FCP loses second audio track on import I have mp4 files with two stereo audio tracks, one with voice, and the other with game sounds. Unfortunately, when I import into Final Cut Pro, and then expand audio components, I only get the first (voice) track. Everything I can find claims that I should be seeing both tracks. What am I doing wrong here? Is there an import switch not set properly?

Make sure to activate “Separate mono and group stereo audio “ and deactivate “Remove silent channels” in the import window.
Maybe consider to check the files with VLC or Audacity to make sure both channels are present. You could export just the audio tracks and import them separately as well.


Create an animation of a slider-crank mechanism system I'm trying to create an animation of a slider-crank mechanism system in After Effects, but I'm finding it difficult to create a move closer to a real simulation.

Would anyone have an idea how I should proceed?

The link below shows what I'm trying to get:

Slider-crank Mechanism System

This was my attempt, but it's getting very strange:

The setup is reasonably simple, built in functions, trigonometry and some Pythagoras will get you there. Have a look at the diagram below:

The orange solid is the crank, with its anchor point shown at the bottom. Its rotation drives the whole thing (you could drive it from the piston, but this is probably easier(?)). In your diagram the crank isn't shown, so you can just use a solid, and make it a guide layer. Attached to the crank is a null called pivot, lined up to the where the crank and piston are attached to each other, with the crank as its parent. I use that to save myself a little bit of maths, The green solid is the piston, its anchor point is at the top, lined up with the blue solid.

Now to find the position of the piston we have to find Yc, x, and Yp. That will also allow us to find the angle ϴ.

First we need to find the position of the pivot. Fortunately we can use the built-in function toComp. That will return the absolute position of the pivot null. If we subtract the position of the crank we're left with [x, Yc].

Since we know the length of the piston—p in the diagram above—and the value of x, we can use Pythagoras' theorem to find Yp, because x² + Yp² = P², then it follows Yp = sqrt(P² - x²).

Putting it all together, plus some offsets to keep the piston lined up with the crank, we get this for the position expression on the piston arm:

var PistonLength = 200; //set this to whatever length your piston is
var crankPos = thisComp.layer("crank").transform.position;
var pivot = thisComp.layer("pivot").toComp(thisComp.layer("pivot").transform.anchorPoint, t = time) - crankPos;
var y = Math.sqrt(Math.pow(PistonLength,2) - Math.pow(pivot[0], 2));
crankPos + [0, pivot[1] - y]

Once we have the lengths of the sides of the triangle we can find the angle using trigonometry. We know that sin ϴ = x / P so ϴ = asin(x / P). Here's the expression:

var pistonLength = 200;
var crankPos = thisComp.layer("crank").transform.position;
var pivot = crankPos - thisComp.layer("pivot").toComp(thisComp.layer("pivot").transform.anchorPoint, t = time);
theta = Math.asin(pivot[0]/pistonLength);
radiansToDegrees(theta)

So in the diagram above these expressions are applied to the green solid on the position and rotation properties respectively.

The blue solid just has to line up with the green piston, but you don't want to parent it, or it will inherit the rotation. So just put this simple expression on its position property (obviously with all these expressions you need to change the names of the layers to match (or change your layer names):

thisComp.layer("piston arm").transform.position

Here's a screenshot of the comp, with all the expressions in place.


What's the best way to set up a live webshow with multiple Skype video inputs? I'm running a small weekly live webshow with an investor on the other side of the planet.

We are using Google Hangouts on Air, but it's not really great.

What is the best system to set up for improving our quality, such as getting guests on (via Skype, not Google+), improve quality, reduce lag, increase production quality etc?

I have been looking at using Google Live and Wirecast, but it seems to be kind of a hack in terms of Skype. I want something simple. Also been looking at Newtek-products.

I need some input.

The popular VLC media player offers low latencey multicast video streaming solutions. This is not as one-clickish as Skype, but hey, thats what you get for becoming more professional.

Video streamed by VLC can have any properties regarding video resolution and quality - within the limits of your network bandwith of course.

Ususally your PC will be behind a home router which acts as so called NAT-Gateway and firewall. Much to the annoyance of network administrators Skype sees to it automatically that this firewall is cranked open, and multidirectional video casts can flow through. It also handles IP address and port negotiation. VLC does not, as the concept behind it is different (its main use is streaming, not video conferencing).

So for this post I will assume that you are willing to invest a degree of brain juice in creating a clean media flow over the internet. After all you are working on a global technological scale. Do not worry, we still will not need to get into the advanced internet routing stuff.

With VLC you will have to configure your home router manually to present a service running on your computer to the open internet. This is called port forwarding, look it up.

I will not get into details about setting up VLC streaming, as it is pretty much straight forward and you can handle this yourself: Open VLC, press Ctrl S, follow instructions. Best use RTP or HTTP streaming as they are well standardised.
When setting up your VLC to stream media from a webcam, you will configure a network port, on which the webcam stream is offered to the internet. Make sure this port is forwarded by your home router.

Decrease media caching to improve latency, increase caching to prevent stuttering. 200ms will be fine. A h264 stream with 720p resolution will look OK at about 2000 kbps but only if you let VLC handle compression. If you let your webcam handle the compression internally you will need much more bandwith, as the hardware encoders are somewhat limited.

Once both parties (you and your cohost) have set up this stream, you can connect to each other using a media player like VLC, mplayer, Windows Media Player, Quick Time... streaming really is a standard ;-) Any guests you are hosting can connect to this stream too, and so can spectators. VLC also lets you record remote video streams to disk for post production.

To get guests on your screen, you can let them use a tool of their convenience like Skype or Hangouts. Once VLC is using your webcam, you will not be able to offer video from the same cam via Skype. But this will not be necessary, since guests can see you over the VLC stream. You would only need Skype to see them, while video streamed from you and your partner remains fluent.

To have people connect to your stream, they will need to know your public IP address, which you can look up on http://www.whatismyip.com or similar sites. You can use a dyndns service like http://no-ip.biz (or other) to use a convenient DNS name instead of an IP address.

With this description you should be able to get started, ask me anything if you need to know more.


Camcorders that can stream directly to YouTube I've googled for the last couple hours and couldn't find any real answers. In short, are there any camcorders that allow you to live stream your video straight to YouTube. All the camcorders with live streaming capabilities that I've found only seem to mention UStream, but this isn't good enough unfortunately.

Edit

I'd preferably like to do this on the go as A lot of camcorders nowawadays have Wi-Fi capabilities.

This must be possible as like I mentioned, you can do so to UStream. Also, GoPros can do it, but these aren't good enough for me because they lack a flip screen and are too small to hold

The "JVC GY-HM200SPU 4KCAM Compact Handheld Streaming Camcorder" claims... "When equipped with an optional Wi-Fi or 4G LTE high-speed broadband modem, the camcorder can deliver a live video stream directly to USTREAM and YouTube, while simultaneously recording HD video internally to SDHC/SDXC memory cards. "

I believe there are other camcorders in the JVC range, and almost certainly in cameras from other brands that will live-stream to YouTUbe.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1206407-REG/jvc_gy_hm200sp_4kcam_compact_handheld.html


DSLR vs CamCorders for video tutorials? I'm planning to record video tutorials for a project of mine without compromising on the quality and I would like to know the best option to shoot them

DSLRs tend to have much larger image sensors than camcorders, which tends to mean much less depth of field (DOF) for a given field of view.  Shallow DOF is great for isolating subjects from their background, but it's a nightmare when you actually want the subject and its context to be in focus together.

Most DLSR lenses have a limited zoom ratio and/or limited maximum aperture compared with camcorder zooms.  A typical DSLR kit (EOS 80D with 18-135mm f3.5-f5.6 zoom), can be equated to a 35mm equivalent of 29-216mm f3.5-f5.6 zoom lens.  A Canon Vixia G40 camcorder has a 35mm equivalent of a 26.8 - 576 f1.8-f2.8 zoom lens.  That's more than 2x longer at the long end with 2 f-stops more light-gathering ability.

Combine longer range, wider aperture, and more depth of field, and you can see why news organizations tend to send camcorders into the field.

On the other hand, depending on your subject and your aesthetic, you may prefer the shallow DOF look, such as this short video demonstrates: https://vimeo.com/100437145


Create a random number each second In After Effects I am trying my hands at this

             and would like to add a random number between 45 and 55 in the upper right corner, which should change each second.

If I use Math.round(random(45,55)) I am getting pretty close, but the number updates maybe 20 times a second making it unusable. Is there a way to control how often a new number is generated? Is there another way to do this?

Just to clarify, I want sort of what is already in wiggle, where wiggle(1,30) wiggles once a second.

random updates at the sub-frame level (so its value actually changes even during a frame, for example when motion blur is on. You can see this as you zoom in on the graph editor of a property with a random value, it keeps changing as it zooms and the time is sub-sampled more).

To force it to update only once a second you need to use the seedRandom function, with the timeless attribute set to true, and a seed that changes every second. Using Math.floor(time) will return a value that increases once every second, on the second.

So something like:

seedRandom(Math.floor(time), timeless = true);
random(45,55);

will create a random value that stays constant for 1 second, and

var holdTime = 5;
seedRandom(Math.floor(time/holdTime), timeless = true);
random(45,55);

will stay constant for 5 seconds - you can change the value of the variable holdTime to control how long the value holds for. For example to change once every frame, but not during sub-frame intervals set it to holdTime = thisComp.frameDuration;


Questions about Customs/Insurance/Transport for your equipment? Sorry if it's not the right forum for such a question but is it possible to get any feedback from experimented filmmakers on how they transport their equipement abroad ?

For example, how do you handle customs ? Do you have like any specific document that allow you to get your equipement "anywhere" ? I'm talking about the case where you have 100 kg ~ 200 kg or more of equipement.

Which insurance do you have to protect the equipement from any baggage loss from the airline company (preferably a french or european insurance company) ? Some airline companies don't theoretically allow electronic equipement transport and hence in case of any loss, they refuse to refund. They allow it in practice but if they lose your luggage, they don't refund anything under the pretext of transporting electronics is not allowed.

How do you handle the nightmare of transporting the batteries ? We had once a shooting in a remote area in Asia without electricity. We got some solar panels but we were unable to transport the batteries or big power banks. We couldn't even send them separately. FedEx, DHL, UPS all refused to transport them saying it' considered as dangerous good.

Any feedback is appreciated.
Thanks

I can only write from the experience of travelling from the UK to many other countries with kit a few years ago (pre-covid era):
In the UK, if you provide an equipment list to the airport customs desk before you leave, they will examine it, take a copy and stamp it.  The form is called a Returned Goods Relief Form.  This is to prove that you are taking valuable equipment out of the country for filming purposes, and plan to return with it (not sell it overseas and avoid paying taxes).
The list needs to show every item of equipment you are carrying and should have columns for: Manufacturer, Manufacturers Model, Serial Number, Value (£).
Print many copies of the equipment list, so that any official who demands one can take one.
Put a copy of each equipment list in each bag, Put a "lost luggage" note in each suitcase in the local language, and English.
Customs in the incoming country is another issue.  It depends on the country.  Research it carefully. Some countries need you to buy a "carnet".
Make sure no bag weighs more that the allowed limit by the airline.
With regards to batteries, the correct procedure a few years ago was to inform the airline that you would be carrying batteries. Make sure the weight of the batteries did not exceed their rules.  If they are Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries (often used in drones), carry them in LiPo bags which should reduce fire risk if they malfunction on the journey. Any exposed terminals should be taped over.
The airlines usually (and correctly) state that you should carry the batteries in hand luggage, so if they do malfunction, it would quickly become apparent - if they were in the hold, it would be too late to do anything.  Security guards in airports often aren't aware of this rule, and may try to get you to put batteries in the hold.  Allow time for this when you travel.
Officials love letters. Get a letter from the airline confirming that you can travel with the batteries. Take a letter from your employer confirming that you will be filming in x country for y days and address it "to whom it may concern".  Print many copies on headed paper.
Can't comment on insurance as it was handled by the company I worked for.  Large broadcasters usually have insurance, but often the excess is so high it is effectively useless. More important is the third party liability insurance, in case you injure somebody else during your work.
Also - use Peli cases. They're waterproof, fairly indestructible, and if they do get broken, they will offer you a replacement.


loop all videos from folder to rtmp stream I am bash user and I want to loop all videos from folder to rtmp, one video at a time. I am facing issue of stream stop after a 1st video finished  I need continuous rtmp after finished 1st video and jump to next video. I am using following codes:

for j in *.mp4;
    do
        ffmpeg -threads 2 -re -fflags +genpts  -i $j -i '/c/Users/user/Desktop/ffmpeg_logo/mylogo.png' -filter_complex 'overlay=W-w-50:H-h-25' -ac 2 -f flv -vcodec libx264 -profile:v baseline -b:v 2000k -maxrate 2000k -bufsize 2000k -r 24 -ar 44100 -g 48 -c:a aac -b:a 64k  "rtmp://user:passwd@ip:1935/live/mystream"

    done

You could do this by looping over the videos in a subshell, and piping to another copy of ffmpeg to generate the RTMP stream. For example:

(for j in *.mp4; do
    ffmpeg -threads 2 -re -fflags +genpts -i $j \
        -i '/c/Users/user/Desktop/ffmpeg_logo/mylogo.png' -filter_complex 'overlay=W-w-50:H-h-25' \
        -vcodec libx264 -profile:v baseline -b:v 2000k -r 24 -maxrate 2000k -bufsize 2000k  \
        -ac 2 -ar 44100 -g 48 -c:a aac -b:a 64k \
        -f mpegts -
done) | ffmpeg -f mpegts -i - -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -f flv rtmp://user:password@ip:1935/live/mystream

Notice the brackets around the for loop; that creates a subshell to run the first read & encode ffmpeg command. The output from that command is sent over the stdout ("standard output") pipe to the input of the second ffmpeg command, which generates the RTMP stream. The syntax for that is using - as the name of the input or output file.

I've had to include a bitstream filter aac_adtstoasc because I've used an MPEG Transport Stream as the format on the pipe as well.


How to extract only frames from videos that have certain levels of luminosity / content? I have a series of high framerate (slow motion) videos and need to extract all frames with content to series of images.

Most of the videos are of electrical events that took place in the dark and just the frames with a certain degree of lighting / actual visual output need to be extracted.  Thus the dark / black frames will not be extracted, but the other frames will be.

Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Here's the gist of the ffmpeg method: use the blackframe filter to identify frames with a certain amount of non-black content. Use the metadata filter to pass through those frames and discard the rest.

Inspection:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf blackframe=amount=0:threshold=92 -f null -

The amount (0) in the blackframe parameters refers to the percentage of pixels that have to be below the threshold (92) for the filter to tag it as a black frame. The way we'll using it, it won't matter what the amount is, so keep it at 0.

You will get a readout like this:

[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:1 pblack:35 pts:1 t:0.040000 type:I last_keyframe:1
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:2 pblack:35 pts:2 t:0.080000 type:I last_keyframe:2
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:3 pblack:35 pts:3 t:0.120000 type:I last_keyframe:3
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:4 pblack:35 pts:4 t:0.160000 type:I last_keyframe:4
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:5 pblack:34 pts:5 t:0.200000 type:I last_keyframe:5
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:6 pblack:34 pts:6 t:0.240000 type:I last_keyframe:6
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:7 pblack:34 pts:7 t:0.280000 type:I last_keyframe:7
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:8 pblack:34 pts:8 t:0.320000 type:I last_keyframe:8
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:9 pblack:34 pts:9 t:0.360000 type:I last_keyframe:9
[Parsed_blackframe_0 @ 0000000002be5aa0] frame:10 pblack:34 pts:10 t:0.400000 type:I last_keyframe:10

The pblack value indicates that 35% of the pixels in frame 1 had a luminance value below 92 (out of 255, since I ran it on a video with 8-bit luma).

With some trial and error, figure out what threshold and pblack values will identify the frames you want to discard/keep.

Extraction:

With those values, use

ffmpeg -i in.mp4
       -vf "blackframe=amount=0:threshold=X,
            metadata=select:key='lavfi.blackframe.pblack':value=Y:function=less"
       -vsync 0 img%d.jpg

X is the threshold value you calibrated to identify black pixels, and determines the pblack value (out of 100) reported by the blackframe filter. The metadata filter then keeps those frames which have at most Y% of pixels that qualify as black. These frames are then saved as images.


Loss of quality while adding subtitle via FFmpeg After solving on problem I cam coming to a next one. After adding subtitles, discussed here, with the command:

ffmpeg -i grdedFinal.mov -vf subtitles=portSbs.srt gradedFinalwithSubs.mov

the quality of the generated file significantly decreased. The original file was of size 1,5GB whereas the resulting file was of size ~300MB. The subtitles are added correctly but the compression is unnecessary. In a word I would like for the FFmpeg to add subtitless and do only that leaving the sound and picture quality untouched.

As you are hardcoding subtitles, the video (with the subtitles added) will be re-encoded.

You can use the CRF rate control method to modulate the quality of the output.

So, start with

ffmpeg -i grdedFinal.mov -vf subtitles=portSbs.srt -crf 18 -c:a copy gradedFinalwithSubs.mov

If the quality's not acceptable, lower that value till it is - in exchange for a larger file. Of course, don't decide based on file size but on visual quality. x264 is very good at compressing video while maintaining subjectively perceived quality.


VGA Splitter Switch? I'm looking for switches that can take two VGA inputs, and an audio input from each, and switch between them to one VGA+audio output. Basically, I want to be able to go from one input to another without messing around with cables on the output itself; I just want to be able to flip a switch and be done with it. Somehow, I haven't found a lot of products online that do this. Any recommendations?

You didn't specify keyboard, but sometimes it can be useful to switch USB along with the VGA signal. For this you'd want a KVM.


How to mount microphone and recorder on the DSLR? I keep reading that for proper sound you should use an external recorder like the Zoom H1 or H4N with your DSLR. Until now, I was only using an external microphone, namely the Takstar SGC-598, without an extra recorder.

My question is, how do you mount both the mic and the recorder on the DSLR which has only one hot shoe.

Recently, I've been shooting my first documentary video, holding the camera just like that with no steadycam, shoulder rig etc. Also, I was on my own so there was nobody to hold the microphone (and potentially a recorder) separately. Therefore I had to attach it directly to the camera.
Having only the camera with little extra gear made the shooting very dynamic which I liked.

I looked at a few Hot Shoe Y-Adapters but none really convinced me.

Do you have any experience with a setup like this? How do you mount mic and recorder on the camera?

There are multiple answers.

The easiest and cheaper solution is to get a shoe extender.

The more professional way is to get an external recorder specifically designed for DSLR mounting. Look at the products of BeachTek and JuiceLink for examples.


How to cut a part of a video to make two horizontal black bars on the top and bottom I wanted to remove a part of the video itself not removing a clip from it if you know what I mean, like making to horizontal black bars on the top and bottom or something similar I wonder if someone could tell me how.
I am using Adobe Premier Pro CC 2015.

There are plenty of YouTube videos on how to do this and various different ways, such as cropping the top and bottom, or using a PNG image to the correct format you want to show, you could also even make the timeline the aspect ratio you want to use and expand the image up to fill the area.


Is it possible to verify if mpeg dash video was correctly transcoded I am transcoding some of my videos to mpeg-dash so I can use html5 players. But I am not able to play them on any player. It might be something wrong with my files.

These is a sample

https://d19cwas8lp55sz.cloudfront.net/archivos/1048/mpegDash/playlist.mpd

I tried playing it on this test player
https://bitmovin.com/demos/stream-test?format=dash&manifest=https://d19cwas8lp55sz.cloudfront.net/archivos/1048/mpegDash/playlist.mpd

I can see that the duration of the video is displayed correctly but I cannot play the video.
I was using amazon elastic transcoder to transcode this files

This is not an issue of the player, but it appears to be related to your Cloudfront setup and/or your S3 bucket, as it doesn't provide the required CORS configuration, therefore the player can't download your video/audio content.

You can check that yourself by opening the debug console of your browser (F12 on Windows, or CMD SHIFT I on Mac). In the console tab you will find error messages like that:

Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://d19cwas8lp55sz.cloudfront.net/archivos/1048/mpegDash/mpegDash4800k/3d3b437408996f42ed668f17cbe10408e0059e8914fcb12c775ad92d002cc88f' from origin 'https://bitmovin.com' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.

CORS is a security policy enforced by the browser in order to allow/deny XHR requests to resources which are hosted on a different domain than the site the request is coming from. XHR requests are commonly used by javascript applications web apps as well as HTML5 players to request your video content.

The decision of the browser, if it blocks this request or not, depends on additional headers which are returned by the server the XHR request is sent to (Cloudfront and/or your S3 bucket in this case). If the CORS configuration whitelists the domain the request is coming from, the browser will allow this request.

In your case this CORS configuration seems to be missing. Therefore, please see your S3 CORS settings:

S3 Bucket CORS configuration: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/user-guide/add-cors-configuration.html

This CORS configuration allows every origin to access your content

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<CORSConfiguration xmlns="http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/2006-03-01/">
<CORSRule>
    <AllowedOrigin>*</AllowedOrigin>
    <AllowedMethod>GET</AllowedMethod>
    <MaxAgeSeconds>1800</MaxAgeSeconds>
    <AllowedHeader>*</AllowedHeader>
</CORSRule>
</CORSConfiguration>

This CORS configuration only allows bitmovin.com to access your content

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<CORSConfiguration xmlns="http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/2006-03-01/">
<CORSRule>
    <AllowedOrigin>https://bitmovin.com</AllowedOrigin>
    <AllowedMethod>GET</AllowedMethod>
    <MaxAgeSeconds>1800</MaxAgeSeconds>
    <AllowedHeader>*</AllowedHeader>
</CORSRule>
</CORSConfiguration>

How to configure Cloudfront to respect CORS:
https://medium.com/@dmitter/amazon-cloudfront-and-cors-57dd43cdfd30
OR
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/header-caching.html#header-caching-web-cors

As soon as this is done, the playback at this demo page should work just fine. https://bitmovin.com/demos/stream-test?format=dash&manifest=https%3A%2F%2Fbitmovin-a.akamaihd.net%2Fcontent%2FMI201109210084_1%2Fmpds%2Ff08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa.mpd

I hope this is helpful and understandable :)


ffmpeg audio to visualisation I would like to "convert" audio to video visualisation (oscilloscope or waveform) sort of like some media players have.

I read this thread on how to do so with ffmpeg: How do I turn audio into video (that is, show the waveforms in a video)?

I have never used ffmpeg before and having read the previous thread I am still very confused with how to do it. As far as I know, ffmpeg does not have a GUI, so its a bit hard to understand.

I tried the following code:

ffmpeg -i audio.mp3 -filter_complex "[0:a]avectorscope=s=1080x1080,format=yuv420p[vid]" -map "[vid]" -map 0:a -codec:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset fast -codec:a aac -strict -2 -b:a 192k output.mp4

But the result i get is just a vertical line (the avectorscope does not spread out).

I have made sure that the audio is in stereo and has a high amplitude. I guess there is something I am missing in the code...

Also I would really like to know how I can change the background color from black to something custom.

The following command shows a video with a waveform of the corresponding audio:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:a]showwaves=s=1280x720,format=yuv420p[vid]" -map "[vid]" -map 0:a -codec:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset fast -codec:a aac -strict -2 -b:a 192k output.mp4

I replaced avectorscope with showwaves: avectorscope is for showing the difference between stereo pairs.
Try showcqt,showfreqs,showspectrum for other visualization effects.


Tips to start making a little production So I have to make a little commercial for a class at my college and it is a video of about 1 min. I already have the idea of how all is going to be but I'm worried that at the moment of the edition the quality of the takes sucks. There's no big equipment, just an i5 computer, a GoPro Hero 4 and a couple of phones that record at 4K. No lightning, or anything... I would like to get some tips to make it look as professional as it could be and no too amateur. It's just video, no voice or dialogs. I'm also using a couple of luxury cars, I want to take good takes of them since I want to record 'em at night and I think lightning there is going to be a problem. Any tips?

The minute you said "no lighting" you violate the premise of "look as professional as it could be and not too amateur".  Lighting is not only about ensuring there are enough photons to actually record decent image on the camera's sensor.  Lighting defines highlights and shadows, contrast ranges, areas of focus and mystery, etc.  It is almost impossible to overstate how important lighting is to the look of an image.  The understanding of lighting, and use of that understanding in the control of lighting, is perhaps the single greatest factor that separates professionals from amateurs and professional-looking results from amateur-looking results.


FFMPEG - Apply opaque white with mask This seems like a simple thing to do, but for my life I cannot find an answer that does this the way I need to.
Using a mask image, I want to make the white parts of the mask still be white (not transparent) in the video output, while the black pixels of the mask would not appear in the output. This would make it easier for a particle tracking software to work properly as there would be no confounding particles coming from the background+text. Like so:

I can almost achieve this using the code:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -loop 1 -i mask.png \
       -filter_complex "[0]split[m][a];[m][a]alphamerge[keyed]; \
              [1][keyed]overlay=eof_action=endall" video.mp4

However, the result is not an opaque white due to the overlay function, and I would further need to blur it as the clock is still very visible and becomes a new trackable particle.
So specific questions would be:

Is there a way to make the masked overlay be opaque white?

Alternatively, is there a way I could still use the code above but make just the white part of the mask blurred? (right now, it blurs everything if I add boxblur=5)

Found the answer to this problem in here. The mask should be first be white + transparent, instead of black and white. New code would be:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i mask.png \
-filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=0:0" -c:a copy \
output.mp4


Transcoding AVCHD To Something That Isn't Choppy In Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 I'm recording with a Sony camera that records with the AVCHD codec. Unfortunately, as others have also observed, this format is choppy when trying to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

What is the best codec to transcode to that will ensure the highest quality video with no choppiness in the editor?

What you can do is create an "offline" version of your footage, and then once the edit is complete do an "online".

Pick a codec that is good to edit in, e.g all I-frame mpeg, or proRes / DNxHD or even HDV. The quality isn't actually too important, because before you make your master you delete the transcoded copies, and re-link to your camera footage. Then you can master off the original footage with zero quality loss.

If that doesn't work for you, then the first three codecs I mentioned will be an acceptable compromise. ProRes and DNxHD have the advantage of greater colour depth, at the cost of greater storage size, though since AVCHD is only 8-bit to start off with the advantage might be negligible. Whatever you choose, you want something that is all I-frame for editing.


Black halo / ghosting on transparent layered PSD file imported into FCPX In Photoshop, I have prepared a scene to be animated in FCPX. I just selected a part of the clouds and copied into a separate layer, with 10px feather to avoid rough edges. However, when I import the same PSD into FCPX, the feather becomes a black halo. Anyone know how to fix this?
See examples below:

As Final Cut Pro is not made by Adobe, it does not have the same exact processing engine for dealing with the effects in a PSD.  This appears to be an artifact of the difference in processing between the systems.

To work around this, I would recommend exporting the components as TGA or some similar file format that has alpha support.  Simple alpha blending is far more likely to blend in a predictable manner between applications.


How can I change/reduce the bitrate of AVI files using Adobe Premiere Pro CC or other tools? I'm using Eprime and Experiment Builder which requires files in AVI format (AVI-XVid). The files are quite small already (various 2 second clips under 1mb), but are still too large which crash the system, thus I am looking into reducing the file size by changing the bitrate, resolution, frame rate etc. I am not familiar with video editing, any help would be appreciated!

Premier Pro doesn't encode XViD, you'll need to rely on another solution such as FFmpeg.  Using FFmpeg is a different question but the command will be something similar to:

ffmpeg.exe -y -i "in.xvid" -t 480.00 -vf scale=720:301,pad=720:576:0:137 -map 0:v:0 -map 0:1 -b:v 2500K -vcodec libxvid -aspect 1.25 -b:a:0 128K -ac:a:0 2 -ar:a:0 48000 -codec:a:0 libmp3lame "out.avi"

you'll need to tinker with these settings to get the exact quality you want


Video file format won't play Hopefully I'm not out of line asking here, but I used to have a Sony HDR camera and of course all the files were in a sony format.  Quite some time ago I used iMovie to import them and since then I've just been storing them on a file server.  Now I'm going through my archive and trying to figure out what I want to keep and what I don't.  However, I'm having issues opening some of the files.  It seems completely random quite honestly.  Clips from the same day will work while others won't?  I've downloaded VLC for mac and pc and neither recognizes the file.  VLC has always opened everything pretty much.  Any thoughts on how I can determine if this is just a unrecognized format or a corrupt file  or something else?

Here is the a public link to the file in case you want to have a look.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25690725/clip-2008-12-25%2009%3B21%3B23.mov

Thanks!

I just downloaded the clip from provided Dropbox link and found that the file is repairable. Please try to diagnose it using MP4repair.org or in case you're on a Mac computer using Treasured. You will be able to repair it in a few minutes.

Regards,
Javier

(As crew of Aero Quartet I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.)


ffmpeg: convert an existing audio stream as an additional audio stream (keeping untouched original as well) I have a video with 1 video stream, 2 audio streams (TrueHD 7.1 and E-AC3 5.1), a bunch of PGS subtitles and chapters.
I want to copy the video, convert the 7.1 audio into AAC, copy over the original 7.1 and 5.1 streams (so 3 audio streams), keep only French and English subtitles and all the metadata.
After a few trials, this command seems to do exactly that:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a:0 -map 0:m:language:eng -map 0:m:language:fre -c copy -c:a:0 aac -b:a:0 512k output.mkv

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (truehd (native) -> aac (native))
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:2 (copy) # truehd 7.1
  Stream #0:2 -> #0:3 (copy) # e-ac3 5.1
  Stream #0:3 -> #0:4 (copy) # (English subtitles)
  Stream #0:6 -> #0:5 (copy) # (French subtitles)

Now the question is... if I wanted to get rid of the e-ac3, how would I do that?

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:v:0 -c:v copy -map 0:a:0 -c:a:0 aac -b:a:0 512k -map 0:a:0 -c:a:1 copy -map 0:s:0 -c:s:0 copy -metadata:s:s:0 language=eng -map 0:s:1 -c:s:1 copy -metadata:s:s:1 language=fre output.mkv
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (truehd (native) -> aac (native))
Stream #0:1 -> #0:2 (copy) # truehd 7.1
Stream #0:3 -> #0:3 (copy) # (English subtitles)
Stream #0:6 -> #0:4 (copy) # (French subtitles)

If I've done this correctly it should only copy or encode what you asked for and nothing else..
-canvas_size 1920x804 (WidthxHeight of video.. Is needed to copy DVD & Blu-ray picture based subtitles over..)

And on a side note:
-map 0:m:language:eng (Missing Index on which stream metadata should be changed)
-map 0:m:language:fre (Missing Index on which stream metadata should be changed)
-c copy (This will copy all streams over regardless of mapping..)


FFMPEG - The result of converting video to hevc format lost audio (video only) I'm new in programming, I have some movies and want to convert them to hevc format to reduce storage space but keep quality video, i tried with my code through ffmpeg:

**for %b in (*.mp4) DO ffmpeg -y -i "%b" -r 30 -g 50000 -q 22  -filter:v scale=650:-1 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -b:a 320k -ar 96000 -f hevc -pix_fmt yuv420p -b:v 10500k -strict experimental -shortest -x264-params -lossless 1 -tag:v hvc1 -movflags +faststart -threads 4 "output\%%~nb.hevc

Raw in pastebin

(The directory I tested: secufiles!
)

I tried changing a lot of code but the result is still the same, the video only has images without sound, ffmpeg says me: "-qscale is ignored, -crf is recommended.", Please help me Or give me an idea for this code.

I am really grateful for any help from you.

Thank you very much.

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

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

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

For more info see:

FFmpeg Wiki: H.265
FFmpeg Wiki: AAC


Thunderbold to HDMI ---> HDMI Switch ---> Saeco projector = No Video I've the following hardware and a problem getting things work.

projector Sanyo PLV-Z800
DeLock 87498 HDMI 1.3 Switch
MacBook Pro 2010 just with miniDisplay Port
MacBook Pro 2011 with Thunderbold Port
Lenovo ThinkPad with normal Displayport

When I try to connect my (3) MacBook Pro 2010 through my (2) HDMI Switch to my (1) projector everything works fine.

Problem:

When I try to connect my (4) MacBook Pro 2011 through my (2) HDMI Switch to my (1) projector I don't get a signal on my projector.

When I try to connect my (5) Thinkpad through my (2) HDMI Switch to my (1) projector I don't get a signal on my projector either.

I've tried to find out which hdmi versions my hardware is working with.

The Projector seems to have the HDMI version 1.3b
The HDMI Swtich seems to have the HDMI version 1.3
I don't know, which versions my Macbooks have

Is there anyone who can tell me if my Switch is problem? So I just want to know if the HDMI version 1.3 doesn't support the newer standards.

Can anyone recommend me a nice and affordable HDMI Switch where my setup will work with.
I want to buy this one: Aten CS1792 HDMI KVMP Switch (2-polig, 2x HDMI, 2X USB).

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

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


How to gradually colourize an object in after effects I'm rather new to AE but I believe I have the rotoscoping under control.
How can I gradually (each frame more) colourize an object in a video. So that at first the whole video is black and white and then one object starts to get more and more colour starting from a certain point and allow the colour to spread back to the whole object.

Thanks a lot!

I can't give you AE specifics, but one general method would be to have a mono layer and an otherwise identical color layer, keying the color over the mono using a matte layer that you draw on. As portions of the matte layer are turned white, or shades of white, the color layer is revealed.


Is there a video player where I can draw on top of video? I wonder if there is a video player (similar to VLC) where I could stop the video, and draw annotations on top of the video (lika on a transparent layer). Then I could choose to erase it when continuing to play the video, or leave it.

The purpose would be showing recordings of football/hockey matches. When stopping the video I could highlight players and draw tactical instructions(using the mouse).

Does such a video player exist?

Why not just use an app that annotates the screen? Depending on whether you are on Windows, OS X, or Linux there should be plenty of apps when you search for "screen annotate" or "annotation". Maybe you've searched for the wrong thing until now.


Physical difference between ISO and gain I'm trying to understand the difference between gain and ISO in today's photo/video cameras, and haven't found a good explanation even after heavy googling. I know that both ISO and gain are used for adjusting the sensor's sensitivity to light, with higher ISO/gain resulting in a brighter picture, but with more noise. However, I do not know what the physical process behind ISO/gain is. Does both mean analog/digital amplification of the signal at the sensor? Is gain just another term for ISO?

ISO stands for the International Standards Organization.  They standardize all kinds of stuff, including film stock for photography, cinematography, and digital video.  If you're using a digital camera that uses ISO instead of gain, then it should conform to the specifications they've outlined in ISO 12232:2019, which is available for purchase here.

There's a very good wikipedia article on the subject here.

Gain is just the amount of amplification in decibels that the camera applies to the signal from the sensor before it gets recorded to the image.  Some cameras apply gain before analogue to digital conversion, some apply it after, and some, such as the BlackMagic Pocket cinema cameras do both, to achieve what they call, "dual-native ISO."

So, in short, Gain is a measurement of amplification, and ISO is a standardized measurement of film/sensor sensitivity.  Gain does not necessarily correlate consistently to exposure across different camera makes, models, and manufacturers.  It's just a "volume knob."  ISO is designed to correlate to exposure universally (but it does not consider some variables and imperfections, which is what EI does, similar to the difference between "T stop" and "F stop" measurements for aperture).


Glitches in Premiere exports When I'm using intensive plugins like Film Convert, and some Red Giant plugins that use the GPU, I get glitches appearing in my exported videos.
If I delete the render files and switch to software render only, there are fewer glitches, but still occasionally some.
Does anyone else experience this?
Why does it happen?
Has my laptop's GPU gone bad? (If so, how can I confirm this?)
It appears to have got worse recently, but it's hard to tell...

According to this post, it might be because I'm using iPhone video footage which for some reason is rated at 30.01fps.  They recommend converting it to 30fps first using Handbrake. I haven't tried this yet, so not sure whether it will fix it.


Preventing audio clipping on inexpensive lapel mics I'm doing some video work on a budget, so I followed a suggestion I found online for audio to combine an inexpensive lavalier mic with a portable voice recorder. In my case, I chose the Olympus ME-15 microphone with the Olympus VN-702PC recorder.

The recorder only has two input volume settings, high and low, and on the lowest setting I'm experiencing frequent clipping when my characters talk, especially when they get excited. Originally we had clipped the mic to the collar of a t-shirt, somewhat off-center, but it also happens when clipped lower on the lapel of a coat.

I'm not concerned about whether the mics are visible, but I'm wondering how to pick up clear sound that isn't louder than the recorder can handle. Would it be better to place it under a layer of clothing? I'm willing to experiment, but I thought it would be helpful to ask others with more experience for suggestions.

What can I do to my microphones to avoid clipping? Can I put them somewhere else? Can I cover them with something?

There unfortunately isn't enough information here to give you a definitive answer but I will try to cover the most likely bases.  The first thing you need to do is determine the source of the clipping.  Is it actually clipping at the recorder or are the microphones themselves clipping.  Clipping occurs whenever the signal level exceeds what a particular piece of equipment is designed to handle and can occur at almost any point in the process.

If the levels you see on the recorder are actually exceeding the levels it is capable of recording, then you need to use a device called a pad to bring down the levels and match the impedance of the microphones to the impedance of the recorder.  You can try working around it by positioning them further away, but any sufficiently loud noise is still going to cause them to clip and background noise will become a much larger problem.  Bringing down the signal level with a pad is the correct solution.

The other possible problem, particularly with cheap microphones, is that the mics themselves could be clipping.  If this is the case, it would likely be a distortion but not peak the recorder.  In this case, you would need to move the mic further away and ensure that nothing is bumping in to the diaphragm that could be causing direct shocks to it.  Alternately, a better mic could be used which would allow it to stay closer to the signal source and thus reduce your background noise.

The main thing to keep in mind when getting clean audio is that you want to sample as much signal and as little noise as possible, which means keeping things as directional and as localized as possible and/or keeping the environment quiet.


ALL-I vs IPB. Which one to use I'm fairly new do filmmaking. I've been trying to figure out which is best, but people seem to have very different opinions and everyone has his own arguments. My guess is that ALL-I should be better because they are all I-Frames, whereas IPB should be used when storage is a concern. However, some people are saying IPB is actually better.

Any thoughts?

First we need a primer on I, P and B frames.  An I frame is a frame that is a completely independant picture of the frame.  It doesn't depend on any other frames and is a frame which B and P frames are based on.  A P frame stores only the changes from the previous frame and a B frame stores only the changes in either direction.  IPB uses a mix of all 3 frame types in a set sequence to capture video with much lower data usage, but every P and B frame is an approximation of what the frame that was originally captured was.  They are not exact.

For the same size I frame, all I will ALWAYS be better quality, however, it could be possible for IPB to be better if the camera has a set limit rate for I frame that could end up with larger I frames for the IPB due to the saved space, but that would depend on the exact data rates used by the camera.  The theory behind it would be to say we have all I with 3k per frame (making this number up completely) then we have 30 pictures of whatever quality we can get out of 3k.  Now, if the IPB frame, if we had say 1k per frame on average, but the P and B frames are very small, then it might be possible for the I frame to use 5k of data and the P and B frames to use only .5k each and result in a higher overall quality.

This would depend on the quality of the motion and the data rates being used by the camera however.  In most cases, recording all I on the camera is probably going to produce I frames equal or larger in size than those in IPB.  However, when doing a final output, the highest quality for a given size will almost always be compressing to IPB.  All I will also capture fast motion better since the difference between frames will be larger.


How do I make a news-like lower third in kdenlive? With the composite transition in kdenlive I am already able to let the the lower third (with the name and a line of additional information, just like in the news) appear. Now I want it to fade in (or some other effect), but kdenlive only allows to add one transition.

Is there a way to avoid this dilemma?

Just use an affine transform for the title

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

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


phone vs dslr vs webcam for making videos I'm using OBS to record some videos for youtube with a webcam. Right now I'm using the Logitech BRIO Ultra HD. It's alright... but definitely could be better. I'm looking to upgrade to something high quality but before I shell out for a $2000 Sony A7 III which I don't feel like I can really afford, is an iPhone camera also a possibility for this usecase?
I have an iPhone 7 atm, is it already better than the Brio? If I get the iPhone 12/Galaxy S21 would it be what I need?
I'm just looking to vastly improve the quality of my videos. Thanks.

videos for youtube

This does not describe your projects. Youtube is a place to publish your videos, does not tell the content of them.

but definitely could be better

What could be better? This is the point. You need to know what do you want to imporve.
Are your videos about gaming, where you are on a little corner on a green screen?
Are your videos about you talking to the camera on your room? Do you need to use the bathroom because it is the only place you have? Or you do outdoor videos. Do you really need to actually improve the image quality?

Let me narrow this a bit. Let me asume you are on a bedroom infront of a fixed setup, your computer and your camera. Here is a list of what would I check before getting a new camera.

Light.

Not only the ammount of it, but how does it look. Find a video where you like the light. Is it rim light or a big diffuse light? Is it lateral or on top of the subject?

Background.

Leave a good space behind you. You do not want a mug shot. Put context on it, remove yourself from the shoot and see it as the main subject, and see if you like it.

Sound.

Good sound is probably more important than excelent video quality.

If you still need better video, and you already tested your current phone. (Yes one first section on this answer is, test your phone, and find out if it is better for you) what you want to have on a new camera is

Looks

Flexibility. Duration of the shoot without heating, focus options (manual or good auto focus) conection, etc.

And I leave the looks to the last. A mirrorless or dslr camera have its limitations but have specific lenses that will actually make the image look good. The main things to consider are focal length and aperture.

A focal length of 35mm or more on a cropped sensor.
A wide aperture, a typical recommendation is 1.8 but needs a fixed distance or a superb auto focus system.

All this answer is not to tell you what you need, it is what you need to investigate to find out what you really need.


Best way of presenting both 720p and 1080p screencasts I record screencasts in 720p resolution, but would like to put up 1080p as well. This brings a problem: how can I record videos in 1080p such that they still look OK when scaled down to 720p? I've been thinking about DPI scaling (on Windows), but maybe it's possible to go the other way, i.e. record at 720p and then use some sort of smart scaling to produce a (relatively speaking) high-quality 1080p render?

Generally speaking shooting in 1080p and scaling it down to 720p is not a problem with cameras as I do this all the time and it looks just fine. When I do this I may also be mixing 1080p and 720p raw images, and I always scale to the lowest resolution. When I render a 1080p I will generally render a 720p version as an answer print to view before committing the final cut to a 1080p render. I say this with caution because I have not worked with screencasts or using screen motion capture software.

However, shooting in 720p and trying to make it into 1080p is a losing battle because then you are asking software to make up for pixels that do not exist. You can try it, but I don't think you will like it unless someone makes a software product something like Twixtor that adds frames needed for extra slow motion shots.


Garage Band alternative for windows Is there any software for windows which can perform live audio modification during recording. I have a samson go usb mic but still records are a bit lacking in terms of the professional audio quality like a hint of a reverb etc.

I know garage band for Mac has ability to have these effects in real time to your audio. Any software for windows or other alternative to have that high bass cool sounding audio for podcasts/screencasts.

One that comes to mind is Presonus Studio One vr3 It is about $50 and is a full featured digital audio workstation. There is also sonar, protools and ableton live but I believe they are all quite a bit more expensive.

Good luck!


Video clip is smaller dimensions than project. How to change the color of extra space? I may be asking the question in an unclear way, because I come from an audio and graphics background. Apologies in advance. Hope this is makes sense...

My Final Cut Pro X project is 960x720, and I'm putting a clip on top of it that's larger, but scaled down using "Spacial conform" so it fits vertically, and there are black stripes to the left and right of the clip.

The clip is a Powerpoint and it's got a white background, so I'm using "Stencil Luma" blend to put a nice animated video behind the text. The effect is nice, but the black bars to the right and left of the clip prevent the animation from showing underneath those black bars.

I simply want those black bars to go away, or become white, so that the background video won't be clipped while the front video is on the timeline.

Solutions?

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

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

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

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

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


Understanding / troubleshooting After Effects crash I have been struggling to export a project.
The project was edited in Premiere Pro CS6, color graded and stabilized in After Effects CS6 and I usually export straight from AE, but it kept crashing at the same point.

When I have problems like this, I sometimes export the audio from Premiere and uncheck the audio in AE's timeline and add the one audio file exported from Premiere. This happens sometimes, maybe because I use shots from a wide range of cameras in one timeline who have different time-rates and audio encoding settings. But this didn't help.

I also tried importing the project into Adobe Media Encoder, but Adobe Media Encoder returned an error too.

Another thing I tried was to look at the temporary files in the export folder. The AAC file always has a duration of 6:51 minutes (the whole film lasts about 11 minutes), so I inspected the shot located at 6:51 in the timeline, but it seemed normal.

How can I troubleshoot this kind of crash, and solve it to be able to export this video?

Crash log:

Process:               After Effects [1554]
Path:                  /Applications/Adobe After Effects CS6/Adobe After Effects CS6.app/Contents/MacOS/After Effects
Identifier:            com.adobe.AfterEffects
Version:               11.0.4 (11.0.4)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           After Effects [1554]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2016-06-26 18:16:55.948 -0700
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.11.5 (15F34)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        BE310E80-903C-A620-D4F3-A77FA58199E9

Time Awake Since Boot: 31000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        31

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0xfffff5ffd7894010
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

    Model: iMac12,1, BootROM IM121.0047.B23, 4 processors, Intel Core i5, 2,7 GHz, 12 GB, SMC 1.71f21
    Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6770M, AMD Radeon HD 6770M, PCIe, 512 MB
    Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz, 0x02FE, 0x45424A3231554538424655302D444A2D4620
    Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz, 0x02FE, 0x45424A3231554538424655302D444A2D4620
    Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM1, 4 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz, 0x830B, 0x4E54344743363442384847304E532D434720
    Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM1, 4 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz, 0x830B, 0x4E54344743363442384847304E532D43472

It sounds like AE is encountering a point in one of your source files where there may be corrupted data, and while the file might be playable within the AE/PPro canvas, exporting isnt possible because of the way AE reads the file.

I don't see why using Media Encoder would be any different, they are built around the same engine.

I would suggest trying to replace the file you think is the issue with a proxy (same resolution) rendered using another application, perhaps VLC. Another option, would be (you mentioned 6:51 timestamp), is to split your clip in Premiere on a Sequence. Splice 10 seconds before that timestamp, and 10 seconds after. Render 2 separate files out, and drop them in.

This will leave a black hole, which you would have to fill... But that would tell you if the source file is the issue.

Lastly, clear cache, and also you could try accessing the hidden secrete menu in Preferences. On windows, hold Shift and while holding, click Edit - Preferences. There will then be a new "Secret" tab that allows flushing of memory every X frames during output, and some other options.

My guess, bad source. Have to work around it by either re-encoding the file into a format AE likes, or splitting if you can.


How to BATCH remux combine video and audio to one file? How can BATCH remux video and audio to one file?
I'm trying this on mine android termux.
So what I'm trying:

I want to rip audio from video and convert to wav. ffmpeg -i inp.mkv -map 0:1 audio.wav
Extract only video. mkvextract tracks "inp.mkv" 0:video.mkv
Remux Combine extracted video and wav audio file. mkvmerge -o final.mkv video.mkv audio.wav

UPDATE
I Have found the command Solved myself

for f in .mkv;do ffmpeg -i "$f" -map 0:1 "${f%mkv}wav";done && for i in .mkv; do mkdir -p "${i%.}" && mkvmerge -o "${i%.}/${i%.}.mkv" -A "$i" "${i%.}.wav"; done

Another Question
How can I batch convert ssa to srt and send it to folder and also give subtitle the same name as video?
for f in .mkv;do ffmpeg -i "$f" -map 0:1 "${f%mkv}wav";done && for i in .mkv; do mkdir -p "${i%.}" && mkvmerge -o "${i%.}/${i%.}.mkv" -A "$i" "${i%.}.wav"; done && for f in *.ass;do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%ass}srt";done


Embedded Timed Text for closed-captioning? Is that possible? I am going to be working on a video project that needs closed captioning. The requirement we got from the client says....

Closed Captioning

Embedded Timed Text subtitle track (ISO/IEC 14496-17)

After doing some research I haven't been able to find anything that would let you embed a Timed Text file into a video. Is that even possible? What would be the process for accomplishing this? I am using Adobe Premiere.

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

example tools would be ffmpeg, subler, mp4box


Video converted by FFMPEG has a different duration, why? I convert videos using FFMPEG. My goal is to convert them to the MP4 container format (MPEG-4 Part 14) with AAC-encoded audio stream and MPEG-4 part 10-encoded video stream.

I use the following line to convert the videos:

ffmpeg -y -i "{inputFile}" "{outputFile}"

The converted video looks fine, however the duration of streams in the converted file and the input file doesn't always match.

I've made some experiments and the difference in the duration is undoubtedly there, however, it is not that much - anyway I'm testing with small videos.
Here are my results:

| InputFile  | InputAudio | InputVideo | OutputAudio | OutputVideo  |
|------------|------------|------------|-------------|--------------|
| h.avi      | 3s 631ms   | 3s 567ms   | 3s 668ms    | 3s 567ms     |
| h.flv      | 3s 631ms   | 3s 558ms   | 3s 668ms    | 3s 567ms     |
| h.mov      | 3s 532ms   | 3s 533ms   | 3s 682ms    | 3s 534ms     |
| h.mp4      | 3s 605ms   | 3s 534ms   | 3s 682ms    | 3s 567ms     |
| h.mpg      | 3s 605ms   | 3s 533ms   | 3s 563ms    | 3s 534ms     |
| h.wmv      | 3s 620ms   | 3s 633ms   | 3s 659ms    | 3s 567ms     |

Since I would build a software on the top of FFMPEG, I would be happier if I could at least understand the reason of this difference. Is it because of some unnecessary transcoding?

In this case, can I turn this transcoding off to prevent FFMPEG to resample my input video file?

If I cannot turn it off, how can I be sure (besides testing) that this difference is not proportional to the size of the video?

If I convert for example a 10-hour video, a difference of multiple seconds or even minutes is not suitable for me.

Hope this explanation is what you're looking for:

When you transcode to an encoding such as H.264 (MPEG-4 part 10) you necessarily also resample the video, that's part of H.264 compression technique. Nontheless, I doubt if this is the reason you experience a timing gap since the resampling doesn't necessarily influence the clock rate of the media. So, I wouldn't worry too much about resampling, it can cause some variance, but probably very marginal.
The container formats you listed are kinda irrelevant, because they define how the compressed stream is packaged, whereas the the source of the timing difference is the compression itself. The .flv file, for example, may contain a stream encoded by the legacy Flash Sorenson codec or the newer H.264. In the first case you would be transcoding the video stream, but in the latter it is possible the you're not - depending on the audio codec used. The .avi and .wmv containers are codec agnostic, so there's no way of even guessing their content's encoding.
You didn't mention how the duration was tested. Note that ffmpeg by default shows you the duration that appears in the file's metadata and not a computed value. If your list is based on the data that ffmpeg dumps as part of its splash notices then you should note that this is explicitly metadata and not an actual measured value.
The delta in the durations you presented are within the range of one or two frames in a 25 or 30 fps range. It is reasonable for codecs to pad-with or strip-from streams blank frames according to their algorithm (or developer's tidiness...). It shouldn't influence timestamping when you properly concatenate streams.
There are only two reasons I can think of that can substantially change your media's duration, neither applicable in your specific case:

Re-encoding at a different target speed. Sometimes this happens unintentionally due to bad metadata in the input file. But not in your case, which, as noted above, correspond with a single frame dropped or gained.
When you apply a codec that recreates either stream. Examples include ad-stripping, silence detection, noise cleansing, etc.

Bottom line, if you are concerned what's gonna happen with a 10-hour video - just run an actual test. If you run into trouble and seek assistance then keep in mind to post the input file's codec details and the method that you measured the stream duration.

Hope this helps.


Easy way to preview 120 fps footage at 30 fps? I recently got a Nikon Z7 and I've been playing with its ability to shoot 120 fps at 1080p and then make slow-motion 30fps (or even 24 fps) videos from it.   A 120 fps video can be used to generate a slower-fps video using Premiere Pro or even ffmpeg if you don't dialing your Wayback machine to 1983 and typing in a command line.
But if I have a bunch of 120 fps videos and I want to select the one that looks best, I just want to VIEW them at a slower playback speed.
Is there any way to do that either in-camera or with some simple Windows app?

If you want to view at slower playback speed, would videoLan help?
Menu->Playback->Speed->Slower

then check if the speed at 0.25x is it what you want.


How do I drag multiple media clips and vertically stack them onto a premiere pro timeline? I want to be able to grab multiple media clips from my project window all at once, then drag and drop them to a timeline stacked on top of each other as opposed to side by side. Each track would take its own track in the timeline.

Sort of like keyframe assisting in after effects.

Is there a way for this to be done, maybe by holding down a particular keyboard command?

I dont believe there is any native built in way to do this. The easiest way would likely to build a simple keyboard mouse macro which can be run to repeat the action of selecting the next clip down, and adding to a new track at the start of the sequence.


Setting up (negative?) midi delay in ableton When tapping a simple beat on my MPD24 controller in Ableton Live on a Macbook, the notes sound fine when I play them, but as the clip repeats, they seem to play too early. I must admit I am an utter amateur, but it seems like Ableton has moved the notes a bit earlier (to compensate for latency?).

Perhaps there is something wrong with my brain, but I really think I am playing these notes on the beat, not before. There is also a notable difference between when I play them and when the clip repeats after that.

What setting controls this behavior? Is there a MIDI latency setup step that I skipped?

Go to Preferences, the click on the MIDI/Sync tab.

Open up one of your MIDI ports, and you will see the MIDI Clock Sync Delay.

Mess with that.

If that doesn't do it, then Driver Error Compensation, under Latency in the Audio tab.


Using both SMPTE and IRIG-B time codes Is there a way to insert both SMPTE and IRIG-B time codes to a video file?

I'm asking because I use video for experimental test purposes and having both allows me to track non-video signal along with the video shot during a test. After it can be used to create visual overlays of data on top of the video clip matched in real time.

If the instrumentation code is available as an audio signal (Modulated or Modified Manchester), it can be added as a new track on the video (separate stream in the file). In a multi-track environment it should survive editing etc.


Is there a "Lightroom for Video" product? I'm doing photography, audio recording, and video just for fun.  I have a full Creative Cloud subscription.  I mention this to help clarify my fundamental objectives and very limited perspective and experience.

It appears to me as if folks consider video more "one time use" than still photographs in that there are things that help a work flow for a project.   But my main concern right now is just keeping track of things.  And this is where "Lightroom for Video" idea comes from.

LR allows me to add tags.  Tweak the original.  Create virtual copies and tweak them uniquely.  Group photos into "collections" (in addition to the underlying file system / folder structure).  And it even allows me to geotag them now so I can find them by location.  I'm assuming that I will find these features useful for videos as I shoot more and more.

I can add the videos to LR and I can do some of these features but its clear that LR really isn't happy.  I'm not sure why but the performance was rather horrid after ingesting 500G of videos last weekend.  It seems, perhaps, to have recovered by now.

The basic question is: what is the closest thing to LR for videos that you know of given what I view as LRs features above.  For example, it would be neat if I could create a "virtual" copy and add in and out points.  Indeed, it would be nice if there was a way to catalog Premiere sequences so I could quickly find and re-use them.  Honestly, my desires extend to Audition as well so I could take a waveform, make a copy and apply destructive "process" to it, but still keep it "with" the original and properly tagged so I can find it, understand what I did with it, and re-use it or at least use it as a starting point later on.

I see that Adobe has "Prelude" but light surfing says that its not intended for one-man shops but more for work flows involving lots of people.  But, it appears to have some features for "ingest" that Premiere does not have.

Edit:

I am using Adobe Premiere and their other products.  As I mentioned, I have a full CC subscription.

Perhaps I'm missing something but I don't see how I can search metadata or even easily "see" things like sequences of other projects.  I can keep track of things via the file system but that level of "keeping" track is rather primitive.

An analogy is email.  Originally, I kept track of email via folders and I had to hunt and search for things.  Now, with all the search tools at my finger tips (e.g. Apple's Spotlight or Google's GMail search) I can search and find things instantly.

Also... there are times when copies are made... in particular Audition has destructive "process"es that alter the copy it is working on so if you want the original, the user must make a copy first.

Short answer, there is not really any "Lightroom" for video. But there are non linear editing programs out there that do all the things you want to do with your footage. So, as someone else said here, you want to start using Premiere or some other editing program.

Learn how to organize your projects professionally. You're never going to make duplicates of files (except in some circumstances), but you are going to create duplicates of edits, string-outs, sequences, clips, etc.

So, here's a typical project organization, inside Premiere in this instance (make a clean version of this project, call it "Default", and simply open it and save it with another name each you work on a new project; that way you don't have to re-create all those folders all the time):

And here's an example of drive organization:


Sony Vegas default chroma key seem to shift blue colors After a few videos, I think that now I manage pretty well chroma key on a green screen.

But in my last video, my subject handles items that are light blue / cyan, and I started to notice that those items shift color and become an unnatural blue, it looks like contrast has been pushed A LOT after applying the chroma key effect, I never noticed that before (probably because this color is quite greenish).

But this is not how I thought chroma key was working. I thought it was just removing the parts of the video that was matching the selected color (+some margin) and not touch the other parts/colors of the video.

And indeed, testing it with several other tools (Adobe After Effects, Lightworks, and the NewBlueFX chroma key plugin), it does exactly what I expect : remove the background and doesn't touch the colors that doesn't match. Only the default chroma key plugin seem to do that.

Is it a bug in the chroma key plugin (that seem to exist at least on version 12 and 13) ? (but it would be surprising as I guess a lot of people would be affected)

Is it a bug with my installation ? (keeping in mind that uninstalling Vegas 12 and installing Vegas 13 didn't fix it)

Is it some parameter or something I forgot somewhere that would affect the chroma key plugin ?

Update :
Here is small parts of the video, with different effects applied :

The raw image
The best I can do with the NewBlueFX Chroma Key plugin
The best I can do with the default Vegas Chroma Key plugin (pretty ugly...)

Vegas Settings :

NewBlue Settings :

This might be an issue with the Vegas chroma key program removing green from all objects and making it transparent rather than finding only solid green and modifying that.

Someone may know how to fix this in Vegas, but if all else fails you can run your keyed footage through a program like Davinci Resolve Lite (free) and correct the colors.


Why does my still camera stop recording video on its own? I have a Nikon s3300 and wish to take video at a concert however no matter what card I put in the available time says 8min and 11 seconds. Am I doing something wrong or is there a way to fix this.

There are three main reasons that still cameras with video functionality have restrictions on the length of video they will shoot.

The first and most common, as tomh pointed out is tax purposes.  The European Union charges a 5% tax on any video recording device and sets the limit at any device capable of recording 30 minutes or more of video.  To avoid this 5% additional fee in the EU, the camera manufacturers limit recording length to 29 minutes and 59 seconds.  Most manufacturers don't bother making a non-EU model, so the rest of the world gets hit with the same limitation.  This reason, however, only applies to cameras with a 29 minute 59 second limit.

The second most common reason is that of file size.  The Fat32 system used by many cameras for the memory card (due to its simplicity and lack of patent encumbrance at this point) is limited to 4GB per single file.  While many cameras are capable of splitting across multiple files, it does involve a few challenges that not all camera manufacturers bother to deal with.  When they don't, it means that the video recording must end when the 4GB file size limit is reached.  This results in a fixed length limit for each quality level, but it will differ based on quality level, with lower video qualities being able to record longer.  You can easily verify if this is the reason by checking the file size of the videos.  Some cameras have third party firmwares and hacks to bypass this limitation, however I'm not aware of any for the Nikon S3300 specifically.

The final reason, which used to be the most common, but is substantially less common with modern cameras, is that of heat.  When CMOS imaging sensors (found in most all modern still cameras) are used, they produce heat.  If the heat can not dissipate fast enough, it eventually results in the sensor overheating, which causes additional noise and eventually sensor damage.  To protect against this, one of two methods can be used.  The oldest is to simply put an arbitrary length limit on recordings that is considered a safe amount of time for the sensor to operate.  Many later systems monitor the temperature of the sensor and only shut down recording when they detect that the sensor is becoming too warm.  It is hard to tell for certain if this is the reason for the recording to be stopping, but in the later case, the time when the recording stops will not be exactly the same between instances, particular when light levels and ambient temperature differ significantly.


Setting track points from Mocha to a solid makes it very small I'm a newbie to all of this so please bare with me.

I am following this tutorial.

After tracking the movement with Mocha the tracking data is copied to AE.
If I copy the data and past it onto a solid the solid becomes very small.
I have no idea what causes this. Because of the images that are used on the solid I am not able to scale it up.

See before:

And After:

Can anyone tell me what I'm missing here?

Unbelievable,

Right after I asked the question I found the solution online.
After tracking in Mocha make sure you click the "Align selected surfaces" button.
I had to search for it but here it is:

After this you can copy your tracking data and paste it in AE.


Will Compression/Format of Audio Change when Uploaded to YouTube? If I have a .wav audio file, put it in a video file, say a .wmv, as, if I'm not mistaken, that format basically just uses .wav for its audio, and upload said .wmv file to YouTube, will the compression or format of that audio change?

In other words if I have a certain sequence of bytes present in the original audio file and I upload a video containing it to YouTube, if somebody downloads a copy of the isolated audio from that video, will that sequence of bytes be present? I couldn't find a definitive answer anywhere, and hoping someone on SE can help.

Again, I'm asking about only the audio, not the video.

Youtube generally reencodes all videos you upload to youtube to ensure compatibility across various platforms and to provide smaller versions of the videos for users with slow internet connections. So yes, both the video and the audio stream of your video file will be compressed and reencoded when you upload it. If someone uses a third party tool to download the video from Youtube, they will only be able to grab that reencoded file, never the original upload. Because Youtube compresses the video very heavily to reduce file size, there will be a noticable quality drop in both video and audio, which is a complaint many video editors have about youtube (though there isn't really a well-known alternative that doesn't reencode videos on upload). Youtubes will reencode the audio to m4a and aac files in various bitrates, as well as some low-quality ogg files.

If you want people to be able to download the unaltered original, you should provide a download-link via a file hosting service such as Dropbox or Google Drive. I believe if you have a Vimeo Pro Membership, you also have the option to allow people to download the original video, but I'm not sure about that.


WMV vs MP4 Streaming & Download I work for a company that outputs videos in many formats.

We currently stream movies in FLV format, offer downloads in a WMV and MP4 format.

However in the interest of saving server space and offering the user a better service, we are preparing to offer our streams in MP4 instead.

What I am wondering is: What format would be good for downloads:

Download size
Encoding time
Format compat: Will it work out of the box on both a Mac and Windows machine.

To my knowledge, WMV works out of the box on Windows and MP4 works out of the box on Mac. Is there a format that works for both and has a reasonable file size?

Your comparison of WMV to MP4 is a little bit confusing, because you're comparing apples and oranges.

MP4 is a container format, which may contain a variety of audio and video formats.  Most commonly, an MP4 file will contain wither an MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka H.264) or MPEG-4 Part 2 video stream, although it can contain MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 video streams.  There are a number of audio codecs that can be stored in an MP4 file as well. See Wikipedia for more information.
WMV is an actual codec (akin to H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 2 mentioned above), and files that end in .WMV are generally stored in an ASF container (see here).

What this all boils down to, is you need to use a codec that both Mac and Windows can play.

According to Microsoft, as of July 2010, Windows Media Player for Windows XP supports (among others):

Microsoft MPEG-4 Standard Video Codec
Vivo H.264 Video CODEC

Which suggests that it ought to play back the two common video formats contained in .MP4 files.  Note the caveat:

  NOTE: Not all of the supported codecs are installed by default. These codecs will be downloadable when you play content that requires the codec.

So it's possible that your users may be prompted to install a codec the first time they try to play one of your videos.

You'll also want to make sure you use an audio codec supported by Windows Media Player. The most common (but by no means only) one is probably MPEG-1/MPEG-2 Audio Layer III (aka MP3), and this is in the list of supported codecs.

So based on this information, if you use MP4 streaming, Windows users should have no trouble playing back your videos.  Although you'll surely want to test your specific output files on a fresh Windows (and Mac) install before you commit to this decision.


Finding a highest megapixel camera for PC How can i have a PC camera/webcam that have high quality as a portable camera, like the Nikon D800 have 35 MP. I can't find a PC camera that have the same Megapixel ? Even the Microsoft Lifecam have only 2MP and it's not my choice :(

Your best bet is a DSLR with a lens mount for the microscope.  It goes in places of the eyepiece and generally does not have the diopter from an eyepiece (so magnification is a bit lower, but you can also zoom in).  Among standard size DSLRs, the highest megapixel one I'm aware of at this time is the Nikon D800 at 35 megapixels, but there may be bigger out there now.


Why is the audio delayed both in preview and render in after effects I have a problem with after effects, the video is alright but whenever I render or preview it the audio is delayed. The problem is not during the render it occurs during preview and its only one video that contains sound that is on my timeline, the preview is ok at first but at some points on the timeline the audio begins get mixed up. I checked the waveform of the audio of the video and it was ok, but when I preview or render it gives problem, this problem occurs in all the adobe products I have- after effects cc, cs6, 2015, and premiere pro

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

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

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


Lossless convert 3gp video to mp4 using ffmpeg I'm trying to get lossless conversion of 3gp to mp4 using ffmpeg.
I tried
ffmpeg -i input.3gp -vcodec h264 -c:a aac output.mp4

I tried with "libx264" for the video codec, I tried just a simple
ffmpeg -i input.3gp output.mp4

No matter what I try, for a 10 MB 3gp video I am getting a 5 MB mp4 video that doesn't seem to have the same quality.
Any suggestions are welcome.
Thank you.
EDIT
Here's what I get if I try to copy the Video and Audio codecs:
ffmpeg -i  VIDEO0004.3gp  -c:v copy -c:a copy VIDEO0004.mp4
ffmpeg version 4.4 Copyright (c) 2000-2021 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple clang version 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.32.29)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/4.4 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --enable-avresample --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-ffplay --enable-gnutls --enable-gpl --enable-libaom --enable-libbluray --enable-libdav1d --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-librav1e --enable-librubberband --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsrt --enable-libtesseract --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-lzma --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-libass --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libspeex --enable-libsoxr --enable-libzmq --enable-libzimg --disable-libjack --disable-indev=jack --enable-videotoolbox
  libavutil      56. 70.100 / 56. 70.100
  libavcodec     58.134.100 / 58.134.100
  libavformat    58. 76.100 / 58. 76.100
  libavdevice    58. 13.100 / 58. 13.100
  libavfilter     7.110.100 /  7.110.100
  libavresample   4.  0.  0 /  4.  0.  0
  libswscale      5.  9.100 /  5.  9.100
  libswresample   3.  9.100 /  3.  9.100
  libpostproc    55.  9.100 / 55.  9.100
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'VIDEO0004.3gp':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : 3gp4
    minor_version   : 768
    compatible_brands: 3gp4mp413gp6
    creation_time   : 2011-02-06T16:39:49.000000Z
    copyright       :
    copyright-eng   :
    rating          : 0
    location-eng    : +00.0000+000.0000/??
    location        : +00.0000+000.0000/??
  Duration: 00:01:00.20, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1369 kb/s
  Stream #0:0(eng): Video: mpeg4 (Simple Profile) (mp4v / 0x7634706D), yuv420p, 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 1355 kb/s, 9.90 fps, 9.92 tbr, 1k tbn, 60 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2011-02-06T16:39:49.000000Z
      handler_name    : VideoHandler
      vendor_id       : [0][0][0][0]
  Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: amr_nb (samr / 0x726D6173), 8000 Hz, mono, flt, 12 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2011-02-06T16:39:49.000000Z
      handler_name    : SoundHandler
      vendor_id       : [0][0][0][0]
[mp4 @ 0x7fbaf5009600] Could not find tag for codec amr_nb in stream #1, codec not currently supported in container
Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?): Invalid argument
Error initializing output stream 0:1 --

If the codecs of your input file are already h264 and aac for video and audio, respectively, you can just copy without decoding and encoding again.
ffmpeg -i input.3gp -c:v copy -c:a copy output.mp4

The options -c:v copy and -c:a copy indicate video and audio won't be encoded again, respectively. If audio format in the input cannot be embedded to the output, you need to omit -c:a copy from above command.
If you need to encode again, an option -qscale 0 will result similar quality (but not lossless).
below is an example.
You might combine with -c:v copy or -c:a copy if you don't need to encode video or audio again.
ffmpeg -i input.3gp -qscale 0 output.mp4


Would 2 lights solve my DSLR green screen noises? I would like to make a presentation at the background and the human which is "green screened".

I tried with my DSLR Nikon D5200.

So for now the result is like in this short video: https://streamable.com/nf5tk.

The result is quite bad, because of noises. I tried to use small lamps to fix it but I could not. I read a lot and ask a question here already and it seems that fix can be made only by adding more professional light.

So I would like to ask if 2 softboxes with 4 bulbs each, 35W, 5500K would fix it? Is it enough? Would it fix noises at the human body in the video I have posted? I think to put them 45 degree in on both sides pointed at the human and green screen which is behind the human.

Eventually I can buy the third lamp like below and point it in front of the human. But I would prefer to save this money, since recording video is not my hobby.

The result of your key depends on many things. It would have been really nice to see a still of your footage before you keyed it. I believe you are working in after effects, which has a pretty solid keyer built-in called "keylight". Using the clip white and clip black settings under the matte-section will help you clean noise from foreground and background. You might want to throw a "roughen edges" onto your keyed footage and set everything to 0 before raising the amount gradually, which will give you a bit of a softer edge.

Other than that, proper lighting will be your only hope. Look for wrinkles in the screen, or shadows you or anything else throws onto it. Try standing as far away from the greenscreen as you can to minimize spill (the bounces green light thrown back at your body) and to avoid shadows of yourself on the screen. If the color of the greenscreen differs from the foreground at every place and has no shadows or wrinkles on it, you should be good to go.

If you want to you can send me a short clip of your unkeyed footage so I can try to key it as best as I can, so we can see how far you can push your current setup. Have a blessed day :)


How scale rectangle in one direction without roundness scale Property "Size" scale rectangle in two directions, like a mirror. And "Scale" distort roundness.

How scale rectangle in one direction without roundness scale without expressions?

Assuming this is a shape layer created with the rectangle tool, you can solve this by going to Shape Layer 1 -> Contents -> Rectangle 1 -> Rectangle Path 1 -> Size, and unchecking the icon that looks like two chain links, and then changing either of the two numeric values independently to change either the width or height of the rectangle, without changing or distorting the roundness.


Edit audio from Final Cut Pro X 10.4.5 in Logic Pro X 10.4.4 I'm new to Logic Pro, more experienced with FCP. I have a video project in FCP with may different sound situations, and I need to level the audio. I've tried to do this in FCP, and that works reasonably well, but now I have Logic Pro, I hope to have a better tool available.

I've tried to export to XML in FCP, but can't open or import that in LP. I read somewhere that you need to publish from FCP to LP, but I don't see that option and have no idea how to do that. What I found online was for older versions - no idea if that is the problem here.

How can I edit audio from a Final Cut Pro X (10.4.5) project in Logic Pro X (10.4.4)?

The solution is to open the menu Preferences > Advanced, then select all. Then the FCP Import menu becomes available. The Help menu did help me, but could be more directly explaining that you need to set this option in the advanced preferences.

Unbelievable that they hide this import option.


After effects - how to put multiple sources on the same layer line? or how to reduce the scrolling of the layers panel? Competitor software can put multiple footage in the same layer. I think this is Pinnacle, but I've seen this also in Magix (I am not a professional, this is the kind of consumer software I've used in the past):

Instead, it appears this is not possible in After Effects. Am I wrong? Is there a way to do this?
As a result, nearly half of what I have on my screen is just gray lines. Either that or endless mouse wheel scrolling. I have over 5 million pixels on my screen, but they are just used for gray. I think this is horrible UI, and I'm looking a way to improve my user experience. What are my options?

This is totally making me go cross-eyed and giving me headaches. I just can't believe this is what you folks have to deal with. There's got to be a better way. Thank you.
P.S. I cannot pre-compose otherwise I lose the ability to snap. Tried that – didn't work for me. Any suggestion?

Video editing (cutting) is best done with Premiere Pro and animation with After Effects. Both are complex software tools that require lots of training. You should invest more time in training or maybe choose different products, if they simply don't fit to your style of working.
Create a sequence in Premiere where you can easily have as many clips in a track as you want. Create a new sequence where you insert this sequence (this is called nested sequence). Then right click on the inserted sequence and select Replace With After Effects Composition. When After Effects opens you will see that you get a composition with only one layer.


How can I copy/paste multiple key-frames in After Effects from different layers? Is there a shortcut key to copy and paste After Effects keyframes? No, I don't want any kind of script to do so. I just want to move selected keyframes (they're multiple, not one, and they are in different layers) from a time to another time. But when I copy and paste them, AE pastes the whole layers!

Is there a way to copy them without copying the layers? Or at least a way to show only the keyframes in the timeline, so I can copy them?

There is no way to copy-n-paste keyframes from multiple layers without using a script.

You can show the keyframes in a layer by hitting the u key. And then you can copy those keys layer by layer.

I'm not sure why you're opposed to using a script. I wrote one that can copy and paste keys from multiple layers in a single click (including copy-pasting with time reversal), and which is free and open source, you can download it here.


How do I 'downgrade' an Adobe Premiere Pro project file to open in older versions? Is there any way at all (perhaps with a plugin, paid or otherwise) to save an Adobe Premiere Pro project file so that it's compatible with an older version of the software? The scenario I have is that I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 but I need to send project files for editing to someone who only has CS3.

Since this is the top google result, I would like to give the actual solution to this problem

Option 1

Duplicate the .prproj file you want to downgrade and name it temp_downgrade.prproj or something. Just so you don't have to mess with the original.
Download 7zip.
Right click on temp_downgrade.prproj and select Extract here.
You should see temp_downgrade next to the original temp file with no .prproj.
Now right click on the temp_downgrade file and open it with a text editor.
You should see a couple million lines of confusing text, ignore it. you are looking for the 4th line, it will look like this:

<Project ObjectID="1" ClassID="62ad66dd-0dcd-42da-a660-6d8fbde94876" Version="29">

That version=29 (or whatever it says in your file, could be any number) is what you have to change. Simply set it to 1 so the whole line reads:

<Project ObjectID="1" ClassID="62ad66dd-0dcd-42da-a660-6d8fbde94876" Version="1">

Save the changes you've made to the file.
Now right click the temp_downgradefile - remember the one without the .prproj - extension and select add to archive under 7zip .
Change archive format to gzip and change the file name to be something. like temp_downgraded.prproj. Doesn't really matter it must end in .prproj though.
That's it open temp_downgraded.prproj like a normal premiere project and it'll ask to upgrade the file or something. Save the copy somewhere permanent as that's where any changes you make will be saved. You can delete all the temp files now.

Here is a gif of the whole thing.

Option 2

EDIT 2018: This tool mentioned in an answer below mine seems great! http://joshcluderay.com/downgrade-premiere-project-converter/

If you would prefer a local open source version, I also made a small JavaFx app that should automate everything in Option 1. You can download it for a Mac/Windows computer with Java(!) installed. Over here.

Are there any consequences from doing this?

Not reeeeeally. At least - it's much less than the current accepted answer on this thread. If you export something as an xml file on premiere you will effectively lose most of the editing you've done. Aside from maybe the most basic sequences. All the colour correction, Sound work, etc is gone. With this method - yes some of that will disappear if you are working on an old enough version of premiere. But, I'm talking like five years old. If the difference is CC2017 and CC2016. Sure you'll lose any effects that only exist in CC2017. But I would bet this is mostly niche stuff and 99.999% of your project will probably be fine! But - even if it isn't - say you make some small changes to your downgraded version on CC2016. If you copy the downgraded version to a computer with CC2017, after the changes have been made. All the newer features will still be there. So as long as you render on the computer with CC2017 nothing will be lost.

tl;dr: Obviously there are some cases where you could lose information, but if you just need to make minor edits or fix something small on your home computer then take it back to work or something - this is fine.

Why this works?

Apparently adobe save files are just gzipped xml, so that's why. Should work on AfterEffects as well.


Workflow / Tool to count cuts in footage material is there a tool or workflow available or how could one solve this problem:

counting the cuts within video footage

e.g. as a result 'this 8 min piece from "Titanic" has 35 cuts"

Thx in advance!

You might want to try Algorithmia's Scene Detection. It detects timestamps where the algorithm assumes there is a cut. Then you just have to count the number of timestamps to get your result. You need to setup a Python environment for that and have some basic programming skills. I haven't tried it, so I cannot say how well it works.
Update:
Premiere Pro now has an edit point detection. It's quite new, at first glance the results look good. You may want to give it a try. To count the number of cuts, select "Create Clip marker..." in the dialogue and export the markers to a csv file.
Pretty much all solutions can be inaccurate to a certain degree. Some methods of cutting are hard to detect, like match cuts or invisible cuts. Be aware that some of the found cuts might not be cuts after all but are other types of transitions, like dissolves or morphs.


How do I import minidv video to windows? I've connected my camcorder to the pc via firewall,driver was also installed but when I plug in and out nothing happen. (Except the sound). Do i need any software?

of course you need software. There are several that give you 30 day trial. or you can install Ubuntu and then download the video with dvgrab. works very well.


After Effects: How to do line animation on a moving camera I've got a drone shot of an area where there will be built a road in the future. The drone shot is a simple pan to the left and I want to draw where the future road will be built with line animation.

I've got the shot camera tracked, but I'm having problems figuring out where and how to put the line animation when there are points that will at different times be on or outside the current camera view.

Btw: I'm trying to do this in After Effects.

After more research I found the solution myself:

I created a null track layer from the camera tracker data, then a new shape layer. The shape layer then needs to be a 3D-layer and then linked to the null track layer. Once that was in place I was able to draw the path I needed and then animate it.