displays 'deinterlaced' previews so you won't notice this in the editor. In the clip, select "Field options" and then "Always deinterlace" then render your video again, it should be fine then.


How to limit file size with ffmpeg? I want to encode a video, that has a length of 60 seconds, to a target or maximum size of 10 MB.

There are two approaches I know of. One is explained in the FFMPEG-Wiki, and the other one I found in the documentation. Unfortunately, I haven't found an explanation on when to use what method.

Is any of those methods recommended? If not, what are the upsides/downsides of each method?

1) Calculate and set Bitrate to match the length of the video as explained in the ffmpeg-wiki

  (10 MB * 8192 [converts MB to kilobits]) / 60 seconds = ~1365 kbits/s total bitrate
  1365k - 128k (desired audio bitrate) = 1237k video bitrate

ffmpeg -y -i input -c:v copy -preset medium -b:v 1237k -pass 1 -c:a copy -b:a 128k -f mp4 /dev/null && \
ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -preset medium -b:v 1237k -pass 2 -c:a libfdk_aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

2) Use the -fs parameter and let ffmpeg figure it out.

ffmpeg -i input -c:v copy -c:a copy -preset medium -crf 23 -fs 10485760 output.mp4

The fs parameter will stop the encode once it hits its value. So, if the output hits the 10MB mark while encoding the 15th second, then that's the duration of your output file.

If you want to make sure that the entire file is encoded but it doesn't cross the set target size, then use the bitrate method. To accommodate the muxing overhead and other data within the target size, set your video bitrate slightly lower by, say, 1-2%


What is the simplest way to cut and put together many parts (for which I know the timestamps) of many videos? I am absolutely new to video production, I just have a simple job to get done.

I have about 10 videos of a few minutes each. I want to take the interesting parts of each video (there's maybe 3-6 interesting parts per video), put them together into one video, and discard the rest. I have sat through each video and recorded the timestamps of the beginning and end of each part in each video I want to keep. E.g. Video 1: 00:36 - 00:39, 01:04-01:20, Video 2: 01:36-01:39, 02:24-03:00, etc.

Is there any program that would allow me the simplicity of typing in the timestamps of each part of each video I want, and then put it all together as one video?

Additionally (although this isn't currently a necessity) it would be nice if I could put in a title (I'm thinking white text on black screen) before each part of the final video to explain what will be shown next. Or at least have a caption on each part of the video.

Cutting and arranging video material is the most basic thing that any video editing software has to be able to do. You won't find any NLE that can't do that. Titles are pretty basic as well, you can insert titles with software as simple as Windows Movie Maker (though of course more sophisticated software will always give you more control). So yeah, as Michael Liebman said, pick one.


Commercial Movies: Film vs Digital I was reading about how slowly a lot of motion picture is transitioning to digital from film and the relative advantages & limitations of each medium etc.

I was wondering, are there directors who shoot mixed? Like some scenes in film and others digitally, essentially exploiting the best of each medium depending on what the conditions of the actual shot are?

Or is the logistics of doing such a mix too complicated and not worth it. Is the post-processing flow amenable to mixing film and digital?

Not in modern terms, but the BBC did this for years. Many a series was shot multicam video on a sound stage, with any location footage shot 16mm, for portability. The blend was anything but seamless. My take on this was a mock scene from such a series... Woman: "What's it like outdoors?" Man, peering through window: "Hmmm. It's a bit soft and quite grainy."


Glass/Magnification Effect — After Effects How can I achieve this glass distortion effect that is caused by the circle in the middle? I am trying to achieve exactly the same level of distortion around the edges etc.

Link to the original Instagram post

You can use cc_glass for this sort of thing. There are great tutorials by andrew kramer from videocopilot, they might help you. Alternatively, this effect could also be created using a lens distort - you might want to try slapping it onto an adjustment-layer and masking the layer with a circle.


Graphics card and video codecs: are colors stored in a linear scale? Is this saying correct ?

The graphics card and most video codecs store colors in a linear scale.

If by linear scale, the (Cinelerra manual) "saying" means gamma = 1.0, then that's not my understanding of most video codecs.

GPUs, OTOH, probably do operate upon values decoded and stored as a linear representation of a higher precision than the source, which would be typically 8-bits per channel.


How can I crop an undistorted region from a wide angle gopro capture? When I ski with my gopro, I usually have to use the wide FOV because it's too difficult to carefully frame my shot while I'm skiing since I have to, you know, ski!  I often am chasing some of my friends who may be right in front of me, or off to the side.  The resulting footage is a little underwhelming since the subject is so small on-screeen.

Since I can shoot this wide fov footage in 4k and only really need 1080p footage, I would like to have a moving crop at 1080p centered around the subject, preferably undistorting and stabilizing the image at the same time.  Is there any video editing software that would allow me to do this?

Pretty much any modern NLE will allow you to do this, with varying levels of difficulty. For example, in Davinci Resolve you could do most of this in the free version, except for removing the fisheye effect which is I believe only available in the Studio version.


What is the function of buffer size and what value should it have? I've just started to do some video editing with Blender (Linux) and I can't tell what function it has and how it affect the final quality.

I've searched about it but I didn't find any explanation behind the value it should take. So:

1) What is the function of buffer size?
2) What value should it have?

According to the blender documentation found here

Rate
The bitrate control also includes a Minimum and a Maximum.
Buffer
The decoder bitstream buffer size.

the buffer size is related to streaming video. The link in the manual takes you to this article which describes what the buffer is. It sounds like you are editing for web streaming in which case your buffer size should be based on your target internet connection and the quality of the video you are delivering.
If you are referring to a different buffer setting in blender please elaborate.


Record VGA/DVI with timecode I'd like to record presentations and lectures and then edit them after the fact. I'll use one or more camera feeds and a timecode source (either a camcorder or external source). To record the screen, I was thinking of using something like the Blackmagic Hyperdeck Shuttle, but I'm not stuck on this device.

The Shuttle can record HDMI sources (great--I can record DVI or convert VGA to HDMI). However, it can only record timecode from SDI. I could convert HDMI to SDI, but then where does the timecode come from? Is there any way I can inject the timecode into my SDI stream?

Any other totally different solutions?

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


Can I swap out compositions, or control a composition's layer visibility via the timeline? Is there anyway to swap a composition with another via the timeline, so the new one still has all the same properties as the old one? (rather than just putting them on separate layers and ending one and starting a new one).
Or maybe hide/show the layers within the comp via the timeline? (trying to animate a character with a few preset animations)
Right now I have the animations on separate layers, but it's annoying to keep adding a layer every time i want to swap the animation, because it makes lots of layers, and i have to manually line them up every single time.
This is what I currently have, but I'd like it to all be on a single layer:

You can replace a comp in the timeline with a comp from your project tab:

Select a comp in the project tab
Select the layer in your timeline that you want to replace
Hold down alt
Drag and drop the new comp from the project window

It will replace the layer in the timeline, maintaining all the settings on that layer.
You can show or hide a layer using the Opacity control on each layer. Select the layer and press T to reveal them (remember it as "opaci-T").
Then you can make a keyframe on that layer to animate it on or off (hold keyframes are useful for this).
You could also pre-comp all your layers onto a single layer, then use Time remap to select which frames appear when (and use the Loop expression on the time remapping to loop sections if necessary).