Is there a way to upscale without re-encoding? Basically I need to take a h.264 8 bit 1080p render and  upscale it to 4k without re-encode. Is it possible? And if it is, does the container matter? Cause ideally it needs to be mp4 container, otherwise avi, otherwise mkv.

Reason:
I made a video project in a 1080p space. But now I need the final output as a 4k. So the problem is if I change the resolution of the space it offsets and shrinks all the effects in the video editor. So I could render everything as a high format like png 16 bit (or something better...?) but that's alot of rendering and data for a 30 minute project. The other problem is the footage in the video editor is h.264 already, so I need to vehemently avoid double renders.

To get from 1080p to 4K you're going to need to re-encode, but container won't matter (much), so 16bit png is overkill just for the sake of 4K.  H.264 works fine.

But before you spend the time to upsample, you should double-check to make sure that you actually need to.  Most modern 4K televisions upsample 1080p on the fly.  Most mobile devices aren't high enough resolution to display 4K.  If you can leave your project in 1080p and let the display device do the work, then you're already done!

But if you're sure that's what you need, remember that normal, traditional methods of upsampling such as bicubic or bilinear interpolation don't really increase the actual resolution of the image.  Sure, the output pixel dimensions will change from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, but the new image size just comes from (to over-simplify) doubling each pixel's width and height.  In other words, the basic scaling algorithms don't add any information to the image, they just make the 1080p "bigger."

There are newer, fancier upsampling algorithms which use sophisticated methods to scale images.  Photoshop calles theirs "Preserve details 2.0." DaVinci Resolve calls it "Super Scale."  After effects calls it a "Detail Preserving Upscale" effect, but they're all very similar methods of upscaling an image while preserving sharpness.  Bear in mind that none of these methods actually add information to the image, either.  They're just a tad better than ordinary, re-scaled 1080p.  They're also fairly computationally expensive.

In a perfect world, the best thing to do is to shoot in a resolution that's at least as high as your deliverable, but preferably higher, and then downsample.  When that doesn't happen, you'll have to evaluate the importance of having a higher resolution and weigh that against the extra time and effort it takes to generate such an image.

4K is still pretty difficult to work with under many circumstances, in terms of bandwidth requirements, latency, storage, etc.  There's a lot of overhead that goes into those extra pixels, and it's not exactly a 1:1 relationship.  Quadrupling the number of a pixels means you can expect MORE than four times the effort to complete a project, especially if you're working with long timelines, multiple streams, multicam, effects, etc.


MP4 video rendering differently on different browsers and different machines I have asked a similar question before, but we are still having the same issues.

Background color of MP4 rendering incorrectly in QuickTime

I am trying to encode MP4's for playback on a website. I have created a test page so you can see the problem I am having. The original video is created in After Effects. When the page displays correctly the video should match the background (so should be unnoticeable apart from while loading).

http://videooptimization.azurewebsites.net/

The MP4 file was encoded via Adobe Media Encoder

PAL, 25 fps, Progressive

No Audio, 2.06 Mbps

The difference in rendering seems to change depending on machine. My machine renders the video perfectly in IE10 and not in Chrome or Safari, my colleagues machine renders the video fine in Chrome and Safari, but not in IE10 (so an exact swap of issue). We both run Windows 8. There are also similar problems on Macs.

IE10 Screenshot

Chrome Screenshot

Safari Screenshot

Can anyone tell me what is going on / how I can create an MP4 that will render identically cross platform and device?

Thanks.

Unfortunately you are not going to be able to accomplish your goal.  Two major factors impact this.  First, color processing on different systems is going to differ.  This will result in slight differences in the colors that are displayed because many video players apply "enhancements" to video and what you actually see when viewing the video in a browser is an embedded player that is installed on the local machine.

Second, different software is also going to use different implementations of a decoder which may result in slight differences in color based on optimizations and rounding error based on how they do their calculations to get the video out.  It's just a side effect of the way the players operate, there isn't a problem with your source (as the data in the file can't change from one player to another.)


Is it possible to find a webcam with large aperture? I'm looking for a Webcam with large aperture and shallow depth of field, similar to the F 1.8 Canon lenses, so far It has been really difficult since most of the specifications for any webcam are meant for home users.

I do video casting with green screen, and it does help tremendously having large aperture to diffuse the green screen (color evenness) and clarity at night with inexpensive lighting equipment. Also editing time is reduced considerably since I wouldn't have to re-sync audio and video or import files from the DSLR to my computer.

Please give your thoughts.

Actually, your best bet is to use a PCIe or USB 3.0 HDMI input card, like a Blackmagic Intensity, which will take the clean HDMI output of many high quality cameras (e.g: a Nikon D600 or D800, a Canon C100 or C300, etc.) and make it available to other apps on your computer. This is what professional productions do for green screen work to ensure they're getting the full quality image out of the camera before it hits the camera's compression software.


How to fix fragmentation when rotating a shape in AE? Working on a caption animation and after rotating my arrow it left a strange fragment, almost like a stroke that got left behind. I'm looking at the white line on the top arrow:

I've tried finding it with selection thinking maybe it really is a stroke left behind but couldn't:

Then I proceeded with my AE Composition, brought it into Premiere, and just did an Export hoping it was just a memory issue. It doesn't appear to be the case however because its showing up all the way through to my .mp4 file. It appears to be transparent since instead of looking white it looks like the background its atop:

Any ideas why this occurs and how to fix it?

Edit

If I adjust one of the Arrow's Paths you can see even more of this strange line / mask thing:

However, at least as a beginner I don't see anything in the layers that would create this.

I also tried enlarging the rectangular portion instead and it didn't reveal the mask:

Changed layer order and still nothing:

I found it through the Layers Panel. There was a Puppet Pin modifier. I have no idea WHY the Puppet Pin caused this to occur but removing it solved my issue.


ffmpeg h264: VLC could not decode the format "aivx" I am using the following command to make h264 archives of video with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i myfile.mov -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset slower -crf 20 myfilearchive.mov

To get 10-bit h264 support for capture with decklink, I switched my ffmpeg from a version I downloaded from ffmpeg.org to a version I built using the media autobuild suite.  Now, however, when I run the same command to make an archive video, the output can't be played in VLC.

This is the error I get in VLC:

  Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "aivx" (No
  description for this codec)

This is the output (from MediaInfo) for an archive video made with the ffmpeg I downloaded from ffmpeg.org:

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High 4:2:2@L5.2
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 8 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 5 min 4 s
Bit rate                                 : 26.3 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.106
Stream size                              : 953 MiB (92%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 148 r2721 72d53ab
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language                                 : English

This is the output (from MediaInfo) for an archive video made with the ffmpeg I built locally:

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : aivx
Codec ID                                 : aivx
Duration                                 : 4 min 30 s
Bit rate                                 : 27.2 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.110
Stream size                              : 878 MiB (92%)
Language                                 : English

Can I get playback in VLC by changing the command used to encode the videos?  (I want to use h264, but it doesn't have to be 10-bit for the archive.)  Or should I just use one ffmpeg for capture (with 10-bit support), and another ffmpeg for archival output (in other words, use the ffmpeg.org binary ffmpeg to do my archives)?

aivx is simply a specific tag for 4K H.264 streams. Surprising that VLC doesn't probe the stream.

Try with

ffmpeg -i myfile.mov -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset slower -crf 20 -vtag avc1 myfilearchive.mov

In some cases, ffmpeg may fail to set the tag without warning. Add -strict -2 if that's the case.


Bulk/Mass Edit Video Audio? I have 100 videos that need editing so that I can level the and amplify the audio track. However I do not want to have to extract the mp3 track from each one and edit it then merge it again with the video. this is aloooonggg process.

Is there a software that can achieve this or something similar?

you can use avconv (the ffmpeg utility replacement) and mp3gain to script extracting, adjusting and merging the files.

The advantage using mp3gain is that it does not reencode the audio but just adjust levels. So you don't lose any quality. It has a nice automatic mode that work descent although not perfect.


Video production basics for a noob I am an iOS developer who wants to create a mobile app for video editing. But I do not know the basic terminology and functionality of video editing and production. Terms like video scrubbing, video ramping etc. leaves me clueless.

Please if anyone could suggest me some resources from where I can start my research about the video editing tools, features, requirements and basic terminology.

Thank you.

I recommend you do a few things.

Take an online course in video editing. You can either sign up for one at something like linda.com, or even just go to YouTube and search for video editing. There are thousands of tutorials which can point you in the right direction.
If the above isn't reasonable, take a class at your local community college. Many offer classes in video editing and motion graphics.
Read some books. I can personally recommend In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch and The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice by Ken Dancyger. Peachpit Press also has lots of books on a number of applications.
Go to a local video editing user's group and ask basic questions. If you're in a major city in the US, you might try the local Final Cut Pro User Group meetings (SF Cutters, LAFCPUG, CHIFCPUG, BOSFCPUG, etc.) or Adobe Premiere or Avid User Group meetings.
Sit down with a local editor (there are probably editors near you who do commercials, if not TV, film, and music videos). If you can befriend an editor or other video artist, they are a good source of ideas for software to write!

I've been writing such software professionally for over 15 years, and that's how I got into it.


Should I use Magic Lantern as a beginner? I'm getting a Canon 600 D. I will also get a 32 gb class 10 sd card. Do you think I shoujld get another card and install Magic Lantern into that?

I really want to create time lapses.

As someone who just went through the transition of using Canon firmware to Magic Lantern firmware, no. It depends ENTIRELY on what you know. For instance, do you know what shutter speed, ISO, and aperture are? Do you know what effect shooting "wide open" or with a high ISO has on your shot? Do you know how to correctly set your white balance and get correct exposure?

If you're a beginner and you're not familiar with these terms, you may at first be overwhelmed; that's totally normal and OK. But, it is my strong suggestion that you get to know these things and work with the standard Canon firmware before moving to Magic Lantern. Film making is hard enough as it is, no point in making it more difficult on yourself. Once you have a strong grasp of the basics, you can better appreciate/utilize the features that Magic Lantern gives you (recording formats, focus peaking, settings logs, RGB parade, hotkeys, wider range of ISO/aperture values, etc.).


Duplicate layers X times and move 1 frame each time I do a lightpainting video on After Effects (CS6 here) where I duplicate my layert to create continuous lines based on a moving light. I have a lot of comps to do and many layers to duplicate, then I search a solution to avoid this boring task…

If you knows a script or something else which duplicates a layer X times and moves it 1 frame everytime (like stairs), it would be very welcomed!

Here is a screenshot of the current (but working) solution, by hand:

Check the Array script on aescripts.com website. It duplicates your layer in desired numbers and has more control for offsetting the properties like position, scale, rotation as well as time. It is really easy to use and has many great built in functions for creating really good looking and creative motion graphics. Especially for your case, playing around with the script might function as a brainstorm tool to create new looks. Just watch the provided tutorial video to see the features.

By default, AEScripts website will set a price but you can "Name your own price" for this particular script. Just register with the website and type zero in the price field and add to cart.

My personal thought on the pricing, if you are using the script in a commercial project, it is always a good thing to pay some amount for it. As this is a great and creative tool, it deserves some donations, think it as a tip. It is not compulsory but a way of showing appreciation.

By the way, check the other scripts on the website, it is a gold mine. There are lots of great tools to speed your workflow.


What is the technique behind mkv. video format? Can someone please explain in detail the technique of encoding and decoding used in mkv video format and what is the major difference between mkv. and other video formats. It will be good if someone provide the link containing technical information regarding mkv video format  Thanks.

This question is a bit nonsensical as Matroska is only a container format, however I think it does bring up a deeper question on how video files work in general.  Matroska doesn't actually define the way anything inside it is encoded or encrypted, it just stores the information that says what was used on the content so it can be decoded.

While Matroska does support encrypted content streams, generally video and audio is encoded, not encrypted.  Encoding is when a format is used to store data in a more efficient manner than a simple representation of the data, such as MPEG2, h.264, etc.  Encryption is when a key is used to protect data from unauthorized access or tampering and uses algorithms like DES, 3DES, TwoFish, Blowfish or AES.  In the special cases where video is encrypted, it is also generally still encoded prior to encryption to make it a manageable file size.

Either way, it is kind of a moot point though, because matroska can use any of a large number of encoders and/or encryptors.  As an open standard, the details of the container format are publicly available on the Matroska website here.  More precisely, this page describes the different codec formats that are currently suppoted by the container.

As far as the differences between Matroska and other formats, there isn't any meaningful difference.  It is a different way of storing the information about the streams, but the streams themselves are exactly the same as if they were in an AVI, MOV or m4v file (provided they are encoded in a codec that is supported in those containers.)  Transitioning between containers with appropriate tools is a lossless operation as the media stream itself is not materially altered.


Using AAC-HE for 5.1 audio? A couple of questions when thinking about 5.1 audio encoding:

What are the limitations of AAC-HE codec while doing 5.1 audio ?
Why is AC3 preferred when compared to AAC-HE ?

What are the limitations of AAC-HE codec while doing 5.1 audio ?

HE-AAC v2 can only encode stereo from my experience with Nero AAC and the article in Wikipedia about Parametric Stereo.

  Why is AC3 preferred when compared to AAC-HE ?

Which case are you actually talking about? Are you sure it's HE-AAC not AAC-LC? Dolby Digital / A/52 / AC-3 was the standard for video DVDs which makes it the most common digital audio format for video. It achieves acceptable quality at significantly less bitrates than the competitor DTS and newer formats developed for video on physical media. AAC-LC is usually offered for official downloads and streaming and is part of the MPEG4 specification.

To add some perspective, HE-AAC was one of the early efforts to develop a codec suitable for low bitrates providing high quality audio compared to earlier speech only audio codecs. Opus is a successor with many improvements in this field and which also offers multichannel capability. Some podcasts offer it as an additional option to Vorbis. It's part of later WebM revisions and can be decoded on recent Android devices but its adoption seems to be very slow. If you are looking for a solution to high quality multichannel audio at low bitrates you should be looking into the state of the art Opus, not old AAC with extentions.

The general recommendation has been to use AAC-LC and to avoid HE features which may cause playback issues on some devices.


"Opus cuts audio above 20kHz" - Is this normal for lossey audio codecs? Summary:
1. Is it normal among lossey codecs?
2. what are the effects of this specifically when handling this 'cutoff' audio file?
3. Why is it still saving the file as 48khz if it doesn't contain that data anymore?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I was reading the wiki for Opus. And the bottom notes caught my eye, mainly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)

  Opus cuts audio above 20 kHz, the generally accepted upper limit of
  the human hearing range.

It lists very specific sample rates that are supported as well for opus on that page: 8khz, 12khz, 16khz, 24khz, 48khz

So if I intend to use opus as my audio format does it mean I need only record at a sample rate of 24khz? Anything above 20khz is just extra data for transforming the waveform before export? So no intent to transform would mean you might as well just record at 24khz?

I'm not overly familiar with the specifics of audio codecs, but is this normal for codecs to cutoff such a large range of sounds? That just seemed concerning to me, given everyone records at ~44.1khz minimum and in general 48khz is well used. Is it better to use a different 'lossey' codec than opus if I intend on possibly editing/re-encoding the audio again at some point? Or would there be no real difference between the loss experienced when editing and re-encoding an opus vs the loss when editing an aac/etc?

I'm also confused why when I re-encode from a 48khz f32 .wav to opus it saves itself as a 48khz sample rate still. Isn't all data above 20khz gone...? That's confusing to me. edit: well I guess when you merge different sample rates they sound of different speeds so that's why it would keep the original format..?

And yes I'm aware that lossless is the ideal format if I intend to re-encode/edit at some point, but for the sake of argument let's pretend we have to choose between lossey formats (at least for the initial export, we can trans-code later to lossless)

You mistake the sample rate for the audio cutoff rate.  If the sample rate is 48kHz, the absolute maximum frequency that could even theoretically be represented with a lowpass signal is 24kHz (I am not getting into bandpass theories since the 20Hz subsonic band is just too small to be useful for transferring high frequency content).  In practice, you need more leeway to avoid aliasing problems.

So 48kHz is a reasonable sample frequency to use for signals cutting off at about 20kHz.  Now you are asking whether this is customary for lossy audio codecs.  The principal of lossy audio encoding is to throw away information that psychoacoustically is supposed to not be relevant.  Since human hearing is supposed to basically be constrained to the 20Hz-20kHz range, it is not in the least surprising that the range above 20kHz would not be subject to encoding.


Green Screen Streaming I am a complete newbie when it comes to making videos. Just got a Canon VIXIA RF62, and built a DIY green screen. On the green screen I hope to place maps and other background images that I will point to in my presentation. I know I can add these things in post-production, but I want to be able to look at myself in a monitor, with the images in place, so I can see where to point in real time.

I was thinking of hooking my camcorder into my PC laptop via the HDMI out cable on the camcorder. The idea being that I could hook up a monitor next to the camera that I could see while filming, so I can tell where to point. I don't want to just look at me in front of a green screen.  At the same time I want to be recording the whole thing.

I have not as of yet bought any video editing software. Is there some that can do decent amateur video editing, and still do what I want it to from a streaming perspective? Any help would be much appreciated!

There are several ways of achieving this.

Use a hardware solution. They are available from Datavideo or on most video switchers. Obviously, these cost money and the results are dependant on how well you've lit your setup.
For a software solution you will, like you've mentioned, need to connect your camera's video output to your computer. (It seems you have an HDMI output) Therefor you will need an HDMI input on your laptop. If your laptop supports USB3 or Thunderbolt you can look at solutions from Blackmagic Design (among others) to capture the HDMI feed over USB3 or Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt solution is really affordable, the USB3 solution, less so.
Some of the BMD models allow you to do Live-Chromakeying in the Blackmagic software.
For Windows I came across this software, http://vidstudio.com/ it seems free and allows for live-chromakeying.
For the Apple filmmakers among us. A quick search on Live-Chroma Keying OSx will result in a large selection of affordable software.

Especially when you are going to do the actual keying in the post process, you don't need the highest quality live killer. These are often times very expensive and give moderate results at best.


Orbits in After Effects I'm new to After Effects and I might be asking about obvious stuff, but I searched this site and elsewhere and can't find an answer.

Basically I want to orbit some points in a setup similar to the Sun - Earth - Moon (Sun is static, Earth goes around the Sun, and the Moon goes around the Earth), and I need each moving point to have its position change over time so that I can parent other stuff to them.

I'm trying to animate this graphic:

I've got the epicycle (the small circle) to rotate around point T (Terre), while V (Venus) is rotating on the epicycle. I have a beam between T and the center of the epicycle (C), but I would also need to add a beam between C and Venus.

I can get Venus to rotate on the epicycle either by making it an ellipse on it's own layer and then parenting it to the epicycle; or I can add it as another ellipse on the same shape layer as the epicycle, making V rotate with the epicycle. But in both cases the position of Venus remains invariable, so the beam can't follow.

How do I make point V rotate on the epicycle such that its own position changes over time allowing me to add a beam between it and the center of the epicycle?

I'm confused by all the different Position parameters, if I create V as an ellipse on its own shape layer there'll be 3 different position parameters and none if them will change over time if V is parented to the epicycle. I've also tried alt-pick-whipping these 3 to the position of the epicycle with no luck.

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

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

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

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


FFMPEG encoder/settings for TEXT-LEGIBILITY and low file size? I often create long screen-recordings of myself explaining code.

When scrolling text, the movement doesn't need to be amazing, just smooth enough.
When static, the edges of text must be very crisp for legibility.

I'd love to be able to REALLY compress these videos down, as they tend to be quite long

I tried using CRF (Constant Rate Factor) but the trade-off space does not get me the size compression I believe is possible.

I'd be particularly interested in an encoder that could be "motion-aware".
e.g. if the video is static, the encoder won't update the f. But if there is movement in the video, start storing frames etc. There is a freeze filter in the new version, but it looks like its for notifications only.

Does anyone have any good encoders (or settings) they can recommend?

Thanks

Most codecs are motion aware. The problem you are most likely encountering is too many key frames. Every time a key frame is inserted, the encoder forgets everything and starts over. If you set your keyframe interval very high, (like 60 seconds) the bitrate will be progressively lower over time, until the next keyframe.


Premiere Pro on Windows 10 N version - Can't import MP4 I've tried to install various codecs - not working.

I still can download whole Media Feature, but that's what I would like to avoid, since N version is way lightier.

Can you please advice me how I can import MP4 files into Adobe Premiere Pro on Windows 10 ?

Thank you

my dear friend
Windows alone is not enough, you need such peripherals
Use the K-Lite Codec Pack. After installing this item, you should not have any problems
The function of this package is to be able to run relevant codecs such as mp4 in Premier Pro
Good luck.


How to save multiple QuickTimes but flatten audio tracks so that youtube/vimeo will accept it When I copy/paste multiple clips into a single clip inside quicktime, QuickTime allows me to save that "edit" as a single standalone mp4 file without having to re-encode any video. This is a very fast/efficient export and works well for quick edits where you just need to trim off material.

The Problem:

When you look at the final output file, it has multiple audio tracks, instead of a single. At the point where the 2nd edit point plays in the video file (where the 2nd audio track plays), the audio drops out on youtube and vimeo.

Solution?
Im guessing the only solution is to do an export instead of a save, which will re-encode... but im asking the question in case anyone else knows any tricks to avoid re-encoding.

Exporting is the only option from within QuickTime if you want your audio to be flattened down to the standard channels which most simple players will understand.

The problem you have is that your extra audio tracks are just ignored by YouTube, Vimeo etc.


How to upscale the dv 4:3 to dv 16:9 and maintain its quality while scaling I m working with two different footages dv 4:3 and dv 16:9. I wanted to make the project in 16:9 and upscale the 4:3 footages in 16:9 .. Is there any plugin or method that can be done without loosing its quality. I tried putting sharpen, bit and of saturation and antiflicker but its not helping, there is a pixlet vissible because of upscale of clip. Can somebody help me on this ...

I will say this. Most people who use 4:3 footage in a 16:9 project will only scale up until the clip is even with the top and bottom of the screen. The sides will maintain an even distance from either side of the 16:9 frame. The blank sides will usually be filled in with another layer of video. This background layer will sometimes be graphics and information or even an upscaled, blurred version of the original footage played back in sync.

Check out this link: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1153004

I don't believe there is a way to convert your 4:3 footage into 16:9 without loosing any quality. I suggest a hardware upgrade.

Good Luck,

ND


How to upscale a 480p video to a 1080p with minimal quality loss? I have a ripped DVD that I want to have digitally upscaled to 1080p. I have access to the editing software Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. I know Premiere is able to upscale when exporting, but I'm not happy with the results and I'm looking for a better solution.

So in short, what is the best way to upscale a 480p video to 1080p?

You can upscale Premiere Pro footage using the Detail-preserving Upscale effect in After Effects via Dynamic Link. The results will never be as good as actual HD footage, but the Detail-preserving Upscale effect does a great job at scaling footage without losing too much quality.
There's a short tutorial on how to do this at the following link:


Why does editing a video by Adobe Premiere Pro more than once decreases its quality? For example: On first edit, I decreased the speed of video and saved it. Then again I imported it and made some other changes, like brightness adjustment, and saved. When I check the final file, the quality of video is decreased. Why does it happen? Is there any way to fix this?

There is a big difference between

saving your project, then returning to the project to do some additional changes, such as brightness adjustments, then exporting a media file, and
exporting a media file from your project, importing the result into a new project, doing some additional changes, such as brightness adjustments, then exporting the result of that to create yet another media file.

In the case of (1), you are working with your original source media, which is pretty much as good as it gets in terms of input quality.  In the case of (2), if you export a compressed file (and virtually every playable media file is a compressed version of the originals, which may also be compressed), then you are working with a second generation of quality.  While you may not immediately perceive that the second generation file is not quite as good as your original masters, compression errors and noise accumulates every time through the cycle.

One way around this problem is to only ever export in uncompressed file formats.  But this is not practical, as uncompressed 1080p video is 2.98Gbps (compared that to your typical AVCHD codec that is limited to 28Mbps, about 100x less).

The practical way around this problem is to return to the project that created your first media export.  In that project, add the brightness correction you want as an additional correction, export using the original sources, and then you will have media quality that's as good as your original export, with the color quality you were hoping to achieve with your second export.


FFmpeg MP4 to FLV too slow I am converting .mp4 files to .flv using ffmpeg in centos. But the conversion time is extremely too slow! It takes about 1.5 hours to convert 500MB .mp4 file into .flv. I am using a linux vps with 2 GBs dedicated RAM.

I am using the following code:

ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -c:v libx264 -ar 22050 -crf 28 destination.flv

Is there any way I can fasten the conversion time? Any help/suggestions will be appreciated.

Given your are using a VPS this is no suprise (guessing you only have a single core with 1-3GHz) and you won't be able to crunch the conversion down to a few minutes. You can try using -c:v libx264 -presets ultrafast but I'd guess it will still take you about 45-60 minutes to encode.

Also remove the -crf option when using a preset (they choose a default that produces a very good balance between speed and quality, I only recommend to modify that value when you know what it really does)

Be advised that the quality you get from that preset is not exactly great. If you NEED fast encoding speed over everything then go for it, if it's not THAT important I'd suggest using fast oder faster instead of the ultrafast preset.


ffmpeg split screen two video sources I am not able to figure out how to get ffmpeg
to make a video
that combines (muxes) half-height-cropped  from two video sources.
The latest generation of ffmpeg (3.x) has a "vstack" filter.

My screen resolution is set to 1280 by 720 pixels.

I have a webcam that is set to provide video at that same resolution.

I want the top half of the webcam's input/feed/stream to be layered on top of the
bottom half of the screen-capture-recorder (recording my desktop).

Both source video streams, plus the end output result will have a width of 1280 pixels.  The combination of the half-height 2 video stream inputs will end up filling up 720 lines of vertical resolution.

This should be simple.

I'll paste a few of the commands that I've tried and that have failed to work.

ffmpeg.exe -f dshow -i video="screen-capture-recorder" -f dshow -i video="Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000" -vf "crop=1280:360:1280:360" -filter_complex vstack -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset ultrafast 6000screen_take1.mkv

and

I even tried adding :
"[0:v][1:v]vstack[v]" -map "[v]"
to that , above (previous) command.

See my Google Doc for complete output (what was in my cmd.exe window) :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SqtjEY_gM3rdeKPyRzUq_jJhPQUPCK5L4E5HPttwS3s/edit?usp=sharing

If you're using filter_complex, then all filtering has to happen within that complex. So,

ffmpeg.exe -f dshow -i video="screen-capture-recorder" \
           -f dshow -i video="Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000" \
-filter_complex "[0:v]crop=1280:360:0:0[v0];[1:v]crop=1280:360:0:0[v1];[v0][v1]vstack[v]" \
-map [v] -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset ultrafast 6000screen_take1.mkv

This stacks the top half of the webcam video below the top half of the desktop capture.

Having taken a look at the console output, you should actually try this:

ffmpeg.exe -f dshow -rtbufsize 9000000 -i video="screen-capture-recorder" \
           -f dshow -i video="Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000" \
-filter_complex "[0:v]crop=1280:360:0:0[v0];[1:v]scale=1280:-1,crop=1280:360:0:0[v1]; \
                 [v0][v1]vstack[v]" \
-map [v] -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset ultrafast 6000screen_take1.mkv


how do I produce a time lapse visual animation like this famous video? I want to create something of that similar effect...I don't know what this style is called, I don't know what tool to use, please help me.

R (the letter R) is free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.  It can be extended by means of packages that the R-core team and team and community create.  For creating a video such as the above, you would want the data that describes the date of a nuclear event, the yield of the event, some metric of its decay function (perhaps the half-life of some particular isotope present in the fallout of the event), the geolocation of the event, and the country responsible for the event.  You could then feed this data into a package such as animation combined with rworldmap.

R is a great way to bring data to life, visually.  With the above, you can create animated GIFs, active HTML pages, or full-fledged video files that can be further integrated into digital production environments.


What is the video equivalent of vector graphics? Images and videos have their own quality standards and protocols. There are either raster image file formats (.gif, .jpg) or vector graphics images (.svg, .pdf). No matter how much you zoom in on vector graphics, you will never see pixels, with diagonal lines still retaining their non-jagged smoothness.
In my opinion, video is always pixelated regardless of the resolution used (the 1080 format is going the way of the dinosaur already), while 4K and 8K (also just higher resolutions) still possess pixelation as well I think.
What then is the vector graphics equivalent of video file formats? or is there none

The whole premise of vector graphics is that there is a drawing engine in the output device that can interpret graphical commands and output shapes and fonts at the maximum resolution of its rasterizer.
In simple terms, when someone produces a Postscript projector or media player, there will be a video equivalent of vector graphics.
But in another sense, this is already the case with video production software that lets you create titles and graphics using TrueType fonts and vector drawing tools. The renderer, such as the Media Export engine in Premiere Pro, rasterizes fonts and shapes at the maximum resolution of the output video format. You don't have to worry about pixelated graphics and fonts that would result from importing low- resolution artwork. This video rendering of vector sources is equivalent to the work of a RIP (raster image processor) or web browser, which render PostScript (vectors and fonts) at the maximum resolution of an imagesetter or printer for output on film or paper or a webpage.
Ultimately, shapes, images and text all have to be turned into dots/pixels at output time. All output devices -- with the exception of pen plotters -- can only print/display dots/pixels -- solid spots of a single color. That applies to laser and inkjet printers, computer monitors and TVs, digital platemakers, and even crowds of people holding up colored cards to make gigantic pictures in the stands of football stadiums.


How do I edit a video clip without increasing size? I have several video clips that are small files -- the videos are pretty low quality. I'm on a Windows computer. I just need to trim the videos and rotate them 180 degrees. You'd think that if I trim the videos, the files would be smaller than they started, but for some reason when I do it on Windows Moviemaker it makes them bigger. I'm not willing to pay for a legit movie editor to do something this simple. Does anybody know how I can do this? I just need to trim, rotate, and potentially combine clips without changing the resolution and without increasing the files sizes. Thanks so much!

The file gets bigger because the encoder struggles to keep the quality of the resulting file as close to the same as the original as possible. AviDemux allows you to cut out parts of a video file without re-encoding.


Crossfading audio at beginning and ending of video The html5 video tag has a loop attribute. When playing a video in a continuous loop, it doesn't do this seamlessly. I hear cracks and pops at the beginning. With ffmpeg I am able to trim .05 seconds from the start and end to make audio and video uniform. That helped a lot but still not fully smooth when played in a loop. Then crossfade came into question. How can I gradually lower the volume at the end of video and gradually raise the volume at the beginning?

ffmpeg .05 seconds from the start and end

for f in *.mp4; do
    duration=$(ffmpeg -i "$f" 2>&1 | grep "Duration"| cut -d ' ' -f 4 | sed s/,//)
    length=$(echo "$duration" | awk '{ split($1, A, ":"); print 3600*A[1] + 60*A[2] + A[3] }' )
    trim_start=.05
    trim_end=$(echo "$length" - .05 - "$trim_start" | bc)
    echo ffmpeg -ss "$trim_start" -i "$f" -c copy -map 0 -t "$trim_end" "${f%.mp4}-trimmed.mp4"
done

For purposes of this answer I'll assume the audio is encoded with an aac codec.

For each video:

Use ffmpeg to extract the sound track to its own file.

ffmpeg -i "${f%.mp4}" -vn -acodec copy "${f%-sound.aac}"

If not yet known, determine the duration of the audio file.  In some cases ffmpeg is known to give an incorrect duration (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10437750/how-to-get-the-real-actual-duration-of-an-mp3-file-vbr-or-cbr-server-side), so I'd use sox.

duration=$(sox soundtrack_before_processing.mp3 -n stat 2>&1 | sed -n 's#^Length (seconds):[^0-9]*\([0-9.]*\)$#\1#p')

Use sox to apply fades in and out.

sox "${f%-sound.aac}" "${f%-sound-with-fades.aac}" fade t $fade_in_seconds $duration $fade_out_seconds

Replace the audio track in the original video file with the faded track.

ffmpeg -y -i "${f%.mp4}" -i "${f%-sound-with-fades.aac}" -map 0:v -map 1 -vcodec copy -acodec aac -strict experimental -shortest "${%f-new.mp4}"


How to make a project for compilation videos? I am trying to create a project that will automatically convert videos to a compilation. Although not literally, but kinda.

I want to create project that will hold effects, motion data in specified duration, then import videos into them, is it possible to apply motion and effects to sequences?

Yes, in Premiere, you can create a master sequence consisting of nested sequences and apply motion and effects to those nested sequences within the master sequence.

And swap footage within those nested sequences as desired.


What part should I buy to render videos? I want to create & render videos (using SonyVegas, Adobe Premiere) to get fast rendering speed. I have optimized the program codecs/bitrates, but now want optimize hardware too:

Can I ignore CPU (they were used in the past) and just buy a good videocard (a.k.a. GPU) ?
Or does there exist  any special external part (attachable miner or etc..) , like this:

CPU's used to render graphics was a very very long time ago. GPU's surpassed CPU's for this almost 20 years ago. You absolutely do need to get a good graphics card, yes. Don't look for anything external - the amount of data transferred in and out of the graphics card means running through an interface will be so slow as to be unusable.
You'll want one of the cards from this list:

Nvidia Titan X.
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition.
Zotac GeForce GTX 980Ti AMP Extreme Edition.
Gigabyte Radeon R9 Fury X.
Sapphire Radeon R9 Nano.
MSI GeForce 1070 Gaming X.
Nvidia GeForce 1050 Ti.
AMD Radeon RX 480.

And more than likely, if you have never done this before, you'll need to get yourself a new motherboard to support the graphics card. And look at fast disk...


Reimporting from Camera for footage already in Timeline in FCPX I have created a video using FCPX using media from my GoPro and my Cannon camera, when trying to export the video I receive an error "Project has missing or offline titles, effects or generators".

I have identified the clips which are still used from external sources, however when reimporting clips as instructed nothing happens.

The files aren't imported, I'm stuck on how to export this file. I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting the media (the footage is still able to relink itself) but doesn't import. I have also tried restarting FCPX but that hasn't done the trick either.

UPDATE:
Actual error message when exporting...

The error you are having "Project has missing or offline titles, effects or generators" is kind of self explanatory, the project you are trying to export is missing on of the following from within the project timeline

Title (some text you have put on or used)
Effect (a fade in or fade out, wipe, etc)
Generator (any one of the build in generators)

so if you watch the project from start to finish you will see the issue, somewhere on the timeline there will be a missing

If you have not used any of these then there might be something wrong with the project and I would suggest re-doing the whole project again.

I don't think you have any problem with the "media" as such. Normally within FCPX you will see a "red" section where there is a problem.


Soundtrack recomendation I'm building a 1 min tv-ad for a college assignment and I'm looking for a "crescendo" music... something like

             but not as easily recognized because I don't want to people focusing on "where have i heard that before?!?"...

Extra info: The plot for the video is a craftsman that walks into a dark room, turn the lights on, removes a sheet from his tools, and crafts a... ... ... guess what?!? piece of crap chair ("anti-climax") that falls apart by itself, and i fade to a "don't stop practicing, Bla classes for only 19,99"...

That's a pretty funny idea! If you have $50 to spend, you can get royalty-free music from audiomicro.com. Incompetech.com also has royalty-free music; I don't know how much it costs.  And if you use iMovie (which comes free with every Mac), their FREE audio library might include something you could use.  You could even splice together several songs into one to get the effect you want.


What are supported stream formats for h.265 I wanted to know what are the possible streaming formats for streaming a video using H.265.

Does H.265 support rtsp and rtmp based streaming?

Currently, I am using ffmpeg to live stream the camera feed from my Android phone to the Wowza streaming server.

The following command throws no errors but the streaming does not begin from ffmpeg. I mean the bit rate logs for transfer do not show up.

ffmpeg -f image2pipe -vcodec mjpeg -i - -c -copy -f hevc -vcodec libx265 -f rtsp rtsp://10.31.5.126:1935/app2/myStream

That command isn't well-formed. First, you specify copy, then specify a raw HEVC format with HEVC encoding and then RTSP as an output format.

Try

ffmpeg -f image2pipe -vcodec mjpeg -i - -vcodec libx265 -f rtsp rtsp://10.31.5.126:1935/app2/myStream


Premiere Pro CS6 preview problem: other application shows through Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this question, but, I'm having a issue with Premiere Pro CS6 from Creative Cloud.  Whenever I put footage in the timeline this happens: .  The file's encoding is fine and it happens with every file.  I'm running it on a MacBook Pro Retina.  Does anyone have any ideas on how I could try and get Premiere working?

It looks like a problem with the playback engine.  I would try updating your video card drivers and/or making sure the playback engine (in the project/ project settings/general menu) is set to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only.  If that doesn't work, I'd try uninstalling and re-installing Premiere.

I don't know what can cause it on Mac OS, but on Windows seeing something from another application through a portion of a window is generally a sign of a graphics driver being misconfigured or misused by the software in question.


Keynote video pausing/playing I have an idea for linking a keynote presentation with a video (exported from a 3d tool).  The idea is that each time you 'click' (as you would to move to the next slide/transition) it would play x more frames of the video then pause.  So frame 1-30 might be the first animation, and it would pause on frame 30.  Then, you click again and it plays 31-60, stopping on 60.

Is such a thing possible and if so how would I achieve it?  Assume a video file is available in the required format.

Many thanks.

The easiest way I can think of would be to actually do it as multiple videos and stills.  Have the first video play and then go to a still of the last frame.  The next would be the next video clip followed by the still.  Continue doing that for the length of it.  Not sure if it works like that in Keynote or not, but that's how I'd do it in any of my sequencing/presentation packages.


Are there technical issues with doing video reviews of software? I see plenty of people online reviewing physical products and video games, but rarely ever plain old software. Is there a technical reason for this? Is it more difficult?

I have an interest in providing video reviews of desktop software and phone/tablet apps, but I saw there's very few people doing that online and don't want to jump into something just to find out there's a good reason no one's doing it.

I think it is mostly a structural thing.  Games generally involves simple interaction with a lot of similar content.  Hardware devices have a physical interface and while they can run lots of different software, the capabilities of the device are reasonably easy to describe.

For general productivity software, the interactions are complex, but not so deep, thus it is harder to review in video form.  You see many video tutorials about how to do particular things, but a review is concerned with glancing over a lot of information about the product and doesn't give much interesting visual content to go along with it.

For a game, you can show some gameplay while you talk about the review, but what do you put on the screen for a video review of say, Photoshop?  The main screen of Photoshop is the main screen of Photoshop.  You don't have enough time to show all the new stuff and if you don't have time to fully show it, then what do you put on screen while you mention the new things and how they work?

Try it for yourself, read a software review sometime and think about what you would put on screen while reading it if you were to produce a video form of the review.  It's really hard to come up with visually interesting content that would fill the space.  Now you could simply have a video of you sitting there talking about it, but that is slower to consume than reading an article and so doesn't add a whole lot of value.

There simply isn't really any interesting visual interaction that video can handle better than text and simple screen shots that can setup in advance and put into a written review do a better job of naturally showing how a new feature works in a concise manner than video could.


Most-efficient inexpensive way to speed/slow video track to sync with audio track? My machines are a few Android tablets (not the newest, but not too old either) as well as a Mac running OS X 10.9.5 (not about to upgrade the OS - long and irrelevant story why). Sometimes I do a presentation where I record separately the video track and the audio track - and then selectively speed-and-slow parts of the video track to sync with the audio --- thereby producing something similar to whiteboard animation.

Here's my question. The current way I do the speeding-up and slowing-down is through iMovie -- where I load the video, strip the audio that comes with me (which is just the sounds that are in the room at the time) load the audio that it is meant to go with --- and then I split the video clip at the right places, and for each segment, adjust the speed manually, thereby getting the video to sync with the audio. It's a slightly tedious process --- and I'd like something a tad more efficient. Say, something that would allow me to select key points where I map the audio track to a corresponding key point in the video track -- and maybe let the program then automatically speed-up and slow-down the video segments between those key-points so that things sync. Would make the process much less tedious.

Here's the thing though -- I am on a very limited budget -- and therefore, if the only options for something like this are too expensive, I probably will then just go on doing it the way I'm currently doing it through iMovie (which is tedious - but gets the job done). I can spend a little money, but something expensive is just out-of-the-question for me - and will remain so for a while it looks like. I'd like to have more money to spend on expensive tools (and if I had such money, I would have been using FinalCut Pro rather than iMovie for example) but the reality of the situation is that I don't have much money to spend.

So --- any suggestions what tool I can use to more-easily speed-slow the segments of the video track to sync with the audio track?

Well you could download a trial 30 day copy of the legacy version of Adobe After Effects CS6. It allows a full unrestricted 30 day install trial.

From there, you could take your footage in, place the master clip in a composition, and instead of cutting it, use the the time warp feature, which will give you smooth keyframes where you can adjust up the speed to X, then place a keyframe if you notice it begin to slip, and set a keyframe to slow it down a bit. This will provide ramping, which basically "cuts" the clip in half over and over again, and does all the math for you, to make the smooth changes in speed. Then render it out. Premiere might also have that function- it's also included in the CS6 Production Premium Bundle, google the download link, and you can install and try for 30 days without purchase.


vary the color of repeated shape in After Effects I have a shape, in a shape layer, let's say a triangle. I apply a repeater to the shape, and I get lots of them. I can change the distance between them and their rotation ...
My question is: Is there a way to change their color? I mean to control what fill or stroke color each of the cloned ones have? either a random color or even specified color for each?

I don't think it's possible with repeater. You could do this with expressions and multiple duplicates of the shape however.

Here's an example I came up with:

And here's how I did it:

Firstly make your initial shape. Now duplicate that shape (with the shape selected hit
ctrl / ⌘+D). You should see this:

Note that we'll be making as many copies as we want later, but for the moment only make one, and get it set up so that we can duplicate it and not have to apply expressions to dozens of copies individually.
For each of the properties you want to alter with every repetition we'll add an Expression Control effect, as a handy way to be able to control the whole thing from a single slider.
Say we wanted to alter the position, scale and rotation: we'd add a Point Control effect to control position another for scale, and an Angle Control for rotation. Expression controls are in Effects>Expression Controls>

For ease of use rename each effect suitably. I've changed "Point Control" to "offset" and "scale ctrl", and changed "Angle Control" to "rotation":

We're going to add expressions to control the transform>Position property, the Transform>Rotation property and the Transform>Scale property of each shape object. Note that this is the property inside the shape, not the Transform properties for the layer.

In order to increment the rotation and scale etc. for each duplicate of the Polystar shape we have to find its index, or its serial number so to speak. With layers this is relatively easy, each layer has an index property, but shapes within a layer are layer sub-objects so we have to use a bit of magic to get the index of each. This thread is where I got the info I needed to work it out.

the key bit of the expression you need is this:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;

The variable shapeIndex now gives you a unique index for each duplicate that you create. This index can then drive the value of the various properties.

  Skip this section if you're not interested in how it works

  The expression propertyGroup(2) returns the string "Polystar 2" and we
  use javascript string function split() to split it on the space
  which returns an array ["Polystar", "2"].
  We select the second member
  of that array (or member[1], since javascript numbers arrays starting
  at 0) which returns "1". If javascript wasn't so sloppy with types we'd have to
  explicitly convert the string "1" into the integer 1, but it does the
  conversion without even being told. Yay Javascript!

So to add an offset to each duplicated shape layer we then use the shapeIndex variable and the expression control.
Firstly we'll add an expression to the shape's Transform>Position property. alt-click on the stopwatch next to the property to set an expression for that property. It will look like this:

Delete what is there by default and paste in the shapeIndex variable definition mentioned above:
shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
hit return (not enter) to start a new line
Now use the pickwhip to get the value of the Expression Control Effect that we created for the offset:

Now we multiply that offset by the shapeIndex variable. The expression should now look like this:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
effect("offset")("Point")*shapeIndex

So if your offset is [20, 20], then the fist duplicate will have an offset of [20,20], the next [20,20]*2 which is [40, 40], then [60, 60] and so on. You'll be able to change the value of this point control and have the duplicates update as you do it, without having to type any more code.
The same applies to rotation:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
effect("rotation")("Angle")*shapeIndex;
And scale. Scale is a bit different because we want to increment the difference between 100 and the value of the controll - if the control is 110% we want to add 10% to the scale. And once we start adding vectors and scalars it gets more complicated - we have to unpack the array, and the integer and pack it up again. So we use this expression:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
[100+ (effect("scale ctrl")("Point")[0]-100)*shapeIndex, 100+ (effect("scale ctrl")("Point")[1]-100)*shapeIndex];

If we only wanted uniform scale we could use a slider Expression Control effect, and the the same sort of expression we use for rotation:

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(2).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
(effect("scale ctrl")("Slider")/100)*shapeIndex;
Lastly we want to control the colour. Colour in AE is a four-element array [R, G, B, Alpha]. The individual components of the array are decimals from 0 to 1, where 1 is full on and 0 is off. So red is [1,0,0], yellow is [1,1,0] and mid grey is [0.5, 0.5, 0.5]. What you want to do with colour is up to you, but here's a demo. It fades out from red to green, with random variation on the blue channel.

Note that the shapeIndex definition in this expression is different. That's because the color property is nested down a level inside the fill property, so we have to use propertyGroup(3) instead of propertyGroup(2).

shapeIndex=thisProperty.propertyGroup(3).name.split(" ")[1]-1;
seedRandom(shapeIndex, timeless = true);
r=value[0]-shapeIndex/25.6;
g=value[1]+shapeIndex/25.6;
b=random()
[r , g, b, 255]

The seedRandom function creates a new, unchanging random number for each copy. If the timeless=true part is changed to timeless=false the random number will change with every frame. Another randomising function is the wiggle function, that softly changes values over time.
So now your shape layer should have two shape objects in it, and the second one will have expressions like this:

Here's where the magic happens
Now duplicate that second shape. If all goes well you should see new copies with offset, rotation and scale controlled by the expression control effects (make sure you have sane amounts for these values - the offset for example will default to half the width of the comp, which will move your duplicates out of sight. Try setting it to something like 50, 50 to start with). It should look something like the image at the start. Below is how the layer looks.

One of the cool things about doing it this way is that the expression is actually based on the name of the shape object. So the layer order doesn't matter. As you can see here, the copies are in front of the original, I can move them around so that they're behind, or individually move them up or down. Using the name is a little bit kludgy though. If I rename one of the shapes I might break all the expressions that control it.

If that's all too hard to read, here's the project


Is there an existing video format that records per-frame metadata? I wish to stream a video with dynamic metadata. I know I could just steam the video and metadata separately, but ideally I'd like them to be bound permanently.

Is there an existing protocol / encoding / format that does this? I could store the data in each frame using steganography, but this is not an ideal solution and is rather hacky.

If the frame-rate is not too high and you can associate a frame with a precise timestamp then the easiest would be to add the metadata as textual subtitles.

The other option is to mux the metadata as standard headers in .mp4 or similar container format. .mp4 can be broken down into multiple fragments, each one with its own header, and theoretically this can be done per frame. However, doing that for more than a few frames is extremely inefficient in terms of file size and performance. A variation of this method would be to extract every frame as an image (e.g. JEPG), and set its metadata.

Yet another option is to use stenography without any hacking, you just encode the metadata into a separate stream which is timestamp-synced with the main video stream. Most modern container formats, including .mp4, can accommodate multiple video streams in the same container (e.g., you can label the encoded metadata stream as the same content but in another language).


Difference Matte Keying software I would like to know if anyone out there knows of any free software, or software not as expensive as Adobe After Effects, that can do Difference Matte Keying? I have searched the web a little and have not come up with any promising results. Note: Chroma Keying is not an option. I am on a Windows 7 computer.

Thank you in advance for your time, and possible help.

Blender, which is free and open-source, can do difference matte keying.

I don't know if it's better or worse than After Effects' keyer because I haven't used it before.


Home and end keys not working in kdenlive i'm on kdenlive and for some reason the home and end keys aren't working ctrl+left or right takes me to the beginning or end of each clip but not home or end keys, i have no idea what's going on, any ideas? thanks

The online documentation seems to indicate: <ctrl>
+<Home> to go to the beginning of a project, and <Ctrl>+<End> to go to the end of a project ?  (I found the doc with a very simple google search: kdeenlive hotkeys )
If you indeed press that, check if your keyboard is not in some kind of numerical mode: many keyboards offer different mode for the numeric-pad keys (so that you can go to numerical mode and quickly enter many numbers in a spreadsheet, or go back to the other mode and quickly use the default usage of those same keys), and a <Fn>+<some_key> (or sometimes <ctrl>+<Fn>+<some_key>)  usually activates/deactivates that special mode.


Is it possible to loop a 360 degree YouTube video offline? I want to put a 360-degree video from YouTube downloaded offline and uploaded to WordPress so the user can immediately view a VR/Google Cardboard split-screen vid (no VPN required). The video would be a continuous loop and act as a "simulation" of an environment. Also, there would be the same capabilities of moving the phone around/gyroscope effect to view the video from a web browser.

You can use marzipano which will provide all the code necessary for the viewer and provide you with a Javascript API for customization.

A quick Google search found me this Wordpress plugin which claims to do what you want as well.

Honestly, what you're asking is quite complicated. If you can't do it on your own using the tools linked above, I suggest you hire a web developer to do it for you.


Is there a low-cost automated pan/tilt/zoom system? Our church wants to install a video camera to record services and sermons, nothing fancy - here's what I'm thinking:

Mount a remote-control pan/tilt head on the wall or railing of the balcony
During the service, attach a video camera that has remote-control zoom/start/stop control
Have software that lets the operator hit buttons that say "pan/tilt/zoom so the camera is pointing at the pulpit" or "pan/tilt/zoom so the camera shows the entire altar area".

The challenge, of course, is that we don't have $5000 to spend on one of the fancy commercial systems (nor do we need something that sophisticated).

We have a Canon VIXIA HF-R52 that you can control remotely (zoom/start/stop), and I'm considering the Panasonic CTR-1 Remote Pan Tilt Cradle, what I can't tell is whether the controls for either let you say "go to zoom level 8.3, pan 20 degrees from center and 30 degrees down from horizontal" (which is what I would need, in order to give the operator a button for "pan/tilt/zoom to the altar".

BTW, I don't want the system that follows motion, or requires everyone to carry a special tag that the PT head detects and follows.

Is there a low-cost solution that gives me what I need?

I saw this question: Remote pan/tilt/zoom cameras that aren't expensive which is similar, but didn't go far enough.  As far as I can tell, the low-end pan/tilt heads let you say "pan to the left" but they don't let you say "pan to 30 degrees left" which is what I am looking for.

What you look for is probably a combination of the Bescor / Hague MP360 motorized pan tilt head with the CamRanger controller. CamRanger are selling the combo under their label, you can see some nice video explanations at their web site. If you don't need the extra pizzaz then you can look at just the MP360, or even the lower-end MP101 which is a great product too.

Note that these heads have a tilt limit of 30deg, so, depending on your setting, you may have to throw in a correction plate.


Video Subtitles Specification [CHK and PAC] I'm wondering if any of you have experience dealing with CHK and PAC subtitles.

I'm working on a project (from a software point of view) and we need to open these subtitles and convert them into a nicer format that can be used by some standard media players.

So my 2 questions are:

Does anyone know the specification of the subtitle format? (this is bit technical, but will help us open the file and transform the contents to whatever we want)
Does anyone know any application that can transcode these subtitles to other formats?

This might be helpfull Subtitle-Edit for .PAC subtitles.
The .PAC subtitle format is binary format
For other subtitle format, .CHK is far I know the file format for "Chunks" or fragments of hard disk after doing CHCKDISK command. But also the CHK file extension is associated with the SSConvert application used to distribute data format containing multiple streams (typ. languages) of subtitle text, timing and presentation style data for video.


Adobe After Effects vs. Final Cut Express for chroma keying Which is better for chroma keying, Adobe After Effects or Final Cut Express and why?

I haven't tried chroma keying in Final Cut Express, but I'm pretty sure it depends on your needs and workflow. If you use Premiere for editing movies than AE should be more integrated.

Yet, if you really want to get awesome results and have some spare bucks, I'd say you look at some plugins. After all neither AE nor FCE is specialized in chroma keying. There are plenty of companies out there that build specialized plugins that might give you better results, and they usually offer them for all video solutions (AE, Premiere, FC, etc)


Permanent metadata for videos Is there any existing container (video format) in which the metadata is immutable?
I am new to this topic and my use case is that once a video is recorded, I want to preserve the metadata (for ex location, time, some caption used while sharing it, etc) in such a way that no one can alter this information, or worst case, only the original creator can do so.

Containers don't support encryption of metadata, and without encryption everyone may change what he wants (even damaging by his action the whole multimedia file).

There is a possibility to make a checksum of your file (as SHA-256), but it will not protect to change it, it only helps detect if the file is in its original state (not changed).


H264 framerate information? Does raw H264 data (stripped from an RTP stream) contain information about the framerate?

Or is the framerate derived either from RTP timestamps for stream reproduction or written the container files (avi, mkv...) when playing a video from a file?

RTP is just a protocol for data transfer, it doesn't contain any specific information about the internals of the data transmitted.

The information should be contained in the .h264 stream. The SPS (Sequence Parameter Set) is what you want to look at, it should contain all the meta information you need. Here is a very nice detailed look at how the SPS is set up: https://www.cardinalpeak.com/the-h-264-sequence-parameter-set/

Though in theory you should be able to just mux this into a mp4 and it should play fine.


video letterboxing in premiere pro with the same image as background I am creating a slide show in premiere pro and the slideshow contains few portrait images and few box images. which give a black letterbox. I want the letterbox to show the same image blurred as background.

example:

or this youtube video: (I dont want to add links)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qm07MUkgiA

Copy the picture into a second video track. Then, zoom in the picture on the lower track (i.e. increase it's size in the effect settings panel). Then, apply a gaussian blur from the effects panel and raise the blur factor in the effect settings panel until you are satisfied with the result.

If you need more detailed instructions, please provide some additional info on how you set up your project in Premiere Pro, what you have tried to achieve this and why it didn't work.


Is it safe to use the yuva420 pix_format option with ffmpeg to encode webm videos? I am encoding png image sequences to both webm and mp4 formats using ffmpeg. My goal is to achieve perceptually lossless videos, with the smallest file size I can reasonably achieve.

The webm videos I produced worked fine and were playable in many browsers, until I switched to a later version of ffmpeg, which I compiled from source. (The reported ffmpeg version is N-91380-g46fb150, whatever that means).

The output webm videos still played fine in VLC, but browsers like Chromium and Opera would display them with the colors totally messed up. It seems like the blue in the video is mostly replaced with green - anyway it looks really weird.

I checked the color mode with ffprobe on the videos produced with old and new versions of ffmpeg:

The old ffmpeg webm videos that worked everywhere:
vp9 (Profile 1), yuv444p(tv)
The new ffmpeg webm videos, which work in VLC, but have messed up colors in browsers:
vp9 (Profile 1), gbrp(pc, gbr/unknown/unknown, progressive)

The ffmpeg command I was using didn't specify any pix_format - and I'm pretty sure it was something like this accross old and new ffmpeg versions:
ffmpeg -framerate 30 -f image2 -i frames/%04d.png -i my_audio.flac -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -tile-columns 2 -crf 18 -c:a libopus -b:a 128k -r 30 -g 300 -y my_video.webm

I read somewhere about pix_format and tried this (note the yuva420p option):
ffmpeg -framerate 30 -f image2 -i frames/%04d.png -i my_audio.flac -c:v libvpx-vp9 -pix_fmt yuva420p -b:v 0 -tile-columns 2 -crf 18 -c:a libopus -b:a 128k -r 30 -g 300 -y my_video.webm

I chose yuva instead of yuv in the hopes it would enable the alpha channel, because my input png images have transparency. It seemed to work... the videos now play fine in browsers, like with the old version of ffmpeg. Compared to the old ffmpeg result with default pix_format, ffprobe shows a slight difference. It reports:
vp9 (Profile 0), yuv420p(tv, progressive) and alpha_mode: 1

Interestingly, the output webm file size using yuva420p is smaller than if I omit the pix_format option. With yuva420p it's about 2/3 the size of the output file that uses the default gbrp mode and messes up colors in browser playback.

So it seems like pix_fmt yuva420p is the way to go. But since I really have no idea about color spaces / pixel formats, my question is: What color mode / pix_format option should I choose, given I want high quality webms, small'ish file size, and compatibility with many browsers? Are there any drawbacks with using yuva420p instead of the default gbrp, or another pix_format option?

And for bonus points ;) if yuva420p is OK, why would ffmpeg change the default pix_format value away from yuv to gbrp?

YUV color encoding with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling is the only widely safe pixel format for web playback, although for certain codecs, other pixel formats may be supported.

FFmpeg auto-selects the pixel format for the output as not all encoders support all pixel formats. It will select the pixel format which best preserves the source bit depth, chroma sampling scheme and the color encoding scheme, from among the formats supported by the encoder. PNGs have RGB pixel format and until two years ago, ffmpeg did not support encoding RGB formats for the VPx encoders, so it would select a YUV format with full chroma (4:4:4). Since RGB became supported in FFmpeg for VPx, it will select a RGB variant like gbrp.

Auto-selection is overriden by manually specifying -pix_fmt.

YUV streams can be more efficiently compressed than RGB.


After Effects - How to zoom on track points I want to mimic effects some YouTubers use where they track an object then zoom in on the object that is being tracked. An example would be someone's head moving in a frame, and it cuts to a close up that moves with them. So far I've got track points but I'm stuck from there. A video of what I would like to get is here:

I think you just need to break this into two steps. First, do the motion tracking and apply the tracking data to whatever. Render that out, or sub-comp it. Second, use AE (or just use your video editing software) to do the zoom-in where needed. There's not much benefit to doing it all in one pass, as far as I can see from your example.


How to merge videos side by side if one of them is cropped I have 2 videos of the same resolution, but I need to crop one of them and then merging them side by side, so that general height would be equal of height of non cropped video. I.e. they should look the same size after merge. Just cropped video should look like it zoomed in.

I tried to do that, but uncropped video being cropped during merge.
I cropped like that:

ffmpeg -i L.MOV -filter:v "crop=in_w-28:in_h-28" -c:a copy LC.MOV

Then merge which crops right video:

ffmpeg -i LC.MOV -i R.MOV -filter_complex '[0:v]pad=iw*2:ih[int];[int][1:v]overlay=W/2:0[vid]' -map [vid] -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset veryfast LCR.MOV

Here I drew what I need:

And here what I'm getting:

Use

ffmpeg -i L.MOV -i R.MOV -filter_complex '[0:v]crop=in_w-28:in_h-28,scale=640:480,setsar=1,pad=iw*2:ih[int];[int][1:v]overlay=W/2:0[vid]' -map [vid] -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset veryfast LR.MOV

Since you want a zoomed-in effect, after cropping, you should rescale it back to 640x480. Your crop dimensions are disproportionate to the input dimensions so I have reset SAR to 1. You can skip this if you apply crop=in_w-28:in_h-21.

To apply the crop to the right video, use

ffmpeg -i L.MOV -i R.MOV -filter_complex '[1:v]crop=in_w-28:in_h-21,scale=640:480[int];[0:v]pad=iw*2:ih[left];[left][int]overlay=W/2:0[vid]' -map [vid] -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset veryfast LR.MOV


Why does VLC player convert a 4-minute mp4 to a 4-hour webm? I used standard webm settings in VLC player 2.2.1 (the latest) to convert a 4-minute mp4 made in Handbrake. In the conversion panel it says "Streaming 04:00" but the end result is "03:49:15" and, on two further attempts, "03:56:28" and "04:04:23". The file size is almost the same as the mp4 (4MB).

The length of the webm video - i.e. more than 4 hours - is confirmed by MediaInfo and by Firefox native player, videojs player, and VLC player. In VLC player, I tried clicking on the progress bar to explore exactly what takes up 4 hours, but on-click it closes the video. In Firefox, the same test returns the video to frame 1.

Update (30 August)

I did a test on this "generic mp4": http://download.wavetlan.com/SVV/Media/HTTP/H264/Talkinghead_Media/H264_test1_Talkinghead_mp4_480x360.mp4. Do not know if it was done with Handbrake. Then converted it to webm, using default settings, with VLC 2.2.1.

Results: The mp4 is 00:00:14s, the webm is 22:40:00s. But the webm is not really 22 hours long, it plays for 14s just like the mp4. However, in a html5 player, Firefox and Chrome native players and VLC player, the progress bar gives the length as 22:40:00.

Yes, it seems to be a problem of generated timecode. See https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/12713#no1

Switch to ffmpeg (with a GUI like Avanti) to avoid this issue. My answer to an earlier webm question may guide you on settings.


How to create “diagonal wipe” effect in FFmpeg? Is it possible to create "diagonal wipe" effect in FFmpeg between two videos? An example: the first video is playing and after some time the second video is replacing the first video starting from the right upper angle. On images below, blue color means the first video, green color means the second video.

Basic syntax is

ffmpeg -i old.mp4 -i new.mp4 -filter_complex
       "[1]format=yuva444p,
           geq=lum='p(X,Y)':
           a='st(1,(1+W/H/TN)*H/D);if(lt(W-X,((ld(1)*T-Y)/(ld(1)*T))*ld(1)*T*TN),p(X,Y),0)':
           enable='lte(t,D)',setpts=PTS+D/TB[new];
        [0:v][new]overlay" wipe.mp4

This will unveil the new video over the old starting from the top-right.

What this basically does is add an alpha plane to the new video and then manipulate transparency so that when overlaid a wipe is effected.

Two of the variables will need to be replaced with numbers by you.

D is the duration or the wipe, in seconds.

TN is the tangent of the acute angle between the wipe frontier and the vertical. This is the ratio of the horizontal wipe speed to the vertical wipe speed. So, TN = 1 represents a wipe at 45 deg and TN = 2 represents a wipe at atan (2) = 63.4 deg.


Cannot create a multi cam clip in Resolve 16 I'm a newbie when it comes to DiVince Resolve so hopefully this question isn't too stupid... I'm using version 16 and am trying to create a multi-came editing session. There are many tutorials out there and they all have a screenshot something like this:

I just dragged my three videos in, selected them, and right clicked and I see something very different:

That's all I have, not the huge menu that all the tutorials have. What step have I missed?

To see that contextual menu item, switch to the Edit page.  You are on the Cut page.  The Cut page uses a different method to create multicam clips, called the "Sync Bin."  Sync bin is most useful when you have sync'ed timecode on all of your cameras, which you don't have, I promise.  So, switch to the Edit page, and right-click on the clips you want to turn into a multicam clip there.  Once done, if you prefer to work on the Cut page, you can switch back.

Personally, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with the Edit page.  When BlackMagic introduced the Cut page, they intended it to be a simplified, minimal approach to editing.  To do this, they removed access to much of Resolve's core functionality. As you've discovered, it is sometimes impossible to accomplish basic tasks without switching into the full UI. This defeats the purpose of having a simplified one.  To their credit, the Cut page is a work in progress, and BMD have already improved it over its initial incarnation.


Recommendation to Shooting Long Videos I'm seeking recommendations on how to shoot a long lecture by a guest speaker that is coming to town. I currently own a Canon t4i. My main question is what do I need to avoid my camera from spazzing out during the lecture. What SD card might I need? Will the battery run out? How to avoid that?

Thanks

The biggest trick you will run in to is the 4GB file size limit and the 30 minute record time limit.  You will need to monitor the recording and resume several times or use a third party software like Magic Lantern to overcome the limitations.  As for battery, there is a DC adapter available that you can buy if battery life is a concern.


ffmpeg pixel format definitions ffmpeg -pix_fmts lists many pixel formats. In my ffmpeg, there are 66 different pixel formats that start with yuv. A few of them are familiar to me (e.g., yuv422p), but most of them are not (e.g., yuva422p16be).

Where are these pixel formats defined?

If your question was

  Where are these pixel formats defined?

Go to http://ffmpeg.org/download.html and download the source of ffmpeg. Then unpack it

tar -xavf FILENAME.tar.*

and descend to the folder in the source code that is called libavutil

cd ffmpeg-*/libavutil/

and open the file pixfmt.h where you will find a description of all pixel formats. A few sample lines

AV_PIX_FMT_YUV420P,   ///< planar YUV 4:2:0, 12bpp, (1 Cr & Cb sample per 2x2 Y samples)
AV_PIX_FMT_YUYV422,   ///< packed YUV 4:2:2, 16bpp, Y0 Cb Y1 Cr
AV_PIX_FMT_RGB24,     ///< packed RGB 8:8:8, 24bpp, RGBRGB...
AV_PIX_FMT_BGR24,     ///< packed RGB 8:8:8, 24bpp, BGRBGR...
AV_PIX_FMT_YUV422P,   ///< planar YUV 4:2:2, 16bpp, (1 Cr & Cb sample per 2x1 Y samples)

Additionally you can read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUV and it’s cited sources and external links.


What is this kind of video artifact called (grafitti) This lyrics video contains multiple examples, ie. 0:41 to 0:43 and 1:00 to 1:02 and 1:31 to 1:38.
I mean the grafitti zipping quickly through. I've seen this effect earlier, but I don't know what it's called.

Thanks in advance.

That is neither an artifact nor graffiti. That is a (simulation of) writing directly onto a film leader.


Change default audio track of Video file using ffmpeg I have a video file with extension .mkv. It contains 2 Audio Tracks.

English
Hindi

English Audio track is the default Audio track. I am trying to set the default Audio track to Hindi because when I try to play it on my LED, it plays English Audio track as it is the default track.

I used below command to set Hindi as default Audio track.

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:1 output.mkv

But, it still keeps English as default track.

Am I missing anything?

ffmpeg -i "input.mkv" \
-map 0:0 \
-map 0:2 \
-map 0:1 \
-disposition:a:0 default \
-disposition:a:1 none \
-c copy "output.mkv"

input
use video stream (0:0)
make 2nd audio stream (Hindi) the 1st
make 1st audio stream (English) the 2nd
use the new 1st audio stream (Hindi) as default
remove the default from the new 2nd audio stream (English)
create output without transcoding


Stabilizing GoPro videos When I watched videos on GoPro's youtube profile, they seem to me almost perfectly stable. And when I attached my action cam to helmet and tried to record during skiing, the video was very shaky.

I am aware, that videos on their profile are advertising videos made by pros. So my question is to pros - can you tell if the videos were stabilized with some software? Do consumer products have such capabilities?

If the videos were not stabilized, what can be done, to achieve more stable videos, when recording from helmet or hand held (pole-mounted) camera?

Software that I know of:

Virtualdub with Deshaker plugin:
http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm
Sony Vegas Pro since version 10 has a built-in stabilization plugin
Depan for Avisynth - http://avisynth.org.ru/depan/depan.html - it can get quite complicated but there are sample scripts to help getting started.

Youtube can detect if the footage is shaky, though it's not always working so well and it applies to the whole video.
My personal favorite is the Virtualdub route. Just remember to save it to a lossless format if you plan on editing it further.


How to capture documentary quality footage of tiny subjects Hi, guys. I just watched the David Attenborough documentary: Life In The Undergrowth:
Invasion Of The Land.

And I was wondering: What sort of equipment would I need, in order to get that kind of footage? Is it possible with typical modern retail-consumer class A/V hardware; or only at great expense - with professional, specialized gear?

I've included a short clip to illustrate the actual size of some typical subjects; followed by a copy of the entire documentary for your viewing pleasure (if anybody's interested).

Unfortunately, they're both in SD/Lo-Res; but should (hopefully) give you a decent idea of what I'm talking about.

Here's a short clip on YouTube:
(min 144p→360p max)

Here's the full video on Dailymotion:
(min 380p→480p max)

Cheers.

Up until the high-frame rate (HFR) section of the video I would have said that all you need is a Canon MP-E 65mm Macro Lens, a nice LED light (so as not to fry the poor bugs with all the IR radiation that comes from tungsten halogen sources), and a camera with a reasonable video codec that accepts Canon lenses.  However, the HFR section is clearly in the specialized territory of a Phantom camera, which is very expensive.


how to do the video commentary with you in the corner of the screen? I've seen a lot of let's plays were the person will comment on the game while they're in the corner of the screen doing their reactions. I am wanting to do this for a video I'm working on but I'm not entirely sure how to since I'm not doing a let's play review and not very familiar with editing videos. My friend says I need a web cam but I can't afford one and I don't know if there's a way for me to just use a regular camera and upload it from that. Plus I don't if the program I'm using (iMovie) even has the ability to do this.
Can someone please help me?

Since you didn't answer @Ryan's question, I'll assume your talking about video editing, not live streams.

What you're talking about is a very basic editing technique called a video overlay. Obviously, you're going to need two video recordings for that, one of which is the screen capture. There are several pieces of software out there that will record your computer screen while you play your game (or whatever you're doing), e.g. fraps. The second video is the one that shows you. To record that, you will need either a camera or a webcam (careful with the latter, those usually provide poor quality). You record yourself, copy the video files to your computer (or connect the camera to your computer and have it save the recording directly to your hard drive) and import them to iMovie. Then you just have to put one video on top of the other and you're done – even though iMovie is a consumer-centered software with not that many features, it's sufficient to do video overlays. Here's a simple tutorial:

If you want to do that as a live effect while streaming, the required software and setup is a bit more complicated – there are several good tutorials out there.


Would this camera light solve a lot of my indoor shooting problems? I have a Rebel T5 Canon camera I use to shoot short videos with. Interviews, short video sketches, scenes from plays. In my living room.

I'm having a huge problem with indoor shooting. No matter how many light fixtures I turn on, bring in from other rooms, or train directly at the person I'm shooting; no matter what kind of bulbs I use, incandescent, CFL, or "flood"; no matter how much I play around with the ISO levels or aperture: everything, and especially the person I'm shooting, comes out either too dark and grainy, or yellow, or too harsh and overexposed (and yellow).

I'm not a cheap moron: I'm a painter on a tight budget.

Would this camera light solve a lot of my problems?

It's NEEWER® 160 LED CN-160 Dimmable Ultra High Power Panel Digital Camera / Camcorder Video Light, LED Light for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Panasonic,SONY, Samsung and Olympus Digital SLR Cameras, and it's selling for $30 on Amazon.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

This light fixture will not solve your problems.  As a painter, you surely understand the need to transfer paint to your canvas, so you choose the correct tool for the job.  It could be a brush, an airbrush, a palette knife, your fingers, or you might just pour it on straight out of the bucket.  So, too, must you learn to transfer light to your scene.

A light such as an ARRI 300W Fresnel is a scale model of the Ur-light for video.  This design pattern scales down to 150W and scales up to 24000W, though it is difficult to work with more than the 1000W model in a home and more often than not you need dedicated electricity to handle more than 2000W in a commercial environment.

The basic Fresnel has good "throw", meaning that it gets a meaningful amount of its light onto your subject in a scene.  Because a Fresnel can be focused, you can adjust it from a meaningful flood to a meaningful spot (much more meaningful than a 75W light bulb from Home Depot that lists itself as spot or flood).  The basic Fresnel is also a standard input to many lighting modifiers, such as a soft box, which means that in addition to creating "hard" light (distinct shadows) you can create "soft" light (soft shadows or almost no shadows).

Straight-on lighting such as the above device will make your video look a bit like what a photo looks like when you use a flash (if it even has enough light to do its job).  Which is not pretty.  To light an interview, it is best to use Three Point Lighting as a starting point, and then creatively change from there.  You can sometimes ditch the rim light.  You can sometimes get away without fill.  You can sometimes get away without key (especially if you are interviewing a criminal who does not want their face shown on video).  But Three Point Lighting is the starting point.

Of course you can get fresnel lamps with other lighting elements than tungsten: LED, HMI, Plasma, etc.  But these are all more expensive than "hot lights".

For your living room, 300W may be Just The Thing, or you may need to step up (650W) or down (150W) a level.  But be advised that the way luminosity of LED panel lights is measured, it is much more about the source light level, not the level of light that actually reaches the subject 8' into the room.

Also, if you are getting blown-out highlights, it means your contrast levels (lighting ratios) are wrong.  Again, Three Point Lighting is the ticket for balancing highlights and shadows, and with a little practice you can dial in 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 ratios between key and fill, avoiding the typical 10:1 or more ratios you get with only a single key light.


Home office studio setting to create Calculus videos - Lighting issues I've been meaning to start creating professional looking Calculus videos for university students and my current setup is the following:

I know what you are thinking, and you are absolutely right: The setup is very amateur.
I would like to create professional videos and my current equipment is a Canon T5i and a 10-18mm Canon lens. I have a whiteboard (1,90m width by 1,20m height) and the distance from the camera to the blackboard is around 1,80m.

The biggest problem is the lighting: it is creating these shadows when I stand next to the whiteboard and, depending on the angle, since the whiteboard is highly reflective, the viewer can see thoss "lighting spots" (please check images attached).

How can I get a quality video on this office? Which lighting setup would help? How would you do that with the least cost?

Thank you.

Lighting a green screen is even harder than lighting a whiteboard.  And performing in front of a green screen also requires practice different than that of writing on a whiteboard.

Here are two alternative strategies which you can possibly blend to taste.  The first, and most obvious, is to get a standard 4'x8' bead board.  Put that board on the wall opposite the white board.  Aim a focused, bright light to fill the 4'x8' bead board.  This will send diffuse light back to the talent and the whiteboard without a specular reflection.  If you need to, you can cheat the bead board to one side or the other so that you don't have a "warm spot" (a very large, diffuse hot-spot) in your whiteboard.  For illumination, start by looking at this ARRI 750W flood and then adjust to your favorite illumination source (LED, HMI, plasma, CFL, etc).  But don't lose focus and barn-door modifiers.  You can also raise the bead board off the floor to span the angle between the rear wall and the ceiling.  You can also place the bead board on the rear ceiling and bounce the lights toward the talent from on high.  The shadows, etc., will tell you how high the bead board needs to be to make everything look right.

The second strategy is to stay with the idea of a pair of side lights, but get a pair of tall vertical light baffles that you can use to completely shade the whiteboard from the lights.  Ideally the shadow pattern is such that the whiteboard itself is shaded from the lights but the talent in front of the whiteboard is not shaded.  Because white is so bright, you actually don't need a ton of light on the whiteboard itself--it will look white when the ambient (ceiling) light hits it.  But you do need light on the talent--skin tones are several stops darker than whiteboard white.  So let your side lights hit the talent and not the whiteboard.

It should be obvious you can combine these two ideas.  Beware of mixing color temperatures (i.e., don't use daylight CFLs for side lights and tungsten lights for the bounce board or things will look weird).


How do I set up a field recorder with camera/wireless monitoring? This has to do with production sound. If you're a mixer, please help me, because I cannot wrap my head around this. I am a total newbie.

Here's the scenario.

Not working explicitly with this device, but since it makes for a head scratching example, take the Zaxcom Maxx (http://www.trewaudio.com/store/Zaxcom-Maxx-Mixer-Recorder.html)

This nifty little recorder has several outputs.

1x TA5 Mono(?) tape out
1x TA5 "Aux 1/2" out, a sum of Out 1 & 2
1x TA5 Stereo(?) Return
2x XLR Outputs

I am assuming from Zaxcom's manual that they are all balanced connections.

NOW. I want to send my stereo mix from the Zaxcom Maxx to a camera, which has two Mic/Line selectable XLR inputs, AND to a Comtek M-216 transmitter.

I have no idea how to do this. Obviously for camera you would use the two XLR outs with some kind of twin/braided XLR cable, right? Does that cable even exist?

Do you use the tape out for the Comtek? TA5 to stereo mini?

Very confused. Please help.

Easiest bet, use a distribution amplifier.  If you need the same audio to both, a DA will boost the signal so that it can actually go to both.  Not sure what the inputs on the Comtek are though, the DA will generally work best if they can both take XLR in.  Also, are you mixing in stereo?  If not, do you need two XLR to the camera?

As for the cable to the camera, you could heat shrink wrap two XLRs if you can't find a basic 2 channel XLR snake (assuming you are looking to have only one "cable" going to the camera.  Any reason not to timecode sync them and combine in post if running two cables is really a problem.


How to add images at the end of an existing movie? I'd like to add some images at the end of a mp4 file via ffmpeg:

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Use this command:

ffmpeg -i "video" -loop 1 -t 3 -i "image" -f lavfi -t 3 -i anullsrc -filter_complex "[0:v] [0:a] [1:v] [2:a] concat=n=2:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -strict -2 -map "[v]" -map "[a]" output.mp4

Replace the t value with the duration that you want the image to stay. I've supplied the common encoding parameters. Replace those as needed.

For an image sequence, use

ffmpeg -i "video" -f image2 -framerate n -i "image" -f lavfi -t 3 -i aevalsrc=0 -filter_complex "[0:v] [0:a] [1:v] [2:a] concat=n=2:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -strict -2 -map "[v]" -map "[a]" output.mp4

Replace the n in framerate with the rate that you want.


Timelapse Countdown Timer in After Effects I'm sure someone out there must have done this before, but how do I create a countdown timer with hours, minutes and seconds that starts from a specific time and counts down at 71.928x speed?

71.928x because I took one frame every 3 seconds and I'm playing it back at 23.976fps.

I've tried using text expressions but to no avail.

You will have to do it with expressions, unfortunantly it is the only outside of possibly finding a 3rd Party plugin...

This is a good start, http://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/up-down-clock.html