How to get closed captions to appear on a live stream I want to be able to stream live TV but also include the closed captions.  My workflow is to use a Blackmagic Designs Decklink card (video source is SDI) and use VLC to capture and transcode the video, then send that to a Wowza server to be packetized for HTTP streaming.  I have this working for Video, but I cannot figure out how to get the closed captions to appear in my player.  I am using a VLC Player, Quicktime, Flowplayer on a web page, iPad, and iPhone to view the streams, none of them show the closed captioning in the source video.  The closed captions are both 608 and 708.  I have spent the last 3 days reading everything I can about vlc and closed captions, wowza and closed captions, and x264 and closed captions, vbi, teltext, and even subtitles, but I am no where closer than when I started.  I sincerely that someone here will be able to help me.

I am using a core i7 with 4GB ram, runign ubuntu 10.04 64bit.  I compiled vlc with the following:

./configure  '--enable-xvideo' '--enable-sdl' '--enable-avcodec' '--enable-avformat' '--enable-swscale' '--enable-mad' '--enable-a52' '--enable-libmpeg2' '--enable-dvdnav' '--enable-faad' '--enable-vorbis' '--enable-ogg' '--enable-theora' '--enable-mkv' '--enable-flac' '--enable-caca' '--enable-alsa' '--enable-qt4' '--enable-ncurses' '--enable-realrtsp' '--enable-twolame' '--enable-real' '--enable-x264' '--with-decklink-sdk=/home/bimls/bmd/Blackmagic_Decklink_SDK_9.6.4/Linux' '--enable-zvbi'

I use the following to capture and stream the live video:

cvlc decklink:// --decklink-card-index="0" --decklink-mode="ntsc" --rtsp-timeout 0 --sout='#transcode{venc=x264{subme=1, ref=1, bframes=16, b-adapt=1, bpyramid=none, weightp=0 }, vcodec=h264, vb=1300, acodec=mp4a, ab=96, threads=4}:rtp{dst=127.0.0.1:8888,mux=ts}'' --vbi-page=100 --no-vbi-opaque --vbi-position=0

Some of the question I have are:

Is this the proper way to get the closed captions to appear? if not please what am I doing wrong?
How does one
know what vbi-page to look for as the range seems to be "--vbi-page integer [-2147483648 .. 2147483647]>"
Does transcoding destroy
closed caption data?

So, Please any help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

There isn't support for taking the closed caption data from SDI and embedding it in the video stream. That's why it doesn't work.


How can I record video with a Canon 1Dx DSLR which will feed straight into Adobe Premiere or Final Cut? My university is setting up a video production studio and they want to use a DSLR camera to record videos. However, they want the camera to feed the video into an iMac with Premier or Final Cut installed while it is recording, so I can preview it on the computer screen. Can this be done?

I read somewhere that Premiere and Final cut both use firewire to do this but neither the 1Dx and iMac have firewire inputs. I also read that I can use USB 3 or thunderbolt cable and a Black Magic or AJA box but there are so many products on their sites and I'm confused. Also, the 1Dx only has USB 3 and HDMI outputs.

Please help.

Best Wishes
Greg

Any DSLR that can provide a live video signal (such as via HDMI) can feed that signal to a recording device (such as Atmos SHOGUN) or monitoring device (such as a TV monitor).  In order for your computer to handle live video, you need a live video input port, typically found on cards such as the Blackmagic Design Deck Link card.  BlackMagic's Media Express software can record and/or monitor live video.

I would be surprised if Adobe Premiere Pro (or other NLEs) can handle live video as an editable stream.  But MediaExpress can record with a confidence monitor, and then Premiere Pro can edit the resulting file.


Adobe Premiere crop one side - then fill the frame - I've got Adobe Premiere Pro; I don't see where I can crop just one side (as opposed to all locked proportionally) - and then fill the frame with the cropped image, as I can in other programs - I'm thinking you must be able to do it in premiere pro, but I don't see how - help is appreciated -

To crop just one side of a clip, select the clip in the timeline and open the Effects panel. Search for 'crop' (in the current version of Premiere Pro, the effect can be found under Video Effects → Transform). Double-click the effect with that name to apply it to your clip. Then open the Effect Controls panel, there you will find the effect settings for the crop effect with allow you to specify a crop amount in percent for each side.

To have the cropped image fill the frame, use the effect controls of the Motion effect that is applied to all clips in the timeline by default. Use the Position and Scale controls to adjust the clip's position and size to your liking.


compressed vs uncompressed feasibility question? I have multiple videos uncompressed. I uploaded them a while ago to vimeo. I lost the original files. However, I found the original files stored in vimeo under the download button below the 1080p version. I realized that the 1080p WAS 100MB in size, whereas the 1080p original was 1.96GB.

In term of storage saving the 100mb IS IDEAL, however will i lose quality? I still cannot grasp the differences btw these two version. if possible would someone explain the differences?
thank you!

As you can imagine, a file that is compressed from 1.96gb to 100mb has lost a lot of information. The question is what you need to do with this film now. If you want to make a version to be shown in cinemas, that's not going to work well since you probably will see compression artifacts etc on a big screen. If you need to create a Sd DVD from it, probably that's fine.


Original video sharper than editted (PP CS6) I've notests this for a while now, but it seems Premiere Pro CS6 is making the edited video more soft / less sharp. I'm using a GoPro Hero4 / Session2 in 1080p/60fps and it seems the only way I can get the production video to be as sharp as the original is by encoding it in 4k. If I encode it on 1080p/60fps (same as input) the image gets washed out no matter what encodig settings I use.

I've used FFmpeg for other encoding jobs, and that generates much more sharp video's than PP CS6 does in much smaller formats. So it can't be the encoding.

Could this be some wrong setting? Maybe this is a known "feature" of Premiere? It doesn't matter if I encode the video at 10mbps or 100mbps, the output is just washed out. It's not much, but its enough to get on my nerves.

I tried a subscription for Premiere CC, and it seems to be much better. So TravisO was right, CS6 is just too old.


UHS1 vs. Class 10 sd card (Samsung dv100) Looking to buy a new memory card for my Samsung dv100.
After reading the manual,  asking samsung support and searching the web,
I still don't understand whether buying UHS1 card is an "overkill" for this camera model.

What advantages would buying a UHS1 card have?

Here is some reasoning based on numbers:

You don't need a fast card for video. It is generally advised to use at least class 6 for video recording on a consumer AVCHD device:

Max recording bit rate of AVCHD 2.0 is 28 Mbit/s and minimum write speed of a class 6 card is 48 Mbit/s, this should provide enough headroom even with an almost full card.
Your camera doesn't mention UHS-I in it's specs, only SDHC. So if you use a UHS-I card, it will be limited below 25 MByte/s, which is still faster than many class 10 cards.

For shooting pictures in continuous (burst) mode: when the high speed memory buffer of the camera fills up, you will continue to shoot below 25 MByte/s, about 3 images per second or less.
Using high speed card reader, transferring a full 32 GB UHS-I Class 1 card will take you maximum about an hour.

Take a look at this list of some bitrates for cards, cameras and video formats.

                        MEGABYTE/S    MEGABIT/S

---- 1080p30 Consumer ----
          AVCHD              3.0         24     also in some prosumer cams
        AVCHD 2.0            3.5         28
------ 1080p30 Pro -------
          DNxHD             9-28     36-220
         ProRes            12-41    100-330
        AVC-Intra           6-55     50-440
  Compresed CinemaDNG         60        480     roughly, as seen in BMPCC
        12-bit Raw            89        712

---- 16 Mpix Picture -----                      File size per picture
  Uncompressed 14-bit Raw     27        214
   Lossless Raw (NEF,CR2)     20        160     roughly
           JPEG                8         64     roughly

------ SD Card Class -----
          Class 2            2.0         16     Card class is the minimum speed
          Class 4            4.0         32     of the card according to the spec,
          Class 6            6.0         48     measured with empty card
          Class 10          10.0         80
------- SD Card BUS ------
            SD              12.5        100     Bus speed: speed of interface
          SDHC/XC           25.0        200     between device and card,
                                                data transfer speed is lower.
--- UHS SD Card Class ----
    UHS Speed Class 1       10.0         80
    UHS Speed Class 3       30.0        240
---- UHS SD Card BUS -----
       SDXC UHS-I         50/104    400/832
       SDXC UHS-II       156/312  1248/2496


Convert VfW-codec based video to "normal" (Windows) my CCTV software (GeoVision) supplies me with AVI videos with the FourCC "GMP4" codec ("Geovision MP4"). The codec is supplied as a Video for Windows 32-bit driver only, so I had to set up a virtual machine to even be able to play the files with MPC-HC. What software can I use to convert the files into something more universal like h.264?
The "usual suspects" ffmpeg/VLC don't play the file at all because they are not able to use VfW codecs.

Thanks!

While it can't go direct to H.264, VirtualDub I believe can work with Vfw codecs and can transcode to something more compatible with your other tools.  I don't know if Quicktime for Windows supports Vfw codecs or not, but I do believe the Pro version of Quicktime supports H.264 encoding.

If you have Adobe Media Encoder, it would also easily do what you are looking for, but I believe it only comes with the Adobe suite, thus would be prohibitively expensive if you don't have it already.


Centering in After Effects I'm fairly new to AE and I'm having some issues centering different shape elements.

I've been using the Cmd+double click the Pan Behind tool to center the anchor point on circle and rectangle shapes but but it doesn't work the same with straight strokes. So how do I center the anchor point to the center of a straight stroke's path?

Thank you!

There isn't really a good way of doing this. But there is a way of doing it.

With the stroke on its own layer, from the align pallet centre the layer to the composition horizontally and vertically.

Now copy the layer's current position value. Then right-click the position property and choose reset,

Go the stroke's anchor point value (not the layer anchor point but the one inside Contents>shape1>Transform: Shape1.

Paste the original position value there, then click on the individual property values and subtract the value there from half the size of the comp (in other words whatever the position property is now). So if the comp is 1920×1080 and the copied value was [999,123] you'd type 960 - 999 in the x channel and 540 - 123 in the y channel.


Composition shows mask instead of content I have the following project layout:

[null]
[comp1]
  mask/matte
  texture

When I'm inside the comp1 I see the content correctly. But in my main project view, I just see the mask(!) (black/white) instead of the content! What might be wrong here?

Check whether you have Collapse Transformations enabled in your comp1.  It's a litte sun icon:


What causes the VHS rewind effect? And how did rewind preview work? (Apologies if this is the wrong stackexchange, it seems the most appropriate)

When rewinding a VHS tape on an analog player (i.e. a VCR hooked up to a (CRT?) TV) when rewinding, or fast-forwarding, and regardless of video format (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM) we're always treated to the same effect: a relatively clear window into the video playing backwards (or forwards), overlayed with two or three bars of static. I found a good example on YouTube here (around the 00:06 - 00:10 time):

What causes this? How does the action of the helical-scan tape over the read head cause these artifacts?

I also wonderred: when rewinding, if the VHS tape is playing backwards, and the video signal is scanned one scanline-at-a-time, how is it the video display is not vertically and horizontally inverted? Even on early, pure-analog VHS players lacked framebuffers yet when rewinding their displayed the video in the correct orientation, how was that possible?

In helical-scan video players, the tape is wrapped around a rotating drum that has one or more magnetic pickups (heads) that are the width of a track and angled slightly from true horizontal. Each track is several inches long and laid down diagonally at (roughly) the same angle as the head is tilted. (The angles differ because the relative motion of the tape and heads causes a precession, an "active angle").

When the tape is moving forward at normal speed, the rotating head aligns with the angled tracks and all is fine. When the tape moves in reverse the angles are misaligned, and when the motion is faster than normal the heads will "sample" more than one track during a video frame, and pick up some of the inter-track guard space as well (the static).

This is what you see when you rewind. Nothing about the orientation of the data on tape changes, so there's no reason for the images to be inverted. If the drum rotated in a different direction then you'd see something else.


Vox-style dynamic charts in Final Cut Pro X I am wondering how I could replicate dynamic charts like those made by Vox in Final Cut Pro X.

For instance, like this dynamic graph found here ("The big lesson from South Korea's coronavirus response"):

I tried the FCPX Charts from Pixel Film Studios add-on library but it is not quite there yet.

Any suggestions?

You are better served with Motion 5 or similar programs for something like that.

Here is a good example from Ripple Training what might work as starting point for you.


Can you put in and animate 3D models in After Effects exactly like in this video? From 1:25 to 1:30.

I want to do something like in this video where the 3D models of candies float up, swirl around together, shoot out to the viewer, and then land softly on a pile of itself. I was wondering if After Effects can be used to accurately recreate this scene?

If writing in detail of each action is too long/time-consuming, can someone at least explain how to do the swirling "tornado" effect? That is my biggest question.

For reference, I found a site that sells the exact 3D candy models used in the video above.

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/candies-obj/1006028#

Combining camera footage with generated objects is called compositing.

The candy scene could be created in three steps:

The girl was filmed ahead of a green screen. Green parts of the footage made transparent.
3D scene was created with background furniture and the candies flying – in Cinema 4D or any other 3D package. It was rendered to a movie clip A. And the frames with candies flying towards the viewer rendered with transparent background to clib B.
AfterEffects or other compositing package was used to combine the three layers (front to back): clip B, green screen, clip A.


Increasing text layer area size without changing font in Premiere Pro I have created a text layer and inserted text as shown below.  When I try to show more of the text by grabbing the text area handles, the font size increases, which I don't want.  I am trying to create some rolling credits (position keyframes working fine), but cannot get the text box bigger when I add text - it gets truncated as shown in the pic.
I'm clearly not looking up the right thing in google, as I get responses about expanding the text for titles.  Being new to Premiere / video editing, it could be I don't know the terminology, or just plain ignorance.

This is a good question, and it's not obvious.
When you click once with the text tool, you make a single line of text.  If you drag the handles of this line, the text gets bigger and smaller.
But if you click and drag with the text tool instead to create your text, you get a text box.  Now resizing the box with the handles increases the amount of text in the box, not the font size.
Video (animated gif because of this website) below to demonstrate:


How can I force YouTube to convert my video's audio stream to Opus or Vorbis / Youtube Red issue I know the answer, which is probably "there is no way", but bear with me for a moment.

I am uploading videos to YouTube, and on my Android phone I am downloading them using YouTube Red. I am playing these downloaded videos in the YouTube app in the background, when the screen is off. This works with the vast majority of the videos, except the ones that I am uploading. I did read the recommended upload formats, I tried several codecs, but no luck. My audios stop the second I am shutting off the screen.

What I finally found using youtube-dl -F is that my videos do not have audio-only streams with webm extension, only as m4a (after Youtube processed them). So my question is: what makes Youtube create webm audio files for some videos, but not for the others? Is there a way to force this (I suppose not). Is there a way to suggest it? As I mentioned, I tried a wide variety of codecs - video and audio, and the combinations - when generating my files for the upload.

A sample output for a file that works with Youtube Red playback in background:

format code  extension  resolution note
249          webm       audio only DASH audio   52k , opus @ 50k, 73.58KiB
250          webm       audio only DASH audio   66k , opus @ 70k, 92.62KiB
251          webm       audio only DASH audio  114k , opus @160k, 161.14KiB
171          webm       audio only DASH audio  115k , vorbis@128k, 161.27KiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  127k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k, 180.79KiB

and the output for one file which does not:

format code  extension  resolution note
139          m4a        audio only DASH audio   49k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.5@ 48k (22050Hz), 1.20MiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  129k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k (44100Hz), 3.20MiB

YouTube currently does not have any encoding options for content creators.

As far as why some videos are encoded as webm and others in different container types, I don't believe there is any documentation on that whatsoever. YouTube may be beta-testing specific codecs, to see how codecs perform/stream for end users, or there may be a specific matching system whereas input = specific output attributes.

When you upload a video to YouTube, the video is re-encoded using a Variable Bitrate at the highest resolution / matching resolution of the original upload. If the uploaded video is larger => 360p then smaller versions are also encoded for multiple streaming options (240p as an example).

But there is no current way to force the YouTube encoding platform to encode to a specific codec, and even you were able to figure out what input codec would result in a specific desired output codec, it may only be temporary. I only mention this because YouTube has stated it is currently experimenting with new codecs, including closed source proprietary codecs and encoding algorithms... so what works today may not tomorrow.


Intersecting animated masks As a quick demonstration, here's an illustration;

So I have two shapes (2 and 3), which intersect (4). I want to animate the position (possibly also scale) of these two shapes, while having footage masked inside each numbered area. The shapes should move independently of the footage.

I've gotten as far as masking the footage for 2 and 3, but the intersection is what makes me scratch my head. Is there a way to do this in After Effects CC without any hand-tooling for a mask for the intersecting area?

Simply copy the two animated masks to the 4th footage file and set them to "Intersect" instead of "Add". Then they will only reveal the footage that they are applied to when they intersect with another mask. Then put this footage files layer ontop of the others.

Here a screenshot as a reference.


Are ffmpeg prores files reliable enough to be used in production/broadcast environment? Recently I'm transcoding a lot of material that I wish to use in broadcast and production environment where they use all sort of macs and apple software.

I'm not very fan of apple computers and I already own various pc to carry out normal jobs.

What I wonder about is.. is ffmpeg or ffmbc or libav good in producing prores? I mean good enough (producing high compatible files) to make me not in the need of use an apple only for produce pro res files for my customers ?

What documented glitch, issues or problems people who use my ffmpeg prores on final cut or other apple softwares can experience ?

I've had no problems producing prores 422 HQ .mov files with ffmpeg on my Windows machine for Mac-encumbered clients, including delivery to TV Networks for broadcast. I have had some problems with prores 4444 but only when the files have alpha channels, however that bug seems to have been fixed recently.

I don't know if anyone has done any head to head tests with the results you get out of ffmpeg vs a native apple app or something like adobe media encoder. That would certainly be worth doing.


How do I properly bake a texture in Cinema 4D? I'm trying to bake a texture into a model, but the results are terrible.

Here is the way it should look:

But every time I bake it, it comes out looking like this:

Am I missing something?

When you bake an object in C4D you get several options which passes you want to be applied in the final baked texture. You might want to try to generate new UV's by not ticking the "keep UVs" setting. If you want to bake lightning you have to tick the luminance pass for that.

Also be aware that the baked object might look horrible in the viewport but will look perfectly fine when rendered. Thats just a thing of how the OpenGL viewport is interpreting the material.

Though you're model does look a bit weird after baking. Are you sure this was a polygon object and not a nurbs object or a diffrent non poly object generated from a plugin and you are missing some interpolation? If thats the case you might want to turn it into a poly object first, maybe some subdivision setting differed for rendering and the viewport.


How to slow down ProRes file from 25fps to 16fps without re-encoding? This works to change the speed, but it also changes the codec to MPEG4 Video (H264).

ffmpeg -y -r 16 -i at25fps.mov -filter:v "setpts=25/16*PTS" at16fps.mov

I need the codec to stay untouched: prores (HQ) (apch / 0x68637061), yuv422p10le(tv, progressive).

I found many similar post, but nothing worked:
How to change framerate with ffmpeg without re-encoding?,
Lower framerate without re-encode

This post suggest I first extract the raw stream - how would I do that for a ProRes file?

I just found a way to do this by changing the parameters help by fps tbr tbn tbc; answer is derived from this post.

ffmpeg -y -i at25fps.mov -c:v copy -video_track_timescale 16 at16fps.mov

I am getting these remarks from Apple Sound Media Handler (so I am not sure if this is the best way to do it)

  Non-monotonous DTS in output stream 0:0; previous: 0, current: 0; changing to 1. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.

  Non-monotonous DTS in output stream 0:0; previous: 1, current: 1; changing to 2. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.

  ...


Misplaced FFmpeg watermarks I'm trying to add a watermark of an icon (an arrow pointing to the right） to the top right corner of two different videos using FFmpeg. Both videos have the same resolution (1280x720) and I use the same command to add the icon. In one video, the icon appears in the correct place. However, in the other video, the icon appears in the bottom right corner.

Has anyone encountered the same problem?

The picture on the left is a portrait video stored as landscape but with a rotation tag. So, the overlay image co-ordinates take effect with reference to the stored representation. For such cases, you should rotate the video beforehand by 1) adding the transpose filter before the overlay 2) disabling autorotate on the input video* and 3) manually resetting the rotation tag in the output, e.g.

ffmpeg -noautorotate -i input.mp4 -i arrow.png -filter_complex "[0]transpose=1[bg];[bg][1]overlay=X:Y" -metadata:s:v rotate=0 out.mp4

*not needed if your ffmpeg is from April 2015 or earlier.

To check the rotation tag for a video, you can run

ffprobe input.mp4 -show_entries stream_tags=rotate -v 0 -of compact=p=0:nk=1

You'll get an angle value. If it's 90, use transpose=1. If it's 270, use transpose=2


What lighting setup is recommended to achieve a purple atmosphere in an indoor hall The video is taking place in a night.
I want the beginning of the hall to be purple lighted and a fade to black, at the end of the hall.

The Left photo, is the location when regular lights are on, and the Right one, is the what I want to achieve.

Is it enough to use a 800w - or 1000w - light on the ceiling with color filters to achieve this atmosphere?

The biggest issue with having only one powerful light source for the whole hall might be the foreground being too bright and the fall-off to dark being to fast. You may compensate for this by placing the light way behind the camera, if this doesn't cast any camera/crew shadows inside the frame. This setup will give you a much smoother fall-off, but will also make the scene darker.

The scientific reason is the 'inverse square law' described here: http://www.usefulphototips.com/2012/04/10/controlling-light-falloff/

But I have another suggestion: Why don't you keep the lighting as shown on the left, and just turn some lights off at the far end of the hall. For achieving the pink effect you then use a color gel in front of the lens. And for having some more colors than just pink in the frame, you can add one or two red light sources distributed in the hall.


Lens that doesn't make faces look fat I'm using a "PANASONIC LUMIX G II Lens, 20mm, F1.7 ASPH" (MFT) lens to shoot interviews.

However, it distorts faces a bit when within 10 feet. I've read (after I bought it, unfortunately) that this lens isn't too well suited to interviews for that reason.

What would be a better fit? A wider lens would also be nice.

Any advice appreciated!

Typically recommended portrait lenses are around 85mm to 135m. These numbers refer to full frame cameras.

Since you are using a m43 camera with a crop factor of 2x you should investigate lenses from 40mm to 70mm that fit your Panasonic


Common newbie mistakes for cinematography? I'm going to make a serious movie, what are the BIG mistakes newbies often do, both in the clipping and the shooting stage?

Common oversights of beginners in pre-production:

1) No script or plan of action. Even if you are doing something very abstract or experimental, have a plan of how things begin, develop and end. You can always change this as you proceed, but it's most important to have a baseline. This should include your budget of money and time for all concerned.

2) No research. If you are shooting a documentary or a narrative be sure to do all the fact checking or if this is fiction, make it plausible or not if you desire the comical.

3) No storyboard. The storyboard is a series of panels like a comic book that describes each scene and the action contained within. This is how the camera will set up for each shot. From the storyboard you can derive a shot list.

4) No idea of screen direction. Right from the storyboard you should have a good handle on the direction the action moves within the frame as well as taking into account how the camera may move to cover such action whether that is a pan, tilt, crane, handheld, etc. shot. The key here is continuity of movement from shot to shot. Learn about screen direction and cover the 180 degree rule as this also falls under continuity.

5) No production schedule. Most movies do no shoot each scene in the scripted sequence because you can save a lot of time and money by shooting by location, time of day, or other logistical considerations. I once worked as an Hollywood extra in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". The last shoot or wrap night as they called it was actually a sequence near the beginning of the film. Plan your shooting schedule to optimize each location as appropriate.

Common oversights of beginners in production:

1) Not locking down exposure, focus, and white balance.

2) Terrible lighting. Learn about shooting with existing light, and how to make it work with reflectors if need be. If you are shooting indoors, learn about basic 3 point lighting to start. The most important thing is to make sure your subject is lit well and defined.

3) Terrible sound recording. Learn the basics of sound recording, like setting the level so it does not exceed peak load and not changing the recording level while recording. Also, get creative with sound too, learn about Foley and explore ways to create your own effects.

4) Camera shake: it's one thing to shoot hand held but if you are trying for a steady tripod shot, make sure you don't touch the camera when its recording. For instance one of my cameras has a remote so I can start and stop it with out even getting near the camera. Also, if you are using a tripod be sure that it has enough weight to handle the wind. For hand held shots shoot wide angle as vibration is proportionately magnified by increasing focal length (zooming in).

5) Over zealous use of zooming. Learn to use the zoom feature when it is transparent and does not call attention to itself. For instance a more effective use of zooming in or out is done simultaneously with a pan or tilt (assuming you have a tripod with a fluid head) while following an action. A good example of this is how a sports cameramen will follow a play such as someone trying to steal 2nd base.

6) Learn to compose a shot. Use the law of thirds in framing a subject, and when to make exceptions. I highly recommend art history 101 for beginners to learn about composition. Study the greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso to understand how to frame your subject and study film history 101 to learn how great directors worked with framing in motion, e.g., Orson Welles' work in "Citizen Kane". Others: Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa to name a few.

7) Didn't get enough takes to cover the action. Make sure that you have enough good takes of each shot on the shot list. Be sure to allow some flexibility with adding long shots, medium shots, and close ups all with different angles to optimize the light and action. Shooting more is better than less from an editing point of view. Editors love to have tons of stuff to choose from as long as these extra shots highlight the intent and the director is behind it.

Common oversights of beginners in post-production:

1) Wrong format. Be sure that your camera files are compatible with your video and music/sound editing suite.

2) Too much time on one clip. Unless you are using a steady moving crane shot don't expect to keep anyone's attention if your shots are too long, and don't have any sense of movement or action. Having a wide variety of long, medium, and close up shots with varying angles to choose from that cut swiftly on action and appear transparent will be more engaging to your audience.

3) Jump cuts: this is all about continuity, learn when and when not to use a jump cut.
One acceptable form of the jump cut is the 'magic cut' such as some one suddenly appears in the frame like in Star Trek when they beam up. A bad jump cut is when something that may have been in the previous scene is misplaced in the following shot or the reverse is true too. There are a zillion examples of jump cuts. One famous one is Dustin Hoffman driving the wrong way on the SF Bay Bridge in "The Graduate".

4) Over use of effects. There is a huge temptation to over use an effect you may find interesting, even experienced cinematographers can easily over use something new to them and unfortunately your audience finds this boring and distracting. The golden rule is to use effects sparingly but appropriately when used. The best way to learn this is to see how this effect has been successfully used before by professionals in great movies.

5) Non-original music. Too many beginners use popular music for their productions. Even if it appears to fit, we've heard it already. Does "Also sprach Zarathustra" have to always play for a sun rise or moon rise? The question you should ask yourself is, how many buddies of mine play music, how many are good and want to work on it with me? Got a friend that can compose? Original music makes any production refreshing and takes your film from the ordinary to the unique as long as you make the music interesting and supports the film action.

6) Pay attention to the basic rules but don't be afraid to take some risks. My number one rule is that if I break one I better have a darn good reason and it really has to work within the context of the film I am working on.


How do Apple do this? (iPhone 4 commercial) Take a look at this short iPhone 4 advert...

How do they keep the phone so stable throughout the video? If you have ever tried to hold something completely still in close up, it’s extremely difficult.

If you look very closely, the left hand appears to shift very slightly in relation to the phone. This would imply the phone is fixed onto a mount, but the initial section amd the move at 25s show that it’s not.

I have tried using software stabalisation in post, but this does not look convincing.

Is the screen of the iPhone superimposed in post, over a still hand and device? This seems unlikely I think.

Any thoughts on this would be very welcome.

It's a still. For commercial beauty shots like those, you hire a hand model and freeze frame the video once the phone is held. The screen is obviously just a Greenscreen or simply black so it can be replaced afterwards. Then, the finger swipes etc are recorded seperately (probably in front of a Greenscreen) and then composited onto the screen to fit the animation.


How do I communicate with post-production team? Need a list of effects and examples I'm doing a short video and I am not from video editing background.

Sometimes I want to show my post production team the effect I want but it's very difficult to say... Just look at [...] video. I don't know where to find examples. Is there a list of names or example videos somewhere I can easily refer to?

For example, if I say I want Ken Burns effect for this photo, he immediately knows.

The particular example I want is having lots of newspaper headlines intersecting, creating an effect that this event generated a lot of buzz... but I don't know where to find a video example for him?

About the newspaper headlines. I would not call it an effect at first. First it is a storytelling element, with the headlines actually telling something and often carrying the storyline forward - easily anything between three days to several months, plus that you could use it as a prelude for a jump in time of several years. What I'm trying to say is; this effect, as you call it, is a timeline jump in your story.

So in practice it is not an effect first. The way you actually do it is an effect, meaning that you can do it entirely in digital, CG, or real newspapers thrown on a table and filmed as so, a combination of methods, etc. Whatever, you need the headlines in these papers, because your audience is going to read them, or at least have time to grasp the message if not given time to properly read them. Telling a story through newspaper headlines is not a job for effects engineer. You provide the headlines, the story. (A job for your writer(s), not necessarily yourself.)  Then you let your team create a newspaper headlines storytelling section.

Furthermore, say you want to skip filming a court of law section in your story. In between those newspaper headlines you could do very short inserts of video, like the main characters walking up the steps to a courthouse, accompanied with more newspaper headlines, then a clip of grieving after a lost case, and when the media buzz is over, you can continue your film at any distance in time, like 20 years forward if you so wish and the story tells you so. But this was not in your question.

To answer your question - write those headlines and take them to your team, and tell them what you want with the same words that you used to describe your question here. It should be enough for them.


How to create the text effects in short videos like this I would be very glad if someone could put me in the right direction as to how to achieve text effects like this:

I've researched and still can't make out how to create them easily on OSX.

You will be able to create something similar to this with iMovie on your Mac.
You will simply gather all of the video clips you want to use, the music you want, and then plan out your text (in a storyboard if it's easier). Make sure your video and music is licensed for you to use (not stolen from someone else or used without permission).

You can find lots of resources for stock videos, like this.
You can find lots of stock music here.
You can research about lower thirds for the text effects at the bottom.

Of course, there are lots of other ways to achieve this, and tonnes of resources. But this is where you can start to achieve something like the video you provided.


What is the name of the effect where every other frame is dropped and the remaining frames are duplicated? What is the name of the effect where every other frame is dropped and the remaining frames are duplicated?

Like this...

ABCDEFG   // 1: original
ACEG      // 2: every other frame deleted
AACCEEGG  // 3: remaining frames duplicated

Does Final Cut have this feature?

If not, how do I do this?

Back in the days of analog video, TBCs used to call that a strobe effect. It looks like Premiere has a strobe filter, but I don't know if it can be configured to do the freezing, instead of flashes.


Sony TV RCA output into Yamaha HS80M input via RCA male to XLR male: Is it safe? Title says it all really. Just want to check up before I do this.

I have a spare set of Yamaha HS80M monitors lying around. Rather than just having them sitting on the shelf, I'd like to connect them to a Sony LCD TV directly.

Is this safe? Is it advisable?

I plan to use a cable that looks something like this:

I realize the signal isn't balanced. I'm really most concerned as to whether this is in some way dangerous.

Cheers.

Not dangerous at all. You may have impedance matching issues though. And possibly lots of noise in the signal because of the unbalanced source and mis-matched impedance.

Start with the volume on the Yamahas all the way down and, with something playing on the television, nudge the volume up ever so slightly until you can hear the source. You want to make certain a too-hot signal from the TV doesn't rip your speakers apart.

For best results a DI with properly matched inputs for the TV would be my advice. Something like this would do the trick.


Managing compound clips in Davinci Resolve 16 I've made a couple compound clips in my Davinci resolve project. Right now, I need to open that project, manually copy required clips and paste them in a new project. Is there any way to create a catalogue or export these clips, so I could reuse them in new projects?
At the moment I could recreate these clips as simple PNG with transparency, but in the future I'm planning to reuse animated clips.

In Resolve, "Power Bins" are what you use to make elements available across projects.  Unfortunately, as of version 16.3, Resolve won't store Compound Clips, Multicam Clips or Fusion Clips inside a Power Bin.  However, in your case, a workaround is fairly straightforward.
Whether your image is static or animated; an exported still image, file sequence, or video is compatible with power bins.  Export what you need on the Deliver page, Re-import it, add it to the Power Bin, and you should be good to go.
One quick tip for the Export->Re-import step:  After you export anything in Resolve, after Resolve marks the Queue item "Complete," You can right-click on the complete item, and select "Reveal in Media Storage."  Resolve will then open the Media Page, and highlight the file in the browser.  From there, all you need to do is drag it to your Power Bin.
To enable Power Bins, on the Media page, go to the "View" menu, and near the bottom of the list, check "Show Power Bins."  If your media pool and/or media folders sidebar list is not visible, hit command-1 (mac) or control-1 (pc).
You do need to be careful with the way you handle transparency if you expect to use it.  Resolve doesn't "think" for its users the way some apps do.  It doesn't pre-suppose that you "meant" to include an alpha channel because your source sequence contains one, but your chosen export codec doesn't support it.  It won't give you an error, or a warning, or recommend a different codec.  It'll just do what it's told, and then you'll wonder why your backgrounds are black instead of transparent.  So, make sure you're exporting to a format that supports transparency if you need it, like prores4444.  If you're doing that already, and getting black backgrounds anyway, it's because your alpha pipe is broken on the color page; make sure that the last node's alpha output (blue square) is wired to the master alpha output.  If it's not wired to anything, right-click in the background of the node tree, and select "Add alpha output," then wire the blue square to the blue circle that appears.
The same caution applies to premultiplication.  If your antialiased edges appear too bright, or too dark, that's a premultiplication error, and the onus is on the user.  To change how Resolve interprets a clip's alpha math on the import side, right-click on the clip in the media pool, choose "Clip Attributes" and change "Alpha Mode" if necessary.  Note, however, it's possible to accidentally double-multiply, or double-divide on the export side, in which case no menu selection here will produce desired results.  See here and here.
And one final note.  While Resolve doesn't support Fusion CLIPS in Power Bins, it does support Fusion COMPOSITIONS in Power Bins.  So, if you need something more interactive than a flat export down the road, that's the direction you should explore; It's a great way to make titles, and lower-thirds that are re-usable across projects, which maintain a consistent look, yet remain flexible to edit.  Fusion is a complex topic on its own, and I encourage you to experiment with it, and ask specific questions as they arise.
Hope that helps, Good Luck!


How do I open only one library in iMovie? I'm creating different libraries for each of my projects. When I attempt to open a new library via File > Open Library, it has both the old library open and the new one open.

I want to close the old one so I don't accidentally create projects within the old library.

File > Close Library is disabled. If I try to close iMovie and re-open it, it remembers the last library that was opened.

How do I open just a new iMovie Library?

Find the Library in finder (e.g. ~/Movies), and double click it.

You can be sure that it's the only open Library by using the drop down menu in Projects:


Why is there a need to render the video if live playback is flawless? Live playback is almost fully flawless. Software like OBS can do transitions and greenscreen / chroma key effects live, without the need of rendering. So it would make sence if "rendering" would at least be as fast as realtime video playback is.

I do understand that videos produced with rendering are not compressed (are they?), but it's very hard to see the compression on the video, especially if video sharing sites like YouTube also compress the video. It would make sence in this case as well to have an option to export the video without rendering.

When you export a movie from a video editing software, there are, broadly speaking, three steps involved.

Rendering: reading each frame from source media and applying assigned effects to each individual clip. Compositing all tracks to form a final image. This part happens during live playback as well. However, most software will use faster and cruder methods during live playback, depending on hardware capabilities. So, the results may not be mathematically equivalent. But the average viewer may not notice the difference.
Encoding: This is the compression part. One or more rendered frames are fed to the encoder, which then performs motion estimation and other methods to identify exploitable redundancies. Using that information, the encoder generates an encoded bitstream. This part, depending on the encoder chosen, takes significant CPU time.
Writing: The encoded bitstream is then written to disk. If the frame sizes achieved in step 2 are small enough, then this constitutes a minor portion of the export process. But if not, disk I/O can add delay. This will usually be the case if step 2 is skipped and uncompressed frames are written to the file on disk.

During live playback, steps 2 and 3 are skipped. The rendered frames are stored in RAM and played from there. If the buffer overflows, earliest rendered frames are dropped, and re-rendered if requested. So, the difference in duration between live playback and render to disk is due to the better methods used in step 1 and the addition of steps 2 and 3.


Difference between 10bit 4:2:2 and 10bit display panels I'm a bit confused regarding color in bits.

I know of two color "types":
Many more expansive displays offer 10-bit panels with 1 billion, instead of 16 million different colors.

Better video cameras use 10-bit 4:2:2 subsampling to save storage space by only giving 4 color values, for 8 pixels.

Are those two different types of color-types?
Or how does one translate to the other?

Thanks!

The bit depth and the sub-sampling method are related but different parameters of the imaging system. As you noted, the bit depth determines how many different colors the system can display. The more colors that can be imaged, the closer to reality the image looks. You also get fewer quantizing artifacts.

The sub-sampling method is a form of compression. Human vision is less sensitive to colors than it is to luminance, or black/gray/white, information. By only sampling some pixels for color, the system saves data by trading off some resolution.

(You should note that the "better film cameras" you reference in your question probably use 4:4:4 sub-sampling and better/professional video equipment use 4:2:2.)

You can have any combination of bit depth and sub-sampling. So a system can be, among other possible configurations:

8-bit 4:2:2
8-bit 4:4:4
10-bit 4:2:2
10-bit 4:4:4


which file format to use for the ios app tutorial which should be embedded inside the app? we have developed ios application, and now stacked at tutorial preparations , google does not helped too much.
Our issue is the following : what format will allow us to have the most size-wise optimised solution? What is the golden standard used for videos inside ios apps?
There is a really lack of resources about that....

The videos I've delivered for iOS App Previews have been as per the specification in this section, viz. H.264 video codec, Baseline profile, 30 fps, AAC-LC audio codec, sampling rate 48 kHz, stereo in MP4 or MOV. Resolution and bitrate haven't been restricted to what the docs say. Those should be tailored to the device(s) your app is for.


Extract all audio channels as separate wave file from a multichannel file I have this file, and would be cool use ffmpeg for extract all audio channels to separate files..

I know how to extract a single channel at time in a way like:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -map 0:1 -c:a copy output.mov

However this will work for the first channel only.

Aside with for $i 0 to 15, is there a way to extract all the audio channels at one in a specific directory?

ffprobe says:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'D:\myfile.mov':
  Metadata:
    creation_time   : 2016-04-25T14:10:57.000000Z
    timecode        : 10:00:00:00
  Duration: 01:30:36.32, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 193036 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: prores (apch / 0x68637061), yuv422p10le(bt709, progressive), 1920x1080, 174295 kb/s, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 t
bc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2016-04-25T14:10:57.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler
      encoder         : Apple ProRes 422 (HQ)
    Stream #0:1(eng): Data: none (tmcd / 0x64636D74), 0 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2016-04-25T14:10:57.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler
      reel_name       : Unnamed
      timecode        : 10:00:00:00
    Stream #0:2(eng): Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, 16 channels, s32 (24 bit), 18432 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2016-04-25T14:10:57.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler

Unsupported codec with id 0 for input stream 1

EDIT: It should be something like this..

ffmpeg -i input.mov -filter_complex \
"[0:a]pan=mono|c0=c0[a0]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c1[a1]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c2[a2]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c3[a3]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c4[a4]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c5[a5]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c6[a6]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c7[a7]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c8[a8]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c9[a9]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c10[a10]; \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c11[a11]" \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c12[a12]" \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c13[a13]" \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c14[a14]" \
 [0:a]pan=mono|c0=c15[a15]" \

-c copy -c:a pcm_s24le
-map 0 -map -0:a -map "[a0]" audio_00.wav -map "[a1]" audio_01.wav -map "[a2]" audio_02.wav -map "[a3]" audio_03.wav \
-map "[a4]" audio_04.wav -map "[a5]" audio_05.wav -map "[a6]" audio_06.wav -map "[a7]" audio_07.wav \
-map "[a8]" audio_08.wav -map "[a9]" audio_09.wav -map "[a10]" audio_10.wav -map "[a11]" audio_11.wav
-map "[a12]" audio_12.wav -map "[a13]" audio_13.wav -map "[a14]" audio_14.wav -map "[a15]" audio_15.wav

for me the -map_channel option did the trick:
get the file layout using ffprobe multichannelinputfile.mov
    ffprobe version 4.1 Copyright (c) 2007-2018 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 10.0.0 (clang-1000.11.45.5)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/4.1 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --enable-hardcoded-tables --enable-avresample --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-ffplay --enable-gpl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-libsnappy --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxvid --enable-lzma --enable-opencl --enable-videotoolbox
  libavutil      56. 22.100 / 56. 22.100
  libavcodec     58. 35.100 / 58. 35.100
  libavformat    58. 20.100 / 58. 20.100
  libavdevice    58.  5.100 / 58.  5.100
  libavfilter     7. 40.101 /  7. 40.101
  libavresample   4.  0.  0 /  4.  0.  0
  libswscale      5.  3.100 /  5.  3.100
  libswresample   3.  3.100 /  3.  3.100
  libpostproc    55.  3.100 / 55.  3.100
[aac @ 0x7f903d01fa00] Assuming an incorrectly encoded 7.1 channel layout instead of a spec-compliant 7.1(wide) layout, use -strict 1 to decode according to the specification instead.
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'set1permeke.mov':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : qt
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: qt
    creation_time   : 2019-01-05T22:00:13.000000Z
    com.apple.quicktime.make: Apple
    com.apple.quicktime.model: MacBookPro15,1
    com.apple.quicktime.software: Mac OS X 10.13.6 (17G4015)
    com.apple.quicktime.creationdate: 2019-01-05T21:58:54+0100
  Duration: 00:57:02.28, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 23693 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1920x1040 [SAR 1:1 DAR 24:13], 22756 kb/s, 60 fps, 60 tbr, 6k tbn, 12k tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2019-01-05T22:00:13.000000Z
      handler_name    : Core Media Video
      encoder         : H.264
    Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, 7.1, fltp, 928 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2019-01-05T22:00:13.000000Z
      handler_name    : Core Media Audio
[aac @ 0x7f903d019600] Assuming an incorrectly encoded 7.1 channel layout instead of a spec-compliant 7.1(wide) layout, use -strict 1 to decode according to the specification instead.`

I then mapped all the audio channels to seperate files for easier editing in my DAW
ffmpeg -i multichannelinputfile.mov -map_channel 0.1.0 ch0.wav -map_channel 0.1.1 ch1.wav -map_channel 0.1.2 ch2.wav -map_channel 0.1.3 ch3.wav and so on producing the asked for separate wav files


Tracking box to full viewport Basically, I've recorded a video of gameplay on my DS console using a camcorder, and I want to:

Remove the shaky movement caused by me not having a tripod
Stretch the screen to cover the entire viewport.

I'm a complete newbie at video editing, but I've got Adobe After Effects so I figured I'd give it a try. My video is imported and thanks to a tutorial I have it happily tracking the corners of the screen. Now what I need to know is how can I expand that area to fill the viewport?

Any tutorials or other step-by-step instructions would be much appreciated!

EDIT: Motion tracking isn't quite working the way I'd hoped... If it helps any, the console is black so the video is essentially just the screen surrounded by near-black area. Any idea how to track that?

Tracking the corners of the screen isn't the same as stabilising the image.
Whatever you do, the stabilisation is going to reduce the overall resolution of the video, as it is going to have to scale up to fill the viewport with the cropped stabilised image.

Here's a YouTube tutorial showing how to use image stabilisation in AE:

LockNLoad is a plugin that can help with stabilisation, but it will still make the image look softer.

Alternatively Final Cut has stabilisation built in too.
The best option would be to reshoot with the camera on a firm surface, and avoid the wobbles in the first place.


What are the rights to exported video from the Apple's Keynote app? When

I make an presentation in the Apple's Keynote with transitions an like, and
export it to an video,
can I publish the video as commercial - as my own work?

I'm added the soundtrack later - it is royalty free (public domain - classical music).

Any difference when

using apple supplied THEME?
or when the presentation contains  only my own theme?

This is really going to come down to what the terms of the EULA is.  It should outline what rights you have to use the Apple provided contents.  Most likely you would be fine as included assets are typically intended for reproduction.  It might be trickier if you were going to sell copies, but a commercial is probably ok.

As far as using it as commercial work, I'd be careful about what you use it for.  The quality level is still probably going to be sub-professional for most purposes.  Programs like Keynote and PowerPoint are really more designed for making basic presentations easy for the average consumer rather than trying to actually make a good commercial production.

It is also worth mentioning that while the classical music itself may be in the public domain, the particular recording may not be.  Rights are a complex thing and while classical music in the public domain is free for anyone to play, copyrights can still exist on particular recordings that have been done recently.  Unless you specifically purchased it as royalty free from a reputable dealer, then you may want to double check that as well.


Davinci Resolve: Move polyline radius handlers separatley on macOS I'm using Davinci Resolve 16.1.1.005 on macOS 10.15.3 (Catalina).

I'm creating a simple polyline. I want to move one of the radius handlers separately without causing the other radius handler to mirror the movement.

I've tried using the modifier keys Cmd, Alt, Shift and Ctrl and combinations of them. As far as I know is Ctrl the right key. But Ctrl + click causes a right click on macOS.

Can I switch the modifier keys?
Does another keyboard mapping help?
Am I missing another modifier key?
Can I change the behaviour in some settings?
Is it not possible on macOS?

I assume, since you use the terminology "polyline" that you are in the Fusion page of Resolve.  Furthermore, since you say "radius handler," I assume you're asking about controlling the softness of a double polyline shape, and not talking about manipulating the normal bezier curvature handles.  Also, to be clear, Fusion polylines behave differently than the power windows found elsewhere in the Resolve interface.

One method of controling Fusion double polylines:

First, activate Double polyline by clicking the outlined "D" icon if you haven't already.
Select all points with Shift-A
Hold the "O" (offset) key and click-drag in the viewer.

There are other ways to control double polylines. More information can be found in the DaVinci Resolve user manual.  As of version 16.2, the relevant pages start at 1298.

Key bindings in Resolve's Fusion are customizable, but not out of the box.  If you're determined to change them, the simplest way would be to use stand alone Fusion, which has a built-in hotkey manager in the "Views" context menu.  The compositions you create in standalone Fusion are easy to copy-paste into Resolve Fusion (but know the difference between Loaders and MediaIn nodes; Savers and MeidaOut nodes).

Alternatively, you can install the Fusion plugin package manager, "Reactor," which is available here, and install Andrew Hazelden's "Resolve Essentials" atom, which includes a script to edit Resolve Fusion keybindings.  Personally, I'd leave them alone, though.


Tool for cutting video I have an MP4 format video.

I was wondering if there is a good tool to take a video, and create n number of new videos, by just setting a bunch of cut points.

Obviously most video editors will be capable of cutting a video and exporting. But I am wondering if there are any tools who are exceptional fast at this.

For example, and ideal situation would be like..

take a 2 min video and say..

set split @ 30 seconds
set split @ 60 seconds
set split @ 90 seconds

and then just hit export function that spits out 4 new videos orig_name_[number].mp4.

In an even MORE ideal world this could be done with a command line program and a batch file :)

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

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

If you want equal-sized splits, use

ffmpeg -i input -segment_time 30 -f segment -force_key_frames expr:gte(t,n_forced*30) -reset_timestamps 1 a%02d.mp4

If you need to split at irregular intervals, use

ffmpeg -i input -crf 18 -segment_times 30,60,90 -f segment -force_key_frames 30,60,90 -reset_timestamps 1 files%01d.mp4


Final Cut Pro audio issue that's driving me nuts I am experience an issue with audio in FCP X. In my videos, I take certain sections, turn the audio down to zero and speed the sections up to 8x. What this often does is screw up the audio in the entire video. It becomes choppy and echo-y and, occasionally, the echo is so strong that it sounds like there are two people talking at the same time.

An example of the issue can be seen in

            . There are several places where the acceleration happens (e.g you can see one at the 25min mark). But you can hear the choppy sounds throughout and especially after that mark.

Any suggestions (short of switching to Premiere?)

I second what Alan commented. I would cut the part on both sides you want to mute and do the speed change on it. You might also consider a J cut from the following normal speed clip.
Double clip in between the video and the sound and it should expand. Now you can extend the audio from the normal speed clip towards the end of the clip which was sped up.


Premiere: Waveforms missing on nested sequences So, I have nested some audio tracks and now the nested sequences look like this:

How do I get premiere to display my waveforms in the timeline again? Because this is not very helpful ... to say the least.

When you nest a sequence with more than one audio clip, your nested sequence will not have a single waveform to reference.

To generate the waveforms you must select the nested sequence and go to Sequence > Render Audio in the top menu bar.


What software do movies use for FX? Movies these days have a lot of computer generated effects and they all seem to follow the laws of physics, what render program is used for this kind of stuff ?

There are a number of different options.  Some production companies use their own proprietary, in house systems for rendering.  There are a large number of companies that use existing commercial products however.  Maya, SoftImage, 3D Studio Max and Cinema4D are some of the big ones.  I have not personally worked with Cinema4D, but I know that physics simulation is possible in all of the first 3.  Cinema4D also supports physics simulation according to comments, though I have not personally used it.

It is also worth noting that a combination of both physics simulation and physical modeling can be used.  For complex systems like particle effects and such, simulation is pretty much the only option, but for some larger actions, they may actually film a movement and then animate it to match what they record.  This can either be automated (using motion capture where they tracks dots on an object from multiple angles and computers reconstruct the motion) or by an animator manually watching the video and reproducing it.

These models and scenes are then rendered using a process called ray tracing.  Ray tracing works by having a simulated view point and a simulated screen.  The image is formed at the simulated screen by sending a ray from the view point, through the pixel on the simulated screen and then allowing the reflections to be traced back until they reach light sources.  This produces highly accurate reflections and lighting effects but is much more time consuming than the kind of rendering used in 3d games.

The output of the ray tracing is then combined with other information (such as depth and transparency) that comes out of the 3d rendering engine.  This information is all fed in to a compositing program such as Adobe After Effects or Autodesk (formerly Discreet) Inferno.  These programs combine the 3d elements back with the actual video elements and allows for filters and effects to be applied to help blend the layers together smoothly.


AE - Composition video file/layer missing audio In my case, I'm working with a file that does have audio, confirmed in the RAM preview and other checks mentioned above, however, I noticed after rendering, the first video file ha no audio (not even in the RAM preview any longer, the video layer is like my other imported video layers and still has the little audio icon with it). I had a audio fade-in on it but it worked before in the RAM preview and my audio fade-out on the last video still works fine. Some little option somewhere got toggled and yeah.... somewhere in there in those many great options AE provides...

The link to my .aep and project files on Google Drive:

http://goo.gl/PJI2nz

and to my audio fade-out working, but no audio in the first half of the video:

https://youtu.be/pMf5JLBIPQk?t=1h35m22s

Thanks for any help.  :)

Make sure the sound icon of the layer is enabled and check the audio waveform of the layer in your composition at this time.

For RAM Audio Preview see this answer: How can I preview with audio in After Effects and be able to pause / resume the preview?


Can't make a clip in FinalCutPro X longer I am pretty new to FinalCutPro X and want to make my timelapse video with it. So far so good... I am almost finished...
But in the end, I'd like to make it a bit longer.

What I have are a couple of compound clips for each part of my video and then in the end I made one more compound clip with all of the parts to be able to easily adjust the length of the whole video to the music I am using.

Now I wanted to add some more images to my last segment but then I can't drag the clip longer. It will show a red border at the end and wont make it longer. Also, the part on the right is kind of grayed out.

Hard for me to explain the problem, so I made some screenshots.
First one shows the one big compound clip

Second shows the inner ones (each represents one week)

And inside those are individual images. Even when I add a couple of more images to the last compound clip, I am not able to make it longer...

Any idea of what I am doing wrong would help me a lot!!!

And... just a very quick question (don't want to create a whole question for it)... When I slowmo a clip it will show this drag-handle-bar on top to adjust the speed. When I close the project and reopen it again, they are gone... Is there a quick way on how to get them back?

Cheers,
Georg

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

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

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


Is this as high quality a GIF I can produce from this MP4 using FFMPEG? I am using Powerpoint to create animations which I then export into a video and crop and convert to GIF using ffmpeg.

Here is the (cropped) MP4 video, and this is the GIF I was able to produce:

To my (untrained) eye, it appears rather grainy, and not terribly smooth. I am wondering if there are options in ffmpeg I can be using thaat will give me a better quality GIF.

Here is the command I am using to crop:

ffmpeg -i in\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4 -filter:v "crop=1262:423:91:154" in\cropped_vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4

Here are the two commands I am using to convert:

ffmpeg -y -vf fps=35,scale=896:-1:flags=lanczos,palettegen out\PALETTE.png -i in\cropped_vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4
ffmpeg -y -filter_complex "fps=35,scale=896:-1:flags=lanczos[x];[x][1:v]paletteuse" -i in\cropped_vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4 -i out\PALETTE.png  out\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.gif

I should say, I am not particularly talented with ffmpeg, I mostly put these commands together from googling and other posts on this site. So if any of the arguments I am using are making the conversion worse, I'd also be interested in hearing about it.

I tried the -b 2048k option, and I couldn't tell a difference in quality. In fact, when I ran a SHA256 hash on the output file with and without this option, the result was identical.

The separate cropping step is leading to a generational loss. You can combine that and see.

ffmpeg -i in\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4
       -vf "crop=1262:423:91:154,scale=896:-1:flags=lanczos,fps=35,palettegen"
       out\PALETTE.png

ffmpeg -i in\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.mp4 -i out\PALETTE.png
       -filter_complex "[0]crop=1262:423:91:154,scale=896:-1:flags=lanczos,fps=35[v];
                        [v][1]paletteuse"
       out\vlans-3vlans-tag-untag.gif


How do I get a 1960s film look, like technicolor? What modern digital camera,video editing software and lense, can offer the same look/color/grain of 1960s movies, like james bond thunderball etc. Lighting systems to if possible, also if any can name which old cameras and lenses they used back then too, would also be helpful.

Pretty much any professional grade video editing software will have "color Correction/Color grading" capabilities -- this is the part of the art that you are looking for. Obviously, the "grain" you'll get here is digital/simulated noise, and not actual particles of chemicals. this is the Instagram filter before there was Instagram.

the website "shotonwhat?" is a good resource to see which actual cameras (and lenses, but not always) were used for movies. Lenses, lighting, makeup and wardrobe and production design also make a big impact on the look of the film, some of which you've mentioned.

Another big part of the equation is the "film stock" -- the actual film used in 35mm/16mm/8mm cameras -- which had countless varieties based on different factors. Individual film stocks often had special characteristics (sometimes intended, sometimes not) which were favored by cinematographers/directors.

the digital equivalent of a film stock is called a LUT (a look up table). so the way it works is this : you shoot the scene in the digital camera's "flat" mode to get the most information on your chip. Then you apply the LUT to make it look like how you want to. On set, you can live preview your LUT to approximate how it's going to look like in post, unless you're just playing with it in post from scratch.

It's hard to give a specific answer to your question without spraying a bunch of brand names -- which is frowned upon here -- but I hope my answer helps you in farther research.


How do I automatically create burned-in subtitles in Premiere Pro? I have subtitles for a video in .srt format and I want to use this create 'burned-in' subtitles in Adobe Premiere Pro. Is this possible to do - and how?

What do you mean by burned in?  Do you mean you wish to actually render the text on to the video or that you wish to encode it in a format that supports inclusion of a subtitle channel?  For actually making them a permanent part of the video, I've always done it through titles rather than an srt.  I unfortunately don't have any experience with the latter option of making them a subtitle channel in a compatible format, but it would likely depend greatly on the format chosen.


Forcing kdenlive to adapt its profile to the video clip kdenlive starts with a profile for instance 1080*720/etc.

Then I import a video clip.

How to tell kdenlive to modify its profile to match the video clip?

Modifying the profile manually by copy/pasting each of the clip's properties is very time-consuming and error-prone, I am sure there is a better way to do this.

Curious... recent versions of KDEnlive practically push this option into your face once you add a clip with properties different from the project.

If the option got disabled in your setup you can enable it again by going to Settings -> Configure KDEnlive -> Misc (selected by default) -> [ ] check if first added clip matches project profile

I am using this option in version 0.9.6 on Debian, but I've seen this behaviour in 0.9.4 and probably older versions as well.

Also if you got used at some point to dismissing this funny question window you get immediately when adding a clip, try to control the urge this time - the question is whether KDEnlive should adjust the project properties, which is what you want ;-)

(don't be mad at me if you think this last part is stupid, I've done user support occasionally and I have seen people do this;-)


Adobe Media Encoder CC - No output sound After I finish my project in Adobe After Effects I export the project to Adobe Media Encoder.

I choose the default setting Youtube HD 1080p 29.97. After render all the video I get no sound on the video.

Any help?

Often by default the Audio Output checkbox is not checked in After Effects.  When you go to add the composition to the render queue, make sure Audio Output is checked.


Ideal frame rate for video with moving objects I am working on a drone to capture a soccer game. What should be ideal minimum frame rate for the camera? Does it depend on velocity of objects(ball, players) in the game?

There are two distinct types of frame rates and how they're captured and played back.

interlaced
progressive

A progressive frame rate transmits whole images at once, depending on whether you use NTSC or PAL, you'll start on the low end with 25/24 FPS. From there, you can go up as much as you want, but the conventional frame rates are usually 25, 30 and 60. Because you're filming a soccer game, 60fps will give you a more crisp, clear and even slower viewing experience, without actually slowing down the footage.

When it comes to interlacing, it's a bit more complex. TV and broadcasts used and still use interlacing for the most part. With it, you'll only send half the picture, first the even or uneven rows, and after that the other half. Using interlacing, you can safe a lot of data and make the image still look quite good, however, in rapid movements (be it a whip pan or alike), you'll be able to make out interlacing lines which I absolutely detest.

That said, you should most likely opt for 60p (p standing for progressive) or, if you can't get progressive frame rates, 60i or 120i. Interlaced frame rates get confusing, because for example 25i and 50i is practically the same, only the name differs, since you're sending 50 half-frames a second, but 25 whole frames.


Create a movie file from a set of pdf files I have a set of files from which I would like to create a movie file with a certain frame rate. I can, however, not seem to find software that is able to do this.

I'm working under Ubuntu Linux. Ideally the movie would maintain the vector graphics format from the pdf. But I do not know if software exists which makes this possible. If this is impossible, I could also convert the pdf files to a nonvector format and produce a movie from it.

Does anybody have experience with this?

A tool to do that would be FFmpeg but unfortunately it does not support PDF decoding.
Though you can convert your pdf's to png's using imagemagick (relevant question on askUbuntu).

And then create a movie out of those PNG's with ffmpeg. This guide on the ffmpeg page explains how, here an example command:

ffmpeg -r 1/5 -i img%03d.png -c:v libx264 -r 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

This read images from the current folder with the prefix "img" and a following number of 3 digits and display them for 5 seconds (-r 1/5) with a frame rate of 30 fps (-r 30).


flattening a sequence in Adobe Premiere (collapsing included sequences) I'm using Adobe Premiere -- I'm trying to convert a project to use a single sequence, with all the media clips in that sequence.
At the moment I'm in Adobe Premiere 5.5, but I have Adobe CC available.
Any leads are welcome!
Question
Q: What is the fastest and easiest way to replace these subsequences in my main sequence, with their component clips, such that the main sequence still renders to exactly the same video?
If you have any leads or even partial ideas, please feel free to leave a comment.  Also, please mention which version of Premiere you are using.
Current State of the Project
This is a simplified view, the actual number of clips and subsequences is much larger!

Main Sequence A

Clip 1
Clip 2
Sequence B
Clip 3
Sequence C

Sequence B

Clip 4
Clip 5

Sequence C

Clip 6
Clip 7

Desired State of the Project

Main Sequence A

Clip 1
Clip 2
Clip 4
Clip 5
Clip 3
Clip 6
Clip 7

Difficulties In Flattening

Sequence A doesn't use all of Sequence B, and it doesn't start at the beginning
Suppose I just copy the clips from Sequence B
...pasting them in Sequence A where Sequence B is now
the clips will not start at the same time they do when in Sequence A

Flattening Techniques
Attempt 1: Nesting

Select the clips in Sequence A, including Sequences B and C
choose "Nest"
now only one sequence is in Sequence A!
...however that sequence still has nested sequences.

Attempt 2: Trim project

I selected only Sequence A and chose Project Manager...
Premiere made an entirely new, simplified ("trimmed") project
the media used in that Sequence A, and therefore B and C as well, were included in the sequence, and no others
the media used were copied to the new location (so they are in two places on this drive now)
...but when I opened the new project, Sequence A STILL has nested sequences.

Attempt 3: brute force
Why bother?  Why not fix all these manually?  Well...
Here's the process I have at the moment to replace a single sub-sequence.  Bear in mind this is a large project and I'll have to do this dozens of times.

in Sequence A, select Sequence B and duplicate to another layer
...we'll call this "Sequence B2"
extend Sequence B2 in length to the very beginning of its earliest point
cut B2 to where Sequence B begins
the new first half of B2 is the length of B that elapses before showing the part used in Sequence A.

This half we'll call B2a
the part that plays in Sequence A we'll call B2b

now, in Sequence B, use timecode/frame arithmetic to go to the exact point in the clip
make the cut in the same place in Sequence B as it began in Sequence A... we'll call this B3, which is theoretically starts at the same point as B2b
copy the cut clip B3 in Sequence B...
...and paste in Sequence A on top of B2b and use a separate layer
set B3 to a partial opacity to verify Sequence A is EXACTLY THE SAME as it appeared before B3 was pasted in!

if it's off, you'll see B3 and B2b as two distinct and overlapping images

(1.) Open the master sequence containing the nested sequences.

(2.) MAKE SURE that the "Insert or overwrite sequences as nests or individual clips" selector (the leftmost icon under the timecode display in the sequence panel) is NOT highlighted. This will force a nested sequence in the Source Monitor to be edited into the sequence as the individual clips contained in the nested sequence.

(3.) Park the playhead in the middle of one of the nested items in the main sequence

(4.) Choose "Marker / MARK CLIP" (I have this programmed to "X" on the keyboard.") You need to make sure your track selection toggles are correctly set to target the track containing the nested item.

(5.) Choose "Sequence / MATCH FRAME" (I have this programmed to "F" on the keyboard.) This opens the nested sequence into the Source Monitor.

(6.) Choose "Clip / OVERWRITE" (I have this programmed to "B" on the keyboard, like an Avid.) This should have replaced the nested sequence CLIP ITEM with the clips contained in the nested sequence. This overwrites (from IN to OUT as selected in step 4) with the contents of the nested sequence.

(7.) move the playhead to the next clip and press X, F, B

(8.) repeat step 7 until you're done.

[This is tested on Premiere CC 2015.2]


rate stretch tool on premier I have made a sequence on adobe premier. One of the clips I have stretched using the stretch rate tool and another I have compressed using the same tool.

I have made sure the clips are video blended. However when I render the sequence into a QuickTime movie the clips I've slowed down and speed up are green and damaged. Does anyone please know why this is and how I can fix it? Many thanks

Probably you forgot to change framerate of composition.


How to change the grey color of a clip block in the grey timeline in FCPX in the FCPX timeline, is there a way to change the standard grey color of a clip?  so i can notice it quickly between hundred other grey clips in the timeline ? Imagine the convenience...

Modify > Edit Roles

Choose a colour, then right-click an item in the Browser or in the Timeline to Assign that new Role.


How do i do this shot? BSD

Platform: Adobe Creative Cloud CC (premiere, ae, etc.)

Basically I have a shot that I would want to do practically. The shot should look like one shot, static, and we see a  guy (profile-medium) talking then stops...and smoke gently comes out of his mouth. Now the source of the smoke is not a cigarette in the shot but I could use a cigarette to get the smoke look. My reason for going practical is because I cant find a realistic AE effect and this is a realistic video. So the way I originally wanted to go about it was like this:

Have him stand in the profile and talk until the point that I would cut (between him talking and the smoke), have him stand in the exact same position then have him drag a cig, keep his face in that position and then let the smoke come out.

Are there any special Adobe techniques to make this as fluid and unnoticeable (the cut) as possible.?
thanks and sorry for the verbosity.

I like your idea. You might be able to make a convincing smoke element to superimpose on your shot like this:

get a black sheet or piece of posterboard
cut a small, mouth-sized hole in the posterboard
paint the actor's lips black
have the actor stand behind the black posterboard, and blow smoke through the hole

The lighting would be pretty tricky. The best bet would be to have a light directly overhead, not on the black posterboard at all. The light would (hopefully) catch the smoke but keep the posterboard exceptionally dark.  It could be darkened more in After Effects when you're superimposing it (probably as a chromakey where the key color is black). In addition, you could create a traveling mask over the shape of the smoke.


fair use of copyrighted footage in language learning context I am making a language learning website. One of the features I want on the website is a collection of videos that talk about various topics in the taught language, so that the members get to practice listening. These could be historical or factual topics, like World War 2 or chinese cuisine, or pop culture topics, like James Bond, Michael Jackson or Super Mario.

These videos would be of an informative nature, but their main function would obviously be to serve as material for language practice. To what degree could I defend the usage of copyrighted material, for example movie footage, in such videos as fair use? And would it affect the situation whether access to the videos was free or not?

EDIT: The website is operated from Norway.

According to this site, Norway does allow exceptions to author's rights for educational purposes, but it does not expand on what said requirements are.  You should probably talk to a lawyer in your jurisdiction for up to date information on your local jurisdiction.


Avidemux output to youtube Youtube recommend this encoding setting for videos. I'm is not an expert of encoding, I just use avidedmux to sync external audio with video, and compress the mix. There are a lot of options in "MPEG4 AVC" and I can't match it with the youtube's recommendations.

What options should I select in avidemux (for video and audio) to match youtube's recommendations?

avidemux's dialog box for x264 settings is pretty bad.  It's been years since x264 added presets from ultrafast to veryslow, but avidemux still makes you manually choose all the cpu-time vs. quality options.  It doesn't even have a checkbox for more recent (but essential) options like mb-tree, or psycho-visual optimizations (AQ and psy-rd).

I honestly can't recommend avidemux (2.5.4 in Ubuntu 14.04) as a frontend for x264.  It's pretty essential to have something with a slider for slow to fast presets.  I made a test encode, and the important settings default to on, which is good.

It doesn't matter too much what you use for youtube, as long as you use enough bitrate for it to look good.  (CRF 18 is usually visually transparent, you could go CRF 16 to be on the safe side.)

There aren't any settings that will make youtube use your encode untouched for even one of its standard resolutions, instead of doing a transcode.  The encoding guidelines, are all stuff that's on by default in avidemux.  Except the GOP of half the framerate, which makes no sense anyway, and is a horrible idea.  They're going to xcode the whole video anyway, so using a 1/2 second GOP size is just going to hurt compression.  Same for only 2 b frames.  I'm sure their decoder can handle the max consecutive B frames h.264 allows.  (which is probably 16, since that's what x264 allows.)  x264's default setting of 3 b frames is apparently good.  I think with that one, they're just making sure that mis-informed people don't disable b-frames and worsen the rate-distortion (quality vs. filesize) tradeoff of their encode.


After effect using multiple linear expression based on its value I am new to After Effects. I want to write a linear expression on [Audio Amplitude] that is converted from an audio file based on its value as the below:
 linear(value,0,15,0,0);
 linear(value,16,20,30,80);
 linear(value,21,30,80,100);

So basically I expect when value is between 0  to 15 it becomes 0 when it reach between 16,20 it becomes 30 to 80 ,....
However, it looks it only executes the first linear(0,15) and anything is map to 0,0
How could I achieve this?

When expressions are evaluated the first term that returns a result will set the value of the property. If you look at your expression line 1 will always return a result - 0. None of the other lines will be executed.
What you need to do is test what the value is and then execute the right function accordingly.
if (value <=15){linear(value,0,15,0,0)};
if (value <= 20){linear(value,15,20,30,80)};
if(value > 20){linear(value,20,30,80,100)};

note that the linear() functions on the second and third line have minimum values of 15 and 20, not 16 and 21—consider what would happen if the value was 15.5 or 20.5.
What the expression does is only evaluate the first linear() function if value is in the 0-15 range. If it is that result is returned and the expression stops being evaluated, if not it goes on to the next line, and so on.


What software and technique would I use to achieve this effect? How would I achieve the digital distortion effect seen in this David Bowie video from 6:20 to 7:10?  Is there a term for this effect to help guide future searches?

Can't embed the video, so here's a screenshot

Tough question, and I imagine that those effects may be combinations of many other effects (probably in a 3D package given the context of the video itself). Barnaby Roper has a pretty interesting skill set, and we could try forever guessing what he did without getting it exactly right.

That said, you should be able to accomplish a similar effect with purposefully induced compression artifacts. Getting those artifacts to animate seemingly organically like the video will be tricky.

Otherwise, dig into After Effects and start playing with combinations of all the distortion. Trapcode's Particular is (unsurprisingly) used throughout, but it's hard to pin down exactly what they're using it for everywhere. Still, Trapcode does have a small blog about the video, which might be able to direct you to further expertise:

http://www.trapcode.com/journal/2013/11/19/david-bowie-love-is-lost-hello-steve-reich-mix.html

You may also want to look into Trapcode MIR: http://vimeo.com/46449353; I don't think it was used for the distortion you've highlighted, but it's possible.

Happy hunting!


Matching colors between two clips (Newbie alert) Using DaVinci Resolve 16 free, I'm trying to create a video trick in which I tap a ball out of my laptop. The two clips I'm using are (1) laptop being tilted and tapped, (2) ball dropped on the table.

I made two attempts to combine the two using masking but the results are bad and I need advice. The main problem is the shadow cast by the laptop. Here are the two attempts, using Fusion:

First, did exhaustive masking over the tilting laptop for (a) hiding part of the ball's trajectory and (b) masking out the laptop shadow. Unfortunately there is a small yet visible color mismatch between the two clips and the mask outline is clearly seen:

Reverted the above, tried masking around the ball. In this case the ball doesn't interact with the laptop shadow and thus looks unreal.

Is there a better way? Is there a better newbie place to ask these kind of questions?

One of the biggest ironies of working with visual effects is that if you've done your work well, the audience won't notice the work you've done.  Good effects appear effortless; the better the effect, the more effort concealment required.  So when you ask, "Is there a better way?" the bad news is: Not if you're looking for an easier way.
The good news is:  You're on the right track.  You've done everything right so far, and all you need to do is add a little more polish to get the results you're after.
I think that one thing that will help a lot in your case is feathering the mask edge, which is definitely possible in Resolve/Fusion.
With a polygon or bspline node in fusion, you can either use the "Soft Edge" slider (easier) to feather the whole edge uniformly, or activate the "Make Double Poly" icon (more control), which is the capital letter "D" icon with double lines in the row of icons at the top of viewer whenever the polygon/bspline node is selected.
Press and hold the letter "O" on your keyboard while dragging one of the shape knots to drag out the feathering (it's fully sharp and hidden at first). Then, if your masks are animated, you can "Right-click-here" in inspector to animate both the inner and outer polygon edges.

Speaking of animated edges, you say that you "did exhaustive masking over the tilting laptop."  When you say "exhaustive," I assume that you mean you've animated the mask as the laptop moves.  It's hard to know the right approach to this particular shot without seeing the moving footage, but it seems like you're on the right track.  You should know that animating masks by hand can be counterproductive in some cases, and draw attention to your subterfuge, however.  If the camera is completely stationary, and depending on the circumstances, there are certain times when it's easier and more effective to use a static shape.
The rest of the time, keyframing a mask by hand usually isn't sufficient by itself, and is often combined with other techniques to achieve the desired results.
One of those other techniques, would be to use a greenscreen.  When a keyframed matte is combined with a greenscreen, the matte is called a "garbage matte" because it roughs out the unused portions of the screen, allowing the keyer to perform more accurately.
But since you're not using a greenscreen, the the other technique you might want to add into the mix is tracking.
If your footage is hand-held, and the laptop is moving organically (i.e., it's held by a person, not in freefall, following a parabolic arc, sitting still, etc), then a keyframed matte alone will never match the object's motion.  In these cases, it helps to first track the movement of the object, using either DaVinci's Point tracker, or a planar tracker (which would be good in this case because the laptop is a flat plane) to do the lion's share of the work, and THEN keyframe misaligned edges, and finally  selectively feather the result wherever necessary.  It's probably not necessary to feather it much along the face of the laptop, for example, because that's a straight line.  But the edge that overlaps the woven basket in the background would be difficult to conceal any other way.
And finally, since your question is about color correction, yes, getting the color of your foreground plate to better match the background plate as closely as possible will help sell your composite.  There are some auto-match features on Resolve's Color page, but Fusion happens before Color in the order of operations, so you'll want to match the plates in Fusion as best you can.  Since everyone's color vision is slightly different, it's best to not trust your own eyes when color matching.  Use the waveform monitors and vector scope in Fusion if you're comfortable with that, but what I like to do is match each color channel individually.  Use the r, g, and b keys on the keyboard to single out the individual color channels in fusion, then match the contrast levels of each.  Cycle through them all a couple of times until your satisfied, hit the "C" key to switch back to full color, and you'll be surprised at how misleading your color vision is on its own.


How do I setup a camera in a fixed position? Im interested in creating a video stream channel. There are cases where say I'm building a computer that I want to place a WebCam in a fixed position above my head. Or say doing a car repair, I will need a similar set up.   Most web cameras I've seen are designed to be attached to a computer directly.  Im imagining a stand and a camera attached to it.  Ideally, the camera attaches to a PC but it doesn't have to.

I guess I could pull this off with my iPhone if it had a stand to hold it.

Get a camera (not a webcam), any camera, and put it on a tripod. Make sure the camera has the approriate mount to put it on your tripod. If you have a camera without such mount, just prop it up against some books or something like this. Then connect your camera to your PC (for live streaming) or just record to SD card and put it on your computer later (for prerecorded video).


Correct order of layer effects in Premiere CC 2017? For once in my life, I've been handed an edit job that is shot in such a way that I can grade the whole thing in one pass with a LUT.

On this particular edit, I need to first use a Log conversion LUT, and then can apply the additional grade LUT. I'd like to do this with Adjustment Layers to facilitate easier revisions (rather than clip-level effects).

What is the correct order of rendering with regards to adjustment layers? If I put each LUT on a different layer, which is applied first?

My searching revealed no answers; apologies if my underslept brain has missed an obvious one.

I'm fairly certain that Premiere Pro renders all layers from bottom to top. I have found several sources that confirm this behaviour for After Effects, but nowhere is it stated explicitly for Premiere Pro.

From the Adobe documentation for After Effects:

  A composition consists of layers stacked on top of one another in the Timeline panel. When the composition is rendered—either for previewing or for final output—the bottom layer is rendered first. Within each raster (non-vector) layer, elements are applied in the following order: masks, effects, transformations, and layer styles. For continuously rasterized vector layers, the default rendering order is masks, followed by transformations, and then effects.

Source

Rendering layers from bottom to top is also the logical order. If it was the other way around, blending modes and certain other effects couldn't function properly. Let's say I have two video layers, the upper one being set to multiply as it's blending mode. This blending mode takes into account the pixels of the video layer below it. This wouldn't work if that layer hadn't been rendered yet.

So I would suggest this layer order for your timeline:

Adjustment Layer with color grading effects
--------------
Adjustment Layer with color correction effects
--------------
Layer with video clips

Alternatively, you could just put all your LUT effects on the same adjustment layer. Keep in mind that effects on a clip are rendered top to bottom. So if you have just one adjustment layer that holds one LUT effect for color correction and another one for color grading, make sure the color correction effect is on top in the Effect Settings panel.


Standard software for producing video with AR effect What is a standard tool to make videos that contain AR effect?
I am very impressed with this movie because (a) it tracks the camera position of 3D coordinates smoothly and (b) gadgets of Mac OS are clearly placed with nice look.

I think AR is the future in front of us, so, eager to produce this kind of video by myself to feel how we see with it!

There are a couple of ways to obtain such a result. You can record a video and add these objects using editing software like after effects or blender. This software can track the surfaces and you can add any 3d objects. The second way is to build an AR app using unity or an unreal engine. This method is good and you can use this with any surfaces, unlike the first method. You can find out more from here


How to preserve colorspace in ffmpeg I have a x264 video with yuvj420p(pc, smpte170m) color space and i want to convert this video to x265 and reduce its file size. I have used this command ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 20 output.mp4 but the video got darker and when i runned ffprobe i saw the colorspace changed to yuvj420p(pc, progressive) How can i preserve color space while transcoding?

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

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


How is a shot like this done? (Smooth angle shift in extreme slow-motion) https://i.imgur.com/LqzejN9.mp4

How is this achieved? It seems like the camera would have to go from sitting still to moving extremely fast to capture a pan that far to the side while the wave is moving in such incredibly slow motion. Right? If the camera was changing angle at non-insane speeds, its angle change would happen in extreme slow motion just like the environment it seems like to me.

But it's over water in the waves, so it could be a drone but can drones really go from hovering still to instantly moving as fast as necessary for that shot? They could have a boat with a rig to pull the camera sideways fast but it would have to be pretty close considering the angle change and wouldn't it have problems because the waves are bouncing it around?

I would have to agree with @Michael on this one, Bullet Time (as the name suggests when opening up the image "Surfing Bullet Time" would probably be the best result. To be fair it was probably filmed on a small boat (cameras in waterproof housings) as take just as the boat goes over the wave (just before it turns over)

Here is the actual video

It was shot with 12 GoPro cameras