Changing acceleration of animation path I'm sorry if this question has been asked before but the search showed up nill for me. It could be I'm wording this wrong to be honest but I appreciate and help.

Essentially I have a shape that I have moving from one side of the screen to the other but instead of the animation moving at a linear speed, I want it to have an acceleration aspect to it (so it moves slower at first then speeds to full by the end)

Normally I do this by positioning and adding keyframes manually to make that effect, but it gets a bit time intensive. I'm wondering is there any effect or thing I can do to automatically add that in or make my life easier then doing it key frame by key frame?

I appreciate any help!

Keyframe interpolation is essentially what you're looking for here. One really easy way to achieve this is by using modifying your "keyframe velocity".

This article explains it better than I could:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/speed.html


Loseless conversion from IphoneX HEVC for PC - PPro Looking for a ffmpeg command that would convert IphoneX HEVC 4K 25fps videos to any format that will work on PC - PremierePro and keep it lossless.

Conversion always will involve some loss, only copy (-c) is lossless.

There are some suggestions for "lossless" encoding in this Q&A, but I can't test them on my phone. There are UpVoted and have an accepted answer: the intermediate and output file will be uncompressed, and huge.

You can minimize loss when converting your existing videos by choosing an excessively high bitrate, since it's a cellphone video it will be of a limited length and thus only expand so much.

The ffmpeg H.264 Video Encoding Guide claims to offer lossless encoding using the -crf 0 command. It also mentions that you should expect incompatibility problems with some programs.

The section: Choose a CRF value says:

  The range of the CRF scale is 0–51, where 0 is lossless, 23 is the default, and 51 is worst quality possible. A lower value generally leads to higher quality, and a subjectively sane range is 17–28. Consider 17 or 18 to be visually lossless or nearly so; it should look the same or nearly the same as the input but it isn't technically lossless.

Using '0' isn't so much a "conversion" as it is a decompression and wrapping up the uncompressed video, the so-called converted video isn't recompressed.

You can correct the problem at it's source (in future) by:

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Camera > Formats > change "High Efficiency" to "Most Compatible".


AviSynth mp4 Not Supported (Total beginner) Trying to process an MP4 file using an AviSynth script, as follows:
    DirectShowSource(inputFile, fps=25, convertfps=true, logfile=logFile)

Error message: "DirectShowSource: couldn't open file SomeFile.mp4. Cannot play back the file. The format is not supported."

The file is valid, i.e. it can be played in a video player.

Using Windows 10 64-bit, and AviSynth 2.60

How can I process this file using AviSynth?

In the end, I made it work just as posted above, by installing the Haali Media Splitter. I have seen posts by people who say that this software is needed to process MP4 files.


how able to change the sequence setting timebase to 100fps in premiere pro I am trying to change the sequence setting to 100 fps in premiere pro 2020, but I am only able to see up to 60 fps.

I want to change it 100 fps because when I am nesting my 100 fps, then it makes it to 60 fps, so I am not able to apply speed ramping. I am halfway through the project. Any suggestions would be really helpful.

If right-clicking on your 100fps clip in the bin and selecting New Sequence From Clip isn't placing it in its own 100fps sequence, you can create a custom XML sequence template to import with arbitrary values. If you save the following code as an XML file, you should be able to import it into your project and have an empty 100fps 1920x1080 2-channel sequence.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xmeml>
<xmeml version="4">
    <sequence id="sequence-1">
        <rate>
            <timebase>100</timebase>
        </rate>
        <name>Custom Sequence</name>
        <media>
            <video>
                <format>
                    <samplecharacteristics>
                        <width>1920</width>
                        <height>1080</height>
                    </samplecharacteristics>
                </format>
            </video>
            <audio>
                <numOutputChannels>2</numOutputChannels>
                <format>
                    <samplecharacteristics>
                        <depth>24</depth>
                        <samplerate>48000</samplerate>
                    </samplecharacteristics>
                </format>
            </audio>
        </media>
    </sequence>
</xmeml>

Check out Apple's FCP XML documentation if you want to get super deep into customization, or just export an empty sequence as an XML file and have a look around. Most of the tags are fairly simple to understand as you can see. I've minimized the code here, Premiere can fill in the blanks for most settings if you don't include them.

You could actually edit your .prproj file in the same way, it's just an XML doc, but Adobe likes to obfuscate their data in base64, in addition to a few other gripes I won't get into here. It's more trouble than it's worth.


What is a simple way to transfer HI-8 tapes to my computer? A long time ago I had a HI-8 camera. Now I would like to create home movies I can share digitally. Does anyone know a simple an hopefully inexpensive way to transfer these tapes to my computer?

"HI-8" is an analog format. You will need a hi-8 player or camera with outputs and an analog to digital converter. Consumer grade devices are typically finicky -you get what you pay for. I've used several of the 60-$80 level in the past and had various issues. Such as: not detecting the source, poorly written drivers, very buggy software, low quality capture.
Here's a list of comon some common devices to help your research:

http://vhs-to-dvd-converters-review.toptenreviews.com/

Mostly these come with a software to allow capture and create a digital file. Some also allow you to burn to a DVD / blu-ray.

A better quality box might be something like this (I haven't tried this unit):
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/349146-REG/Grass_Valley_602029_ADVC_110_Bidirectional_Media_Converter.html

You will need to get software sperately. Most editing software Premiere Pro, etc. Allows you do capture from a source. You will need to have some knowledge of what codec / wrappers, video aspect; to get a good result.


ffmpeg audio video separate files 1 command I'm trying to get ffmpeg to output separate audio and video files in 1 command.

Here are the 2 commands I have:

ffmpeg -ss 04:53 -i ./07.mkv -t 3 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -filter:v "setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, crop=960:720, scale=480:360" -an -sws_flags lanczos -fflags +genpts 07-alexFlex.mp4
ffmpeg -ss 04:53 -i ./07.mkv -t 3 07-alexFlex.mp3

Is there a way to get it in 1 command? Ideally both the audio and video files would share the same name automatically without me changing it twice in both commands. Thanks.

Daisychain the commands, so

ffmpeg -ss 04:53 -i ./07.mkv -t 3 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -filter:v "setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, crop=960:720, scale=480:360" -an -sws_flags lanczos -fflags +genpts 07-alexFlex.mp4 -ss 04:53 -i ./07.mkv -t 3 07-alexFlex.mp3


Parenting a null causes unexpected results I've built an arrow that is controlled by two nulls - one at the start point and one at the end point.  Using some trigonometry in some expressions, it works.  When I move the nulls, the arrow resizes appropriately.

But when I try to parent one of the nulls to another object (like another null, or a shape layer), the null position jumps.  And even after parenting, the parent null can't move the child null.. Any ideas?

video:

Below are snippets of the controlling code, based on some scripts by others that I found online.

arrowlength controlled by

CellTower = thisComp.layer("startpoint").transform.position;
Target = thisComp.layer("endpoint").transform.position;
sizefactor = 100/(effect("ArrowSize")("Slider"));
BeamLength = (length(CellTower, Target)*sizefactor)-150;
[BeamLength]

rotation of the arrow controlled by

CellTower=thisComp.layer("startpoint").transform.position;
Target=thisComp.layer("endpoint").transform.position;

// Find the length of side a
SideA = sub(CellTower, Target)[1];

// Find the length of side b
SideB = sub(CellTower, Target)[0];

//Find the Angle between them
-1*(270-(radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(SideA, SideB))+180));

I think the problem there is that the expression is using the position value for the null. As you know when you parent a layer to another layer its position becomes relative to its parent. So if for example you have a null at [960,540] and you parent it to a layer whose position is also [960,540] the null's position now becomes [0,0]. This means that any expressions that use that value now are seeing [0,0] instead of [960,540].

So you need to feed the null's absolute position in world space to the expression. This is where the mysterious Layer Space Transform functions come into play.

Change the parts of the expression that have the null's position from

CellTower=thisComp.layer("startpoint").transform.position;

to

startPoint = thisComp.layer("startpoint");
//use a variable just to make the next line easier to understand
CellTower=startPoint.toWorld(startPoint.anchorPoint);

What that is doing is translating a point as seen from the relative coordinates of the layer startPoint to the world coordinates of the comp. The point that we're giving it to translate is startPoint's anchor point.


On-line and Off-line editing? I am just wondering if anyone can shed any light on the subject of On/Off line editing, as I have been approached and asked before..
I understand this is type work flow for post production process but without sounding too clueless about things, can you somebody please describe to me what it means and what different skills are required that separate these workflows...

Thanks so much for your time and answers!

I've never heard the terms On-line and Off-line editing used for audio.  In the video world, off-line editing is a term used for the editing process, whereby you edit your footage (often compressed) and then export and EDl for the On-line editor to do the final assembly with higher quality picture, maybe adding titles and some transitions and color correction.


Recording Video From one PC to Another I'm planning on recording PC screens in general, including gaming and videos.

I'm aware of screen capture software like FRAPS, Playclaw etc. and have tested them out, but the increased strain on my computer is noticeable while they are active, even with extra background programs closed.

I'd read elsewhere  about a lag-free solution that sent the video to a second computer running the screen capture software, offloading the extra effort to the second machine and keeping gameplay smooth.

If I intend to try this solution, what hardware and software am I likely to need in order to duplicate the video output and be able to record it with a second machine? Audio recording won't be a problem, as I intend to do that separately.

In order to duplicate the display you would need extra hardware in your machine anyway, otherwise you will still get lag, so I would instead recommend simply upgrading your existing machine - it will be cheaper, and the spinoff is that you will have a better machine.

The machine I am currently writing on has a reasonable GeForce graphics card, quad core i5 and 8Gb of RAM - pretty cheap, but can happily use FRAPS on full screen (1600x1050) at >25 fps while playinng COD4 or MW2 for example.


Adobe Premiere CS6 has laggy preview with high disk access but low memory use I have a video project including 40 clips, in average 2/3 minutes, at high quality (400MB /min).

If I import a single clip in the project, the video preview is fine, however, having many of them lined after each others eventually causes the video preview to lag. If I pause and give it a few seconds, the preview after resume is fine for a while then starts lagging again.

CPU usage is bellow 20%, RAM is 1.5GB used out of 6.5GB, however disk usage is high. I assume the software can't keep up loading the video fast enough due to the heavy weight.

Is there a way to fix this issue ?

I am working in Adobe Premiere CC 2018, but if memory serves you should be able to still do this in your CS6 version.

Set an out point 'O' at the end of the clips you want to preview.
Go up to 'Sequence' in the upper left - and select 'Render In to Out'

Once they're rendered on your timeline they should play with no lag.


Best value video cameras as of 2014? I could always google lists and such but nothing can beat legitimate suggestions and reviews from video professionals.

I'm looking to produce music videos in the next months/years and I need a good video camera.

Here is my criteria for a good video camera :

720p/1080p videos
Max budget is $1000 (but feel free to include cameras worth more if you think they are worthy of being included)
Doesn't need to be waterproof
Must be tripod-compatible (I'm a noob here, so I'm not sure if there are cameras that can't be attached to tripods)

I'm not sure if these types of questions fit in VP.SE but there are software-recommendation questions and I wondered why hardware-recommendations wouldn't work as well. Thanks in advance.

At your price point, I'd have to recommend the Black Magic Pocket Cinema camera, though I don't believe it comes with a lens, so you would still need to buy a lens which would put you over your $1000 budget.

You could get a basic PDAF (phase detect auto focus) enabled video recording DSLR like a T4i along with a semi-decent zoom lens or a fairly good prime for $1000 as well, though the cheaper DSLRs (T4i is only one or two steps above entry level) tend to have pretty strong rolling shutter, which will produce a "jello" effect when panning.

I would recommend staying away from any DSLR that doesn't have PDAF enabled video for a beginner because it would mean having to manually adjust focus while shooting, which is fairly challenging to do well.

The Lumix GH3 is also pretty well regarded in terms of video quality for the price, though the GH3 is a bit older.  I also don't recall for certain if it has the ability to auto-focus on video.  It does produce very nice video quality for the price though.

One nice thing about shooting music videos is that the audio doesn't matter much.  You can use the recorded version of the song for the sound and don't have to worry about sound from the video shoot, so you don't need to worry about a multi-track recorder (which would make your $1000 budget almost completely infeasible.)

You will still additionally probably want to get some lights though as good lighting is also pretty key to shooting music videos, though if you only have a $1000 budget, you are probably best to put it all in to the camera and use whatever lights you can find for now and then buy good lights later when you can.

Overall, $1000 is still very much on the cheap side for getting a rig capable of really professional quality video.  Most people doing even fairly low end professional cinematography have multiple lenses that cost more than your entire camera budget, not to mention the cost of the actual camera.


How to create a glitch effect In many films(especially trailers) we can see some kind of glitch effects. Recently I found one more here:

Video on FB: link.

I want to try to create one by myself but cant find any useful info. How and where is it possible to make? I would be pleased to see some links and guides.

There are several effects like this available today. If you're using Final Cut Pro X or Motion, you can use the BadTV filter.

There are also 3rd party filters for a variety of platforms including DigiEffects' Damage filters.

You could probably make your own by copying your input video, applying noise, maybe offsetting it, and then masking parts of the result to mix with the original.


Compress multiple videos at once on a Mac I want to reduce the file size of a bunch of videos at once on my Mac.
Would you know any free tool that does that or any way to automate a loop in Automator to pilot Handbrake to loop on a given folder?
Thank you.

Handbrake can queue up a batch of files.
FFmpeg is free and works on a mac, but you'd have to run it from Terminal.
You can install it using Homebrew for Mac.
Once Homebrew is installed, go to Termaninal and type
brew install ffmpeg

Then you should be able to change directory to wherever your files are by typing something like:
cd /Users/my.username/Movies

where my.username would be your username on that mac, and Movies would be whatever directory the files were in
Then you can convert them by typing something like
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.webm

Where input.mp4 is your source file, and output.webm is your output file.
To convert all the mp4 files in that directory you would enter
ffmpeg -i *.mp4 output.webm

More info on selecting different codecs etc.


Need to learn about Video stitching I need to start learning about video stitching. I have studied about this and have some knowledge that the video should be converted into image sequences, then image alignment is done [geometric and photometric correction], and feature matching is used to match two video frames which are then blended together.

I don't know whether this is correct and I need to know if this process is correct and is there anything I missed? Is there anything I need to learn? Also I need to learn from basics. I want some knowledge about this.

I've found 2 useful references:

LEVIN, A., ZOMET, A., PELEG, S., AND WEISS, Y. 2004. Seamless image stitching in the gradient domain. In European Conference on Computer Vision, 377–389.

and

PÉREZ, P., GANGNET, M., AND BLAKE, A. 2003. Poisson image editing. ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH ’03), 313– 318.


Tessellation-like animation in after effects I am trying to make something I've seen on the local new in the after effects. Now, let's say there's a large picture that has text on it "WBC" or something like that and those letters, when zoomed in are made of smaller pictures. I made the large image in Photoshop and it's pretty decent looking but I can't seem to figure out a way to create this tessellation animation that is probably simple since it revolves mainly around zooming in and moving around but I am a novice in After Effects so i need your help. Thanks ;)

The easiest way to do this is to sync the scaling and make a cross dissolve between them as you do the scaling.  You want it to fade fairly quickly as you work your way in.  One layer would be the many images in whatever arrangement you want, the other would be the overall logo.  This is also often the technique used for doing a smooth zoom in on a satellite image from a very high level to a lower level.

If you time the fades right, it isn't that noticeable as you move to progressively more detailed images because the more detailed image is starting in while it is still small enough to not be distinguishable.

To keep the sizes manageable, you may also have to do multiple images to transition through.  Don't bring one in to the timeline until the previous image is big enough that details of it will start being noticeable.  Also, be sure to remove the larger previous image from the timeline once the newer image completely covers it.


RTSP to RTMP converting fails after specific time only when IP camera enters night mode I have bought a cheap IP camera Escam QF002 producing output in RTSP.
I'd like to secure it with RTMP or HLS stream served by nginx with nginx-rtmp-module.

For this I'd copy the video stream (h264) and transcode audio(pcm_alaw -> aac), using:

/usr/bin/ffmpeg -loglevel debug \
  -i 'rtsp://192.168.1.2:554/user=admin&password=******&channel=0&stream=0.sdp?real_stream--rtp-caching=100' \
  -vcodec copy -acodec aac -f flv "rtmp://localhost/escam/stream"

After ~260 seconds (same value each time) of successfull stream, no valid output is produced any longer and the message is being spammed:

Delay between the first packet and last packet in the muxing queue is 10020000 > 10000000: forcing output

This seems to happen only when camera is in "night/infrared" mode. Some differences may be logged:

Night mode: reported framerate converges to 13 fps and inital frames are passed with 488 DTS

...
[flv @ 0x1d53710] Non-monotonous DTS in output stream 0:0; previous: 488, current: 385; changing to 488. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
....
frame= 1451 fps= 13 q=-1.0 size=    5357kB time=00:02:11.84 bitrate= 332.8kbits/s speed=1.16x

Day mode: reported fps converges to 20 fps, and and inital frames are passed with 300 DTS.

But each time the input stream is defined as:

Stream #0:0, 0, 1/1000: Video: h264 (Main), 1 reference frame ([7][0][0][0] / 0x0007), yuvj420p(pc, bt709, progressive, left), 1280x720 (0x0), 0/1, q=2-31, 20 fps, 13 tbr, 1k tbn, 90k tbc
Stream #0:1, 0, 1/1000: Audio: pcm_alaw ([7][0][0][0] / 0x0007), 8000 Hz, mono, 64 kb/s

So far only disabling the audio stream with -an allows for continuous streaming. Copying the stream without reencoding audio (-acodec copy) or writing to file results in same error.

What could be the issue? Why this is specific to night-mode only?

EDIT:
I think I need to post it as another thread, since this turns out to be an XY problem.

I guess the issue is connected with improper PTS/DTS for the video frames returned by RTP.
FFmpeg reports, that video input has 20fps, while actually it returns ~ 13fps (tbr):

Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Main), yuvj420p(pc, bt709, progressive), 1280x720, 20 fps, 13 tbr, 90k tbn, 40 tbc

Probing the input frames with ffprobe -show_frames -read_intervals %+100 'rtsp://host/stream' gives the following info for video frames:

pkt_duration_time = 0.05s, pkt_duration = 4500
increment of pkt_pts is 6923, increment of pkt_pts_time is ~ 0.077s, same apllies to pkt_dts, pkt_dts_time, as well as best_effort_timestamp, best_effort_timestamp_time

The PTS/DTS must be somehow recalculated from the default 0.05 (I'm not sure whether done by ffmpeg or source itself). However this interval is to small compared to audio stream - as seen on the graph below. This results in video being remuxed faster than audio.

Questions:

Are RTP h264 DTS/PTS given by stream itself, or calculated by ffmpeg?
What's the proper way to modify these to match audio DTS/PTS?

I've solved the issue by rebuilding the timestamps from scratch with -use_wallclock_as_timestamps 1 and -fflags +genpts.

/usr/bin/ffmpeg -use_wallclock_as_timestamps 1 -i "rtsp://${source}" -fflags +genpts -vcodec copy -acodec aac -f flv "rtmp://${dest}"

This is only a partial solution, or rather workaround, as it's still unclear to me what causes this behavior.


picking a frame and an overlapping audio from a video I know how to extract frames and audio from a video using ffmpeg.

But what I want to is, to pick a random frame in that video, and then picking a random 1 second audio clip that overlaps in time with the sampled frame.

As of now I'm doing this by preprocessing the videos for frames and audio, but that is consuming a lot of disk-space.

The way I'm doing it now is: I extract the frames and audio before hand I'm finding the number of frames and picking one from them randomly. By finding the name of that frame, which gives me it's number, say 100th out of 3000 frames, I'm picking audio which overlaps with it.

So is there a easier way of achieving this?

The inverse way of doing this is faster.

Get file duration

ffprobe in.mp4 -show_entries format=duration -of compact=p=0:nk=1 -v 0

This will print the duration in fractional seconds.

Pick a random value between (0, duration - 1)

Run

ffmpeg -ss value -t 1 -i in.mp4 -map 0:a -c:a copy audio.m4a -vf thumbnail -vframes 1 img.png

The thumbnail filter will pick one frame out of the 1 second of video provided to it.


using -force_key_frames in ffmpeg with libx265 I'm trying encode a video stream using HEVC with ffmpeg and create a MPEG-TS file. I need to be able to insert IDR frames to certain locations in the stream. I came across the flag -force_key_frames under ffmpeg documentation, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

Here is the command I tried:

ffmpeg -s:v 1280x720 -i input.yuv -c:v libx265 -x265-params crf=20:keyint=25:fps=25:preset=ultrafast -force_key_frames 1,12,30,111 -f mpegts out.ts

Please help me to sort out this issue.

Thanks.

ffmpeg's libx265 wrapper is very minimal, and doesn't pass on very many settings.  e.g. -pass 1 requires manually setting -x265-params pass=1.

Also, if x265 is anything like x264, don't use ultrafast except for lossless or for testing things.

sorry for not taking the time to dig this up myself, but have a look and see if you can get your desired I frame locations into x265-params.  Probably not, though.

If you want to hack some C code, have a look at libx264.c and libx265.c, and maybe you can see how to ffmpeg sends frame-type requests to x264.  And maybe you can port that to the libx265 wrapper.


Mobile Tethered Video Shooting I'm interested in purchasing a camera setup for video where I just "tether" a camera with realtime HDMI or USB output to a PC (a netbook) with a huge hard drive and shoot everything directly to the netbook.

Why? So that I can experiment with visual effects in realtime, and get excellent macro-command functionality and web uploading for "free".

Do any of you have personal experience with this kind of setup and have anything to say to dissuade me from trying it?

I have personal experience with tethered shooting for different purposes, and I have absolutely NOTHING to say to dissuade you.

Having said that, there are some things about which you need to be cautious. I don't know what your end result is going to be. Is this going to be a webcast? or are you trying to save some post-production time on a movie for distribution? That makes a huge difference in what you need to watch out for. Without that, the best I can do are some very broad generalities.

First, prosumer cameras take up a lot of bandwidth. Do some tests to make sure your hard drive spins fast enough to capture the data coming down the wire. I had to upgrade to a 10k RPM hard drive for a stright-to-disc project once. Use lower quality cameras for less bandwidth, but few of those have HDMI.

Second, depending on what you're doing for VisFX, coupled with the complexity of the image you're using, you'll want to make sure that your processor is fast enough to render everything on the fly. That's a total crapshoot...but VisFX on a relatively static talking head will take less processing overhead than VisFX on a scene with fifteen people all moving in front of the camera.

Third, if you're webcasting, see my bandwidth comment above. You've got similar issues on the output side, and you'll need to render your output to be small enough to be web-friendly. Uncompressed AVI to compressed QuickTime, Flash Video, Windows Media, etc. takes time and processing power. If this is the plan, you may wish to consider a dedicated machine that transcodes for web in realtime. The ones I've used are dedicated machines, I'm not sure if they'd play nicely with your system.

You have a lot of variables at play here. Before you invest in the gear, I would recommend borrowing and renting what you can, and testing the bejeebers out of the system to make sure it's doing what you need. If something doesn't work, figure out that smaller piece of the process, then move on. I can guarantee that by doing it and asking questions along the way, you'll lern more about doing this than you ever wanted to.

But I'm definitely NOT dissuading you. Be excited about your journey into new technological realms, and go for it!

Good luck!


Software advice - for creating animations I need to make a sort of animation. Not that I am going for same feel or style but I would like to make something that is sort of similar to the animated sequences in "Monty Pyhton's Flying Circus".

There is one catch though! I need to attach some collage/clip-art to something that can easily be distorted into a 3D-perspective - so I can move 'a virtual camera' around imported 2D-images(bitmap) in 3D-space (hope that's clear enough). Currently I am passing on Flash, I think.

If you are a starter go for after effects, check videocopilot.net for subject of interest..

short:

new project, import your prerpared files, create new camera, drag your footage to the timeline, mark the 3d layer switch, set up the positions of the layers(x y z) and roll the camera ;)


Sending real time audio from the field unit to the radio studio over 3G We have a temporary FM radio station running for a week before the May Day. We don't have a portable radio transmitter for our field reporter and we're planning on using the mobile data (3G) for the field to studio link.

Mobile data network here is quite good, but the latency varies. We can either use mobile phones/pads or the reporter can carry a laptop. Which protocol/software could be suitable for this kind of a scenario so that the audio stream survives a bit jittery and lossy network?

Look at Pocket Lite or Pocket codecs, for example. They use N/ACIP protocol.


Vegas Pro 12 vs Vegas Pro 12 Premium I'm currently shopping for Sony Vegas Pro 12 and I'm slightly confused at what I am finding. In addition to the standard Vegas Pro, I've found a "Premium" version that contains some upgrades (SoundForge 11, 180 days of support) but at a drastically reduced price (50% of the standard).

The premium version isn't even on Sony's website, so I'm guessing it was made for independent retailers.

Is there a difference between Vegas Pro 12 and Vegas Pro 12 Premium? Or is this just a great deal?

After purchasing Sony Vegas Pro 12 Premium I can confirm that it DOES include the full version of Sony Vegas Pro 12!

This really is a great deal as it also includes DVD Architect Pro 6.0, Sound Forge Pro 11.0, and CD Architect 5.2.


Why my objects are showing in this color? I am new to 3D software and have just started with Cinema 4d. When I add an object it shows on a weird color different from the one I see in tutos.

The tutorial videos I have seen create objects where the faces can be see in white. What am I doing wrong?

Image relating to the problem:

While the tutorial shows this:

The image from the tutorial has a white material applied to it. You can see it in the object manager, it’s the white sphere. By default, C4D uses a grey material.  To do the same, create a new material in the material manager (the empty area under the timeline) by using the "Create" menu ->New Material or ->New PBR Material, depending on your preference.  Both of those are white by default.  Then, drag the newly created material to your object, either by dragging to the object in the viewport, or in the object manager.


ffmpeg multiple filters not working I am trying to specify multiple filters for ffmpeg and I am getting an error output.

I am trying to do an audio and video fade in and a resolution scale.

my command is as follows...

ffmpeg -i 00021.MTS -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -crf 0 -vf fade=in:0:500, afade=in:0:300, scale=384:218, scaled.avi

and the error it gives me is as follows.....

  [NULL @ 0xb72ce0] Unable to find a suitable output format for 'afade=in:0:300,'
  afade=in:0:300,: Invalid argument

Audio and video filters are invoked in separate chains. And without enclosing quotes, whitespace will break the chain.

ffmpeg -i 00021.MTS -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -crf 0 -vf "fade=in:0:500, scale=384:218" -af afade=in:0:300 scaled.avi


Final Cut Pro- Reopen Library and Entire Timeline is Gone! I was working with a library, arranged all my clips, audio, etc. and had a great 6 minute long video ready to go.

When I closed the library, I shut my computer off. After I rebooted, I went to reopen the library and all of the files are still part of the library, but all of the clip arranging and everything I did to it- the entire timeline- is gone!

It's just completely blank as if all I did was drop files into the library and never started working on anything from within the timeline.

What happened!? Is there any way to view all of my timeline? That's like 12 hours worth of work!

Thanks

The timeline for which you are looking is actually called a "Project".  Projects are stored within events, which are in turn stored within a library.  Just opening a library (from within the finder, for instance) will not necessarily open your project.  To do that, you need to twirl down the disclosure triangle next to your Library in the event manager, select the event upon which you were working, and then double click the Project name to load it in the timeline.  Also, make sure that you are connected to any drives or network storage locations that you might have stored media to when you created the project.


How to make this vector animation? I would like to make a demonstration animation like this...

As I am really ignorant about animation making, I even don't know how to describe it.  I think this is something made with vector, as you see there are zooming effects.

I think this animation is made very practical. I hope I could master it in minimum time. Anybody would tell me what technology is used and how long could a beginner master it.

That is the realm of motion graphics and is probably using vector graphics within the motion graphics.  To get something of that quality, would take a very long time for a beginner to make look that good, though if someone is naturally skilled at it, it could shorten the curve considerably.  It requires skill in multiple disciplines to produces a reasonably high production value video like that.

If you want to try to pursue it though, I would suggest looking at software like Flash or After Effects.  Illustrator is also worth looking at for developing the vector assets.  After Effects with Illustrator is probably the best bet as it supports 3d layers (which could be used for the 3D spinning) as well as fairly easy support for write on text.  The painting effect is probably a little easier in Flash, but should be plenty doable with some work in After Effects.

Your early work isn't going to look anything like the video you linked though.  If you want such a video for commercial purposes, your best bet is to pay a studio to do something for you.  If you just want to play around, then dig in to the topic of Motion Graphics which is way too big of a topic to cover in one question and answer.


Simple editing without re-encoding from the GoPro AVC codec? Im looking for a fast workflow, where i can take my gopro video files, make simple cuts (no transisions, no effects, no audio manipulation), and cut them together into a clip and then export that edit out without having to re-encode/compress it.

Im shooting in their lowest HD setting (1280x960)... but would be open to switching formats if it helped.

In looking at this Final Cut Tutorial, it says i could edit without re-encoding if the project format matched the source material. The problem is, my Final Cut doesn't have the exact format my gopro records in... any ideas? Can i install the gopro codec somehow into final cut?

GoPro codec specs:

GoPro AVC H.264
1280x960
29.97

One Idea:

Use QuickTime to set in/out and keep copy/pasting clips into a single clip then SAVE. This works without re-encoding and saves fast, but the the workflow is not that fast. The other downside to this is Quicktime saves all the audio tracks into separate tracks, so the file chokes on youtube/vimeo unless you do an export with re-compression.

I know for sure that Corel VideoStudio version 7 and up can do straight cuts in AVC-encoded HD video, and then output without re-encoding. You must be careful to use exactly the same output format as input format. I don't know whether it can do the same with 4K. You can download a trial version and see for yourself.


How does Salman Khan make his screencasts? Just wondering what software he uses. I see his videos regularly and I'm somewhat impressed by the video and audio quality of his screen-casts.

He uses Camtasia Pro ($200) a Wacom tablet and (at least on the earliest videos) MS Paint. And a head mic.

http://www.teachthought.com/technology/how-to-screencast-like-the-khan-academy/

On a mac, a similar piece of screen capture software would be Screenflow, although Khan works on a Windows machine:

http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/


How to change value in After Effects when passing marker I am running into an issue where I want to change the value of my slider controller (just adding 1) each time it passes by a marker. This is my current code

if (marker.numKeys > 0) {
    value = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
}

However, the issue I am running into is that midway between markers it changes value.

marker.nearestKey picks the closest marker - even if it is in the future.

A simple solution would be to iterate over the markers with a for loop instead:

if (marker.numKeys > 0) {
    let i;
    for (i = 0; i < marker.numKeys; i++) { // For every marker we have, add 1 to i
        if (marker.key(i+1).time > time)   // If the marker is past current time,
            break;                         // stop the loop
    }
    i; // Return i value
}


The ideal wood for the DIY slate? I am planning to create a DIY slate/clapperboard. What would be the ideal wood for the clapper? I believe that the main qualities of the ideal wood would include, but not limited to, the following:

Toughness : the ability to withstand lots and lots of clapping.
Sound : it should make the snappiest and loudest sound compared to other woods; although, I am not sure whether there is a major difference among the types of woods.
Budget : Of course, we should always try to keep our costs as low as possible.

What type of wood I should be looking for?

I'm not really sure there is an ideal wood.  In fact, it really doesn't even need to be wood.

The entire point of a clapper is simply to make an audible sound that comes from an easily visible source.

As long as the sound is loud, short and crisp you are fine.  If you wanted, you could have your three year old be the clapper instead and just give him two pots to bang together.

The convention of a clapper is simply because it is a convenient device that also allows for indicating other meta data about the shot.  The clapper part is just included so that you can also capture the audio sync data without needing another device.


Which is a better choice for shooting classroom teaching, a DSLR or a shoulder-mounted video camera**? I want to shoot open class videos that require  teacher's face and blackboard writing to be clear.

Which is a better choice, a DSLR or a shoulder-mounted video camera?

Shoulder Mounted video camera?

I think that's a little over the top, A decent 1080p or even 4k video camera (Canon, Sony, Panasonic) would give you a decent image, your main thing would be audio, you want something that would give you decent audio, a camera with a XLR input and a shotgun mic to start with and then maybe mic yourself up using a wireless kit.

Obvisouly this would all depend on budgets, time, amount of editing you want to do, maybe if you want to live stream.

Other things like decent tripod, recording media, etc will affect your budget.


Invalid timebase converting videos from Galaxy S3 I have a video that I recorded on my phone and would like to flip horizontally. I am using the following command:

avconv -i 20131117_220136.mp4 -vf "hflip" 20131117_220136.flipped.mp4

I get the following output:

avconv version 0.8.9-4:0.8.9-0ubuntu0.12.04.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the Libav developers
  built on Nov  9 2013 19:12:07 with gcc 4.6.3
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '20131117_220136.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: isom3gp4
    creation_time   : 2013-11-18 04:35:04
Duration: 00:33:26.03, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 17127 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1920x1080, 17000 kb/s, PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 30 fps, 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 180k tbc
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2013-11-18 04:35:04
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 124 kb/s
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2013-11-18 04:35:04
[buffer @ 0x9a80de0] w:1920 h:1080 pixfmt:yuv420p
[mpeg4 @ 0x9a83200] removing common factors from framerate
[mpeg4 @ 0x9a83200] timebase 1/90000 not supported by MPEG 4 standard, the maximum admitted value for the timebase denominator is 65535
Output #0, mp4, to '20131117_220136.flipped.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: isom3gp4
    creation_time   : 2013-11-18 04:35:04
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 1920x1080 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 90k tbn, 90k tbc
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2013-11-18 04:35:04
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: [0][0][0][0] / 0x0000, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 200 kb/s
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2013-11-18 04:35:04
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 -> mpeg4)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (aac -> aac)
Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

The issue is the timebase 1/90000 not supported by MPEG 4 standard error, I'm assuming. I haven't found anything on it yet.

Specifying the framerate fixes the issue. I.e. adding -r 23.967 to the command.


Using 1080i on a 720P monitor will produce better image/video quality? I have a LCD monitor which only has resolution of 1366 x 768, and it can support 1080i

So,

Should I output 1080i video to this monitor, or should I just use 720p? Which one is better?
I have tested using 1080i/50 give me the best result, while 1080i/60 produce flicking image, any idea?

Native resolution is always better than non-native.  If it only has a resolution of 720p, then it would have to be down-converting to that resolution which means it has to blend pixels which can produce artifacts from the pixel blending.  (Notably, softer edges is the most likely.)

Update: I'm sorry, re-reading, I noticed that it isn't native for either resolution.  I didn't read closely enough as I was a bit tired when responding just before bed.  Given that the resolution exceeds 720p, it would probably be better to use the higher resolution, though the interlacing would be the bigger problem.  I'd suggest trying both and picking whichever looks better to you.


using canon 5D markiii or Olympus OMD EM5 as computer video camera? I tried the EOS utility and cam link USBs but nothing works for the two cameras that I own---canon 5D mark iii or Olympus OMD EM5. I understand that they are pretty old models. I was wondering if anyone figured out how to make it work?
Thanks!

Neither of these cameras offers video out. They are still cameras that can take limited movies, that you can then download using the USB port for bulk transfer.
It's really worth reading the manuals for your cameras - if you don't have them with your camera, they are available for free online.


FFmpeg rtmp listen not working correctly: Connection Refused Im trying to convert rtmp into an HLS stream using ffmpeg as the rtmp server. In the docs they mention that providing -listen 1 makes ffmpeg act as an rtmp server yet the behaviour is very weird.
Example's I've tried (hls part changed to mp4 for readability):
ffmpeg -listen 1 -f flv -i rtmp://localhost:1935/live/appname -c copy -f mp4
ffmpeg -listen 1 -f mpegts -i rtmp://localhost:1935/live/appname -c copy -f mp4

All give me the following error:
RTMP_Connect0, failed to connect socket. 61 (Connection refused)
rtmp://127.0.0.1:1935/live/app: Unknown error occurred

What does work for me is when I change rtmp into tcp and vice versa in OBS for a test stream; however I actually doubt its then using rtmp as its underlying protocol.
Are there certain flags I have to enable during compilation of ffmpeg? My version has librtmp enabled. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing wrong here but it looks like ffmpeg is still going into client mode even though I specified the listen flag.
Some other details:
I have tried with different outputs as well; with no luck, different placements of listen etc.

Try to use static build of ffmpeg without librtmp. You can download it from the website, or build by yourself. I've got the same problem, but without this lib I could run ffmpeg listener. Also when I tried to stream to external rtmp host, I've got issue when streaming unexpectedly stop. As described in the end of this ticket https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/7547


Best way to add subtitles to videos I currently have ~200 short 30 second teaser youtube video that link to articles.

I am looking for the best way to add captions to these videos. These will eventually go out on social media. Because the videos are short and clear, the youtube default captions are actually quite good.

However, I want the captions to be part of the mp4 file so that when I share it on social networks (uploading the video directly) then the captions appear.

What is the best way to do this? This is the ideas I have so far:

1) I could manually download the captions for each video, then use some service (which one) to merge the captions with the videos, and then post it.

2) I could download the captions for each video, then use the social networks service to add the caption as an add-on, you can do this with fb at least. The downside of this is that it would have to be done again and again for each social network.

This is for a volunteer run non-profit so there is no money to get this stuff done with super expensive software (though we have the adobe suite including premiere).

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

1) Is probablly the easyest. You can download it from YouTube and merge it in Premiere Pro. Easyest way is to burn it in, so you wont have any struggles with other social media plattforms.

If you have basic programming knowledge, ypu could write a script whoch automatocally downloads and adds the sub titles from YT.


Library with LOTS of clips: Increasing performance I work for a small graduate school producing 6-10 short documentaries each year. Most of these projects highlight some aspect of the student experience: classroom, office hours, socializing, internship, family life on our residential campus... So that I'm always ready, I have built up a large inventory of B-roll covering these various aspects of the stuent experience. Most of this content remains current from year to year.

Until recently, I organized all these B-roll clips into one library on a local HDD. This was excellent, because I could search one library for "Dr. Jill Smith" and find all clips titled or tagged "Dr. Jill Smith".

But recently, I have found that Final Cut Pro X 10.0 Events and 10.1 Libraries alike struggle with handling a large number of clips. They are sluggish to load (into RAM?) and frequently give me the "spinning beach ball". In response to this performance issue, I started a new B-roll library for 2014 (also on a local HDD). Its performance is better than my 2011-2013 B-roll library, which I attribute to its having fewer clips (does that sound right?). The result is that now my B-roll is split across multiple libraries. Furthermore, my keyword hierarchy isn't duplicated to my new 2014 B-roll library.

This is a problem for me because I need to be able to search all of my B-roll quickly. I'm considering moving my B-roll content to Lightroom, but evaluating that option, I want to give Final Cut Pro X a chance to be the only media management software I need. (Besides, I love being able to select a clip in one library, press "Q" to add it to my project, and have it consolidated into my project library automatically.)

Is there a way to increase performance of a library with a lot of clips in it? Is there another solution I should consider that would increase my speed of finding the clips I need? Is there a better overall media management strategy I should consider?

Ideally having all your content and project files on a separate harddisk would give you some performance back, this could be a internal drive if your on a Apple Mac Pro or a external drive, USB3, Fire-wire, Thunderbolt etc.

If you dont need to have the libraries open I would close them as they load up the files when you open FCPX.

Other options are to increase your RAM in the Mac, FCPX likes a min of 4gb, I had 6gb in mine and it was running slow, I upped it to 16gb and now it runs so much better, I also made sure I was running the latest FCPX version and I closed some of my libraries down which I didnt need to have open all the time as you can just re-open them when you need to.

I mainly do weddings where I shoot a lot of clips throughout the day 200+ sometimes so it shouldn't have an issue really. I do keep my projects in a very strict order and filing system
Library Name
--Event Name (normally one for RAW files, Audio, Titles etc etc)
--Project Names (normally one for each timeline)

I can have 3/4 edits going at any one time, once I finish one I close it down and archive the whole library removing any render files, optimized media etc to keep the archive size down.

I hope something in this will help


How do I write up a shot list? I am writing a script for a short movie. How do I write a shooting script? Is it needed? What is the difference between a script and a shooting script?

Shot lists are fairly easy to write. You can draw up your own grid or download a template online. The simplest way is to have four columns: shot number, shot type, action, notes. However you can customise a shot list to include whatever you think is necessary to illustrate your vision.
Here is a template I use for simple shoots:

Notice that they are written in an order that would be logical to shoot on the day. They are not listed in order of how they will play out in the story.
Hope that helps :)


fps changes during the record I recorded myself using my LG G3 smartphone. Now I see that one video is 28.97 fps, another video is 28.81 fps according to the QuickTime Player stats.
When I edit the videos in Premiere, the sound sometimes don't match to the video and when I sync the audio and the video, it loses the sync again after a while.

Is it possible that the fps is changing during the record?

It is possible that the device is dropping frames when recording. If there are a lot of apps running or the device is running low on memory. I would try rebooting the phone then try to record video and see if you experience the same problem.


After Effects - Make one frame brighter I am using the CC version. I am making a gunshot composition and I need to have a specific frame brighter. What should I do? Remember , there shall be only one frame , not all the clip with preferences!

I'm not an AE user, but if it has the concept of an effect layer, you can add a track above your clip that has one frame of 'brighten' or blowout.

Alternatively, split your clip into three -- pre-glow, the hot frame, post-glow.


Display multiple clips in DaVinci Resolve 12 I'm very new to DaVinci Resolve and I'm still trying to figure out what DaVinci Resolve is good at and for what effects I should use other software.

The result I want to achieve is to see multiple clips at the same time (in the render product, not only while editing). Each quarter of the screen should show another clip.

My approach is hardly satisfying:
To achieve that I tried to have a video in a video.
I resized the first clip and made it small. But that makes the rest of the screen black and I couldn't find out how make the black part transparent in order to show another resized clip.

There must be an easier way (though my approach should work, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to replace a green screen). Any suggestions?

BTW: Where can I learn such basic things? There must be a place to go.

Note: I'm aware of the split screen feature, but this is not what I was looking for (because it splits the screen only to let the user compare different color versions).

You are on The right track! There is not a specific effect to accomplish what you want to achieve.

The only way (unless there is a 3rd party plugin, I don't know about) is to stack the 4 clips on separate tracks in the edit tab. Select one of them open the inspector (panel on the top right of the edit page) scale down and adjust the placement.  The video clip on the video track below should become visible.

[Added by Michael Tiemann as a friendly amendment: In the panel where the scaling information is displayed, there are also parameters for the anchor point.  By default, images are scaled from the center, which means you have to add in X and Y offsets to get each clip going to each corner.  Instead, you can set the upper left anchor point to be the upper left corner of the video, the upper right to be the upper right, etc.  Then, when you scale, each video clip will retreat to its own corner.  If you want to animate this effect, you can have one clip expand from its corner and go fullscreen by scaling back to 100%, and you can return it to its corner by scaling down to 50%.]

Good luck.


Audio level goes up and down in rendered output [After Effects] I render my AE project using Media Encoder, but when I check the output, its audio level clearly changes and go up at some parts and down on other parts! and its not consistent at all.
The thing is that sound doesn't have any problem. I check sound in Audition and its good, I even check the sound in AE and it doesn't have any problem on RAM preview.

It's the first time that this problem occurs.

Any idea for what to check in AE or AME?
Thanks.

Have you export the audio only from audition & does it have the problem then ?

Does the audio have a compressor on it? You could use one to keep the levels consistent.

Are you sending from AE to encoder with the sound file ? Try using premier as a middle man. Bring the AE sequence & Audition project into premier and export from there. Could be that AE is ignoring your mix because it’s AE. Alternatively you could export direct from AE the vision and the audio only from audition and stick the two together in premier.


How to (safely) produce flying dust on set? Simple question, mainly asking for your collective experience.

I am planning a short-film in a post-apocalyptic scenario which is supposed to be very dusty with a thick-looking atmosphere. Part of it is easy to achieve with haze or fog, but I was wondering about those little specks, kind of like ash blowing in the wind.

How would one safely achieve something like this? Is it a good idea to actually just blow around some burnt paper (essentially ashes)?

I would avoid burning things to make ashes. Not very environment-friendly.
Instead of paying attention to the acting and to the light, and framing you will be worried about the effects. That is not a good idea.
Now days is pretty simple making particles in a 3D program. Try Blender, that can track the footage and have a very robust particle system and render options.
Here is an example of how a normal scene can be transformed into an apocalyptic scene, one typical example is Silent Hill.


Is it bad form to have a different number of audio tracks from video tracks? In Premier when adding a new Audio or Video track it wants to add both. In industry is it considered good form to leave empty tracks, say:

V2 Movie Clip
V1 Title
A1 BG Music
A2 nothing

Or is it better form to delete those extra tracks or not add them to begin with so instead it looks like

V2 Movie Clip
V1 Title
A1 BG Music

I always avoid excess tracks.  You can add as many or few tracks of each types as you want in "Add Tracks..." Simply adjust the number of tracks to be added by clicking on the number.  It defaults to 1 video and 1 audio track, but that can easily be changed each time you add tracks.

You can also add an individual track to either by right clicking in the header area and saying Add Track.

As far as industry standards go, I've never heard of a standard and I've never known anyone to think anything of having unused tracks, but cleanliness is always a plus.  There is certainly no standard to intentionally use excess tracks, but in my experience nobody is going to think anything if there are a few excess tracks either.  Generally cleaning up after yourself does look a little more professional though.


How do I recreate this Annotation effect In After Effects? I found this annotation effect that I really like. and would like to recreate in After Effects. Does anyone know how to do it?

https://vimeo.com/42220418

Thanks

That's fairly simple. Just create the text, arrows, and other stuff. Animate them to create the effect you want (I can't give you details here, you'll have to ask someone else). Then track the points where you want the annotations to be so they'll follow them.


How to render a smooth timelapse from 30FPS video? So here's my problem: I make timelapses from my cycling rides and the results are extremely shaky because the software picks frames linearly and sometimes I turn the handlebar or tilt the bike slightly, and the view is completely different to what it was the previous frame. This makes the video rather annoying to watch

So, I was wondering if there are some smarter algos out there that can 'smooth out' timelapses -- not in the motion blur sense (I suppose you can just average out the frames) but in terms of picking the right frames based on the delta changes between significant objects.

If there's some alternative approach to this, I'd be interested, too.

I ain't sure if this will work but better than nothing!
Here two of my approaches to this problem:

Warp Stabilization
Software such as Mocha, AE and many others have Warp Stabilization. What is means is that it can automatically stabilize the clip based on the frames and it somewhat relates to Machine Learning approach to Big Data.

Converting to 24fps
You can open in in a video editor and manually delete clips based on your own human ability to judge by looking at the previous and next frame. As we know our eyes can think 24fps as a smooth video clip, you may try this manual fix technique by deleting at 3-5 frames per second of your video!

Giving an opinion based answer, I think warp stabilization would render quite great results.


Does any software have the capability to create a mask/alpha value based on the volume of an audio channel I'm looking for an automagical way to create a Google Hangouts effect, ie.
 1. I have a number of files that are recordings of individual conversation members.
 2. I want to put together the video tracks into one project, and mask each one when the corresponding audio is silent (below some threshold), and to make it visible when there is audio from that audio track (so basically how Skype/Hangouts looks -> someone is talking, you see their webcam)

I haven't been able to find something like this using Google, or poking around in Premiere and Lightworks, but if it's available in another program, that would be great to know.

The mask doesn't need any motion tracking - either the entire screen is entirely transparent (audio), or entirely opaque (no audio).

Is there any way to do this automatically, or is it something that has to be manually put together?

You could certainly do it in After Effects. If you convert the audio levels to keyframes you can then use expressions / the pickwhip to drive the opacity of the layers. After Effects is not free. I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible in Fusion (freemium) and certainly other compositing tools like Nuke or Apple Motion. Natron, (free) may have the capability. There was an audio to ascii plugin, I don't think it still works though.

You could do it in Blender, because of course you could do it in Blender. Blender is free.

For a more programmatic approach you could use something like Processing or OpenFrameworks (free). You need Java or C++ knowledge to use these.

It is definitely possible in all of these programs, though in none of them is it a beginner-level operation. The simplest workflow would probably be After Effects, though that might be my bias because it's the one I know best.


Correcting exposure flickering in time-lapse footage "in post" I have made some time-lapse footage of a flower blooming. It was taken inside, at night, with constant lighting. The pictures are great, but as footage, the exposure between frames is slightly inconsistent (probably beacuse one of the lights was fluorescent), resulting in a "filmic" flickering effect. The effect is actually quite cool (in an early 20th century kind of way), but I want to see what it would look like corrected.

I had assumed that it would be pretty quick and easy to correct this sort of thing in After Effects. I've tried using Auto Contrast, Auto Levels, and Auto Color (with and without temporal smoothing enabled), but they don't seem to correct the flicker at all.

What I want is to equalize the total amount of "light energy" (sum of pixels values) per frame, using an exposure adjustment. Anyone know how I would go about doing this (in After Effects or other software)?

The flickering you are talking about comes because you have chosen a too narrow aperture. Normally you can completely eliminate the flickering by choosing a wider aperture than f/8.

The reason is simple: The lenses are no longer controlled by a physical aperture ring. Today it's the camera's job to set the aperture, and if you choose a f-number higher than 8, the aperture has to move a lot in a short amount of time. This leads to an accuracy of maximum 96 %, thus resulting in 100-96=4, 4 in each direction: 4*2=8 %. This means that each picture can be up to 8 % different in exposure. (This percentage is of course dependent upon how good your camera and lenses are.)

But as you already have your footage shot you need to fix it on your computer. There aren't many programs to do this, in fact I couldn't find any, but a good one is Photoshop CSX Extended. The Extended version can work with video, thus making you able to correct each frame individually. But this leads to a lot of job!

Luckily for you there has been made an action for Photoshop CSX Extended to automate this process. (Think of it like a plugin for After Effects.) Just load your video and apply the action, and it will fix your footage completely!

The action is a part of a big action bundle called iNovaFX which only comes with this eBook: http://www.gmbooks.com/product/CS5.html. On this page you can see it in action!

I hope this will solve your flickering video! Have a good day!


Will lens softness be apparent on DSLR video footage? The one-line question above had to be vague, so let me elaborate:

Let's say that I'm using a Canon T4i (doesn't necessarily have to be that camera) with a Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM lens to shoot 1080p video. I know that this particular Canon lens is naturally not very sharp at 1.4, and this would probably be apparent on a full-size photo when blown up to 100% scale on a screen.

However, it seems reasonable to me that, even if the lens is soft, if I were to shoot video at f/1.4 and then view it at 100% scale on a screen, the video is still so small in resolution that the lack of sharpness may not be very visible, similar to taking the photo previously described and scaling it down to 50%.

In this way, I want to see if I can get away with using this lens at 1.4 and get results that look very good and really sharp, despite the lens's apparent natural limitations (and, of course, assuming proper focus on my part).

Does my theory have any truth behind it?

Your theory is correct, video is much less demanding of resolution than stills (1080p HD is only 2 megapixels). However you'll never get a truly sharp video image out of a Canon DSLR due to the strange interpolation/line-skipping that is used to produce a video frame from the full image sensor resolution, the result is always a lot softer than you would get from a dedicated HD video camera (or strangely the much cheaper m43 Panasonic GH2).


Livestream outdoor sports I'm looking for a camera to set up to an outdoor tennis court and stream to youtube. I'm not sure what the best way of doing this would be and am looking for guidance.

The way I see it is either I get an IP Camera and livestream directly through it to youtube, or get a (preferably wireless) webcam and stream it through a dedicated PC.

I have done some tests and am successful in streaming with a webcam hooked up to my laptop, then encoding through Open Broadcaster and stream to youtube. What I'm looking for is a simpler system, where I can in the best of worlds just press a button and start streaming.

Any recommendations on type of camera etc. is greatly appreciated!

If you cannot get your video to a wifi uplink; you will eat through your data very fast on your phone.

I speak from experience. Each carrier tower (a cel phone on a carrier only connects to a single tower at any given moment), is a standard T1 line.

One phone will not be enough, if call volume spikes; your uplink bitrate will be bottlenecked by your carrier.

The solution; if this is a serious project, is to build a streaming cel phone package. You want to use rather than phones, the 4G hotspots, which have both USB and wifi connectivity. Although phones work too.

Then you want a product like the Cradlebridge Bandsteering Router, powered off a portable 12v battery source.

The Cradlebridge Routers can use multiple network connections; my unit has 2 USB and 4 CAT5 + Wifi, which it can then, use multiple uplinks; steer the data, and make sure it gets there in the correct order at the right time. Literally, switching between your phones from say ATT, Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, etc; in case you get sqeezed off one or more of your uplinks.

At best-- best... you can expect a consistent 150-200kbps uplink on a single cel line over the LONG run. Thats not to say small uploads and videos don't go up in a snap, but a long run game... you will get squeezed out bandwidth wise. Again, doing a 20 second speed test is not going to give you realistic results for long uploads. The tower on one carrier will allow a burst, fast upload, for say 30 seconds, but then watch it drop.

So you tether 4 carriers together, each carrier will be working of a separate tower... and then use LiveStream to broadcast.

It's harder, and more frustrating, than you would think.

Lastly, do the math, on a single cel line at 200kbps x 1 hour... how many GB will you go through? Unless your data is unlimited.


ffmpeg statement for Anaglyph of Red-Cyan Color I'm trying to take two input videos (can be in avi, mp4, whatever ffmpeg supports) and combine them into a stereoscopic video with the "ffmpeg" utility that uses simple red and cyan colored glasses (anaglyph). I have tried the following statements with input files of type mp4:

ffmpeg -i left.mp4  -i right.mp4          stereo3d=al:arcc  video_arcc.mp4
ffmpeg -i left.mp4  -vf "movie=right.mp4" stereo3d=al:arcc  video_arcc.avi

I see error messages like:

Error message: [NULL @ 0000000003220940] Unable to find a suitable output format for 'stereo3d=al:arcc'
stereo3d=al:arcc: Invalid argument

My source images are a series of JPEGs that I can convert to any input format. It would be preferrable to use left%06d.jpg" and "right%06d.jpg", but that is an extra layer of difficulty for now.

What command line options do I need for ffmpeg anaglyph red-cyan?

stereo3d is a video filter so it has to be specified via a filterchain or complex. Since you have two inputs, and stereo3d only converts a single input from one form of 3D arrangement to another, you'll have to combine the two image sequences first. For which, you can use the hstack filter, which will place the two sequences side-by-side.

So,

ffmpeg -i "left%06d.jpg" -i "right%06d.jpg" -filter_complex "hstack,stereo3d=sbsl:arcc" video_arcc.mp4

By default, image sequences are treated as 25 FPS and hence so will the output, in this case. If the framerate is different, say 24, then the beginning will be

ffmpeg -framerate 24 -i left%06d.jpg" -framerate 24 -i "right%06d.jpg


Utility or method for joining MP4 files I have two MP4 files that I generated with Camtasia Studio. I need to join them together post rendering with Camtasia (it can't be done during the Camtasia rendering process). Looking for a utility or technique that will work to join these, preferably that doesn't require re-rendering all the video again.

Update: Either Windows (preferred) or Mac. Doesn't need a GUI if it is a good command-line app.

I think the simplest way to this is to use MP4Box.

./MP4Box -add file1.mp4 -cat file2.mp4 -cat file3.mp4 output.mp4


Replace all completely black frames with interpolated frames Due to a bug with Nvidia Shadowplay, I have a bunch of videos that look like this.  A bunch of random frames have been replaced with pure black frames.

I'd like to fix one of these videos to remove the flickering.  I saw an answer here which suggests the following ffmpeg command:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf blackframe=0,metadata=select:key=lavfi.blackframe.pblack:value=50:function=less -vsync cfr -c:a copy out.mp4

However, this replaces all the black frames with the most recent non-black frame, which makes the video look like a slideshow.

Is there any way to use a similar ffmpeg command (or any other tool) to use motion interpolation to fix the missing frames?

After poring over the documentation all weekend, I figured out how to use the minterpolate filter to do motion interpolation.  The full command is

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf blackframe=0,metadata=select:key=lavfi.blackframe.pblack:value=50:function=less,minterpolate=mi_mode=mci:mc_mode=aobmc:me_mode=bidir:vsbmc=1:me=fss -c:a copy out.mp4

These were the settings that gave me the best-looking results.  If these are too slow for you, you can try something like

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf blackframe=0,metadata=select:key=lavfi.blackframe.pblack:value=50:function=less,minterpolate=mi_mode=mci:mc_mode=obmc:me_mode=bilat:vsbmc=0:me=tdls -c:a copy out.mp4

which went about 3x as fast in my testing.  You can find the documentation on the different minterpolate options here.


Source patching audio "light" will not turn on The basic question is why the audio source patch of the first audio track will not toggle on.

I'm looking for confirmation or the correct reason.

I created a sequence preset based upon the DLSR 1080p preset and change it to be square 1080 x 1080 but did not change any of the audio settings.  I created a sequence with that preset.  The preset has three audio tracks.

I put my source sequence and set in and out points and then hit over write and it put the audio in a new (fourth) track.  So I undid it and then tried to toggle the source patch "light" of the A1 track but it will not toggle on.

After reading and surfing, I came to the belief that this is because my source audio is different.  The properties of the source says 48000 HZ - Multichannel while the target sequence properties says 48000 HZ - Stereo.

It also seems I can not change these settings once the sequence is created.

Your guess is correct. If you have an audio asset active into the Source Panel, you can't activate the Source Patching for an audio track that does not match the type of the asset. Premiere seperates between Standard (Stereo), Mono, 5.1 and Adaptive. You can tell the track type by the corresponding icons in the timeline:

From Top to Bottom: Standard (no Icon), 5.1, Adaptive, Mono.

You can't put Multichannel audio (where multi means more than two) in Stereo tracks and vice versa. Instead, you need to create new tracks of the matching type. To do this, right-click on any audio track1 and select Add Tracks… from the context-menu. This opens a pop-up menu where you can chose to add any number of Audio and Video Tracks. Make sure to select the right Track Type (in your case, you'll need 5.1 or Adaptive). You can also delete the superfluous Audio Tracks from the same context menu (accessed via right-click).

Note that this will not change the Audio Master Type. When creating a sequence, you can change this in the Tracks tab, as well as control how many audio tracks of which types are added.

1 Note that you have to right-click in the right area, as there are several available context-menues hidden in the timeline, depending on where you click. To access the context-menu described above, you need to click anywhere between the Sync Lock icon (to the right of the Track Targeting toggle) and the column containing the Track Type icons (to the left of the timeline itself). You can also access this via the menu over Sequence → Add Tracks….


How to disable continuos autofocus during video shooting with Canon SX230 HS? I have a Canon SX230 HS camera and want to record a movie from a train driver's perspective on a model railway.

Everything is working fine, except that the camera refocuses continuously during the shoot, making your eyes hurt when watching the movie.

Is there any way to disable the continuous autofocus when recording a movie?

See "Shooting with the AF Lock" on p94 of the user manual.  This is linked from p120 which is for shooting movies so I would assume it works for movies as well as stills.


FFmpeg raspberry pi OMX hardware encoder with inline_headers enabled = Increasing latency over the time I managed to enable inline header on the OMX H.264 hardware encoder. inline header(SPS/PPS) are mandatory to play an already launched stream.

https://github.com/Serveurperso/FFmpeg/commit/6e410823e63103342e8fc3407ff6698808d4d1ef

Yes but there is a problem : the latency grow over the time. There is a strange time calculation problem inside the muxer? I get a lot of traces "application provided invalid, non monotonically increasing dts to muxer in stream X/0" and the ffmpeg process always freeze at 3335/0 (with no trace).

Without inline header : no latency (about 0.2s on raspberry pi 4 / 720x576 25FPS) No "... increasing dts to muxer" error. disadvantage: I can't resume the already launched stream.

With software x264 encoder : no latency (about 0.2s on raspberry pi 4 / 720x576 25FPS) No "... increasing dts to muxer" error. disadvantage: It consume a lot of CPU power...

How to fix the timestamp(?) calculation inside ffmpeg muxer code to take into account the addition of SPS / PPS NALUs ?

Gyan is right :

I just need to add +global header flag and only the "dump_extra" bit stream filter

My patch become useless, ffmpeg can add SPS/PPS itself inside the stream.

My old cmdline is - missing inline SPS/PPS for infinite streaming - :

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -vf hqdn3d=0:0:50:50 -c:v h264_omx -profile:v baseline -b:v 1500000 -f rawvideo tcp://127.0.0.1:8003

I just need to add "-flags:v +global_header -bsf:v dump_extra" the cmdline become :

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -vf hqdn3d=0:0:50:50 -c:v h264_omx -profile:v baseline -b:v 1500000 -flags:v +global_header -bsf:v dump_extra -f rawvideo tcp://127.0.0.1:8003

(live result here : https://www.vigibot.com/ click on the "Astro" public robot)


Are there any recent 64-bit VFW screen capture codecs out there? I'm currently editing some video screen capture recordings I did under Linux using recordMyDesktop (basically OGG Theora video files).

Since there's currently no way to import Theora video into After Effects CC, I first need to transcode the video files into an intermediate format. I first tried with the Huffyuv and Lagarith losless codecs, but the file sizes came up too big.

I also tried transcoding to MP4 using ffmpeg with mixed results. It seems that After effects only likes a particular kind of MP4 encoded videos which I have yet to find. In my case, the footage would show intermittent "video offline" frames, which is undesirable.

The My ideal codec would be something that:

Uses screen capture specific compression.
Can be enumerated as a 64bit VFW codec inside Virtualdub 64.
Runs in 64 bit mode (since I need to decode and edit inside After Effects).
It's free (I'd pay for one, but first I'd like to exhaust my options).

Finally, I tried looking for VFW compatible screen capture codecs and here's what I found:

TSCC codec - TechSmith: Not free. Free version does not allow me to encode video using Virtualdub. I think this one can run with 64-bit applications.
inno Screen Capture Codec(iSCC): Not free. Don't know if runs in 64-bit mode.
MSU Screen Capture Lossless Codec: Free. Compresses files fairly nice. I think it kind of messes with the framerate of the video. Unfortunately, I didn't find a 64-bit build of the codec, so the 32-bit codec encoded files get rejected by After Effects :(.

I also read about using ffmpeg to encode to Quicktime mov with an animation codec here https://video.stackexchange.com/a/8315/6059. So I'll give that a try.

So has anyone else done something like this?

Thanks!

You don't need a 64bit codec to use it in 64bit Software like VirtualDub or After Effects, a 32bit codec will work just fine.
For intermediate codecs I generally use either a QuickTime with PhotoJPEG compression or Animation like you suggested yourself. The latter is lossless and produces fairly big files, the former is lossy just like JPEG but offers visually lossless compression with a reasonable size and works very well in every software that supports QuickTime video.

Another alternative would be a JPEG2000 image sequence which can be be either lossless or lossy, though its a bit less fun to work with as you end up with thousands of files in a folder, though there are commercial JPEG2000 codecs out there that are 64bit native and integrate into Windows.

Another good (open source) alternative is Ut Video. It also features a native 64bit version of the codec and integrates into Windows aswell. It's completely lossless but produces files with reasonable size.


Adding additional audio to a synced clip and having that sync via audio in Final Cut Pro X In FCPX I can select a video and audio clip and do "Synchronize Clips" using the "Use audio for synchronization" option.

Now I have a new clip in the browser on which I can say "Open Clip" and then see the timeline with the audio synced to the video.

If I want to add another audio track into this synced clip, I want a way for the additional audio to be automatically synced too.

I can't seem to find a way to do this - is it even possible?

This is a long shot as I did not try it.

Try to use a Multicam clip instead of a Synced clip.
I know that it is possible to add another audio line to a Multicam clip and sync it inside the Multicam clip.


Copying All Settings Of One Composition in AE I want to copy the whole settings of the composition to the other, all keyframes, transition points, 3d layer etc. In Adobe After Effects

This is not possible to do in one step, it is only possible to duplicate compositions:

Select the composition (Import Footage Panel)
Press Ctrl+D (or go to Composition > Duplicate Composition)
As (almost) everywhere in AE, hit Enter on the selected composition to rename the duplicate

When you need to copy the properties of a layer:

Select the Layer
Click on the tiny Triangle > left beside the layers name to open up the properties
Select Transform, Effects or Mask
Press Ctrl+C
Switch to the Second Composition
Select the Layer
Set the playhead to the animation start frame (first keyframe)
Press Ctrl+V to overwrite all properties and insert all copied keyframes

To check the result, press U on the Layer, this will open up all animated properties of the layer.

Note: Copying the same properties of different layers is also possible by selecting multiple layers, open up the properties simultaneously, and select them by holding down Ctrl or Shift.

Related: After Effects: Shortcut for showing all transforming properties of a layer


Using super resolution to improve video quality Is there any publicly available code that uses deep learning to employ super-resolution techniques to improve the quality of video clips?

Or even any free online software?

Thanks.

Yes, there is a method using AI to upscale images:

if you convert your footage into an image sequence using ffmpeg, you could run every frame through such upscaling.


How to automatedly synchronize video recording with pre-recorded music track? When they film music videos ---ones that require the artist to lip sync in cooordination with a pre-recorded song--- do they synchronize

the moment that the cameraman hits the record button on the
video camera

with

the moment that the audio of the pre-recorded song starts playing?

What extra equipment is required to do this syncronization in an automated way, instead of with clapboards or flashing hand signals at people?
The idea is to minimize the divergence in syncing the video and audio files within a video editor upon import during post-production. Is there an automated way to have perfect synchronization during both recording as well as editing?

Music videos are often the easiest type of video to sync because they rarely (but sometimes) contain any live sound from the set. Usually, the people in the video are lip-syncing to a recording of their own music, which they’ve rehearsed many times, and have no problem repeating.
In postproduction, all an editor needs to do is replace the camera scratch audio with the original recording.  This is easy when camera scratch audio records the on-set playback to which the talent is lip-syncing, because the editor can either align the audio waveforms visually, or use software to sync the audio waveforms, automatically.  All of the major NLEs are capable of waveform synchronization, but third-party alternatives are also available.
In cases where there is no camera scratch audio, aligning visual cues to the music manually is also straightforward and effective.
But in cases where audio is recorded on set, with second system sound (an audio recording device other than the camera), usually the camera and audio are synced by “jam syncing” their internal timecode clocks together. Usually, also the camera slate (aka “clapperboard”) serves as a visual+audio sync cue.  Low budget sets will often only use a slate, and zero budget shoots will use a simple hand clap. Of these methods, only jam-syncing timecode provides an automated way to re-assemble the files.
In a nutshell, jam-syncing tells all synced devices to set their internal clocks to the same time exactly once, and then trusts that the devices are capable of keeping time accurately.  For a short music video, you are unlikely to experience significant drift between clocks, but for longer recordings, the inaccuracies between clocks can introduce sync errors.  In these cases, highly accurate timecode generators are often used to broadcast timecode continuously to all cameras and audio recording devices.  Ambient Recording’s Lockit box and Timecode Systems’ Timecode buddy are two names in this field.  For Jam-syncing, Tentacle Sync devices are also popular.


Creating a video from a text and an audio file I have a text and an audio file. I want to create a video that simply displays the text with the audio file playing in the background.  I have to create many such videos, so I'm looking for an automated solution. What program/script  could achieve that?

The Amara website offers a free service that accepts audio and text files, synchronizes them, and lets you download a .srt file (synchronized SubTitle). Source of suggestion: Photography TutsPlus.
YouTube also accepts text files without time coding as SubTitle files and then you can enable auto-sync, you ought to be able to download a .srt file after processing is completed (not tested by me).

To do it manually (with some automation) try the following.
If you convert the text file to a .ass or .srt file then you can use the following commands:

ffmpeg.exe -i subtitles.srt subtitles.ass
ffmpeg.exe -i video.mp4 -vf ass=subtitles.ass video-new.mp4

That will show the words hardsubbed on the video synchronized with the audio. The video can be a moving image (video) or a static image.
Using a .ass editor allows more control over color and other font features than using .srt files.
Without using a SubTitle Format file you won't get synchronized text.
You can add the audio to a video and upload it to YouTube, then wait 15 minutes, after which YouTube will have used audio recognition to convert the audio to subtitles (with better than 80% accuracy). Then you can download the .srt file from the Video Manager and edit the SubTitle file by comparing it to your (presumably accurate) text file.
If you were hoping for a program that automatically syncs raw text files with audio and makes a video I have found nothing by Googling (outside of pay services).
There are a few questions over at SO, but they remain unanswered.
I will do some more searching and improve this answer in a few hours.
Not a one-mouseclick solution but it's about as automated as I can suggest, for free (other than Amara).
[I welcome Mulvya to edit and improve this answer.]


AE Error : Imager Buffers exceed internal limits. Decrease the memory requirements for the rendering of this frame. (12804) I'm kinda new to AE and having a weird issue while trying to render a 1920x1080 Composition.

After rendering about 10seconds, i get the following error:

I've checked all of my objects and i have no composition with the large dimensions mentioned in the error.

Did anyone ever bump into this error ? It would greatly help me to hear from the more experienced one.

Cheers,
Shai.

It would be good to know what OS your machine is running and if it's 32 or 64 bit, and the resources as in type of processor (Dual Core, i3, i7?) and how much DRAM is on the motherboard. I am not an After Effects user (yet) but this error appears to be a resource error, which is common to many other video editors.

It would also be helpful to have you describe what you are trying to render in AE. For instance how long is the piece, how many video tracks, what effects are used, etc.

Without knowing your computer's resources is not a show stopper, here are some items to check.

Are you running anything else when AE is trying to render, if so try your render again with nothing running but AE.

If you have a 32 bit machine you may have a 2GB limit on the RAM, which is going to be an issue. Have you tried this on a 64 bit machine with more memory?

What resources do you have AE using besides the requested render? For instance do you have the preview screen on 'auto' size mode, you might try to make the preview smaller and in a 1/4 or 1/2 mode so AE doesn't have to figure out each display frame size thereby freeing up some cycles.


Android,iphone,blackberry, Virtual reality content creation I have a requirement to view pictures I have shot in 360 degree panorama mode as virtual tour pictures in various platforms.

How can I convert from the panoramic picture to the model used in virtual tour viewers?

I wouldn't suggest trying to do it manually unless you are a mathematician - as it really is all about the transforms that take your cylindrical shots and calculate views and sight lines in real time.

Generally this would be done using one of the commercially available panorama to virtual tour applications. There are many out there - I have only used one, but the functionality seems similar across them all.

Try out something like Pano2VR, which has a free trial version to get a feel for how it works.


stream with ffserver without encode-decode I have static file on my disk I want to stream it with ffserver .

The problem is that ffserver is decode and encode my file.

I know how to pass decode and encode when I save stream to file ffmpeg-i http://.... -c:v copy test.avi.

How can I do that when I stream with ffserver with command ffmpeg -i test.avi http://<ffserverUrl>

ffmpeg -i test.264 -c:v copy http://<ffserverUrl> still re-encode the video

I know that ffserver is not recommended but I need this option please

FFmpeg, by default, uses ffserver's conf file to set encoding parameters.
Add -override_ffserver to the ffmpeg command to prevent that.


What does a phantom technician do on a production set and why would a director need one? I just saw a video and in the credits is listed "phantom technician" ?
What are this person's duties, and why would a director need one on a production set?

Here is the video reference:
https://vimeo.com/23141142

This was shot with a Phantom HD camera. It's a special high-speed digital camera that can shoot at up to 1,500 fps (which is what the creators say they were shooting at). So he's likely the tech who setup this camera rig.


ffmpeg - Stretch 4:3 video to 16:9 I have a video track that is a 4:3 video with pillarboxing/black bars on the side making it a 16:9 video. The resolution of the video is 960x540 (16:9).

How would I remove the blackbars and then stretch it to 16:9 to be a proper 16:9 video?

What I have:

What I want:

I'm assuming I want to use a -vf "crop=720:528:120:6" to remove the black bars from the side and the small one at the bottom, but how would I then stretch that to 16:9?

By the way, im hoping to end up with this video in the resolution: 960x540, meaning with the small 6 pixel removal of the small border under the video, im hoping to stretch that BACK to 540 from 534.

Add a scaler after the crop.

-vf "crop=720:528:120:6,scale=960:540,setsar=1"

The setsar is added to prevent players squashing the video during playback.


What software do I need to convert a DVD to common formats? And what are the recommended formats? I need to rip a DVD (product instruction manual for my company) and convert the files into common formats for users to download and play on their computers.

I was planning on offering .MOV, .MP4, .WMV and .SWF (is this overkill?). I was able to use handbrake to convert the files to .MP4, but I am not sure how to convert the rest.

I am looking for a software recommendation (Windows) that will cover all of the formats.

I ended up using Xilisoft and it works well for my requirements.


Any way to create a dashed line in Premiere Pro? Is there any way to create a dashed line within Premiere Pro- say in the title tool or otherwise, without having to import from external sources?

A possible workaround would be to use the Venetian Blinds filter. Here with a bit of experimentation I've made a path with a stroke of 20 and for the blind effect I have doubled the width to 40.

The Transition Completion value is set to 50% so that half of the effect is achieved. You might want to play around with the settings if you want longer dashes or gaps.

This effect is typically used as a transition, but as we have not used keyframes for the transition there will be no animation. This effect only works with straight lines, if the line is at an angle, you will need to adjust the Direction value.

You may find it more appropriate to design dashed lines in After Effects as there are options for stroke gap and width to easily create a dashed line.


Where can I find build in sounds in fcpx I a editing a video and I want to add some sound effects ie by some places add some small Bits of audio. Is there built in audio files in fcpx like in iMovie? Or do I need a plug-in? And if that is the case, what plugin?

Thank you

Make sure you do “Download Additional Content” under the Final Cut Pro menu. Download and install if you haven’t.

Left top corner next to the Library Sidebar icon is the Photo and Audio Sidebar Icon. When you in this sidebar you can find “Sound Effects” with lots of sounds you can use for free.


Final Cut Pro X Sharing to DVD 66% error? Slideshow compression? I created a Slideshow in Final Cut Pro X.  I need to burn a DVD, I need to upload to YOUTUBE and I need to put on a jump drive.  I can export to Master File, however when I try to burn to DVD it only burns to 66% and stops.  I tried to "Add" background before burn to get it work to no avail.  The Slideshow is majority photos with very small small video at the end.  Specs are 720/42:22 minutes/42.4GB.  I just downloaded Wondershare video converter and feel perhaps I got ripped as it it stating conversion to 3.1gb will is taking 200 minutes.  I need help.  Any suggestions on how I can get this to burn to DVD, bypass 66% error, or compress smaller?

Open Activity Monitor. I found that every time share (from fcpx) hangs @ 66% the app "DSPPublishing Server" wasn't responding. Look down the list of active Process Names and manually terminate it. This should allow Create DVD to restart.


Any DSLR monitors around 3 inches? I'm looking for an external DSLR monitor that is not bigger than around 3 inches. For example, 4 or 5 inches is too big. I need something small and not bulky, for skateboarding videography.

Zacuto makes an EVF monitor that is 3.2 inches, and I can say from experience this is the real deal...Has built in sharpening monitoring to help with focus support, and has a detachable eyepiece...also look into their camera rigs fro your skateboarding videos, they could be really helpful for you.

http://www.zacuto.com/zfinderevf


Can I paint a rough wall with chromakey paint to make a green screen? I'm setting up a studio to make videos. My space has walls that have been covered with stucco-style paint. In other words, they're rough. I want to have a green-screen background behind me. If I paint these rough walls with chromakey "video paint" will little shadows mess with the chromakey effect and defeat the purpose? In other words, do I need to put some other flat surface in front of these walls? Hope this question makes sense!

It depends on some factors.

For example, how far is the wall from the main actors? If you have some good spacing, the texture can probably blur out due to DOF. But as on a green screen you need to maximize the focusing range, probably you will still have some texture visible.
How even is the light? You can probably lit good enough from both sides to eliminate the shadows on the texture produced by the other light.

In reality, you need to test. You do not need to paint in green before making these tests. Use your wall as it is, and use that color as a chroma key, you can even use white. Put a subject with clothing that has no white (or whatever current color you have now) and make a test. If it passes, it will probably work better when painted in green.

If you do not need a large green screen, you could probably use a frame made of PVC and green fabric.

But if it is sort of permanent thing... probably add a panel.


How to get battery status of aftermarket battery on Canon camcorder Is it possible to get battery status of an aftermarket battery on Canon camcorders, specifically Legria HF R26?

When I insert that battery, I get the message saying that the camcorder can't communicate with the battery pack, which is understandable since it says the same thing in the manual.

I'd just like to know if there's some kind of a workaround.

By aftermarket do you mean generic? I.e. a battery made by a company other than Canon?

To the best of my knowledge, generic batteries won't give you a charge reading in the camera. Only original batteries will. That's just the trade off you have to live with when choosing generic batteries.


How to learn all about video editing? I have been self learning about 3D art(especially using blender) and have reached a level where I can make some use of my skills on a productive scale. (Even though blender has an integrated VSE) I though have to learn to make my small footages produced from 3D art seamless and I realized the importance of video editing. But, learning video editing comes with also technical knowledge about codecs and encoding and all the technical stuff.

I am not really a programmer, and I have been practising 3D art in a very intuitive and practical process. How do I learn about these technical sides of video editing in order to ready myself for a more strong and production scale way?
It would be very helpful if some books and resources were also included as a recommendation.

The best resources I've seen for learning how to edit are on YouTube. A lot depends on what NLE you'll be using to edit, but most editing fundamentals translate well across all NLEs (which is what I believe you're asking for anyway).

One popular YouTube channel with a ton of videos on how to edit is Film Riot. They have 700+ videos on all aspects of production, but a search for "edit" on their channel shows they have a ton to offer on that subject as well. They typically stay in Adobe Premiere Pro, but they generally strive to make their tutorials work across any editing software.

Surfaced Studio is another channel I've discovered recently with a nice playlist of some beginner-level Premiere Pro tutorials. Unlike Film Riot, Surfaced Studio seems to be pretty specific to Premiere Pro - usually, explaining how to work within the PP interface.


Is there a text effect for Sony Vegas Movie Studio for light reflecting off metal? I found a picture to illustrate the effect I would like to have. http://www.bugei.com/scart/public/database/repository/images_import/peace/habuchi.jpg

Does anyone know of text effect for this, or another way to do it?

Vegas Movie Studio or Pro versions do not have a text option already set up for this but there are a couple of ways to get what you want.

One way is to make a composite by creating two video tracks one with the text and the other with the image you want to bleed through the text, here are instructions on how to do what is called a 'masking track':

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/creating_masking_tracks_in_vegas