How do I trim text/video in smaller increments? (for Kinetic Type Video) I want to trim a basic title element so it matches an audio file I have.
I want to drag the start of the title element to a marker on the timeline.
I can't do this because final cut keeps truncating the trim function.
How do I raise the resolution that I can trim at?

This behaviour is normal because a title element is bound to the video frame rate. All visual elements must start/end in "between" frames. In your example GIF you zoomed enough in and even can see the markers. Note the line just below the timecode.
The reason sound is not bound to this is because sound has a much greater Samplerate. If you think of Samplerate and Framerate as Data points over time then you understand video has commonly 24 or 25 (higher fps becomes more common) data points in a second, sound usually has 48000 data points per second.
Have your title element start at a frame what feels the best.


Trim the part of composition in After Effects along with its key frames I want to trim a composition b/w the two Composition marker (1) and Composition marker (2):

You see there are many layers with different key frames and I want to trim everything which lies in the selection area. So the rest of the part of the composition (left and right of the two Composition marker (1) and Composition marker (2)) combines and becomes a complete composition.

As Alex suggested, precomping is the answer to your question. There is no other way to have two separate compositions within one composition. Precomping is a normal part of the After Effects workflow, and is in fact necessary for many effects to work properly with nested elements.

It need not be messy – just organize your project well and label everything clearly. Learning to navigate between your comps with the Tab key will help you to use this workflow efficiently.


How to make YouTube video with screen projection in background? I want to know, how we can create YouTube videos like this channel:

In here we can notice that the Daniel Shiffman's laptop screen is projected in the background, but it doesn't look like a Projector projecting on the wall behind him.

Any suggestions?

I don't think you can achieve this on a live webcast with only a laptop. You will want either:

a dedicated PC with an I7 or better CPU, appropriate video hardware (Blackmagic capture card or comparable) and software switch (Wirecast or comparable), or
a hardware video switch (Blackmagic ATEM 1 M/E or comparable).

Having purchased both types of systems in the past few years, the two options come out to about the same price, and I'm partial to the hardware solution.

Once you have the hardware and software in place, you can greenscreen the entire room, which creates lighting issues, or only a section behind the lecturer and use picture-in-picture to minimize the amount of space that the green-screen requires (and the lighting problems that go with it).

After that, the output of the laptop is just an input to the capture card or ATEM switch.


Wobble/Wiggle effect in Adobe Premiere Pro CC Is there a way to add a “wiggle” to a keyframable value in Adobe Premiere Pro (CC)? For example, if I wanted an image to jitter back and forth, I could apply such an effect to the rotation value.

There is such an effect in Adobe After Effects: by adding an expression to a value, and typing wiggle(frequency, amplitude, octaves, amplitude multiplier, time) (with numbers instead of the arguments), the value will randomly shift up and down over time depending on what arguments you entered.

tl;dr: Is there a way to produce an effect in Premiere akin to the wiggle() expression in After Effects?

This might work:

You could build a project in after effects (or get someone else who has AE to build it for you?)

Get them to set a wiggle using Expressions.
Convert the expression to keyframes using the Animation menu --> Keyfraem Assistant --> convert to expression to keyframes.

Save the layer as an Essential Graphics template.

Open the Essential Graphics template in Premiere.

The item will have the positional wiggle, but you won't be able to modify the wiggle, or parent anything else to it (the positional variable in Premiere won't be wiggling).

I'm not sure whether this will work if you do not have AE installed - someone would have to try it and see).


Read audio Markers/Regions in Premiere? Premiere CC 2014 is unable to read marker data in a wave file.

I'm migrating from Vegas Pro, and this program is able to read markers from the start.

Vegas Pro:

Premiere Pro:

Is there a way to make Premiere read marker/region data?

Looks like Audition can read BWF markers but Premiere doesn't. So, two options are

1) to save separately the regions between markers.

or

2) export a WAV from Audition, with cue points that which Premiere seems to see.


Use of big name apps in a commercial video projects Does anyone know the legal side of including obvious brands such as Facebook/Instagram in commercial video projects? Or replicating a Facebook messenger motion graphic? For example, visuals of Young adults scrolling through an Instagram feed or typing into messenger to promote sharing of content? Are their licenses for these things or is it fine to use without in video projects?

Thanks in advance.

I'm no legal expert, certainly - so do take this 'advice' with a pinch of salt - and I'm not sure what you mean by commercial, but I'd probably err on the side of caution and, instead of replicating a Facebook post exactly, just do an approximation of it with motion graphics if you've got the time/budget.

To be honest, though, unless this is going out on TV, you're probably fine to use FB/Insta/Whateveragram provided that you're not suggesting that you're affiliated in any way and that those programs aren't the cause of crime/immoral action in the film.


Can anyone give me a thorough explanation of some of the FFMPEG commands? I am finally using FFMPEG after using programs like Virtualdub2 but I do need some clarity with some of the commands. Do not get me wrong, the resources that some people sent to me do help but I do some clarity on some of the commands. When you are inputting a video to convert another video, do need to type out the file location or just the video file?

That's a very general question, you will have to ask for a specific command if you want help since ffmpeg has a loooooot of options. But you can use the following command to get help:
-h      -- print basic options
-h long -- print more options
-h full -- print all options (including all format and codec specific options, very long)
-h type=name -- print all options for the named decoder/encoder/demuxer/muxer/filter/bsf/protocol
See man ffmpeg for detailed description of the options.

If the output is to long you something like: ffmpeg -h |more
And it shows a part of the text on the screen everytime you pess a key...


Stripping metadata sometimes doubles video, the second half of (doubled) video is without sound I use this command for stripping metadata:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map_metadata -1 -c copy output.mp4

Sometimes it works fine but occasionally the result is as

+----------------+----------------+
| Original video | Original video |
+----------------+----------------+
| Original sound |    No sound    |
+----------------+----------------+

I saved one output of such unsuccessful stripping:

ffmpeg -i ridiculousjump.mp4 -map_metadata -1 -c copy ridiculousjumpnomet.mp4
ffmpeg version N-85750-ga75ef15 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 6.3.0 (GCC)
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-cuda --enable-cuvid --enable-d3d11va --enable-dxva2 --enable-libmfx --enable-nv
enc --enable-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libblur
ay --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libilbc --enable-libmodplug --enable-
libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenh264 --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-lib
rtmp --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-amr
wbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxavs --enabl
e-libxvid --enable-libzimg --enable-lzma --enable-zlib
  libavutil      55. 61.100 / 55. 61.100
  libavcodec     57. 93.100 / 57. 93.100
  libavformat    57. 72.101 / 57. 72.101
  libavdevice    57.  7.100 / 57.  7.100
  libavfilter     6. 88.100 /  6. 88.100
  libswscale      4.  7.101 /  4.  7.101
  libswresample   2.  8.100 /  2.  8.100
  libpostproc    54.  6.100 / 54.  6.100
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'ridiculousjump.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : mp42
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: mp42isom
    creation_time   : 2016-09-28T00:49:17.000000Z
    encoder         : mp4creator 1.6.1d
  Duration: 00:00:26.56, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 822 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 636x396 [SAR 1:1 DAR 53:33], 694 kb/s, 25 fps, 25
 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2016-09-28T00:49:17.000000Z
      encoder         : VC Coding
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 125 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2016-09-28T00:49:17.000000Z
Output #0, mp4, to 'ridiculousjumpnomet.mp4':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf57.72.101
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline) ([33][0][0][0] / 0x0021), yuv420p, 636x396 [SAR 1:1 DAR 53:33], q=2-31, 694 kb/s, 25
 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc (default)
    Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC) ([64][0][0][0] / 0x0040), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 125 kb/s (default)
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (copy)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
frame= 1328 fps=0.0 q=-1.0 Lsize=    4929kB time=00:00:53.08 bitrate= 760.8kbits/s speed= 915x
video:4504kB audio:405kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.416591%

(I'm currently not able to find that input video but I will post it as soon as I will find it — or similar one.)

Had someone a similar experience or knows where is or may be the problem?

EDIT

I found a video with the same problem, only 430 KiB: Bubble_burst.mp4.

This is the Gyan's solution, and it works:

ffmpeg -ignore_editlist 1 -i input.mp4 -map_metadata -1 -c copy output.mp4

The important part here is the -ignore_editlist 1 option  (yet undocumented).

The reason is that the original video contains for its video stream an edit list (elst box) with entryCount value set to 2 (which is ignored by some media players — but not by FFmpeg, which interprets it as repeating the video stream twice).

The Gyan's explanation (see ticket #8456):

  The video stream in this file has an edit list that says that the video should be displayed twice. So actually looping the video is the correct behavior. But I think the file is actually invalid, as the duration of the track in the tkhd and the mdhd box both shows 6s, although it is double that after applying the edit list.

Note:
 I tried several videos converted by Any Video Converter into the H.264 format (as input files), and the same problem occurred with most of them.


Post production automated addition of text I'm a software developer who has a video that has been pulled from a livestream event in which attendees commented on the video as it was running. I've got the data on when each comment was made and the text and am wondering if anyone is aware of software that I can 'push' text into the video in an automated manner with?

More precisely I'd like to use some sort of command line tool to be able to pass some text (maybe font and font size as well), a frame/time to display the text, a frame/time to remove the text, and I'm guessing some sort of coordinate rectangle (being able to transition the text to a new location over time would be amazing but not necessary) and have it rendered into the video.

Hope this makes sense, happy to clarify anything further.

You could do this by making subtitles from your data streams and then either playing them back on a media player that can display subtitles, or rendering them into the video.

Most subtitle formats are very simple ascii files — to demonstrate, here's an srt subtitle file:

1
00:00:01,046 --> 00:00:02,540
This is my home.

2
00:00:03,560 --> 00:00:05,110
I'm living here.

3
00:00:05,110 --> 00:00:08,640
My name's Nickel
Mundabi Ngadwa Nickel.

It is pretty easy to generate them from any data source, as long as you have start [and finish] times. You can then insert them into a video file as a subtitle stream using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i inputvideo.mp4 -i inputsubtitles.srt -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s mov_text outfile.mp4

Any player that is capable of displaying subtitles will be able to display them. SRT subtitles like these don't have formatting info though, so the format will depend on your player's settings.

Other subtitle formats have more formatting capabilities. Here is an Advanced Substation Alpha subtitle file:

[Script Info]
ScriptType: v4.00+
PlayResX: 1920
PlayResY: 1080

[V4+ Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, OutlineColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, Underline, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, AlphaLevel, Encoding
Style: Default,Univers,56,&Hffffff,&Hffffff,&H0,&H0,0,0,0,1,2,0,2,10,10,16,0,0

[Events]
Format: Layer, Start, End, Style, Text
Dialogue: 0,0:00:01.05,0:00:02.54,Default,This is my home.
Dialogue: 0,0:00:03.56,0:00:05.11,Default,I'm living here.
Dialogue: 0,0:00:05.11,0:00:08.64,Default,My name's Nickel\NMundabi Ngadwa Nickel.

so basically you have the style definitions in the [V4+ Styles] section and the content in the [Events] section, with timing info for each bit of text. You can define multiple styles, and you can add effects and inline formatting.

You can insert them into a video file (you'll need to use the Matroska video container because mp4 doesn't support .ass subtitles),

ffmpeg -i inputvideo.mp4 -i inputsubtitles.ass -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s mov_text outfile.mkv

or you can "burn them in" by rendering them into the video stream thusly:

ffmpeg -i inputvideofile.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -vf ass="inputsubtitlefile.ass" -c:a copy outputvideofile.mp4

So you can see it's not beyond the capabilities of a fairly simple shell script to do it.


FFMPEG fade out image overlay issue on windows 10 sorry if my question is not exactly the correct format, this is my first post here
I have created  a ffmpeg one line code that will  fade in and fade out a transparent .png as a overlay
here is my code:
bin\ffmpeg -t 10 -i "video w bottom.mp4" -i "utube watermark.png" -filter_complex "[1:v]format=rgba,geq=r='r(X,Y)':a='0.75*alpha(X,Y)',scale=150:150,zoompan=d=25*4:d=125:s=150x150,fade=in:st=2:d=1:alpha=1,fade=out:st=4:d=1:alpha=1[im];[0][im]overlay=10:10:enable='between(t,0,5)'" -c:a copy preview.mp4

now this works great!  BUT...  the issue i am having is if i try and change up the here:
fade=out:st=4  and enable='between(t,0,5)
then it no longer fades out correctly if say i change it to:
fade=out:st=5  and enable='between(t,0,6)
EDIT:
Here is the final code with with the info i got from @Gyan (I am sure can be cleaned up better)
SET /A overlayStart=2
SET /A overlayLength=6
SET /A fadeInDuration=1
SET /A fadeOutDuration=1
SET /A fps=30

SET /A startOverlayFadeIn=%overlayStart%
SET /A startOverlayFadeOut=%overlayStart%+%overlayLength%
SET /A betweenEnding=%startOverlayFadeOut%+%fadeInDuration%
SET /A overlayFullLength=%overlayStart%+%overlayLength%+%fadeInDuration%+%fadeOutDuration%
SET /A dur=%overlayFullLength%+4

bin\ffmpeg -t %dur% -i "video w bottom.mp4" -i "utube watermark.png" -filter_complex "[1:v]format=rgba,geq=r='r(X,Y)':a='0.75*alpha(X,Y)',scale=150:150,zoompan=d=%fps%*%overlayFullLength%:s=150x150,fade=in:st=%startOverlayFadeIn%:d=%fadeInDuration%:alpha=1,fade=out:st=%startOverlayFadeOut%:d=%fadeOutDuration%:alpha=1 [im];[0][im]overlay=10:10:enable='between(t,0,%dur%)'" -c:a copy preview.mp4

Hope this helps someone else out and/or they can expand on this

In zoompan, you have set d=125 so @ 25 fps, zoompan will create a 5-second stream.
Thus there are no frames after 5s for the fade to be applied to. The duration of the stream should be enough to cover the end of the fade transition. For st=5:d=1, total duration should be 5+1=6 or more.
Change to d=150.
P.S. In d=25*4:d=125 the first d=VALUE is overridden by the 2nd one, so it is useless.


Best way to get synced audio from multi-cam Premiere project into Audition and back I have a Premiere Pro project with a multicam sequence, shot with two cameras, A and B, on HDV. The total is about 1:16 long. I have two clips from each camera - A1 and A2, B1 and B2, and after A1 ends, there is a tape switch before A2 starts, and then B1 ends with a tape switch to B2. So I have continuous video and audio, even if I only have from one camera at a time at those two points.

Camera A has audio from an XLR microphone. The mic is mono, but the sound is recorded as stereo, i.e. same audio in each track. Camera B has "room audio" with audience reactions etc.

I want to now take the audio from these 4 (in total) audio channels and export them to Audition. There is some noises I have to remove in the camera B track, and I want to adjust the mix so that the XLR audio is clear and the room audio is present, but not dominating.

I then want to export this back to Premiere as a nice, clean, two channel mix that can replace the original audio in the sequence.

What is the best workflow to do this? I am a CC subscriber, keeping up to date, if that matters.

Thanks!

Adobe Bridge should allow you to open the Sequence in Audition.  If you go to the project panel and right click the sequence you want to edit, you should be able to choose Edit and then Edit In Audition.  This will automatically bring the sequence over to Audition with the tracks properly laid out.  You should then be able to do any work you want to in Audition.

For output you have two options, you can either rely on Bridge to apply your changes from Audition when rendering the sequence or you can output a mix-down from Audition and then import it to Premiere and use it to replace the existing audio.  Since the project in Audition is synced to the Premiere sequence, the audio length should be correct starting from the beginning of the sequence.

More details are available in Adobe's online documentation here.


Simple: Can HTML5 Play a .mpd Manifest File Through Its Video Tag? I have a Movie_Manifest.mpd file that is made up of 5 .webm video streams (consisting of different sizes and bps) and 1 audio file. The question I'm asking is: can it be played through a "simple" HTML5 video tag?

I've tried this and it doesn't work:

<video controls>
  <source src = "Movie_Manifest.mpd"/>
</video>

Well it works, but it chooses the lowest quality video stream and the output is laggy. I would like it to have adaptive bit streaming. You might think, "Do you think your bandwidth is just that slow?" Yeah, my bandwidth is slow, but not that slow. And besides, when I run that low quality webm file on its own, it runs smooth.

So to reiterate:

1) Can I use a "simple" HTML5 video tag for adaptive bit streaming?

Or

2) Do I have to use an open source media player (that the video tag would be accessing through a javascript)?

Thanks and happy streaming

no. video tag can not play mpd, and will not do adaptative bitrate. You must write that yourself, or use a free, or commercial implementation


Is it possible to use ffmpeg to move part of the video to another position and crop the video at the same time? I have a video file let's say it's the following one.

What I want is the following operations:

Copy the part in the red rectangle to the bottom-right corner for the whole video.
Remove the left red shadowed part of the whole video.

So the expected result looks like this:

Notice the part has been copied to the bottom-right corner and the left part has been removed.

Is is possible to do this with ffmpeg or I must use something like Adobe Premiere Pro?

Basic syntax is

ffmpeg -i in -vf "split=2[pip][full];[pip]crop=W:H:X:Y[pip];[full][pip]overlay=W-w:H-h,crop=iw-M:ih:M:0" -c:a copy out

where W,H,X,Y are as per your diagram. M is the margin from the left edge which needs to be cropped out. Select M so that iw-M results in an even number.


Any nice tool for replacing all black frames in a video with another frame My video file has some blackish frames (it's almost black, but not exactly black, i.e. #000000), and I want to filter out them, replacing them with neighboring frames.

However, I can't find a simple way to do that.

Of course, I can extract all the frame images from the video file with FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -i foo.mp4 -an -framerate 30 -s 1280x720 -f image2 foo-%05d.jpeg

and then list all the blackish images with some image tools, replace them with neighboring-numbered files, and merge them:

ffmpeg -i foo.mp4 -vn -acodec copy foo.m4a
ffmpeg -i foo.m4a -f image2 -framerate 30 -i foo-%05d.jpeg -r 30 -s 1280x720 output.mp4

but this will create over 10,000 intermediate image files and it is also time-consuming.

Is there any software or programming language that helps this work?

I am using Windows x64.

You could do this in After Effects.  There are lots of examples online where people use Expressions to examine the average brightness of each frame, then act upon it.  For example, you could add a marker to each frame that fell below a certain threshold level. Or make the frame's opacity go to 0%, to allow another track to show through from behind.

Tutorial examples here:
http://markos.co.nz/2012/05/after-effects-expression-use-the-luminance-of-one-layer-to-drive-another-layer/

http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2009/07/color-sampler-using-sampleimag.html

Here's an example expression I wrote based on the blog posts above -

threshold = 0.01;  // this is the threshold below which the track becomes transparent - black = 0.
driverLayer = thisComp.layer("Pre-comp 1");
samplePoint = [0,0]; // examine from the top left pixel
sampleSize = [640,360]; // examine the full comp size (in this case 640x360)
lightnessSample = driverLayer.sampleImage(samplePoint,sampleSize);  // this samples the image as rgb
driverLightness = rgbToHsl(lightnessSample)[2]; // converts to hue, saturation and lightness, then only takes lightness
if (driverLightness >=threshold) transform.opacity = 100 else 0; // tell opacity to be either 100 or zero depending upon the threshold point chosen in line 1

I applied this to the opacity layer.  You would need to adjust the threshold value, and the size of your comp ( in my case 640x360). (the red solid below was to see whether the opacity change was working.  I guess you would put a copy of your video showing the previous frame here?  Will look as though the video got stuck though...


ffmpeg log missing "dup" and "drop" key-value pairs For some reason, my ffmpeg output log does not show dup and drop key-value pairs.

expect:

...
frame=563 fps=138 q=23.0 size=13056kB time=00:00:09.42 bitrate=11346.8kbits/s dup=0 drop=0 speed= 2.3x
...

running the following:

~/bin/ffmpeg -i INPUT.mkv \
    -t 00:00:10.000 \
    -c:v libx264 -crf 15 -preset veryfast \
    OUTPUT.mkv 2>&1|tee ffmpeg.log

results in this output instead:

...
frame=  563 fps=138 q=23.0 size=   13056kB time=00:00:09.42 bitrate=11346.8kbits/s speed= 2.3x
frame=  600 fps=134 q=-1.0 Lsize=   16199kB time=00:00:09.98 bitrate=13294.4kbits/s speed=2.23x
video:16095kB audio:92kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:4kB muxing overhead: 0.077694%
[libx264 @ 0x55d5711efac0] frame I:3     Avg QP:15.71  size:227164
...

or running:

~/bin/ffmpeg -f v4l2 \
    -framerate 60 -video_size 1920x1080 \
    -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video0 \
    -c:v libx264 -crf 15 -preset veryfast \
    -tune film -profile:v high -pix_fmt yuv420p \
    -color_primaries 1 -color_trc 1 -colorspace 1 \
    -dst_range 1 -color_range 2 \
    OUTPUT.mkv 2>&1|tee ffmpeg.log

gives:

...
frame=  880 fps= 60 q=23.0 size=   64512kB time=00:00:14.31 bitrate=36910.3kbits/s speed=0.977x
frame=  911 fps= 60 q=23.0 size=   64512kB time=00:00:14.83 bitrate=35626.4kbits/s speed=0.978x

system info

OS: Linux Debian 10 (buster) x86_64
tested with two versions of ffmpeg:

1) Debian package

$ ffmpeg -version
ffmpeg version 4.1.4-1~deb10u1 built with gcc 8 (Debian 8.3.0-6)

2) compiled for myself

$ ~/bin/ffmpeg -version
ffmpeg version N-97910-g88567a2 built with gcc 8 (Debian 8.3.0-6)

using -loglevel debug and ffv1

~/bin/ffmpeg -i INPUT.mkv \
    -t 00:00:10.000     \
    -acodec  copy       \
    -vcodec  ffv1       \
    -level 1 -coder 1 -context 1 -g 1 \
    -loglevel debug     \
    OUTPUT.mkv 2>&1|tee ffmpeg.log

result: unable to find a single occurrence of the word "drop" in log.txt file

How to output the missing "dup" and "drop" in my log?

If no frames are dupped or dropped, then those fields are not printed.

If you need a definitive statement, add -progress filename to print progress report to a file and search for dup_frames and drop_frames.


How to render png's as h.265 12 bit video? ffmpeg -framerate 500/21 -i %d.png -i audio.wav -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -pix_fmt yuv422p10le -c copy output.mkv

I have the above command for converting a png sequence of images into 10 bit h.264 video file.

I want to know: how do I modify it to render my png sequences as a 12 bit h.265 video? Or do I need a completely different command and what would that be?

Aside:
I noticed it in handbreak, but I see alot of complaints that handbreak isn't as clean an encode as raw ffmpeg? I don't know if there's any basis to that or if I should just do it in handbreak instead.

Use

ffmpeg -framerate 500/21 -i %d.png -i audio.wav -c:v libx265 -x265-params lossless=1 -pix_fmt yuv422p12le -c:a copy output.mkv

You'll need a ffmpg with a libx265 that supports a bit depth of 12. At this time, I can't find such a precompiled binary so you'll have to compile ffmpeg using the auto-build script at https://github.com/jb-alvarado/media-autobuild_suite


Video desyncs with the audio over time I record footage with OBS and do voiceovers recorded in audacity. I process the audio in audacity, then sync the audio with the video. However, since I started doing it this way, the audio and video are not syncing up.

It starts out fine with a definite sync point (countdown from 3 and then I do something like click on something) but as the video progresses, the video starts lagging behind the audio. near the end of a 20 minute video, the disparity is nearly 3 seconds.

Someone brought up framerate. the footage is 30 FPS and Lightworks lists the audio as 24 FPS. The mic is set to 44100 Hz as well, if that helps.

Make sure the sample rates in both systems are the same. I don't know what OBS is, but if I was using Final Cut for video editing, I would make my project 48kHz, and make sure any external recordings were also at 48kHz. Even with the same sample rates, audio will drift over periods of more than a few minutes. Either sync it up manually in chunks, or use something like Pluralize to do it for you. (Or have a fixed sample clock  between all your devices when you record- probably not possible)


Software to add text from file I'm working on a daily video blog, currently creating them with Adobe Premiere Pro. I need an advice or an alternative software, because I don't find a way to add text (e.g. as titles) from file.

I have an intro, a main part and an outro. In the main part is a background image and changing text (fade in, fade over, fade out). I would like to leave off all the duplicate steps to change a text or move the position (4 titles, break, 2 title, break, 3 titles, break but in the next video 2 titles, break, 3 titles, break and so on). I've started to modify the text in PS, which is a bit faster since I dont have to look up the correct title in the project, but its not perfect.

So, do you know a software that can combine 3 parts of a video and add text from a file?

Would be nice to here from you!

Well there are MANY programs that do this but what your talking about is something you want to do manually. Technically you should be able to accomplish this with Premiere Pro, and I don't understand why your having trouble due to the awesome functionality between Adobe programs.

But what you're describing is something you do not want to leave up to a program if at all possible because a program could totally screw it up or would apply things EXACTLY the same so the alignments could be totally off or an assortment of other problems with how it looks. And since you are in premiere you should only have to copy and paste these "duplicate steps" you are talking about.

If its frustrating you so much that you want to automate it have you ever taken a look at the macro tools built into the Adobe Suite? It may help you with what your looking for.


quickly extract video frames with ffmpeg I am using ffmpeg to extract frames from videos. I have the following code thus far:

ffmpeg -i vid.mp4 -vf fps=1/10 images%05d.png

My issue is that it takes awhile! 6 seconds per image on average. Is there a way to speed this up? I am working with tens/hundreds of videos and I'm wanting to write up a shell script to automate the whole thing, but I don't want it to take days!

I have seen other programs that can do this but they have to literally play through the video to reach the frames to extract. That would be far too slow. Perhaps ffmpeg is doing something like this?

Any ideas how to speed this up?

The videos at hand are 1920x1080 GoPro videos and I'd like full resolution images.

Here's the output from the console:

ffmpeg version 2.7.2 Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.53) (based on LLVM 3.6.0svn)
  configuration: --prefix=/opt/local --enable-swscale --enable-avfilter --enable-avresample --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvorbis --enable-libopus --enable-libtheora --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libmodplug --enable-libvpx --enable-libspeex --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-lzma --enable-gnutls --enable-fontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --disable-indev=jack --disable-outdev=xv --mandir=/opt/local/share/man --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --cc=/usr/bin/clang --enable-vda --arch=x86_64 --enable-yasm --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-nonfree --enable-libfdk-aac --enable-libfaac
  libavutil      54. 27.100 / 54. 27.100
  libavcodec     56. 41.100 / 56. 41.100
  libavformat    56. 36.100 / 56. 36.100
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5. 16.101 /  5. 16.101
  libavresample   2.  1.  0 /  2.  1.  0
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  2.100 /  1.  2.100
  libpostproc    53.  3.100 / 53.  3.100
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'vid.mp4':
  Metadata:
major_brand     : mp42
minor_version   : 1
compatible_brands: mp41mp42isom
creation_time   : 2015-09-18 03:38:20
  Duration: 00:01:18.23, start: 0.969178, bitrate: 20388 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuvj420p(pc, bt709), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 20004 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 180k tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)
Metadata:
  creation_time   : 2015-09-18 03:38:20
  handler_name    : Core Media Video
  encoder         : GoPro AVC encoder
Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 127 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
  creation_time   : 2015-09-18 03:38:20
  handler_name    : Core Media Audio
[swscaler @ 0x7fdb12000000] deprecated pixel format used, make sure you did set range correctly
Output #0, image2, to 'images%05d.png':
  Metadata:
major_brand     : mp42
minor_version   : 1
compatible_brands: mp41mp42isom
encoder         : Lavf56.36.100
Stream #0:0(und): Video: png, rgb24, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 0.10 fps, 0.10 tbn, 0.10 tbc (default)
Metadata:
  creation_time   : 2015-09-18 03:38:20
  handler_name    : Core Media Video
  encoder         : Lavc56.41.100 png
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> png (native))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
frame=    9 fps=0.2 q=0.0 Lsize=N/A time=00:01:30.00 bitrate=N/A
video:17647kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: unknown

I have no idea if what you're doing is optimal, but "playing the video" to extract frames is essentially what has to happen, at least a little, if the frame you're extracting is not an I-frame (most frames are not).

The chosen frame is likely represented as the accumulated differences since the last complete frame, which is what interframe compression does. In order to extract it, a program must read and reconstruct the intervening frames -- not from the beginning of the video, just from the most recent complete frame

Depending on how many frames you need from each video, it might make sense to first convert to an "all-I" codec like MJPEG, where every frame stands alone. Then extracting any given frame would be much faster. When done you can delete the converted file.


Why is Adobe Media Encoder so slow? I have a 2.5 hour corporate event that I edited in Premiere Pro. There are AE clips, sound, imported video, the works. When I run it out to AME, the source resolution is 1440x1080 and I am downsampling to 640x480 for delivery on Vimeo.

The thing is... Media Encoder is teling me that it is going to take 20 hours to render this video. Why would it take that long? I rendered last night at full resolution, it took 8 hours and produced a 27 gig MP4. I have run out video this size (previous events) with way less of a time investment. Clearly I am doing something wrong! My newbie-ness is showing something bad here.

I am on a Mac Pro, 2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Inel Xenon tower with 22 GB of RAM running OS 10.8.4 and the Adobe Master Suite 6.

Can you make a suggestion, or maybe point me at a tutorial on render settings? I thought I had everything set right, but this is crazy!

10 times the length does sound pretty long, but isn't completely insane, particularly if you are running two pass.  The more compression you are trying to do while maintaining quality, the longer it is going to take to compress it down.

It's also possible that if you are using nested projects, it may still be trying to do some rendering at the native resolution of the output for it.  Are you running the MP4 or the project through encoder?  If you have a full res MP4, I would suggest trying to run it directly instead of running the project.  The quality will likely be lower, but it should run a lot faster.


Footage of different framerates in Adobe Premiere Pro Background information

I'm going to create a audio/visual production with two camera's. One camera uses 1920 x 1080 with 25fps rate. The other camera is the GoPro camera. There are several video settings for the GoPro camera, these are:

3840 x 2160 with 15 or 12.5fps
2704 x 1520 with 30, 25, or 24fps
1920 x 1440 with 48, 30, 25, or 24fps
1920 x 1080 with 60, 50, 48, 30, 25, or 24fps
1280 x 960  with 100, 60, or 50fps
1280 x 720  with 120, 100, 60, 50, 30 or 25fps
848 x 480  with 240fps

After recording I'm going to merge the recorded footage from both camera's together in Adobe Premiere Pro. The settings I will use for the project are 1920x1080, 25fps.

My question

Which video setting would you recommend me for the GoPro?

I could go for the 1920x1080 with 25fps rate. But than again I have the possibility to use 50fps. But than again, would the 50fps footage give the 25fps project somehow a quality loss?

It depends on the shutter speed being used on the other camera.  If the shutter speed is faster than 1/50th of a second, then shooting at 50fps and discarding every other frame would be the same as shooting at 25fps, but it means that your shutter speed must be faster than 1/50th of a second.

If light isn't an issue, then the faster frame rate won't have an impact, but if light may require a higher ISO and degrade the footage unnecessarily.  Similarly, if you aren't planning to need any slow motion shots, then there isn't really any great advantage to shooting at 50fps as you gain nothing.

Overall, say go with 1080p and 25fps on the GoPro unless you need to do slow motion and have sufficient light, in which case go 50fps on the second camera (or better yet, do 25fps for all but the slow motion shots and move to 60fps for the slow motion shots since the frame rate will be altered anyway.)


FFMPEG - convert video to Black & White with threshold? I'd like to convert videos to black and white but also specify the threshold of what to convert to black/white.

I'm currently using cv2 to do this successfully using the 2 lines below (first converts to grayscale then B&W). But it would help my workflow to do everything with FFMPEG if possible.

    grayFrame = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
    (thresh, BW) = cv2.threshold(grayFrame, 10, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)

Use the threshold filter:

ffmpeg -i main_1280x720.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=gray:s=1280x720 -f lavfi -i color=black:s=1280x720 -f lavfi -i color=white:s=1280x720 -filter_complex threshold output.mkv

This filter requires four video streams to perform thresholding:

main input
threshold
min
max

You can optionally add the format filter for a grayscale pixel format: threshold,format=gray (assuming your output format supports that otherwise additional pixel format conversion will automatically take place).


How do I rig a Kino Flo to a gobo arm like this? I want to know how to rig a 4-bank Kino to a gobo arm like this. I can tell they're using two arms, but I don't understand how it is attached to the first, nor do I know what mounting plate they have on the Kino.

film set with Kino on C-stand http://provideocoalition.com/images/uploads/fbm-makeoutpict.jpg

Most photos I've seen just have the Kino with its own lollipop, right into a knuckle.

Back of Kino Flo on C-Stand http://tanklightsyouup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/two-kinos.jpg

The photo shows two grip heads, two arms and a c-stand. The kino would have its normal mounting plate (the one in the second photo).

The two grip arms are interlaced together; this makes them trombone-able (adjustable in length), stronger, and gives the gag a longer reach. One grip head attaches the arms to the c-stand, another attaches the kino to the arms.

I use this rig all the time; it works better if the stand is a junior stand and the grip arms are attached to the junior stand with a junior lolly-pop (much stronger).

Cardellini clamps can indeed clamp a stud to many things, but they aren't the best tool for this rig: you want a 5/8" female receiver for the Kino, not a 5/8" stud.


Home video, Canon 60D, 1080p, 23 fps, H.264 lag during playback I can play almost all videos without problems on my Google TV or XBMC box, but when I try to play videos recorded on a Canon 60D camera it gives severe lag and takes some time to start up. Any reason for this? Should I check some other option? Tried also without network streaming, but almost same result (although better than streaming). Starting from a windows machine with VLC does not have a problem.

This is almost certainly a data rate problem.  The quality level of H.264 from a camera is much higher and much less compressed than a typical media file.

H.264 is an elaborate compression which can achieve substantial compression ratios while maintaining high quality, however it is also very complex and difficult to encode with the best compression settings available.  To save time and battery, a camera such as the 60D uses a hardware encoder and applies only simple compression.  This means the file size is much larger (though the quality is also higher).

Before final consumption, the video file should be re-compressed to a more compressed file for final viewing.  You can use any of a number of compressors (either one built in to a video editing package of your choice or you can use the free FFMpeg).  If you use a two pass VBR preset for something like YouTube it should encode to a much more highly compressed and network/low power device playback friendly compression.  If you have an option for profile, I'd try the low profile as it is supported by more low power devices than the high or medium profiles.


Do movie makers shoot video from two different perspectives to create 3D movies? I understand that 3D video works by showing two different perspectives of a scene to the eyes, separately, and the brain does the rest. Just like looking at a real life scene.

But for shooting 3D movies, I always assumed that they would just take the same picture, or perhaps a wider picture panned left and right for each eye. But I just saw something about shooting 3D being special.

Do movie makers shoot video from two different perspectives to create 3D movies? If not, what's special about it?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  If it is shot "for 3d" then yes, they use either two cameras or a splitter to go through two optical assemblies to one camera.  Here are some sample rigs that have actually been used in large films.

There are, however, a number of films that are released in 3d despite having not been shot "for 3d".  In these cases, the films were shot on conventional cameras with only one lens.  They are truly 2d, however, by the process of image analysis, effects artists go in and assign depths do different elements of the scenes.  This depth data is then used to invent two perspectives to be used for making a 3d effect.  It involves a lot of guess work and creating new content to fill in the gaps where actual footage doesn't have a given angle.

Some 3D TV's even have a basic level of this as an automated process where it will analyse the film in real-time and attempt to guess at depth information.  The only difference is that the 3d extraction done professionally is an offline process with more time and effort spent to fine toon the end result and fill in some gaps by hand.  The exact process and effort at each step depends on the individual project and budget, but the results are always sub-standard to actually shooting for 3D.


I can't buy a streak filter where I live. How do I go about making myself one for my DSLR? Generally used to achieve the anamorphic 'streak' effect.

It's not on Youtube, so I can't embed it, but there is a nice tutorial here that looks like a simple, and very inexpensive method to achieve the streak filter.  (link is to vimeo)

Basically, you affix a piece of fishing line across the lens.


How to re-encode a video file's audio, but leave the video stream with ffmpeg? Does anyone know how to take a video and re-encode the audio, but just copy the video data using FFMPEG?

So Apparently FFMPEG can do this, I had to use -c:v copy and that will leave the video stream intact. I actually used an app called iFFMPEG to figure this out.


Why is CCD still alive? I have met my dreams in a camera called PXW-X500
I thought CMOS had killed CCD after cheapness, global shutter revolution and years of advancements? Why is CCD still a thing?

The main reason is that while CMOS has made great strides in overcoming it's limitations, there are still some advantages that CCDs hold.  I wasn't able to find anything completely up to date, but this article from 2017 has a few examples.

There's more ability to get consistent results from each pixel and get higher quality analog to digital conversion with less amplification necessary on the CCD.  The cost is much higher obviously as CCD has always been a more expensive option, but it still holds some specialty advantages.  If you need those advantages and have the money, it's still worth buying.

Looking at the difference between that camera and the next model down, you can see that the CCD does have a low light performance advantage over the closest equivalent CMOS camera in that line.


Lossless color compression I need to reduce the file size of an mp4 video. I don't need color information at all but pixel brightness resolution must be preserved. Videos consist of white background with a few (important) black dots of about 5px diameter. I am confused about what the best method/output would be.

Without knowing the video properties, my generic answer is

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf geq=lum='p(X,Y)':cb=128:cr=128 out.mp4

This will reset the color information, but pass the luma plane intact. Add -crf 0 for truly lossless re-encoding.

This is the faster way,

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf extractplanes=y,format=yuv420p out.mp4

The luma plane is extracted, and then neutral chroma planes are added in the pixel format conversion. This 2nd step is added because otherwise ffmpeg will auto-convert pixel format to yuv444 which isn't widely compatible.


Why This Video Appears in Full Canvas? Rookie video editor here, asking about video canvas. Don't know the right term in video editing but in image editing it's area that is not part of it.

This is the video:

As you see, ratio is good and available definitions are up to 480p.

After downloading it (and I tried different definitions) this is what I get when playing in VLC and Windows Media Player:

Do you have any idea how something what was previously invisible got picked up? And why I don't see this canvas/artifact on YouTube? No idea what that is but feels like amateur's first attempt at YouTube publishing. Maybe YouTube filters it out but only when viewed there.

How can I crop the picture out of this mess and would I need special software?

Another question is about available definitions. While YouTube displays them up to 480p, how is it definitions up to 1080p are available through KeepVid?

Thanks!

It's weird. I see all resolutions - upto 1080p - on Youtube. And the thumbnail hover does show the full frame as seen in your VLC snapshot, but not in the playback window on Youtube.

youtube-dl shows streams in a 1:2 ratio i.e. 540x1080, 360x720, which would be what you're seeing locally.

You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, to crop out the remainder.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf "crop=iw:iw*9/16,scale=0:-2" -crf 20 -c:a copy new.mp4


Pop out a shape out of another shape How do I do a 'pop out' effect from one shape out of the other?

Right now I have this:

But I would like if the shape visually appeared out of the left 1.  So like it stretches and then comes bursting loose. I don't know the right terms for this, so looking for a solution hasn't been easy.

How do I achieve this effect, and what is it called?
Thanks!

For simple shape and best result you can do it frame by frame, drawing each morph state separately
For more complex shapes, I will advise:

Move second object (and maybe scale it from little size to normal) from behind first one
Bend part of first object outwards slowly, while new object appear (simultaneously with point 1)
In the moment, when second object is fully separated from first, first object shall rubber bend back with bash, as cartoon character, who was hit with the bat in the head, or as water surface, after water drop hit it.

To fully understand, what I mean in last point, look at this:


Advantage of converting GoPro video files with GoPro CineForm? Having worked with GoPro cameras for a few years, I had originally ignored the GoPro CineForm Studio software. Probably out of the usual disregard for packaged software, but also due to it being marketed for a while at the 3D users.

I've added it to my workflow lately at it performs better (somehow) on my Macbook Pro for simple preview/rename/sort operations than VLC does for my tastes. I have tried using the conversion batch processing also, but I was wondering what use turning a 271 MB source MP4 file into a 2 GB MOV file is?

I'm using FCP X as my NLE, which has recently even replaced Lightroom/Quicktime for timelapses, and I'm curious if there's a point to the conversion workflow for this environment? There's a YouTube video by GoPro themselves that doesn't explain this, and they seem to be ignoring user comments asking similar questions.

The GoPro CineForm Studio Manual sums up the advantage as being primarily one of unpacking the compressed and native MP4 file that the device records to. It also introduces metadata, allowing the user to adjust elements of the video such as the contrast or scaling. As these are metadata elements, you can continue to adjust these on the fly, while the media is being edited in your video editor.

Read the guide here.

I'm not sure if this will replace the conforming process I use importing media into Final Cut Pro X, but it's a great addition to the workflow as I look more into open source editing tools.


Video editor with basic color correction for commodity hardware? I have been using Adobe Premier Pro and After Effects on my main Core i7 machine for actual videos, but I would like to know which Non-linear video editor would work best for some of my slower machines.

For some videos all I really need is the ability to trim clips and do basic color-correction.

It seems Adobe CS4 software is a little too much for my dual core (even my Core 2 Quad) machines. I was thinking about installing OSX on some of them and using something more basic like iMovie, or trying some other software like Sony Vegas.

What are my choices for this? I run ubuntu, Windows XP-7, and OSX 10.6.x.

Finding non-linear editors on a computer can be really hard. The linear approach in the old days was actually a forced limitation due to the restrictions you had with tapes. You needed to add clips successively. Sure, you could make an insert but at the risk of messing up the time-base and other things.

That being said - the non-linear/linear is not the reason why editing struggle on a less capable CPU. To the computer it doesn't matter at all in what succession clips comes in so implementing a restriction such as linear approach has no point.

The main reason for what you experience comes from the the resolution of the video, its compression codec, the disk capabilities and memory available for caching the video/sound. If you work in HD the amount of raw data is many times that of f.ex. NTSC/PAL and naturally gets harder to process for a computer.

You will see these problems in any editor as the common factor is the computer itself. The Adobe suite and other professional suites can do a lot of things with a video, but as long as you don't utilize effects and so forth there is really not much load on the computer besides from processing the video itself.

The professional software has also addresses performance issues to get the most out of what is available. The risk is actually to loose performance with very basic software that do no pre-processing of the video and sound to enable it run smoother, implementing smart optimized caching, not to mention utilizing a GPU and so forth, and only relies on loading from disk as-is.

The (permanent) solution is to upgrade the hardware or run the software on capable hardware.

Tip to get around with a less capable computer:

Before starting to edit you can reduce the resolution of the original clips to a low-res version. Then edit with these in that resolution. When finished create a new project set to the resolution of the final product and import the original full resolution clips and an edit list. This way you can work with low-resolution on a less capable CPU.

See EDL files or OMF interchange files or AAF files (what suits best), and refer to the software's manual on how to export and import edit files. You might need to rename the clip names in the file to point to the full resolution of the clips so have a naming convention ready from the beginning when importing clips from the camera to make life easier.


h264 Settings for Motion Tracking & Analysis (technical photography)? I'm trying to do "scientific" video motion analysis. Right now I'm using a Raspberry Pi camera, which records natively in h264, which then needs to be converted/wrapped as MP4.
Is h264 an appropriate format for constant/fixed frame rate "progressive" images? I'm already noticing curvature of lines with motion, with the default settings.
Right now I'm using the open source Tracker software to do the motion analysis.
What would be a good starting point for raspivid and gpac MP4Box settings, to get crisp "progressive" images (ie. full frame captures, with minimal compression/motion estimation), and preserving the frame rate through to the final MP4?
Or is a different capture format better for this purpose? Eventually I'd like to get high frame rate (~250 FPS or so) - low cost camera suggestions also appreciated!

My suggestion is MPEG-2. For tracking and analysis, latency is the concern. H.264 is more complex than MPEG2, it introduces high latency as well. Since your content is not going to stream over network, i suggest MPEG-2
OpenCV always is the starting point, you may check https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2015/03/30/accessing-the-raspberry-pi-camera-with-opencv-and-python/ and https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2018/07/30/opencv-object-tracking/
Good luck!


What factors influence how much of an online video people will watch? If I'm making 4-minute videos and everybody's dropping off after 2, then I'm doing something wrong. However, I notice that sometimes I watch a much longer video, often because the quality of the narrative is so good. When trying to craft engaging content, what factors influence a viewer to watch the video to then end?

Here are some factors I've considered:

Shot variety such as B-roll and multiple camera angles
Music
Dramatic tension
Authentic responses to interview questions (in a mini-documentary)
Production value (color grading, audio mix, etc.)
Motion graphics
Video length

There could be any number of factors as to why people quit watching a video, but if you want to entice them to stick around, there are a few tricks.

Yes, "content is king," but CONTEXT is arguably queen— and let's be honest, who really rules the castle? That is to say— even if your content is great, if you aren't getting it to the right audience, it won't matter. Make sure the people who would WANT to see your video are finding it at the right time and place. Context.
Pay-off. A viewer is more likely to stick around if they know the pay-off at the end of the video is worth it. What will they learn? What mystery will be solved? What's the burning question? etc. Give them a clue in the beginning.
Challenge? As a twist to the "pay-off" bit (and especially if your end goal is social media shares and conversions)... Remember the whole KONY 2012 thing? They got millions of people to watch a 20-something minute documentary, and then spread it virally. Why? Beyond just compelling content: they challenged the viewer to finish it at the very beginning. The first lines were similar to "The following video is a social experiment..." I.E. "Let's see who makes it all the way through and then cares enough to do something about it."

It was a challenge, and human nature led people to take it on.

So there's my 2 cents.


Is there any way to play corrupted .MOV video file Today I recorded presentation I gave to my development team, part of this recording was screencast. Right after I finished, screen capturing tool that I used collapsed and I was left with corrupted .MOV file (160Mb)

Here is header:

0000000      0000    1400    7466    7079    7471    2020    0000    0000
0000020      7471    2020    0000    0800    6977    6564    0000    0000
0000040      646d    7461    2021    4003    1c68    4e21    3bff    785a
0000060      d8ac    c326    6d06    bf0e    5c5d    0010    0000    2000
0000100      4c45    9987    9691    8948    9b15    dbfd    000e    0000
0000120      c700    c774    7541    a2c6    3fd5    8a92    7880    677d
0000140      ed57    87ff    b783    00ae    7dfc    7e6f    78f0    fbfe
0000160      0678    6839    eefb    230f    8ca7    0100    2387    977e
0000200      a44f    61e5    f5d5    073e    1d2f    88b7    0400    4bd7
0000220      0e3d    ef59    faef    d1f3    808d    6f00    dd67    1d37

Is it corrupted?
Is there any way to play such file?

I can not recapture my talk so I really hope you could help me.

Trying using a program called VLC, a lot of times it will play corrupt video clips but it may crash/and or stop playing around corrupt portion


Play a .g64 file extension A legal friend of mine received a file from a colleague with a .g64 file extension that she needs to view.  My searching indicates that the .64 file extension is some form of proprietary security video format but I can't determine the exact software.

I checked VLC but it doesn't look like there is any native support for it, and I couldn't find any addon codecs for it.  Other references to download player software for it look like they are probably just click-bait scams.

Any ideas what I can use to play the video?

.g64 is the extension of the proprietary video format from Genetec, a provider of IP video surveillance. Even 5 years after your question I have not found any library to open them or player to read them other than the official player. Not sure where to find it, part of their doc is behind a login wall. You might try http://downloadcenter.genetec.com/products/SecurityCenter/GenetecVideoPlayer/GenetecVideoPlayer.exe


Converting from 8mm Video Tapes to Digital (PC) Can you please assist with a recommendation about a good Video Capture Card / Device that can used to convert from 8mm Video Tapes to Digital (PC - Windows)?

I found a site with lots of such devices which are not expensive at all, but since I have ZERO background in this area I am not sure which of them will do the job and will give me the best quality.

Here are 2 examples, I will be more than glad to receive your feedback / suggestions.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6659984&CatId=1428

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=612720&CatId=1428

Three years ago I purchased the DIAMOND One Touch Video Capture similar to the 2nd link you provided.:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815306013

This device worked perfectly for converting tons of old VHS tapes to a format suitable for DVDs, I must have converted over 50 tapes this way. I also discovered that I could use this device to capture live broadcasts using the following chain: Antenna --> Video Converter box --> Diamond...Capture --> USB Computer input --> capture software.

The main thing you have to remember is that the conversion is in real time and linear. I had to allow for the tape to play through the parts I wanted to capture at the normal playback speed. On the plus side, the USB interface allows quick and easy set up, no need to open up your computer and install another PCI card.


Adobe premiere, how do i link two audio clips and one video clip for the purposes of the razor tool? So this is what it looks like. I have one video track, three audio tracks. The last audio track is background music. I need to edit the clips to cut out the boring parts. The problem is, I want to kind of be able to hear the background music as I play the video in preview. Anyway So normally what I do is, I press shift, and it allows me to use the razor tool to cut all clips at the same time, then i select and drag things into place. The reason why I can't do that here is, the shift razor tool will cut the background music too. What I need to do is link v1 a1 a2 for the purposes of the razor tool so that i may edit them as if they were one clip, how do I do that? I tried link, but link is grayed out for some reason when I select more than two things. Thank you!

Even though Michael Tiemanns answer is technically correct, it seems overly complicated given the description of your problem, as nested sequences may cause other problems and inconveniences down the road. So here are two other options that might help you:

Grouping

Select the three tracks you want to edit, then right-click → group (or press CTRL + G). The grouped clips will all be selected when you click on one of them. Then you can press CTRL + K to cut all clips in the group at the position of your playhead. The problem with this method is that the cut clips will still be grouped together, so if you select one of them, they will all be selected and moved simultaneously. The next option will be more convenient for your workflow:

Track locks

Click on the lock symbol on the left side of the timeline on the track that holds your background music. This will completely lock all clips on the track, preventing you from accidentally cutting or moving them.


Are there Tripods to film the bottom when writing on a paper? I would like to make some short movie clips explaining how algorithms work. To do so, I would like to film how I write / scribble on the paper.

Are there tripods which support filming what is directly below the camera or should I tinker such a tripod myself? In case you recommend building it myself: How is this standard "mount" at the bottom of each digital camera called? (So that I can buy something to fixate the camera.)

(I have a Lumix DMC TZ41 digital camera. Do movie cameras have other "mounts" for tripods than digital cameras?)

Some online courses (Udacity, Coursera) make something similar / exactly what I would like to do. See Programming - CS101 - Udacity for example:

There are a number of photo tripods that allow you to invert the center column.  When inverted, the camera sits between all the legs and can be pointed down.  Another tripod design has a center column that can also be shifted to a horizontal position.  This allows greater flexibility in terms of distance from the subject (and it also means you only have to shoot between the front two legs, rather than inside all three).


Software to make a transcript? I record conferences and produce them in an HTML player. I have a need to transcribe some content and integrate it into the player.

I found this question, but the answer seems to say that the transcription is mixed into the video file. I do not want that.

What I need, or could work with, is a transcript that is in a separate text file with the timings that the sections begin. XML, CSV, or some other standard is perfect.

I have thousands of hours per year that I would potentially need to do this on. There needs to be very little effort involved to get the transcripts for this to be viable.

What would be perfect is that I tell the program what videos I want a transcript for, click go, then it produces the files. Any OS is fine, though I prefer Windows.

Update: I learned that Google employs a very good transcript engine, but you cannot seem to take advantage of it without actually uploading files to YouTube. I asked if there was a way around this on Superuser, but got nothing. To further complicate things, YouTube decides if the video with be transcripted without notice to the user. There is no option to select it or generate it on command. So in expansion of this question, what options do I have available to me regarding YouTube's engine? Is there a way around this? I can upload to YouTube as long as I can keep it private and the transcript will be generated at time of encoding, if that's the only option.

Adobe premiere has a speech analysis system built in, after cs4 I believe. Machine transcription systems tend to be very poor though - in my experience it is only useful for a vague sense of where you are in the video. See below:

http://www.realeyes.com/blog/2010/03/05/caption/

Human transcription services are getting cheaper as many of them use Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" to provide the human labour. The quality is much better, but will still require editing for readability. See the link for more info:
http://waxy.org/2008/09/audio_transcription_with_mechanical_turk/


Video File (.MOV) Opens in VLC and Other Players But Not in Premiere A four Gig .MOV video file plays perfectly on VLC, Windows Media Player and PotPlayer but when imported into Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5 the following error message appears :

"The file has no audio or video streams".

I've tried four different video file converter / repair tools (including Remo, Stellar Phoenix and StreamClip). All three tools actually worsened the problem instead of fixing it. Most of them made the file unplayable (as well as not editable). As a precaution, I only tried the repair tools on a backup of the file so as not to ruin the original.

I've searched but cannot find an example of a video file that plays back perfectly but cannot be imported into Premiere.

I had this same issue. I found 2 different solutions for my file.

The issue has to do with some kind of codec issue with newer versions of Adobe that no longer support certain .mov encoding types (or something like that)

Solution 1: Rename the file extension to .mp4

Believe it or not, this is actually working for some people. Read toward the end of this thread.

I tried it myself and was finally able to open the file in Adobe CS5. However, only the audio appeared in the timeline. No video.

Solution 2: Re-encode using VLC

There's a fix in this thread from Sasha L. (dated April 11, 2018) that involves re-encoding the file using VLC. I tried this and it worked. The steps once opening VLC are:

Click "Media" in the menu bar
Select "Convert/Save"
Choose your source file
Select your destination file type (click the toggle icon in order to access more advanced encoding settings)
Choose your destination file name
Export

When I used this method I was able to export a visual-only video (no audio).

Between the 2 methods I was able to export audio and visual and import them into Adobe Premiere so that they could be combined.

Best of luck!


DaVinci Resolve: Difference between adjusting Y or YRGB In DaVinci Resolve 14, some operations can be performed on all of the Y, R, G, B channels at the same time or only on one of them.

What is the difference between adjusting only Y, or adjusting all of YRGB?  The effect looks the same.

My statement that the effect looks the same was incorrect. The use of these sliders is explained in the manual, in "Primary Grading Controls" -> "Color Wheels Palette" -> "RGB Lift/Gamma/Gain Sliders" (page 725 in the v14 manual).  Quoting:

  ... These three controls allow easy Y-only adjustments to contrast, where an increase in contrast results in perceptually diminished color saturation.

  Making Y-only adjustments to contrast is a great way to increase contrast when you’re going for muted saturation or a gritty look. This kind of adjustment is also useful in situations where you’re trying to increase shadow density without increasing image colorfulness.


Looking for a laptop with the required performances to use the Adobe premiere software please? I want to start learning  editing, I'm looking for a laptop with the required performances to use the Adobe premiere software? Any advices please!

HAdobe publish this information on their website - see this link or below: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html
It's pretty simple, personally I would use the recommended specifications as a minimum in a professional environment.  If it's for personal learning, then it's your call how much you spend, but don't get anything less than the minimum.  Enjoy!


Generate travelleng matte from a nearly-white bright background? I have video of a stage with a bright screen behind it, and I thought it would be neat if I could (easily-enough) punch in another image on the screen.  And not just a small section of it, but fill it out with a "projected" image that I'll animate using keyframe movement and zooming.

If I use the Luma Matte in Premiere, especially doing it before the Color Correction effect, it can find the bright screen pretty well.  However, unlike the Chroma Key effect, the Luma Key effect doesn't seem to have anything for shifting the edge or feathering, so it leaves a white line around the figures (and it doesn't handle everything well, really).

The un-corrected footage is a bit dark with the screen being very bright; I not only raised the shadows but I knocked back the brightest whites on a curve adjustment.  So using the un-corrected version it should be easy to make a matte from that, but the Luma Matte effect they included is just too lame and does not produce a clean image even though it can identify the screen.

Now I thought about using AE for this, but I don't know how to use it and it's not simple.  The rotobrush has trouble with the white medallion at the head of the pipa and the gap that shows through the recurved neck of the instrument, and causes far more complications in the Premiere project in general.

So I'm wondering if there is a (free) add-on effect that does a better job of this and/or has more command over it, or a stand-alone tool to generate a traveling matte file, or some techniques and tips to make what comes with Premiere work out better.

The problem that you're going to have with this is that the colour of the screen is too similar to colours in the foreground. If you look at the levels on the highlighted part of the drummer's face they're very similar to the levels on the edges of the screen, and a similar colour, same for the drum skins and the pattern on his shirt. I had a go in AE with no success using keylight, colour range key and even extract, but nothing works. So a clean matte is going to involve lots of work rotoscoping.

One thing you might get away with, depending on your background content is to put it below the original layer, and set the original layer's transfer mode to darken. If your background layer is darker than the foreground it will show through, so as long as it's darker than the screen but lighter than the performers it will composite ok. You might help things along with some masks on the performer's faces and the other light areas, and you may get a bit of blending, but it might be good enough, without spending years roto-ing.


Big difference in the video file size after the conversion (.mov to .mp4) After converting from .mov into .mp4, a video file is greatly reduced in size (.mov - 75,2mb .mp4 - 11,9mb) - does this mean that the converted video degraded (loss of color information, or the information in the highlights/shadows, or something else) or such difference in file size can be lossless?

Let me explain you from scratch.

MOV, MP4, AVI, MKV etc all these are just containers, It is just kind of wrapper which contains audio, video, text, metadata file together as one file. It does not play a big role in the size of a file.

Size of the file heavily depends on audio and video codec and bit-rate of that audio video codecs.

So there is a possibility for file size reduction during conversion.

Reduce in video codec bitrate. While converting video if default/changed bitrate of video codec is less than source file, then it will lead to a reduction in file size as well as quality for sure.[ May not be perceivable by eye ]
Change video codec. While converting video if change video codec to advance video codec of the stream, then it will reduce size but quality will not be degraded.

For example :
Video codec of a source file is MPEG-2 with bit-rate 20mbps and during conversation we convert to H264/AVC with bitrate 10mbps it will have the same quality with half of the size.

So, Below are the popular video codecs generation and improvement.

MPEG-2 -> H264 (40-50% bitrate reduction than MPEG-2) -> H265/HEVC (40-50% bitrate reduction than H264)

Though the more advanced codecs are computationally expensive during video playback. e.g H265 is ~300% more computationally expensive than H264.

During video conversation point 1. & 2. both can be applied

You can view details of audio/video file can be seen using a free tool (mediainfo)
It will show properties of the stream like video codec, bitrate, fps etc.


YouTube Compression: Why? There's a lot of advice on the internet on encoding settings to apply to your video before uploading to YouTube (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en,

            , ...). They say that not only will compression allow your video to upload faster but it will make it look better when played back on YouTube (an example of this is at 0:18 in the YouTube link above).

What I also read is that YouTube re-encodes any video that you upload (example: "Telestream Episode product manager Kevin Louden started by noting that YouTube re-encodes all video uploaded to the site" - http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Encoding-for-YouTube-How-to-Get-the-Best-Results-83876.aspx).

So the obvious question for me is if YouTube re-encodes anything that it's asked to upload, why should different codecs make a difference to final playback quality on YouTube? To get the best playback quality on YouTube, shouldn't I upload a lossless file and let YouTube compress it however it wants?

I don't care about upload time or file size, I just care about playback quality on YouTube.

I've answered a similar question some time ago. YouTube added a few codecs since then but all the info there still applys: How does YouTube encode my uploads and what codec should I use to upload?

Short answer: Yes if you are concerned about maximum quality a lossless codec or visually lossless codec is the way to go. Re-encoding always means loss of information if you re-encode with a lossy codec like h264.
Saying that videos will look better with compression is just a wrong statement.
Compression reduces file size, that's the only benefit you get from it. Best case you don't loose information with that compression but with most codecs like h264 you do because they discard information and re-arrange it in order to achieve a high compression.

Though different codecs do have an affect on the outcome, encoding a video with MPEG2 or h264 makes a huge difference. The former will usually have way more compression artifacts depending on your encoding settings than an h264 encoded video with similar bitrate.
So if your source is already having artifacts the second encode from YouTube won't make it look any better but worse.


Half Screen Mirror Image I’ve been asked to flip a video clip and display it so it plays alongside the original clip as a mirror image.

I’m using DaVinci Resolve 15 and I’ve found how to flip a clip. I’ve also found how to shrink, crop and move it around on top of the original but when shrinking it does it proportionally so it becomes a quater of the screen size.

Is there anyway to make it take up a full half of the screen so they play side by side of the same size and without any of the image being cropped?

Depends on whether or not you care about the image appearing squashed/stretched.

If you don't care, then you can hold the shift key while dragging the corners of the transform tool to unlock the aspect ratio.  You can also do this by clicking the chain link icon between the x and y values of the "Zoom" item in the inspector pane, and then altering the numeric values.

If you care about squashing/stretching, you care about cropping, you care about the image not being too small, and you have a fixed screen size, then the answer is no. There's nothing you can do.  It's just the geometry of rectangles, not a limitation of the software.  You have to compromise in one of these areas.  Maybe you crop an equal amount off of each mirrored half, for instance.

But when you say, "take up half the screen," many of us make automatic assumptions about the size and shape of the rectangle you're trying to fill.  We assume that you're talking about a television, most likely, or maybe a YouTube video, but almost certainly something with a 16:9 aspect ratio (a width which is 1.7777 of the height).  But DaVinci Resolve will let you arbitrarily decide the dimensions of the movie file you're trying to create.  So, you could just set your timeline resolution to twice the width of your source media.

To do this, in the Project Settings -> Master Settings, set the "Timeline Resolution" dropdown to "Custom" and enter numeric values in the boxes below.  The left field is width, so you'd enter double the source media's width in that field, and keep the other field the same as the original.  If you set it up right from the beginning, when you go to the Deliver tab to export, you shouldn't have to touch the "Resolution" dropdown menu.  If you do find yourself reaching for that menu, chances are you've made a mistake in the Project Settings.

Of course, If you do try to play a double-wide movie on a 16:9 television screen, you're going to run into the same problems you had in the first place.  Most likely, the TV will add black bars to the top and bottom, and scale your image down to smaller than you wanted.  But it could also stretch, or crop, depending on it's default behavior.  However, if your end goal was always a movie file that would play back windowed on a computer, you're golden.  Just don't think too much about how that window fits into the rectangular display of whatever device the viewer uses ;-}


FFmpeg hardware cuda decoding and overlay picture I can overlay a picture to the video stream with the following command:

  ffmpeg -thread_queue_size 1024 -i udp_source -i watermark.png
  -filter_complex "[0:v]scale=1920:1080,yadif=0 [base]; [base][1:v] overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:10 [marked]" -map "[marked]" -vcodec
  h264_nvenc -acodec libfdk_aac -ab 192k -ar 48000 -f flv rtmp_output

But if I made a hardware decoding with deinterlacing and resizing at the GPU with the following command:

  ffmpeg -thread_queue_size 1024 -hwaccel cuvid -c:v mpeg2_cuvid -deint
  2 -drop_second_field 1 -vsync 0 -i udp_source -i watermark.png
  -filter_complex "[0:v]scale_npp=1920:1080 [base]; [base][1:v] overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:10 [marked]" -map "[marked]" -vcodec
  h264_nvenc -acodec libfdk_aac -ab 192k -ar 48000 -f flv rtmp_output

I got the following error:

Error while decoding stream #0:1: Invalid data found when processing input
Impossible to convert between the formats supported by the filter 'Parsed_scale_npp_0' and the filter 'auto_scaler_0'
Error reinitializing filters!
Failed to inject frame into filter network: Function not implemented
Error while processing the decoded data for stream #1:0

As I understand we can't overlay the picture to the video via NVIDIA. I added the "hwdownload" filter in the command to copy data to CPU:

  ffmpeg -thread_queue_size 1024 -hwaccel cuvid -c:v mpeg2_cuvid -deint
  2 -drop_second_field 1 -vsync 0 -i
  "udp://226.58.24.4:2000?overrun_nonfatal=1" -i
  /home/anis/logo/2mbps.png -filter_complex
  "[0:v]scale_npp=1920:1080,hwdownload [base]; [base][1:v]
  overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:10 [marked]" -map "[marked]" -vcodec
  h264_nvenc -aspect 16:9 -b:v 1808k -minrate 1808k -maxrate 1808k
  -bufsize 904k -g 100 -no-scenecut 1 -forced-idr 0 -preset:v medium -vprofile main -level 4.1 -map 0:#0x091d -acodec libfdk_aac -ab 192k -ar 48000 -f flv rtmp://10.150.12.104/virginandtv/abr2k_test

After this I got the following error:

[udp @ 0x39abda0] Circular buffer overrun. Surviving due to overrun_nonfatal option

I tried to increase a fifo size up to 1M, but this issue still exists.
Is it possible to overlay a picture directly on NVIDIA card?

For 1st question - Most likely you're looking at not applicable error (the default yuv420p is not usable here - you may also need to get newer ffmpeg) - while using the hwdownload you need to tell explicitly to the NPP scaler the output format of the video frames. For your case the below command should make the trick:

ffmpeg -thread_queue_size 1024 \
    -hwaccel cuvid -c:v mpeg2_cuvid -deint 2 \
    -drop_second_field 1 -vsync 0 \
    -i "udp://226.58.24.4:2000?overrun_nonfatal=1" \
    -i /home/anis/logo/2mbps.png \
    -filter_complex "[0:v]scale_npp=1920:1080,hwdownload,format=nv12 [base]; [base][1:v] overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:10 [marked]" \
    -map "[marked]" -vcodec h264_nvenc -aspect 16:9 \
    -b:v 1808k -minrate 1808k -maxrate 1808k -bufsize 904k \
    -g 100 -no-scenecut 1 -forced-idr 0 -preset:v medium -vprofile main -level 4.1 \
    -map 0:#0x091d -acodec libfdk_aac -ab 192k -ar 48000 \
    -f flv rtmp://10.150.12.104/virginandtv/abr2k_test

If you could please always include full ffmpeg output as this makes debugging always easier.

For 2nd question - I wasn't able to find any way how to mix frames on the GPU using the current NPP library w/ ffmpeg. It certainly should be possible so whenever you find a solution let others know. I personally don't have enough time to read through all the NVIDIA docs and work on implementation but somebody else may get more time :-)


Multiple FFmpeg input & output I just want to know if it's possible to encode audio & video at the
 same time by FFmpeg

-c:a libfaac  for  audio
 &
 x264.exe for video.

and any example!

To pipe to x264 and encode to AAC file in the same command, use

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -map v -f yuv4mpegpipe - -map a -c:a libfaac v.aac | x264 --demuxer y4m --crf 18 --output "v.mp4" -

Then you can mux it via

mp4box -add v.mp4 -add v.aac -new va.mp4


After a clip ends should that track be re-used? Say you have file100.mov run for 10 seconds on track A1 and V1. At the 11 second mark track A1/V1 is effectively empty. Is it better to "recycle" that track with file200.mov or to put file200.mov onto track A2 even though there is no overlap?

If its best to use the same track when not overlapped would it be beneficial to slice the below as soon as the cross dissolve ends on V3 and move the rest of MVI_6260.MOV to continue running on V2?

It depends on what technique you are using for editing and what purpose you assign to each track.  In a non-linear editing (NLE) program like Premiere, it is extremely common for almost all editing to be done on a single video track with additional tracks only being used when something needs to be layered on over top of what is currently on Video 1.  (Such as titles).  When doing this type of editing, it doesn't matter where exactly you put the cut when you are doing transitions.  The clip will keep playing as long as it is needed for the transition (unless it runs out of footage in the source file.)  So in your example, if V2 and V3 were both on the same track, you would just need the one instance of Cross Dissolve and the clips on V2 and V3 would both be used for the duration of the dissolve effect.

In composition software like After Effects however, each video or asset is on it's own layer and has it's own track.  The difference is that composition cares about the layers themselves and how they combine where as non-linear editing cares about what clip is currently being displayed and how you change between them.

It is also possible, particularly in large, multi-camera projects to synchronize the video clips from different sources on different tracks in an NLE and then choose which track you want to be active.  This is known in some systems as A/B or multi-camera editing.  Premiere does support mutli-camera editing and formerly had an optional A/B editing mode.


FFmpeg keep different sar and dar in multiple videos I have two video that I'm working through filter_complex.

First video is 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9] and the second video is 1280x720 [SAR 203:640 DAR 203:360]

I would like to merge the files with filter_complex keeping original sar and dar both each on final output. Please notice I'm using inputs dynamically, so I need a command that keeps sar and dar regardless of the source files.

I tried using the command

  setsar=1,setdar=1

But nothing, second video not preserve original aspect (1280x720 [SAR 203:640 DAR 203:360]) and the output is like first video (1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9]). I would like to keep the original parameters also on second video that seems to become SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9.

Problem was in the source file (second input) that did not respect the correct scales and pads. I solved thanks to this answer https://superuser.com/a/991412. Credits to @LordNeckbeard


Name of the software used for the given animation Which software has been used to produce the Wildebeest animated short by Bird Box Studio?  It can be seen here.

The short film, Wildebeest was rendered in Adobe After Effects and Flash.

This is the quote from an interview by the director Ant Blades.
"The film is animated in Flash and AfterEffects. The main aim was to be funny. The secondary aim was to develop a style I hadn’t tried before."
Source:"Filmmaker Ant Blades, Wildebeest"

Workflow of Mr Blades is to first sketch in Adobe Flash. As he puts it, it is an easy way to sketch out an "animatic" of an idea. He then renders it with After Effects, I assume he would be using the plug-in Cinema 4D to render the 3D work but that is a guess on my part. A more complete interview and the process in how he creates his works for Bird Box Studio. "Interview Ant Blades, Bird Box Studio"


Converting a Adobe Premiere CS6 project to a CS5 one I run the old CS 5 version of Adobe Premiere but my friend just got the newer CS 6 version.

Now she's handing over a project on to me. So I have to turn her project files into files I can continue working in.

The problem is that Premiere's own built-in conversion process did not quite do it. I ended up with a faulty project where the project window is actually blank, even though the files are clearly there (they show up in the timeline). Also, it is still possible to play back the timeline - it's just that I can't actually do much editing with the project window being as it is.

This leads me to my question: Is there a better and simpler way to do the conversion from a CS 6 file to a CS 5 one yet? Are there any good workarounds I have not thought of (that aren't "render every single track individually and go from there") or anything else I can do?

It seems that I have solved my problem.

All I had to do was to import the CS6 project file into a brand new CS5 project. That did it for me.


After Effects: how to create a color via expressions Using After Effects expressions, I can create a color reference by pick-whipping a color control and the result is:

var rgb = rgbToHsl(effect("Color Control")("Color"));

But, I want to avoid using a color control, and simply instantiate a color through code:

var rgb = rgbToHsl([159,27,41,1]);

...but this doesn't seem to work.  Is it possible?

From what I'm reading, it looks like it may just be [R,G,B] where each value is a floating point number between 0 and 1.  I'm looking in the Adobe After Effects Scripting Guide.  Every method I can find that accepts a color value simply uses an array like that.

Update: While certain scripting methods take a 3 parameter RGB value, other expressions require RGBA or HSLA.  In these cases, there will be a forth parameter for Alpha (ie, transparency) where 1 is fully opaque (a good default value) and 0 is fully transparent.  If you get an error with one format, I suggest trying the other and if you get unexpected values, check if the input expects HSL or RGB.


Merge clips with playback-speed automation I've got two source clips, and I want specific frames to line up across the merged playback sequence.

Eg.
 clip1@frame38 & clip2@frame27 >> merge1@frame27
 clip1@frame56 & clip2@frame40 >> merge1@frame56

This requires the playback-speed of at least one source clip to be modulated between the synchronization points on the timeline.

I'm using Resolve, but if you know how to do this in fcpx or premiere that's fine too.

I'm a novice in Resolve, Premiere, and FCPX, but in case none emerges to write up an in-built or automatic procedure, in your place I would think of it as two ops:

First calculate and apply the correct playback speed adjustment. For your example:
clip1: 56-38 = 18 frames difference, 19 frames inclusive
clip2: 40-27= 13 frames difference, 14 frames inclusive
so to show those frames across the same time span for synchronized playback of both clips, your choices are to
play clip1 at nineteen fourteenths as fast: 19/14 = 1.357 = 135.7% or
play clip2 at fourteen nineteenths as fast: 14/19 = 7.368 = 73.68%

Second, now that they'll both be playing at the correct speed, it's just a matter of aligning any frame you can conveniently match up between clip1 and clip2.


Why is my Time Ruler in After Effects displaying seconds like this? I know that Cmd clicking on the time stamp in the left corner alternates between frames and seconds, but why are my seconds displayed like this? every other screen of the app I've seen with other users (on youtube tut's) it's a much more understandable 01s...02s....03s etc.

thanks!

I know that Cmd clicking on the time stamp in the left corner alternates between frames and seconds:

Thats exactly whats happening here.You switched to frames so After Effects is showing the frame count instead of a second count. Do a Ctrl / Cmd click on the time stamp and you will get seconds:

To see all time values in the timeline simply drag the zoom slider to the right or use Alt and the mousewheel in order to 'zoom in':


Auto generate video clips using a CSV of times as markers from a single MPG video I have an MPG video and a CSV of times. I am searching for a way to automatically generate clips from the video using those times.

So at each time position a clip is generated with 10 seconds either side of the time resulting in a 20 second clip.

I have investigated scene detectors and trying to import markers into Adobe Premier etc, but with no luck.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

You can use an EDL (Edit Decision List) in the CMX3600 format. An EDL is a very simple import/export format from the 1970s, when data was exchanged using floppy disks and videos were stored on tape. It's just a text file and most modern NLEs (including Premiere Pro) can import/export it. (Today there are some variations between NLEs, but that doesn't have to bother you.)

To understand EDLs, it's probably best that you create a new timeline and put your MPG video in it. Then export the timeline into an EDL (File > Export > EDL) and open the exported file with a simple text editor. Analyse the content. Then do some cut in your timeline and export it again.

Basically, an EDL consists of several text lines like this:

VJ0K006W V    C         00:00:00:00 00:00:18:19 00:00:22:02 00:00:40:21

The first column is an ID of your video clip, followed by V for a video track and C for a cut. An A instead of V indicates an audio track. The last 4 columns are timecodes which define the in and out point of the source and the in and out point in the timeline. You see that this clip is the first 18 seconds and 19 frames of the input video starting in the timeline at 22 seconds and 2 frames. It's only logical that the clip must end 18 seconds and 19 frames later, at the timeline position 40 seconds and 21 frames.

Now, to answer your question: You have to write a small program (or ask a friend to write) which takes your CSV file as input, extracts the time position, calculates the +/- 10 seconds, and writes an EDL file in the way that Premiere Pro exported. Premiere Pro should import it without problems and assemble the timeline.

Here are some footnotes:

Wikipedia explains how timecodes are constructed. If you have simple frame rates like 24, 25, or 30 fps, calculating your +/- 10 seconds is not so difficult. But if your clip has 29.97 fps, then you have to consider drop frames. (You know that leap years have an additional day - February 29, but only occur in distinct years. Clips with 29.97 fps have normally 30 frames per second, but at distinct times have 2 frames less.)
I didn't cover the problem of media file names here. When the EDL/CMX3600 format was defined, media only had tape numbers, which were written in the first column of the EDL. When file-based media came into existence, NLEs had to add the file names somehow to the EDL. They did it, but not in a consistent way. But since you only work with Premiere Pro, just see how your video file name appears in the EDL file and mimic the same when writing your file.


How to prevent chromatic aberration (green/purple fringing) on an After Effects export? I'm relatively new to After Effects. I'm building a short ad using a free template I downloaded. I then rendered the project using Adobe Media Encoder on the H.264 Youtube 1080p setting.

Unfortunately, I'm getting green and purple lines both on the left and right of the overall video, and along any high contrast edge within the video (particularly egregious with any letters). All the animated typography etc. is done within After Effects so there's no question of this being introduced from any of source materials like imported video clips etc.

I've attached a few different images showing this. Any ideas on what I can do to prevent this? A different codec, different settings in Adobe Media Encoder? Could it be a particular filter or color treatments within After Effects itself?

Screengrabs:

The effect makes the video hazy and adds an unappetizing tint to the borders of all the elements in the video :(.

Thanks!

I can't see your images for some reason but I suppose this is intentionally added in the template project. To remove it you would of course need to figure out which effect within AE is creating this problem, which I can not do without looking at the file... however I would look for effects like "Optics Compensation" or "Transform" (the effect, not the property). Try turning off any adjustment layers one-by-one to see if that does it. There's a 99% chance that it is an effect on an adjustment layer at the top of your composition creating something like that!


Video overlay - how is this effect created? I came accross this image - and was wondering how to recreate it in after effects?

https://www.truedigital.co.uk/assets/video/us-hero.mp4

I was able to produce it by doing the following:

Convert the video to monochrome by turning the saturation down
Apply Levels and bring the output black point up to around 30%
Put an orange color solid over it and set the opacity to 50%
Set the blend mode to "Normal," "Overlay," or "Hard Light"

You can experiment with the black point and blend modes to get the look just right for your footage.


I only have the .mp4 files from a Sony XDCAM EX shoot, is there a way I can still convert them for use in AfterEffects on Windows? I no longer have access to the original recordings and the weird excess of files that Sony likes to bundle with the video you actually need.

I'm running Windows 8.1 and Adobe After Effects CS6, and I've now got Sony's "XDCAM EX ClipBrowser V2.6".

Is there a way around Sony's encryption or are my options limited to reshooting the whole project?

Thanks in advance!

MP4 files should be all you need.  There shouldn't be any encryption on the files.  It is possible you may need to download a codec.  MP4 files are just a container format, so different codecs could be used within it.  It is possible that you don't have the needed codec installed, but if you do, the files should just open in After Effects without issue.


Exporting to multiple formats these days we usually have to export our videos to multiple delivery formats - HD  variants for projection, and we tend to have different settings for vimeo, youtube, and the other versions we might need them.

To handle this i've tended to export a MASSIVE lossless version of my video from my editor (Premiere or FCX usually, but sometimes aftereffects for small projects) and then reduce it using preset profiles in Compressor on OSX.

I mentioned this to a in-industry-yet less-techy friend and he said this isn't usually the way, but couldn't articulate why, but it roused my interest.
For me a locked lossless export as the "master" then from the master you do your specific formats makes workflow sense.  It also means you have the same process regardless of your editor, and don't have to worry about editors not supporting some formats.

So i'm curious what people think of the 2 choices - pro/con/opionions.  Do we use our editor to handle multiple delivery formats, or export a single master and then handle specific formats from there?

With Adobe you can render most things through Adobe Media Encoder. AME has the ability to render one project file as different formats and you can actually create somewhat of a list and it will treat it as a queue.