Best render options for custom size movie in after effects I have a composition of 1500 x 643. I need this format for a moviebanner in a website. My assets are in 4K, very good quality.

I can render it as an AVI, best quality. Then it's almost 4 GB for 30 seconds.

When I choose H264, it has problems with framerate and the size (it resizes, ...). What do I have to choose as render settings to have a good quality movie (+30mb? instead of 4Gb), for web with my custom size?

I use After Effects CS5.

EDIT: After changing the settings to an odd resolution, I can export as H.264..
But I don't like the quality. The size is 3.3Mb, it could be a little bit more.
How can I get better quality for this export?

My screens:

The results can you find here: https://wetransfer.com/downloads/a15013dad2f4bc5c0b4ce0aa92cb821c20170508063926/347bd4

Are you using the inbuilt After Effects render queue? It's a bit easier to use custom settings when you use the Adobe Media Encoder instead. AME comes with After Effects and is installed automatically when you install AE. Simply open the composition you want to export in After Effects and select Composition → Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue. This will open AME and add the current state of your composition to the render queue (this might take some time). Once you see the item in the render queue, press the highlighted format designation to open the Export Settings dialogue.

In the Export Settings, you can change the format (codec/container) as well as the other export parameters. Make sure to set the dimensions (Width/Height) to whatever you need them to be. To bring down the size, the most important option is the bitrate setting (Target / Maximum Bitrate for H.264).

Read this for an explanation of bitrate and it's relation to the resolution of your video and this for the math you need to figure out the appopriate bitrate dependent of your desired output size. Since you mentioned you need the video for your website, you might also be interested in my post here regarding recommended encoding settings for web video.


how to have a project on a different location that its library in FCPX I have an SD kart with a lot of videos, and I have a USB stick also with videos.
Is it possible to have all the videos on one USB stick and the project on the other USB stick? If yes, how would I do that?

thanks

As far as I know FCPX is not excepting external USB to work on your project. It has to be an internal or external drive. You certainly can move the project to an USB when you finish or to transfer between computers.

I also would not recommend to have your media on an USB for performance reasons as well.


Photoshop Layer Blending Goes Away When Imported into After Effects When I import my Photoshop file into After Effects, the blending options I used on the layers (like drop shadow, stroke, etc) disappear, but they do show up when I view the composition file. I know I could apply each blending option permanently in Photoshop, but is there another way to just make it show up in After Effects? Thanks!

If you want to be able to edit your layer styles from Photoshop inside After Effects, you need to do the following:

Save your photoshop project as a .PSD file.
Import it into After Effects with the following options-
Choose "Import Kind: Composition (retain layer sizes if you wish)
Set Layer Options - Editable Layer Styles

Double click on the comp that is created.  You'll see a series of layers in your timeline, which should correspond to your layers in Photoshop.

If you pop open the triangles next to the relevant layer, you should see the layer styles, as shown below:


How to obtain clipname while shooting? Is there any kind of solution to obtain simultaneous the clipname while shooting? prehaps to read hanc and fanc of the SDI signal? I use a sony AX1 4K.

Both RED and Alexa cameras offer this feature, and the Sound Devices PIX 240i reads it.  But nowhere on the Internet is there any documentation that your SONY camera offers this feature.  Either SONY doesn't have it, or they greatly need to improve their documentation.


Software used for this slideshow/animation? could someone please tell me what software could have been used to create this slideshow/animation? Could they have used a template?

http://media.boxstudios.com/17096_art_na_stills_paper_29_12_b_web_mp4_3ip.mp4

Software you could do that effect with:

Adobe After Effects
Blackmagic Fusion
Nuke
Autodesk Toxik
Autodesk Flame
Autodesk Smoke
Adobe Premiere Pro
Apple Final Cut Pro and Final Cut X
Avid Media Composer
Avid Symphony
Corel video Studio
Magix Movie Edit Pro
Lightworks
Sony Vegas
Natron
KDEnlive
Avisynth
Cinelerra
Pitivi
FFMPEG (given enough time)
Blender
Lightwave
3D studio Max
Autodesk Maya
Cinema 4d
Photoshop (yes, really)
the Gimp (ditto)
Processing (if you're handy with java)
OpenFrameworks (ditto, but C++)
many more… Pretty much any compositing, visual effects or 3D animation application, and most NLEs could do it

Could they have used a template: yes.


Is it possible to have stereo sound from an external mic on a Canon Vixia HF G20 I have a Canon Vixia HF G20 and I cannot find anywhere in the manual about an external mic in stereo mode. The "advanced hot shoe" does support stereo and surround sound but through the Line In/Mic port on the camera I can't seem to produce stereo sound. My source is definitely stereo. Any suggestions?

According to the Using Commercially Available Microphones section on page 76 of the manual for the HF G20, it should be possible to connect a stereo microphone to the external mic connection.  There may be some problem with the kind of a source you are using or the way you are connecting it.


Exporting 360 video in a 360 video format (not plain video) I have the Insta360 One X camera and want to edit the video I take.

Basically I am putting the camera on a tripod and videoing 60 seconds. Then in Insta360 studio 2019 software I can edit the video to change the view angles (using keyframes) so when I play it looks like it is panning round.

When it is exported it always ends up as a plain video.

I want it to play as a 360 video so the user can pause it and also change the view angle if they want to look somewhere in particular then carry on playing the video again.

So far I can only find a way to export in a plain video & not in 360 video — can't this be done. Is there any other video editing software I can use (I don't mind paying a one off amount to buy it)?

Hope all that makes sense.

Yeah Spatial Media Metadata Injector destroys the video. I was somehow able to export a video using insta360 studio as an actual 360 video but have no clue how I did it.

It seems all anyone wants to do is make claims to all these types of features but no one wants to explain how they're doing anything. The information people are leaving is useless.

I was on the phone with insta360 today for about 40 minutes trying to have them explain to me what a keyframe is, what purpose it serves and why it's even in insta360 studio to begin with.


Windows - Easy to use video editor I want to make a video using photos and video snips and add titles freely. Is there any user-friendly software to do so? I don't have much time for complicated software right now. So I'm looking for one which I can easily understand and use.

If you want to save time and learning efforts, and you can live with limited control over the end result, you may want to have a look at:

muvee Reveal
Magix Fastcut
GoPro Studio
Sony Action Cam Movie Creator

The later two are for free.


Motion tracking in very shaky footage? I have footage of me sitting in a boat filming a friend that is riding a wakeboard. The footage is very shaky and as the boat turns around 180° every now and then, the background is constantly changing.

I tried to set the motion tracking point at my friend's head but the point is just flying all over the place. How can I track the motion in this shot?

If you have access to adobe premiere pro CS6+ or after effects CS5.5+.

Try using the warp stabilizer effect and see how well it handles it.
It would automatically attempt to stabilize the footage (and rolling shutter).
This is probably the easiest thing to try first before doing manual frame by frame tracking.

You can see a video by adobe giving a quick overview of it here:

http://tv.adobe.com/embed/902/12454/


Unhappy with wedding videography production - want expert opinions to provide an independant view I recently got married and i'm very unhappy with the finally product by the videography firm who basically feel the case is closed.

I am looking to take these to court but want some additional videography experts that can provide a 'second view' that is independant and free of prejudice.

I am based in England, UK - can someone recognise some offical professional videography guilds or societies that can assist with this?

I essentially want them to view the video (from a professional aspect) and give me a detailed description of problems/defects with both post & pre video production. The video's in total are approx 90 minutes long, any advice on the matter would be appreciated.

I could add the video here but as it will likely go to court i'd want to have the video hosted privately (and not here for the whole world to see)

This is going to be a hard one. I am a wedding videographer myself and there isn't really a guild or similar (well there is kind of but there are no requirement to be joined to one in the UK).

Now this is the awkward bit. I am going to assume that you hired this company based on their previous work and that you were happy with how it was filmed, edited and sold to you via phone, email, website, in person, etc AND you have raised the issues with them and tried to get it resolved with them first.

Now assuming the above and the company has filmed your wedding and produced a product that meets the spec provided in your contract with them, it might be hard to take them to court, if they have not produced to the spec described in any of the communications with you and or contract that might have some options within to raise a complaint.

What is actually the problem with the video, is it not like ones on their website or what has been described to you? would you be willing to upload it to the likes of Vimeo and make it a private video for someone to look at?

they would need to know exactly what you are not happy with and or where to look for issues.

Also you might find in the contract there is a statement advising that the creative control with editing is down to the company and not the client or something similar.

I hope some of that helps


Photoshop animation dropping frames at 12fps or as image sequence I have been kind of tearing my hair out trying to figure this out. I have a frame animation with 30 frames. I tried exporting it as a video set to 12fps. For some reason, what should be 2.5 seconds (30 frames at 12fps) is dropping down to 2 seconds on export. I thought it was some weird video codec glitch, but I discovered that the same thing happens when I export as an image sequence: Even though I have checked several times that "All Frames" was selected (other options are disabled anyway), I find only 24 pngs in my sequence where there should be 30.

Any help with this? It's a frame-by-frame rotoscoped animation so switching from frame animation to a timeline animation doesn't quite work. I know I can export frames manually by saving each frame one at a time, but it would be lovely to not have to do that (or to find a script that can do this for me to save time). The goal is to import the sequence to After Effects for additional animation/compositing.

I'll gladly share screenshots later tonight when I'm at my animation computer again.

Don't do the frame rate change in Photoshop.  Do it later on in AE.  Export all 30 frames from Photoshop, then import them into AE.  Make a new comp in AE, setting the new frame rate as 12fps in the comp settings.

Right click on your image sequence and choose "interpret footage as 12fps".


Merging sequences and files from one project into another in Adobe Premiere Pro I have a project that I am working on which required a number of sequences creating in a short time frame. A colleague assisted and I would like to merge his files into the project I am currently working within. The aim is to have well ordered final project with all assets in one place.
There are a number of offline links when I bring the camera footage across from his project. The original file paths are pointing to his local machine.
In Adobe Indesign, there is a feature called "relink to folder" which is very useful to link up multiple missing image links that have been moved to a different location. Is there an equivalent feature in Adobe Premiere Pro? At the time of writing, it appears I need to relink one at a time and I was hoping for a more efficient way to do this. Any suggestions would be good.

If you are using project , it is because all projects are built on a different system
With its features, the operating system is embedded. Therefore, while running the project on your operating system, you may encounter messages such as the image below, and you must act on the option that you see in the image.

By clicking this button you can search for your missing files, you can even create a file with missing names and paste it in the project
Also, if you need a sequence, enter the items of one templates in another premiere pro templates First you have to run the main project, then import the project from the file menu to get a message like the one below.

I hope I was able to help
Ask if you have any questions
Good luck


YouTube message suggesting wrong compression settings (Wondershare Filmora) I was wondering if anyone can help me? Whenever I uploaded a video to Youtube. I always get this message…(videos would upload faster if you have the right settings for your video). I think I doing the right rendering settings for my video in Wondershare Filmora.

Here are my render settings:

Encoder: Mpeg4 or H264(HD Optimized)

Resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels

Frame Rate: 29.97

Bit Rate: 8000 or 10000 (My video bit rate usually says 32189)

Audio Bit Rate: 128kbps

Channel: 2 Stereo

Audio sample rate: 48khz

One of my videos information:

MP4

Resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels

Frame Rate: 29

Bit Rate: 32189

Channels: 2 Stereo

Audio Bit Rate: 134kbps

Audio sample rate: 48khz

What that message likely indicates is that the MP4 produced by Filmora does not have its MOOV box at the beginning of the file. The MOOV box has metadata about the audio and video streams contained in the MP4.

Why this matters is that Youtube speeds up processing by breaking the uploaded video into segments, processing those segments in parallel, and then joining the processed parts into a whole video again. If the MOOV box is at the front of the file, Youtube is able to start creating the segments and dispatch them for encoding as the file is being uploaded. If the MOOV box is at the end of the file, it has to wait for the whole file to be uploaded before it can start processing.

A cursory search did not reveal how to get Filmora to place the MOOV at the beginning of the MP4.


What tools can I use for animating maps? I know this is not the optimal type of question. Sorry for that. However I think it can be answered by listing some alternatives.

So I want to make videos about travel and I am looking for a tool for making animated maps.

I use Magix Video Pro X8 for editing my videos. It has a "travel animation feature" included, however I think it is too cumbersome to use, some of the features seem to be no longer working and it does not allow me to do more fancy animations (like just showing the shape of a country and the main cities)

I also tried to use QGIS with OSM data, but again it seems that there has to be an easier way.

I found the geolayers plugin for Adobe After Effects, but it is just too expensive for video editing being just my hobby. Also After Effects is only distibuted as a monthly subscription which I don't like because I only do video editing once a month.

I think the following videos show approximately what I want to achieve, especially the third one:

What tools could I use to achieve similar results?
(I am using windows)

I have recently started using Google Earth Pro for Windows (free app).
It has the ability to export a recording, using the "Movie Maker" tool (under the tools menu). This will record your actions.
Strangely it cut off "Google Earth at the bottom right ("Google Ea"), I wasn't sure if this would cause them to complain about attribution.

I tried Google Earth with the Screen Recorder in PowerDirector, this works well and I am not limited by Google's speeds. (And the attribution was not clipped).

I find I fight with small things and can't quite get things just the way I want. However, it is free, and it does work.


How to move a layer using a slider control? I'm trying to create a mogrt file that has the option of moving a layer using a control (instead of just moving it on the timeline).

Is there a way to create a slider control for example that allows to adjust some kind of "offset"?

Yes, in short. But you will need to learn Expression Controls.

Search YouTube for "Expression Control Slider After Effects"

There are a lot of good tutorials which will walk you through the process.


Chroma Key video software for command line Do you know about any video processing software that can do chroma key of two video files, but run from command line as well?

I have two static video files (let's say MP4, same length) - one with green bg and another to be used as background video. I need to do chroma key effect. And it doesn't have to be perfect.

Two video files -> [software] -> one output video. Just so.

While not a direct solution, AVISynth supports creating a mask from a Chroma key using ColorKeyMask.  You can then use that mask to blend the two layers together by using Mask on the top layer and then Layering them together.

You could then just feed files in to the script and use FFMPEG or something similar to write out the frame stream from AVISynth.

Note that you will still need to adjust the color of the background and the tolerance if they lighting isn't really consistent between shots of the green background though.


How to zoom .psd with vector graphics in AE without losing quality? I'm in the process of making a little animated film, and since I don't really know how to use Illustrator, I did all my graphics in Photoshop, and now I'd like to import those into After Effects to animate everything.

I have a few .psd files which I prepared, and they all consist of vector layers. All those layers were created with the pen tool, and other similar tools, and I did not rasterize them, so they are still fully editable within Photoshop. However, when I import my .psd into AE and try to scale one of the images above 100%, it becomes pixelated and blurry. I assumed that AE would properly handle vector graphics in a .psd file, but I was wrong. I did try enabling the "continuously rasterize" option for my layers (as suggested by other sources where the same question was asked), but it didn't do anything. Also, this happens regardless of what option I choose when importing the .psd file (whether to merge the layers or not).

I guess I could just export the .psd in a much higher resolution in order to be able to zoom into it in AE, but that seems like a waste of resources, plus the render times and just performance in general would be horrible, I imagine. I would have to export my images in like 8k, or something like that, since I want to zoom in pretty far. I don't have a really powerful computer anyway, so that would be just plain suicide.

Is there a way to make AE properly re-render vector graphics in an imported .psd file at any scale?

Using Photoshop to create vector graphics is a bad idea, as it is just not built for that. Even if you don't use the more sophisticated features of Illustrator, the basic tools such as the pen work somewhat similar to the vector tools in Photoshop. So next time you want to create vector graphics, just work with Illustrator from the start.

For your existing vector graphics, as long as they are truly vector-based in the .psd-files, there should be several ways to export them to a vector format or copy them over to Illustrator (this doesn't directly answer your question, but it's a better approach than trying to make the .psd files work with vector graphics within After Effects anyway). Here are two options for you to try:

Export as svg [requires Photoshop CC]. In Photoshop, use File → Export → Export as.... Select SVG from the dropdown menu. SVG is an XML-based vector format. You should be able to import those into After Effects directly. Or you can open the exported SVG file in Illustrator and export it to another format.
Open your .psd file in Illustrator. Chose 'convert layers to objects' in the Photoshop import options. As long as your .psd contains only vector objects, this will work as intented. Once you have imported your vector graphic to Illustrator, save it as an .ai file. You should be able to import that into After Effects to work as intended. If that doesn't work for some reason, try saving it as an .eps file instead (File → Save a copy... → Select Illustrator EPS from the dropdown menu in the file saving options).


Does RCA or "interface connector" (VGA?) offer better video quality? I'm trying to archive a laser disc as a digital file. My laser disc player (a Pioneer) has 2 video output options: RCA and a 15-pin port labelled "interface connector". The 15 pins are arranged in 2 rows. After researching video connectors, I think the 15-pin port is VGA. What would be the higher resolution output for creating a digital recording?

The 'interface connector' is (almost certainly) a serial control port, not a video output. LVD stored composite analog video, so there are no chroma or difference signals available to assist in digitizing the video.


Suggestion to record video from TV I don't know much about video recording.

I want to record some programs from home TV that receives signal from the normal coaxial cable.

I'm seen some VCR/DVD Recorders that record digital and air TV, I think they use HDMI port.

I've seen on internet USB TV Tuners that can be connected to laptop in USB port and in the other side connect the coaxial cable input, so I understand the TV signal would be shown in laptop display and I think some software should be use to say "Record" within laptop but I don't know.

May you suggest me a good options to do what I want please? less expensive the better.

Thanks in advance

Personally I use Pinnacle Studio to record the TV shows. I have used it to record over a 100 hours of TV footage till now and I'm pretty happy with it.

What You Need

TV Tuner
Software to record.

For the card you can buy Pinnacle TV Tuner (~ $70), but any compatible card will do. Many good cards are available for a lower price. Just make sure it has a coaxial cable input.

Pinnacle Studio comes along with the card if you buy that. This software can be used to record/edit videos. Recording is straightforward. You can select the encoding format, resolution, quality and begin recording. You can also schedule TV recordings to record when you are not at home.

But once you have the driver for card, the rest is easy. You can use any software to record the feed (including VLC player).

The only thing to keep in mind is storage. More often than not, live recording won't have the best encoding used, so it will take up a lot of space. To take care of storage problems I record in HD only if really necessary. Otherwise I would need additional tools to re-encode in high compression formats (like h264 or h265). Use ffmpeg or Handbrake for that.

Good luck!


ffmpeg prores alpha channel not present when colormatrix and colorspace operations are performed So I've figured out how to convert images to prores with no colorspace shifts using either:

-vf colormatrix=bt601:bt709 filter for 8bit material

and

-vf colorspace=all=bt709:range=pc:format=yuv444p10:iall='bt601-6-625':irange=pc filter for 8bit or 10bit material.

However, whenever I use colormatrix or colorspace filters the output file contains no alpha channel.  As soon as I remove these filters the alpha channel is present but now I've got a color shift.

#this generates no alpha
ffmpeg -f image2 -r 24.0 -i tif_w_alpha.%3d.tif -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 5 -pix_fmt yuva444p10le -vf colorspace=all=bt709:range=pc:format=yuv444p10:iall='bt601-6-625':irange=pc -alpha_bits 16 this_has_no_alpha_channel.mov

#this has alpha but also a color shift
ffmpeg -f image2 -r 24.0 -i tif_w_alpha.%3d.tif -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 5 -pix_fmt yuva444p10le -alpha_bits 16 this_has_alpha.mov

This behavior is the same in both -profile:v 4 and 5 which are the only 2 that support alpha.  How can I get the color filter to work without losing the alpha channel?

The colorspace and colormatrix filters don't handle alpha pixel formats, so those get stripped off. The workaround is to extract the alpha and then reattach it.

ffmpeg -f image2 -framerate 24.0 -i tif_w_alpha.%3d.tif -filter_complex "[0]colorspace=all=bt709:range=pc:format=yuv444p10:iall='bt601-6-625':irange=pc[main];[0]alphaextract,format=gray10le[alpha];[main][alpha]alphamerge" -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 5 -pix_fmt yuva444p10le -alpha_bits 16 this_has_no_alpha_channel.mov

BTW, The Quicktime specification doesn't accommodate output range pc. Consumers should expect to treat range as always tv. If your software allows to override that, nice, but other software may not.


How to include guitar tabs from guitar pro in video? Guitar Pro is a software that is used to write and play back guitar tabs (or any music notation for that matter). Similiar to the video below, I want to overlay the tabs played in guitar pro to a video. How would I do this?

Example on YouTube:

Playback in guitar pro

The Guitar Pro website doesn't list video as one of the output formats available within the software.  So, you'll need to use screen capture software to record the animated tabs, then composite this over your instrument footage.

Alternatively, you could use hardware video mixing devices to combine the video feed of the tab playback with a live camera feed of the guitarist.  This is how many video game streamers composite video feeds with their live gameplay.  Blackmagic design makes an entry level device suitable for this purpose called the ATEM mini.  AJA is another company with similar devices.

Neither of these methods will allow you to alter the format of the output from the guitar tab software; what you see is what you get.  For example, if Guitar Pro 7 doesn't have a continuously-scrolling lower third output format (Like the one in the Cerberus video), you'd need to manually re-create the lower-third tab notation, and then composite it with your guitarist footage.  You can get as fancy as you want with this method, using motion graphics techniques and software such as After Effects, Fusion, or Motion (to name a few), but you could also keep it pretty simple; It's pretty straightforward to animate an image moving left to right in any NLE.  You could use photo editing software like photoshop to convert one of the printable export formats of GP7 into a long, horizontal image, overlay the graphic on your footage, and animate it by setting a position keyframe at the beginning of your video, and one at the end (use linear temporal interpolation for steady movement).


DaVinci Resolve 12.5.5 - Deselect Power Window When you're in the Color tab and have an active Power Window selected in the Viewer, is there a keyboard shortcut to toggle it on/off to see the unencumbered view of your clip?

"Deselect All" doesn't seem to deselect all.

You can use the key combination: Shift + `  (Shift and Backtick) to toggle the Power Window overlay on the [Color] page.

This also works for viewer overlays on the [Edit] page in Resolve 16.


Do Film Makers Want 4k? I am looking at upgrading our camera equipment and am trying to work out, to 4k or to not 4k?

We need a relatively compact camera in size and weight for our productions specifically.

For generic video productions companies, do they want 4k?

Is 4k valuable at 8 bit, 24fps, or do they really want 60fps?

Would they prefer us shooting high quality HD (1080p) footage upto 60fps (i.e. 12 bit, 13 stops, raw)?

We are having real trouble making a choice, as picking lower end 4k seems to have some big caveats. So is it worth it?

We have had some tell us, 'YES GO 4K!' And others, 'don't bother'.

Any tips would be much appreciated, thanks.

In my opinion, the market for 4k delivery is still very small, but that doesn't mean its useless.

Shooting at a higher resolution than the delivery resolution allows you to recompose shots without any quality loss. If you shoot a talking head in 4k but deliver in 720p, you can get a wide, medium, and closeup from the same shot.

In my experience clients nearly always want video delivered in 24/25/30fps. Higher frame rates should only be used to achieve slow mo. That being said, everyone loves slow-mo, so the ability to be able to shoot at 60fps or higher is valuable.


Playing back a video file with an optional time sequence I have a video file and I want to play it to some people in a public place. Actually, some parts of the video are not suitable for the public display. As you might guess, it is not respectful to skip this parts manually in front of them and I want to play the video automatically, i.e., without any manual skipping (actually when I use my mouse or keyboard to skip it, I don’t know exactly to what frame should I click and that stresses me out).  I have neither enough time nor special knowledge how to cut the pieces and re-render it. I’m using K-Lite to play my videos files for some reasons such as loading subtitles. A friend of mine said that I can make a text file with the jump sequences included but I don’t know how to do it (and he is not sure either!). My jump sequences are like this:

00:00:00 – 00:07:03 -- jump – 00:07:54 -- 00:26:22 – jump – 00:28:12 -- so on

Other techniques are also appreciated (without cutting and re-rendering the video file).

Cutting a video doesn't require more knowledge than what you are trying to do here. I'd even say it requires less knowledge.
Consider the free video editing tool Lightworks and this short video tutorial on how to cut videos with it:


Video Editor with custom effect masking and shape/drawing overlays I've spent a very long time on this and have been unimpressed with 90% of the main stream video editors, so I'd really appreciate some expert advice on this.

I'm looking for a video editor (hopefully within the 100-150 range if possible) that has the following options:

"Effects Masking" - ability to draw custom masks for blurring small segments of text on screen captures. A lot of the editors I see allow you to import a png file for this, but I really would rather have this in the editor, as I have a lot of footage and making a new png for every time the text changes would take forever.
Customizable basic shapes/drawing tools for overlays - NOT cheesy animated overlays; I want to be able to highlight areas of the screen by being able to draw boxes or circles around them.

These seem like basic requirements, but I've had a really hard time with this, so I would REALLY appreciate your help!

That isn't really rotoscoping, just mask drawing.  Rotoscoping is more on a frame by frame basis generally.  Either way, After Effects will do what you are looking for very easily, but is not in your price range (not even nearly).  Largely, you get what you pay for though and I'm not sure that there are a whole lot of cheaper options that allow you to draw your masks in the editor.


Mi Sphere 360, where is stored the gyro data? I bought a Xiaomi Mijia MI SPHERE 360 Camera, it has an embedded gyroscope. The iOS app allows exporting stabilized movies combining the video and gyro data.

The camera records .mp4 files of the following format: ISO Media, MPEG v4 system, 3GPP JVT AVC [ISO 14496-12:2005]

I would like to retrieve the gyro information of my movie along the movie. I can imagine there is exif like metadata for each frame where the camera would store specific information but I have not found any way yet to put the hand on it.

How could I retrieve the metadata per frame containing this information?

[Edit]
Here is a github project containing 2 short (10sec) clips I made. I recorded in the dark. One is steady (camera laid on the ground) the second one shaking. Both have a useless? audio track.

The data are stored within the file disregarding of the .mp4 file standard.

the chunk containing those per frame data starts with: #¿Ttlyd or 23C05474 6C7964in hex

Each frame has 36 bytes of data, those seem to be 9 floats of normalized (from -1 to 1) numbers

Those numbers seem to be a 3x3 matrix representing the current coordinate system for this frame.


Canon xf105 blending frames at 24p? I just finished shooting some film on a Canon xf105 in 1080p24 on the 50mb/s setting with a shutter of 48. Every few frames it seems to be doubling the image, reminds me of deinterlaced blended frame. What is happening? I have twiked the fps playback in premiere thinking it is trying to convert up to a higher frame rate, but everything is 23.976 fps and it still does it. Could this be an effect of the rolling shutter on the camera? or maybe the camera does not capture true 24p and it is interpolating frames for some reason?

The XF-105 will acquire native 24p video, that is 23.97 fps.
3:2 pulldown is only added to the Composite/YUV and SD/HD-SDI signal interfaces during 24p, and 2:2 pulldown during 30p.

Can you upload the video seq somewhere, and I'll have a look at it for you.


Techniques and technologies for synchronizing multiple audio and video streams I'm hoping to produce an amateur movie.

I may be renting some equipment: (professional camera, microphone and digital recorder) but I hope to primarily use my own equipment: camera phones, professional microphones, analogue audio mixer, audio digitizer and a laptop. I hope to produce the video on an open-source video editor (Linux or Windows).

In case it needs to be said, I'm on a near-zero budget! The biggest concern I have is how I will synchronize a phone camera with an external microphone fed into the laptop.

Are there any techniques to help with this? I had a go before and it's surprisingly hard getting the audio perfectly sync'd with the video. Are there any tricks?

Also, what industry-standard technologies are used for synchronizing professional microphone setups with video, and between multiple cameras? I assume there are at least a couple of old analogue and newer modern digital methods?

Thanks!

Edit: I looked at this link but it didn't go into detail or explain different options.

The professional way
Professionally done, all cameras and audio recorders will have a running (SMPTE) time code, which can be configured in 'free run' mode - meaning the time counter runs regardless whether we record or not (ie, STOP mode).
At the beginning of the shooting day, all recordists (cameras, audio) will sync their clocks. This is done either to SMPTE 01:00:00:00, or to the time of the day.
Then all video clips and audio files (broadcast wave files - BWF, which is just a WAV file with time code imprinted) will be 'timestamped' - the time at which the clip was recorded is part of the file header.
In addition, these recorders allow you to choose the folder and file prefix of the recorded clips. A simple case is when all crew (camera and audio) set this prefix based on the shooting day ('Day01' for example).
Then when the audio and video clips are imported to the video editing software, there's alway an option to 'spot' the clips to their original time code. This way, the alignment of video and audio happens nearly automatically.
The non-professional way
Before the days of digital equipment, the syncing between pictures to audio was done manually with the help of a clapper (clapperboard):

Upon the director's instruction 'Cameras', both the camera men and audio recordists will aim at the clapper; then the clapper is clapped.
Later on, each clip is brought consecutively into the timeline (clips are numbered - there's a way to know which came before the other). The sync is done manually, by finding the video frame at which the clapper jaws were hitting each other; on the waveform display, you can see a transient from the sound the clapper makes. So it's all about moving the audio transient to the clapping frame.
For your purpose - you can just clap your hand in front of the camera (although visual and auditory labelling can be of great aid later on, but this too can be improvised).
Note that in the professional industry, this practice takes place until today, even if all equipment can stamp timecode.


FFmpeg convert to HD video format that Adobe Premiere Pro will not crash on? My problem is somewhat similar to others asked on the site in recent years, but none of those solutions were quite right for my problem:

I have a series of frames from a video recorded at roughly 30 fps. I need to convert it (using FFmpeg or otherwise [if applicable]) to a video format that Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 won't crash on. I have tried FFmpeg (and its codecs: h264 and libx264) but both times it has crashed (with no error message that I can see).

For your information, it currently does not have an audio channel, but I can get that if it is needed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Here is the general form of the cmd I am using:

ffmpeg -i input_%05d.tga -framerate 30 -codec:v h264  -b:v 4M -b:a 3M output.mp4

Proxies

Consider using proxies: especially if this is 4k or bigger. A proxy is a lower res stand-in for editing. Upon export the original, bigger, higher quality originals will be used to create the output. See Adobe Premiere Pro User Guide: Proxy Workflow for more info.

You can have Premiere create the proxies, or create them with ffmpeg and have Premiere use those as the proxies.

Lossless

If you don't want or need a proxy another option is to use an editor friendly, lossless intermediate file using a format such as Ut Video. This will avoid the unnecessary generation loss of using lossy H.264–although to be fair when given enough bits you may not notice a difference or care.

One downside is file size, but if it is going to be temporary it may be a moot point.

Premiere can both decode and encode Ut Video after you install it (you may have to restart Premiere).

Example command:

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i input_%05d.tga -c:v utvideo output.avi


Camcorder vs. GoPro mounted on bike I am using a GoPro mounted to a bike to capture crews rowing in a boat next to a (gravel) bike path. I am mostly happy with what the GoPro offers except that I need a less wide-angled view. For better quality and having access to zoom lenses, I am considering using a camcorder instead. However, I am worried that mechanical vibrations are going to break the camcorder which I would expect containing moving parts whereas a GoPro has none. Any recommendations from people taking videos by mounting them to vehicles (rather than holding them)?

Example: https://vimeo.com/338228818

The primal problem will be the stabilization. GoPro's Cameras offer a decent image-stabilization and are wide-angled. This allows shakes and bumps to have less of an impact. If you now go for a camcorder with, say, a lens of 50mm, you will experience an extreme increase in shakiness.

In other words: When you worry about your camera to break due to shakes and bumps, the footage will most likely not be great.

There are some options you have, which one to choose is on you.

First, you could try to buy a GoPro that can record in 4k (maybe you already own one). That way, you can hit two birds with one stone. On the one hand side, you will be able to zoom in digitally in post without losing any image quality, assuming you want to render in full HD (1920x1080). This fixes the issue of the wide-angle lens. On the other hand side, there will be plenty of material around the visible area, so a warp-stabilizer in After-Effects should easily help stabilize the footage, giving you a much more smooth result than opting to put a camcorder on your bike.

The other options would be to use a camcorder indeed, or even a tv-production or cinema-camera if you like, but staying off that bike. Either, you can rent or buy a Steady-Cam or Gimble (the ones from Ronin are very good) and run along. The Gimble or Steady-Cam will stabilize your Camera and will give you probably the best results (assuming you know how to properly use a Gimble / Steady-Cam).
This is also the priciest option though, I fear.

The other is to use the camcorder or higher-tier camera again, but stay still entirely. You can try to find a Spot on the path where the water flows around you a small bit, like in any curve of the river. Position yourself on the extended piece of land and just pan with the Subject, instead of moving at all. This would be the easiest and probably cheapest option, though it only really works well for short, preferably fast pace sequences, so you don't catch that the camera is stationary. Many people use this method to capture people running in forests: The actors simply run in a circle around the camera and the operator pans with them, which results in footage looking like they follow the subject horizontally.

I hope my answer was helpful, good luck with your project!


Different luminosity between preview and render on Sony Vegas 13 I currently have a problem with a video I'm editing, when I render it with Sony Vegas 13 (with the Sony AVC/MVC 1080p-30fps "Internet" preset), the resulting video is much darker than the preview (on the same screen), whatever player I use (VLC, Youtube, Windows Media Player).

This is really annoying because I now have to export small chunks of the video to check the resulting luminosity without being able to preview it properly.

I already did dozens of video with the exact same process (same camera, same lighting setup...), except I was using version 12, and I currently can't try to revert back to previous version.

Any idea of what's happening ?
Any suggestion of what I can do to have a preview that matches the rendered video ?

Some context :
The video is a man wearing black standing in front of a green screen. The green screen is keyed to a complete black screen.
In order to be able to see the man's body, I adjust the luminosity and contrast so that the clothes are slightly brighter than the background.
After rendering, everything is darker so the clothes are of the same color as the background and you just see a face with hands floating...

UPDATE
User altarvic suggested that I check the histograms of both videos and to do that I imported back the rendered video in Vegas. And there, the luminosity is correct in preview (the image is exactly what the preview displayed).
So it seems that the luminosity is wrong on players (at least the ones I tried), but not in Vegas.
Could it be a codec issue ? (Vegas using it's own, player using the machine's).
Or the Vegas preview is not displaying properly the video (I checked I have no output effects applied).

I believe I have a solution. Render the video, put it into Vegas again and apply "Sony Levels" with "Computer RGB to Studio RGB". Worked for me.


Adobe Encore/Premier quick and dirty/shortcut to make DVD Isn't there a quick way to create a DVD movie with menus and everything in Adobe Encore or Premier? I mean like for instance the old iDVD on Macs where you could choose a preexisting theme and iDVD would do the rest for you (once you've chosen the chapters etc).

Starting with Adobe CC, Adobe removed a program from their Premiere suite called Encore. Encore had all the same benefits of Dynamic Link - you didn't need to render your project, just add your project file, and boom - transcoded to DVD in one step, without an intermediate.

Now, for CC users, you still have a licence for CS6, and can downloaded Encore still, through the Creative Cloud launcher.

What you do have to do, is first make an intermediate render. You've got two basic choices:

Render a Master copy, full res, full quality, with no or very little compression (ProRes, DNxHD etc.)
Render a DVD-ready MPEG2, that will not need transcoding in Encore. There are presets for this in Media Encoder.

Adobe has the information you'll need to download Encore in their Help Documentation. Summarised, you install Premiere CS6, which also installs Encore CS6. Then, uninstalling only Premiere will leave you with Encore CS6, as well as all your regular Adobe CC apps.


Red bars, yellowing, and pixelated output from Premiere I'm having trouble exporting from Premiere (OS X 10.11, Premiere Pro CC 2015.0.2). While the preview plays flawlessly, when I export I get odd red bars, yellowing, and pixelation in some (or all) of the still images. I've attempted many different settings in the output, and while there is some variation on the severity and frequency of the distortion, it is always present.

Here is a sample of the issue.

Any suggestions?

This is extremely well documented in the Adobe Premiere forum.  Premiere Pro is not fully compatible with El Capitan (10.11).  The work-around is to disable the GPU by selecting "Mercury Software Render", which will remind you why so many people hated doing digital video before GPU cards existed.

The situation is a mess.  Adobe has apologized, is working on a fix, and has no idea when Premiere Pro, or an update to 10.11, or both, will result in a working system.

The other work-around is to back-out 10.11 and downgrade to Yosemite.


Add transparent background to ffmpeg with text over it How to correctly add expression to transparent background like on this question ffmpeg drawtext filter - create transparent background with text
for my case (where there are 3 lines in bottom right corner):

ffmpeg -i videoin.mp4 -vf "[in]drawtext=enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)':fontsize=50:fontcolor=White:fontfile='ariblk.ttf':text='textline1':x=min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-2.5)))*(tw+10)-tw\,10):y=h-th-130, drawtext=enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)':fontsize=50:fontcolor=White:fontfile='ariblk.ttf':text='textline2':x=min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-2.5)))*(tw+10)-tw\,10):y=h-th-75, drawtext=enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)':fontsize=50:fontcolor=White:fontfile='ariblk.ttf':text='textline3':x=min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-2.5)))*(tw+10)-tw\,10):y=h-th-20[out]" -codec:a copy videoout.mp4

Use the box options i.e.

drawtext=enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)':fontsize=50:fontcolor=White:fontfile='ariblk.ttf':text='textline1':x=min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-2.5)))*(tw+10)-tw\,10):y=h-th-130:box=1:boxborderw=12:boxcolor=black@0.45

This adds a box with padding of 12 pixels around the text boundary, and the color is black with 45% opacity.

Using drawbox (add it before the drawtexts)

drawbox=y=ih-140:h=110:c=black@0.45:t=max:enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)'

Here's the entire vf expression:

-vf "drawbox=y=ih-140:h=110:c=black@0.45:t=max:enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)',drawtext=enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)':fontsize=50:fontcolor=White:fontfile='ariblk.ttf':text='textline1':x=min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-2.5)))*(tw+10)-tw\,10):y=h-th-130, drawtext=enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)':fontsize=50:fontcolor=White:fontfile='ariblk.ttf':text='textline2':x=min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-2.5)))*(tw+10)-tw\,10):y=h-th-75, drawtext=enable='between(t,2.5,6.5)':fontsize=50:fontcolor=White:fontfile='ariblk.ttf':text='textline3':x=min(4*(tw\+10)-(abs(4-2*(t-2.5)))*(tw+10)-tw\,10):y=h-th-20" -codec:a copy videoout.mp4


Apply effects to multiple video channels in Sony Vegas Is there a way to apply the same effects across multiple video tracks?

Say, you have a video that has indoor and outdoor scenes, and also some other tracks. And you notice that indoor parts require brightness/saturation adjustment.

You cut your video into a sequence of scenes (Video Events), and you find it boring to apply FX to all/several indoor events, especially if they are cut into many places across your video.

I use a pretty simple technique to automate it.

Make sure all Video Events that need to have an FX stay on a separate Video Track, so that the track contains only events that do need the FX. Call it, say, "Indoor with brightness".
Let's complicate things and assume you also need some scenes to be pixelated. Place them into yet another track, call it "Indoor with brightness and pixelate". Apply Pixelate FX to this track.
Make a new Video Track, and call it, say, "Brightness FX Master"
Make both "Indoor with brightness" and "Indoor with brightness and pixelate" tracks to be children of "Brightness FX Master" track
Apply the Brightness FX to "Brightness FX Master" track

Pros: You set all FX only once. Modify it freely and you don't need to re-apply it.

Cons: Usually, you will have to cut through the tracks carefully because it's impossible to add a non-FX track in between two child tracks. Also, managing cross-track crossfades is often a difficult to accomplish.

Also, You can't partially apply an FX this way, e.g., Brightness +10 is always Brightness +10, there's no way to set its opacity=50% (effectively to Brightness +5). In this case, use Animate feature to dynamically change parameters of applied FX ("Brightness Amount", in this case).


Best way to set up my AE project? In a nutshell, I just got a new job where I have to create at least 30 MP4 files a day cutting different parts of music videos (even from the same one).
They will provide me the videos to download and I have to make different MP4s in After Effects not longer than 8 secs.

I was thinking of doing it this way:
Project in AE (10 sec composition) with 3 project folder

Footage: full-length videos
Cut Footage: cut videos pre-composed

Here is a problem: cutting in AE is so annoying and (because the main comp is 10 seconds) I have to extend the new composition from 10 sec to the length of the video, find the relevant part, put two markers and reduce again the composition within the markers. Finally, I have to move the pre-comp in the main composition where I can start with the effects and stuff. I do all of this because I want more control of the layers, for this reason I prefer to keep a fixed length layer rather than a reduced layer, like in the screen below:

Render: the folder where I put the pre-comps formed by cut footage pre-comp + effects

What is the better way of making a rendering queue in AE?

So the worst part is cutting, but what about the size of the project? I mean, should I create an After Effects Project every day that includes 30 MP4 files with of course all of the effects, layers, videos, etc. or is it going to be to excessive? Do I have other options?

I found a solution about cutting. I can upload the video on Premiere Pro, cut and select "Replace With After Effects Composition" and that's it, that feature is amazing for this type of work! Thank you all by the way!


How does YouTube encode my uploads and what codec should I use to upload? Related to What codecs/formats are appropriate for full motion video recording for youtube? I'm wondering exactly how I can expect Youtube to handle my videos. I know they have a rather zealous processing set up that generates multiple copies of my upload at different resolutions; 1080p, 720p and 480p and apparently a mobile one, at the very least.

What codec(s) do they use? As a producer I have an option to download the file as an MP4; however I note a third party downloader (which is extremely shady and crappy) brings the files down as FLV. I'm basically wondering if my codec is going to be preserved or overwritten with H.264 or whatever they use. Considering their amazing compatibility across devices I assume they either use a very common standard or multiple codecs for each video.

So what codec can I expect my videos to be output in, and if it depends, what does it depend on? Should I adjust my own encoding to "play nice" with Youtube's codec, or does it matter, quality-wise? I know I can throw pretty much anything on Youtube and it will take it, so I'm mostly concerned with video quality.

Some general info about the formats used:
YouTube uses 4 container formats and 4 different codecs. It depends on the popularity of the video what codecs are used for your video (see below why). Generally, every of your uploaded videos will be encoded in h.264 and will be muxed into an .flv and .mp4 container. That's the standard and this will happen for every video. Though .flv will only be used for resolutions below 720p. Meaning only 360p and 480p will exist in an .flv container. Though every video below 720p will also have a mp4 version available. For 240p YouTube is also using 3gp which is a rather old codec (based on MPEG-4 Part 2 (not to be confused with MPEG4 Part 10 aka h.264) meant for mobile devices (long before the smartphone era), it comes in the container .3gpp.
The other codec used is VP8 which is coming in the WebM container format. WebM is a format developed by Google and was meant as a standard video codec for HTML5, support for it is by now pretty good in most modern browsers.
WebM was introduced with the HTML5 version of YouTube. YouTube only encodes some videos in WebM after they got uploaded and mostly only popular videos (going by the videos I saw encoded in WebM) so it's not certain your video will be present in WebM. Though this is changing with WebM gaining some more support.
YouTube also supports VP8/VP9 in the WebM container. This is supported by all major browsers for several years now. With WebM, they also introduced support for the Opus audio codec (besides AAC which is used in all other containers).
In regard of your linked question (maybe they should be merged?)
What codec/container should you use for uploading?
That depends, if you are limited/concerned by your upload speed then use h.264 Level 3.1/4.1 with Main Profile for SD or High Profile for HD. YouTube will accept this just fine and it will look nice after it got encoded by the YouTube servers. I would usually recommend a bitrate of ~4-5 Mbit/s for 720p material and ~8-9 Mbit/s for 1080p. For 4k go for ~15-25Mbit/s or more depending on the complexity of the footage. "Cartoon" content with few colours can usually have a much lower bitrate in general.
This is usually a good balance between size and quality. If you want better quality go with a higher bitrate, and if you want a smaller video go with a lower bitrate.
But be aware that YouTube will ALWAYS encode your video once it's uploaded, doesn't matter what codec and settings you use. So if you want the theoretically best quality for your uploads, choose a lossless codec for uploading or at least visually lossless.
See YouTube as the final output into a delivery/consumer format and the upload to YouTube is the last step in production and during production you want to stay lossless.
But please note this is all just a theoretical thing, practically I'd say it really doesn't matter as we are talking about YouTube and not about TV broadcast or Cinema. In almost all cases a very high bitrate h264 encode (20-40mbit/s) will suffice even for high-end content.
But if you really want to do it the "perfect" way, use a production codec and not a consumer codec like h.264.
MJPEG would be a good codec for that, YouTube definitely supports that in an .avi or .mov container. MJPEG is a lossy codec but the visual quality will be the same as the source (if you chose a high enough quality setting, this is practically JPEG as the video codec).
Going with a real lossless codec would be a waste of hard-drive space and bandwidth in my opinion.
But if you want to upload your video truly lossless and don't care about the upload time, I recommend using a standard QuickTime codec as they should be nearly all supported by YouTube (note that not all of them are lossless, h264 is also a standard QuickTime codec). Though YouTube doesn't state which QuickTime codecs are supported, unfortunately. Animation or JPEG2000 should work I guess. Both codecs can be 100% lossless depending on settings in case of JPEG2000.
When it comes to frame rates, if you can choose then use 25FPS or 30FPS  during recording/animating (by now YouTube also supports 50 and 60FPS+ video, so use that if your content benefits from a higher framerate), YouTube likes standard framerates like 25 or 30FPS the most (or again one of the higher FPS options) but if your footage comes already in another frame rate like 24FPS then stick with that and don't interpolate up or down. YouTube will handle the conversion for you and generally does that better then your average encoder. They have to deal with all kind of framerates every day and solved this (actually very complicated) issue really well.
Audio:
For the audio use PCM if you want to stay lossless with the audio as well but again this is really just a theoretical quality improvement. AAC will usually do the same job quality wise (subjective) and will be smaller. I recommend a bitrate of at 128-192kbps for AAC. The size impact is usually not as big as the video codec so you can also just go with 192kbps or higher if you feel your audio content is very sensitive. YouTube will convert audio to ~24kbps(Mobile aka 3gp) ~64kbps(240p), ~128kbps(360p/480p) and ~192kbps(720p+) using the AAC and Opus (WebM only) codec.


How to convert a 3D movie to 2D using ffmpeg I am looking for a way to convert a 3d movie to a 2d movie.

I found a reference on this forum.
http://www.ffmpeg-archive.org/How-to-re-encode-3d-video-to-2d-video-td4676271.html

While you might be able to achieve this by manually using ffmpeg's crop filter, the stereo3d filter is designed specifically for this purpose. You didn't specify the exact 3d format you have. There are several possibilities as documented at the the stereo3d link above. Assuming that input.mkv is the relatively common sbsl (side-by-side left eye on left),

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf stereo3d=sbsl:ml -metadata:s:v:0 stereo_mode="mono" output.mkv

will result in a 2d (left eye only) output.mkv. I believe the reason -metadata:s:v:0 stereo_mode="mono" is required to remove the stereo tag is because the metadata isn't piped through the filter system, and ffmpeg otherwise tries to duplicate the metadata of the original. If you don't do this, some players may think your 2d result is still 3d and do weird things.

If you find that the result has the wrong aspect ratio, you can experiment with using stereo3d=sbsl2:ml instead which treats the input as half width side-by-side. If all else fails, you can set the correct aspect with -aspect 16:9 (or whatever you know the correct aspect ratio to be).


Want to Start 2D 3D Animation Studio I am a newly retired person (40 years old). I always loved animation
and have some experience in 3D modelling (using 3Ds max).
Now after retirement I want to start my own freelance animated video
production business. However I have few questions

Question 1: Since I do not want to get a huge team should I stick with 3D
animation or switch to 2D. Is 2D managable for small team of two?

Question 2: Is it possible for 1 or 2 men team to develop 2D anmations
at their own since I do not want to start a large company just me and
may be one more person. I had plans to have a 3D animation company but
3D animation is a very long process and takes lot of time so I have
settled for 2D. Is making a 1 or 2 minute 2D aniamtion for a single person
/ month possible (please assume what ever you have to to answer this)

Question 3: My objecctive is making 500-1000$ / month since I have my pension
how long it will take me to reach this goal in freelance business if i
work full time.

I understand that all the above questions are very subjective
and need lot and lot of other information but please assume what all you
have to OR just give your own experience.
My style in 2D animation I assume will be cartoon / series creation
promotional vidoes.

It depends on the quality you want to achieve and where your skill set is.  The bigger difference between 2d and 3d animation isn't so much the time it consumes, but rather the skill set it requires.

The techniques for both are completely different (though there is a subset of 2d animation that is based on cell-shading or other specialized rendering of 3d models).  2D animation requires good vector and hand drawing skill with generally linear shading.  It can be either very fast for basic keyframe and bend work with simple vector geometries, or it can be a painstaking manual process involving rotoscoping changes for each individual frame of animation with elaborate hand drawn textures.

Similarly, 3d can be very quick and simple when making things that don't need to be photoreal.  Textures can be more easily applied and don't have to be perfect for all contexts, lighting is far simpler to get close, though perfecting it is still very hard.  If you are doing things like 3d logo work and basic business effects (such as intro videos and some work for commercials) then you don't really need to be doing hyper realistic photoreal work and 3d animation can be pretty quick.

On the other hand, photo-realistic 3d animation is extremely painstaking, requires massive amount of processing power and a dedicated staff of specialists to get everything tweaked just right.

So, either approach can be done at a professional level with only a couple of people working on it.  Both are within the realm of what is financially viable for an individual to invest in, though 3D animation is much more expensive initially unless you start with Blender, which is free.

You should decide on which you want to approach based on what best fits your interests.  Try some 2D animation with flash, try some rotoscoped, frame by frame animation with Photoshop, try some motion graphics with After Effects and try some 3d animation with Blender.  It might also be worth getting a trial copy of Maya, SoftImage or Cinema4D if you can as well and see how you like those higher end 3d graphics packages.

Choose whichever you enjoy the most and look for work that makes use of that type of animation.


Using ffmpeg to convert files to OVG (libtheora) on Windows 10 results in corrupted Video Files ffmpeg version 4.2.2 win64 static

I'm using this command in Windows 10 to convert a file from mp4 to ogv:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libtheora -q:v 10 -c:a libvorbis -q:a 10 output.ogv

The result is a jumbled mess of colors:

However, when executing the same command on Ubuntu(20.04 LTS) it works just fine.

The pic shown is a snapshot of the result played in VLC. When playing the same video in Windows' “Film & TV” application, it just skips the frames that have these artifacts (which is very often).

Any idea what could cause this Windows specific problem?

According to this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/ffmpeg/comments/fy2618/need_someone_to_test_libtheora_encoder_on_64bit/
The theora encoder is currently broken in the 64bits versions.
I tried this with the 32bits version and it now works as expected.

32bits builds can be found here: https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win32/static/

Greetings


DaVinci Resolve 15 view multiple tracks at once So I have been looking for an answer for long and have not found any. I want to view multiple video tracks separately. The idea is that I have video sources from multiple cameras, I want to sync them in the timeline, each one in separate track, but then I want to see them all at the same time for me to decide which clip from which camera I use in the final product. I would like to use it for 2 to 4 cameras.

Currently running Resolve 15 and I am aware of Resolve 16 having new "Cut" workspace but I have not tested it.

If you have any ideas how to do this in Resolve I would be very grateful. However, a working, easy to use, third party program would be also appreciated.

This is what the Multi-Cam feature is for. You can see this Tutorial: How to use Multicam in Resolve in it, you can preview all cameras at once. Keep in mind that this is quite perfomance intensif. Make sure to use Proxy to improve performance.


How do I scale an object in only one direction? I am animating a volume meter, and have done the "tricky bit" of getting the volume value.

Now I want to apply the volume value to a mask , so that as the music moves, the mask is exposed in time to the beat.

I have tried two ways, the first by scaling the mask. However, I can't get it to scale in one direction only (i.e. it scales around a center point.) Even if I move the pan anchor it still doesn't pin the base of the shape.

The other way I tried was using a linear wipe. However, this was no good either, as the whole wipe effect is completed at 38% (i.e. if I move the slider the object vanishes totally at 38%, not 100% as I would expect.)

Is there a better way to do this?

Seems simple, but has me stumped.

Set the Anchor Point to the bottom of the object by pressing y or clicking on
Disable proportional scaling
Optional you can add a slider control to to get a better control of direction scale values

The shape can also used as track matte, just set the layer below to Alpha.

Note: As alternative you could use a trim path on a shape layer as track matte, see this answer:

https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/49643/how-to-use-after-effects-trim-path-with-an-illustrator-path/49975#49975


Remove audio tracks from multiple MKV files I've got a multitude of MKV files each containing two audio tracks that correspond to two languages. In each of the files, the English language is the second track and it's the only track I need for these MKV files. So how do I easily discard the first audio track in each of the MKV files.

N.B. My primary OS is Windows but if there really is no easy way to have it done on Windows, I could be interested in a Linux answer too.

I don't know Windows, but I have just gone through this in Mac OS X (Linux Applicable).

mkvtoolnix is your friend here, and is available for Windows.

I used the GUI to check (a sample of) my files to make sure the audio tracks that I wanted to keep and delete were in the same order in the files. Then I manipulated the options in the GUI to match what I wanted.

Finally, I used the "copy to clipboard" button to copy the command line output to the clipboard and massaged it into a bash script to run on a directory of the files I wanted strip the audio from.

I know it's quick and dirty (and maybe not to your liking), but you can probably use it as a starting point to massage into what you really want to do.

#!/bin/bash

for file in *.mkv; do mkvmerge -o "$file-noeng.mkv"  --language "1:jpn" --track-name "1:AVC-HD" --default-track "1:yes" --forced-track "1:no" --display-dimensions "1:1920x1080" --language "3:jpn" --track-name "3:AAC" --default-track "3:no" --forced-track "3:no" --language "4:eng" --track-name "4:ASS" --default-track "4:no" --forced-track "4:no" -a "3" -d "1" -s "4" --attachments "1" -T "--no-global-tags" "$file" --track-order "0:1,0:3,0:4";

done


Handle 2 sources in a video file We recorded video from our last event with 2 sources (1 mic by speakers) and we now have to handle MXF files with 2 diferent sources.

I need to upload this video file on Youtube, it work but it only take the first audio source.

Any (Simple) way to merge this two audio sources ?

Regards,

First, get ffmpeg.

Generally, you want to give YouTube the highest quality you can because it will re-encode anything you give it, but the formats used in MXF can be mental for uploading. So re-encoding to modern formats for a more manageable upload often makes sense.

Example

ffmpeg -i input.mxf \
-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge" \
-ac 2 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a libvorbis output.mkv

What these options do

-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge[a]" – Take the two audio streams and combine them with amerge filter into one, multichannel stream.

The [0:a:1] refers to [input file index:stream specifier:stream index], so [0:a:1] is the second audio stream from the first input file (input.mxf).

-ac 2 – Downmix audio to stereo.
-c:v libx264 – Encode video to H.264. See more info and examples.

-crf 18 – libx264 option to make output roughly "visually lossless".

-c:a libvorbis – Encode audio to Vorbis.
output.mkv – Output to Matroska container format. It will not be playable in WMP or QuickTime, but who cares. YouTube will, and YouTube is all that matters in this case. VLC, mpv, or MPC-HC will be able to play it.

Keeping it as MXF

If you want MXF for whatever reason:

ffmpeg -i input.mxf \
-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge[a]" \
-map 0:v -map "[a]" -ac 2 -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16le output.mxf

The video will be stream copied (re-muxed). No re-encoding, so it will be fast and preserve quality.
MXF is picky, so the -map option is used to arrange the output streams in a MXF friendly order.


VHS and capture: what is the real aspect ratio? I have captured a vhs with this script under Linux
#!/bin/sh

videodevice="/dev/video0"
alsadevice="hw:2,0"

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl mute=0

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -i 1

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-standard=PAL

gst-launch-1.0 -q v4l2src device="$videodevice" do-timestamp=true norm="PAL" pixel-aspect-ratio=1 \
    ! video/x-raw,format=YUY2,framerate=25/1,width=720,height=576 \
    ! queue max-size-buffers=0 max-size-time=0 max-size-bytes=0 \
    ! mux. \
  alsasrc device="$alsadevice" do-timestamp=true \
    ! audio/x-raw,format=S16LE,rate=48000,channels=2 \
    ! queue \
  max-size-buffers=0 max-size-time=0 max-size-bytes=0 \
    ! mux. matroskamux name=mux \
    ! queue max-size-buffers=0 max-size-time=0 max-size-bytes=0 \
    ! filesink location=vhs.mkv

The final result is a raw avi, which I had to crop and resize to correct Aspect Ratio.
The mediainfo program said is 5:4
mediainfo vhs.mkv |grep -i aspect
Display aspect ratio                     : 5:4

But as I know the vhs is an old technology and in their times(70-80-90) the standard was 4:3
I ask this because to determine the AR I usually do this
a)make a screenshot with mplayer
b)open with gimp, select rectangle and I read the a/r (1.7777,1.6666,1.3333) in the bottom of program

the screenshot result different and return different a/r if I set with mplayer the a/r
mplayer -vf rectangle,screenshot -aspect 5:4 vhs.mkv
mplayer -vf rectangle,screenshot -aspect 4:3 vhs.mkv

In your opinion I have to use 4/3 or 5/4?

I have tested a 4:3 vhs, and using 5:4 a/r making screenshot report bad final a/r(1:22)
mplayer -aspect 5:4 -vf screenshot

using 4:3 a/r report in screenshot the correct ar(1:31:1)
mplayer -aspect 4:3 -vf screenshot

So I think the correct answer is 4:3.


mpeg-dash playback on ios I have created my dash videos with mp4box and ffmpeg. it plays fine on exo player and videoJS on android and all browsers, but it doesn't play on ios 10 safari. how can I make it playable on ios and safari?

here is a demo:

http://79.175.133.185/static/videos/bighero/index.html

Dash will not playback on iOS safari. You can create an HLS manifest however and reuse the same dash assets and play that.


Masking messes up in after effects after rendering I've been masking all day today and everything has worked perfectly up until now. I did my usual mask and then rendered it but upon render everything screwed up. I have tried it multiple times and I've even gone as far as to re-import the clip and mask it all over again. The results were different but only in the pattern of the glitch.

Im busy uploading the clips of the glitch right now so I'll just have to explain it for now. Basically everything looks perfectly fine in the ram preview window but when I render it, it separates the video around and the mask is completely messed up. Can someone please help me with this? It's incredibly frustrating when everything else today has gone smoothly. I'm using After Effects CC

Ram Preview Window:

After Render:

Once the Rotobrush tool has been selected to use (assuming you used Rotobrush based on the pink outline) a small box in the bottom right of the comp will appear and should say "Freeze." Literally just press that and it'll freeze the mask... fixed my masking render glitch and I hope it does for you too! Best of luck, happy editing.


After Effects: How to make 3D path I am trying to make a 3D path that will be used as motion path for a object as well as base for Trim Paths.

In other words, I would like to create something like Nyan Cat. I am going to use a path to animate movement of a 'cat' and to use same path to animate 'rainbow' by using Trim Paths. A 'cat' must move through 3D space eventually. Not sure if I chosen right direction so I would appreciate any tips about best practices for that kind of tasks.

However I would really love to learn how to create 3D paths to use them as trajectory for a camera, for example.

What I tried:

To create a circle -> make it 3D ->change its orientation -> convert to Bezier Path-ctrl+c. And then if I try to paste the copied path into an object position it get inserted as a 2D path. I could create 3D motion path for a camera manually using a Pen tool, however I would like a path to be a right circle.

Sorry if my question seems to be stupid, I am a really new. Thank you in advance!

Create a path with the Pen Tool first, copy the property path under:

  Contents > Shape 1 > Path > Path

Create a NULL object and paste the value you just copied to its position property.

You now have a NULL that follows your 2D path.

To enable the Z-axis of the NULL position, toggle the 3D Layer setting.

Click on the NULL position property and then get into the Graph Editor, in the bottom bar click the icon Separate Dimensions, this way you now have the 3 axis as separate properties.

You can see the Z Position is set at 0 without keyframes, despite the other 2 axis, play now with the Z Position and add keyframes as wished to give a 3rd dimension to your previously created 2D path.


Network video rendering So I have a weak tablet with Windows 10 on it and a useless PC with alright specs without monitor, mouse and keyboard which I want to turn into a server in order to remotely edit and render videos on it from my Windows 10 tablet.

I discovered that network video rendering is hard to set up in latest versions of Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas Pro (which even doesnt have such option in latest versions). So I thought I could run normal desktop windows 10 on this PC and connect to it via remote desktop application which can be found in store but i doubt that it will work because the PC doesnt have monitor, keyboard and mouse, so it will be impossible even to log in the user at the startup.

OS doesnt matter as long as I will be able to remotely edit and render videos on the server from my Win10 tablet so I am just asking for an editing software that can be used the way I described above.

Google the config setup to have the computer auto-login, bypassing the login screen. You can change a setting in regedit and it will auto login to the default profile, which cannot use a password.

Over Remote Desktop, you can then control the system.

If it crashes, you'll have to do a hard reboot.


Timelapse on after effects I have got 90 pictures of a building site (one per work day), and I would like to get about 10 seconds of video.
So, I would like to know how to generate image between my images on after effects (CS6) to get a smoother time lapse video ?

Thx in advance !

The most-recommended way to do this is with Twixtor, a pricey plugin for AE and other platforms. They offer a watermarked free trial. There are some free alternatives out there but I haven't used them so I can't say for sure they'll suit your need. One is SloMoVideo and if you google that you'll see videos from people who've tried it.


Creating a split screen effect I have two videos of the same length and I want to create one video with those 2 in a split screen manner.

I'm totally new to this field and I will probably never need to do this ever again so I'm looking for a quick and easy way that involves free software.

I tried VirtualDub but I'm lost in it's options and settings and I don't even know if it can do what I want to do.

EDIT: Context: each video is a recording of a PC screen. I want to show them in a split screen manner in order to display the way one PC influences the other. Audio is of no importance.

FFmpeg, a command line tool, can accomplish this, via this command.

ffmpeg -i left -i right -lavfi [0:v][1:v]hstack -pix_fmt yuv420p -an combinedvideo.mp4

Replace left with filename of video to be positioned left. Same with right.

ffmpeg (32bit static build) can be downloaded from here. The ffmpeg.exe is in the bin folder of the archive.


Rendered mp3 file is much larger than original In Sony Vegas Pro 10 I've placed an .mp3 file (about 3MB file size), then I've cut it slightly at the end to shorten the length. I've tried to encode it with following settings:

File - Render As
Save As Type: MP3 Audio
Template: Default Template
Description: Audio: 256 Kbps, 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, MP3

The encoded file is about 6MB and it seems that the resulting file is the same quality as original.

How can I render .mp3 without getting a larger file size than the original?

The settings say Stereo. The doubling of file size might indicate that the original file was mono.


How to add audio to transitions in Final Cut this question is probably asked already, but as I am not pro video editor I do not know how to ask properly.
My question is: how can I add audio transition? I don't mean just fade in or out, I mean actual sounds synced with the visual transition
When transition occures the proper audio transition plays.
I can only do it manualy, but it is not the point.
For example, when the shot changes I want the circle transition with the corresponding sound.

Your question is indeed very confusing.  What, exactly, is the corresponding sound to the circle transition?  Is it a cricket?  Is it a car honk?  Is it the sound of a particular church bell ringing?  Is it the sound of a glacier melting?  And what about the sound of a triangular transition?  Or the sound of a vertical vs. horizontal wipe?

These questions are rhetorical; there is no sound associated with these transitions, other than the sounds you creatively choose to associate with them.  Thus, the answer to your question is that you do need to choose those audio transition sounds, and audio transitions, manually.


How can I take a part of a video and chroma key only the parts that I select? I'm not sure if this should be for photo or video, but let's say I see a part of a video that I would like to add a green background to, like chroma key, but the background isn't a solid color. Could I be able to select only the parts that I want to keep, and do this frame by frame? What I'm doing will only be about 3 seconds long. Is this possible with a program like After Effects, or some kind of Adobe program?

This isn't chroma keying. If your subject isn't in front of a green screen (or blue) then you're only other alternative is to mask it, rotoscope to be precise. After Effects does have a tool called a rotobrush that let's you brush around the edges of your subject but it's not the most precise or clean mask.It will however make for a very quick rotoscope. If you go frame by frame, you can make a mask with the pen tool and key the shape each frame as you adjust it. 72 frames at 24 frames per second would give you three seconds like you're estimating. That's about 2 days of work for someone with a decent amount of experience with the pen tool. Hope this helps.


How to record system sound without video? I installed Soundflower with brew cask install soundflower and I see it listed:

$ ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""
[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7f9a32515e80] AVFoundation video devices:
[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7f9a32515e80] [0] FaceTime HD Camera
[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7f9a32515e80] [1] Capture screen 0
[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7f9a32515e80] AVFoundation audio devices:
[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7f9a32515e80] [0] Soundflower (2ch)
[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7f9a32515e80] [1] Built-in Microphone
[AVFoundation input device @ 0x7f9a32515e80] [2] Soundflower (64ch)

I found several threads on recording the screen without system sound (one, two, three) and one about recording audio on Linux with ALSA. I could not find how to record audio only, without video.

I also tried this command to record the audio along with the screen ffmpeg -f avfoundation -i "1:0" ~/Downloads/Screen.mov, and I got an error Conversion failed!.

How can I record system sound to a file with FFMPEG?

With 1:0 you're including the video input from FaceTime HD Camera. Try:

ffmpeg -f avfoundation -i ":0" output.wav

This only selects audio device 0 which is Soundflower (2ch).

See avfoundation input device documentation for more info.


What is the best way to convert .vob files copied directly from a DVD into a format usable by Premiere Pro? I need to import some video material that was copied directly from a DVD into Premiere Pro. (Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes, in that context it is lawful to use excerpts of commercial films in Germany).

They were directly copied, meaning I don't have an image of the DVD, but the original file structure from the DVD including the folders VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS, containing .VOB files. Premiere Pro can't import them.

What is the best way to convert/copy those files to get them into a format that Premiere Pro can use? By 'best' I mean with the least quality loss possible and in a way that will produce either one file that has the entire movie in them or an array of sorted files that will be easy to look through. No I don't have the original DVD. Thanks!

Using ffmpeg, cat and remux all the VOBs together to a MPEG program stream.

ffmpeg -i "concat:vts01_1.vob|vts01_2.vob|vts01_3.vob" -c copy -f dvd dvd.mpg

(You may have to escape the | character i.e. vts01_1.vob\|vts01_2.vob\|vts01_3.vob)


FCPX => DaVinci Resolve => FCPX color grading round trip I'm trying to get my (non-graded) video from Final Cut Pro X through DaVinci Resolve 10.1 Lite, and back into FCPX for the last bits (audio, logos etc). The first part wasn't that hard, just export the FCPX project as XML, and load that from DaVinci Resolve. The color grading itself was a bit harder but still very doable.

The hardest part is getting the graded clips from DaVinci Resolve back into FCPX. I went to the Deliver page, set the Easy setup to Final Cut Pro XML Round-Trip, selected all the clips and selected a destination. After adding the job and running the job, I looked in the directory that was just created and saw a bunch of videos there and a fcpxml file. But importing that fcpxml file into FCPX just loads the clips from their original location...

So, how is this round trip supposed to work between Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci Resolve Lite?

I've spend the better part of today trying to figure that out, but all I can find are YouTube clips explaining how to do it with Premiere Pro or other video editors. And when I do manage to find something about Final Cut Pro X, it says I should just go to File=>Export AAF, XML. Unfortunately that option is greyed out for me. And all the other docs are either refering to Resolve 8 or 9. Even the official documentation still refers to a Conform page which is long gone in Resolve 10, and replaced by the Color page. Too bad I can't find a way to export from there either :(

Xudonax,

The preset Final Cut Pro XML Round-Trip renders the graded files in ProRes 422, but it uses an old XML file, not supported in FCPX. You need to go to the Edit (important!) section of DaVinci after rendering the project. Then you will be need to make File – Export AAF, XML... command and check the fcpxml version 1.3 type of file. It will be comfortable to save this five in the same folder used for rendered files in Deliver section.

After that you can do simple import of this FCPXML file in Final Cut Pro X, it will create new Event and Project in your current library with all your graded files.

Be sure to make render before XML-export. If you will export FCPXML ver. 1.3 without delivering, you will make the FCPX-project with original (non-graded) files.
Good luck!


why movie video is different from other videos (sports, news, or other) I'm not a video producer or anything but I always noticed the different
of the image from a movie vs a regular video.

I'm curious, re they shot on different camera types or it's just post-production effects?

http://i.imgur.com/g1vg6GU.jpg

This is an example. If you take a look at the colors you will obviously
notice which one is the movie

Movies have certain "looks" to arouse certain moods. The lightning and color depends on the intention of the movie and each individual scene.

Let's take the picture you linked as an example:

The footballer is lit by the floodlights in the stadium. He is lit from every side so that you can see as much as possible, there is little shadow and contrast. The movie scene with the delightful workers is very different: There is a leading light coming from the left, with shadows on the right side. It may look like sunlight, but this was most likely achieved with a set of spotlights. At the very least, you usually use three different lights coming from different directions. This is called three-point lightning. From Wikipedia:

  The key light, as the name suggests, shines directly upon the subject and serves as its principal illuminator; more than anything else, the strength, color and angle of the key determines the shot's overall lighting design. [...]
  The fill light also shines on the subject, but from a side angle relative to the key and is often placed at a lower position than the key (about at the level of the subject's face). It balances the key by illuminating shaded surfaces, and lessening or eliminating chiaroscuro effects, such as the shadow cast by a person's nose upon the rest of the face. It is usually softer and less bright than the key light (up to half), and more to a flood. [...]
  The back light (a.k.a. the rim, hair, or shoulder light) shines on the subject from behind, often (but not necessarily) to one side or the other. It gives the subject a rim of light, serving to separate the subject from the background and highlighting contours.

Of course, aside from the lightning, the garments, stage props and the likes are also picked carefully. Imagine how you would react to a shiny red plastic bag in Bilbo Baggins' Hobbit-Hole ...

Then there is post-production, which has a huge role in creating a movie's look. Color-grading is the process of deciding upon a desired look for each scene and then adjusting the colors in this scene to have a coherent appearance. Take a look at movies in color, a great website that analyses movies and creates color palettes to show which colors are dominant in a movie. For example, this is the color palette of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which uses mostly blue-grey colors:

More palpable, this is a collection of ordered stills from James Bond: Quantum of Solace:

As you can see, each scene has a specific color range that is used to convey certain moods. The color-grading process is very difficult, there are people who do nothing but that for a living ...

Tl;dr: The speficic look of a movie is achieved through a combination of sophisticated lightning techniques, the choice of stage props and post-production efforts.


Premiere export video with black frame I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro 6.0 and trying to export video but it always adds a black frame. The output preview shows one picture, the result shows another. It seems like it also crops the video a little. What am I doing wrong?

There are a couple of things I would check

The first thing that comes to mind, the aspect ratio is different from the output to the source. I would check that first (sequence settings)

The seconds thing that comes to mind
Set the crop setting in the export settings to 16:9. That might get rid of the black border for you.

Let me know if it worked.


Sony Vegas Pro 13 forgets to render some frames in my video I'm not completely sure what's going on here but let me visualize my problem through videos.

Here's is what my Preview window shows.

And this is what Sony Vegas Pro 13 renders into an .mp4 720p60FPS.

So as you can see, Sony Vegas Pro 13 seems to be skipping a few frames throughout my video, but it only seems to do it where I have very heavy edits as you can notice in the final render.

I am using plugins from Sapphire Genarts OFX, Red Giant Link's Magic Bullet Looks, Boris FX Plugins, and build-in plugins from Sony Vegas Pro 13 itself, is it because there is any incompatibility between the plugins, or is this a bug in the program itself, or should I change anything in my projectsettings, etc?

FYI I have rendered this in 3 possible ways; .avi .mp4 and .avc but so far all 3 of them give me the same result but on different frames throughout the video, but still on the heavily edited parts only.

I know this reply is 4 years past, but hopefully its of some use to someone. But I found that matching your project/raw files to match your output fixes that issue for me personally, so if I have a 1080p30fps raw file, the final render needs so also match 1080p30fps, if you "upscale" to 60 fps, you'll have ungodly render times and paused/skipped frames.


.webm blocky in initial frames, terrible for looping :( I made a .webm by compiling a series of rendered out images with FFMPEG. I'm intending for it to loop in background. The problem is, the first frame/frames (not sure) come out very blocky. I used this:

ffmpeg -f image2 -i img%05d.png -vf fps output3.webm

anything I am missing to avoid this issue?

Try something like this:

ffmpeg -f image2 -framerate 30 -i img%05d.png -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 30 -cpu-used 1 -tile-columns 2 -threads 8 -row-mt 1 output.webm

Placing -framerate 30 before the input specifies it as the frame rate of the input to be 30. This is then inherited as the output frame rate as well.
-c:v libvpx-vp9 specifies that you want to use VP9. If you want to use VP8, use -c:v libvpx instead. VP8 has lower compression efficiency but is also less demanding to decode.
-b:v 0 is required for -crf to work the way most people expect when using libvpx or libvpx-vp9. This is very important when it comes to quality, if you forget this your video is going to look bad at a CRF that would normally look good.
-pix_fmt yuv420p set the colorspace to 4:2:0 which is important for wide player compatibility and hardware acceleration. This is essential when converting a series of images into a video since forgetting to set this leads to higher file sizes due to increased color representation capability and can make some players display the video incorrectly or to not play it at all.
-crf 30 sets the bitrate control mode to Constant Quality and the value to 30. In my experience this is a good value to start with. Lower values lead to higher quality. Try out different values to find out what works best for your content.
-cpu-used 1 sets the encoding speed, lower values equal better compression. 0 is the lowest speed and highest compression efficiency while 5 is the fastest speed and lowest compression efficiency.
-tile-columns 2 specifies that the video will use two tile columns. These are used to achieve multi-threaded encoding and depending on how old your version of FFmpeg is this might not be set automatically. 2 columns is suitable for 720p and 1080p video. Refer to Google's VP9 encoding guide for the suitable amount of tile columns and the amount of threads they allow you to use.
-threads 8 defines the amount of processing threads available for encoding. Set this to the amount of cores (or threads if you have HyperThreading/SMT available) on your CPU for the fastest encoding. This option still needs to be set manually even in latest versions of FFmpeg or else libvpx will only use one thread, which slows down encoding significantly.
-row-mt 1 enables better multithreading for libvpx. Setting this manually doesn't seem to be necessary in recent versions of FFmpeg but it doesn't hurt either.


T5i video quality doesn't even match smartphone camera? Where can I improve? A friend wanted to make some professional looking videos for a weekly vlog type of thing for his church. We went into this planning to buy a better camera and lights etc as we go.

We filmed a video last week with his phone: a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. The quality was surprisingly good but I thought we could do much better.

After spending a couple of weeks researching cameras and looking at reviews I ended up picking out the T5i; but I gotta say, I'm pretty underwhelmed. While, the photo quality is pretty good (I haven't had time to take a ton of photos), the video quality is quite a bit worse than the camera phone.

In general, the video is not as clear, bright, contrasted or colorful, and there's more noise and artifacts. I've tried Auto, as well as few other modes, and also manual (1/60, F/5, ISO 800). To reduce grain I also tried bumping the ISO down to 400 and the shutter to 1/30 to compensate. But after more research I don't think the grain was a problem. I'm guessing I was actually seeing compression artifacts.

At first I had trouble believing that a smartphone could outperform a dedicated camera. Especially one that has countless reviews saying it's the best entry-level camera.

What might be the problem? Is a $600 phone really better than a $700 camera? Do I need a better lens? I've been eyeing the Canon 50mm f/1.8 because it's very affordable and footage I've seen with it looks much better in low lighting.

Maybe it's the lighting? Our lighting setup is definitely not ideal, at the moment, but I would expect it to at least still look clear even if it's underexposed. We have 3 work lights purchased at Walmart with 65w flood bulbs (if i recall).

We definitely want to get better lights; but it's still disconcerting how last week we used the same setup and got much better results on the phone.

Although, one area where the new camera was definitely more helpful was the focal length. With the phone we had to be very close in order to keep our backdrop in frame. With the T5i kit lens we were able to go to 50mm and backup and get much more natural framing.

I really want to make this work; it could be something we're doing wrong. Video tests I've seen on YouTube from the Rebel line seem to show better quality than we're getting; even T3i videos. I was hoping it was just post-processing, but after spending a day trying to color correct and color grade the footage, it's still not any clearer (of course).

At this point, we're considering returning it and getting something better but I'm not sure what to get.

I was hoping this would be the best of both worlds but it seems like it's really more focused on stills; and for now, video is our primary focus. And, after some research it looks like we'd better off with a Panasonic or Sony. True? The Panasonic GH4 looks great as far as I can tell; but of course, it's twice the price. I also hear good things of the GH2 or GH3.

Bottom line with the canon rebel series cameras is that the video is pulled from a low resolution capture of the chip which is normally used for high resolution photos. The photos from these cameras will resolve many thousands of lines but the video compression chip in the camera cannot deal with these in real time so they just grab the image that goes to the rear LCD screen.

This image is achieved by throwing away the high res photo lines (or pixels), this is called binning (discarding). This makes high contrast edges very aliased or have a stair stepped effect. To fix this Canon soften or blur the image to make it more acceptable. Guess what, all of this results in a video image that ends up resolving at about 480 vertical lines or standard TV resolution 'not' HD resolution. So no amount of sharp lenses or post sharpening will ix the matter. The soft is baked in.

While the phone camera is built specifically to capture a fixed line resolution but it compromises on maximum photo resolution, typically not better than the video resolution.


Looking for Radio Automation Software I am currently planning to run a podcast or a radio show as you prefer, where I intend to broadcast some Skype talking and play some music, live through Mixlr. I've been looking for some software that can help me to do this. Something where I can create a playlist that I can set up easily, control mic, have some embedded notes, etc.

I am especially looking for free software, but if I get myself into something that fits my needs, then I am willing to spend a few bucks.

I ran into a couple paid solutions:

ProppFrexx OnAir, which seems the most complete solution, with tons of options, most of them not really understood by me... Looks very recent, and the free version lets you play for 3 hours, with a random 2kHZ sound playing occasionally.

SAM Broadcaster, which seems to be used by most of the people. Looks like a very simple solution (the free version, at least)

There are other free options, but most of them do not work rather well or are hard to understand and get used to.

My question is then, if there are good free solutions that fit my needs (for Windows and/or eventually Ubuntu) and which. Or paid ones, that are quite simple and easy to manage. Out of curiosity, I would also ask if you know which software big radio stations use.

Thank you.

Not sure about Windows, but for Ubuntu, you could always check out Rivendell.
http://www.rivendellaudio.org/