How do you adjust the 'margins' in the Premiere Pro program window? How do you adjust the 'margins' in the Premiere Pro program window?

For example

there's clearly some kind of smaller black square within the black square, and that smaller black square represents margins… Not anything I put in there but there by default.

The text is getting cut off when it's outside of certain margins at the top left right and bottom.

So any text too high gets cut off at the top, any text too low gets cut off at the bottom… Any text too far to the left gets cut off on the left, and likewise any text too far to the right gets cut off on the right.

I'd like to remove or change those margins.

Any idea how?

I suppose I could work within them, but I'd be interested in being able to change them too.

Added note

My example is a simple demonstration of the issue i face. What you see there is not a whole project where it's not clear what is what. My example is an example that clearly demonstrates the problem. I am showing you that there's what appears to be a border there hiding any text. If I just made a blank project and did one textbox, then you'd see it gets cut off. (nothing to do with nesting that I see mentioned in one answer as a possibility)

Possibility #1: If there's not just black filled rectangles from the rectangle tool around your text, then it looks like you might have nested your text into a sequence with smaller dimensions. Find the text on your timeline and check if it is in a nest. If so, try:
1. Right-click on the nest in the timeline
2. Choose 'Reveal in Project' to find the nest in the Project panel
3. Right-click on the nest in the Project panel
4. Choose 'Sequence Settings'
5. Change the Video > Frame Size 'horizontal' and 'vertical' values to match the sequence you added the nested text to.

Possibility #2:
Another way you can achieve this effect is in the Effects controls panel for the text clip. If you were to scale the video down, it would have hard borders. Check that the video scale is at 100%.


Create Project Template in Adobe Premiere cs6 I'm a youtuber and I make a bunch of videos. Every time I make a vid I have to import the same files [watermarks, back ground music]. Is there anyway to make a template so when I create a new file they are already there?

Certainly - you can simply create a new project with the appropriate files already imported. Save that project. Whenever you need to create a new video, go to your template project and save it as a copy. This way, you retain your original template and you can bypass the process of reimporting the necessary media.


How to film a moving bike on a budget I have been tasked with filming a new road bike for casual cyclists. We have a rather low budget. Does anyone have any tips on how to deliver quality footage without spending too much money? I'm am using a Canon 5d Mark III SLR to shoot. I'd appreciate some tips on how to get good wide and detail shots while the bike is moving.

Here are some suggestions:

Film the bike from a moving car.
Have two people in the car, minimum: One for driving and one for filming.
Shoot through open windows of the car, not through glass.
Get every shot from every angle you need separately.
Do all of your editing after recording, not in camera, using video editing software.


After Effects: Images on whole pixel still blurry edges I am jsut working on a new After Effects Project. I have a bunch of images I am working with and I just wondered, why the edges of images are so blurry.

First I thought it might have something to do with the fact that sometimes, images don't lay on whole pixel. So I used an expression to keep them on whole rounded pixels. BUT! even when they are laying on whole pixels, they have unsharp edges.

My Question is, is there any Opportunity to fix that and in case you know how, could you please tell me?

Thanks in advance!

So, I figured it out by myself. The problem was the anchorpoint. My images were on even pixels but the anchorpoint was odd.

So the solution is to use following expressions:

// Position
newX = Math.round(transform.position[0]);
newY = Math.round(transform.position[1]);
[newX, newY]

// Anchorpoint
newX = Math.round(transform.anchorpoint[0]);
newY = Math.round(transform.anchorpoint[1]);
[newX, newY]

UPDATE 2

Since I use this expression everytime now I am animating motion graphics, I thought it would be cool to make an actual after effects script of it. You can purchase it here:
FIXL -Snap Layers to Pixel

UPDATE

When you try to animate layers with these expressions, it comes to rough animations. That's why I wrote a new expression that only applies if a keyframe is set. So its safe that whenever an image or layer is resting on the same position for a longer time, it will stay on even pixels.

Add this Expression to the position property of your layer:

n = transform.position.numKeys
t = time;
timeOfKeyframe = null;

for(i=1; i <= n; i++){
    if ( t == transform.position.key(i).time ){
        timeOfKeyframe = transform.position.key(i).time;
    }
    else{
        value;
    }
}

if (t == timeOfKeyframe) {
    keyValue = transform.position.valueAtTime(timeOfKeyframe);
    roundedValue = [Math.round(keyValue[0]),Math.round(keyValue[1])];
}
else{
    value;
}


Can one edit a 360 degree video into a traditional video? I just ordered a Theta S which should be released by the 30th of this month. I can not wait to start recording 360 videos.

My question is, can I edit a 360 video into one of my non 360 videos? Just like if I were to record a video and cut to a time lapse and then back to the normal video, can I cut to a 360 video and then back to the normal video?

I am not sure if it is possible as I know there is different encoding etc, but I am yet to find an answer.

I don't think there's any currently way to combine 360 playback and normal non-360 playback into a single player.

More generally, you can convert between rectilinear 360 videos and normal video.  The issue you will have is quality, because the resolution of the Ricoh Theta S is maximum 1920x1080 pixels.  This is HD spec for a normal video, but don't forget that the pixels are being used to cover the whole of a 360 sphere.  When you convert back to "normal" video, I assume you will only want a small portion of that sphere, otherwise the image will be very distorted.

If you're making SD videos, the quality should be reasonable, depending on how much of the viewing sphere you want to use.

You can convert between rectilinear and normal videos using something like Skybox in After Effects.  (There are many other ways to do this, but this is the one I have used successfully).


How to identify i-frame from idr-frame in the ffprobe show frames output? The ffprobe show frames output shows the following details:

[FRAME]
media_type=video
key_frame=1
pkt_pts=42
pkt_pts_time=0:00:00.042000
pkt_dts=42
pkt_dts_time=0:00:00.042000
pkt_duration=N/A
pkt_duration_time=N/A
pkt_pos=799
width=1920
height=1080
pix_fmt=yuv420p
sample_aspect_ratio=1:1
pict_type=I
coded_picture_number=0
display_picture_number=0
interlaced_frame=0
top_field_first=0
repeat_pict=0
reference=3
[/FRAME]

I was reading this article and was wondering how to differentiate between the two types of frames from the above output.

Frames with key_frame 1 (will have picture type I) are IDR frames.

I frames with key_frame 0 are not.


FFmpeg can't convert eia_608 subtitles: "Data Ignored since exceeding screen width" I'm trying to convert iTunes movies that were previously decrypted to an mkv file with FFmpeg for use with Kodi. I want to keep stereo audio and h264 video the same, which I can do. Subtitles I want to convert to some other format, like subrip. On some movies this works, namely ones with "mov_text" subtitles. However some iTunes movies have eia_608 subtitles which, when I try to convert them, throw this error:
[Closed caption Decoder @ 0000014b2b92eec0] Data Ignored since exceeding screen width
It continues to throw this error hundreds of times until it finishes.

Here's an example of the output. The eia_608 stream isn't the default subtitle format for this one, but you get the idea: https://pastebin.com/uerFwFna

Is there anything I can do to fix this? I've tried updating FFmpeg to the latest build, copying the subtitles format (Matroska is apparently incompatible with it), and extracting it to a separate .srt file results in garbled subtitles. What can I do to fix this?

Also, this warning message cuts off the progress text a bit which is funny. Idk why that's happening, lol.

It's a warning, not an error. The subs are still converted.

The EIA-608 standard specifies a maximum of 32 characters per line and the ffmpeg decoder is enforcing that.

A workaround is to use ccextractor to get a SRT file, and then proceed with that.


Use A6000 as webcam type camera I need to do a live stream and I'm looking for a way to connect my Sony A6000 to my computer so that it can be used as a camera for Facebook Live. Any ideas?

For real time output you only have hdmi (the USB is for file transfer) so all you need is an hdmi input card for your PC.

Then you can grab that input as a source for applications.


Creating the Star Trek warp effect in After Effects I am trying to figure out how to create the effect of going into warp from the Star Trek tv shows like The Next Generation and so forth - the one where the ship stretches forward, blurs a bit and then disappears in a flash of light. I've been trying to find out if some guide exists online on how to do it, but haven't been able to find anything useful, so I was curious if there's anybody more experienced with After Effects who could push me in the right direction.

I have a ship moving from the lower right corner of the screen to the upper left.

You can see an example of what I would like to accomplish on a video here: example. It is the white flash at the end of the video.

All that looks like to me is a simple lense-flare that got its opacity and scaling keyframed. Startrek used very cheap methods for vfx due to the limited budget, so I believe that you can find assets such as these online quite easily.


How do I remove audio from all files in a directory with ffmpeg? I have a directory full of short video clips in .AVI format, and I want to remove the audio from all of them. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04.

I tried this command:

find -name '*.avi' -exec ffmpeg -i {} -an -vcodec copy {} \;

But while it did remove the audio, it also reduced each clip down to just a few frames. They are originally about 1 to 2 minutes long each, and should stay that way.

This might just be because ffmpeg can be buggy sometimes. Or maybe there's a better way of formatting the syntax.

In any case, whether it's with ffmpeg or a different command, is there a way I can reliably remove the audio from a bunch of clips without changing the video in any way?

I suspect you are having problems because you are trying to overwrite the input file with the output, ffmpeg just doesn't work that way. For a single file:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -an -c:v copy output.mkv

To do every file in a directory, you can use a for loop. For every `file.avi``in the working directory, this command will create an output called file-v.mkv:

for f in *avi; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -an -c:v copy "${f/%.avi/-v.mkv}"; done

To do the same thing recursively, you can indeed use find like so:

find . -type f -name *.avi -exec bash -c 'ffmpeg -i "$0" -an -c:v copy "${0/%.avi/-v.mkv}"' {} \;


Can ffmpeg calculate a new starting keyframe when being asked to split/copy on a non-keyframe? I understand from a question here that keyframes can (and do) occur anywhere in an h.264 stream, so I'm wondering why most of the advice I see where users want to cut on a specific time or frame (that is not a key frame) is that they'll have to go to the next/previous keyframe and start cutting from there if they want to do a straight stream copy,
Is it possible to make ffmpeg cut anywhere, from any frame and if it just so happens that the start frame is not a keyframe, then seek back to the nearest keyframe, then work forwards composing a new keyframe that will be used much nearer to the non-keyframe the user wants to start from?
For example if we have rules that a keyframe K must be followed by a pattern of any number of n and o starting with n, and the user wants to cut on some o:
KnononononoKnononononoKnonononono
      ^                                 //and the user wants to cut on an o

    knononoKnononononoKnonononono       //use Knono to generate a new k, place it near the o
           '

And then just encode this new keyframe plus original non keyframes knonono and then start stream copying from the frame above the apostrophe?
Does the encoding of the whole of the second Knonononono rely on some output from the first and hence there's a chaining effect/replacing the first block ruins the stream? (And if so then how does cutting on an existing keyframe help in that regard?)

In principle, this is possible, and is usually called "smart" encoding or rendering in the video editors / apps that offer this facility, typically in limited circumstances. FFmpeg does not have support for it.
The main complication is that the parameters of the encoded portion has to match the coding parameters of the existing stream. That is specific to each codec, and ffmpeg supports hundreds of video codecs. It would require significant redesign to parts of ffmpeg to have different handling for parts of an output stream, and to correctly parse the existng stream and ensure a compatible encoding. It's quite a bit of work and testing required for a feature that can be accomplished manually using a few more commands i.e. segmenting the input file, transcoding the changed /trimmed portions, and stitching the transcoded and old segments.


How Does Remote Streaming Work? I am thinking of developing a software solution to send images from digital cameras to a mobile phone.

I have seen DVRs with 4-8 channels selling as kits. They allow remote access viewing via a mobile device.

How are the images streamed from plugged in DVR to router to mobile?

Is this type of service reliable?  If we assume that the internet connection is OK are the images reliable to view in real-time on a mobile phone?

Is it possible for multiple users to access the same stream?

There are numerous different possible ways for a video stream to be done.  Generally video is streamed over a UDP streaming format such as RTMP or something similar.  It can also sometimes use a series of individual pictures (particularly common when refresh rate is not that high, such as IP security cameras.)

In the case of a home device acting as the source, a connection would have to be made between the client device and the home device, possibly using a third party server to help get across any firewalls or dynamic IPs.  The information would then be streamed the same way as any live stream technology.  The video would have to be encoded on the stream server and then passed to the client.

The reliability of the service would depend entirely on Internet connection speed of both the client and the server.  Streaming video at any kind of significant quality is a very bandwidth intensive activity and most residential connections are not capable of the necessary upload speeds for high quality video, though standard definition may be possible.  Higher end connections can cover HD speeds though.

As for multiple users, within a local network, multicast can be used to distribute UDP packets of a stream to multiple users, however, across the public Internet, multicast is not possible.  An individual connection has to be made to each client and the content must be sent once for each client.  (Two clients takes twice the bandwidth requirement of one.)  With sufficient bandwidth, there is no reason the packets can't be independently streamed to both, but that goes beyond the limits of just about all consumer Internet connections.


ffmpeg: How to cut 2 parts of a Video an Join them together in specific order I have a vídeo where I want to cut 2 parts and join them together but I want to put a part that happens at a later time first...
For example cut seconds 23-30 and 45-50 and put the part with seconds 45-50 first.
I used this:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "select='between(t,45,50)+between(t,23,30)',scale=720:-1" "output.avi"

But even thoug I put the 45-50 part first in the command the output.avi plays the 23-30 part first in the output.avi video.
How would I join this 2 videos and have the later part played first, I also tried it with filter_complex but I also have to scale the video and it looks like filter_complex and vf can't be used together.
If possible I want to use only 1 reencoding to not loose much quality. Thanks in advance.

Here's the thing about modern video—most formats are actually designed presuming a varying frame rate. We like to think of them like digital filmstrips, but that model rarely works when we're streaming over a network or capturing from many kinds of devices. So, every frame has what's called a Presentation Time Stamp, or PTS.
The problem here is that, while you do indeed concatenate in that order, the PTS for each frame never changes. You can actually manually set the PTS of a frame with the setpts filter, which is definitely something to look into as panning video can get much more complicated than this, and it's deliciously flexible; but may require some reading to understand all of the parameters.
The fields you'll need to know are PTS, which is the presentation timestamp before the filter is run; STARTPTS, which is the presentation timestamp of the first frame rendered, and TB, which stands for Time Base and is basically the ratio between a PTS "tick" and a second; so if you know that your first clip is going to be five seconds long, and you want your second clip to start immediately afterward, you will want to add 5.0/TB to your new PTS.
So, I suggest (PTS-STARTPTS)+(5/TB) for your second clip; but this isn't the only way to determine it and feel free to adjust it if the result doesn't feel right to you.
We're going to use a complex filter here, as we're splitting our stream into two separate streams and concatenating them at the end. (Complex streams actually aren't all that bad, but do take a little getting used to.) One of the big differences with a complex filter is that you generally start each command by specifying a stream for it to use, and end each command specifying a new stream to write to, both in square brackets. When we begin with [0:v], that means to take the first input (input number zero from file input.mp4) and grab its video stream. What comes at the end can be used to identify it later when you want to filter it again.
Lastly, it helps to use the -map tag to tell FFmpeg which stream it is writing from. It's critical, as if FFmpeg wasn't aware of which one to use you could end up with literally any stream or combination thereof in your file; and an invocation can take a while to complete.
Your final command:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex " \
    [0:v]select='between(t,45,50)'[v1], \
    [0:v]select='between(t,23,30)'[v2], \
    [v2]setpts='(PTS-STARTPTS)+(5/TB)'[v2], \
    [v1][v2]concat[outv], \
    [outv]scale=720:-1[outv]" \
    -map [outv] output.avi

Remember that if you want to use this for any other file, you will need to adjust the (5/TB) part to match the end of your first clip.
While I'm a very experienced programmer, I'm relatively new to FFmpeg in-depth; so it's possible that someone else here will have more details for you to consider.


Replicate opacity animation to every title in my sequence I have several titles in my sequence that I start with zero opacity, goes to full 100% after 1~2 seconds and at the end it disappears in a new animation changing opacity from 100% to 0%.

How can I repeat this without having to create keyframes and set their opacity manually for every title?

I tried using Cross Dissolve but I can't have it more than once in the same sequence (and I don't know if it works both for fading in and out).

UPDATE

One option I've found is to press and hold Alt key while dragging and dropping the existing title in the sequence to create a new one with the same animation.

I tried using Cross Dissolve but I can't have it more than once in the same sequence (and I don't know if it works both for fading in and out).

I'm not sure what you mean there. You can add transitions to the beginning and end of every clip (a title is considered a clip in the context of premiere), or respectively to every cut between adjacent clips. In fact, if you only want the titles to fade in and fade out, this would be the preferred method. Far easier than doing it with keyframes. Two quick tips regarding this approach:

You can quickly add the default transition1 to multiple titles/clips by selecting them in the timeline (select multiple clips by holding CTRL and left-clicking on them) and pressing CTRL + D.
You can set the default length of transitions in frames or seconds in the program preferences under Preferences → General → Video Transition Default Duration. This will also affect transitions added using the shortcut described above, but changing this setting will not change transitions that are already applied to your clips.

  How can I repeat this without having to create keyframes and set their opacity manually for every title?

Once you have created the keyframes for the first title clip, right-click on it and select Copy from the context-menu. Then, select all the title clips that you want to add the same keyframe animation to in the timeline and right-click on one of them. Select Paste Attributes… from the context menu. This will open a context window where you can select which effects you want to paste (In your case, select Opacity. You might also have to select Scale Attribute Times. Note that this will work with any effect you have added to your clip, not just the default ones). Click OK and it will apply the selected effect settings to all the selected clips.

1 The default transition is highlighted with a blue border in the effects panel. You can change it by right-clicking on the desired transition in the effects panel and selecting Set Selected as Default Transition.


compress video for backup I want to compress a video to store it for backup purpose.

By that, I mean that I don't need to play video when it is compress format. So I don't want to lose quality or something like that, just compress it.

I have tried to compress with 7zip, but size not decrease. Is it possible to compress a video ?

For example, I use 7zip on a 3.92Go mkv video. I try :

zip format : 3.92Go
gz format : 3.88Go

Generally no. Compression algorithms search for repetitive data and replace it with a shorter code and keep a dictionary with all codes. Compressing text works excellent because in longer texts a lot of words repeat.

With video this work has been done most of the time already. Usually the encoder is  performing a similar operation: looking for repeating patterns and replacing them with a shorter code. Most video files you see are already compressed, most repetitive patterns already encoded and therefore any further compression won't do much.

Sometimes re-encoding videos with a much newer encoder saves a lot of space, but this process is always a bit lossy and requires more work.

You could check if the files have any additional unwanted audio tracks and remove them, like tracks in languages you don't speak anyway.


mp4 to avi/mpeg conversion I'm trying to convert an mp4 video to play on a digital photo frame. The photo frame (Living Image Li1210) manual states:

The digital photo frame can playback MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, and AVI (dependant upon codec) video formats.

And in the FAQs: The device only works with the avi/mpeg4 files taken by most digital cameras. It is also capable of playing some compressed AVI files, such as DivX and XviD videos... The best supported resolution of a photo or video is 480x234.

I've tried various options with ffmpeg such as

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -vf scale=480x234 out.avi

but can't seem to get anything but a blank screen on the photo frame.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Apologies I'd being faffing with different scaling settings and must have got my files mixed up. The following (quoted in the question) does in fact work on this product - Living Images Li1210.

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -vf scale=480x234 out.avi

However the following scaling seemed to produce better results when converting from 1280x720 (youtube standard download)

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -vf scale=416x234 out.avi

And I think this addition from this question produced a slight improvement

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -q:v 6 -vcodec mpeg4 -vf scale=416x234 out.avi


Software to automatically detect (and if it possible remove) commercials from video files recorded from TV I have recorded some TV shows to my PC. They have commercials. And I want to remove those commercials.
I want to know if there is a software that can automatically parse a video file or a batch of files and at least detect the points in time when commercials start and end, and remove/delete those scenes or provide that info in some standard format that can be latter used in another software to do the remotion part of the job?
Thank you!

Take a look at Comskip (https://github.com/erikkaashoek/Comskip). I use it with TvHeadend to mark commercials, which are then auto-skipped during playback in Kodi.
There is a paid-for, pre-built version for Windows, or if you are comfortable you can build it yourself from source code.


How to edit laying snow into a video? So I and a few friends decided to film a Christmas movie. This is gonna be really interesting as I haven't even made a short before. But anyway, most of this movie takes place at the North Pole in Santas village. What does the north pole have every single day of the year? SNOW!!! Any type of physical artificial snow is out of the question, and real snow obviously is too. It will be filmed in the middle of summer, and the snow needs to be edited in. To clarify, I'm talking about snow lying on the ground, on trees, on rooves, etc. Not falling snow. I know how to do falling snow. That's easy. I found lots of tutorials on how to do this on a still image in photoshop, and they look pretty good. Here is an example.

But why can't I find any tutorials on how to do this in Filmora9,(the video editor I use) or for that matter, ANY OTHER VIDEO EDITORS??? NOT EVEN PREMIER PRO!! It shouldn't be much harder than doing it on photoshop, right? How can I do this? If it isn't possible on Filmora9 but there is some other free software that I can do this, that's fine. I'll just add snow in that software and do the rest of editing in Filmora9.
Any help is appreciated.

EDIT: You need to be clear what your goal is. If this is a summer project and just something for some friends to work on together right now, I'd suggest getting Blender (https://www.blender.org/) and learning to use it together. Make some of your establishing shots, if you can.
Or start on a script. 99% of people with good ideas for a movie never make it because they never write and finish a script. Pick one scene and script it and shoot it. Do you need lighting? Props? Have you found a good location? Is it interesting.
Depending on your expectations, it will be very hard. But you can learn together and if things go well, you may have the foundation for actually making a movie.
Script-writing is hard. Movie shooting -- multiple angles, script, actors, props -- is hard. 3D (Blender) is hard. But if you're imagining that you can just run a camera and have people do what they want and in the end you make it look like it's winter -- that's VERY hard.
If it snows reliably in your area, you could easily take the next six months working on Blender, scripting, practicing some shots, scouting locations, etc in preparation for real snow. (Even if it doesn't snow, winter footage may be better than summer footage in terms of looking like winter.)
You can enjoy this process. But don't let your friends' expectations end up with lots of filming being done and then dumped on you to do the impossible. Make sure the process is iterative so your friends can see what's possible, rather than imagine a Hollywood budget.
PREVIOUS ANSWER:
You'll really need to set expectations for your friends. A huge portion of the filming (say 98% or something like that) should be indoors.
Like most shows/movies you'll have an establishing shot of a snow-covered building in a snow-covered valley for a few seconds, then you'll cut to indoors scenes which you physically set up to plausibly look like they are the inside of that building we just saw the outside of. This establishing shot might be real video of a real building that really has snow, or you might attempt to take a photo and touch it up per some of the Photoshop tutorials, then animate falling snow or use a 3D program like Blender and animate a truck or something, so the still could be a video.
Inside, you might want to see the outside occasionally. Have the camera on a tripod and unmoving, looking at the scene with a window in the shot. To make it easy, don't have any people walk in front of the window. Make sure bright light is coming through the window, as if there were lots of snow outside. You can then figure out what it looks like outside of the window and replace the window with that image/video.
If actors walk in front of the window, you'd need to rotoscope around them -- hard -- or the window would need to be a greenscreen or something like that -- also hard -- so you could have the actor appear in front of your replacement window view.
Better yet, fake it. The snow is so high or the wind is so strong that snow/ice cover the windows and you can't see out. Pile fake snow in a bag against the outside of the windows. Every aspect of the script will have to be driven by whether you can actually pull off the shot or not.
Do some experimentation first to see how realistic you get, before you write a script and get actors and crew and actually spend days taping. Your friends can fantasize about how it will look, but you'll be on the hook to fulfill their dreams and it's absolutely not easy.
Anyhow, if your video editing software has color grading/correction tools you can try to do what the Photoshop tutorial does: pick areas of your frame that are green or bright and tint them very white -- leaving some light/darkness variation so it looks a bit more 3D. I tried that really quickly on a scene and the best I could do is to have it look like a dusting of snow had fallen on some grass. And there was a lot of flicker in the color: it's easy to get a single still frame looking good, but video has noise and the light is changing from frame to frame, so it's easy to get flickering when you're doing as extreme of a color adjustment as making stuff look white.
But it's not going to look like the North Pole. There's another Photoshop Tutorial that I see recommended from the end of the one you linked. It uses an old wood cabin and the thumbnail shows a before/after split screen. Notice that they replace entire chunks of the image with white, then add shading and texture to give it depth. That's what a real movie would do in your case: most of the outdoor scenes -- basically anything that your actors don't touch -- would be masked out and replaced by 3D renderedings.
So it's in your best interest to have pretty much everything take place indoors (in a building, in a cave, etc), with some peeks at the outside.


Extract section from Premiere without re-compression Is there a way to use premiere like the hundreds of other "cheap" video cutters out there?

I need a quick way to select a portion of video, for example our source footage is often 1h long, and we need to cut out many 30s clips.

However, this needs to be a fast process, and we cant re-compress those clips on the export.

We have premiere pro, can this do the job? Every time I try, it wants to compress the footage.

I know this is an old question abandoned by the asker, but I use ffmpeg to stream copy (re-mux) sections.

Example 1: Single output

Skip first 14 minutes and make a 30 second output:

ffmpeg -ss 00:14:00 -i input -t 30 -c copy -map 0 output

This will not re-encode, so the process is quick and preserves the quality.
Depending on your input format the output may not be exactly from the desired time, but usually it's close enough. See the -ss option in the FFmpeg documentation for more info.

Example 2: One segment of every n seconds

Use the segment muxer:

ffmpeg -i input -c copy -map 0 -segment_time 30 -f segment output%03d.foo

This will not re-encode, so the process is quick and preserves the quality.
Note that splitting may not be accurate, unless you force the reference stream key-frames at the given time. See the segment muxer documentation for more info.


What software can be used for pre-visualizing video presentation environments? D3 Technologies offers both a previz and a playout platform for video presentations. I'm interested only in the software part, for pre-visualization of complex, multi-screen presentations.

Using their software you can import or construct a 3D model of a stage or venue, including display screens, and apply your video elements to the screens. You then use a virtual camera to view the set interactively to evaluate sight lines, projector and lighting placements, etc.

Is there any other software that is generally used for the same thing, like maybe MESH or FrameForge?

Wow, this is a late reply.

Here's the technologies I know that are available at the moment for it.

ESPVision (via Vectorworks/3DS Max): (However camera inputs are broken at the moment which is how I arrived here at this thread--I do expect they will fix it in a reasonable amount of time).

http://www.espvision.com/

Capture: (I have not used this for video in recent history but theoretically it works)

https://www.capturesweden.com/Products/Software

And there are a horde of other options. I'm not a huge fan of Watchout due to their licensing scheme with the dongles--you need two to have output ~ $6000--but it technically has previsualization and it is significantly more affordable than anything from D3.

Frankly, you can do a lot with QLab (Mac only) which is my "daily driver" for most small projection gigs. You can just route that as a Syphon output and "view it" as a texture.

You also might want to keep an eye out on TouchDesigner and VVVV modules if you have programming experience.

However, due to the limitations in most of this software I tend to work off a model and a cheap 480p LED projector. (I design lighting and video for theater, hence my workflow tends to lean towards models)

Hopefully this helps someone!

EDIT April 2018
Apparently this did help someone:

I've been using Capture for the past year and it is a fairly solid 3D previz tool if you are willing to use NDI or a series of capture cards. Right now it is my preference for usability/workflow.

You might also check out Light Converse
http://lightconverse.com/

Or for PC, Realizzer
http://www.realizzer.com/

There's a few others by some major brands, Martin has Martin Show Designer and GrandMA's previz can theoretically work.


SD Card - GoPro Hero HD I have seen a lot of comparison about which microSD card I should take if I own a GoPro Hero 3/4 but none of thoses articles mension the original GoPro HD.

So is it worth buying an expensive one (30-40€ - 32 Go) or just a normal one (class 10 etc... at 16-20€ - 32 Go) is perfectly enough for filming in 1080p without having any downgrade in quality.

Thank you in advance :)

PS : I know there is a list of SD cards on GoPro website, but they may link overpriced SD card for the Original HD, that's what my question is about :)

You shouldn't notice in major downgrades in quality from a slower card (which I'm assuming is the main difference between the "expensive" cards and "normal" cards you mention). Higher speeds are required for newer cameras (like the more recent GoPros) that shoot in a much higher resolution and/or frame rate that need to be able to write a lot of information very quickly to the card. You should be more than fine with a class 10 card for the original GoPro HD.


How to install AviSynth+ 32-bit? I have used and installed AviSynth+ 64-bit on a machine. I then wanted to install AviSynth+ 32-bit to use the watermark filter. I followed these instructions to install 32-bit, changed the registry keys, and got a blue screen of death.

After a fresh reinstallation of the Windows system, I want to install 32-bit AviSynth+ only and avoid another blue screen of death.

On the new version 3.5.1 of AviSynth+, is XP the 32-bit version, or is any installer able to install a 32-bit version?

There is no problem with having installed both 32- and 64-bit version of AviSynth on your 64-bit machine, if you correctly placed 32-bit plugins vs. 64-bit ones to their appropriate places.

AviSynth is a frame server, it means, you never call it directly - other program call it back. It means that for example

64-bit Media Player Classic will call the 64-bit version of AviSynth,
32-bit Media Player Classic will call the 32-bit version of AviSynth.

Similarly

64-bit FFmpeg will call the 64-bit version of AviSynth,
32-bit FFmpeg will call the 32-bit version of AviSynth.

I guess that your problem lies in your FFmpeg installation — you have probably 64-bit, and it means that in the process of converting your .avs script to some media file the FFmpeg calls 64-bit version of AviSynth, and you need the 32-bit (because of your 32-bit filter).

So my advice is, install both 32- and 64-bit versions of FFmpeg (into different directories) and use the appropriate one for every particular case.


Final Cut Pro X clip still showing past its duration I'm new to Final Cut Pro X. I have a still image in my project that shows for a certain duration. Problem is, it still shows on the screen even after the video goes past that image's duration. It's weird because I have other images where this works fine.

Here's the clip in the project:  Once it goes past the duration the X does not disappear.

Thanks!

Marina

It’s a bit hard to see, is there more clips above your X clips? If so, you should check what is there. In general, videos should be stacked on top of the main timeline. Sound clips go mostly below.

FCPX will show the most on top video clip (if you don’t change transparency or add other effects). You can think of a video clip gets covered with the above clip. Like a stack of papers you can see the top paper but none underneath, however, there are there. If you fan out the stack, other papers will appear underneath the edges of above papers.

In your case I assume something is above what you want to show.


Repair MP4 Video with broken header (but with 2 video and 1 audio stream) I have a MP4 File which has not been finalized at the end so there is no header. The file contains 3 streams: 2 video streams and 1 audio stream.

I tried several tools to repair the header but the best I get is a video where the 2 video streams alternate after about 2 seconds (2 seconds first video, then 2 seconds second video, 2 seconds first video and so on). I also have a working reference file but the header is still not correctly repaired with those tools.

Here are the tools I tested:

Some freeware like Yodot MOV Repair
Yamb (file could not be loaded)
recover_mp4 / recover_mp4_to_h264 (the two video streams will be
extracted as one video stream)

I don't think it was from a GoPro. It was from a Race Keeper System with one front facing camera and a second one filming the people in the car seats. So there are 2 different streams with HD quality. I don't even need both streams, one of them would be enough if that helps.

Maybe it is still possible with one of that tools but I could not figure it out.

I would really appreciate some help.

Have you recorded the video with a GoPro camera?

If yes, then the two video streams may be a low-res preview video followed by the regular video stream. To repair such file, you would have to filter out the low-res stream.

So far as I know, the new version of the recover_mp4 has an algorithm of filtering out low-res streams of the GoPro cameras. The tool is now called Restore.Media. You can try repairing your MP4 with this tool and watch a full-time preview for free just to see if it works. Also, here is their article about repairing GoPro video files.


Best Streaming Encoding Software to incorporate a message feed I am trying to stream a weekly boardgaming video podcast. I was hoping to incorporate a message feed to video. I want the people playing the game to be able to show watchers their strategies without revealing it to the other players.

I was thinking some sort of twitter feed that only the users at the table can contribute to or something like that. I have never done anything like this and am new to streaming so any ideas would be helpful.

I  not sure if I understood your question correctly, but CasparCG would be a common solution to overlay graphics (or anything else) to a video feed.
 http://www.casparcg.com

Or, if you want to do this in software, take a look at the liquidsoap library:
http://liquidsoap.fm/doc-svn/video.html


Running ffmpeg WITHOUT editing path variable So I'm a long time user of ffmpeg, and I know perfectly well how to install it for command line use using the environmental variable editor.

What I want to know is how to run ffmpeg by directly addressing the .exe file.

I want to do this is so that I can pass someone a folder containing ffmpeg and a batch script and just tell them to double click the .bat file to perform a certain action (like converting mkv to mp4) using the copy of ffmpeg that is in that folder. Effectively, I want to make it portable.

The reason for this is that less technical users are not confident/comfortable with changing environmental variables.

I expected that the batch script would work something like this:

%~dp0\bin\ffmpeg.exe <ffmpeg command here>

instead of the usual

ffmpeg <ffmpeg command here>

but this doesn't seem to work. The code crashes before the "pause" command (i.e. on hitting the "if" statement)

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
REM cycle through files
for %%a in (*.mkv) do (

    set b=%%a
    echo !b!
    REM only do files without "_mod" in file name.
    REM (This works by seeing if replacing any "_mod.mkv" with ".mkv" results in the same file name as no action)
    if "x!b:_mod.mkv=.mkv!"=="x!b!" (
        pause
        REM Export the subtitles (Note that these must be 'ass' format subtitles)
        %~dp0\bin\ffmpeg.exe -i "%%a" -map 0:s:0 -y "Temp.ass"
        ...

This doesn't occur with just "ffmpeg ___".

Any suggestions? I'd ideally like to avoid changing the current directory as I'd like to keep the top level folder clean of everything except the batch script and the files to be converted.

I solved it. Silly me.

Turns out you have to use quotation marks around the file path.

"%~dp0\bin\ffmpeg.exe" -i "%%a" -map 0:s:0 -y "Temp.ass"

not

%~dp0\bin\ffmpeg.exe -i "%%a" -map 0:s:0 -y "Temp.ass"


How can I stay motivated and become more productive as a video editor? I really like the editing process, how it's possible to bring a vision you've had to life, by timing things just right, etc. It's a great art.

Unfortunately I am super un-productive at it. This has been a pattern for me for a long time. Editing always takes the longest time and it a huge dread for me. I have several projects that I failed to complete once they got into the editing stage.

Often I am quite excited at first, piecing together one sequence that's viewable pretty fast.

From there it's downhill. I lose all kinds of motivation, excitement, or passion, and the process is tiring me out. Trimming the 150th cut, fixing the 96th issue, finding just the right 3 seconds from a 4 minute clip... It just becomes sooo dreadful and overwhelming. Even if I made it through putting potentially usable clips, which I pre-trimmed, in a somewhat useful order, it becomes tiring to go through the footage again, and yet again find just the right frame in the 200 frame clip... phew. Another thing that always frustrates me is when my material just isn't any good. I am missing important shots or angles or whatever, or the existing ones have giant mistakes in them, which makes the clip hard or impossible to use.

Overall my output is pretty good after the first session (after I piece together the first usable bit) but for the rest of the project things just take forever and drag out endlessly. As I said, I have some projects that are still not completely edited.

I mean generally this sounds like any project you could do (not just video related) : At first the motivation is high, but then it steadily declines and things become a dread. Perseverance makes or brakes success. For me personally though, editing is extremely affected by this problem.

Has anyone had this issue, too, and found good ways to overcome it? Are there any techniques I could use that are rewarding, or at least help me stay productive? Any guidelines or "recipes" I could follow that give me a different perspective? Has anyone ever successfully applied Scrum to editing?

Do you drink coffee?  That's my solution.

More seriously though - For me, it helps to jump from project to project, setting individual goals each time I move to a different project, e.g. for project 'x', finish creating sub-clips from raw footage before I stop editing.  It also helps to alternate between tasks that are boring and tasks that are more exciting.

In reality, you often don't have the luxury of moving away from a project or boring tasks.  That's when you have to just power through it.  In the end, if you're proud of what you have done, it's always worth it.

It can be extremely frustrating to work with bad material or to have to work in projects with missing shots.  Again, with these situations, there is no secret sauce.  You edit what you can, and do your best to prevent the situation next time.

I hope this helps.

Calvin


Easiest workflow to get better audio when using a DSLR I'm looking for some information (note: not a product recommendation) for getting better audio when using a DSLR. Generally, the built-in microphones on DSLRs leave a lot to be desired, so professionals will have a separate sound guy who holds a boom mic or sets up subjects with lavalier microphones or something like that. Let's assume that neither of those are options - I'm just a guy with a camera that likes shooting videos, but I don't like the way the audio sounds.

I'm trying to enumerate my possibilities in terms of getting better audio. I've only come across two so far, with some of the pros and cons I've determined, purely from research. Please let me know what you think, if I've misunderstood or overlooked something.

Improved mic on the camera, recording into camera

Shotgun mic can be placed on top of the camera shoe, with a 3.5mm jack recording directly in to the video file on the camera's memory card
Pros: Super easy, no constant set up, possibly adjusting levels on the mic if that's an option it offers. Audio is already synced up.
Cons: Only one audio source (it replaces the camera's source), mic requires its own batteries (won't pull from the camera's battery)

Improved mic on camera, recording to a separate source

Same idea, put a microphone on the camera's shoe, but either record to an SD card inside the microphone, or buy a separate audio recorder
Pros: Multiple audio sources, more control over audio with the second recorder
Cons: Lots of gear to manage, lots of batteries to manage, have to hit record in two places as opposed to one and then sync up the audio in post

I'm leaning towards the first option purely because it's easier. What do you think? Is there another method to getting better audio?

Imagine using a point-and-shoot camera where you point the camera at something but instead of actually looking through the viewfinder, you only pay attention to whether or not you see an exposure warning light.  You don't validate focus.  You don't validate composition.  You only validate that the sensor is receiving signal not blocked by the lens cap.  That is kinda how people treat audio, whether using internal microphones or shotguns strapped on to their cameras.  When they listen, rather than just looking at the meters, they are still mostly validating that signal is passing through the microphone.

What you can learn by listening to the microphone as carefully as you might look at framing, composition, balance, focus, perspective, etc., is that many audio environments are a mess.  Many audio environments mess up sounds that can only be recognized/understood because we have a really good stereo imaging system (our ears) and a very powerful noise rejection / signal enhancement system (our brain).  Randomly locating a microphone in such an environment can sufficiently compromise the signal that our ears and our brain cannot properly (or will not happily) decode it.  The solution to that problem is to place the microphone where it is not overwhelmed with flutter echo, modal resonances and cancellations, etc.  Usually, that means placing the microphone 3x closer to the source than to any source of confusion, which means keeping it within 6"-36" of the source source (depending on microphone type, source type, room behavior, etc).  The reason that pro sound guys boom their mics is because there is absolutely no substitute for putting the microphone in the right place.  The reason they use $1000 microphones is because if you are going to go to the trouble of getting good sound, you might as well get excellent sound.

There is essentially no microphone you can buy and attach to your camera that will give you good sound in a variety of circumstances.  There are many mics you can buy and attach to your camera that will give you good sound in one particular circumstance: your talent is approximately 2' in front of the camera, and there's no terrible acoustically reflective surface too close to either the talent or the camera.

DSLRs often add insult to injury by also having poor quality preamps that compromise both good and poor microphone outputs.  But the most important factor in audio quality is location, then an appropriate microphone type (omni, cardiod, super-cardiod, figure-8, etc) for the location, then the quality of implementation of that microphone, then the quality of implementation of the preamp and finally the digital recording format.


Panasonic's AVCHD video format: questions about quality, compatability, conversion I've just bought a Panasonic Lumix TZ25 to replace my sadly defunct Lumix TZ3. This new camera is excellent, but I'm a bit confused over the video recording formats available. The user manual states:

  This unit can record motion pictures in either AVCHD or MP4 formats... AVCHD records high definition  quality images suitable for viewing on a large format TV or for saving to disc. MP4 is a simpler format best used when extensive editing is needed.

Is AVCHD superior to MP4? The way Panasonic describes it, that's the impression given. Yet surely MP4 can provide the same high quality?
Can an AVCHD video be shown on an Android tablet? My wife has an Asus Transformer and would is trying to view some holiday recordings on it but so far without any success - we're assuming there's a compatability problem?
Assuming that AVCHD is superior to anything else, is there any software out there which would convert AVCHD to a more widely used format but without discernible loss of image quality?

The AVCHD vs. MP4 is just a choice of a container format. When all other parameters are the same, choosing AVCHD or MP4 depends on the use you intend to give to the movie clips that you record. If you plan on doing editing, then MP4 is better because it has the index tables that video editors need to find frames fast using random access. If on the other side you plan to just streaming these clips over to a TV or computer then AVCHD is best as it is a transport stream, so players will have to do less work to play the clip from start to end.

Note that a utility like ffmpeg can easily convert between AVCHD and MP4 without any loss of quality, so really the choice you make isn't irreversible.

What determines image quality is the picture size and the recording bitrate, not the container format. I went to the site that has the specs for your camera and found it offers the following recording options:

[HD Video]

1920 x 1080 pixels, 50i (FSH: 17Mbps / AVCHD) (Sensor output is 25p)
1280 x 720 pixels, 50p (SH: 17Mbps / AVCHD) (Sensor output is 25p)
1920 x 1080 pixels, 25 fps (FHD: 20Mbps / MP4)
1280 x 720 pixels, 25 fps (HD: 10Mbps / MP4)

[STD Video]

640 x 480 pixels, 25 fps (VGA: 4Mbps / MP4)

So for best quality you should pick the largest picture size at the largest bitrate. Looking at the above list the best choice is the FHD format, which is 1920x1080 at 20Mbps, and that option is only available in MP4.

The second and third options are at 17Mbps. At that level you have two options, 1920x1080 and 1280x720, both recorded in AVCHD.

Note that I'm not including frame rate in my decisions, since it appears the sensor in this camera can only record 25p.


Scaling video lowers quality in Premiere Pro I try to create a Picture In Picture effect where a smaller video playing in parallel on top of a background video. I dragged two videos of same size and codec into timeline and scale one of the video size to 60% from its original, keeping the background video to its original size.

After I down scale the video I notice the quality of the video deteriorate, as shown in the screenshot the text clearly gets blurry. Why this is happening and how to resolve this problem?

Why this is happening: because an interpolation method the Premiere uses for scaling kills high frequency details (ie., sharp edges, as text or some thin elements of the GUI are).

A scaling interpolation method (in our case, Lanczos method, as an Adobe employee mentions here) is an algorithm used to map an array of pixels of one size into an array of a different size. You have a 200x200 image and want it to be 400x400. What do you do? Quadruple each pixel of an original image so it will take 4 pixels in an upscaled image? Or blend the neighboring ones somehow?

There are a couple of algorithms developed, like Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bicubic and Lanczos. They differ in computational complexity and in the quality of the results they produce. And the quality (here we finally come to your question) also depends of the nature of the source material. Adobe chose Lanczos because it does a decent job at scaling natural images taken by camera. If this was an image of a person, you would expect that a scaled down version will not have the individual hairs and the little marks on the skin to be seen in the same detail as they are seen on an original larger image.

Yet, you are scaling down a different kind of footage – the screen capture of a software GUI. The one you'd want to see all the sharp details even on a scaled down image. As you see, the Lanczos method does a bad job here.

And we come your second question: what algorithm would do a better job, or how to fix this?

Short answer: in Premiere, you can't.
Long answer: a scaling algorithm we need is a Nearest Neighbor algorithm. This one preserves the sharp edges of the GUI just as we like it. Adobe After Effects has it (called "Draft" scaling quality). Premiere doesn't (natively). You can try your luck searching for "Nearest Neighbor scaling plugin" for Premiere.


FFMPEG: Delete chapters I have a video file, video.mp4. This file has 3 chapters, 'Beginning', 'Middle' and 'End'. I want to delete chapter 'Middle' (the actual video, not just the metadata) and combine chapters 'Beginning' and 'End' back into one file. The chapters appear to be stored as subtitles.

How can I do this with ffmpeg?

Try adding this ffmpeg parameter:

-map_chapters -1


How do you edit in multicamera mode if you have a mask on one track? I'm using Sony Vegas Pro 10, and I have one track that I need to pixelate someone's face on.  There are 4 video tracks total.

So, I have one track where a Pixelation mask is applied.  Now I'm trying to make a Multicamera track (Tools/Multicamera/Create Multicamera Track) and it seems like it's losing the pixelation.

I have read that you can apply FX to a track in the media bin and it will stick when you create a multicamera track, but that seems to only apply to the whole track and not just a mask.

I hope this makes sense to someone, because I'm stuck!

Here's what I ended up doing.  I created a mask the way you would normally create a mask, and the end result was that I had 2 video tracks.  Any tutorial on the Internet can show you how to do that.

When I got ready to create my multitrack edit, I included every video track except the 2nd video track mentioned above.

In other words, let's say I have 3 video tracks; V1, V2 and V3.  V2 is the camera angle where the person's face can be clearly seen, so I put a pixelated mask on the person's face for the whole clip.

When I make my multicamera track I only highlight V1, V2 and V3,  This combines those 3 into one track, and V4 remains it's own separate track.

Now when you make the cuts and edits, that pixelation mask will still be on any shot where you use V2 as the source, but will not be on any shot where V1 or V3 is the source.

Just remember, when you render the video make sure the mask track, the one you didn't add to the multicamera track, is above the multicamera track in your track layout so it lays on top of that track instead of under it.


Final Cut Pro X to After Effects Workflow Everybody is saying FinalCutPro to Motion5 is like PremierePro to AfterEffects. But its a fact that AfterEffects is more powerful than Motion5. So since I love the simplicity of FinalCutProX as my Cutter, for me the perfect solution would be using FinalCutProX together with AfterEffects.

Now does that make sense or would you better not do it like this?
If yes, how is your workflow to not loosing any quality of the clip by exporting to AfterEffects, editing there and exporting back to FinalCutProX?

It is certainly possible to use FCPX and AfterEffects as part of the same workflow.  To do this effectively, you will need to use an intermediate codec that preserves image quality across successive generations.  ProRes HQ 422 is a good baseline as an intermediate codec.  There are higher quality ProRes codecs (XQ 4444) and lower quality ones (ProRes LT 422).  But ProRes HQ should be a good starting place.


How to start and record Flash video stream without recording the player taskbar I want to record a Flash video stream from the web. This is the website in question: http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/plus7

The problem is that the video starts with a task bar over it and I have to move the mouse pointer over and out of the video to fade it out, all of which is recorded in my screen capture.

How do I avoid recording the task bar?

As long as the video isn't copy protected, you will want to use a stream ripper instead of trying to do a screen capture of your monitor.  Any number of software products are able to directly transfer a video that is in the Flash streaming video format as long as it isn't copy protected.  A quick search for "flash video ripper" and your operating system should return numerous results to choose from.  The advantage of this is that the stream can be recorded with the original encoding preserved, which avoids loss of quality due to repeat encoding and compression.

As a side bonus, since the stream rippers will record the stream directly, you also don't have to worry about the bar or your mouse being over the screen.


Why is there an orange cross going through my clips in premiere pro Whenever I put an effect on one of my clips an orange 'X' goes through the display and the render. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I am pretty sure this does not happen with every effect, just with those from Boris FX (Sapphire).
It's very likely you use a trial version and need to buy a license. Check here: https://borisfx.com/faq/sapphire-trial-watermark/
If you already have bought a license then something might went wrong during activation and you should contact them for further support.


Adobe Premiere - how do I find a clip using a removed plugin? Adobe Premiere: 5.5

I had a plugin, then I removed it
Now my project complains about not having it
I think this is from a clip or sequence using the plugin

Questions:

How do I find the clip or sequence to take out the plugin and remove this error?
Could this error be caused by something else?

EDIT: more complications:

it is a feature length project, with 20+ long sequences
I only see the warning when I open the project, and it takes 5+ minutes to load

In premiere Pro CC 2015, you can use the find on timeline command by pressing (Cntrol+F) for windows and for mac (Command+F) the dialog box that opens up will help you find the clip.

Chose from the dropdown "effects" the chose "contains" and type "name_of_plugin".

replace the name_of_plugin with the name of the plugin you used and gave you errors. Mostly it should find it.

I tested this with an inbuilt plugin of premiere called "Calculations" within channel in video effects and it does find the clip. The only difference is that I did not delete the plugin itself while testing as its in built. You should give this method a try and hope that the metadata needed for the same will be there.

P.S.: you could also try starts with instead of contains in the second drop down for better results.

Good luck.


Davinci Resolve - Store Clips Edited in Cut Window in a Media Folder I am working on a video project in DaVinci Resolve. It a short video documenting a piece of installation art. One of the media files is a handheld camera that takes close up shots of different parts of the piece. I'm trying to edit this into closeups of individual elements that I can cut to throughout the video.

I'm currently editing the clip in the cut view, but keeping organized is very difficult. I'm looking for functionality where I can drag the clips I've edited into a folder where they can visually be viewed side by side, rather than having them just sit on the timeline, which is a really inefficient workflow. Does this functionality exist and how do I do that?

I'd like to take clips from the cut view that look like this:

And drag them into a folder so I can view and work with them like this:

As of resolve 16.2, it’s not possible to organize media from the cut page that way. Switch to the edit page. All of the edits you’ve made will persist, and you’ll be able to drag timeline clips to bins from there (this creates subclips).  You can then switch back to the cut page and continue to work if that's what you prefer.


Who owns the RAW video, audio and photo footage in case the client does not pay the agreed price? Hello to all here is my burning question: I came from Europe with all my equipment and worked for 3 months for a client. Prior to my coming there I send my terms for working and the agreed price and no complicated contract, just saying that a down payment will be needed of 30% and that food and lodging, airplane ticket and expensive s as such is not included on the price we agreed.

Now until today the client did not pay me anything and they claim I must hand over all RAW footage to them. I don't know about the USA federal law but here in Europe the video maker and in my case also photos in raw is the owner before a agreement for handing off is made.

During my stay there one of my camera's a ProHD JVC went broken the fire-wire board needs to be replaced and it will cost me over $1K

And I am more than willing to give them all the footage, including audio and photos in the case they pay. I think I am in my right.

Copyright law here says that the person who shoots the footage owns the footage. The only way to change this is if you sign a work for hire contract which says that the production company owns the copyright and that they'll pay you in exchange for your work and copyright. If they didn't pay you then they breached their contract. If there was no contract then you own the footage and don't have to give them anything. Something as simple as an email could be considered a legally binding contract though. I suggest you contact a lawyer who knows entertainment law in the US.

Save everything, emails, phone call records, written notes, receipts, plane tickets, reservations, anything that demonstrates your working relationship with this company and how much they have paid you and how much they owe you or should have paid you.

Sorry this sort of thing happens.

See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire


Stop motion animation and audio keyframes in AE so I'm completely new to After Effects (normally work with premiere or stop motion animation) so if I've not given enough/or the right information, just let me know what you need to know.

I have a four frame animation, and want to use keyframes generated by audio to choose which frame to show of the animation (it's for a music video and each frame is a different position while playing an instrument). I was hoping to assign a frame to different value ranges generated by the audio, I've managed to animate other things with audio keyframes and linear expressions. The issue I seem to be having is that keyframes seem to only exist for effects, so I can't figure out how to assign each frame of the animation a value that I can then use in relation to the generated keyframes.

I'm sorry if that doesn't make any sense, but any help would be hugely appreciated!

You can choose which frame of footage is shown by enabling Time Remapping for the layer. Find it in the layer menu, or by right-clicking a layer in the timeline, or by using ctrl / ⌘alt / ⌥t

Turn it on for a layer and the displayed time is set by the value of the Time Remap property, which can be keyframed or controlled with expressions. Once you've applied it hit u to show it.

The value of the property is in in seconds, so you'll have to convert it to frames. You'll have to check what fps value the footage is interpreted as having.


Need culturally sensitive alternatives to standard videography terminology such as "shoot," "shooting," and "shot." The idea of "shooting" makes some people uncomfortable, so we're trying to change our terminology for a particular client (big 6-month project). We need to come up with appropriate alternatives to use for terms in all of our written plans and processes for this project. And though there are many terms we can use, I'm wondering if there is a new standard or commonly used alternatives. We need alternatives for "shoot," "shooting," and "shot."

What about:

film, filming, filmed
record, recording, recorded


Vinyl converter spins 35.3 RPM -- How to correct? My new "Numark PT-01 USB" turntable/vinyl converter actually spins 35.3 RPM instead of 33.3.  Notes sound slightly sharp.  Is there a good software to fix this?

Just about any audio editing software should be able to do this for you.  You simply need a "stretch" or "speed" adjustment.  If you don't know of any software, Audacity is a popular free option.  It's probably overkill for your needs, but should allow you to stretch the audio out to slow it down.


Lowering preview resolution for better on-the-fly timeline rendering in Davinci Resolve I used to work with Vegas a lot, but my organization is now using resolve. One feature I’ve been missing and trying to find an adequate replacement for is the ability to have the little video preview you see while editing be at a lower resolution than the actual video, so that it can render faster and be smoother while you’re editing. As it is, resolve is trying to run that preview at full resolution and with my PC specs it’s just not going to happen. I’m pulling about 5-10 FPS which is very disruptive to my editing flow. In Vegas there was a simple drop down menu next to the preview pane where you could select the resolution to preview in (full, half, quarter, or auto); it doesn’t seem to be that simple in resolve but is there anything that would have the same effect?

I believe Proxy Mode is what you are looking for. You can find it in the Playback Menu.

Playback > Proxy Mode >


Why my workstation PC is rendering too slow on Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019? I'm wondering why my desktop workstation render too slow the video on Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019.

I tried to edit (cut, music, simple graphics) video of 15 minutes.
But when it renders, it takes more than 1 hour.

Here is my specs:

I7-8700k 3.7 GHz
Ram 16 GB ddr4 2133
Samsung ssd m2 nvme 256 GB
Kingston 120 GB SSD
Toshiba 1 TB
Motherboard : MSI z370 gaming m5
Watercooling thermatalk

The only thing  I doubt in is, I do not have a graphic card as I know it's not very important in video editing and 2D as a CPU.

Please give me a solution, or where is the problem?
Thanks

Have you read Adobe's system requirements for Premiere Pro? I think you'll find that a GPU is absolutely crucial for Premiere renders. Looking at your specs you seem to have got everything fairly well specced up except for the one thing that will massively decrease your render times for PP.

TL;DR: get the best GPU you can afford.


Can QuickTime Pro Edit mp4 files? I just started trying out Snagit 11 on Windows. It now records screencasts in .mp4 instead of .avi. I thought this would be great but there's a problem. I typically record a screencast and then open it in QuickTime Pro 7.x and edit out the bits I don't want. When I'm done I export to .mp4.  When I tried to do this with the mp4 that Snagit11 created, deleting a few seconds of video would actually delete a couple of minutes. I tried it multiple times and it was very repeatable. It got the starting point of the cut correct but it didn't get the stopping point even close. I'm not sure if this is a problem on the Snagit11 encoding side or on the QT pro side. I've never tried to edit an MP4 before. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible and I can see how I might lose some precision in adjusting playheads on an already compressed format but to miss by a couple of minutes seems a wee bit extreme. Are there any tricks I need to know to edit a video in QTPro that is already in mp4 format?

I think the short answer (one you may have already found) is no! I'm in a similar situation: I write music to picture and used to receive clips as .movs. I could then add final audio myself for showreel/web purposes. Now those clips arrive as mp4 and are useless and unchangeable. I can merge files in QT pro for viewing, but no saves are allowed.

Editing software usually prefers 'linear' formats (aiff or wav for audio, .mov or similar for vids) whereas mp4 is heavily compressed and 'lossy'. Also, the key frame rate is very poor (300 I think) so that might explain some of your edit problems. The only workaround I can find is to open in QT and re-export, but the results are pretty ugly! Saving to mp4 for final product? Why not - it looks pretty and the file sizes are good. Working with mp4 in the edit? Hell no :)


Annotating sports video: design principles? I was watching Match Of the Day (a soccer highlights show for those not from the UK) and I've found they use this software Piero to annotate the football matches.

When annotating video of moving players I find that the graphics can be quite clunky and perhaps a bit too obtrusive. You can't see clearly the ball when some graphics are applied for example.

As I take an interest in video editing myself, my question is what would be the best design principles to annotate sports videos, especially while they are moving?

I'd think the best principal would be to ensure that motion always trump graphics.  Ie, any pixels that are detected as having velocity that is not equal to the velocity of the background should be rendered over the graphics.  This might be difficult to accomplish without purpose built software, but such an approach should keep the graphics from going over any action.  You actually already see this with things like American "Football" (not soccer) games where they render on lines for things like line of scrimmage and first down.  The perspective makes it look like it is simply graphics on the field even though they are actually added electronically.


How can I generate a color-correct h264/MP4 from a DPX sequence using ffmpeg? We are converting a sequence of DPX files into an MP4. When the artist uses Adobe Media Encoder CC to generate the video, the colors match the original DPX. When we use ffmpeg, the video has a reddish hint. The command used is:

ffmpeg -y -start_number 0101 -i \\path\to\filename.%04d.dpx -pix_fmt yuv420p sample.mp4

How can we generate a video that matches the color of the original DPX files?

Inspecting the files with ffprobe revealed the following differences (correct file/bad file):

major_brand: mp42 / isom
minor_version: 0 / 512
compatible_brands: mp42mp41 / isomiso2avc1mp41
encoder: not listed / Lavf57.34.102
Video: h264 (Main) / h264 (High)
Video: yuv420p(tv, bt709) / yuv420p
Video: 1920x1080 / 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9]
handler_name: Alias Data Handler / VideoHandler

Probe references: dpx, correct, incorrect

I followed up on the yuv420p(tv, bt709) portion of the encoding and discovered that this refers to the Rec. 709 colorspace for HDTV. In ffmpeg, colorspace is defined by the colormatrix filter. However, you must convert from some colorspace. According to an ffmpeg mailing list conversation, the default colorspace is assumed to be bt601:

  ISTR that if you give ffmpeg RGB it assumes its full range, it also by
  default converts using 601 matrices. Although it has a number of
  colourspaces defined which can be accessed in the libs using the API,
  ffmpeg itself makes no use of them (Although I have a nagging feeling
  that that may not be completely true anymore either).

So the final ffmpeg command that worked was:

ffmpeg -y -start_number 0101 -i \\path\to\filename.%04d.dpx
-vf colormatrix=bt601:bt709 -pix_fmt yuv420p sample.mp4

The color is now correct, but there is no discernible difference in the output from ffprobe or MediaInfo. (In other words, the colorspace of the ffmpeg-generated file does not appear in the output.)


How to change output filename in ffmpeg batch? I'm using windows and ffmpeg to convert video mp4 into audio mp3. I've come up with the following batch line that will do the job:

 for %f in (*.mp4); do ffmpeg -i %f -vn -ar 44100 -ac 1 -b:a 32k -f mp3 %f.mp3

However, the %f variable captures the whole filename with the extension, so my output looks like filename.mp4.mp3. I'd rather it look like filename.mp3.

I've tried all sorts of brackets and truncation methods I know of but I cannot get anything to work.

How can I change the filenames in an ffmpeg batch conversion on Windows?

You can extract the file name directly from the for replacement parameter. No need to set a new variable at all.

for %f in (*.mp4) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -ar 44100 -ac 1 -b:a 32k -f mp3 "%~nf.mp3"

If you want to do more complicated string munging, it's much more intuitive in Powershell:

ls *.mp4|foreach{
    ffmpeg -i $_ -vn -ar 44100 -ac 1 -b:a 32k -f mp3 $_.name.replace("mp4", "mp3")
}


Can I update the scan type by ffmpeg? I have a video, which was recorded by kurento.  But the video can't replay. after I checked it,  I think the reason is the scan type is incorrect.

The work video,

Tony-MacBook-Pro:ios tony$ ffmpeg -i good.webm
ffmpeg version 3.4.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 9.0.0 (clang-900.0.39.2)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/3.4.1_2 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --enable-hardcoded-tables --enable-avresample --disable-jack --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-gpl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-opencl --enable-videotoolbox --disable-lzma
  libavutil      55. 78.100 / 55. 78.100
  libavcodec     57.107.100 / 57.107.100
  libavformat    57. 83.100 / 57. 83.100
  libavdevice    57. 10.100 / 57. 10.100
  libavfilter     6.107.100 /  6.107.100
  libavresample   3.  7.  0 /  3.  7.  0
  libswscale      4.  8.100 /  4.  8.100
  libswresample   2.  9.100 /  2.  9.100
  libpostproc    54.  7.100 / 54.  7.100
Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'good.webm':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : GStreamer matroskamux version 1.8.1.1
    creation_time   : 2018-06-29T17:15:35.000000Z
  Duration: 00:00:57.52, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 438 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: vp8, yuv420p(progressive), 480x640, SAR 1:1 DAR 3:4, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      title           : Video
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: opus, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
    Metadata:
      title           : Audio

The bad video,

Tony-MacBook-Pro:ios tony$ ffmpeg -i bad.webm
ffmpeg version 3.4.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 9.0.0 (clang-900.0.39.2)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/3.4.1_2 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --enable-hardcoded-tables --enable-avresample --disable-jack --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-gpl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-opencl --enable-videotoolbox --disable-lzma
  libavutil      55. 78.100 / 55. 78.100
  libavcodec     57.107.100 / 57.107.100
  libavformat    57. 83.100 / 57. 83.100
  libavdevice    57. 10.100 / 57. 10.100
  libavfilter     6.107.100 /  6.107.100
  libavresample   3.  7.  0 /  3.  7.  0
  libswscale      4.  8.100 /  4.  8.100
  libswresample   2.  9.100 /  2.  9.100
  libpostproc    54.  7.100 / 54.  7.100
Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'bad.webm':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : GStreamer matroskamux version 1.8.1.1
    creation_time   : 2018-06-29T13:52:20.000000Z
  Duration: 00:00:35.19, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 367 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: vp8, yuv420p, 480x640, SAR 1:1 DAR 3:4, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      title           : Video
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: opus, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
    Metadata:
      title           : Audio

I compared both, the only difference is the 1st one has yuv420p(progressive), the 2nd one has yuv420p; so I guess that's the root cause, and want to change the scan type to try.

bad file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t07pfe69a78h1tg/bad.webm?dl=0
good file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uivgb1trobhrg5n/good.webm?dl=0

The issue isn't the scan type but the timestamps for the video stream.

Run

ffmpeg -i bad.webm -c copy -an badv.nut

and then

ffmpeg -i badv.nut -i bad.webm -c copy -map 0:v -map 1:a new.,webm

The video timestamps start at some large non-zero number but the audio TS start at zero. That throws stream queueing out-of-whack since the sync relies on the stream with earliest start time within the file. The two step method works around that by isolating the video first into its own file.


Update media source directory for Final Cut Pro X event While "cleaning" my OS drive, I decided to move all project media files (video, audio and pictures) to my network storage. As expected, Final Cut cannot locate the files, that were tied to my projects.

Is there a function to update the file paths by "scanning" the new directory?

When you link one media file in an event, FCPX should find the other media files automatically.

For example, if you had media files in a folder, then moved the contents of that folder elsewhere, linking one file from that folder back to the FCPX media reference should let FCPX see the rest of that folder and automatically relink the rest of the media from that folder.


What should I be looking for in a low cost color correcting monitor? I am in the market for a low-cost, color-correcting monitor. Please help me define "low cost." I don't want to skimp out but don't want to buy top dollar either. I know good monitors cost money.

I will be using the monitor for both Video and Photography. What features/specs should I consider a "bare minimum" so, hopefully, I wont need to buy two.

There's a loose binning of monitors into 3 categories:

Consumer equipment [$500 - $1500] Dell U-Series LCDs, Panasonic Viera Plasmas
Entry-Level Monitors [$2500+] FSI, HP DreamColor
High End Monitors [$$ - $$$$] eCinema, TV Logic

Some of the features of non-consumer monitors that you'll want to learn about are:

HD/SDI inputs
Additional outputs
Colorspace and signal type support, such as 4:2:2
"Higher" bit depth, such as 10-bit
LUT programmability

If you're asking for low-cost, without already knowing these monitors, then I strongly suggest you stick to the first category, and use something like the DataColor Spyder calibration puck.  Getting that top 5% of color accuracy comes at a steep price, and since it seems you're just starting out, you probably want to stick with the 95% solution.  Upgrade only when you have specific need for the features.


How do I prevent Wirecast from crashing? I'm attempt to livestream from a 2016 MacBook Pro, but for some reason Wirecast (12.2.1) crashes. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, it only stays open for a couple of minutes, then it just completely closes.

If you have an external monitor, try unplugging it and loading up Wirecast.  Some people have reported too much video resources being in use cause problems.


Disguising the identity of a voice over I consider making some kind of tutorial channel on YouTube about a specific subject where I do a voice over on my videos while using an Intuos to demonstrate on the monitor. However, I do not wish the whole world to know who I am and therefore I thought about if it is possible that my voice could be recognized from the voice over in any way.
So is it actually possible to quickly and easily change the voice audio a bit so it still sounds natural and wouldn't be recognized?

Also, I know about Audacity. Do any of you know how to do it there and are there better software solutions?

You have a few options for disguising a voice, but several of them intentionally make the sound unnatural.

Have someone else record the voiceover. This is the only technique that results in a truly natural sound because it is an unmodified voice. There are some relatively inexpensive voiceover services available if you don't already know someone. Because the person is never seen on screen in what you describe, you don't have to worry about lip sync, just rough timing.
A simple pitch shift. Change the key of your voice with a pitch shift filter and correct the timing. This is easily reversible if you have serious concerns about your identity. This video describes how to do that in Premier.
Randomize the pitch shift, layer multiple pitches, or add other distortions. Sound designers get creative with plugins.


What does it mean when encode a yuv422 file to yuv420 by libx264 lossless encoding? I have an AVI file input.avi encoded in HQ which has yuv422 format according to ffprobe.

Now, if I run the following command

ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

Will the out.mp4 be lossless compared with input.avi? or it will be 'lossless' except half of the U and V information is lost?

To directly compare the YUV422P AVI and YUV420P MP4,

ffmpeg -i input.avi -i out.mp4
   -filter_complex
      "[0]format=yuv420p,split[avi-p][avi-s];
       [1][avi-p]psnr;[1][avi-s]ssim" -f null -


How to precisely trim video with ffmpeg? -ss and -t are off by more than a half second To put this plainly, -ss and -t don't work very well or even consistently.

I'm trying to take a single input file1 and only encode from a certain start point, -ss, and for only a certain time, -t. I've checked and double checked my in times are what I want, down to the frame (calculated to milliseconds2), but ffmpeg adds anywhere from 10 to 19 frames to the beginning, which is more than a half a second. I need frame precise cuts at the in points. Out points can be off by a few if necessary.

I've run the following commands all with exactly the same results on 13 different files. All add the 10 to 19 frames to the beginning.

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:34.600 -t 00:26:40.400 -i 002.m2t [commands] 01.mp4
ffmpeg -i 002.m2t -ss 00:00:34.600 -t 00:26:40.400 [commands] 01.mp4
ffmpeg -ss 00:00:34.600 -i 002.m2t -t 00:26:40.400 [commands] 01.mp4

The [commands] section is exactly

-filter_complex "scale=852:480,setsar=1","eq=brightness=0.05:saturation=1.0" -crf 24 -c:a aac -b:a 64k -ac 1 -loglevel quiet -stats -movflags +faststart

I find many with the same issue, but no solutions. I thought at first that putting -ss and -t before -i would work, but as you can see I've tried moving them around and get exactly the same results.

Is there really no way to cut a video with frame precision in ffmpeg?

In the documentation I found -seek_timestamp which says

  This option enables or disables seeking by timestamp in input files with the -ss option. It is disabled by default. If enabled, the argument to the -ss option is considered an actual timestamp, and is not offset by the start time of the file. This matters only for files which do not start from timestamp 0, such as transport streams.

I know m2t (see footnote 1) is a transport stream, so I tried using -seek_timestamp, but I get errors that seem to be about parsing the arguments. I've tried putting it in different places in the command too. Maybe the answer is here, but I'm having trouble with the syntax.

Footnotes

The input files are MT2 HDV recorded via firewire from an old Sony cam direct to Vegas Pro.
I import the files to Vegas Pro and trim them on the timeline like any other edit job, but instead of rendering in Vegas Pro, I export the events to eventually derive the ffmpeg commands, with -ss and -t effectively pulled directly from the Vegas Pro timeline. When I do this, the -ss 00:00:34.600 in the command above  actually came from the Vegas Pro events like this: 00:00:34;18. The 18 at the end is 18 frames. Since this is 30 fps footage, I calculate the milliseconds needed for the ffmpeg command by dividing by 30. 18/30 = .6.

Transport Stream files are meant for streaming, have no global header, and may be sliced or joined together without the help of a format-aware utility. Because of this, there'a a lot of metadata structure within a TS file that allows them to be playable even after such operations. What that allows, in turn, is having multiple streams of different duration starting and stopping at different times. A format-aware utility like ffmpeg will parse the metadata and respect these features whereas a video editor which is mainly designed for a static file-based and indexed media usually won't - not with full fidelity anyway.

In the sample, there are two streams - 1 video and 1 audio. Run the following to identify the start_time of each stream

ffprobe -show_entries stream=codec_type,start_time -v 0 -of compact=p=1:nk=0 sample.ts

For your file, this results in

program|stream|codec_type=video|start_time=1.978233
stream|codec_type=audio|start_time=1.400000

stream|codec_type=video|start_time=1.978233
stream|codec_type=audio|start_time=1.400000

Ignore the first two lines. You can see that the video start is delayed relative to the audio. FFmpeg respects this delay. Your editor likely doesn't. It will either ignore the surplus audio or desync it with respect to the video.

So, 00:00:34.600 in the editing timeline actually references absolute timestamp of 34.6 + 1.978233 = 36.578233.

So, to accurately extract the desired frame, you need to know the delay of the video stream. Now, ffmpeg, by default, removes the starting offset i.e. it subtracts the start_time of the earliest starting stream before ingesting into its processing pipeline (unless copyts is set).

So, without copyts, the video start_time will be modified to 1.978233 - 1.400000 = 0.578233 and the desired frame will be at 34.6 + 0.578233 = 35.178233.

So, run

ffmpeg -i sample.ts -ss 00:00:35.178233 -t 00:26:40.400 [commands] out.mp4

You can use

ffprobe -show_entries format=start_time:stream=start_time -select_streams v -v 0 -of compact=p=1:nk=0 sample.ts

to get

program|stream|start_time=1.978233

stream|start_time=1.978233
format|start_time=1.400000

where the relative offset for the video is 1.978233 - 1.400000 = 0.578233


Halogen brightness for video I'm trying to get an idea of the brightness of halogen lights before I go and buy any. I'm going to be producing a music video and for some indoor scenes I'll need lighting. I'm on a small budget unfortunately so hiring hundreds of dollars of lighting is not on the agenda.

I was planning on getting some cheap work lights of 250W or 500W but I've heard people say that 500W lights are actually very bright and get rather hot.

If I was looking for an exposure at 1/50th of 1/100th (for 50fps shots) at f/2.8-4 at around ISO 100 or 160, will a 500W light be too bright? I obviously want the ISO to be as low as possible since I'm working with an APS-C DSLR, not a dedicated cinema camera.

I do have an ND4 filter on hand. The only remaining issue would be controlling the light from the work lights.

If anyone was curious, I managed to pick up a 400W halogen work light (supposedly delivering equivalent to 500W) and the exposure within a few metres (3-4) was spot on. I also bought a 250W halogen that I would probably use more as a fill light as it's a stop or so darker.

At f/2.8, ISO 100-320, 1/100th at 50 frames per second, the exposure on the histogram was pretty well on the money.

And the light cost me all of $20. I filmed it at 3000K (approximate temperature of halogens) using the CINEMA pf2 profile on my Canon EOS 60D. The profile produced an almost completed colour grade.


How to add text to specific animation frames I'm not really a video expert, I'm more into Geographical Information Systems (GIS). I've recently been able to make some great time-based animations of Geographical Data using the excellent QGIS with Time Manager plugin, and mencoder. The former outputs a series of static PNG files and the latter converts to a video.

I would like to improve these by adding text to the video, so that over a specific period of time (i.e. specific number of frames) some text is showing. This text should vary by month or week of the video.

I'm wondering if anyone has any good techniques for this. My first thoughts were that I would have to either:

Alter the relevant PNGs programmatically, perhaps using a tool like Image Magick. This would require selecting the correct frames to work on somehow
Do it in video-editing software. I don't know whether there are any that can do something like this. Ideally it would be open-source and able to run on Windows as this is a work project.

Does anyone have any experience with either of these two methods, or some general advice?

If you don't want to mess around with either of the free video editor versions available from Windows, WinXP (Windows Movie Maker) or Win7 (Windows Live Movie Maker) as these may not be flexible enough for your project, then you can try out a pro version with a free demo (good for 30 days) of Sony Vegas Pro 11.

Once you set up your trial version, add your video to the timeline, then use the "media generator/text" (title) features to add the titles you want. There are lots of options on the text generators.

Three links that are of interest.

Free Demo Version of Vegas Pro 11 (make sure you choose the correct version for your computer as in 32 vs. 64 bit):
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/vegaspro?keycode=64506

Tutorial on how to use the media generator/text on Vegas Pro 11:

Expert advice and overview of Vegas Pro media generator:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/media_generators_in_vegas_pro_software

Likely you can get your whole project done under the 30 day trial period and render a final version ready to post or show. If you don't understand how to render there are tons of tutorials out there, so just for fun I'll add one more link:


Will the Samsung 64GB Evo Plus be sufficient for the Panasonic gx80/85? Will the Samsung 64GB Evo Plus be sufficient for the Panasonic GX80/85 for 4K video?

I have recently purchased the Panasonic GX80 and need to get an SD card to go with it. I know nothing about cameras or SD cards. I am trying to find the cheapest, reliable card that will work well with the 4K video. My research has indicated that the Samsung card linked above should work fine with its (up to) 100 MB/s read and 60 MB/s write speed with class 10 and U3 compatibility. I've noticed that (for this product) the write speed scales with the memory size. I am really trying to determine if:

Is this card overkill / insufficient / fine for a beginner?

In addition to

I've read that Micro SD Cards with Adapters are preferred as full sized SD cards tend to break and with the micro SD cards it is trivial to replace the adapters. Is this nonsense or does it generally hold true?
Are Samsung SD cards generally reliable?

Most of my information comes from this forum post, which would now appear to be out of date. I won't ask about memory card size as I understand that this is completely subjective and situational. First time post here, so apologies if this is subjective / not the quality of question that you expect here. If so, I'll happily delete.

What speed does my SD-card need?

The manual states that:

So any card that can continually write 100 Megabit per second (so around 13 MegaByte per second) should be fast enough for recording 4K. For photography, there's no hard number: usually, it's the faster, the better, especially when shooting series of pictures in RAW. However, it will only have influence on the buffer and how fast it is cleared.

Your suggested card has a write speed of up to 60 MegaByte - but "up to" can mean anything in between 0.1 and 60.0 MB/s. Look for benchmarks - or look for
Speed Classes - those will usually tell you the minimum continuous write speed of a card. Speed-classes come in all sorts of logos and are usually displayed on the card.

Please note that the camera has to support the protocol of the card - A U3 card will only be able to work at C6-speed (at best) in a camera that only supports up to C6.

Now, having a standard is all well and fine - as long as everyone is abiding by it. "Premium" card manufacturers have a reputation to lose, so they usually will not forge speed ratings. If you do not know if you want to trust them, again, you should look for benchmarks and reviews.

Are µSDs more reliable than regular SDs?

No. I carry some of my (non-essential) SD cards in my purse - next to my coins and without protective cases. So I assume that to break an SD-card, you really have to try. SD-cards are usually cheaper than µSD-cards (at same specifications), so I would go with one of these all the time.

This, of course, does not consider cross-device use of the card, e.g. in a smartphone.

Are Samsung's cards reliable?

Simply look for reviews in the internet (e.g. in the link you posted from Amazon). I have no experience with Samsung, though they tend to have good reputation. Their SSDs are always well-received, so I would think the same would go for their SD-cards. However, there is always the possibility that you get the one bad card of a batch - or that one specific model comes out faulty.


How do I apply effects to a layer at its current resolution (scaled up by the layer's scale property) instead of its original resolution? I'm a sprite animator in Adobe After Effects.

For example, I want to be able to skew a layer, but because this image is very small on its own, when I scale up its scale property and then skew it using one of a few possible effects, it does the skew based on its original resolution, meaning the pixels trying to show the skew are very large.

The only way I know of to do this is to use the transform property, and to scale it up that way, then use its scaling property. Trouble is that this means that the bounds of the layer are much smaller than the visible portion, and it means I have to screw with anchors and positions again to get everything back to normal, which is very tedious.

I basically want to be able to skew just like in Flash. Is there any way to do it that is much quicker and smoother than the method I described?

Here's an example image:

In the first and second sprite, it's scaled up by playing with the layer's scale property. On the third one, it's scaled up using the effect called "Transform", and then I use CC Slant to skew it. For a few reasons, this is tedious and a bit unwieldy, so is there a better way to do this without using Transform? I know I can do something similar by precomposing the sprite, but this is also unwieldy.

I should also mention that I only own AE CS5.

Well, the answer to the question in your title is to apply the CC Slant effect to an adjustment layer above your (scaled-up) sprite layer. The adjustment layer will have the same resolution as the comp.

But based on the description below the title, I'm not 100% confident this is what you want. Let me know.