High noise video during night at F/1.8 I am using Nikon D5600 camera body with Nikon f1.2 50mm prime lens.

Shooting condition: Dark with few lamps along the street.

Settings:

Mode: Manual
Aperture: f1.8
ISO: 200
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
Video FPS: 24

The camera was mounted on a tripod and there was no light source directly above the camera.

PROBLEM: The video contains so much noise. Since I have already set the ISO at 200 then what is making the video so granular?

Why have you set your ISO as low as ISO200?  You are telling the camera: go ahead and waste the light, I'll crank it up in post-production.  1/50s of exposure does not help.  And you have an f:1.2 lens and use it at f:1.8.  Which is probably sharper in sunshine.  But you don't have sunshine.  Stop telling the camera that it should behave like it has plenty of light to spare (it's not only the ISO but also your other choices) and tell it what it is actually dealing with.  There is no point to choose low ISO values and then magnify exposure digitally: that will give you considerably more noise than if you allow the camera to dial up its sensitivity.  And of course, decrease your shutter speed (what use is the cinematic exposure rule when your principal problem is light?) and open up your aperture.

You have good equipment.  Allow it to participate in problem solving as long as the problems you buy for its respective contributions are smaller than the main problem you are dealing with: a lack of light.


How do I transition objects individually? How do I do this? the way the objects appear is just so cool

Video:

I can think of 2 ways:

Film all the objects separately with green screens. Apply a keyer to each one to key out the green areas, place them all on the timeline, and fade each one in as you see fit.
Film them all together, and then manually mask out each object by hand. If the objects are basic shapes it might not be too hard, but if it includes people moving, etc., it could be tough. Then fade the masks out as you see fit.


FFmpeg: afade plugin, how to specify time 1:55 if colon separates filter parameters? Escape I want to make a fade out in a video, using the afade audio filter.

Here's my command:

ffmpeg -i VIDEO06.mp4 -c:v copy -af afade=t=out:curve=hsin:st=00:0:30:duration=00:00:10 VIDEO06-faded.mp4

But appearantly that's wrong, because ':' separates the filter arguments.

How can I specify the time in H:M:S format (here's ffmpeg's duration syntax) within the params? Or how can I escape the colon?

Enclose the time argument in single quotes and escape the colons within.

So,

afade=t=out:curve=hsin:st='00\:0\:30':d='00\:00\:10'


h264 (Constrained Baseline)/(h264 (native) vs h264 (libx264) I am recording a video using OBS Studio with the following settings:

With these settings, OBS is consuming 55 to 60 MB storage for a minute long recording. Considering that my recordings span across multiple hours, a 2-hour recording ends up consuming as much as 4 GB space.

So I tried to transcode the recorded videos with FFMPEG with this command:

ffmpeg.exe -i [RecordedVideoFileName.mkv] [OutputVideoFileName.mkv]

The transcoded video consumes just 5-6 MB per minute in comparison to 55-60 MB per minute as consumed by OBS. The logs of the command are here.

While going through the logs, the following statements statements caught my eye:

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> h264 (libx264))
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (aac (native) -> vorbis (libvorbis))

So I had the following questions:

What is the difference between h264(constrained), h264(native) and h264(libx264) encoders?
Does transcoding from one to another (as in my case) result in degraded video/audio quality?

Let me clarify what a stream mapping line such as the one below, indicates.

Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> h264 (libx264))

Stream #0:0 indicates that the input stream is from the first file #0:0 and is the first stream in that file #0:0

-> #0:0 indicates that the input stream is sent to the first stream of the first output file.

h264 (native) means that the detected codec of the input stream is H.264 and that ffmpeg will use its native (builtin) decoder to decode the stream.

h264 (libx264) means that the codec of the output stream will be H.264 and that ffmpeg will use the libx264 encoder to generate this stream.

"h264(constrained)" usually seen in the input file dump e.g.

Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline), yuv420p(progressive)...

indicates that the input stream codec is H.264 and the stream profile is Constrained Baseline. A profile defines the kind of methods that an encoder can use to generate streams and also a set of methods that a decoder is expected to perform, in order to decode the stream.

With your ffmpeg command, libx264 is re-encoding your video stream with CRF 23 and profile High. If the output looks fine to you, there's nothing to do further.

To experiment, you can use

ffmpeg.exe -i [RecordedVideoFileName.mkv] -crf X [OutputVideoFileName.mkv]

where X can go from 0 to 51. 18 to 28 is a good range for good quality and file size. Lower is better quality and larger size.


Help with composition of a movie shot - direction of character's eyes I am making an animated short and I need help to decide the right direction of the character's gaze.

On the image -

The uppermost shot is the preceding frame - the Red is standing over Blue, and looking down. He is slightly to the left of him (the axis of the camera is on the right side of Red)

The last shot is the following frame - Red is leaving and the camera stays on the right side of the axis.

Where I need help deciding is the case 1) or 2).

The 1) is feeling more natural to me, Red is looking to the right side, which the Blue occupies in other frames.

But case n.2 makes more sense, as Red is looking down and to his right, where Blue realistically is in the scene.

I am not sure which one to use.

Shot 1 makes the most sense. In shot 1, your camera doesn't "cross the line" between the two characters. (That's an important cinematography rule; audiences unconsciously expect it.) Here's the easy way to apply this rule to a scene with 2 characters:

The character on the left of the frame in the wide shot should always be looking towards the right of the frame, and should keep looking towards the right of the frame in close ups and over-the-shoulder shots. (The opposite applies to the other character.)

Your character in red starts out on the left of the frame, and is facing the right of the frame (even though we see the back of his head). He needs to keep looking towards the right of the frame in subsequent shots in that scene. Shot 1 shows him looking towards the right of the frame, so that's the shot to use. :)


What is a non-encoding lossless h.264 AVC editor? (other than avidemux which is buggy) This is actually in reference to mp4 h264 avc shadowplay videos; I've tried avidemux but its buggy, and alternatively I like shotcut's interface but it doesn't have the specialized h264 in/out lossless cutting without encoding like avidemux.

I know only VideoReDo and SolveigMM Video Splitter, but they are not full-featured video editors. Both are not free.


Maya Python - How to create shaderOverride? Using python in Maya 2017, I'm able to reproduce the structure of my render_setup (layers, collections and overrides) except for shaderOverride.

For a classic override, I use the instance function : maya.app.renderSetup.model.collection.Collection.createOverride()

Is there a similar command to create a shader override or do you add some specific attributes?

Thanks

You need the MTypeId of the override you want to create. Find typeIDs.py in your Maya installation folder (.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/maya/app/renderSetup/model/typeIDs.py)

As you can see, the MTypeId of a shader override is 0x58000386.

Then, just create a layer and a collection, and call your createOverride method:

from maya.app import renderSetup
import maya.api.OpenMaya as OpenMaya

renderSetup.model.renderSetup.initialize()
rs = renderSetup.model.renderSetup.instance()

# Create layer
rsLayer = rs.createRenderLayer('MyFirstLayer')
# Create collection
rsColl = rsLayer.createCollection('MyFirstCollection')
# Create shading override
over_obj = rsColl.createOverride('MyFirstOverride', OpenMaya.MTypeId(0x58000386))

If you want to create another override, just find the according MTypeId.

Thanks to Fabrice that answered this question here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48305522/maya-python-how-to-create-shaderoverride


The end of my video gets cut off every time I finalize I have a video that I have edited and saved as mp4 several times, each time the last few seconds gets cut off.  The frame freezes but I hear the sound, and the closing credits are cut off.  Same result on a 30 minute version and 15 minute edited version.

You might want to check the framerate of your video and the one of your composition and match it.

If they don't match the app will try to fill the timeline of the composition with footage that is 'shorter' in terms of frames per seconds.


FFMPEG prores_ks 4444 color shift I am attempting to encode "ProRes 4444" movies with ffmpeg.  Some research led me to the "prores_ks" encoder, which is the only one of ffmpeg's prores encoders that supports "4444".

I used this command to test it out (input excluded):

-c:v prores_ks -f mov -profile:v 4444 test.mov

This produces a ProRes 4444 movie.  However, the colors appear darker than the original input.  After some research I came upon this option:

-vf colormatrix=bt601:bt709

Adding this filter seems to fix the problem.  However, the file size is for some reason considerably bigger.  Also, I do not like the idea that a filter has to be performed during this encoding, as I want the highest possible quality.  Does anyone know of a way to overcome this "color shift" without a video filter?

I believe the problem lies in how FFMPEG does the RGB->YUV conversion by default.  This option specifies the use of the bt709 color space for the conversion, instead of the default of bt601.  This fixes it for me - though please let me know if I'm doing something bad here!

-vf scale=out_color_matrix=bt709


Combining multiple Videos Does any one know about any free software for windows with which I can combine multiple videos and create a video like this?

On Windows, for free, your best (albeit complicated) bet might be Blender.

You could create a series of several plane meshes in the layout you wanted, in front of the camera. You'd then create a separate material for each of the planes, setting them to shadeless, and giving each a different video texture. You'd have to mix the audio separately (Windows Movie Maker, or Blender also has a built in video editor).

I'll note that using a 3D approach for something like this isn't ideal at all - a 2D compositing program like Adobe After Effects would be much better (Blender itself does have a 2D compositing component, but since it uses nodes instead of layers, it might actually be more difficult).


How to change framerate with ffmpeg without re-encoding? I have lots of large mjpeg timelapse videos, and I would like to speed them up with ffmpeg without loosing quality, dropping or creating frames.

Video: mjpeg (MJPG / 0x47504A4D), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 1280x720, 605 kb/s, 1 fps, 1 tbr, 1 tbn, 1 tbc

The only way I got it working is ffmpeg -r 10 -i video.avi -vsync 0 output.mp4, but this encodes the output with mpeg4. If I use -vcodec copy, the -r 10 looses its power. The PTS rescaling method creates and drops frames. I do not care about timestamps, I want a file with all of the input frames at a fixed (higher) frame rate.
Is there a simpler solution than this? Maybe with image2pipe?

This can't normally be done, but luckily for you, MJPEG is a codec for which streamcopy + piping can work

ffmpeg -i in.avi -c copy -f image2pipe - | ffmpeg -f image2pipe -framerate 50 -i - -c copy out.mp4

The JPEG frames in your input are malformed. For such streams, it's a two step process

ffmpeg -i in.avi -c copy frames%d.jpg

ffmpeg -framerate 50 -i frames%d.jpg -c copy out.mp4


Youtube convert my video on bad quality I have some problem with video and its representation on youtube. When I upload video which was encoded with MPEG4 or H.264 codec, I get bad quality video after youtube processing.

What is this video. And what is my task.
I get source video from Iphone, Ipad, Ipod. Format of this video is - mp4. Then, I decode this video on frames with Java Library - Xuggler. This library is a wrapper of ffmpeg. After some filters on frames, I encode this frames on final video. I use codec MPEG-4 and try H.264, final format - mp4. And this final video is fine. It has the same quality as source video, when I play this video on Windows Media Player. But, when I upload video on youtube, after processing I get video with bad quality.

This is characteristics of source video, after uploading on youtube it doesn't lose quality:

And this is characteristics of final video. It loses quality after youtube processing:

This is just a result of the compression that Youtube chooses to apply.  Your initial data rate for the video (3.5 megabits for an SD video) is exceptionally high and not really designed for streaming.  Youtube probably sees that it is only an SD stream and then drops the bit-rate accordingly.

It may not be possible to get better quality since Youtube's system decides what compression settings to apply for their transcode, however you could try submitting videos which match with Youtube's suggested transcode settings and that might help.


Digitize a VHS tape with FFmpeg and get a live preview Digitize a VHS tape with FFmpeg

On this thread, I found a perfect command to digitize a VHS tape with FFmpeg using a USB video grabber. All good with that; it works like a charm. Acceptable bitrate, no dropped frames and, most importantly, a good output file.

Working command:

ffmpeg \
-f v4l2 -standard PAL -thread_queue_size 2048 -i /dev/video1 \
-f alsa -thread_queue_size 2048 -i hw:2,0 \
-vcodec libx264 -preset superfast -crf 23 -vf yadif=1 \
-acodec libmp3lame -b:a 128k -channels 2 -ar 48000 \
vhs_output.mov

Question: How to get a live preview?

I've read numerous threads talking about pipes and tee objects, but I still haven't figured out how to get a live preview.

My try for a ffplay pipe:

ffmpeg \
-f v4l2 -standard PAL -thread_queue_size 2048 -i /dev/video1 \
-f alsa -thread_queue_size 2048 -i hw:2,0 \
-vcodec libx264 -preset superfast -crf 23 -vf yadif=1 \
-acodec libmp3lame -b:a 128k -channels 2 -ar 48000 \
vhs_output.mov \
-f h264 - | ffplay -

The problem with this command is that there are now two x264 encoders active. Secondly, the preview isn't as fluid as the output since there are now lot's of dropped frames. Where have I gone wrong? How can I reuse the first output? Raw piping isn't an option since ffplay can't handle it.

The tee muxer is suitable for this.

ffmpeg \
-f v4l2 -standard PAL -thread_queue_size 2048 -i /dev/video1 \
-f alsa -thread_queue_size 2048 -i hw:2,0 \
-map 0 -map 1 \
-vf yadif=1 \
-vcodec libx264 -preset superfast -crf 23 -flags +global_header \
-acodec libmp3lame -b:a 128k -ac 2 -ar 48000 \
-f tee "vhs_output.mov|[f=nut:onfail=ignore]pipe:1" | ffplay -


Shortcut to remove all keyframes from a clip Say I have a bunch of keyframes on a clip. I want to delete all of these keyframes.

Say the keyframes are limited to position, scale, and opacity. Then the quickest way I know of doing this is to

Select the clip.
Click on the stopwatch icon next to "Position".
Warning pops up: "This action will delete existing keyframes. Do you want to continue?" Hit "OK".
Repeat Steps #2 and #3 for "Scale" and "Opacity".

Is there a quicker way of doing this? I'd imagine there's some quicker shortcut.

You can delete the keyframes quickly by selecting them in the Effect Controls panel.

On the right side of the panel, you can see the mini timeline containing all the keyframes at their corresponding positions. First, double-click the bar at the bottom to make sure the entire clip area is visible. Then, you can drag a marquee selection with your mouse, or click anywhere in the keyframe area and press CTRL + A to select all keyframes. Then simply hit backspace on your keyboard to delete the selected keyframes. If you delete all the keyframes for an effect parameter, this will also reset this parameter to the last value it had before you activated the animation.

Note that this does not deactivate the animation for that parameter (i.e. the stopwatch icon stays highlighted). So if you change the parameter value after that, it will create a new keyframe at the current playhead position. Press the stopwatch icon to deactivate the animation for the corresponding parameter. If the parameter has no keyframes, the warning prompt will not pop up.


Is it possible to embed VTT subtitles & chapters in webm video? I have a video in webm format, and two files in webVTT format, chapters and subtitles.

Is it possible to embed this two webVTT file in the webm in order to get only one file ?
webm is a derivative of Matroska, so it's certainly possible. The real question is they will be handled by a program like VLC ?

Thanks in advance !

Edit: It seems that WebM now supports VTT subtitles. See the link below for detailed information.
If you want to add subtitles to a video on a web page, have a look at the HTML5 'track' element. It allows adding subtitles without muxing them into the video container. More details here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Apps/Fundamentals/Audio_and_video_delivery/Adding_captions_and_subtitles_to_HTML5_video

WebM doesn't support subtitles nor chapters right now so you won't be able to embed them without creating a WebM file that is out of specs.
You will probably want to remux your video into mkv and then convert your VTT subtitles to SRT and mux these into your mkv aswell.

From http://www.webmproject.org/docs/container/

  Initial WebM release does not support subtitles.

  WHATWG / W3C RFC will release guidance on subtitles and other overlays in HTML5  in the near future. WebM intends to follow
  that guidance. Ref: WebVTT.


Issues with uncompressed video in edting software I want to create a video from a collection of sequences I took with a light portable camera in 1080p. Because the sequences are quite shaky I used VirtualDub/Deshaker to process the video files and stabilize them. The output from VirtualDub was saved in uncompressed AVI (around 10GB per minute). I thought that it would be better to continue in raw in the video editing software and then to re-compress only once the end result is ready to export.

The problem is that video editing software tools seem to have a lot of trouble playing back my uncompressed video sequences. I tried Movie Maker without success and then thought a more pro tool such as Lightworks would be better. However both tools struggle playing back the video. The PC I use is a high end i7 desktop with 16GB ram but it looks like the bottleneck here is the hard drive.

Is there a better way of keeping the quality of the video between VirtualDub and the editing software, perhaps a lossless video codec ? Or is there something I'm doing wrong here ?

Thanks.

The limitation is certainly the disk I/O, which at 10GB/min is outside the capabilities of all but very high-end disk subsystems.

It's generally true that you should work at the highest bit rate and bit depth your system is capable of so you have the headroom for processing, but your system simply isn't capable of working at the rates your asking of it.

Determine what you need as the end result and pick a reasonable level above that for editorial. Uncompressed 1080p is way overkill if your target is YouTube, for example. Usually, choose an all I-frame (no interframe compression) format and a bit rate that will allow your system to handle two or three streams at once. If your disks can handle 60MBytes/s random access, it can play 3 80Mbit/s sources for compositing, and so on. That's more than needed for all but the most demanding targets.


Editing Daniel2 Cinegy out of pendrive USB3, possible? Does a USB3.0 pen/thumb drive have enough speed to handle editing in Premiere Pro Daniel2 codecs ?

It depends on the USB flash drive, for example some have > 100 MB/s R/W capability and would be similar to working with a traditional HDD. However USB flash drives have chips which are not meant for constant use and lots of writing, and they don't have wear leveling like a good SSD. This means that the flash drive will go bad sooner and you will lose your data when it does.

I recommend using a portable SSD to work with your video projects. For example a Samsung T5 series.


Firefox only uses OBS virtual camera I'm on macOS (10.14.6) and have OBS installed. I tried out the virtual cam a while ago using the native virtual cam functionality (not the plugin) and now whenever I need to use my camera in Firefox (88.0b5), it uses my virtual cam. This is the case whether OBS is open or not and whether my virtual cam is "started" or not. I can't get it to use my macbook's normal webcam or even tell that it exists.
There don't seem to be any preferences in OBS (26.1.2) about disabling the virtual camera. How can I disable that feature entirely or just get Firefox to use my normal webcam instead of the virtual cam?

If you no longer need the virtual camera, you can uninstall the virtual camera plugin (whether it was installed as a separate plugin or as part of an OBS update) using the following commands in the terminal:
sudo rm -rf /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/obs-studio/plugins/obs-mac-virtualcam

Once that is done, make sure to close OBS and restart (quit and open) Firefox.


Recommended format for a large embedded stop motion animation on website? I have a stop motion animation of about 35 seconds in duration (~150 frames). The resolution is quite large at around 900px x 450px.

What is the best format to play this looping on my website? I think my options are either .gif, standard .swf, or convert it into a movie .swf.

What is the recommended approach to this? I want the images to have a high fidelity and I was hoping to not use flash due to Apple incompatibility.

Likely the best solution is take your frames into a video editor, set the still pix time to about 0.23 sec for each shot as you indicated you wanted to show 150 frames in 35 seconds.
35 / 150 = 0.233333333

Set your project properties to 720p, (720 x 1280 progressive)
As you have 2:1 aspect ratio there will be some letter boxing.

Or a better match maybe to use iFrame format:
960 horizontal by 540 vertical pixels assuming you are using iMovie of FCP.

Assuming iMovie, render to .mov and follow these instructions to make it a .swf movie:
http://www.ehow.com/how_8245141_export-imovie-swf.html


How can I animate an iPhone screen within a blender animation? I rendered an iPhone with a black screen in Blender and then animated it so the camera pans in a circle around the iPhone. I exported this as an AVI file. Then I took my real iPhone and took a screen recording. How can I use After Effects to overlay the black screen from the fake rendered iPhone with this recording while the AVI video pans the camera around the rendered phone? I am new to After Effects.

I made an attempt to use a green screen my rendering the iphone again with a green front and then using track motion within After Effects. Results aren't great, it doesn't track well and it's very wobbly but it seems like I'm on the right track.


Converting a Video from 1600 * 1200 to 1200 * 900 I have a video in the format of 1600 * 1200.
I want to convert this video into 1200 * 900.

I have done this with handbrake, but the first 10 seconds of the video is black and scrambled.
Is there a way to convert the video correctly with handbrake or can I do this differently ?

UPDATE
When I play the converted video the first time with "Windows Media Player" the first 10 seconds are not visible correct. If I replay the same video in the same "Windows Media Player" session it shows up correctly also the first 10 seconds.

Use ffmpeg with -vf scale=1200:900 option. For example

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=1200:900 -c:a copy output.mp4


Issue with sony vegas rendering small parts of video I am trying to render a video in Sony Vegas Pro 13.0 and I have something strange going on. Please see the attached screenshot:

That section of the video is rendered as full black screen. It should contain 0.5 seconds video cuts, followed by black screens in order to obtain a clipping effect but Sony Vegas will render it as black screen without taking into consideration the small cuts.

Do you have any idea why this is happening?

If I interpret your timeline correctly, your video pieces are way shorter than 0.5sec. I would guess, they approx 1/60 sec long. So depending on the rendered framerate and exact the position of the pieces, the image may stay dark. I would suggest you extend your video pieces to the desired length of 0.5sec, that should solve the issue.


GoPro 3 Black gets stuck in ">" Play mode when diving I have bought a touchscreen backpanel for my GoPro3 black and whenever I take it diving, it switches to ">" play mode (the black triangle shows up on the front panel and keeps stuck there). I cannot switch it off or operate any of the buttons.

Can it be that the touch panel reacts to pressure from the back cover? I am not using the touch back panel by the way. Any idea what else can be causing this? I have the latest firmware.

It sounds like your probably correct about the pressure of the back panel activating it or possibly the conductance of the water that is around it.  It could be either depending on the type of touch screen they used.


Clear and informative tutorial on video file formats ...I think I will want to make a tutorial that covers video file formats, and their relationship to video codecs.  There seems to always be a lot of confusion around these topics for emerging media creators.

Is there a good source for a tutorial that introduces beginners to the intricacies of this topic?

In particular, it would be good to explain best practices for encoding and exporting files for use during workflow on a single project (ie. many specialists preparing material for use by the primary editor on the job), and formats/codecs to use for mastering a BluRay or for upload to YouTube.

I see some snippets of the information available piecemeal from a variety of sources, but I'd love to discover one clear tutorial -- or at least several that could be used as a basis for a good comprehensive knowledge resource.

---v

I don't think you will find a single clear tutorial as you are talking about a very very broad field and talking about multiple aspects of it.  Many, many, many tutorials exist for help with encoding for YouTube or encoding for Bluray.  In fact, most Bluray authoring software has pretty good walkthroughs in their help.

Youtube itself outlines the basics for getting the best quality encoding for it here, provides conversion settings for unsupported formats here and has links to numerous videos related to creating videos here.

As for understanding file formats vs codecs, I don't know that a tutorial would be much help as it is a conceptual thing not something you can walk-through.  I generally tell people that a video file format is a bit like a filing cabinet, it gives the general organization, but doesn't define the data held within.  The codec is like the filing system and determines how the data the file format holds is stored.

As far as choosing what file format to use or codec, again, with so many to choose from, they really are better covered in tutorials about a specific need.  H.264 in general ends up being by far the most common these days and the file format itself is more or less irrelevant as long as it's using an H.264 codec since it's fairly simple to move an H.264 stream from one format to another.

Similarly, CBR vs VBR 1 pass vs VBR 2 pass is again really more of a conceptual thing rather than something a tutorial can cover.  Most people seem to get it ok when you simply describe video as a bunch of photos and say that CBR uses the same amount of data for every photo, regardless of how complicated the picture is, VBR 1 pass uses less when it notices that a photo is easy to store and more when it is hard and VBR 2 pass looks through all the photos first to make sure that it makes all the photos the overall best quality they can be by spreading the data around to where it's needed.

Ultimately though compression in and of itself is a field that people spend their entire careers in.  It is very deep and complex and you really aren't going to find an all inclusive tutorial to cover everything.  It simply doesn't exist.  The closest I've ever seen was actually the section on encoding in one of the Premiere Pro manuals (I think it was CS2, but it might have been Premiere Pro 6.5 (pre Creative Suite).) but that content is a bit dated now as that was DVD era and prior to H.264 really taking center stage for most purposes.


How to prepare AVCHD on a PC for Mac use later? I recently began a job in IT and part of my role involves recording at some company events. However, it isn't my role to edit the videos themselves. These files need to be handed off to a Mac user who has Adobe Premier. I, however use a PC (Windows 7).

I am using a Panasonic HC-V520 which records AVCHD, and only have the typical included Windows 7 software. I need to somehow get the video to a Mac user (who has Adobe Premier) so that she may view and edit. It would also be nice, if possible, to store the files on our (Windows) server for archiving purposes.

I've found so far that I can play and store the .mts files on my PC and play them in VLC and Windows Media Player, but getting them from the PC to a Mac is really a pain-- Even if I wanted to edit them on my PC they don't burn to a playable DVD in Windows Media Center, and the files aren't playable on a Mac at all.

Don't do anything to the files, Premiere Pro should be able to handle them. Just copy them to a USB drive and hand them off to your editor.

NEVER convert your video files prior to editing. You'll lose quality for no reason.

If the Mac won't open them, try another media player such as VLC media player. For a PC, I'd say you may need to install Quicktime as it comes with a codec that may be required, but on a Mac that should be preinstalled anyway. If that doesn't work, update your operating system. Or just try to import them to Premiere, if it doesn't work, update Premiere.


How to Create Fire Light like Ligthing in After Effects I am interested in creating a fire light kind of effect for a footage. We have a 2d animation composition, and want to add a fire lighting to the scene. Think of a wall when lighted with a campfire or a fireplace. That is what I am trying to accomplish.

Thinking about using particular kind of thing. But not sure if that's the correct way.

How can I? Open to every kind of suggestions.

Thanks!

You could add some randomization to applying a redish orange color to the scene, but really, without 3d depth information it isn't going to work all that well.  Lighting falls differently based on distance from the source and angle of incidence and you can't compute that information easily or accurately from a flat frame.


Interpreting 50fps to 23.976fps in Premiere Pro with my DSLR, I used to shoot in 60fps and then interpret footage as 23.976 so slow it down. Now that I have moved to mirrorless (Sony) in PAL I can only shoot in 25 fps or 50 fps. If I shoot in 50fps and slow it down to 23.976 fps, will it be the same or will my footage look glichy?

The recommendation from Adobe for slowing down motion is to use Optical Flow.  If you put a 50 fps onto a 23.976 fps timeline, select the clip and set Speed/Duration to 47.952% with optical flow, then you should get a good quality result.  And of course you are on your own for sound, because slowing things down 2x is not going to make any sense for the audio you recorded.

Shooting at 25 fps for a 23.976 timeline could be a 4.1% slowdown (in which case you might want to pitch shift your audio so you can keep it) or a re-interpretation (where you drop/optical flow frames) in which case you can keep your audio as is and mate it to the retimed video.

If you find yourself doing lots of 25->23.976 conversions, you may want to seriously rethink the idea of using a PAL camera do make NTSC deliverables and instead buy a camera that is NTSC-friendly.


What exactly is D-Cinelike? My DJI Mavic Air drone has the ability to shoot video footage in either standard mode or “D-Cinelike”.

Is D-Cinelike just a flatter colour profile with less contrast (to capture more detail in shadows and highlights)? What caveats should one be aware of when shooting in this mode or working with it in post-production?

"Is D-Cinelike just a flatter colour profile with less contrast (to capture more detail in shadows and highlights)?" Yes.  It's closer to log color rather than linear.  The big thing to be aware of in post production is to make sure you grade it to where you want it to be and possibly use their LUT to convert back towards Rec 709 depending on what you are looking for.

If you don't want to have to work on your color, don't shoot D-Cinelike.  If you want the best recovery in highlights and more ability to adjust the tone, shoot D-Cinelike and spend the time to apply a color grade to your liking.  (D-cinelike isn't so great in shadow unfortunately).

Personally, I always shoot D-log on my Mavic 2 Pro, which is similar in concept to D-Cinelike, though it has better shadow recovery and a bit more balanced, though slightly less cinematic looking without more effort to tweak it, but last I knew, D-log isn't available on the Mavic Air.

If you want to see some good samples, this youtube video seemed like it had relatively good comparisons of the 3.


Automating Adobe Premiere Pro for trimming videos based on volume level Good evening,

I have been recording screen-captured videos from my iPad explaining Math concepts (it's a Khan Academy style personal project). After I record it, I trim out the parts in which I'm in silence, either because I am making a diagram, or because I am thinking about what I will say.

I have a question related to automating Adobe Premiere Pro: can I automatically trim out those parts? Is there a solution out there that addresses that? Is it possible to build some code in the software where it trims out "anything below volume X"?

Thank you

Try the Auto Gate setting in the Dynamics audio effect.
It will gate (turn off the audio) if the threshold of the audio falls below a specified level for a specified amount of time.
Doing this manually would sound better but take longer.
The gate won’t be able to tell the difference between a deliberate piece of speech and a mouth pop or click, so you may hear the gate open and close when you don’t want it to.

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/premiere-pro/using/audio-effects-transitions.html

Note:It will not trim your clips, just affect whether you hear parts of them in your edit.


Anyone knows what kind of transition like this video? Here is the video:

I know it's "transition effect" at [1:46 -> 1:51] and [0:45 -> 0:49]
But i can't find the name, and some tutorials to do it in After Effect or Sony Vegas Pro.

Anyone knows?
Thanks

What it is

There is no set name for this transition as it isn't a standard transition effect that you would expect to find as a preset in your editing software. It is probably a custom made transition sequence, however it's a rather simple one. It just takes the same image multiple time, applies different filters to them and uses a simple slide-in effect to iterate through them.

How to do it

Extract a frame of your video.
You can either apply the different filters in an image editing program or in the animation software. I think the first method is easier. The filters used in the video you linked are pretty simple; for example, there's a black-and-white converted version of the frame in there, an inverted black-and-white version and one with crushed blacks, increased contrast and overall lowered brightness.
Import those versions of the still frame back into your project, put them in the timeline in quick succession (about 0.5 seconds per image) and apply the same slide-in effect to all of them (you can do this with keyframes, but you will probably also find it in the transition presets of your software).
(Optional) Note that the two instances of the transition you mentioned in your question are not exactly the same, they use different filters and effects interchangeably. For example, in the first occurance there's a grain effect applied to one of the still images and the whole transition sequence has a sepia coloration. The second instance uses a faded film look/effect for the last image in the transition. So you can customize this transition using different effects to have it look however you like.

Why not to do it

Because it looks like crap. I have no idea what kind of video you are doing, but this transition will make you look like you just found out about Photoshop and decided to press all the buttons.
(cough Photoshop Philipp cough)

If you want your video to be taken seriously, use hard cuts or short, soft transitions only. In general, I wouldn't recommend trying to copy Hatsune Miku AMVs from YouTube, unless that is precisely the look and audience you want. Some more advice on transitions can be found in my answer here.


Method of pasting "smoothly-typed" text for demo videos? I often see in demo videos, whenever text is required to be filled in (such as when filling out forms), that the text is entered smoothly, not actually typed by the person shooting the video.

Wondering if anyone knows of a good method(s) of achieving said effect, as it looks much more professional than manually typing text while recording. I'm assuming there is an app(s) that allows someone to paste in text so that it is entered like this, but I can't find anything online so far.

Allmost any video editing software has a "typewriter"-effect or similar called. This one should do exactly what you want and you have the control of several parameters as smoothiness and speed.


GPUs for motion graphics What are a few common GPUs that offer the best hardware acceleration for motion graphics and compositing? (i.e. After Effects, Motion, Combustion, etc)

Currently Adobe products only support hardware with CUDA support.  While there is a specific list on Adobe's website of officially supported hardware, most cards with CUDA support will work with a little bit of tweaking.  The best bet is probably to Google for the particular card you are interested in and the package you want to use as the exact support and capabilities of each card/software combination will vary.


ffmpeg repackaging AVI (h264) into mp4 gives choppy playback in html5 video on chromium I have file.avi which contains a h264 video:

$ ffmpeg -i file.AVI
Input #0, avi, from 'file.AVI':
  Duration: 00:00:20.61, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1530 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Main) (H264 / 0x34363248), yuv420p, 640x480, 1459 kb/s, 18 fps, 18 tbr, 18 tbn, 36 tbc
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp2 (P[0][0][0] / 0x0050), 44100 Hz, stereo, s16p, 64 kb/s

When I convert to a mp4 container using:

ffmpeg -i file.AVI -vcodec copy -acodec copy test.mp4

This produces the following file:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'test.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf56.40.101
  Duration: 00:00:20.72, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1515 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 640x480, 1455 kb/s, 18 fps, 18 tbr, 18432 tbn, 36864 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : VideoHandler
    Stream #0:1(und): Audio: mp3 (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, s16p, 64 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : SoundHandler

The output mp4 file plays in chromium using html5  but is choppy / stutters as it plays.

The file plays smooth in firefox, and also in the desktop viewer (Totem), but I need it to play smooth in chromium.

Are there any ffmpeg flags I need to set to achieve this, or is it something inherently wrong with Chromium?

Note: if I re-encode the file with ffmpeg -i file.AVI test2.mp4 the result works fine in Chromium, but I can't do this (for speed) I'd like to just re-package the h264 video... which almost works.

EDIT: The choppy playback occurs on both Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows and in both Chrome and Chromium.

EDIT 2: Full output from command (note, using flag -an to remove the possibility it's an audio issue.)

Input #0, avi, from 'file.AVI':
  Duration: 00:00:20.61, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1530 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Main) (H264 / 0x34363248), yuv420p, 640x480, 1459 kb/s, 18 fps, 18 tbr, 18 tbn, 36 tbc
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp2 (P[0][0][0] / 0x0050), 44100 Hz, stereo, s16p, 64 kb/s
[mp4 @ 0x1734d80] Codec for stream 0 does not use global headers but container format requires global headers
Output #0, mp4, to 'test.mp4':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf56.40.101
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 ([33][0][0][0] / 0x0021), yuv420p, 640x480, q=2-31, 1459 kb/s, 18 fps, 18 tbr, 18432 tbn, 18 tbc
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[mp4 @ 0x1734d80] pts has no value
    Last message repeated 370 times
frame=  371 fps=0.0 q=-1.0 Lsize=    3664kB time=00:00:20.61 bitrate=1456.2kbits/s
video:3661kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.066175%

Notes:

Adding -fflags +genpts removes the [mp4 @ 0x1734d80] pts has no value error, but does not improve the playback.
Adding -flags:v +global_header removes the [mp4 @ 0x1734d80] Codec for stream 0 does not use global headers but does not improve the playback
Setting the tbc output using -r ## does not improve playback
Setting tbn using -video_track_timescale ## does not improve playback

I ran into this same stuttering after remuxing to mkv and then playing the video on a Roku.  Solved the issue by first fixing the avi with the mpeg4_unpack_bframes filter, then remuxing that as mkv.
See https://www.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-bitstream-filters.html#mpeg4_005funpack_005fbframes
Posting here as this is the top Search result when searching "avi to mkv stutter".


How to remove a rectangular region at the centre I want to remove a portion of the video between say coordinates (x,y) and (m,n), where (x,y) are the upper left coordinates while (m,n) are the lower right ones. Is there a ffmpeg command I could use?

You can use the drawbox filter to umm. draw a box on top of the video.

Basic syntax is

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "drawbox=X:Y:M-X:N-Y:c=black:t=fill" -c:a copy out.mp4

where X, Y are replaced with top-left co-ordinates of box. M-X and N-Y are width and height of the box. The value fill for thickness will make a solid box. This value was very recently changed, so if you have an older version of ffmpeg, use max instead.


Best format to export to in blender I am using blender video sequence editor feature. When I export my video I have subtle quality loss. There are mild flickering artifacts. I have a couple question related to that.

First one, is what is the best format to export to?

It has two places to set formats, which I am not sure the difference.

Under output I can set a tab described as "File format to save rendered images as"

There under video format that allow sound I can select h264, mpeg, ogg theora, and xvid.

Then I have an encoding tab that has a format option described "Output file format" where I can set

flash, matroska, ogg, xvid, h264, dv, quicktime, avi, mpeg4 mpeg2 mpeg1.

Which one of these is best for quality?

The first problem you have to solve is whether the flickering you see is part of your animation or part of the video encoder.  If you have bad normals in your faces, you'll see a flicker.  ProRes 422HQ produces a video file that's both low enough of a bitrate that most modern (post 2008) hardware can play without dropping frames, as well as high enough of a bitrate that you will not see any compression artifacts.  If you still see flickering, the problem is with your model, not your video encoder.  If you see no flickering, then start wandering through the settings of whatever video encoding format you are most likely to use for final product.  If the video's final resting place will be YouTube, that would be H.264.  If it's your laptop or desktop computer, it might be ProRes (Mac) or AVI (Windows) or Ogg (Linux).


Encode a small proxy file with multiple audio streams for editing on Linux After capturing 2K video in 444p with OBS, I need to transcode it to a low quality proxy version that's still easy to scrub and not a huge file. I capture 3 audio tracks in 32-bit PCM and the image consists of two 1920x1080 parts - one is my desktop, one is input from my webcam:

Here's what ffprobe says about that file:

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'original 2020-05-08 21-55-10.mkv':
  Metadata:
    ENCODER         : Lavf58.29.100
  Duration: 00:52:28.95, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 24282 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High 4:4:4 Predictive), yuvj444p(pc, bt709/unknown/unknown, progressive), 3840x1080, 62.50 fps, 60 tbr, 1k tbn, 120 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      DURATION        : 00:52:28,950000000
    Stream #0:1: Audio: pcm_f32le, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, flt, 3072 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      DURATION        : 00:52:28,906000000
    Stream #0:2: Audio: pcm_f32le, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, flt, 3072 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      DURATION        : 00:52:28,906000000
    Stream #0:3: Audio: pcm_f32le, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, flt, 3072 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      DURATION        : 00:52:28,906000000

However editing video in Olive is pretty slow, and I think the biggest problem is high video bitrate.

For example my original captured file is almost 9 GB for 50-minutes of footage, and the playback is very slow.

How can I encode a small proxy file that'll work fast but maintain the same resolution so my transforms don't break when I replace the footage back to original?

I've come up with this ffmpeg command:

ffmpeg -i original.mkv -c:v libx264 -tune animation -crf 35 -x264opts keyint=10 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a pcm_s16le -map 0 proxy.mkv

What this will do:

use h.264 encoder with -c:v libx264 to give small files (prores would give huge files)
use -tune animation to optimize for screencasting
use very low quality to maintain small bitrate using -crf 35
define small GOP settings (complete keyframes will be placed every 10 frames - default settings use more) with -x264opts keyint=10 - this is a tradeoff between small filesize and bitrate and easy of scrubbing. For best scrubbing you'd want to set this to 1, so each frame is encoded independently. However 10 works for me so far.
Use chroma subsampling, as ffmpeg would otherwise maintain original pixel format and you don't want or need 444 for proxy - -pix_fmt yuv420p - this helps make the file lighter.
Encode audio in 16-bit PCM which is very fast to process and easy to scrub (the bitrate is constant) with -c:a pcm_s16le. Compared to video streams the bitrate is still small so using something like Vorbis instead is probably not needed.
Finally, we want to make sure ffmpeg keeps all audio streams in the output file using -map 0. Without it it'd pick just one audio stream and drop the rest.

Resulting file is 1.7 GB (from original 8.9 GB), and plays much more smoothly in Olive Video Editor.

Here's what ffprobe says about created proxy file:

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'proxy 2020-05-08 21-55-10.mkv':
  Metadata:
    ENCODER         : Lavf58.29.100
  Duration: 00:52:28.95, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 7812 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(progressive), 3840x1080, 60 fps, 60 tbr, 1k tbn, 120 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      ENCODER         : Lavc58.54.100 libx264
      DURATION        : 00:52:28.950000000
Stream #0:1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1536 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
  ENCODER         : Lavc58.54.100 pcm_s16le
  DURATION        : 00:52:28.906000000
Stream #0:2: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1536 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
  ENCODER         : Lavc58.54.100 pcm_s16le
  DURATION        : 00:52:28.906000000
Stream #0:3: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1536 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
  ENCODER         : Lavc58.54.100 pcm_s16le
  DURATION        : 00:52:28.906000000


After Effects CC Audio Playback not working So I've been having this problem with my After Effects CC recently and it's actually cheesing my right off. I need to edit a frame by frame storyboard animatic and I can't edit to the sound because the sound refuses to playback. I've tried everything, there is no ''RAM PREVIEW'' button in the new version of AE and the period button simply resizes the window now. What do I need to do to make this work?

If you're on a machine with a number pad, then by default num-pad 0 is the ram preview button. If you're on a laptop with no num-pad, then try crtl0.

If you look in the Window menu you'll find a Previews panel that will let you set the keyboard shortcuts and their behaviours. More if you want to RTFM here.


How to add lower third text graphics to a video using FFmpeg I'm trying to add text to my video. Something like this:

So far I've tried this command, but the text doesn't wrap:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf \
"format=yuv444p, \
drawbox=y=ih/PHI:color=black@0.4:width=iw:height=48:t=fill, \
drawtext=fontfile=OpenSans-Regular.ttf:text='Title of this    Video':fontcolor=white:fontsize=24:x=(w-tw)/2:y=(h/PHI)+th, \
format=yuv420p" \
-c:v libx264 -c:a copy -movflags +faststart output.mp4

The drawtext filter doesn't support automatic wrapping.

So, if you want to display your text in n lines, you have to use the drawtext filter n times, with different values for parameters text, y (and maybe x, too) for every line.


Is it possible to hook up a Component video cable (like those from the Wii) to an old TV that only has classic RCA? I already manage to hook the cables, but my video is black and white.

Is there any way to fix this?

You can get a component to composite video converter.  It takes in the 3 component video connectors and has both S-Video and RCA out.  It should work for your needs.


Convert fisheye videos to equirectangular videos My goal is to quickly create equirectangular videos from full-frame fisheye videos with a given hfov. Panoramatools, especially mpremap allow that but it takes long for each single picture. Given that gpu and 8-core cpu can be used, which program can do that quickly?

You can do that very easily in After Effects. Import your footage/images, create a new composition that matches your footage/images specifications and then apply Optics Compensation (Effect> Distort > Optics Compensation.
Tweak Field of View values until you have the desired result. In some cases you will need to check the Reverse Lens Distortion box.

Cheers!


What software is used in Hollywood for special effects and video editing I am totally new to this video stuff. What I want is to make a short amateur movie and make some visual special effects and maybe edit it.
So I'd love to find some program I could play with and do some nice things.

I found this  question . But answers there still look a little bit confusing to me.

So what software is used in Hollywood for special effects and video editing?
I've downloaded and installed adobe after effects but my feelings tell me that something is just not right with it and it can't be used in Hollywood films production.

UPD: I found this  reddit question so they say that The Foundry's Nuke is the most widespread software for special effects. I guess this is  its official website.

For video editing the Hollywood standard is AVID, however smaller production houses and indie filmmakers tend to use Adobe Premiere. The nice thing about Premiere, in your case, is that it dynamic links with After Effects where you can do motion graphics, composting and basic visual effects such as green screen removal among other things. To explain these keywords would be outside the scope of this website, but dynamic link basically means you can seamlessly go from your edit to your vfx without rendering intermediates.

Nuke is difficult to learn, and requires you to have a foundation in visual effects. Nuke is not an NLE, so it only does visual effects. The benefit of using it is due to its collaborative nature as well as node-based non-destructive structure.

This all probably sounds like garble to a starter, so I would suggest starting to learn Adobe's creative software, and follow some tutorials from http://www.videocopilot.net/.


Wave effect on bottom text I'm trying to animate a text possibly for a logo, making it into a seamless loop. The effect I'm trying to achieve is that of a wave like rippling but only on a portion of the text.

I still want it to look as if it is connected to the part of text that's staying static.

I've seen suggestions of using turbulent displace effect, but I can't get it to loop. Also not certain how to keep one part of the text static while getting the waviness in a correct direction.

Should I mask it out?

Is there any better way of going about this?

Edit:
Here's a static image made in photoshop with warp tool. So, I would like only bottom half of each word have this effect and obviously to animate it.

Create your text layer.
Create a 100% black solid layer
Create a 100% white solid layer, make sure it is above the black layer.
Precomp the two solid layers (cmd/control + shift + c) and jump into the comp.
Add a 'venetian blinds' effect to the white layer and delete the keyframes that automatically accompany it.
Set the 'Direction' to -90deg, 'transition completion' to 50%, width to 100 and the feather to 50 (or half width).
Set a keyframe to position of the white layer. Jump forward two seconds (or however long you want the loop to last) and add 100px to the y position. (Note: the difference in y pos needs to match the width of the venetian blinds effect. 100 = 100).
Go to the previous frame by hitting the 'page up' button on your keyboard.
Hit 'tab' then 'left arrow' then 'enter'. To go to the parent comp.
Hit 'n' on the keyboard to set the animation duration. Duration should always be one frame less that the keyframes of the position on the white layer of the nested comp.
Turn off the visibility of the nested comp and add a 'displacement map' effect to the text layer.
Set the 'Max Horizontal Displacement' to 50 (or your preference) and the 'Max Vertical Displacement' to 0.
Set the 'Displacement Map' to the nested comp layer.

Mine looks like this:

You should be able to modify it to your liking. Good luck!

EDIT: I've just reread your post and realised that you wanted the top to remain static and have the bottom wave.

In order to accomplish that, you'll want to add a couple of rectangular shape layers that will sit directly over your text layers (make them a fair bit wider than your text, but the same height). Add a 'gradient ramp' effect and make is so that it runs from black at the top of the layer to white at the bottom. Set the shape layer's blend mode to multiply. Then cut the layers out and paste them into the nested map layer. Your nested map layer should now look something like this:

With text for reference:

Final map, text turned off:

Now the top of the text will remain static and the bottom will progressively wave more.


How to convert a 2:21:1 video to 16:9 DVD using ffmpeg? I have a MPEG-4 Simple Profile video with size 720x288, pixel aspect ratio of 2:21:1 (ffmpeg says SAR 1:1, DAR 5:2).
I'm trying to use the command I usually use to convert it do DVD format:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.avi -target pal-dvd outputfile.mpg

This produces a 720x576 video which plays fine with video players on the PC. But when I try to burn this to a DVD (with 16:9 aspect ratio), the image is stretched. Playing around with VLC, I understand the video has a pixel aspect ratio of 2:21:1, so when reproduced at 16:9 images are vertically stretched.

I would have expected "-target pal-dvd" to fix this automatically, but it does not. I read some information on the Internet and I think the key is about setting the correct sar/dar, but I tried some combination and I was not able to obtain the result I want, probably because I don't perfectly understand the logic to determine the right values to set.
It's fine for me to have black bands over and below the image, but the video aspect ratio must be preserved, of course.

By the way, I'm getting the same results with avconv instead of ffmpeg.

Thanks in advance.

Having seen the sample, this is the command

ffmpeg -i in.avi -vf pad=720:576:0:144,setdar=4/3 -target pal-dvd out.mpg

The video is square-pixel, so scaling is not required. The frame should be treated as 4:3, not 16:9 (which isn't the right ratio for this movie anyway).

For widescreen playback in the PAL standard, your rendered raster has to be 1024x576. So,

ffmpeg -i in.avi -vf scale=1024:288,pad=1024:576:0:144 -target pal-dvd out.mpg

scale=1024:288 --> the video is scaled to the final display width.

pad=1024:576:0:144 --> vertical pixels are added to make it to 1024x576.

-target pal-dvd --> this will rescale the video to 720x576 and set a DAR of 16:9.


Preventing flicker when recording live presentations Say someone's giving a presentation with the projector image next to them. What I see when recording this is the screen flickers, kind of like top-to-bottom scan refresh that's actually visible. What can be done to fix this? Recording is done with Canon 5DIII.

The reason why this happen has to do with synchronization, or rather, lack there-of.

The projector displays its video-stream at one frame-rate and starting at one point, while your Canon records at a perhaps different frame-rate and starting when the projector image maybe has drawn part of the image.

The ideal approach is to use a common sync - in this case that is very unlikely to help in any case as the Canon don't have a sync input and the projector probably doesn't have one either.

To reduce the problem you need to make sure as a minimum that the Canon and the projector work on the same frame-rate. Ask someone or ask to look at the projector if possible. The start-point (for when the image lines start to draw) is worse - here you need to cross fingers and hope that when you turn on your camera that it will sync with the vertical blanking. As a rule of thumb: use 60i or 30p fps in America and Japan, 50i or 25p in Europe. However, some projectors can show at an internal rate rather than the one based on the electrical system.

Secondly, lower shutter-time (slower) and of course increase the f-stop (add ND filter if necessary). This will reduce the flicker but you can still get "bands" in the video. It will also be more sensitive to movement so here you need to balance/compromise. Too low and you get a strobo-effect instead.

Also try progressive record mode to see if that helps.

However, the best option in cases such as these is to ask for a copy of the presentation file so you can grab stills/video from that in post and super-impose those on the video, or cut to the presentation when editing.

Ask in advance so you can rig your camera in a better position to capture the presenter rather then the screen, but keep track of where in the presentation he is so you get the correct "slide" in post.


Using ffmpeg with avfoundation, capture_cursor and capture_mouse_clicks options are ignored Situation: cash-strapped ivory tower visionary and ffmpeg newbie manacled to a 2nd hand 2010 Macbook Pro concealing a 'Black Screen of Death' NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics chip.

With the help of the gfxCardStatus app (option 'Integrated Only' selected), I overcame this particular Apple quality control failure to record fullscreen video and at full resolution, using the following command:

ffmpeg -video_size 1680x1050 -framerate 30 -f avfoundation -i "1" -c:v libx264 -qp 0 -preset ultrafast -capture_cursor 1 -capture_mouse_clicks 1 capture.mkv

The capture_cursor and capture_mouse_clicks options, however, are steadfastly ignored.

Aside from these omissions, ffmpeg is recording at a quality and smoothness better than any of the screencapture/screencast apps I've tried, so for once I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with the crap hardware, but rather with my use of ffmpeg.

There is nothing to suggest the installation/compilation process went wrong, for which I used:

$ brew install ffmpeg --with-fdk-aac --with-ffplay --with-freetype --with-frei0r --with-libass --with-libvo-aacenc --with-libvorbis --with-libvpx --with-opencore-amr --with-openjpeg --with-opus --with-rtmpdump --with-schroedinger --with-speex --with-theora --with-tools --with-libavformat --with-OpenCV --with-libx264

Is there something I'm overlooking, but which is needed for capture_cursor and capture_mouse_clicks to work? Compilation parameter? ffmpeg option order? Some OS flag setting?

Operating System
 - OS X Yosemite
 - Version 10.10.5 (14F1021)

Hardware:

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 288 MB
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

Addendum

Here the ffmpeg video capture command usage, following the guidelines provided by @Mulvya:

$ ffmpeg -video_size 1680x1050 -framerate 30 -f avfoundation -capture_cursor 1 -capture_mouse_clicks 1 -i "1" -c:v libx264 -qp 0 -preset ultrafast capture.mkv

Place those options before -i "1"

In ffmpeg, parameters and flags apply to the next input/output entry.

So,

ffmpeg {-flags for input1} -i input1 {-flags for input2} -i input2 {-flags for output1} output1 {-flags for output2} output2


Live streaming an event I want to live stream an event on YouTube with my DSLR. Will I need a HDMI capture card? If yes can you please list a few inexpensive ones.

Also, please mention if there are any other ways for me to do this.

Thanks.

Yes, you will need an HDMI capture card.  If you have a modern Mac, you can make do with this $145 device that plugs into its Thunderbolt port: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/ultrastudiothunderbolt/techspecs/W-DLUS-04


How to create a blinking effect in After Effects CC? What I want to do is simple conceptually, but I am just not having success with actually doing it.

I am creating a short video snippet in After Effects, as part of a larger presentation. The video is supposed to begin with a blinking light under the title, which then transitions, with a sound effect, to the video itself.

I've worked out the sound effect, the transition, and all of the other stuff - I just don't know how to animate a blinking light. There must be a way to automate turning the opacity on and off - but all of the tutorials I've found date from several years ago at the earliest and presuppose a working knowledge of After Effects that is more in-depth than what I have.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Preferably with explicit steps!

Create your keyframes
Select them by holding down Shift, via box select or simply click the Flare Brightness Property
Then hold Alt and click the stopwatch icon, this will create an expression
Then click the Expression Arrow > and select Property >  loopoutduration this will cause that the keyframes to repeat themselves


How can I get thumbnails from first frame of a set of videos? How can I get thumbnails from first frame of each video in a set of videos?  I am using Windows.

The command to get a thumbnail from the first frame of a video is

ffmpeg -i test.mp4 -vframes 1 -vf "scale=360:-1" small_thumnail.png

The scale filter is set to resize the image to 360 px width and choose height so that image proportion is maintained.


Is ok to post on youtube or vimeo custom resolution videos? I'm having the need of post some screen capture content where some cropping is applied (eg: 850x620) and/or the original monitor resolution is not full hd 1920x1080 but could happen i have to use directly a 1600x900, 1024x768, 1600x1200 and so on.

Uploading videos in h264 but with a video resolution like that will end in a serious quality loss?

What could be a best practice? Give to youtube, vimeo and other services a classic full hd video adding a black frame to match the size or is possible upload a file in native res?

Main goal is keep everything as sharp as possible.

A custom video resolution has no bearing on quality here; only the choice of encoder, bitrate/rate factor and other parameters will impact the final result.

Youtube's player frame on its site is always 16:9, so if your video has an aspect ratio other than 16:9, YT will automatically add black bars as necessary. No need for the uploader to do so. However, if you decide to embed videos hosted on Youtube elsewhere, you can specify a custom frame size in your embed code which matches the aspect ratio of your uploaded video. In which case, your video will be displayed with no black bars. So, best practice is to never manually append black bars.


Premiere: None of the sequence presets match my clip settings. What to do? I'm a beginner with Premiere CC and following a tutorial that strongly recommends creating sequence settings to match one's clip settings. This seems reasonable enough, but I can't find any suitable presets to match my clip settings. I was not the one who shot the footage, so I don't know what type of camera was used.

ARRI is the default, it seems - should I use that? Oh wait, the footage I have is in 1280x720 resolution, but the only presets available for ARRI are in 1920x1080. Do I need to start looking for ways to upscale the video to match the sequence preset? Should I create a new preset that matches my clip settings (if that is possible)?

I should note that my final video must be 1920x1080. I can decide the frame rate, but I prefer 30fps over 29.97 because it will be easier to create animated content for if that needs to be added.

I don't yet understand enough about Premiere to know whether having a sequence with different dimensions or FPS than the project is a problem, or whether Premiere just handles the conversions automatically - just to give you an idea of where my knowledge level is at.

Clip properties:

Dimensions 1280 x 720
Frame rate 29.97
Source audio 48000 Hz
Project audio 48000 Hz - 32bit
Pixel aspect ratio 1.0

Thanks in advance for any help getting unstuck here.

Those are just presets. Just select one. When you drag a clip into the timeline, Adobe will recognize the clip has different settings that don't match. Just select the option to automatically change the settings for you.

Edit: And you can't magically change smaller resolutions to higher resolutions without suffering some pixelation. Is there a reason you have to upscale to 1080? Devices nowadays automatically adjust to different resolutions. No need to mess with upscaling. Just follow my steps above.


H.265(libx265) codec for 8K videos, using same compress settings, why yuv444 10-bit is saving bitrates than yuv420 8-bit? Our workflow involves huge 8K clips(i.e., 8192x8192). The inputs are mostly very high bitrates 264/265 clips, though we are using ProRes or  DNxHD for post-production within the process, we do not want to archive such huge files as the "master" copies(easily over 100GB for 1 minute).

My current approach is, using FFMPEG to compress the ProRes/DHxHD clips into H.265 clips using a very high-quality setting (crf=12, slow profile).

Another quality related setting is the pixel format config. Then my question comes up:

Targeting the same clips(5 of them), using the same compress settings, one with yuv420 8-bit, one with yuv444 10-bit, yuv444 outputs are constantly smaller than yuv420 outputs(5%-10%), i.e, lower bitrates.

If yuv444 10-bit needs to store more information, how could this be possible?

From Why does 10-bit save bandwidth (even when content is 8-bit)?

  When encoding with the 10-bit tool, the compression process is
  performed with at least 10-bit accuracy compared to only 8-bit
  otherwise. So there is less truncation errors, especially in the
  motion compensation  stage, increasing the efficiency of compression
  tools. As a consequence, there is less need to quantize to achieve a
  given bit-rate.

  The net result is a better quality for the same bit-rate or conversely
  less bit-rate for the same quality: between 5% and 20% on typical
  sources.

See the link for additional info.


Change color to look as how a color blind person sees I use DaVince Resolve and I want to color modify a video in order to show how a person with protanopia sees (protanopia is a form of color blindness). For that purpose I need to change these colors:

to these:

I believe that this is possible in the RGB Mixer menu of the DaVinci Resolve:

yet, I haven't yet found the right combination of the RGB values. Also I don't care about the exact values of the green-olive and the purple as long as the look like green-olive or purple..
Any suggestions on how to modify the colors, would be appreciated.

With these values, I get the results shown below.  Note that your color management settings in Resolve will affect your result, and so will the input color space of your source.  To avoid misinterpreting the color space of an unknown source, I'd recommend using the EBU color bar generator, wrapped in a Compound Clip as a test source.  Wrapping the Generator in a Compound Clip allows you to apply the RGB Mixer, whereas Resolve normally protects test patterns from manipulation.
The values I used were:

R Output:
R=0.5, G=0.5, B=0.0
G Output:
R=0.5, G=0.5, B=0.0
B Output: R=0.0, G=0.0, B=1.0

I also found that unchecking the "preserve luminance" checkbox gave me better results, when I tested against other protanopia images I found on the web.
For this example, I used DaVinci YRGB Color Managed as my color science, with the default rec.709 settings, and set the input color space of your example .jpg to sRGB.  However, when you apply this effect to a video, you should use whatever input space the video happens to be.  Using Resolve YRGB color managed with a known input space will ensure that the transformation is applied linearly (correctly), before being transformed into your desired output space.


Convert MTS 1080/60p to MP4 1080/60p Still learning a little bit about converting formats, fps, etc.

I have a Sony A6000 and have the option to record in 1080 at 60fps. This is perfect for me because I absolutely love the smoothness of it. However, when I import it into my Macbook using PlayMemories Mobile, it imports the .MTS file (perfectly fine) and converts it into MP4. The problem is that the MP4 file looks pretty crappy compared to the original one. Very choppy, etc.

Is there any better way that I can handle this? How do other people record 1080 at 60fps and upload videos to YouTube? I'd like to be able to accomplish the same goal, but have no idea how to. I hope this all makes sense, although I'm sure I'm misunderstanding something here.

I'd love to maintain 60fps if possible during the conversion.

I agree with what @MoritzLost said.  Better that you copy those video files directly.

Once you have these MTS files copied, there are a variety of options.  I ran into this problem myself recently and found the two best options were rather simple (despite lots of complicated discussions online):

Simply rename (or copy first and rename the copy) the video file from a .MTS extension to .MP4 extension.

Sounds a bit stupid, but the video and audio are generally supported by lots of different programs.  Problem is, the MTS container surrounding the video and audio streams us bit as well supported.  Give this a try first, because it's the easiest thing to do with keeping the audio and video quality exactly as it is in the original file.
The next best option I found was using ffmbc.  You can find the website for it (which will eventually be unsupported or removed completely) at: https://code.google.com/p/ffmbc/ .  There is also a Google Groups website for it at: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ffmbc-discuss .  For the Windows version, you'll find a download on the Groups website, while for Mac and Unix/Linux, you can download and build the code yourself (sorry, I can't help you with building on a Mac).

After you have the program built, you can run the following command:
ffmbc -fflags +genpts -i "FILENAME.MTS" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "FILENAME.mp4"

Obviously, you'll need to make sure ffmbc is runable from the command line of whichever OS you are using...otherwise, you can use the full path to the ffmbc executable.  And change "FILENAME" to be the name of whatever file you are using.

**From my experience, you will find the resulting file to be smaller.  For some reason, the MP4 container format is more efficient than the MTS container format.  You could research the reasons behind this, if you're interested.  Anyway, I have found that with a 6.1 GB file, repackaging an MTS file drops to about 5.7 GB.  The time it took to repackage that particular file from MTS to MP4 was about 1m 30sec.  So, even if you have incredibly large files, you are not looking as nearly the length of time that you would for re-encoding the video/audio.
You could also try using ffmpeg, MP4Box, Libav, are a variety of other tools.  The key here is that you do not need to re-encode the audio or video (unless you want/choose to).  You simply want to change the container that "holds" the video and audio streams.

**Generally speaking, the AAC audio format is better supported and standard for MP4.  So, you might want to copy the video stream but re-encode the audio if the application or media player you're using doesn't support AC3 (the default MTS audio format).  Re-encoding the audio won't take much extra time, but will add time compared to simply repackaging the video/audio in a different container.

Also, if you need to change anything, such as framerate, resolution, audio bitrate, etc., then you'll need to re-encode the audio or video (or both).  But, if you literally want the audio/video to be the same, the container change is your best choice and the fastest (with the exception of if renaming the extension MP4, if this works for your purposes).


How do I convert H.264 Rec709 ("SRGB") to H.265 HEVC 10-Bit Rec2020 ("Wide Gamut")? I'm looking to convert a standard colour gamut video to a wide gamut video. For example, I have a 1080p, 2K or 4K H.264 8-bit mp4. This is normally (eg. from YouTube) in Rec709 or "SRGB" colour space.

I want to test my iPad Pro or other wide-gamut monitors to see what the video may look like with a wider colour gamut (eg. Rec2020) as well as save it as a H.265 10-bit mp4.

Download the relevant build for Windows, eg: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpegwindowsbi/files/july-01-2016/

Use the following command line: ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp4 -c:v libx265 -crf 20 -vf eq=gamma=1.15:saturation=0.925:brightness=0.05:contrast=1.15 -color_primaries bt2020 OUTPUT.mp4

Note that you will have to adjust the various values such as brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. to your taste since this is a "brute force" conversion to wide-gamut Rec2020. This has been tested on iPad Pro with H.264 movie trailers. On wide-gamut displays such as the iPad Pro you should notice richer, deeper colours.

Note that this is not an archival or permanent solution as Rec2020 is a very wide gamut vs Display P3 (latest Apple devices) or Adobe RGB (pro wide-gamut monitors). Newer Ultra HD TV monitors or reference monitors that can get close to Rec2020 may be more suitable.

In any case I think this is an interesting experiment and learning experience for any amateur or pro who has just started exploring wide-gamut and/or HDR video... it is a very, very different world to SRGB that had been with digital media for decades. All that is about to change radically in the next 10 years.


How to help warp stabilizer focusing on the right object? I'm making a time lapse video. Due to the specific circumstances, the camera is shaking a little when taking the time lapse photos, which is slightly noticeable in the video. In order to remove the shake, I'm using warp stabilizer effect in Adobe Premiere Pro, which works very well.

In one scene, the primary object—a flower—is shaking under the effect of the wind: this movement is expected. What should be still, on the other hand, is the background: a field and some trees which are far enough from the camera for the wind effects to be noticeable.

However, warp stabilizer imagines that it's the object which should be stabilized, meaning that once the effect is applied, it's the background which is now moving relative to the object.

That creates a very weird, crazy looking scene, but aside its artistic value, I want warp stabilizer to focus on getting the background still, while letting the foreground object move because of the wind.

How do I tell warp stabilizer what zone should not move in the final video?

If warp stabilizer effect doesn't have this feature, how can I help the effect to get it right if I have to shoot the time lapse again? For instance, would it help to include a ruler in the photos as a reference of a stable object (the ruler then being cropped after applying warp stabilizer effect)?

I use long workaround in Premiere and it works for all sorts of stabilizers not only for warp (I use 3rd party).

What I do is masking out unwanted object. But you cannot do that on same clip, since Premiere will serve naked frame to the stabilizer tool. So what I do is put some effect on clip that masks moving parts. It can be title, power window, crop, or draw a mask in newer Premieres. Whatever suits you and track with a shot.

Then you make Nested sequence out of this clip and put stabilizer on that. It will be served with image that is masked out. Not track clip. When done, just go back to original clip inside Nested and tick masking effect off (disable png, or whatever). It will be clean image again and properly done. If You need to change something and re-process it, just enable the underlying effect again.

It is dirty and fiddly but that is how I did it well before Warp was added to premiere with other tools. I would like that would be implemented in the tool itself. Free tools on internet all have masking, but premiums do not bother to serve us better.


Resynchronize Audio to Video When I have audio and video tracks de-synchronized, is there a way to make them synchronous?

A workflow:

Add a video+audio track to a project;
Crop a small Event in the middle and remove the rest;
Uncheck Ignore event grouping option;
Drag one of the tracks sideways;
Note the audio track gets reddish background to indicate it is not synced to Video.
Resize Video and/or Audio Events so that original start/end timestamps get lost;

Now I need to get Audio synced back to Video.
Obviously, dragging Video or Audio will not work as I have resized both Events individually.

How to get Audio back in sync, probably by losing cropping?
I'm aware about opening the Event in the Trimmer and re-dragging the Audio track from there.

This does it for me (see the screenshots):

Set the cursor to the beginning of the audio event.
Drag the beginning of the audio event with the mouse to the beginning of the original clip (note: the cursor is still positioned at the cropped beginning) (screenshot 2)
Cut the audio event at cursor position (press S)
Repeat step 1 to 3 with the video event (screenshot 3)
Now you can easily synchronize video and audio by aligning the events (screenshot 4)
Delete the beginnings. (screenshot 5)


How to simulate a photo being taken from the photographer's POV in a film? How would I go about simulating a photo being taken from the photographers POV in a film?

I want the still to be part of the shot, with moving images before and after the still. And I want the supposed camera to be an analogue old school one.

More accurately I'd have to

superimpose an analogue style viewfinder (I could only find effects for camcorder ones so far)
simulate the closing of the iris
add a filter to make the still look more like an analogue photograph
add a sound effect (at least that's not a problem)

Any tips on how to do this? I'm still in pre-production so all info from setting up the shot to post production would be helpful.

Relevant Equipment
I'll be shooting with a Canon 5D MkII, 50mm prime lens
Editing in Final Cut Pro

Drawing out a viewfinder should not be a big deal. You can do this quicker than searching for one. Do it in photoshop or another decent app. Draw the lines with anti-aliasing on a transparent layer and export it as a PNG with transparency. You may want to set the layer compositing mode in FCP to be something other than the default, play around a bit.
Simulating closing of the iris is just a quick fade to black and back; the sound effect sells it.
Desaturation, the addition of grain. Don't over do it.

I would try 'pillar boxing' the viewfinder shot (4:3 inset in the 16:9 frame of the film), possibly reducing the size so it is inset from the outside frame completely (black all around in addition to being 4:3) as this will give more of the feeling of being 'inside' the camera viewfinder. Then when the taken photo is shown that is full frame.

You may find that desaturating the viewfinder view and showing the taken photo with normal saturation does a better job of achieving what you want; this will depend on the narrative purpose of this effect.


Multiple Audio Sources for Audio Spectrum how can I have more than 1 audio source at the same time for the Audio Spectrum effect of After Effects? Thank you.

I'm using After Effects.

(I tried to upload an image, but it there is an error)

Place your multiple audio sources into a comp, then place that comp into the comp where your audio spectrum effect is going to be.  Point the Audio Spectrum effect at the comp with your multiple layers within it, and they should all affect it together.


Is it normal that using OBS with the Skype NDI integration is unusable on mid-2015 Macbook Pro? Experimenting with OBS...

I can easily live stream a 5 Mbits stream to YouTube at faster.

As soon as I add a split screen guest via the Skype NDI integration, the stream becomes unusable.

Is it normal I can’t run both OBS and Skype a mid-2015 MacBook Pro?

My Internet connection is a 120/20 and I am wired using Gigabit.

I'm assuming Skype is decoding and re-encoding the video stream at that point.  If so, then yes, that's probably entirely normal.  You have two MPEG encoders running at the same time.  My 2017 MBP (i7) struggles to do that with Zoom.


Is there any use in archiving graded 8-bit footage as 10-bit file? I've made a video that was filmed with a Canon 60D. It has been graded and edited in Davinci Resolve.

The original footage from the camera is 8-bit. But what happens in the grading process? Will I use nuances from the grading if I archive it as 8-bit?

I understand there's no point in converting the 8-bit video to 16-bit when unedited, but how about when it's graded?

Yes, you will lose information from the grade if you save as 8-bit.

Here's a thought experiment to illustrate. Say your original red level for a pixel was 128 out of 256 (00001111 / 11111111), and then in Resolve you grade it (using the internal 32-bit floating point colour in Resolve) to be a little bit brighter, say 128.25. Now you'll need to save it in 10 bits  or more to keep that information (e.g 000111101 / 1111111111 where the two right-hand-side bits 01 / 11 = 1/4 = 0.25). If you saved it as 8-bit it would have to be rounded to 00001111, meaning it would go back to being 128.

The upshot is, if your new colours don't fit into the 256 values per channel of 8-bit colour they will get rounded to the closest fit. So while you don't gain anything from up-depthing (that's a thing now, because I just invented it) ungraded footage, you do gain by not collapsing the higher-bit-depth graded footage back down to 8-bit.


FFMPEG: Add outro to the end of video I'm a youtuber...and have more than 100 videos

My question is : how to add 1 outro clip to the end of all 100 videos ?

My question is : how to add 2 or more outro clips to the end of all 100 videos randomly ?

Thanks you guys !

You want to concatenate the videos. see
https://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#How-can-I-concatenate-video-files_003f

I don't know what OS or multimedia containers you have, so read that FAQ. Especially if you want to avoid making potentially huge intermediate files.

In Linux/Mac OSX you want something like:

ffmpeg -i input1.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate1.mpg
ffmpeg -i input2.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate2.mpg
cat intermediate1.mpg intermediate2.mpg > intermediate_all.mpg
ffmpeg -i intermediate_all.mpg -qscale:v 2 output.avi

On  Windows I think the syntax is:

ffmpeg -i input1.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate1.mpg
ffmpeg -i input2.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate2.mpg
copy intermediate1.mpg+intermediate2.mpg intermediate_all.mpg
ffmpeg -i intermediate_all.mpg -qscale:v 2 output.avi

If your multimedia containers are already MPEG-1, MPEG-2 PS, or DV you can skip the transcoding steps and just concat using cat or copy or better yet concat protocol.

You can get fancy with scripting to add pseudo-randomisation to add the Outro. But I'd just add outroA to all odd numbered files and outroB to all even numbered files.

If you want to add more that one outro to your content randomly, I'm not that good a command line hacker to pipe and nest randomisations. So I'd build the randomisation (aka spinning) of 100 cat/copy/concat lines into a script via a spreadsheet, then copy/paste the script into a batch/shell script.


Virtual webcams under MacOS 10.15 or later Has anyone managed to get a virtual webcam functioning under MacOS 10.15 or later?
I used to use CamTwist but it doesn't seem to appear as a source in Google Hangouts any more.  Apparently WireCast works, but I'm looking for a free solution if possible.

Just noticed that 'OBS mac virtualcam' is now working on 10.15 - would be interested to see any alternative versions
https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam


does h.264 have separate audio and video We are requesting video producers to send us video and we've worded our request as below. Please tell me if our request makes sense?

"One 720 p editable file in h.264 in an mp4 or AVI container with separate tracks for audio and video."

My question specifically is: does h.264 even have separate tracks for audio and video or am I making a mistake?

P.S.
We know h.264 is really a presentation format, but the small adjustments we make re-render well enough and absolute perfection is not the goal.

Thanks for any insight you can give me.

You don't need to specify "separate tracks", just the audio and video specs you accept. All common containers will handle multiple disparate tracks including video, audio, text (captions etc). h.264 is a video codec; you could choose (or allow) any of several audio codecs.


jvc recorder .ced file I recorded some videos using a JVC recorder.  Now I am trying to upload those videos to my PC, but the format it .ced.  How do I play/convert this file to a different format on my pc?

According to this post on Adobe's forums, the CED file is an attempt by the camera to save a corrupted video file that occurs when the memory card is not formatted in a way it can write video correctly.  It may or may not actually contain a usable video stream depending on what went wrong.  I couldn't find any PC tools that would open it reliably, but JVC might have something if you check with them.


synchronizing video and audio in a remuxed MKV I am quite new in the area of audio/video manipulation so apologies if the question is obvious. I did not manage to find an answer online, though.

I have a MKV file with several tracks: video (MPEG4), audio (DTS EN), audio (AC3 FR) and subtitles. I wanted to extract the video and French audio, then merge them back into an MKV file.
I did this via mkvextract and mkvmerge (without any specific options). The MKV file I got is playable but the audio is shifted (by 10 or so seconds). The audio in the original file is fine for both languages (ie. it is correctly synchronized with the picture).

I guess that there should be a way to align the video and audio, though I do not really understand why they are shifted since I did not do any manipulations on the extracted files.

I would be grateful for any hints.
Thank you

Use mkvmerge with
  -y or --sync

                       Synchronize, adjust the track's timecodes with

                       the id TID by 'd' ms.

                       'o/p': Adjust the timecodes by multiplying with

                       'o/p' to fix linear drifts. 'p' defaults to

                       1 if omitted. Both 'o' and 'p' can be

                       floating point numbers.


How to convert a black and white video to a APNG file while setting a color as transparent? I created a small video with threshold filter to get black and white pixels (no greyscale):
ffmpeg -y -i /dev/video0
          -f lavfi -i color=0x606060:s=640x480
          -f lavfi -i color=black:s=640x480 -f lavfi
          -i color=white:s=640x480 -filter_complex threshold
          -c:v libx264 -c:a copy  test.mp4

Then I tried to convert it as a APNG file with white pixels as transparent (chromakey filter).
ffmpeg -y -i  test.mp4 -f apng -vf chromakey=white test.apng

This command converts all the pixels into transparent (checked with Gimp, it sets alpha of all pixels to 0).
Why? Also, how can I fix the command to make it work?

I finally found how to do that in one ffmpeg command, using colorkey:
ffmpeg  -y -i /dev/video0
           -f lavfi -i color=0x6a6a6a:s=640x480
           -f lavfi -i color=black:s=640x480
           -f lavfi -i color=white:s=640x480
           -filter_complex 'threshold,colorkey=white'
           test.apng


blend filter and color Trying to debug blending images over video led to this observation:

ffmpeg -i https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/vt1VzlKCpjJjxRGBd3oAVgOHau22m2257fDBaW3KfHsNbhOcw1--OY7oISUM93Zp0SjwCSdlHP5PXXbFHdaflxTJAJ_B32MSrUH4AerS_0u6gv3X -i https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/MMzUU7GklKAqtdcGN4k2UVF22Wc2l35A2NDEeB4GhgM7eU06nKSQgitHAoWttj605G1yjoOEODt-dMKNPoWUdCmtFxe-u-qH5H228E9DxpoZsZk -filter_complex "[0:v] format=rgba [bg]; [1:v] format=rgba [fg]; [bg][fg] blend=all_mode='overlay':all_opacity=1, format=rgba"  out.png

results in (with odd fringes):

desired image is:

The blend filter ignores alpha from second input. You will need to recombine alpha component back into other components somehow. This one works for me:

ffmpeg -i a.png -f lavfi -i color=gray:s=512x512,format=gbrp -i b.png -lavfi "[1][2]overlay=format=gbrp[a],[0:v][a]blend=all_mode=overlay" out.png


Video format with dynamic resolution Are there any video formats that change resolution per frame and with different resolutions at different parts of the screen?

All videos I know today they have fixed resolution.

For video blogs I don't need the highest resolution when I am only talking with frame on me. Selectively I would like to have the higher resoltion on photos I am showing and short clips I attach.

Why I want it?

4+K videos would globally kill any internet connection,
Storage of 4+K unoptimized videos take huge disk space.

When I present a photo I don't need also to copy the photo to each frame of video where it is visible.

The closes thing is presentation like *.ppt . But it is far too complex to play, create(with sound all the time) and stream. Maybe I only need some smart video compression tool?

You can't get "dynamic resolution" because essentially that would mean that some of the time you used a 4K display (for example) to show a 2160P image and some of the time you displayed a 1080P image by pixel doubling - so either way it's 4K but what you could gain (IF there were such a Codec) is an increase in the compression, and that's where you should look.

The h265+ Codec developed by HikVision analyses the image frame by frame and decides what is important and what can be compressed to a greater extent, relying upon prior frames to have the data to 'fix' where the extreme compression was used - it can be decoded with a standard h265 (non plus) decoder.

Here is a quote from their Website: "The average decreased rate between H.264 and H.265 is 47,8%. When applying Hikvision H.265+ the decrease rate increases to an average of 83.7 percent.".

Here's the explanation of this: http://www.hikvision.com/europe/Press-Release-details_71_i14097.html

PDF: http://www.hikvision.com/upload/20161209211521855.pdf

As far as I know it's only available as Hardware in HikVision's cameras, if someone knows where there's an Open Source version of h265+ I'd sure like to know - thanks.


Extract specific video frames I am looking for a Windows based open source method to extract specific frames from video files (*.avi). Ideally the method will be suited to R.

I need to do this as I have annotated (many) video files using Solomon Coder. This is an open source program which, quickly and easily, allows for user specified frame by frame annotation.

I have then summarized the data using R. In my summary I have a behaviour event and the start and end frame numbers. I also have the start and end time in seconds, epoch time and as a POSIXct object.

I'd like to extract the specific frames in some instances.

I am aware of the following options:

ffmpeg in Matlab. However, I do not have access to Matlab nor I am that competent using it.
Using the command prompt and VLC. However, many images seem to get skipped and one ends up with lots of corrupt files. (e.g: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/extract-video-frames-to-images-using-vlc-media-player/)
Potentially calling Octave through R and using similar approach of ffmpeg. Again, this is a bit beyond my ability for the moment.

If anyone has some quick guidance that would be greatly appreciated.

To extract frame # x through y, use

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf select='between(n\,x\,y)' -vsync 0 frames%d.png


how do I create 23 fps proxies for footage shot in 30 fps and interpreted as 23 fps I am trying to create 23 fps proxies for footage shot in 30 fps and interpreted as 23 fps
I watched and carefully followed the Youtube video that explains exactly this and I am still getting out of sync proxies.
Steps I tried:

Create my encoding configuration in Adobe Media Encoder with these settings:
Format: QuickTime, codec: Apple ProRes Proxy, Resolution: 480 x 270, Frames/s: 23,976
Create a corresponding Ingest configuration without making any modifications
In Premiere, configure the ingestion to use my settings
Import my footage in my project and set the interpretation to 23,976 frames/s (select footage in project --> right click --> modify and set to 23,976 frames/s)
Cancel the encoding queue in Media Encoder, reset the state, delete the stale proxy and setup the interpretation to 23,976 frames/s (right click and modify to 23,976 frames/s)
Restart the encoding in Media Encoder

When it finishes my proxies are out of sync (enabling and disabling the proxies in Premiere makes the footage skip to a different frame)
What am I doing wrong? How should I interpret this? Anything in particular I should read?
What's also strange is even the footage I shot in 23,976 is out of sync with its proxies. I am struggling to understand what's going on here... Thanks for any tip or advice.
EDIT: I possibly found the source of the issue. The frame rate set in Media Encoding is not properly set it Premiere. Here are screen shot showing the discrepancy (sorry it's in french but it's easy to relate to the settings concerned).

As we can see from the screenshots, there is a discrepancy between what's set in Media Encoder (23,976 fps) and Premiere's ingestion summary (showing 59,94 fps). What am I missing? I just created this set of presets and I made sure they're the same in ME and Premiere.

The solution was to delete the presets I was using in both Premiere and Media Encoder and start from scratch. Somehow these 2 had gotten out of sync and the presets in PrPro and Media Encoder we're not using the same frame rate. I didn't understand how this got out of sync unfortunately.


If I encode a video above source and then later do a final encode, will I lose extra quality vs the final encode directly? I am very happy with my Handbrake settings for my final encodes but I have a video that needs to be edited first. I intend to use Vegas Pro to do this but the default encoding settings create terribly large files. I know I can experiment and find a closer bitrate to my Handbrake settings but I'd like to avoid this for simplicity. Can I still make a final encode with Handbrake without losing quality if I first encode at or above source?

Edit: My question is slightly different, I wanted to know about encoding first to a higher or equal to source bitrate and then re-encoding to a final bitrate. Based on my answer I got, it seems that unless you encode to lossless, some quality will always be lost.

Yes, if you save your video in loseless codec. Unfortunately, this can produce very large files. Also you can try to find frameservers to avoid intermediate files, for frameservers was for older versions of Vegas, I don't know support of this feature in modern versions of Vegas.


What effect did they apply here? I redrew the image on the left in Blender, but I want to use AE to achieve the "filmy" look on the right. What type of effect did they use here? You can see from the corner of the screenshot the blue area and the black lines are almost glowing?

Looks to me like a kind of "chromatic aberration" effect - where the red green and blue channels of an image are processed separately - sometimes shifted in position or blurred a little, then they are recombined back together. There are lots of ways to do this using built in plugins, or using 3rd party plugins such as Red Giant's.