Looking for a solution to remotely control timed video capture I'm trying to set up a system where a presenter gives short presentations (typically 60 seconds) in front of a backdrop on a daily basis, with the files being ultimately destined for the web.

The limiting factor here though is that ideally the system should be operable by the presenter only - no technical or production staff will necessarily be available to help. So what I'd like is a way for the capture to be triggered remotely by the presenter standing in front of the camera (by a foot switch most likely, but I'm open to other options), and the take will then be recorded to file on the associated capture PC, and will stop after a pre-defined time (60 seconds, 90 seconds, etc). If it's not possible to set a timer, we do have the ability to use a hardware timer device which will send a serial signal.

The studio is all set up and ready, the only missing link is the actual capture solution. We were looking initially at the Aja Ki Pro Rack, but it doesn't make it particularly easy to get at the files - the device has to be put into a different mode, and the files have to be downloaded either through a web interface, or by removing the hard drives and copying the files to the PC.

Then we were looking at various BlackMagic devices, such as the H264 Pro Recorder, but I couldn't see how I could remotely trigger the capture using the bundled MediaExpress software.

I'm open to using alternate software such as Final Cut or Premiere. Does anyone know of a solution that will let me trigger a remote capture with no human operator sitting at the PC, ideally with the ability to set a timer to stop the record as well?

I have no practical experience, but you might take a look at using a (linux) computer with blackmagic decklink or intensity pro card.

There are command line tools like bmdtools which (should) allow you to interface the capture card.
https://github.com/lu-zero/bmdtools

You could then pipe the video input to ffmpeg to record.
I don't know of a setting to provide to ffmpeg to limit the capture-duration, but you could maybe create a script starting and stopping both commands at the right time.
This might be helpful: http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5109

If you are using such a setup with a computer, the next stages of your workflow could be scripted as well.

edit: I can't really find any information about this, but if you can read/record the H264 stream which the BMD H264 recorder outputs in ffmpeg or vlc, It will be a lot less demanding for your system. The other two options mentioned above will have to do the encoding in software.


Mixing audio with HDMI video to replace the sound from the camera I would like to live-stream from a camera, but replace the audio from the camera with a higher-quality mixed soundtrack, ready for sending over HDMI to a transmission device.

How can I do this?

I know that the Tascam DR-701D has two HDMI ports (in and out). Could I use this as the mixer to replace the soundtrack on the HDMI video feed, ready for transmission, or is there a better way?

Details

The video will come from the micro-HDMI port on the camera.

The audio will come from one of three sources:

XLR stream from the event
Directional XLR mic
MP3 player

The audio will be mixed together by a mixer during the event as appropriate.

I now need to mix the audio from the sound mixer with the video from the camera’s HMDI port (which will have an unusable poor-quality audio track from the camera). How can I do this?

It seems that what you are looking for is an HDMI audio embedder.

It seems that the Tascam DR-701D offers this functionality as described in Outputting this unit's audio as the HDMI output audio

Examples of external alternative such products can be found here (I am not affiliated with these manufacturers, other products might exist):

Kramer FC-69

Extron HAI 100 4K


After Effects - Making a compilation I have been practicing with Adobe After Effects for quite a while.  I've created some effects like gunshots, intros and such.

I now want to learn how to combine many videos together, and with additional effects - not only fade in and fade out, but more amazing stuff!

I have not found anything helpful when looking for where to start learning about this.

My main occupation is game programming.  Would you suggest that I go learn better video editing and Photoshop or rely on an artist to do so?

If you are trying to do editing, you are using the wrong program.  Adobe After Effects is an effects and compositing program.  It is designed to make alterations to clips of video that can then be used together.  It is not designed for editing clips together.

If you wish to do video editing, you want a piece of software known as a Non Linear Editor (or NLE).  Adobe Premiere is the NLE in Adobe's software line.  Adobe Bridge allows for you to move back and forth between them, so you can include an After Effects composition as a clip in Premiere or open a clip from Premiere in After Effects to do effects or composition work on the clip.

As a bonus, note that this same kind of interaction can be used with Adobe Encore to add a Premiere Sequence directly to an Encore project if you wish to make a DVD or Bluray disk from your videos.

Update: Since you asked about it, here is a list of the major Adobe CC applications and their purpose.

Photoshop: In depth Image Manipulation
Lightroom: Photo cataloging, Non-destructive RAW processing and basic touch up, workflow management, printing, publishing.
Premiere: Non-linear Video Editing
After Effects: Video effects and compositing
Encore: DVD/Bluray disk production
Prelude: Video/Asset intake
SpeedGrade: Color grading
Illustrator: Vector graphic creation and editing
Flash: Vector and sprite based animation, script-able and interactive capable as well as supporting video playback
Audition: Audio Editing DAW
InDesign: Print layout
Acrobat: Public document finishing, creates PDFs
DreamWeaver: Web design
Muse: simpler web design
Fireworks: Alternate image manipulation application, primarily targeting the web.
Bridge: Minor Adobe product that interconnects the applications to allow them to exchange nested data
Media Encoder: Minor Adobe product that allows for a shared render queue and encoding of final assets


Export video has different resolution Adobe Premier Pro I try to export video in Adobe Premier Pro CS5 but it export the video using another resolution.

So for example the original video (.mov) has resolution 1920x1080, but exported video has resolution 720x560 (something like this, I don't remember it is rough resolution).

I tried to adjust size of vide in export window but the size video was another then I expected in this case as well.

Maybe you can advice some good tutorial import/export video. Many thanks

Exports will be set to the resolution of the sequence you are exporting.  You need to adjust your sequence settings to match your file input and then export.  You can do this from the sequence settings.  It should have also given you an option to update the sequence when you initially added the 1080p clip to the sequence, but you must have chosen not to update your sequence at that time.

The other, more rare, possibility is that you are using a demo codec that doesn't support 1080p for export and it is trying to export at the maximum supported resolution.  If this is the case, choosing a different codec for export should allow you to resolve the problem.


How to add "AR" elements over video? disclaimer: I'm completely a neophyte, mildly competent with Photoshop and that's it.

I was trying to figure out what would be the quickest/easiest way to add AR-ish elements over a video. For example if in the video there is a landmark like a historic building I would like to have a "marker" composited over the middle of the face of this building. Would the gps/compass data of the camera that recorded the video help in any way?

I produced a video on Augmented Reality, for a large corporation that spearheaded the technology. We used After Effects to simulate a lot of effects.

We shot our plates and scenes, and when necessary we added dots on sticks for tracking points.

Then, you can take your footage into AE, latch motion trackers to the dots (if your scene doesnt have points sharp enough to tack to), and once you track the motion, you can nest your AR graphics, either static (photoshop psd files), or animated, and they will move with the camera movement, as if in the scene.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can make the AR layers 3D, and add a camera, and using multiple tracking points get your AR graphics to move in 3D, with axis tilting.

You can also add things like Depth of Field.

And lastly, you can have them build on and build off using the built in transitions in AE under Animation... there are 100s.

Hope this helps, Its more than one could explain here, but there are a lot of youtube videos on how to use motion trackers, 3D layers, etc- so if you look into the keywords I gave you, hopefully it will get you started.

Cheers!


Help with playback stutter in Sony Vegas Pro 11 I've got 2 DSLRs in my kit, a Nikon D7000 and a Nikon D3S, for 1080i and 720p respectively. I experienced stuttering playback with footage from both cameras, and figured it was something with Nikon's codec until I had the same issue with HDV footage from a Sony camera (client was unsure of the model#). I recently upgraded from Vegas 8 to Vegas 11 to handle HD footage more cleanly. My machine has 6gb RAM, one of the recommended NVidia graphics cards, and my CPU, while slower than I'd like at 2.53GHHz, is still within recommended ranges for Vegas 11. My internal discs are spinning @ 7200RPM & I'm running Win7 Pro. I've downloaded all the latest drivers, codecs and updates that I could find for my hardware and software.

So here's more detail on what I've tried:
Playback in Vegas 11 Pro stutters for both the Nikon and and Sony HD footage.
SD footage plays back just fine.
Only picture stutters, not sound.
Stutter happens at all playback resolutions, from draft to highest quality.
If I view the clips in an external player (Quicktime, VLC, DivX) playback is fine.
If I render out a clip to Quicktime, AVI, Windows Media, MPG2, MPG4 at HD resolution, or at least matching the camera clip as closest as I can, I can pull it back into Vegas and play it without any issues.

Based on the above facts:
It's appears to be a Vegas issue, and since playback after rendering THROUGH Vegas works fine, I suspect it's an issue with the Nikon codecs on the inbound side. But, what's up with the Sony playback stuttering? Maybe it's hard drive speed issue? Then why do rendered clips, some of which are larger than the original, not stutter?

I never did any setup from within Vegas to point it to the GPU. I assume that Vegas will FIND my GPU and assign whatever processes as it sees fit. DO I need to do something special?

Has anyone else had success with Nikon clips, and would you be willing to share your setup parameters?

Thanks.

I have seen some trainwrecks by combining Nikon .mov with Vegas Pro 10. After tech calls into both Nikon and Sony it was determined that my machine didn't have enough resources.

I need to upgrade from 32 bit to a 64 bit version of Win7, plus I need to go from a quad core to an i7, and from 4GB to 12 GB or better. I can use my Nikon files now but only if I keep the total under 1 GB, short projects only but it works. One thing that may help your stuttered preview is to set the window to preview mode at 1/4 size, this helped a lot for me.

Here is a tutorial that covers everything I've tried and more of the things that may help you
get your playback smoother.


how do I can check whether a sound clip I want to use is copyrighted? (I want to use it in a video and an app also) as mentioned in title, I want to be sure that a sound I found on youtube (2 seconds long) is copyrighted
(and also, if I will modify it (in audacity or something) will it still break copyright laws?)

Please note, for this answer I use the term copyright as a synonym for whatever law is applicable in your country that deals with protecting intellectual property rights for creative works. Some countries use quite different names for such a law.
Here's a little guide how this topic can be approached. In a professional context, I advise to consult a specialist to clear the rights for you. When you can try to create as much creative content as possible on your own. However, when you decide to tackle the issue of clearing rights yourself this is how I would do it:

Check if the copyright has been expired. Read the law (or at least Wikipedia) to find out how long this time span is in your country. Usually, it's a very long time, so you will rarely find anything from the 2nd half of 20th century or newer with expired copyright.

Find out which copyright limitations or exemptions are defined in the law in your country (e.g. "fair use" in US law). Usually you don't have to ask the creator for permission to freely use their work as parody, in an educational context or when citing an excerpt, but pay attention to quote only the bare minimum.

In most countries there should be a threshold when copyright can be applied. Sometimes the work is so trivial that it shows not enough merit to be protected by the copyright law. In some countries the threshold is very low and you have to read a lot of court decisions to get a good grasp how this is interpreted in practise. If we take a look at your example, after hearing it several times, I am somewhat sure that it is not a simple, plain recording. Either they have created the sound digitally or invested some energy in cleaning up and tweaking a recording. This probably means it has enough merit to be protected. This is my opinion based on what I know how such a case might be judged in my country and if it applies to yours too, you have to decided for yourself.

If none of the above conditions are fulfilled or you are unsure (for example in case of orphaned works), it is safe to assume that the work is protected. If you still want to use the work, check what license options are available. Sometimes Creative Commons allow you free usage of the work but you need to carefully follow every condition they make. Creative Commons comes in various versions and variants. Especially for commercial projects their conditions are often hard or impossible to fulfill. When you do not find any license information, you can always try to contact the creator and discuss business and agree upon a contract for your situation. It will probably cost you a bit but usually you are on the safe side with a contract. If you do not know much about contract law, it will be best to hire a lawyer. However, you have to make sure you are talking to the rightful copyright owner, not to someone who has just published the work with or even without permission and pretends to be the owner. For the example you have provided in the comments to your question, I have my doubt how well such an agreement works, as this person has no contact information on their channel which indicates a non-professional context. This always complicates things.

Do not use YouTube to search for sounds when you need them published along with your own work even in an edited version, like in your case where you want to built an app and use the sound there and in videos. Use trustworthy sources instead, that means professional sound libraries with clearly stated terms of service and license terms. Besides, maybe you already have access to royalty free sounds without knowing it via some software subcription you may have. For example, Adobe offers such sounds when you are a subscriber to their Creative Cloud.

I will not give legal advice how to proceed, but my general recommendation is to look for sounds at some better place, as described in step 5 above, because buying a proper license from this YouTuber person might be hard work. I guess they are not prepared for such a scenario and have no contracts ready, no license terms, etc.


Final Cut Express: Flip a Video Clip I'm sure this is trivial to do, but I've yet to find the right filter to Flip a video clip in FCE 4.

For example, see what happens at the 0:42 mark in this video  (Night Stand HD Pro)

I see box flips, or page flips, but how can I just flip a single layer around an axis?

I guess I'll answer my own question:

After a lot of searching last night, I found a YouTube video that demonstrated a method to animate the flip of video clips using a free plugin called MultiSpace from idustrial revolution.


How to stay objective after viewing your edit hundreds of times? When I start editting something I'm very sharp about cuts that does or doesn't work. But as I go through the process, in which I watch the sequence hundreds of times, I get used to it, and becomes a bit blind to problems.

How do you stay objective and aware after viewing your own work so many times?

I believe the only answer to that is to take at least a 24hr break. Move onto another project or start something new. The number of times I have come back to something after a decent break and can all of a sudden see what needs to be done is shocking.

I don't believe their is a quick fix to this issue.


Shooting stereoscopic 360 video I have a full circle (a ring) of video cameras and i want to create a stereoscopic output (assuming my camera rig does not consist of stereo pairs), i would just need to have a high level of overlap between my cameras? (at least 2 cameras covering each pixel?).

I haven't tried it anything yet but i would still like to know.

Thanks!

Creating just a non-stereoscopic 360 capture setup is highly difficult, unless you are shooting vast landscapes with wide angle lenses.

The problems you will need to factor are far more than overlap.

Yes, you will need adequate overlap for adjustment in post production. But you also need to make sure all of the cameras are genlocked for sync. Shutter speeds will need to match, as will white balance and f-stops.

If you plan on having objects come near the camera (which would be why you'd want 3D), you will need more cameras; because for 360 you want to use high quality lenses in the mid to wide focal lengths.

Your issues will be focus, and mostly, warping as the objects move closer to the camera. Once in post, the objects, unless you are (factoring full frame plane of view) using 50mm or longer lenses, will distort due to simple physics. And will be near impossible to align in post-- especially so with a steroscopic rig.

Im honestly trying to envision your setup, and would think in order for anything like this to work, your camera ring would need to be fairly large; like 6 feet in diameter. Using 16 or more pairs (32 cameras) at the very least. Anything less will not produce appealing results.

The few 360 setups I have seen in person used 22.5 degree slices (16 cameras and 16 projectors).

Hope this helps.


How / can you make subclips from sequences in Adobe Premiere CC? Subclips are great for organizing. This makes a lot of sense when you either do it in prelude ahead of time etc. But what about when you want to make clips from say an interview.

I have a sequence for each interview, each sequence has a video clip, audio track, and adjustment layer for effects. I want to now be able to create subclips of this as if it were a single video clip. (Yes I know I could export it as a video clip and then make clips but the point is I want to have a bunch of clips that are linked to the sequence so that way if I go back and make changes to the audio or the adjustment layer it will effect all the clips.)

I know you can right click on the sequence and "Open in Source Monitor" and create clips that way, however I noticed when you then make changes to the original sequence they do not update the clips. I.E. the clips are separate pieces and not linked.

Is there a way to create linked subclips from sequences in premiere pro CC?

—-
Note:
Though there are workarounds with nested sequences there really isn’t a feature like this in Premiere. To me it seems like with professional editing this should be something that’s used way more often, or maybe there is a different methodology for how to edit those. I think this would be a really useful feature

If you convert all the clips in your timeline (video, audio, adjustment layer) into a Compound Clip, then underlying changes will be properly reflected in your Compound Clip.


How to record live video using camcorder? I need to conduct a video conference using professional video cameras. I will be recording and streaming 1080p video [1]. To that end, I need to stream live video from a professional video camera to my PC. Here are the requirements:

The camera output is HDMI or SDI
The computer input is USB3
The delay between the time an event occurs and the moment it reaches the PC must be under 300ms.
The camera must show up as a webcam to the PC.
The PC will be running Windows or Linux.

Any ideas?

[1] I am aware of how much data is involved. Please assume that I have sufficient resources to do this.

Perhaps the Intensity Shuttle from Blackmagicdesign

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/intensity/models/

This link has some additional info.

http://help.livestream.com/customer/portal/articles/577891-what-are-your-recommended-devices-


Linux command-line option to do video lens correction? Is there a Linux command-line option to do lens correction on videos?  (Either as a tool, or a collection of tools)

Specifically, GoPro videos?  I know I can do correction in GoPro Studio, but I need something that I can incorporate into a batch process.

Frei0r effects has a lenscorrection module:
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#frei0r-1

this is an example to remove the fisheye distortion of a samyang 7.5mm

  -filter_complex 'frei0r=lenscorrection:0.5:0.5:0.16:0.6'

this is the docs from the mlt framework for frei0r lenscorrection
https://www.mltframework.org/bin/view/MLT/FilterFrei0r-lenscorrection


Effect of screen shape on video quality How does the shape of screens (that is, different "width x height" values while keeping the same total displaying area) affect the quality for a given optimal viewing distance?

I do not understand your question. As it is I would say nothing.

Get a 16x9 inches monitor. It measures 16 x 9 inches. Now rotate it 90°. It has the exact same total displaying area but now measures 9 x 16 inches. The "optimal" viewing distance is the same.

If you are referring to different aspect ratios, the unit that is important and easier to get is the native linear PPI.

Find out the horizontal resolution used and divide it by the horizontal physical measure of the display area.

If your monitor has 1920 x 1080 px, use 1920.
If the monitor measures 21 inches on the horizontal size:
1920/21 = 91.4 PPI. Use that value to compare other monitors.


Can't extend image duration in Final Cut Pro X I'm new to Final Cut Pro X and I'm trying to extend the duration of a static PNG image so that it shares the length of the video that's over it, but it won't extend no matter what I do. I've tried Control+D and typing in a duration but it just does nothing.

Try this

At the end of your main timeline add a gap Option-W.
Drag and drop the still picture behind the gap into the main timeline.
Change the duration as needed.
Move the clip where you want it.

Your behaviour you described isn’t normal, it sounds like you do everything correct. Above is to eliminate any timeline issues from stacking and try to sort out the problem.


browser rotates video I use ffmpeg to convert a 3gp video to MP4. You can see a part of output of ffmpeg here:

ffmpeg version N-79139-gde1a0d4 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers

...

Input #0,

...
    Metadata:
      rotate          : 90
      creation_time   : ...
      handler_name    : VideoHandle
      encoder         :
    Side data:
      displaymatrix: rotation of -90.00 degrees
    ...

I use noautorotate option in below command to avoid auto rotate based on metadata of file and it is successful:

  ffmpeg -noautorotate -i $vid -qscale 0 -acodec libmp3lame -ar 44100 -ab 128k ../MP4/$(basename $vid).mp4

Then I tried this HTML code to open converted file in a browser(for example by Google Chrome):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

<video width="320" height="240" controls>
  <source src="../videos/test.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

</body>
</html>

But when I open that, video shown rotated. How I can solve this problem? Is there a tag or any other thing to disable autorotate in HTML?

Although noautorotate stops FFmpeg from rotating the video, it does not remove the rotation tag from the output. So, you have to set the tag manually.

ffmpeg -noautorotate -i $vid .....  -metadata:s:v rotate=0 output.mp4


How can I extract clips from a streaming video feed in near real-time? A client wants me to write some software, perhaps ffmpeg wrapped in scripting, which will monitor a streaming video feed, and copy clips from it in near real-time, delivering them as self-contained video files. It is not acceptable for me to wait for the feed to finish, and the video to be completely stored as a local file, before I copy the clips. On the other hand, I can take say tens of seconds after the end time of the clip before delivering it. Can I do this without building a video processing suite from scratch? Do I need to require that the streaming video feed be a certain format?

So say the video feed is of a 1-hour live event. At some point, maybe 5 minutes in, my software may get the command, "clip from 4 minutes 30 seconds to 6 minutes 0 seconds, save as file X.mpg". I have to tap into the video feed, copy 90 seconds of video, and store it as file X.mpg, by about 7 minutes in.  The actual times are more flexible, I just want to emphasise that I must be able to tap into the streaming feed in progress, I can't wait for a static video file.

I don't even know if streaming video formats permit this kind of operation. If a receiver writes the feed to disc, will the beginning of the file be legal syntax which a normal tool like ffmpeg can parse?

I don't know details of encoding formats, but I understand that they store key frames every so often, and intermediate video frames are stored as differences from the key frame and/or preceding frames. Is it important to know when the key frames are added?  Can normal tools parse video past the most recent key frame to the frame just being written, or would the data in the stored file be still be in some temporary state, and thus not yet parseable?

Or, is copying video clips from streaming video a difficult task which requires more sophisticated software than ffmpeg or the like, wrapped with scripts?

Advice on specific formats, and tool chains which make this possible are welcome.

This is fairly straightforward if you save to a streaming format like Flash Video (FLV) or MPEG-Transport Stream (MPEG-TS).

Let's say this is your full feed capture command

ffmpeg -i source {-transcoding options} localfile.flv

You can then run

ffmpeg -ss 6:12 -i localfile.flv -t 1:05 -c copy extract.mp4

Ideally, the stream should be past 7:17 or close to it when you run the latter command. Note that since the 2nd command doesn't transcode, inpoint seek isn't precise. The extract will start from the nearest keyframe earlier to the specified inpoint.


component to vga cable not giving video I bought these composite to vga cables to go from the YPbPr ports on these dvd players to a "standard" lcd monitor's vga port.

Unfortunately, they don't work. The best results I can get are green and blue colors to come through on any given monitor.  Other monitors don't show any output at all.

This sort of thing should work, right?   Any help/advice is really appreciated.

VGA is RGBHV (horizontal and vertical sync) not YPbPr so without active adapting hardware, it isn't going to work.  The formats are not compatible as the addressing information is missing.    You might be able to find a dual mode monitor that has support for both formats on the connector (some video mixers do for example), but it would be luck of the draw and pretty rare.


How to record the voices of three people in a room? We are planning to produce a Youtube channel, in which we interview one professor and one student at the same time, and we have very little experience with sound. A typical situation would be to have three people talking (the prof, the student, the interviewer), and we are wondering what would be a good compromise between budget and quality for recording the audio.
Lav mics seem to be the best option, but since we need three of them it seems expensive. Right? What about having a single shotgun carried by one of us over the scene? Could that work? I assume the person in question would be monitoring the sound to make sure that the mic is at the right position.
We are also planning to invest into a modest on-camera mic just for safety, in case something goes wrong with the other setup during the shootings. Any further advice?

Save the money for the on-camera mic, it is by far the worst option. Other options include:

lapel or lavalier mics. Wireless lav mics are as you say expensive, but wired lav mics might be the cheapest option. You'll need something that can take 3 inputs, either a multitrack recorder, or a simple mixer to mix it to stereo (I'd mix the two subjects into one channel and the interviewer into the other).

If you use a shotgun you can get excellent sound quality, but you'll need a boom and a boom swinger to make sure that the person talking is on-mic. For an unscripted interview with three people this is quite a tall order. If you don't have someone who can do the job of boom swinger, or if your subjects interrupt or talk over each other this is not recommended.

a surface mic or an omnidirectional mic in the center of the speakers. This won't be as good as three lapel mics, because it will be further away from all of them, and will pick up more room ambience and bg noise. This is probably be the cheapest option, but the second worst (the worst being an on-camera mic).


Annoying drop shadow effect in iMovie I've just started using iMovie 10.1.4 and I've been trying to get rid of this annoying drop shadow effect. I created a new title, chose 'centred', typed the text I want, and set it to a light grey colour. But whenever I go into video preview, or watch the final movie, it comes up with this drop shadow shown below.

Is there any way to remove this? Any help would be appreciated!

First, this is the right place to ask this question.

Second, looking at iMovie, I think that the drop shadow is built into that particular title. Have you tried just using the "Standard" title and setting the font & color to the right one? It seems like that would fix the problem.


Echo duration of video in seconds without decimals If I use ffprobe to output the duration of a video file with:

ffprobe -i input.mkv -show_entries format=duration -v quiet -of csv="p=0"

I will get something like

3658.342000

How can I get the output in second only without the decimals? I do not mind if ffmpeg or Mediainfo has a better function for this. I just need to get the output in seconds.

I am using CMD in Win10.

Ended up using a batch file to export the timings to a text file and then turncate the value as a set variable.

ffprobe -i {filepath$} -show_entries format=duration -v quiet -of csv="p=0" >> duration.txt
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /f "tokens=1,2,3,8 delims=\ " %%a in (duration.txt) do (
  for /f "tokens=1 delims=." %%i in ("%%a") do set _stime=%%i
)


FFMPEG Calculate Hash After Encoding Before Writing I am experimenting with losslessly compressing some raw video.  How can I perform a frame hash on the encoded output before or while writing it to the file system?  I want to make an original.hashes and a compressed.hashes.  (I will compare them with another tool later.)

ffmpeg -r 30 -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\%%03d.png" ^
-filter_complex "split=3 [copyHash] [copyLossless] [otherIn]; [otherIn] {some filter here} [otherOut]" ^
-map [copyLossless] -c:v libx264rgb -qp 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\lossless.avi" ^
-map [copyHash] -f framehash -hash SHA512 "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\original.hashes" ^
-map [otherOut] {some other encoding} someOtherFile.idc

ffmpeg -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\lossless.avi" -pix_fmt rgb24 -f framehash -hash SHA512  "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\decoded.hashes"

comp original.hashes decoded.hashes

So above, I would like to avoid the second call to ffmpeg.  Like if I could split the lossless.avi output of the first call to two new streams:  One to the file system and one to a demuxer feeding the hash muxer.

First, a nitpick: you don't want to compute hashes on the encoded frame data before or while writing. You're testing the fidelity of the  lossless encoding so you need to compare the decoded frame of the x264 encode with the corresponding PNG.

So, first here's how to do what you specifically asked for.

Use the tee pseudo-muxer

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\%%03d.png" ^
-filter_complex "[0]{some filter here}[otherOut]" ^
-map 0 -c:v libx264rgb -qp 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 -f tee "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\lossless.avi|[f=avi]pipe:" ^
-map 0 -f framehash -hash SHA512 "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\original.hashes" ^
-map [otherOut] {some other encoding} someOtherFile.idc | ffmpeg -f avi -i - -f framehash -hash SHA512 %IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\decoded.hashes"

If your end goal is to check the fidelity of the lossless encoding, use

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\%%03d.png" ^
-filter_complex "[0]{some filter here}[otherOut]" ^
-map 0 -c:v libx264rgb -qp 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\lossless.avi" ^
-map [otherOut] {some other encoding} someOtherFile.idc

and then

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 0 -i "%IMAGES_DIRECTORY%\%%03d.png" -i lossless.avi ^
-filter_complex "ssim" -f null -

If the result is lossless, the readout will say

SSIM R:1.000000 (inf) G:1.000000 (inf) B:1.000000 (inf) All:1.000000 (inf)


Seamless loop animation My experience in AE is not so big, so I need your assistance plz.
I faced with a task I still can't solve.
I'm trying to make the clouds loop. I wanted if the part of cloud which disappears on the right side out of frame, at the same time seamlessly appeared on the left side in the frame.
Any tips are highly appreciated.

I not know how do this with AE animation software but I do this in Blender:

Basic theory (see picture) for real camera or software:

• Want repeat image every n animation frames

• Assume camera view is w × h pixels

• For camera view w pixels wide, minimum need draw picture wide 2w pixels wide

• Copy picture two times and put left/right each other (draw left and right edge of image for can't see edge)

• Shift picture -w pixels for first animation frame relative to camera left edge

• Step size for each animation frame is ∆s = w/n

• Image position = ∆s*(animation frame number mod n), means at every n animation frames shift image back -w pixels (return to start position)

• Use linear interpolation for image position (need select this for Blender)

• Use repeat cycle (for Blender)

Blue dot show shift for each animation frame

If image is wider than camera view (R ≥ w):

• shift picture -R pixels for start animation frame

• step become ∆s = R/n

• shift image back -R pixels

Reverse Direction

• Shift picture 0 pixels for first animation frame relative to camera left edge

• Step for each animation frame is ∆s = –w/n (∆s = –R/n for image R ≥ w), negative direction


What is the typical audio to video sync threshold when it becomes noticeable? At what point does audio / video delay become noticeable or is there a general industry standard threshold?

I don't know if there's a "standard", my personal opinion - "it depends".

In general you'll get away with a frame or two out of sync, although most editors will just line it up as accurately as possible if they can, unless there's a reason you can't?

I've filmed tap dancers on a stage and given the teacher the raw footage - and had them complain the audio was out of sync. On a raw recording you're looking at between 2 and 4 frames out, depending on how far the camera is back from the stage.

I'll notice as soon as dialogue is 3 or 4 frames out. Other sounds often sooner. I'll notice when you've got a rear shot of someone's head, and the jaw movements aren't lining up with the dialogue. But I'm not a casual observer, and neither is the dance teacher - so like I said, it depends. There will definitely be people who notice as soon as you're out by even a small amount, and there are many more who won't spot it. Almost always when something on TV is out of sync and driving me nuts, no one else is even noticing it.

Any proper editing software will let you resync the audio, and even without a clapper, it's usually easy enough to figure out, and at least get it within a frame or two. There might not be a standard, but if your audio is badly out, you are better to just spend the time to fix it. If you can notice it, and/or it doesn't look right to you, then likely at least some of your audience will be having the same experience.


How to go about making educational videos of handwritten instructions on a digital pad, where the hands won't be included in the videos? How do we use a digital board/pad to make pre-recorded (not live) YouTube videos of the handwritten instructions, so that hand(s) wouldn't be visible in the videos, but you'll actually use your hand (and not the computer mouse) to write on the board? So basically, to make these videos, you'll write on a digital pad/board connected to your computer, so the computer screen would contain just what you're writing minus your hand, and the video of those writings can be saved afterwards? The best descripotion is some Khan Academy videos: e.g.

             is where you see just what you need, minus the hands, or the instructor himself.

If possible, how exactly do we do it? One idea is described here -

            , but I'd still love to see if there're other simpler ideas out there, possibly not involving buying a very expensive digital board. Some digital board are less than 100€, but some are 1000€ (!).

The easiest way to do this would be to get a graphic tablet (like a Wacom tablet or a cheaper alternative) and record the screen as you write on a drawing program such as gimp, illustrator, Photoshop, paint.net, etc. with a recording program such as OBS. You can set up custom pens that use the speed, angle, pressure, etc. of your drawing to imitate the look of a pen and to create a similar effect to one of these videos.


TV trope name for monologue to unexpected off-camera recipient? Theres a definite technique where the cameraman is focusing solely on character A who is speaking to character B, and character B is not within view for the TV viewer. Then, when it is revealed who person B is, it is completely surprising and often to comedic effect.

I'd like to read more about this technique, but without a name there is little to search for. Is there one?

There are 2 examples where I see this semi-frequently:

Simpsons: (I may not have this accurately recalled) Homer Simpson is giving a stern warning that her daughter's radical behavior will not be tolerated in this house. Then the footage cuts to what turns out to be Maggie, the baby.
WWE: at least every couple of weeks, there is a wrestler backstage and he is talking to someone off-camera about something very specific and serious with the storyline he's involved in. But when the camera pans to the recipient, it's someone unexpected (e.g. a midget, a female valet etc.) which is funny but still makes 100% sense by the speaker.

Does this technique/trope have an name?

TV trope name for monologue to unexpected off-camera recipient?
Theres a definite technique where the cameraman is focusing solely on character A who is speaking to character B, and character B is not within view for the TV viewer. Then, when it is revealed who person B is, it is completely surprising and often to comedic effect.

It is close to the Trick Dialogue, with a bit of Subverted Trope, not a Fourth Wall Psych.

Trick Dialogue:

A subversion of the most fundamental aspect of Dialogue: whether a character is talking to someone else or not.
Commonly, a character will appear to be making a brave confession, and then be revealed to have just been practicing before a mirror. Or, he will seem to be explaining his life to someone, and then be shown to be talking to a gravestone.
Alternatively, a character will clearly be talking to himself, but we find out that someone just happened to overhear. (Bonus points if it was the intended recipient of a difficult request.) This can follow on the first kind for a Double Subversion of dialogue.
Visual media typically use a Reveal Shot, often a Close-Up on Head, to execute Trick Dialogue. Compare Fourth Wall Psych (where the character appears to be speaking to the audience but is actually talking to another person). See also Not So Dire.

Subverted Trope:

Basically, this is playing bait and switchnote  with a trope. A work makes you think a trope is going to happen, but it doesn't.
But how could people know a trope is going to happen? Well, tropes live in the minds of the audience. As such, sufficiently Trope Savvy audience members can predict a familiar trope coming based on the hints dropped by the writer. So when the writer decides to build on this expectation, only to reveal that the expected "trope" was a Red Herring while an entirely different situation results, you have a Subverted Trope.


How To Add Outro Animation I'm new to after effects and currently I am using preset effects. How do I add a second animation(outro effect) after the first animation is completed?

example:

timeline:

1 sec- a picture appears
2 sec- the picture is clear now
3 - 9 secs - the picture is still
10 sec - I want the picture to have an outro effect either wipe out or dissolve.

To add a dissolve you would want to add keyframes to the opacity property for the image. Park your playhead at 10 seconds and with the image selected hit the letter t. You should see the opacity property for the layer. If the stopwatch isn't blue then click it, which will turn on animation for that property. Go to the time at which you want to end the dissolve and wind the value down to 0. You should have two new keyframes on the opacity channel, and the layer will fade out.

A wipe can be achieved in many ways, one of the simplest is using a mask. With the image layer selected hold the alt / option key down and double-click the quickmask icon:

That will add a rectangular mask the size of your layer. Hit the m key to show the masks for the layer. Park the playhead at the time at which you want to start your transition and click the stopwatch next to the mask path property to animate the mask, tThis will also make one keyframe.

Now move the playhead to where you want the transition to end. Double click on the mask outline in the comp window, and you should see a wireframe outline around it. Drag the wireframe right off the screen, in the direction you want the wipe to go. Hold the shift key to constrain the movement to vertical or horizontal only. This will create another keyframe, and the layer will wipe off.

You can add easing to the keyframes to make the motion more pleasing - hit the f9 key to add ease-in/out. You can further refine the motion in the graph editor (hit this button with the mask property selected)

As for anything in After effects the ways of achieving these effects are limited only by your imagination and skill. Hopefully using native AE tools instead of relying on presets will give you a taste for how it works.


How can I update instances of a text template after changing the master template? I've got 20 or so text items in my timeline, all using a text template called Bookmark that I created in Motion. I want to modify the text template in Motion and have the changes propagate through to each of the text items that are already in the timeline. Is that possible?

I'm using Final Cut Pro 10.1.2 and Motion 5.1.1.

Unfortunately, that isn't currently supported. Your text items will preserve the state from when they were first added. So you're stuck doing it manually. It's number 4 on the list of top requested features for the next update though and Apple seems to be aware of this site, or they've just been reading minds the last few updates- http://fcpx.tv/top.html

One thing that has helped me though is that you can drag your new Motion titles on top of the old ones already on your timeline, hit "replace", and it should retain the original text of the old title.


Masks, layers, solids or multi composition to solve my problem? I hope that you can first understand my problem ..then suggest me on how to do... I am doing 3D VR videos. in AE i put the 2 footage (Left and Right eye) cut/paste/edit/render etc is not a problem... the problem happen when I in some occasions need to "zoom in" which can be done by enlarging the 2 footage. problem is that when I do that one of the 2 footage overlap the other!! I tried with masks and solid but didn't work (maybe i did wrong) I feel that using different composition maybe is the right way to avoid overlapping ..but I am not so sure how to do. If I could show you some screenshot would be more easy for you to understand... Please Help me!

The answer to your question is yes. Masks, solids or multi-compositions will help.

What, you want more? Oh ok.

Thing about After Effects is that there is almost always at least two valid ways of doing anything:

To fix your problem you could use masks on each eye. Now because you're scaling the layers, and masks are attached to a layer and scale with it, that won't really work (You could scale down the mask to match the scale of the layer, but getting that right might be really tricky, so I wouldn't recommend it). So if you want to use a mask on the layer you have to pre-compose the layers, with the attributes included, so the scale keyframes are inside the new pre-comp, and then apply the mask in the original comp.

Pros: simpler timeline,
cons: the keyframes are now in two other comps, so you have to be switching between them, and copying-pasting to make any edits (you could synchronise them with expressions though).

Another method would be to make track mattes for each eye. You do this by using any layer–usually a solid–and putting it above the layer you want to mask, and then turning on alpha matte on the layer you want to mask - each eye in this case.

This works a bit like stencil/silhouette alpha mode, except that it only affects one layer. You can either resize the matte layer or use a mask to make the matte the right size.

Pros: everything is on the one timeline, easy to edit.
cons: more layers on your timeline, you have to remember to keep the track matte and footage layer together if you're changing the position of your layers.


Upscaling or downscaling videos I was wondering, is upscaling from the videoplayer worse then upscaling the video during encode?

For example, consider the original source of a video is 640 x 480. Which of the following will produce better quality on a 800 x 600 display:

Encode video > play in full screen
Resize video to 800 x 600 > encode > play in full screen

?

My assumption is that a lower quality resizing algoritm is chosen during video playback to save cpu. Am I right?

This depends on how much resources you are willing to invest into upscaling content. The default setting for libswscale in VLC seems to be bicubic, if you intend to use more sophisticated resizing filters and a particular target resolution then you should upscale the video during encode this way you also don't have to rely on the capabilities and customizing options of the player device or software.


Problem with Adobe Premier masks I have added a text, created a mask and put mask on the text and when I want to move text, mask moves with it, how can I achieve a result, when mask remains and text moves

Nest the text layer, so that the animation works in within the composition and then mask the nested composition.


Defining animation once, then repeating across a selection of shapes in a cascading manner? I have a comp with 20 windows (for a building), that I want to animate in a cascading manner (i.e. windows 1 though 20) with half a second in between each window animates in.

Is there a way for me to define the animation once (i.e. scale from 0 to 100 and increase opacity from 0 to 100), then to apply it to all shapes with a defined space between each animation starting?

Thanks,
Andy.

Assuming the same thing happens in each window...
Make the action that will be inside the first window in its own comp.
Then duplicate the comp 19 times, and use something like the brilliant pt_shiftlayers script to stagger each of the layers half second after the previous one.


How can encode video with images like these (overlay a video over a fixed image) with ffmpeg? How can encode video with images like these help me ffmpeg ?

To overlay a half-sized version of a video in the center of an image, use

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image -i video
-filter_complex "[1]scale=iw/2:-1[ovrl];
                 [0][ovrl]overlay=(main_w-overlay_w)/2:(main_h-overlay_h)/2:shortest=1[v]"
-map "[v]" -map 1:a -c:v libx264 -c:a copy output.mp4

To frame the video:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image -i video loop 1 -i frame
-filter_complex "[1]scale=iw/2:-1[ovrl];
                 [2][ovrl]scale2ref=iw*1.2:-1[fr][ol];
                 [fr][ol]overlay=(main_w-overlay_w)/2:(main_h-overlay_h)/2:shortest=1[fv];
                 [0][fv]overlay=(main_w-overlay_w)/2:(main_h-overlay_h)/2:shortest=1[v]"
-map "[v]" -map 1:a -c:v libx264 -c:a copy output.mp4

If you composite the frame onto the background image beforehand, in ffmpeg or elsewhere, you can just use that resultant image with the first command. Of course, you'll lose freedom of movement for the video overlay.


Can I capture different native resolutions with the same CCD-Sensor? Im working on a paper for my university and need capturings of the same scene in different native resolutions. Im currently using the Logitech BRIO camera with OBS for capturing.

My question is: If I change the resolution of the camera in OBS, does this result in native recordings in that resolution or is the resolution only changed in software?

I know that it could depend on the implementation from OBS but is it even possible to get different native resolution from the same CCD-Sensor in theory? I couldn't find any information about how changing the resolution is actually done.

No, there is physically only one 'native resolution' for any hardware sensor. It is the number of physically distinct light sensitive areas on the sensor chip and is set in silicone at the time of manufacture.

When OBS or any other software gives you a different sized image it is either re-sampling using the values available from the native resolution or alternatively changing the camera resolution which then puts the burden of re-sampling on the cameras internal processing chips.

(Unless you are working with RAW output then the information lost between using a native resolution and sub-sampled resolution is going to be swamped by what is thrown away by modern compression techniques such as JPEG anyway.)


Chroma subsampling notation - rules Are there some simple arithmetical relations (rules, properties) between numbers in x:y:z chroma subsampling notation?

Yes, there are.

Let x:y:z is a chroma subsampling. Then

x = 4
So the begin of the notation is 4:.
y|x (y is a divisor of x)
So there are 3 possibilities for the first two numbers: 4:1: or 4:2: or 4:4:.
z = 0 or z = y
So there are 6 possibilities: 4:1:0, 4:1:1, 4:2:0 4:2:2, 4:4:1, or 4:4:4.
y + z determines the resulting color quality (higher is better).
So 4:4:4 is the best (as 4 + 4 = 8) while 4:1:0 is the worst (as 1 + 0 = 1).


SDR to HDR (High Dynamic Range) Converter? I've heard that it's possible to convert SDR videos to HDR and get reasonable results.  Obviously, this isn't as good as having source HDR content, but I'm really curious and would like to try this for myself.  I have lots of 10 bpc 422 SDR video, and I'm wondering if there's any software out there that could automatically convert it into an HDR format that gives good results.  Is there such software?

For example, I've attempted to use Premiere Pro CC 2019 (using the High10 profile with Dynamic Range checked) to do convert input SDR video to HDR, but the colors in the output HDR video all end up extremely dark looking (an undesirable result).  I'm just wondering if there's software that can give me much better results with little effort on my part.

I'd suspect anything purely automated is going to be pretty marginal.  There's a lot of complexity to getting a good curve with the right gamma, but there's a variety of possible levels of what would be considered "good results".  Personally, I'd rather try getting a good mapping manually with something like Resolve and then trying to see what scenes I could copy the curve to.  I'd suspect that minimal effort and reasonable competence would result in a better quality end result than most automated tools.  That's true for most Auto Tone, Auto Level and Auto Curve tools for standard dynamic range, so I'm not sure why it would be different for HDR.


Color correction workflow I completed my first short film in December. One of the most time consuming aspects of the project was making the colors look nice. I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and the free Magic Bullet plugin. I learned a lot. I now realise that color correction and grading is more of an art than an established set of rules.

Could an expereinced colorist provide some practical tips about dealing with color correction and grading over the scope of the entire project.

Should I wait until I have a rough cut until I start correcting?
Should I correct individual clips on the timeline, or correct the original source?
Should correction (of exposure etc.) and grading (achieving a "look") be done at separate stages?
What kind of automated colour correction tools are there?
Are there things I can do during production that would help with the color correction (i.e. using a target with color squares printed on it like this)?

I am not an experienced colorist but I believe I can provide you with some answers. At least from an indie filmmaker's point of view.

Wait until you have the final cut (or lock-off cut) before you grade. Grading usually happens at the same time as the sound design as both require a locked-off cut. It is best to wait until this stage so that you don't have to go back and grade new shots if the director decides he/she wants to make a change.
Correct individual clips on the timeline. You said you grade in Premiere using a plugin. That's cool. But there are other options. I always went from Final Cut to Apple Color but have recently discovered DaVinci Resolve. The Lite version is free. Here is a bit of info on it.
Grading clip by clip is the best way to go because you can see what the clip before looked like and so you know what the next one needs to look like, i.e. it's easier to reference.
You don't want to color grade the original video incase you decide you want to change something later. I believe doing something like that is called destructive editing. You want to keep it raw so that you can always come back to it.
In my experience, no, it happens at the same time.
Not too sure about this one. Avid Media Composer has pretty good color grading capabilities, I never use the auto correct on it, but it's there if you need it. Check out this tutorial on grading in Avid. Other editing programs may have similar features, but I personally don't use them. And if you're editing a film, I don't see why you would want to.
Yes there are things you can do to help with grading in post. That color chart you linked to wouldn't really help you. I think that's more for when people shoot on film. They shoot 10 seconds or so of color chart on every new reel of film to make sure that the people who are processing their film are consistent. So, they have the same color chart and the same film. Provided they shoot it with the same lighting and exposure, the color charts should all look exactly the same when they come back from processing and telecine. If they don't the film processing company can get into trouble.
During production you pretty much want to make sure you get the flattest image possible and correct exposure. If you under or overexpose a part of the scene, there is no detail recorded and there is no way to get it back. If you shoot on Canon DSLR there is a great (free) picture profile which helps to obtain a flat image optimized for color grading. It's called CineStyle by Technicolor. Otherwise you can shoot with the neutral picture profile with the contrast turned all the way down.
I only have experience with Canon DSLRs so if you are using something else you would need to do some research on how to achieve a flat image.


What are some free (or cheap) options for hosting home videos that have copyright music in them? I uploaded some of my home movies to YouTube for family members to watch but there were a few songs in there which YouTube said were copyrighted. The only music in there was the theme song from the old Mission Impossible but there's not arguing with Google. So they muted the whole video.  Fine, thems the rules.

Are there any other options for hosting a video like that for private viewing (even though I had the Youtube video set to "private")  and thus allow copyright music to be in the video?

(I assume that putting copyright music into a home movie, not for distribution beyond my immediate family falls under Fair Use and that the issue is that YouTube is under a lot of pressure to avoid copyright issues... but I'm hot trying to broadcast this to 100's of people. Maybe 10 or so. But just trying to avoid burning DVDs for them.

You can use a file storage service like:

DropBox
Google Drive
Microsoft SkyDrive
Apple iCloud

You can restrict access of your files there to a handful of persons.

For example on Google Drive, when you share a file with some people, it asks you for their email addresses. It then sends an email to all those people with a "secret" link. In theory, this link is still public. But in practice, it is next to impossible to guess the value of those links.

Personally, I use Google Drive. It offers an initial 15 Gb of space.


How to reveal 3 masks with Stroke in After Effects How to reveal this image with Stroke Effect in a single image layer?

I created 3 masks using Pen Tool
For each mask , I added a Stroke effect and animated everything.
In Stroke effect the settings, I switched Paint Style to Reveal original image

The problem is that I can reveal only one mask, and for two or more, nothing happens. How to animate each mask individually on one single layer using Stroke Effect?
Thank you.

If I understand this correctly, your goal is to be able to adjust the stroke effect in one shape and have it applied to every other shape, right?
If so, here's how I'd approach this:

create your shape layer and add the stroke effect to reveal the image
Pre-compose the shape layer
Duplicate the precomp three two times and scale them, so you have three different sizes
To remain the same thickness of your shapes, you could apply the "min-max" effect and widen the alpha- and colorchannels to make the shape appear thicker.

If you now adjust the stroke-effect of the shape in any of your three precomps, it is applied to every precomp, effectively changing the animation for all the three shapes.


Is it possible to record audio-responsive Quartz compositions along with the audio? I would like to build simple Quartz compositions that respond in real time to audio. Once I've done that, how can I record both the audio and video into a single video file for upload to youtube? I would prefer to work within Quartz Composer, iMovie and other software that is free or already included with OSX.

Well, you can import the audio into quartz or play it through the mic input using Soundflower.  http://quartzcomposer.com/plugins/1-export-to-movie SHOULD export it. Then you can go back and add and line up the music to the video with iMovie (or something better) and export it.

*Soundflower Instructions: Open soundflowerbed, in the menubar (top) a little flower will appear, click on it and go under "Soundflower (2ch)" and click "Built-in output." This will let you hear the audio when you do this. Then go to your system preferences, go to audio settings, and change the OUTPUT to "Soundflower (2ch)" When you go into Quartz Composer, drag the Audio Input (if you have not already) and wire it up. Then go to settings in the inspector and check "Select a specific audio source" and select "Soundcloud (2ch)." Then go and play whatever you want on your computer.


Zoom in and out a video frame panel in Adobe Premiere In Adobe Premiere, I need sometimes to add some small custom masks. And I need to zoom in the video frame in this case. The only option I found is to manually drug a video panel border.

Are there special hotkeys for these actions (zoom in and zoom out video frame)?

Yes, well not for zooming but for maximizing and restoring the panel. These shortcuts may look different depending on the keyboard layout. On English layouts it's ` for the active frame, which is the frame with the thin blue border drawn around, and Shift+` for the frame under the cursor. The ` character is called acute or backtick.
If you use another keyboard layout and the ` does not work or you want to change the shortcuts, go to Edit menu -> Keyboard Shortcuts... Search for Maximize and you'll get "Maximize or Restore Active Frame" and "Maximize or Restore Frame Under Cursor".
Also, you can set zoom-in/-out shortcuts for the program monitor, but it zooms into the video and doesn't make the panel larger. Those shortcuts are not set by default.


Does Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 have a fullscreen mode? Essentially what I'm looking for is a way to make Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 go fullscreen. I do not mean the fullscreen preview of the video or fullscreen on a specific panel (like the timeline).

I want to get rid of the Windows taskbar and the window border. The same way that you would go fullscreen with a browser by pressing F11.

I'm surprised I haven't found any shortcut or any discussion online. I'm working on a 15" laptop monitor and would like to maximize my workspace. I've tried to press F11, searched for it in the menus and the keyboard shortcut list but haven't found anything.

As clarified in the comments on AJ's answer below, I am looking for something like pushing F in Photoshop or Lightroom, where the workspace is otherwise the same.  For example, this is how it looks in Lightroom.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I'm fairly certain there is no such mode.  It doesn't have the same kind of feature that lightroom does as the full screen video preview is really the closest in terms of being related functionality.

The full screen mode is helpful in Lightroom because it allows focusing on the photo with only basic controls.  Premiere is much more complex than LR and a significant portion of screen real-estate is taken up by those controls.  If you aren't purely focusing on the video, then the amount of lost and distracting space really isn't a big issue.

Note that if you really need every last scrap of screen real estate though, you can adjust the task bar so that you can make it only a small line on the bottom of the screen though.  You really are not practically losing any meaningful amount of screen real-estate.

The only functionality is the functionality that maximizes a particular panel or full screens the preview, but you already mentioned those are not what you are looking for.  That's the closest you are going to get though.


Add noise to video while maintaining compressibility I'm creating a promotion video that has to be uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo.

In post-production (using Final Cut), I've added a noise for aesthetic purposes.

This noise looks really bad on YouTube and Vimeo because these sites compress the video's you upload to them.

I know that (pseudo-)random noise is very hard to compress (almost by definition), so I was wondering if there exist noise filters that visually
seem random but are in fact not random, making compression on them easier and hopefully improving Youtube and Vimeo quality?

As you say, noise by definition doesn't compress well. You can try different types of noise in FCP. The Add Noise filter has several choices - Gaussian is a reasonable simulation of film grain, but you can try the other choices, too. They might compress better (or worse).

But your best bet is to increase the data rate of the resulting file. I don't know the limitations of YouTube or Vimeo, and your content may make it difficult to stay within their limits, but that's probably going to get you better results than trying to find some form of noise that isn't (as) affected by compression.


Video stream with delay I need to capture a video stream from a web cam and then show it non-stop with a delay of 30 seconds or more.

A server side linux software would be the best but a Windows GUI application will be ok as well.

What you are looking for is called a Broadcast Delay Processor. Unfortunately, these processors come as a hardware device that you feed your signal through, and therefore they are relatively expensive.

I did look around for a software based broadcast delay for you, but I was not able to find any.

Luckily though, you can use VLC (free and available on Linux and Windows) to stream with a delay. Check out this command:

  Display stream output

  --sout-display-delay=<integer [-2147483648 .. 2147483647]>
                             Delay (ms)
      Introduces a delay in the display of the stream.

In your case use it like with this value:  --sout-display-delay=30000

You can also record your webcam with VLC, see this article for details:
Recording webcam videos with VLC Media Player

In other words, using VLC with the provided commands you should be able to both record your webcam and stream it with a delay (at no cost).


How can I move a floating text or image with the video? In this video

you can see a logo next to head that moves with it.

How can  I do that in Premiere?

This is called Motion Tracking. You define a part on the head that will be tracked, and then have another object move relative to this position.

I'm not sure this can be easily done with Premiere, as I've never done that, but it's a fairly standard procedure in After Effects. After Effects has a built-in tracking system, but there are also plugins like Mocha which offer the same features (and possibly a bit more).

There are hundreds of Motion Tracking tutorials online that explain how to do this, but looking for the term "Tracking" should get you started easily. For example, here's a tutorial for Premiere:


Choosing an import format: AAF vs OMF I am developing a video rendering application. I would like to import editing projects from non-linear video editing application like Avid or FCP.

Which format should I start with, AAF or OMF? What would be the pros and cons of either?

AAF is the newer and more complete framework.  It is the successor to OMF, which still lives on but mostly because of legacy applications.

Note that Automatic Duck makes a line of highly-regarded tools that help with import and export of these interchange formats and have recently been made available for free.


Adobe Premiere not reading audio from .MTS file I was filming some scenes on my Panasonic SD90 and it recorded them In a AVHC-HD format, .MTS. The problem is, when I import them in through Premier they lose their audio tracks! It plays fine in VLC, and I have the K-Lite codec pack installed.

Any Ideas?

Apparently its a problem with Premiere pro Cs6 that haven't been updated or fixed as yet there are 3 ways that might help you resolve your work;

Install an earlier version of premiere pro like 4 - 5 depending what version fits what you do......(DO NOT UPDATE!!!)
Convert all your videos to mp4 720 or 1080, what every quality your working with. Might be a bit time consuming but it works.
Import the ENTIRE CARD, very important, all the files from your card to your pc/mac, the metadata should be located somewhere in a folder within the card, it's not on the .mts file.

Method 3. has been reported to work so try it and let me know.
installing new codecs wont work.


Do video containers influence the video quality? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_container_formats

Understanding containers and codecs

I'm just confused because the information above seems to indicate containers are simply chosen based on what codecs you want in your video, and that they are independent of the actual output which is determined by the codecs.
But then why is it when i output a h.264 in an .mp4 container the quality is much worse and shading different than h.264 in an .avi or .mkv?
And  if there is a reason is there a table or compilation somewhere showing this kind of information for each container so I know short of trying them all?

Extra
I ask because I'm trying to find an acceptable container to hold a .wav32 (or mbe .wav 16bit signed) and 4k h.265 video that will be supported by youtube specifically in this case, .avi isn't working. .mkv isnt listed as beings supported but does upload. it seems to be the same as a working .avi, but I don't pretend to understand what's really going on....it re-encodes anyways so its irrelevant so long as it seems to be the same as a supported format..?
People say to convert .mkv to mp4 but I don't see any reason why....mkv supports going to mp4 without a re-encode but whyyy would you limit your audio options and do so....? Especially when mp4 seems to degrade quality as talked about above, although I don't know if going mkv to mp4 produces similar quality changes as straight out rendering into such a container. Other non supported containers like .ts produces favourable visual results as well.
So this is relating to the posed question of does ur video container just hold the codecs and not affect anything really whether it be "supported" by a streaming site or not? It's all irrelevant and its the codecs that determine everything?

The choice of container has no bearing on stream quality, which is determined solely by encoder parameters.

What may happen is that the stream could have non-standard or at least unexpected colorimetry properties and some containers can't store that metadata or may have stored them incorrectly. Also possible is that the metadata is correct but the player doesn't parse them correctly or at all depending on the container. This can lead to a difference in rendering, which you perceive as a change in quality.


How to modify audio level of video according to replaygain info? I have a bunch of music videos I have downloaded from youtube. I usually put them in a playlist in mpc (Media Player Classic). The problem is that the audio levels of the videos are quite different and I have to adjust the volume for each one.

If I hear them in foobar2000 (it's an audio player) there's no problem because it can apply the replaygain info wich I have added to the videos, but mpc hasn's this feature.

Mpc has a normalization option but it is dynamic and is not what I want.

An aceptable solution would be to recode the video with the audio levels corrected. But I want to move the audio level globally to the video, not dynamic normalization. And also I want to leave the video untouched. What tool can I use?

FFmpeg, a free command-line tool, has a volume filter that should do this.

Syntax would be

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v copy -af volume=replaygain=track output.mp4

The af invokes the volume filter with the option set to adjust the volume using the track replaygain value (if present). Video is set to passthrough into the output.


Speeding up workflow for creating subtitles I'm creating a series of videos that have subtitles that appear one word at a time. My workflow gets me through about 1 minute of subtitles every 45 minutes, and I feel like there could be a faster way.

My general approach is to set the opacity of the last X words of the sentence to 0, and such that X equals  N (the # of words in the sentence) when the sentence starts and then X equals 0 when the sentence hits the final word. Here's what I'm doing:

Using the audio waveform and lots of "Ctrl-." (audio preview) I find the beginning of the sentence I'm creating subtitles for. I then move back six frames (to allow for an opening fade).
I add a "Source text" keyframe and a keyframe to the "Offset" property with the value -1.
Jumping forward six keyframes, I make another "Offset" keyframe with value 0 (this displays just the first word when the sentence begins)
Finally, I search the waveform and audio for the beginning of the last word in the sentence. I put one more "Offset" keyframe there set to N–1, and then use the keyboard shortcut to make it "hold" its value until the next sentence starts.

This works just fine, it's just slow. All I've been able to do to speed things up is to copy and paste the set of 4 keyframes from one sentence to another, but that still involves finding the beginning and end of each sentence, changing the source text, and setting the final keyframe based on the number of words in that particular sentence. If this is the best approach, that's OK, but if there's a better way, I'd love to know. Thanks for reading!

One final thing: I'm using all the keyboard shortcuts I know, which has sped things up a fair bit. The only areas where additional shortcuts would be handy are a) entering editing mode for the text field (I use Command-Enter to exit editing mode), and b) selecting the keyframe at the current time (so I don't need to move to the trackpad and click it manually every time). But I haven't discovered shortcuts for these things yet.

My suggestion is only going to be useful if you have several minutes of subtitling to do like this:

Build the subtitles first using something like Aegisub. Export them as .srt files. Import them into the pt_import_subtitles from aescripts.com

This will generate all your text files for you with the lines appearing at the correct time. Then use your workflow for going through to correct the times when you'd like each word to appear.


Rotating image/video about an axis within xy-plane in FCP Is it possible to animate a photo/video so that it continuously rotates about an axis within the xy-plane? For example, rotate it about the y-axis. I know how to regularly rotate a video (rotation about z-axis), and I know you can keyframe using distort with keyframe, but was wondering if there is a way to continuously have a shape rotating about a vertical axis. This would be like 3D-rotation.

For example, having the image of a card continuously "spin" vertically.

If you don’t want to use keyframes than it sounds more like a job for Motion or you might be lucky and find a plug-in for this behaviour.
I couldn’t think of anything else than keyframes.


Is the Canon 550d ideal for documentary video production? I'm confused as to go with the costlier body cheaper lens vice-versa,
I have a budget at around $1000, and i am looking at the canon 550d with the 50mm f 1.8.

I would like to get advice on the lens selection, the dslr will be used mostly for video.
Also is there a nikon alternative to the 550d?
Your answers are greatly appreciated.

Options:
Sony A55
Sony A580
Canon 550d

Regards

Normally, it is advisable to go with a better lens even if that means a cheaper body (due to budget constraints), as lenses make much more a difference than most modern DSLRs.

Since you are going for primarily for video, you need to consider audio as well. There is no built-in microphone that is good enough for serious documentary, so you have two choices:

Buy a camera with a mini-jack so that you can plug in an external microphone.
Buy an external sound recording device and record sound separately. Merge the sound track from your recording with the video track using video editing software.

The second option is more flexible and also more costly. As usual, you need to spend enough on a sound recording to get something good. Don't both using you cellphone's sound-recording function ;)

There are very few DSLRs which will autofocus while recording video. It is often a concern for people buying cameras for home videos but for anything serious it does not matter.

If you do not go with one of the sound options above, then you will have to worry about the camera recording the sound of autofocus. On the cameras I tried (Nikon D3100 and A55), it will make your sound track annoying to your audience.

Even if you do use external audio, the contrast-detect autofocus system used by the D3100 causes the lens to move back and forth while focusing. This is easy to spot in videos and just does not look right. The Sony Alpha SLT-A55 and its sibling the A33 are the only cameras that use phase-detection during video recording and avoid this particular problem.

If possible for the subjects you are documenting, you should use Manual Focus while filming. This will let you decide precisely on what to focus, when to change focus and how slowly to do it. It will take lots of practice to get right, so try it on squirrels or whatever animal you have roaming around where you live.

If you are filming things that move a lot or live-events (in which case retakes are not possible), then you may decide to rely on autofocus. You will occasionally end up with shots that are partially out of focus since sometimes the camera simply goes after the wrong thing. You can edit such parts out and move any relevant audio.


What's the best way to video chess/go/baduk/weiqi board from above (i.e. top down view)? Are there special equipment to fix a camera in a top down view?

(This is an alternative to mounting a camera above a game board.)

If it proves difficult to mount and operate a camera above the board, consider using a mirror as an alternative.  The camera can be placed on a normal tripod, and a mirror can be mounted above the board on a 45-degree angle.  The camera then shoots the image in the mirror.

The image will need to be flipped vertically in post-production to avoid showing a mirror image of the board.


How to balance audio across multiple clips? I have a number of clips that I want to uniformly amplify and balance. These clips all include a voiceover from me, during different sessions.

You could create a compound clip of your voice over and then add a Compressor effect onto this compound clip.


Getting audio from a Bell & Howell Filmosound 8 Projector I recently acquired a Bell & Howell Filmosound 8mm Projector, and several 8mm Sound Films.  To my delight, the motor and lamp work and the unit seems to work quite well.

I would love to figure out how to capture/play the sound from the sound films, but the unit is designed to connect to something else, presumably a preamp or stereo system of some sort.

Originally, this unit came with a special cable to connect to the atypical audio ports on the projector, but I don't have it.  Both ports are un-labled.  One appears to be an 1/8" headphone type jack, and the other is smaller.  I have tried connecting the 1/8" jack to a number of preamps/mixers, but have not been able to get any audio.  This leads me to believe the 1/8" jack may be for recording sound to a film, and the smaller one is for playback.

Has anyone used this or a similar model and been able to get sound?  Any help appreciated:

The projector you have is for use with the Bell and Howell model 450 cassette recorder. This projector has no optical or magnetic means of playing or recording sound. IN this system, which is a "Double Sound System", the sound is recorded on the 450 player/recorder via a special cable that goes between the camera and the recorder. The film itself has no magnetic or optical sound track on it. The recorder records both the audio from a microphone and sync information from the camera, hence the special cable running between camera and recorder. After the film is processed and returned, it threaded into the projector and then the cassette player/recorder is connected by means of another special cable to the projector, via the 2 jacks pointed out in your photo. The jack questioned is a size 3/32.
This special cable is used to deliver sync information that was originally recorded on the tape to the projector for lip sync sound reproduction


How to achieve this kind of masks and transitions I've come across this video and, as a total noob in video editing, I find it stunning. After watching it a couple of questions arise regarding masks and transitions:

The intro title fills with a smoke-like mask. Where can I find a mask like that, if possible for free?
The subtitle and the rest of the titles appear with each letter growing independently. I guess that could be done using a Stroke for each letter and animating it? Seems like a lot of work. Isn't there an automated process for that?
The transitions in 0:16, 0:49 and 1:05. How are those done?

I'd also appreciate any kind of basic tutorial about color correction to achieve the same looks as that video.

Let me start by saying what they did there is actually far, Far, FAR simpler than you think.  I'll try to break it down shot by shot what is going on.

On the title, there are three main elements.  The first element fades in on a time lapse of clouds moving across the mountain.  This appears to be the same time lapse they use a few seconds later for the first subtitle.

Superimposed over that are two elements.  The first and faintest is a fairly small image of a cloud.  It appears to simply be luma keyed or possibly additively blended (bright parts make bright, dark parts don't impact) and probably has a black background  It's quite probably a CG cloud using particle simulation.

The last element of this first shot is a title composed of white text.  The text is blended in using a gradient dissolve that bases the time it dissolves being driven by the luminance of an underlying image.

As a demonstration, lets start with this CC image from centophobia on flikr.  With some quick rotating and additive blending (Lighten) in Photoshop, applying a greyscale mode change and then using the curves to give us contrast more suitable to our purposes we get an image like this (after resizing and cropping to fit a 1080p video).

Now that we have an image to use for the base of our dissolve, we can actually do the title.  Here is a screenshot from doing this in Premiere.

First, I imported the image I created and then I made a basic title with plain white block letters.  I then added both of these to a sequence.  Note that the smoke layer should be in the sequence with the title, but it should not be visible.

Next, I added a Gradient Dissolve to the title clip from the Transition Effects.  Set the Gradient Layer to the layer you put your gradient map on (the smoke image.)

Next, adjust the settings to add softness to the transition (this is what causes it to work through the gradient rather than having a hard line being exposed).

Set a keyframe on the transition completion at the beginning and end of where you want it to dissolve in (using the little stopwatch looking button) and set a keyframe at 100 for the beginning and 0 for the end.

When you run it you should get something like this:

Now for the other titles, it does appear to clearly be working off the strokes of the characters, so there are a few different possibilities.  The most likely one would be to use a similar gradient dissolve, but build the mask based directly on the title.  Drawing a gradient on each character would allow for the control of the reveal to be precisely controlled and the Transition softness would be set to 0 or near 0 to keep a hard line.

As an example, here's doing something for a large letter K.

They may have had a titling software that could generate the gradients for them.  Stroke animation is another option, but you'd have to use true vector shapes for the fonts then and a lot more manual work would have to be done to keyframe each different part of each stroke.  The gradient way isn't particularly quick, but it's probably less effort than stokes.

The final transition appears to just be a  highly motion blurred image flying across the frame really quickly and having the other clip after it clears the field.  Just take an image with a lot of horizontal blur, send it across within a few frames and cut to the other video the moment it completely obscures the scene.


How do I decide between 2 column layout and single page layout for script? I have seen some people do single common layouts which are quite common.

What about 2 page layouts?

How do decided when to use which?

If you're writing a feature film, or television show, use single column script format. Why? Because that is the standard.

If you're writing a video script for a corporate client, you want to use Two-Columns.

Using two columns, audio for one, picture for the other, allows you to literally pace the video, like tracks.

It would look something like this, with line breaks between each video section and audio section. Also, it would bold things like titles, names, key elements, etc.

VIDEO                                  AUDIO
Black Screen...
                                       Music Track "XYZ" begins...

TITLE
"Video Name"                           We hear a helicopter approaching over the title.
fades to...

EXT. WHITE HOUSE SOUTH LAWN

We see Marine One Helicopter descend   V.O. "A new chapter in our Nation's history is
into the frame...                      begining...

                                       AUDIO SFX: Camera/Press cameras going off.

Close up shots of Marine One landing.

                                       V.O. "... A new president is arriving...

Shots of the press... on-lookers...

The wheels touch down                  V.O. "... A new direction unfolds..."

Shots of American Flag waving in
wind.

The reason this format works well is it literally reads "as the video will be produced". Secondly, it is easy for the client to understand... because they can put together how sounds will enter before/after picture elements.

The formatting is a bit more complex, you want to box each item (horizontal line), and different writers have different styles for bold/italics etc. But that's the general idea.


how to add a gap between clips in adobe premiere pro? I have a long video made of assembled cut clips and sometimes I have to insert a black gap between two clips, for instance

Commonly I would select all the afterwards clips and zooooom out and drag and drop them a bit after as to make this gap but I would like to know if there exists a shortcut or a command to do that without to zoom out and select and drag&drop because on a video with a lot of clips sometimes it is time taking..

Anything like tell adobe Premiere Pro, at this location where the cursor holds add a gap of n seconds ?

The closest thing in Premiere is the nudge keyboard shortcut. Select the clips you want to move and hit ⌘ / ctrl← or ⌘ / ctrl→ to nudge the clips one frame forward or back, and hold the shift key  ( ⌘ / ctrlshift← or ⌘ / ctrlshift→ ) to make it 5 frames.

You can increase or decrease the amount it nudges in the preferences, so if you want ⌘ / ctrlshift← to nudge 5 seconds, open preferences then look for trim and change the Large Trim Offset amount to 125 (for 25fps, or 150 for 30fps).


How to cut a single clip in a Sequence into multiple clips for use in multiple Sequences in Premiere Pro I have a single clip of a multi-speaker conference in Premiere Pro CS6 that I need to split into individual clips of each speaker, so that I can make a timeline of each clip with the end goal of exporting several individual videos, rather than one long video of the entire conference.

I've already split the clip up within a Sequence using the Razor Tool and removed extraneous footage, like so:

How can I get these split-up and renamed clips to their own individual Sequences for production as separate video files? (If there is a Premiere shortcut or tool specifically for this, I haven't found it)

Here's the "Premiere" way to do it.  Create N sequences, one for each of the N speakers you want to create an output clip for.  Copy (by reference) the clip into each of the N sequences.  If you do this correctly, you will have N sequences and 1 clip in your project folder.

For each sequence, set the in and out points of the clip to bound the speaker of interest.  Name the sequence according to the speaker.  If you do this correctly, you will still have N sequences and 1 clip in your project folder.

Here's the magic: select all the sequences and hit "Export Media".  This will queue up the creation of N clips.  Each one will be exactly the speaker it should be, and the clip file names will be based on the sequence name (meaning something related to each speaker).

That is how to do it.


Reusable Fusion Clip with Sound in Davinci Resolve I have created a fusion clip in Resolve 16 which displays a logo. On my timeline I also have a sound clip to go with the animation. Those are the only two clips in my project.

Now what I would like to make this reusable. In a perfect world as a mov file with an alpha channel which I can just slap onto any timeline in any project.

I tried rendering (individual clips) with the Grass Valley codec so that I can export the alpha channel but the resulting mov has no audio and the quality of the logo is real bad. When I render it using H.264 I have a black background but the quality of the logo is as I would expect and the sound is there too.

So how do I go about making Logo Animation + Sound reusable? I should say that I'm fairly new to Resolve.

Edit: In the screenshots you can see the animation looking good in the fusion page. In the color page it looks good when played. When stopped artefacts are showing. After connecting to an alpha channel the artefacts become real bad.

Lasso both of them, right-click, and create a new compound clip. You could store this compound clip within a power bin, and it would be available for re-use in future projects. Or, you could write out a proRes 4444 file to your desktop and import into new projects whenever you need to (has to be 4444 at least to support transparency. If you use a different codec, be sure it does too; common ones like h.264 do not). In either case, if you have trouble with an alpha channel not showing up, you need to go into the color page, right click on the background of the node viewer and select “add alpha output”, then wire the new blue triangle output to whichever node you’re trying to get transparency from. BMD have made this step less necessary in some situations, and try to automatically display transparency when appropriate, but you’ll still encounter black sometimes, and if you do, that’s where you fix it. Oh, and when you say “render individual clips,” don’t use the render individual clips button n the deliver page. It’s for round-tripping to other software, it won’t export single clips like you see them on the timeline. To do that, you can right-click on the clip thumbnail in the deliver page and select “render this clip” from the drop down to set the in and out points to a single clip. The results are very different.


Using a parameter file for filter option of libav (or ffmpeg) Good time of the day,

I have heard that such a feature exists, but i've lost the reference and have been unable to find it now. I am looking for a way to use the file as the input for all the fileter options passed to libav's avconv (or ffmpeg).

I know i can do that via a command line with -f or -vf, but there are two problems: i often reuse the same settings and sometimes i need to reuse the particular approach after bash has already lost that particular command line from history.

If i'm mistaken and there's no way to do that, also kindly let me know.

You can use the -filter_script option:

$ ffmpeg -i input -filter_script filtering -codec:a copy output.mkv

In this example, filtering is a file with the filtergraph.

$ cat filtering
scale=640:-1,negate

I believe this only works for simple filtergrahps that contain exactly one input and one output.

Libav stuff (avconv and their fake, so-called "ffmpeg" version) is buggy. You can simply download a recent Linux build of ffmpeg from FFmpeg or follow a step-by-step guide to compile ffmpeg.


Caught between gamma and brightness I have a video source that, to my surprise, has a lot more detail than I could at first see. Turning down gamma I could see details in a bright part, turning up gamma I could see details in a darker part. I did experiment with brightness for obvious reasons, as well as with saturation, but I seem to be stuck at 50% of the details. Is there really such a predicament in video reproduction that you have to sacrifice one for the other, is my monitor involved (pre-retina Macbook), or have I simply not found the sweetspot of all those image tweaks?

You want to adjust a mix of gamma, brightness and contrast, or if available, simply use curves.  Gamma impacts the way in which the output intensity corresponds to input intensity, but if you don't also adjust other settings, you will still end up clipping key details outside of either the signal range of your signal or the display range of your display.

Using curves gives the most flexibility to adjust the amount of contrast in each portion of the range of signal intensity so that you can see everything clearly, however it is also possible you are simply near the effective limit of the range your display can produce depending on where the information you need contrast for is.

I suggest starting by trying to make sure your contrast or black point (on curves), is set such that you can tell the difference in shadow detail and then trying to adjust the brightness or white point (in curves) to get it so you can just tell difference in light detail and then try adjusting gamma to give you the needed spread.


How to create a fireball effect with After Effects? I'm working on this video, football theme. i was wondering how I can give the ball a simulation of a comet or a cannon ball?

For example when a player makes a strong shot i want it to look as if it was shot from a cannon or sth with fire effects. is there a tutorial for this?

Appreciate your help! Thank you

You might want to check out a class of effects known as "particle generators."

Trapcode Particular is a nice 3rd party option, but costs a bit of money.

AE has some built-in particle generator effects, too. Check out CC Particle World, CC Particle Systems II, and Particle Playground.

This tutorial here covers using CC Particle World to create fire. You could adapt that example to make a fireball instead of a wall of fire.

Particle Generator effects often have an source position property that you would need to match to the position of the football. This could be done with motion tracking, or simply keyframe it 'by hand' if the ball throw segment is fast enough.

Note that CC Particle World and CC Particle Systems II are very similar, but the first is a 3D effect while the second is a 2D effect. For shots where the ball goes from closeup to far away, the 3D variant would be helpful, but otherwise you might be able to get away with the simpler 2D variant.


What is the point of the ethernet plug: SoundCraft Si Compact 32? After searching the internet, I can't find out what the ethernet plug for the mixer is for. Can you use it to remote control the mixer from a computer? Or what is it for?

According their product page (download the PDF brochure) the ethernet port is for HiQnet connectivity, which is a protocol that allows for both control and monitoring of all connected devices.


How to create film sounds like those booms? I'm about to make a (feature) film. And I'm sure everyone have heard the deep booms for instance in the big films. Often movies play a build-up song, a viola plays higher and higher and then everything stops and you hear the low boom/rumble.

How do you create these sounds? Do you use custom VSTs, do you EQ normal drums, what do you do?

Thanks!

A boom could be done a zillion ways. If you have a composer and a full orchestra: Timpani coupled with several double basses playing a quick bowed low note or longer depending on how long you want the boom. A "boom" could be interpreted many ways including collecting real sounds and in post production lower the pitch and cut the sound envelope to make a fast attack. For example, you record a washing machine just before it finishes the spin cycle take the track and cut it right before the final thud, drop the pitch to make it deeper.

The key here is to get a low percussive sound which has the following characteristics: loud, very low pitches, fast attack, and a natural release, even adding a bit of Hall reverb or delay or both will help sweeten up a bit.

Natural boom sounds might be found in thunder, earthquakes, landslides, rock slides, a large tree falling over, etc.

Man made boom sounds can be found in jets breaking the sound barrier, cannons, fireworks, a large truck in a collision, a train wreck, etc.

Alternately, if you have a friend with a synthesizer you might explore some of the pre-programmed samples such as timpani, orchestra hit, Taiko drums, etc.

What I have mentioned are the basic ingredients, stir well, and season to taste. In other words you will likely want to mix a number of sounds to get it just the way you want it.