FFmpeg : How to replace video background color with transparency? (while capturing) I want to capture a window and overlay it on another video.

This is my command:

ffmpeg -i MainVideo.avi
-f gdigrab -framerate 25 -video_size 300x200 -i title="MyWindow"
-filter_complex "[0]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[b];[b][1:v]overlay=(main_w-overlay_w):main_h-overlay_h[v]"
-map "[v]" -c:v libx264 -r 25  out.mp4

background of my window is black.

How can I replace this black color with transparency?

is this possible by ffmpeg? (I think it is possible by chromakey/colorkey filters but I'm not sure, and I don't know how to use those filters)

Thanks.

UPDATE:

Suppose this is a frame of video that I want:

GDIgrab supplies a RGB feed so the colorkey filter can work here.

Try

ffmpeg -i 1.mp4 -f gdigrab -framerate 25 -video_size 300x200 -i title="MyWindow"
-filter_complex
"[1]split[m][a];
 [a]format=yuv444p,geq='if(gt(lum(X,Y),0),255,0)',hue=s=0[al];
 [m][al]alphamerge[ovr];
 [0][ovr]overlay=(main_w-overlay_w):main_h-overlay_h[v]"
-map "[v]" -c:v libx264 -r 25 out.mp4

You may have to use a value of near 0, if 0 doesn't capture all the transparent area.


supply video files to editor in another country My editor is moving from Los Angeles (where I live) to Canada. Is there a common, reliable, cheap way for me to supply large video files (up to 10 GB) to him? I don't have much of a budget, and I have just a standard DSL internet connection.

Fedex has the highest bandwidth around... Mailing laptop hard drives, SSDs or USB sticks is probably your best bet and may well be cheaper than upgrading your Internet upload capabilities.

Alternately, if you need a way to handle it over the Internet, I'd actually recommend getting a virtual private server.  You might be able to find a file sharing service that will fit your needs, but often for larger files, it may actually be cheaper to run your own server.  Running your own server also allows for uploading in chunks.

When I need to transfer multiple gigabytes of data over my Internet connection, I use Total Commander (my file manager of choice) to split the large files in to multiple pieces (normally around 100MB each) and then upload them via FTP to my server.  Once they are up there, I re-combine the files in to their original form and run an MD5 verification of the file integrity.  Then, it is easy for someone to quickly download the files.

I've used this for transferring 10 to 20GB of files at a time to people and it took a number of hours to upload even over my 5mbps Internet connection, but if you give it enough time, it is a viable option at lower speed connections as well (as long as your ISP doesn't cap you).  You might want to use smaller file sizes though as my experience is that slower connections are more likely to corrupt a file and smaller file splits means less needs to be uploaded again if there is a failure.


ffmpeg - resize and crop from input file with unknown resolution I use this filter to do some cropping:

-filter_complex '[0:v]crop=w=320:h=240[v0c]

which works alright. The problem is that sometimes, I do not know what is the input that I am going to get. It might be a 1000x500 or a 500x1000, for instance. So when that happens it just gets a small area of the center of the video. The ideal would be to resize the input to match the smaller of its dimensions to my desired output, and crop the rest. The problem is that I do not know which dimension is going to be.

How could I build a filter to solve this problem?

Use

[0:v]scale='if(gt(a,4/3),-1,320)':'if(gt(a,4/3),240,-1)',setsar=1,crop=320:240[v0c]

The scale filter expressions for x and y check the aspect ratio of the input and if greater than 4:3, set the value to the 2nd argument, and if not, to the third argument. The -1 means that the original aspect ratio should be preserved e.g. scale=-1:400 applied to a 600x800 canvas will result in 300x400.


which camera is best for conducting the interview constantly as one-man show? i tried some DSLR but those have some video shoot limit like 20 minuets. please
help me for select good tools like (camera, light, microphone) in low budget.

i want to shoot constantly 2hr interview.and my budget $1800 for all equipment.

Let me start by saying that $1800 is a very, very small budget for this kind of a setup.  Bordering on impossible to get the kind of results you probably are hoping to get, if not over the line in to impossible.

Video is sadly a rather expensive field to get in to and a professional quality camera the likes of what most popular YouTube shows are produced with runs more than your entire budget for one camera alone (often upwards of $5 or $6k per camera when including lenses and support/stabilization gear) and that's considered a fairly "budget" option by the wider video production industry (where broadcast and movie cameras are in the $60,000 or even $100,000+ range).

Now, you don't need the same quality they are using and thankfully lower end gear has come a long way, but even minimal costs run close to or over your budget and it will show in the final product, just so you know what you are getting in to.  It will still be much better than Uncle Bob's family home videos, but it won't look like a top YouTube production either.

So my approach to answering the question is basically to give you what I think the bear minimum is to have any chance of achieving the quality you are hoping for.  It makes sacrifices in areas I'd personally rather avoid sacrificing in, but it's the only way to give you a chance of accomplishing your goal in your budget.  If you could increase the budget to $3000, it becomes far simpler (or considering used gear could also do it, though that really depends if you have a reliable vendor of used gear in your area.)

Personally, I'd still look at DSLRs, particularly Canon DSLRs with Magic Lantern support.  With a remote, it's not a larger distraction than having to stop for re-takes which you will also likely need to do for a top quality end product.  The way you do it is that you have two or more different cameras running and you start them on an offset.  As long as you check every few minutes, you can restart one at your leisure because the other is filming.  It isn't hard or even something that noticeable to your interviewee.

That said, the best bet is to have both the quality of a larger sensor and better optics crossed with being able to record without interruption.  Using a camcorder in your price range is going to have a noticeable negative impact on the footage, but using a Canon DSLR that Magic Lantern supports, it is possible to bypass the 30 minute limitation and have the camera automatically start recording a new file when it reaches 30 minutes.  There might be a gap of a second or two, but it won't matter since the other camera will have a shot then and you just edit around the gap.

Magic Lantern is technically a bit of a hack, but it is a well established third party "firmware" (it isn't actually firmware technically) that offers a wide range of enhancements for Canon DSLRs and makes them far more powerful video platforms.  Alternately, I believe there is also a similar hack for Panasonic's Lumix GH2.

Another decent option, though again limited, is to go with GoPro cameras.  They will get you good quality sensors and video but they limit you to the built in fixed lens.  As long as you don't mind positioning the cameras carefully though, they are cheap, light and high quality, and they don't have the 30 minute recording limit of DSLRs.  They won't get quite the same quality, but it's probably the best quality you'll get in a non-DSLR for your price range (or anywhere close to it).

Don't forget that you need tripods either.  At your budget, you won't be able to get tripods that are good for video, but since they are static shots, that shouldn't matter too much.  (A halfway decent video tripod is around $300 alone.)  For your purposes, go with the cheapest tripod that can hold your camera still, probably around $50 to $80 a piece.

As for lighting and mics, $1800 budget is really not a whole lot to go on, even for cameras alone if you want solid quality.  You are pretty much looking at getting either a stand alone recorder like a Zoom h4n or, if you can have a PC present, a USB audio interface that accepts XLR inputs (would be a bit cheaper than the h4n) and a couple of basic Lavilear mics (the kind that clip on to your shirt) or perhaps shotgun mics with stands depending on how quiet the room will be.  The Lav's are honestly probably the best bet since you don't have anyone to monitor the audio.

Lighting, you'll just need to use what little you have left to pick up some basic lights to fill out the kit.  We're probably talking home depot (hardware store) clip on light cheap with some home made diffusers and reflectors at that point because you will only have $100 to $150 left in your budget probably.  You might be able to squeeze in a really cheap quality lighting kit, but I don't have any direct experience using those to know if they would be substantially better than the home depot solution.

If you do have a reliable used gear vendor and don't mind going used, get used DSLRs (perhaps T2i cameras) and then use what that saves you to get a decent lighting kit and/or slightly higher end LAVs.


FFmpeg: Make video appear after x seconds I have a video clip that I use as a background, then another clip that contains some text, is there a way to make this second clip start
playing after x seconds?
background: 00:00:00|-------------------|00:00:05
foreground: 00:00:02|         >---------|00:00:05
                              ^it starts

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

Audio processing and encoding will use default parameters.


making mouse click action obvious in a screen-cast video-capture One of the challenges, in creating a tutorial video via screen video capture, is that it becomes a challenge to make obvious which mouse action was used to produce a certain action on the screen.

The creator of this video has a little mouse icon in the bottom left of the screen (see image below) that makes clear whether he's using the left, the middle, or the right mouse click button action.

How does one add such a mouse icon (or alternatively, which software allows this) to a screen video capture? (I've asked the original creator on multiple fora, but haven't heard back for months).

That is a Blender specific plugin that you can activate in the scripts menu.

https://en.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Screencast_Key_Status_Tool


What is the right way to export videos with different FPS? I know about rendering and exporting. But it's about some video clips having different FPS. For example, my current practice project has:

1. Motion Title (29.97 FPS)

2. Video clip 23.976 FPS

3. Other video clips with 24/23.976 FPS.

I have edited all of them in After Effects. And I'm going to export them as .mov/.avi (lossless) and finally export as compressed format (.MP4) using Premiere Pro.

For this, I'm supposed to change Pr sequence settings to 29.97 FPS and drag all clips into it.

Now question is: Would it affect the quality of the clips that don't match with 29.96 FPS?

Another question: Is it better to compress them individually with their respective FPS settings and COMBINE them later with some software (If such professional software exists)?

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

To summarize:

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


Why use Lumetri scopes? I've never fully understood what histograms in LR/PS and Lumetri scopes in PP are telling me so perhaps this is why I don't understand the need for them but why can't I just look at the image and see what needs adjusting? I'm new to video but I've been doing it this way with photos for a long time and if there's a difference between the results I get and others' my eye isn't trained enough to see it. I don't have any formal education on the subjects though.

The scopes are objective and absolute measures of the levels in your image. They aren't susceptible to the vagaries of human perception—colours and levels looking different depending on context—and they work even on un-calibrated monitors.

Scopes are particularly important where viewing conditions aren't optimal - that's why pro cameras will usually have a histogram or scope function. If you're squinting at a monitor in bright daylight you'll have a very different idea of the exposure than if you're inside, and without an absolute measure of the levels it can be very hard to judge what's correctly exposed.

If your viewing setup is correctly set-up and calibrated you can certainly get away without them, but you might find that learning how to read them may give you an insight into the process that you don't get just from looking at the image.

Of course the scopes won't tell you when something looks good, that's your job, but they will ensure that what looks good for you will look good for others.


is there a movie recording tool for dslr connected to phones? I have a 40D and I'm sometimes using EOS-MovRec to record movies. Since there is no firmware mod/hack for the 40d available I'm asking this question.

Is there a tool for the iphone/symbian/android to connect my DSLR and use it just like in
EOS-MovRec as a camera and record a movie?

Greetings

Try this link you will get some tips
http://dpexperience.com/2010/02/12/recording-audio-with-your-video-dslr-part-i/


How to avoid uploaded video being re-encode by Facebook I just uploaded a video to Facebook yesterday, and then I tried to download the video as HD, and I realized that Facebook actually re-encode the video even though the original video file doesn't rendered with high bitrate or super HD option.

Original video

  File size: 50 Mb
  Length: ~3 mins
  Bitrate: 2 Mbps
  Resolution: 1280x720
  Frame rate: 25 fps
  Reference frame: 8
  Level: 4
  Audio bitrate: 128 Kbps

Uploaded video

  File size: 20 Mb
  Length: ~3 mins
  Bitrate: 750 Kbps
  Resolution: 1280x720
  Frame rate: 25 fps
  Reference frame: 5
  Level: 3.1
  Audio bitrate: 48 Kbps

As you can see there's a big loss of quality in the uploaded video. How can I avoid Facebook leave my video untouched? Or it will re-encode the video no matter how small the file size is?

You can't avoid the re-encode. They do this to be sure that every video they serve is in a standardized format, resolution and bitrate. It would be inefficient and risky to vet all diverse set of incoming files to check if they meet all their parameters, some of which are not easily available to set or tweak at the user's end.


big Premiere project with many clips - is it better to storyboard on paper first? I've got a lot of footage logged from about 40 hours worth. I'm considering my next step with the aim towards getting a rough cut of the footage I've marked as being good and worthwhile of being in the film.
At this stage I've got a lot of clips that need organising and then seeing as there is limited horizontal space on the time line, whats the best way to go about lining up the clips. For example if I decide to change the sequence of clips, how do I get all the clips after it to take up the gap? I'm very new to editing.
Would it be a better idea to storyboard out as much as possible first on pen and paper before getting into Premiere in a big way.
My day job is already quite screen based, so I'm looking to minimise my time spent thinking AND at the computer.

Storyboard first, then shoot, then edit.  A storyboard is a tool for organizing your thoughts before you even pick up a camera.  It's like a script, and usually follows from a script, but gives you a better idea of where to place and move the camera.  This is called "shot blocking".

The shotgun method of gathering footage with the hope of being able to string it together into a coherent story is a mistake made by many beginners.  There's nothing wrong with gathering lots of footage.  In cases like documentary work, it's often necessary.  But even when you shoot this way, you need to have an idea of what you're looking for, and how it's going to fit within your story before you sit down to edit.

As for the 40 hours of footage you already have, I'd say no, don't worry about drawing it out on paper now.  I guess you could use a whiteboard if that helps you organize your thoughts, but really you've got what you've got, and you're just going to be duplicating your effort when you sit down at premiere.

It's difficult for a one man operation to compartmentalize the processes to make good video, but you should look to the film industry for guidance.  After all, they have billions of man-hours of experience.  They've got it whittled down to a science.  Directors, cinematographers, gaffers, grips, editors, colorists, producers, writers, and everyone else you see in the credits all have their own job for very good reasons.  When you're trying to do it all yourself, it's best to wear one hat at a time.


MV 750i image sensor I've just bought a second-hand Canon MV 750i camcorder. Unfortunately, its screen doesn't show what I'm looking at. I understand that the problem is with the image sensor, which I want to try to replace myself. I have a repair manual. I got in touch with Canon, but it doesn't have the part and its support wasn't very helpful. Does anyone know the part number and where I might source it?

If Canon no longer has the part, most likely your best bet will be to find another used MV 750i that you can salvage the part from.  If you have a repair manual, you might checking what the part number it lists is and try searching if any surplus places have the part itself.  Some quick looking on eBay shows what appears (or at least claims) to be a compatible part for $20.


How to make this kind of animated video? I just want to make videos like this one:

But I can't imagine how to do them. I mean, what kind of software is he using?

This is called a "write on" effect and is typically accomplished with either a 2d animation package such as Adobe Flash or with a motion graphics software package such as Adobe After Effects or Apple Motion.

It generally involves building the imagery as vector graphics.  Any lines that will be animated are generally drawn as paths that can be "written on" by starting at the beginning of the path and drawing the line until it reaches the end of the path.

It can also be accomplished using motion recording and a digitizer tablet which will allow the writing to be done in real time and recorded, it can then be accelerated or decelerated as needed, or the paths created and timings can be tweaked to smooth things out using typical keyframe animation.


How to prevent frame smoothing (i.e. get really sharp frame images) when making a video with ffmpeg? I have been digging around here and on the ffmpeg site trying to find some commands to use to generate a movie from a set of images. The command I tried that gives me a video I can watch on my MacBook is

ffmpeg -framerate 20 -i slice%04d.png test.mp4

This produces a video but the problem is it smooths out some of the features. I need to capture the sharp features of these images. To give a sense, a single frame from this video is shown below.

The video is smoothing out some of the details, especially from frame to frame. I assume this is a compression issue, so I would like to just avoid compressing the video. Unfortunately, everything I have tried from other help sites and the ffmpeg site do not produce a video file I can actually visualize on my mac. Can anyone provide me with a better command line call to solve this problem?

Since you're asking for "uncompressed" I assume you don't care about file size. If so, I suggest rendering to mjpeg. This smoothing issue is because your command is defaulting to h.264. The difference between h.264 and mjpeg is that mjpeg is intra-frame compression only, but h.264 is intra- and inter-frame compression. As such, mjpeg is a massive file by comparison, but each frame is unique and not dependent on previous frames like in h.264. One benefit is frame fidelity, enough should fix your issue. Mjpeg is also pretty universal. You won't need a codec pack to play it.

To make your images into an mjpeg video run:

 ffmpeg -framerate 20 -i slice%04d.png c:v mjpeg -q:v 3 -an output.mov

c:v mjpeg means video codec
-q:v 3 is a quality control factor. Range is a linear 2-31, lower is better. Tune the number to your tastes.
-an means no audio channel included. This is good to run if that's your goal, as some codecs confuse players if you don't.
Output is mov but I'm pretty sure you can wrap mp4 or avi too. Mp4 seems mostly likely to work for your users on windows as well as mac.

Before you try this, maybe don't quite give up on h.264 yet. Run your original command with the crf flag.

 ffmpeg -framerate 20 -i slice%04d.png -crf 18 -an test.mp4

crf is "constant rate factor", and is a quality control. Range is exponential 0-60something. Lower is better and 18 is considered functionally lossless.


Why is YouTube and VLC making a slight but noticeable mess of my video background? Retitling and reediting, after a few tips from Mulvya.

I've got a div on my blog, with background color set to #83d3c9.

Yesterday I tried creating a video on AE where the background was set to exactly the same color. I was hoping that if I upload it to YouTube and then embed it inside that div, it might "blend in" kind of seamlessly.

Yet, when I finally reached this point, I couldn't help but notice a slight difference in color between the two elements, as if YouTube was applying some kind of tint to my video.

Following Mulvya's advise, I checked my file by means of mediainfo.

Color space:        YUV
Chroma subsampling: 4:2:0
Bit depth:          8 bits

And, then, further down the output:

Color primaries:          BT.709
Transfer characteristics: BT.709
Matrix coefficients:      BT.709

No Color range seems to be specified.

I went on to check how my video displays on VLC. Same faint tint there.

Oddly enough, this was not the case when I played it on Windows Media Player, where my video background was pretty much identical to the background color of that original div.

Further tips as to what might be going on would be greatly appreciated.

This is a problem that drove me crazy...

Long story short; certain browsers; whether it's Chrome, Explorer, Firefox, etc, actually handle color profiles, embedded within the video file (such as color workspace), differently.

I believe if I remember correctly, Chrome uses Monitor Color, sRGB. Regardless of your video file's color profile/lack there of.

I ran into this problem consistently, and after a lot of testing, researching, my final conclusion is that there is no way to guarantee final color values of outputs when played within Web Browsers.

This also works backwards; because if you were to download the video file/rip using a rip tool (it very well might and include the color profile); which when played in AE or PPro would be recognized and applied; thus it would not match what you see in Chrome.

Your best bet is to make sure your Color Space is synced through Bridge, your monitor is calibrated, preferably with a spyder, but unfortunately, regardless of your file or your system, certain players; specifically browers; ignore coloremetry data; or worse, may convert or change your settings; with no work around. End users of course; you have no clue what they see... too many variables.


How to position spheres that are created with the CC Ball action? I'm using the CC Ball action to make some spheres to illustrate a chemical reaction.

When I make the balls, the circle to move it is thrown to the left, and the actual sphere is to the right. I tried changing the anchor point, however I can't move the shapes wherever I want.

How do I change the position of the created shapes?

CC Ball is a video effect to make an array of balls that video can be displayed on.  It isn't designed for making circles that you can move around like this.  What you want is a 3D shape object.  Unfortunately, unless you have a 3rd party tool like Blender to make a geometry you can import, there isn't an easy way to make a true sphere in AE.

The only real option I know of without using a third party tool is to take a period or circle shape layer, extrude it by its diameter and apply a curved bezel and adjust the strength until it results in a fully round sphere.


Visualising geo data on a map Hi I have an interesting task I want to achieve. I currently manage a website that acts as a tracking system for a popular piece of flight simulation software. Currently we take a dump of the lat/lon and other data of everybody flying every 5 minutes. This has been done constantly for the past two years. There is close to a million records now in the database.

What I would really like to produce is a video of the world showing these lines being drawn in a sped-up fashion however this isn't really my area and I can't think of the best way I could go about this in such a programatic fashion. I've seen similar types of videos done before but has anyone got any ideas of what routes I could go down to make this visualisation?

Thanks,
Rory

I think this is probably less of a question for video production people as much as it is for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) people.

GIS Forum on Stack Exchange

While you might be able to find an After Effects (AE) wizard who knows some scripting tricks to make this happen, my guess is more folks over in a GIS forum know how to do this in something like ArcGIS.

Additionally, laying out a million records is going to be an awful lot to ask of a program like AE or Motion, while that amount of detail is pretty much what ArcGIS exists to deal with.

My guess is if this is a one-shot project, you could probably hire some college student to turn it around for you.  If it's going to be something on-going and constantly updated for your web site with a million plus data points, that might be also do-able, but a much bigger programming issue.


Switching HDMI signals without break I need to switch between two or three HDMI signals (1080p is sufficient) for a video stream to a beamer. For example, I would like have a presentation coming from a laptop, and one or two cameras and then switch between those devices as fast as possible.

I tested some simple switches from Amazon, but everytime the input signal is changed, the beamer/output devices needs to reconnect to the new device, creating a black screen for a couple of seconds.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a small, rather cheap HDMI switch that comes without that problem?
I have to remark that between the switch and the beamer, there is an HDMI-Extender that takes a few seconds to reconnect after an interrupt, so the output signal of the switch must be consistent.

Thanks in advance.

You could try it with a device like that one. It takes the responsibility on the HDCP-negotiation for you, what should be what you are looking for.


Trying to figure out why my systems render times are so different Can someone help me figure out why 1 system is rendering faster than the other.
System 1 specs
GPU Quadro K2000
CPU Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1245 v3 3.4 3.8 8 MB 1600 MHz 4
Ram 32 GB
OS Windows 7 64bit
Facilis Terrablock with Fiber connection (used to pull footage)
rendering to a 10k rpm dedicated drive in system.
Task manager say 85% of processor is being used

System 2 specs
GPU Quadro K600
CPU Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2620 v2 2.1 15 MB 1600 MHz 6
Ram 16 GB
OS Windows 7 64bit
Facilis Terrablock with Fiber connection (used to pull footage)
rendering to a 10k rpm dedicated drive in system.
Task manager say 2% of processor is being used

Update with image
new project with new stats
The 2nd system renders this same project out in 1/2 to 1/3 the time but as the pic shows the GPU is barely being used. and system 2 uses almost not CPU still below 5%

System 2 is using GPU acceleration, System 1 is using CPU rendering.  GPUs, especially Quadros run many rendering tasks FAR more efficiently than a general purpose CPU.  It could easily explain the difference of 83% CPU utilization and 40 minutes of render time.

Note that while your system is showing only 14% CPU utilization in the screen shots, that is 100% of a single threaded process.  If the calculation isn't broken in to multiple threads, then it has to process on one core of the processor, which appears to be what is happening here.  That one core is completely maxed out.

I see you have CUDA selected as the renderer in the second screen shot, however it is not being used based on the GPU usage information.  This is probably related to a driver issue preventing Media Encoder from being able to utilize the GPU hardware.  Try updating your graphics drivers and verify that your graphics card appears on the list of supported graphics cards for CUDA support.


Record video to timeline during playback Is there a video editing software that allows you to record video from a tethered device (like a webcam) directly to the timeline while the project preview is playing back?  This would basically be like if Audacity also allowed video recording and editing.

I would like to be able to record video directly to the timeline at a specific time so that the video and audio will automatically match up rather than recording the video separately, importing it, dragging it to the timeline and trying to line it up.

DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, and FCPX all support direct video capture.  But depending on your hardware configuration, operating system, and camera, you will most likely need a video capture card or external capture device also.
Most computers don't come with a way to get video into them, they come with ways to get data into them.  HDMI ports are one-way, so you need an HDMI or SDI input, or a way to convert HDMI/SDI to data, and bring it in through USB, Thunderbolt, or PCIe, etc.  Webcams, whether internal or external will need a software driver to communicate to the NLE.  Generally, inbuilt webcams come with their own recording software, and computer manufacturers (hopefully) guard access to the camera. So for built-in webcams, you will need software which has access to your computer's hardware.  As Far as I know, FCPX can access FaceTime cameras, but Resolve and Premiere cannot.  For tethered ones, you'll need drivers supplied by the webcam manufacturer.


Can't Minimize Video Track Timeline Zoom Automation This is a simple problem that is driving me crazy. I must have accidentally hit some button that made the track height expand to show zoom automation data in the timeline. It looks like this.

Please show me how to make this disappear.
I am using Davinci Resolve 17 on Windows 10.

The two white squares to the right of the clip name in your image - those will close the curve and keyframe viewers, respectively.


Can you render videos on a server I would like to create an app that combines videos and renders them on a server.
Is it possible to do this?

Yes, it is possible. Such a concept is often called "render farm".
On the server side you could use tools like ffmpeg that can concatenate videos. To call it you could build a dedicated render service which works like a job management agent (think of sth. like Jenkins). The goal is to decouple the render jobs from whatever service/API your app talks to.
Maybe you can even use Jenkins because it has a REST API that enables you to trigger builds. Instead of a classic build job, your job will combine videos. This approach might save you some time.
However that is just a recommendation, other architectures are possible.
On the client side, there is one possible problem to be aware: all the raw video material needs to be uploaded to the server and bandwidth or uplink speed could be a limiting factor at some point.
On the server side you have to watch out for possible DoS attack scenarios and upload of malicious content.


Why recorded avi speeds up? I recently recorded an avi using VirtualDub with Microsoft's LifeCam Studio 1080p HD. However, when playing back the video and audio keep accelerating as the video progresses.

When I tried to edit the frame rate in MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus, the audio track seems fine, but the video track is accelerated.

Any ideas what could have caused this or how I can go about fixing this?

According to the symptoms it seems that the workload is too much for VirtualDub. That does depend on the CPU, but also on the hard disk. Sometimes VirtualDub has to drop frames and resync between video and audio. But in the file header there are only static values that MAGIX and other video editors expect to be constant throughout the video.

You should try setting a smaller frame size and a lower frame rate in Video->Capture pin. And in Capture->Timing there are some other important options. Try the "Sync video to audio..." alternative under Resync mode, or the "Automatically disable resync..." option.

When you find a combination that works, then you can increase the frame size again. I hope this helps.


Optimizing ffmpeg settings for high-entropy / HIGH-DETAIL ANIMATIONS towards uploading to youtube Based on this older question, I am looking for a good "transfer video codec / compression" for rendering videos from BMPs and/or PNGs and uploading them to Youtube. I am dealing with a lot of entropy / details in my frames.
I built a small Python framework called "bewegung" around ffmpeg and a bunch of Python visualization libraries for animating scientific data. I am calling ffmpeg as follows, writing BMPs directly to stdin:
codec = subprocess.Popen([
    'ffmpeg',
    '-y', # force overwrite of output file
    '-framerate', f'{self.fps:d}',
    '-f', 'image2pipe', # force input format
    '-i', '-', # data from stdin
    '-vcodec', 'bmp', # input codec
    '-s:v', f'{self._width:d}x{self._height:d}',
    '-c:v', 'libx264',
    '-preset', 'veryslow',
    '-crf', '0',
    video_fn,
    ], stdin = PIPE, stdout = PIPE, stderr = PIPE,)

I originally started with PNGs, but the extra compression/decompression steps simply required too much time. BMPs are faster. The BMPs are using 24 bit RGB.
For content based on a few lines and polygons, this works just fine.

When attempting to visualize content with lots of details, points / dots, for instance (in combination with change of contrast and/or color), I am running into several problems:

The above example is based on roughly 1M points, aggregated into a density plot. During fade-in, fade-out and changes in density, the quality drops significantly. Ironically, the background is also affected: It should actually be a flat gray tone, but youtube somehow (temporarily) introduces a vertical color gradient with visible steps. While the raw video (before upload) is - as expected - virtually perfect, it comes with its own set of issues: The above example requires 523 MByte of space for 10 seconds at 60 fps 1920x1080 px and barely plays on VLC. Longer videos of this kind are therefore problematic.
I have to admit that I am new to this field: Where do I start reading? How do I optimize the output of ffmpeg for this kind of content for the intended purpose?

do i get you wrong about you want a lossless compression?
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264

Choose a CRF value
The range of the CRF scale is 0–51, where 0 is lossless, 23 is the default, and 51 is worst quality possible. A lower value generally leads to higher quality, and a subjectively sane range is 17–28. Consider 17 or 18 to be visually lossless or nearly so ...

or
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/FFV1
FFV1 is a video codec developed within FFmpeg. It is lossless, meaning that it compresses video without introducing quantization degradations.
or
you can google lossless compression


Software to combine two videos of the same scene? I think this software idea seems simple enough to have been created, but it might be so specific that no one has done it. I'm just wondering if it already exists.

I'm looking for some program which takes two videos which have identical backgrounds (or nearly identical, there are likely slight intensity differences in pixels) and allows you to combine the dynamical elements of each into a single video. For example, If I have a video of a room where I'm standing on the left side of the room, then another video from the same view where I'm standing on the right, and then the program would combine the two so I'm standing on both left and right. I guess things like shadows and whatnot would cause some problems here, but the general idea shouldn't be too ridiculous. Does something like this exist?

Thank you much!

Sony Vegas Pro can do it but it is a bit pricey. In general, you need any video editor that supports masking and compositing.


How can I increase the bass in audio (documentary narration, people speaking)? I have several clips where I want to increase the bass of the audio to make the voices deeper.  The audio content is people talking in normal voices; there's no music or singing.

To edit, I'm using Resolve 12.5, which has no audio plugins of its own but accepts VST plugins.  I'm also open to installing additional software if necessary.

I'm relatively new to audio editing so perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but it seems like most commercial audio plugins (such as MaxxBass) are intended for music, not speaking voices.  What can I use to increase/deepen the bass?

An article by Larry Jordan gives the following idea for using the Equalizer effect in FCPX:

  To warm a voice, here are the settings I recommend you start with:
  Men: Add 3-5 dB around 180 – 200 Hz.

There's more info in the article.  Based on this, I was able to make several improvements to the audio in Resolve.


I want to add some audio to the end of a video I have just created a simple AVI video that contains a small powerpoint slide as an opener, then it does into a timed installation of some software. I have managed to copy and paste the final frame so that once the software is installed, the stopwatch appears to stop showing the time it took to install.

I've recorded the video in AVI format using CamStudio, I'd like to be able to keep the audio track that exists and also add a final audio track or voiceover at the end of the video.
Anyone know any free software that will allow me to do this?

I suppose I could just leave it as it is, load it onto YouTube and annotate it on there, but I just wanted to do something a little more professional. Comments/suggestions welcome.

It sounds like you are looking to do what is traditionally handled by a Non-Linear Video Editing software, or just video editor for short.  There are a number of free and cheap options available.  They lack many of the bells and whistles of more advanced software, but are actually typically easier to use than the more advanced software targeted at professionals.

If you are on Windows, Windows Movie Maker will easily allow you to do what you are trying to do and has a nice, friendly user interface.  Due to stability issues and limited functionality, if you want to get more advanced than very basic stuff, it is worth purchasing a better option, such as Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio or something similar in the consumer targeted market though.

If you aren't on Windows, you could use OpenShot video editor which is available for Mac and Linux and should also be able to cover your needs.

As Julian was kind enough to point out in his answer, there is also a list of open source video editors listed on Wikipedia's List of Video Editors, though there is a very wide range in the usability of the products in that list, though most all of them should be able to address your fairly basic needs.

From your comment, I noticed that you were doing some powerpoint slide stuff.  You can actually take an image of that and use it directly in the video editor as well, rather than having to output the video through PowerPoint.


Why concat in ffmpeg 4.2.3 says too many arguments? I am trying to flip 180 degrees parts of a video file from action camera.
When i was using

"[clpABCD][clpEF][clpG]concat[out1]" -" instead of "[clpABCD][clpEFG]concat[out1]" -"

ffmpeg said Too many inputs specified for the "concat" filter !!!! Why?

ffmpeg -i video_output_02.avi -filter_complex \
  "[0:v]trim=start=0:duration=516[clpA];\
   [0:v]trim=start=516:duration=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpB];\
   [clpB]vflip, hflip[clpBf];\
   [clpA][clpBf]concat[clpAB];\
   [0:v]trim=start=517:duration=1204,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpC];\
   [0:v]trim=start=1721:duration=155,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpD];\
   [clpD]vflip, hflip[clpDf];\
   [clpC][clpDf]concat[clpCD];\
   [clpAB][clpCD]concat[clpABCD];\
   [0:v]trim=start=1876:duration=581,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpE];\
   [0:v]trim=start=2457:duration=24,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpF];\
   [clpF]vflip, hflip[clpFf];\
   [clpE][clpFf]concat[clpEF];\
   [0:v]trim=start=2481:duration=253,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpG];\
   [clpABCD][clpEF][clpG]concat[out1]" -map [out1]  -crf 14  -vcodec libx264  -vb 20M  Hflip_2.mp4
ffmpeg version 4.2.3 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 7 (Ubuntu 7.5.0-3ubuntu1~18.04)
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --enable-libvpx --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus
  libavutil      56. 31.100 / 56. 31.100
  libavcodec     58. 54.100 / 58. 54.100
  libavformat    58. 29.100 / 58. 29.100
  libavdevice    58.  8.100 / 58.  8.100
  libavfilter     7. 57.100 /  7. 57.100
  libswscale      5.  5.100 /  5.  5.100
  libswresample   3.  5.100 /  3.  5.100
  libpostproc    55.  5.100 / 55.  5.100
Input #0, avi, from 'video_output_02.avi':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf58.29.100
  Duration: 00:45:34.41, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 22653 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High) (H264 / 0x34363248), yuvj420p(pc, progressive), 1280x720 [SAR 1521:1520 DAR 169:95], 22649 kb/s, 32 fps, 32 tbr, 32 tbn, 64 tbc
[AVFilterGraph @ 0x564f261d9340] Too many inputs specified for the "concat" filter.

ffmpeg -i video_output_02.avi -filter_complex \
 "[0:v]trim=start=0:duration=516[clpA];\
  [0:v]trim=start=516:duration=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpB];\
  [clpB]vflip, hflip[clpBf];\
  [clpA][clpBf]concat[clpAB];\
  [0:v]trim=start=517:duration=1204,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpC];\
  [0:v]trim=start=1721:duration=155,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpD];\
  [clpD]vflip, hflip[clpDf];\
  [clpC][clpDf]concat[clpCD];\
  [clpAB][clpCD]concat[clpABCD];\
  [0:v]trim=start=1876:duration=581,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpE];\
  [0:v]trim=start=2457:duration=24,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpF];\
  [clpF]vflip, hflip[clpFf];\
  [clpE][clpFf]concat[clpEF];\
  [0:v]trim=start=2481:duration=253,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpG];\
  [clpEF][clpG]concat[clpEFG];\
  [clpABCD][clpEFG]concat[out1]" -map [out1]  -crf 14  -vcodec libx264  -vb 20M  Hflip_2.mp4

The command that "is working"

ffmpeg -i video_output_02.avi -filter_complex \
 "[0:v]trim=start=0:duration=516[clpA];\
  [0:v]trim=start=516:duration=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpB];\
  [clpB]vflip, hflip[clpBf];\
  [clpA][clpBf]concat[clpAB];\
  [0:v]trim=start=517:duration=1204,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpC];\
  [0:v]trim=start=1721:duration=155,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpD];\
  [clpD]vflip, hflip[clpDf];\
  [clpC][clpDf]concat[clpCD];\
  [clpAB][clpCD]concat[clpABCD];\
  [0:v]trim=start=1876:duration=581,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpE];\
  [0:v]trim=start=2457:duration=24,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpF];\
  [clpF]vflip, hflip[clpFf];\
  [clpE][clpFf]concat[clpEF];\
  [0:v]trim=start=2481:duration=253,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[clpG];\
  [clpEF][clpG]concat[clpEFG];\
  [clpABCD][clpEFG]concat[out1]" -map [out1]  -crf 14  -vcodec libx264  -vb 20M  Hflip_2.mp4

The concat filter has an option to set no. of inputs. Its default value is 2.

Change to [clpABCD][clpEF][clpG]concat=n=3[out1].


How to remove audio translations from the movie? I want to cut an existing movie and want to remove all the language track from it.
The thing is when I start to edit the movie, Premiere Pro just picks up some language, which is not suitable for me. How do I remove all the soundtracks except the one I need?

I want to cut an existing movie and want to remove all the language track from it.

ffmpeg -i  -c copy -an video_only.mp4

How do I remove all the soundtracks except the one I need?

ffmpeg -i  -c copy -map 0:a:1 specified.mp4
Reference: http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Map


Mac video capture / recording at a resolution larger than, and aspect ratio different to, native display Goal: I'd like to upscale a recording from a 1680 x 1050 (16:10 aspect ratio), 2010 Macbook Pro screen to 1920 x 1080 (16:9) for 'best-try' upload to a variety of target platforms (FB, YT, Vimeo etc).

Note: thanks to the crap graphics chip ('Black Screen of Death' NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M) on this laptop model, I cannot attach an external monitor.

Clearly, the largest 16:9 aspect ratio video I can natively capture on this screen is 1680 x 945, making the scaling to be applied = 1920 / 1680, or approximately 1.14 times the original.

Not bad, but taking a step back for a moment, am I at the time of recording truly stuck with 1680 x 945 (16:9) max, or are there other options in the pursuit of a 1920 x 1080 end result?

Would (for example) ffmpeg allow original recording at a resolution
larger than the native screen size? (conceivable, as all user interaction is in the middle of the screen, the remainder simply providing visual context).
Can I otherwise trick my laptop into thinking it has a 1920 x 1080 screen attached?
is there some other possibility I should be aware of?

If you see a practical approach to a native 1920 x 1080 recording, some detail (for example ffmpeg command) would be helpful.

Operating System - OS X Yosemite - Version 10.10.5 (14F1021)

Hardware:

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 288 MB
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

Apparently, it may be possible to get the OS to output a higher resolution than the native one. It requires some config files tweaking. I can't vouch for this method.

If you just need to show, say, the middle third of the screen, then another possibility is to zoom in to provide a larger source for ffmpeg to upscale. Depending on the size of the area of interest, this might not make much difference.

Of course, I dare say, 1680 --> 1920 should be an easy upscale post-recording with hardly much difference in perceptual quality unless your items of interest are very small.


Fix mp3float Header missing without re-encode I'd like to fix some old AVI files without re-encoding them. I was hoping ffmpeg would do the job, but for some reason I cannot find the right command to fix the MP3 header.
Steps:
% ffprobe  -hide_banner -i input.avi
[mp3float @ 0x56498fcfa740] Header missing
Input #0, avi, from 'input.avi':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf58.20.100
  Duration: 01:19:44.96, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1211 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (DX50 / 0x30355844), yuv420p, 512x408 [SAR 1:1 DAR 64:51], 1071 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 30k tbc
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3 (U[0][0][0] / 0x0055), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s

If I now try:
$ ffmpeg -i input.avi -c copy output.avi

This results in:
% ffprobe  -hide_banner -i output.avi
[mp3float @ 0x56369d7ff740] Header missing
Input #0, avi, from 'output.avi':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf58.20.100
  Duration: 01:19:44.96, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1211 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (DX50 / 0x30355844), yuv420p, 512x408 [SAR 1:1 DAR 64:51], 1071 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 30k tbc
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3 (U[0][0][0] / 0x0055), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s

Is there a way to fix this error [mp3float @ 0x56369d7ff740] Header missing using ffmpeg without re-encoding the mp3 file ?

Right now the only solution I found is a two steps process:
Extract the mp3 stream:
$ ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:a copy input.mp3

Combine it back into the original AVI container:
$ ffmpeg -i input.avi -i input.mp3 -c:v copy -c:a copy -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 output.avi

Leads to:
% ffprobe -hide_banner -i output.avi
Input #0, avi, from 'output.avi':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf58.20.100
  Duration: 01:19:44.96, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1211 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (DX50 / 0x30355844), yuv420p, 512x408 [SAR 1:1 DAR 64:51], 1071 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 30k tbc
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3 (U[0][0][0] / 0x0055), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s


How much light do I need? I make videos showing myself playing guitar. I need advice on purchasing lighting. Budget: $100.
How much light do I need? I read articles about various lighting types, but they rarely give any specific watt or lumen values.
I don't want to sweat in super bright light. I can accept some shadows and I prefer a natural look. I just want my camera to function without much noise, with decent color reproduction. I also don't want to think much about the lights (e.g. adjusting position, turning on and off). I want to "set and forget" and focus on playing music.
I record indoor, in the evenings, with no sunlight. The lights I buy would be the only light source.
I presume the light shouldn't be closer than 5' from myself otherwise it will be strongly nonuniform (e.g. shining brightly on one end of my guitar only, if positioned on the side). Sometimes I also move a bit while playing (say ±1'), and I don't want to worry about moving in and out of the beam of light too much.
I found the following options within my budget:

A small softbox (20–30 inch), perhaps accompanied with another small light. Is it even large enough for my needs? If I position it farther from myself, should I compensate with a stronger light bulb? How strong? Would heating up be a concern in prolonged operation?

A pair of umbrellas. Quite some flexibility in this price range, but again I'm clueless about how strong the light bulbs should be.

A LED panel, perhaps accompanied with another small light. LEDs seem to have excellent CRI, but also seem to be dimmer (20–40W in this price range; yes I know LEDs give more lumen per watt, but it still seems low). Specifications often don't even mention wattage! Is that sufficient for the main light? How badly do I need to diffuse the light, and if I do, do I need to compensate with more power?

There are several things to consider when purchasing and setting up lights.
As for the brightness, the brighter you're lit up, the less noisy your image will be. Brighter light will also allow your camera to reduce it's aperture. The smaller aperture will make the area that is in focus bigger, giving you more room to move around in and still be in focus. There are several factors that go into how bright you will be. When I shoot video for clients, I use 1000W incandescent to light up a room that is anywhere from 5x5ft to 20x20ft. Any bigger than that and I'll probably bring in more lights for the main light source. If you are using LED, 1000 incandescent (tungsten) watts are about equal to 167 LED watts.
As for the setup, if you are moving around in your videos and trying to make sure your space is evenly lit, I suggest pointing the light at the ceiling instead of at you as long as your ceiling is white. This makes the light even and look natural. When doing this, remember that the lit up spot on the ceiling is now your light source. Make sure the light source (lit spot on the ceiling) is in front of you and (in my preference) off to one side. Play around with the positioning to your liking, but look up images of "loop lighting" (off to one side) and "butterfly lighting" (centered) to see the styles of lighting I'm talking about. The most important takeaway from those is the small nose shadow on the face. Those two style are what's used for most photography and video of people outside of mood lighting. I always diffuse the light with the ceiling, a soft-box or an umbrella when shooting, unless there is good reason to use hard/direct lighting.
If you do not want to use the ceiling method, both softboxes and umbrellas work well. The one place I see people make mistakes with the softboxes is placing the box too close the subject which ends up making the light vary too much when you move around and makes the background a bit dark compared to the subject. Being too close with the light also makes the lite seem like a light you set up for the video and not natural lighting.
Now for incandescent vs LED. Personally I never use LEDs for video. There are several reasons for this. First off, LEDs are blinking lights. If you don't believe me, put one on a rope and swing it in a circle and you'll see a dotted path. What this will end up doing is making your strumming hand (and any other decent movement) look like it's a multiple exposure, where you have several sharp images of your hand instead of a smooth motion blur. Some newer LEDs have a refresh rate fast enough to make this a non-issue but they usually cost a pretty penny. The other big issue with LEDs is the color they put out. Incandescent bulbs put out a very wide gamut of color, meaning every visible color is being put out from the bulb. LEDs only put out a single narrow color, or in the case of some LED arrays, a group of narrow colors. The lack of a full gamut, means that some colors will look muted while others are very vibrant. Skin tone can end up looking dead-like. This makes color correction extremely difficult and something many musicians do not want to deal with. Of coarse the down side to incandescent is the heat it puts off. How much of a problem the heat will be depends on your space. A small room will heat up quickly. If you're in a living-room, you probably have enough space for most of the heat to dissipate and for the air conditioning to take care of the rest. If sweating becomes a mild issue, get some colorless power from a theater makeup store to apply before videos.


poor quality export of still images from premiere This is the actual source image to a video track in Premiere (a PNG):

With no resizing whatsoever, and .flv output, this is a resultant frame from the exported video:

How could I improve the output quality, especially the text?
What settings should I use

I've tried to max out pretty much everything in the FLV export settings.
And now I moved to MP4 output with H.264 encoding, but still get poor quality stills.
Here are the MP4 Export settings, what should I change?

Solution
Inspired from the answers, turns out that have to set the source to Progressive when creating a New Sequence (instead of Fields: Upper)

this is why I did not get better results whatever my configuration once I had created a sequence with Fields set to Upper
and this is why the following settings for my next project, yielded good stills

although also using higher resolution, so not sure high that plays into the test results
H.264 / MP4 Export settings otherwise the same

That looks more like a 'field' from the video, rather than a frame -- jagged diagonals are the tell.

If your video is interlaced, you may only get half the vertical resolution in a still, unless you specifically set it to output a full frame. Check the export settings.


How do you edit out pauses in YouTube videos? I have noticed in some YouTube videos that pauses in speech have been cut out. There are no pauses, and this makes the video easier to watch.

How is this done? I have searched for this, but have only found tutorials on doing this manually, but there must be an automatic way for YouTube videos, I hope!

Here's an example of one of these videos:

The effect you are talking about is called jumpcut and it is particularly popular among vloggers.
As far as I know, there is no automatic way to do it although it would probably be possible to do from technological perspective.
However using jumpcuts has several functions.

You get rid of silence and squeeze as much information in short form as possible, keeping viewers attention.
Second important function is selection of your shots. While going through your material (shot usually in one take) you can discard stuff you don't want (even if you were talking at that point) and fundamentally alter the tone of your video.

This increased creative control is worth it considering that editing your video manually in this manner is very easy and won't take much time or effort.

tl;dr
It might be doable, but there is no user friendly solution now. Anyway I would suggest to do it manually for various reasons described in full answer.


Simulate parenting, (or un-parent) in after effects I have a flat layer in AE that is parented to another flat object in 3D space (both are .ai files).

The trouble is when I export to Cinema 4D Lite, the motion of the parented object is not the same as it is in AE.

I expect this has something to do with translating the keyframes on export, so I'm wondering if there's a way in AE to un-parent an object, and add keyframes to retain its motion as if it were still parented.

EDIT: On further research, I've found the Bake Parented Transform script. Is there no built in way to do this?

The only solution to do this without an extra script/plugin is to use expressions and then convert the expression to keyframes via Animation->Keyframe Assistent->Convert Expression to keyframes.

The big downside is that you have to "build" the parenting yourself, if you parent the position of one layer to another it will result in an expression like: thisComp.layer("Black Solid 2").transform.position. You then have to manage your relative position manually by changing the anchor point which is tedious, then you have to basically parent each transform property manually if you want rotation, scale and opacity as well.

So unless you can't spend the 15$ or can't use plugins for any reason I would always go for the script solution.


What media can I legally include into my videos? When making videos for YouTube, what media can I include without getting sued or breaking the terms of YouTube?

What are the differences when being a YouTube partner?

Take for example the gaming web show IGN Daily Fix. They include images, audio, and video of games into their own videos. Do they pay a fee to every single video game producer, to a general organisation, or can they just include anything they want for free under fair use?

PS: I don't know if this is the best forum for this question, but I don't really know where else I could ask.

Preface: I am not a lawyer. These comments aer based on my personal experience navigating copyright law.

The general rule of thumb is that you can only use media that you have created.

If you have not created the media, it's best practice to get or buy permission to use it, and get that permission in writing as a release form.

That being said, something like IGN daily fix could likely get away with demo-ing games under fair use as part of a review or demonstration. There's also the fair use exemption for something "newsworthy". There's a little bit of leeway when you shoot the video of the game yourself rather than capturing the output from the console. There you start to get into derivative work.

Personally, I would get releases for everything. In the case of IGN, I'm sure they can go to EA, and EA is more than happy to provide amterials for their use. You can do the same. Ask for a press kit that includes video clips. Those are licensed for that type of use.

If you don't have a license, here's what you risk. Let's say Google wants to buy your videos and feature them for something. Their lawyer is going to ask for chain of title documentation. This is signed, verifiable contractual agreements that say you have permission for everything. Sign a release form for you own voiceover jsut to please the lawyers. People will sue Google because they've got deep pockets. The lawyers need to mitigate that risk by making sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed. Are you willing to potentially lose a deal because you didn't get permission to use a clip? I've made the decision NOT to risk that...but that's me.

As many people as I know who are under-the-radar enough to get away with a lot, I know enough people who've been "made an example of" that I don't want to play with that lit match.

I'd recommend a.) talking to an attorney and b.) asking permission for everything. You'd be surprised who says yes to the latter.


How to duplicate composition and subcompositions? I have a composition "A" with subcomposition "B". When one duplicates composition "A" to "A2", then both reference to the same subcomposition "B". I need that they reference independent subcompositions. How can I achive this?

This is what I tried

I followed the instructions from

clicked Ctrl+D to duplicate Layer A and B
selected copy B2 and reference B from A2, clicked Ctrl+Alt+/ to replace, but didnt work ( I have a german keyboard, maybe this shortcut doesn't work, because nothing happend.)

Also I simply tried to follow Copying All Settings Of One Composition in AE by just duplicating "B" to "B2" and inserting "B2" in "A2". However I also need that "B2" has the same transform and masksettings as "B" in composition "A2". If I select the transform settings, press Ctrl+C, click on reference "B2" and press Ctrl+V nothing happens. It seems that I can't copy the settings.

I am using Adobe After Effect 2015 CC

Make all your duplications in the Project Panel, not in the Layer/Timeline panels.

Duplicate Comp A

Duplicate Comp B

Double click Comp A2 to open it in the timeline.  It will still contain Comp B. We need to fix this.

Make sure Comp A2 is still open and visible in the timeline

Select Comp B 2 in the Project Panel

Select the Comp B layer in your Comp A 2 timeline

Hold down the option key on a mac (alt on a PC)

Drag Comp B 2 from your Project Panel over the top of Comp B in your timeline panel.

Let go of the dragging.

Comp B in your timeline panel should now be replaced with Comp B 2.

This is a bit of a faff, but gets easier after you've done it a few times.


How to light a set using coloured fluorescent lights Hi all i'm wanting some advice on set lighting. i'm wanting to create a set similar to the below using fluorescent lights. Just wanting to know what equipment is needed to achieve this look. Obviously there are using red fluorescent lights but how are they powered etc and some kind of blue fill light? I'll admit i'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to lighting so any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Try searching for "LED Neon Tube".  Nowadays LEDs are so common for venue lighting, maybe the set designers might went that route.

If this is fluorescent, they could be white fluorescent bulbs wrapped in theatrical gel roll material, such as this.  For the power supply (called a ballast) and housing, you can buy fluorescent bulb track lighting from any commercial lighting store. The ballasts for traditional T8 and T12 size bulbs are being phased out due to regulation.  But my local supplier still had a couple in stock a few years ago.

The bulbs could also be neon, producing a native red color without a filter.  I believe those would have to be handmade by a signage company.

Also, the shot has pretty obvious red stage lighting to the lower-left, and blue to the upper-right.  I'm judging from the red light and shadows striking the ceiling, and the diagonal blue light shadows on the actor's body.  My guess is that almost none of the light in the shot is from the vertical bulbs.

I'm a newbie at this too, but hope some of my information is accurate :)  I had a similar project for a party production a few years ago, which involved fluorescent ballasts and housings with vertically mounted blacklights.


How can I remove ENCODE İNFORMATİON from mediainfo for H265 HEVC .mkv? I want to know how I can remove encode settings from the mediainfo with mkvpropedit or ffmpeg?
İn this post:
Removing MP4 encoding information
I found this command:
ffmpeg -i INPUT -c copy -bitexact -map_metadata -1 -bsf:v 'filter_units=remove_types=6' OUTPUT

for only h264 AVC!
so how can you do this for h265 HEVC
What command do i need to use?
I want to do this by simply copying the file I don't want to convert the whole file.
İ want to remove this:

cpuid=0 / frame-threads=3 / no-wpp / no-pmode / no-pme / no-psnr / no-ssim / log-level=2 / input-csp=1 / input-res=1920x1080 / interlace=0 / total-frames=0 / level-idc=0 / high-tier=1 / uhd-bd=0 / ref=2 / no-allow-non-conformance / no-repeat-headers / annexb / no-aud / no-hrd / info / hash=0 / no-temporal-layers / open-gop / min-keyint=23 / keyint=250 / gop-lookahead=0 / bframes=4 /  ...

UPDATE:
-c:v libx265 -x265-params no-info=1 this command does work but for converting -c:v libx265 converts. I want to know how I can do this just to simply copy -c copy the file?

-x265-params no-info=1
!ffmpeg -y -i http://mirrors.standaloneinstaller.com/video-sample/Panasonic_HDC_TM_700_P_50i.mkv -c:v libx265 -x265-params no-info=1 output.mp4

would generate MediaInfo as

Video ID                                       : 1
Format: HEVC
Format/Info: High EfficiencyVideo Coding Format
profile                           : Main@L4@Main
Codec ID                                 : hev1
...
Writing library                          : x265 2.6:[Linux][GCC 7.2.0][64 bit] 8bit+10bit+12bit

-x265-params no-info=0
!ffmpeg -y -i http://mirrors.standaloneinstaller.com/video-sample/Panasonic_HDC_TM_700_P_50i.mkv -c:v libx265 -x265-params no-info=0 output.mp4

would generate MediaInfo as

Video ID                                       : 1
Format: HEVC
Format/Info: High EfficiencyVideo Coding Format
profile                           : Main@L4@Main
Codec ID                                 : hev1
...
Writing library                          : x265 2.6:[Linux][GCC 7.2.0][64 bit] 8bit+10bit+12bit
Encoding settings                        : cpuid=1173503 / frame-threads=1 / wpp / no-pmode / no-pme / no-psnr / no-ssim ...


How to apply multiple chroma keys in ffmpeg? I tried creating two separate colorkey filters (as these seem to work better than chromakey filters) like this:

ffmpeg -i input1.mp4 -i input2.mp4 -filter_complex '[1:v]colorkey=0x6AA999:0.1:0.2[ckout1];[0:v][ckout1]overlay[out1];[1:v]colorkey=0x4D827A:0.1:0.2[ckout2];[out1][ckout2]overlay[out2]' -map '[out2]' output.mp4

But this does not seem to filter on both keys.  In thinking about why, I think the issue is that both filters are creating transparency in the pixels that match that key, but then the overlay is combining the pixels that weren't filtered out from both keys, so I'm really only getting transparency for pixels which match BOTH filters, instead of those which match either.

I also looked at the blend filter, with the idea that perhaps I could do something like this in the filter complex:

'[0:v]colorkey='$KEY1':0.1:0.2[ckout1];[0:v]colorkey='$KEY2':0.1:0.2[ckout2];[ckout1][ckout2]blend=c3_expr=min(input1_c3,input2_c3)[out2]' -map '[out2]'

The idea being that I would take the minimum alpha value (opacity) of each input source for each pixel and make that the alpha value for the output for that pixel.  I am assuming (it's not clear from the text) that the "c3" channel is referring to the alpha channel, but I don't see how to get the alpha value from each input.  What would go in place of input1_c3 and input2_c3?

Or is there another way to do this that is better?

Instead of always using [1:v], you would use the output of the previous one e.g. [ckout1]
My guess, you want this:
ffmpeg -i input1.mp4 -i input2.mp4 -filter_complex '[1:v]colorkey=0x6AA999:0.1:0.2[ckout1];[ckout1]colorkey=0x4D827A:0.1:0.2[ckout2];[0:v][ckout2]overlay[out2]' -map '[out2]' output.mp4

(Maybe the inputs switched around)
The overlay you are using is from https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#colorkey? My guess is, that you misunderstood, what the overlay does in the example there. The example describes overlaying 2 opaque videos on top of each other, where the upper video receives transparency first.
What you are doing is overlay the transparent version of input2 onto input1 and then colorkeying input2 again and putting that also on top of input1 and the first colorkey.


Portable camera recommendation for interviews I'm looking for a decent quality video camera that I can travel around with and conduct short interviews. I also need to be able to use a lavalier microphone with it.

Someone recommended a GoPro but that seems better suited to lots of action.

Edit (more info):

Budget: $1,000 or less.

Quality: As far as quality, the videos will be going up on a website. Currently are videos are SD so I don't need 1080p or anything, just a good clear picture. Audio quality is more important.

Simplicity is very important. I'm actually the one that will be editing the video, and the person that will be filming is not a technical person. They will not know much about filming techniques, and certainly won't want to be messing with different lenses and stuff like that.

Often, the best option, particularly for interviews, is a DSLR.  The particulars of your needs may change that or harden in on a specific level of DSLR, however in general they key thing for interviews is to be able to have a sharply focused subject with a nice blur to the background.

DSLR cameras shooting HD video with a fast lens (f/2.8 or faster preferably) can achieve very nice background blurs and make great looking video.  Most also have a line input that you can run a mic into, though use of the best quality mics will often require using an external device first to deal with the mic and convert it to the type of signal the camera wants.

Personally, I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark iii and use a Zoom h4n for audio.  I record the audio separately and sync in post production, but a line out from the Zoom can also be fed in to the camera directly.  You don't need something as advanced as the 5D Mark iii, but it hopefully gives you an idea of how a setup can work.  You could substitute any DSLR with a mic or line input for the 5D Mark iii.

If portability is super key however, it might be best to go with an actual camcorder.  They can get a little bit smaller than a full fledged DSLR though the smaller the camera, the harder it is to get the background blur that you often see in interviews.


VHS Wobble After Effects Does anyone know how to achieve the specific wobble of the VHS tape that can be seen here:

(it's throughout the video, but you can best see it if you look at the "Radio Shack" letters.)

Is it some sort of turbulent displace effect?
Note: I have Red Giant's VHS effect and have tried countless other plugins and presets and none of them have the option to produce realistic VHS wobble like this one.
Thanks in advance!

Replicating an accurate VHS-look is a complicated profession, but if you are not worried about the technical accuracy you could emulate it like this:

Create a solid called "Displace-Map"
Apply turbulent noise to it
set the scaling to something huge in the x-axis and something reasonable (100%) on the y-axis.
alt-click the stopwatch on "evolution" and enter "time*100", so that the noise changes with time.
Apply "Displacement-Map" to the layer you're trying to displace
Set your "Displace-Map"-layer as the displace-map in the effect
Dial up the displacement until it looks about right
Don't forget to hide the Displace-Map solid and select "Masks&Effects" under the settings in the Displacement-Map effect, so it also reads the turbulent noise.

You might want to adjust the speed of the turbulent noise. To do that, just up the number you multiply time with in the evolution-expression.
I hope this helped, cheers!


Shapes overlapped in pre-comp, transparent fade in visibility I have two white shapes that overlap on a purple background, which are in a pre-comp. One in animated (an arm) and the other is not (the rest of the body).

When I fade the pre-comp in, from 0 to 100 opacity, I can see the parts where the shape overlaps. This is made worse by having a motion blur, which seems to multiply the blur in that area.

Do you know how to avoid this situation, and to have the two shapes behave as one.

Pretty sure this is due to the little sun icon - the "collapse transformations" icon..
See more here: http://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/3d-layers.html

It's to do with what order 3D comp layers are processed when they're precomped.


Changing duration of multiple After Effects layers at once Can I set duration of multiple After Effects (freezed frame) layers to a fixes value (e.g. 4 seconds each) at once?

Yes.

Select all of the layers.  Move the time cursor to where you want the layers duration to end.  Press alt + ]. This will extend your layer to that position (if it is able to be extended).

Pressing alt + [ would adjust the in point

Pressing Press [ or ] on their own would move the in or out point of the layer to your current time position.


How can I fix a dark spot on my lens in post-production? I need to fix this in post. Can I do it?

If you shoot an evenly lit white frame you could invert it, adjust the levels so that the non-affected areas of the frame were completely black, and then add the result to the original footage. It might take some tweaking of the levels to get it right.


Do i really need a Super-Computer to edit Videos? I wanted to edit a video and encountered some severe lag and preview stuttering.

I started looking around on the internet, but I'm just not getting any definitive and practical information on anything.

You'll read about how you need at least 32 GB of RAM and a 4 figures CPU to edit at all.

And others on forums say they edit HD videos on old machines with 2 GB RAM with no issues.

I'm running Windows on a SSD drive with an Intel i5 quad core (2.8 GHz), 8 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA 1050Ti 4 GB GPU.

The videos I'm trying to edit are 1920×1080 30 fps (captured with a USB capture card from PS4 and
encoded with Handbrake) they are 1-2 h long (I have many of these videos and I also put them together in a few videos that are like 10 hours long but I don't know if I should use them to edit; I don't know if it makes a difference if a have many small files or one huge one)

I used DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks, VSDC and Shotcut and every time its unusable. On shotcut just playing back a clip and looking through it works kinda ok most of the time but when I cut together some clips and want to see how it looks it starts to lag beyond being usable.

I know that Video editing takes a lot of horsepower, but is it really THAT much?
I can't imagine that everyone, every student or just your average Joe who's doing their gaming montages and stuff for YouTube in their free time is sitting on a 2000 bucks high-end PC.

I've read about “Proxy files” for editing, but mostly when people are using 4k videos and even if not, creating lower quality versions every time for every video seems so unpractical.

I don't know, I really didn't think Video editing is so inaccessible.

To add to my confusion:

A view months ago I was editing videos with almost the same specs, the only difference, they were captured from switch, on the exact same PC. But at that time I was running Linux. And I used DaVinci Resolve and I don't remember having any issues at all. And I didn't use anything like proxy files or reducing playback quality, etc...
I think maybe somethings wrong with my windows but with all that conflicting information I just don't know and I hope someone can help me here.

One thing I want to add: these Videos are kind of big. 2h long video with 8 GB, and they have a bitrate of around 9000.

I don't know much about video stuff, I know bitrates influence quality, but that's it, is 9000 much? Or can you reduce it without a huge quality loss?

Thank you very much!

Research how to use proxies. Proxies are copies of your original footage encoded at lower resolution, lower quality, or just in a less processor-intensive codec. You use them while you're working on your project, and then swap back the high quality files when you do your final export. A bit like offline and online video editing from the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

In your case for example, avoiding h.264 will probably speed things up. H.264 does a good job of making really small files at high visual quality, but it's awful for editing. So if you encode in an all-I-frame low-bandwidth codec, e.g. ProRes Proxy, or DNxHR LB the performance should increase markedly.

You can get away with much lower-powered hardware by using proxies, and you don't lose any quality in the process, because you go back to your originals at the end. A good guide, specific to the Resolve workflow, can be found here.


Video Capturing Cards - What to Buy on the Cheap for HD Quality? Im new to the video and capturing world.  I want to give you the setup.

We will be filming a event with three or two cameras. Then pushing this video to a webserver and stream it live.  We will be using Silverlight HD technology which can stream out at 720HD quality video.

Most likely two cameras will be over cable and then one over wireless.  We currently have not figured out what video cameras we want, but to save on costs, we plan on renting the equipment.  Our budget is also $1,000.  We can push it over the top a little, because once we have the hardware, we will be using it over and over hopefully recouping the costs.

We have a PC figured out for encoding and that will be a desktop with a GTX NVidia Card for GPU processing.  The CPU will run us $550, so over and done with.

So we have about $500 or less for the capturing card(s).

First Question, Can we get away with one capturing card for three cameras?  Or do we need one card per camera?
Second, What cards can we buy on the cheap?  If we need three cards, What cards can we buy for about $125 a piece that can produce HD quality?  If we only need one card, Whats a good card to buy that can produce three video feeds?

All the cards need to connect to a Desktop Machine.  It doesn't really matter how, as we can buy Firewire cards or HDMI cards if needed.

EDIT

Do we need to capture Audio Too? Or will the Capture cards do just that?

Thank you!

The cheapest boards i know:

the elgato game capture HD.
the BMD Intensity series.

In that price-category you will need one board per camera.

You don't need additional HDMI- or FiWi-cards. These boards can capture via HDMI, so there are ports for that signal.

Edit:
Yes, this boards can capture the audiosignal too.


Final Cut Pro - does 2GB vs 4 GB video memory make a difference I'm going to purchase a new iMac and my big resource hog will be Final Cut Pro X, mostly for 1080p videos. For an extra $100, Apple moves from a Radeon Pro 555 with 2 GB memory to a Radeon Pro 560 with 4 GB memory.

Will the difference between the two machines be noticeable? Will it likely be noticeable in a few years, when Final Cut gets bigger and more bloated?

I would say, yes it makes a difference. Rendering in FCPX happens in tiles. The size of the tiles is determined by a combination of the amount of memory they consume, the speed of the graphics card, and other similar factors. Increasing the video RAM will allow more and/or bigger tiles to fit on the card at one time. Bigger tiles means fewer passes to make the same adjustments. More tiles means less trips back and forth to main memory or the disk to retrieve image data.

Whether that helps you or not depends on how you edit. If you're mainly just cutting HD clips together with no effects or color corrections, it might not make a big difference. But if you're editing 4k or 8k footage, adding 2D or 3D titles (particularly 3D), applying lots of effects and color corrections, doing retiming, using the 360° functionality, etc. then it will make a larger difference. In my experience, every little bit helps.


How are video and audio streams placed in 'container' files and what interrelations do they have? So far I have been guessing my way through the types of audio/video streams and getting them mixed up with containers. For example, I have had a friend tell me that a video file which won't play on my TV will work if I can change the file extension to .avi/.mpg for example - which worked. However, when I have had the problem since, I have tried the same but with no luck.

Could someone explain which are containers and how you can have different types of audio/video files/steams within a container file?

The basics of that are actually not that complicated (while there is definitely more to know about that topic than would fit in this answer).

Take a look at that graphic you can find on the w3c-website:

As you can see, the container is exactly that: a container that can contain different types of media, most notably video and audio, but also captions and metadata about the file. When you speak about a "file format", you're normally talking about the container format, after which the file extension for normal video files is named. This is why you've probably seen many video files with file extensions such as .avi, .mp4, .mkv and the likes.

When you look at the contents of this container, you will normally have at least one video and one audio track, those are referred to as "streams". Streams can be encoded using different codecs. A codec is, in layman's terms, an algorithm (or rather a set of algorithms) which is used to compress a (video or audio) stream. The more efficient the codec, the better the ratio of (video/audio) quality to file size. Two very common codecs are the H.264 (MPEG-4/AVC) codec for video and the AAC codec for audio. Those are popular because they are very efficient, thus you can have very small files with (relatively) good quality.

So to sum this up, the container is some sort of "wrapper" that contains the actual media streams. Different container formats allow for different kinds of streams. For example, the .avi-container is very limited, you can only have one audio stream and one video stream. The matroska-container (.mkv files) is a good alternative if you need more than that. Matroska is a very flexible container that allows for multiple audio streams (e.g. for different languages), subtitles and more. However, many devices (e.g. most TVs with a USB port) don't support that standard. This is where the .mp4-container (MP4 being the standard-container for the MPEG-4-standard, which is a huge topic on it's own) comes in handy, because nearly all devices can playback files that use this container format along with the H264 & AAC codecs. This combination is the most common approach for easily interchangable video files, which for example is used by most video hosting platforms such as Youtube.

Changing the file extension is generally a stupid idea. If you change an .avi file to something like .mp4, it might work on your TV in some instances, but that is just because your TV is stupid (i.e. it knows the codecs of the streams, but doesn't even try to play them if it doesn't recognise the file extension or something like that). Container format's don't behave like text-files, you can't just change the extension and expect the container format to somehow magically change as well. If you can't open a specific video file, use the VLC video player, it supports most commonly used file formats and codecs. If you want/need to watch it on a specific device such as your TV which doesn't support the codec, you can re-encode it (not a good idea, because that means quality loss) or remux it, i.e. take the individual streams and put them in different containers (which is a bit more complicated but yields better results).


Near natural lighting with softbox wattage between 2400 to 2700? I record video with a large window as a softbox during the day, but I want to record during the night keeping those nice ambient shadows and even lighting.

I'm planing to buy a 3 piece softbox kit. I currently have DSLR with 50 mm f 1.8 and 80 mm f1.4 lenses which give a nice light aperture. The more natural the light is the better.

Here's a sample of my setup with natural light (large window, no additional lights):

I found these two kits that caught my attention, my budget is around 200 bucks.

ePhoto 2400:
http://goo.gl/0GfWdf

ePhoto 2700:
http://goo.gl/6Wov5S

What is the best wattage between these two for a near natural lighting? If not what is the right ammount of wattage to archive it?

Wattage has nothing to do with achieving natural lighting.  The amount of diffusion and placement does.  More light is ALWAYS better because it results in more signal to the camera and more options as far as ISO, aperture and shutter speed.

Nothing you setup with artificial lights (particularly on your budget) will come close to the level of the sun on even a cloudy day.  This doesn't matter though as long as you provide enough light for the camera to pick it up and spread it out through diffusers and light placement and reflectors such that you get a natural look.

I'd suggest reading some on 3 point lighting if you want more information on light placement and get the biggest diffusers you can, though on your budget, you will be hard pressed to get even a decent 3 point light kit, let alone any kind of diffusers.  (A decent large diffuser alone will run over $100.)  Your best bet is to put all the money in to the best light kit you can get and get diffusers later.  Proper three point lighting will still be fairly natural looking.


What are some Best Camera Settings for Recording for Chroma Keying and which color of cloth reflects least green color? I am recording footage for my music video and I am using chroma keying for eliminating the green screen and changing the background of my video.
I am using After Effects CC 14 video production/editing software. I don't have any third party plugin to remove the green screen background and so I am using Keylight 1.2. The steps that I am following for changing the background can be found in this tutorial.

My questions about the issues which I am getting here are as follows:

The main problem I am getting here is that when I am removing the background using Keylight 1.2, I am getting white light borders on the body of the subject. These borders keep coming after the edit even while I am recording the footage from even different cameras.
The second problem is, after creating the garbage matte and editing the clip at different levels as shown in the above-mentioned tutorial, some parts of the elbow of the subject/model are also becoming transparent. I cannot understand why.
Which color will be the best for my subject/model to wear during the shoot, so that it does not reflect the green color and will have the least reflection.
What will be some best camera settings for recording the footage in order to remove the green screen? My Camera is Nikon D5300 and the lens which I am using with it is 18-55MM.

As an example, you may get my test videos here.

Lighting is the biggest factor in improving this setup.  Move the subject further away from the sheet, use a lens that has a shallow depth of field so that any imperfections in the sheet are harder to see.  Light the sheet and the subject using diffuse lighting - large soft lights, or bright lights shone through large soft sheets, to make as few shadows as possible.  Backlight the subject slightly to get separation from the green screen and to reduce spill.

Camera-wise, use a camera which records as much colour depth as possible, and doesn't subsample the colour.  (Don't know how the Nikon samples colour)

If you're using After Effects, this is a very useful tutorial to get a good clean key, but without doing the steps above, you may still have difficulty getting a good key.


Low quality video after exporting Still Image from Adobe Premiere Pro I'm creating Audiobooks via Adobe Premiere Pro and to do so I've created an image via Adobe Photoshop (3200x1800) and applied that as the only still image in the Adobe Premiere workshop with the audio of the book playing along.
I've noticed that the quality of the video is very poor even if it is exported in 720p. How can I get the quality same as the original photo? Ps: I'm new to Adobe Premiere Pro.

This is the comparison between the original image and the quality of the frame from the exported video :

And my Export Settings are:

Firstly it looks like your sequence is 720x480, i.e. standard definition DV NTSC. This is the default sequence for Premiere, and has been since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Since it's about 1/16th the resolution of your image, not to mention that the pixels are non-square it's no wonder that there will be some quality loss.

If you're finishing at 720p (i.e. 1024*720) you should set your sequence to match. You'll have to either start a new sequence using the HDV 720p setting and copy everything across to it…

or cut everything from the timeline, change the sequence settings to match those in the picture below and paste everything back.

N.B make sure that as well as setting the right resolution you also choose square pixels for your pixel aspect ratio. To make your clips match the sequence size you can right-click them and choose Set to frame size. If there are a lot of similar clips you can do the first one, copy it, select the rest and choose edit>Paste Attributes.

Secondly, you're better off creating your image at the final resolution - you won't gain anything by working at a higher resolution than your final product. Working at the native resolution also gives you a good idea of how it's going to look. Photoshop has film and video presets, so choose the correct one when you're setting up your image file.


Mounted Canon VIXIA HF G20 - Church installation. We have the camcorder mounted 12' above the floor and I have to use a ladder to get to the camera to take out the SD card and then replace it after I have downloaded the video for edit and publishing. I use an HDMI cable to a view a remote monitor in the sound booth. Is there a way I don't have to get the ladder out each time I need to download? Is the output to the HDMI the same as the output to the SD card?

As long as the HDMI output is configured properly, it should be the same as what is recorded.  I'm not sure about that particular model, but most higher end video cameras support clean HDMI or SDI output.  A clean output means it is free of any of the on screen displays.  They may also be capable of outputting different resolutions between the HDMI/SDI outputs and the recording.

As long as the HDMI output is configured to match the settings of the recording, then it should be the same signal.  Since it is digital, as long as the signal isn't dropping bits of data entirely, there won't be the traditional type of quality loss from analog transmissions, but you'll want to make sure the HDMI run isn't longer than necessary.


how to create photos flying in to voids video effect Lets say I have a shaped collage of photos like in below video.

What I want to achieve is a small video where initially it is empty and photos fly in and fill the places in the heart shape or whatever other shape I make.

I would suggest working in reverse.  Start out by arranging all the images the way you want them to appear at the end and set position keyframes on all of them at the end of the sequence.  Then move to the beginning of the sequence and set keyframes on the positions and start dragging them all out of frame.  You can then drag the starting keyframes around to adjust when they start flying in and adjust the end keyframes to alter when they arrive in the collage.  Just keep moving the positions and the timing until you have something you like.


Why doesn't an FFT pitch filter fully 'mute' the selected pitch range? While editing a song, I tried to cut out the bass drum by applying a high-pass FFT filter, i.e. filtering out the low pitch of the bass drum.  This resulted in the drum sound being severely quieted, rather than removed entirely.  I know that higher overtones from the drum would still be present in the audio, but why isn't the lower pitch completely removed?

First of all, tell us more about the filter. Is it really a brickwall filter, or are you actually using a low roll-off or low cut-off filter? In the latter case, it is perfectly normal, when using a high cut-off filter, the low frequencies decrease with -6dB per octave below the specified frequency, and are not completely gone. Roll-off is the same, but with less dBs per octave. (either 4,5 or 3, can't really remember.)

If you did use a brickwall filter, there is another possible explaination:

A phenomenon in psycho-accoustics is the hearing of a low note where it is not there, but when the harmonics (= overtones) are there. Every base tone has different overtones. (Really, if multiple overtones are there, there is really not much ambiguity.) The human brain actually processes these overtones and adds the base tone.


How can I specify time for text titles in iMovie for iOS I have iMovie on my iPhone 5S so my question is specifically for iMovie on iOS. I am trying to put together a video and want to add a text object to it. However, I want it to begin X seconds into the video last for Y seconds. I haven't been able to find how to specify that in iMovie for iOS. The only options are Opening, Middle and End. But I want to specify it when to begin and how long to last - the available options really only let me display the text for the entire clip.

I know I can do this in iMovie for my desktop iMac where all the clips and text object can be dragged to a certain length; that's basically the functionality I'm looking for. Is that not available in iMovie for iOS?

If you click on the "?" in the upper right, you'll get yellow markers that show help. One of them is "Learn More" where it brings up the user manual and a search field. When I type "titles" into the search field, it gives me a list of options, the first of which was "Add a title."

According to that help section, a title lasts the entire length of the video or still you apply it to.

So, you can cut your video into 3 pieces - the piece before the title, the piece containing the title, and the piece after the title. To do that:

click on the clip and scroll to the time where you want the title to start
press the scissors icon at the bottom. This will offer some options.
Click on "Split"

Do the process again where you want the title to end.

Once you've done that, click on the piece you want to contain the title. At the bottom, click on the "T" icon. That will bring up the title selection tool. Choose your title style and click on the text to edit it.


Combining a video and a masking video We have recieved 2 video files:

the video with the main character dancing in the middle
an identical file in terms of the animation but the main character is in red, whilst everything else is black.

I imagine the latter is some kind of a mask.

What we would like to do is combine them, so you can only see the bits in file #1 that overlap the red bits, whilst ignore all the black?!?! eg. Just the dancing character that we can choose a different background.

It's like the hard bits been done, we just need to combine them.
We have the full adobe suite, but if someone could point us in the right direction?

We had a play, and added both assets in Premier, and as an example set the #2 file to multiply blend mode... It's the effect we want, but obviously the main character has a red overlay.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Method 1

In your timeline, stack the matte clip on top of the character clip and add the Ultra Key effect to the matte with the red color as the key.

Nest those two clips, and place another Ultra Key effect on the nest, this time keying the black.

You'll probably have to mess with the ultra key settings a bit (transparency, choke, and soften) for both applications, but after you've got that set you should have a masked clip ready to place on a new background.

Method 2

There's also a way to do this with the Track Matte Key effect that yields slightly different results, you can decide which method works best for your matte.

In your timeline, stack the matte clip on track 3, the character clip on track 2, and your new background on track 1.

Add the Luma Key effect to the matte.

Add the Track Matte Key effect to the character clip with the Matte set to Video 3 and Composite Using set to Matte Alpha

Adjust the Threshold in the Luma Key effect in the matte clip if the keyed content is transparent, or adjust the Cutoff if you can still see the black.

I find that the first method gives more control over how the final key looks, but Ultra Key is a complicated tool and the second method is a little more straightforward.


How do you do the vlog style cuts? Im new and dont know the name of the effect. So, im new to video editing, im about to start vlogging. I notice on vlogs theres an effect, its like some one talking, sitting in a chair, seems like when they switch points when theyre talking, seems like a new clip comes on, even tho its them in the same spot? Does that make sense? My friend told me it was called cuts, but ive been searching and that brings me back nothing.

Straight cut is a change of shot without transition effect. Jump cut is a straight cut between two very similar shots, which would be perceived as a single shot if not for a slight change in position or lightning.

Professionals used to consider jump cuts a sign of an amateur, unacceptable for movies and broadcast TV. In the 1960s the French New Wave directors broke a lot of movie rules, including the "no jump cuts" rule. Nowadays you can see them in most vlogs, although the professionals still try to avoid them by using cutaway, which usually is sourced from B-roll.