How were copies of movies meant to be distributed to theaters made? In the "olden days" before digital movie projection and the Digital Cinema Package were around, movies were recorded onto film (usually 35mm, I have heard of 70mm instances). The "master film" was the 35mm roll, and somehow copies were made to be distributed to theaters, which could also be in the 35mm format but 16mm could be used as well. Just how was this done effectively?

Regardless of format; 16, 35, 65, etc... The studios would distrubute release prints. The prints were shipped (speaking about 35mm here) on 2000' reels; 5 reels to a can.

In the olden day's they would use two projectors and the projectionist would have to literally load reel one, and two to the other, and they would switch over. Back and forth. A typical movie in today's world (2 hours) would run about 5 reels.

So let's talk the 1990s. The theater receives a can of 5 reels. The reels would be sent up to the projectionist booth. The projectionist would then assemble the reels into one giant reel; on a platter; basically a large spinning lazy-susan. The platter can feed either from the inside; called the core (the core is roughly 10 inches; and has a center mechanism so with rollers in an assembly so the film never has to be "rewound".

The projectionist would first add blank leader, just black, typically 30 seconds; then they would use a film splicer and film tape to add the theater opening title, and each trailer which would play before the film. Some films; shipped with specific trailers on them. But most times; there would be racks and racks of trailers (small film reels about 6 inches (3 minutes) of film; and the projectionist would; whatever his preference or theater policy; add the trailers he wanted (typically matching action with action films, etc). Then any other small film reels would be added; "Turn off your cell phones". Etc.

Lastly; the projectionist would add reel 1, then 2, and so on; and the platter is motorized so it literally pulls the film off the reel which is setup on a rolling stand.

Each reel would need to be checked at the tails; and spliced and glued together.

The final reel would be a very large reel of film; roughly 5 feet in diameter, with a core about 10 inches in the middle.

Because this would be the "first run", the start of the movie would be on the inside, in the core; so the film would be pulled out of the core; through multiple rollers; and into the projector; and then fed to a take up platter either below or above the feed platter. (Typically there would be 3 platters so you could have more than one movie available on any given screen).

This setup would yield after the movie with the film left on a new platter, ready to be "re-threaded" through the projector.  Every showing required the projectionist to check the platter; and reload the projector threading the film over rollers with sprockets; through the gate, and then to the take up reel.

Release Prints were VERY expensive for the studios to produce. So many theaters had rollers for "Big Releases" - think "Titanic"; where one platter would run through the projector, then instead of going straight to a take up platter; it would be fed through a series of rollers down a long wall; to a 2nd or even 3rd projector; and they would have 3 screens starting all at the same time. The final take up reel would be at the last projector.

After the film was finished being run. The projectionist would then literally do the opposite of putting it together. Trailers typically discarded; and the film put back onto the 2000' reels. The film reels would be put back into the can; labeled for FedEx, and sent to a B-Theater; a less popular/lower income movie house.

This is why when you saw movies in the pre-2000s at say an old mall movie theater; there would be lots of scratches and dust, because the film had been played so many times and had been out for so long.

Now; you can find release prints on ebay; I almost bought a "Terminator 2" release print just to have... they were owned by the studio, and destroyed after use... so they are fairly scarce.

The projectionist would have to pay close attention during assembly and tear down; because you cannot rewind the platter.

I speak from being a projectionist for a year after highschool. One time I assembled a movie in the order of reel 1, 2, 4, 3, 5. So half way through the movie people got confused and came out and complained. With no way to rewind or fixed, the rest of the days shows had to be canceled, and the film reels taken back apart and put back into the same order.

Last note; you can typically see the change from reel to reel when watching a movie; either by seeing what's called a cigarette burn (small circle top right of frame), or simply, you notice a weird cut/shift in color/sound where the splice was... Because the release prints were made on multiple printers, color always didn't match reel to reel. Most times, you could at the least (if the film had an optical audio track); a small pop. Towards the later 90s... films went to digital DTS, and THX went digital as well. But before that, the film was a waveform optically printed on the left side of the frame. The audio, was optical.

In terms of how they did it "effectively". It's just how it was done for almost a 100 years. They were very very happy when things went digital. And theaters had to literally fight the studios, because most projectors in film houses were decades old... mechanical... and the studios wanted them all to upgrade to 20K Lumen 4K Dual Projectors (Digital); which run about $200,000 each.

Cheers!


Convert video from 24 fps to 25, shortening length (no frame duplication), keeping audio pitch I have a .mov video with 24fps and 5.1 audio.

Is it possible change the framerate from 24 to 25 fps with no frame resampling (no frame duplication / removal - just new framerate interpretation) and keep the audio pitch the same?

Normally you do this by not resampling the frame data but setting the video flag from 24 to 25 fps however there is the need to adjust the audio so that it is shortened. Is it possible do it all in one ffmpeg command line or maybe in more than one and prepare a batch / bash file for that?

Also, is ffmpeg's audio processing capabilities professional quality or it is low quality compared to pro algorithms like Avid Pro Tools and Adobe Audition?

Note: This question is different from this one Convert video from 24 to 25 fps while keeping video and audio length and also correct audio pitch.

Here I want to know how to do the same thing but shortening the actual length of the video and adjust audio accordingly keeping the pitch in a professional way.

If your input stream has no B-pyramid i.e. B-frames used as references for other B-frames, and your ffmpeg build has librubberband linked then use the following commands:

#1 Extract video to raw stream

ffmpeg -i in.mkv -c copy in.h264

#2 Retime and process audio

ffmpeg -r 25 -i in.h264 -i in.mkv -map 0 -map 1:a -af rubberband=tempo=1.04166 -c:a pcm_s16le out.mkv

If your H264 stream does have reference B-frames then you'll have to use mp4box as an intermediary.

i.e.

#2a Retime video

mp4box -add in.h264#fps=25 -new in25.mp4

#2b Process audio and add video

ffmpeg -i in25.mp4 -i in.mkv -map 0 -map 1:a -af rubberband=tempo=1.04166 -c:a pcm_s16le out.mkv


After Effect CC - How to combine and crop videos I have 4 videos which i want to combine it into 1 video file.
Drag and drop should do the combining but i don't know how to crop it.

I am new in video editing, so any suggestion or even keyword will help.

Thank you.

After Effects and masking are both total overkill for this problem.

First you want a video editor, not a complex VFX system, as your baseline.  If you have After Effects, you likely also have Premiere Pro.  Drag and drop each video onto a separate video layer.  In Premiere Pro, each video layer has an Effects tab that includes a Motion effect.  The Motion effect includes scaling and translating video (shifting it left/right or up/down).  Scale each video to 50% (they should all scale toward the middle of the screen), then translate each video to their respective corner.

The last piece of the puzzle is to crop the videos as you wish.  In Premiere Pro, there's a video effect in the Transitions category called Crop.  By cropping left, right, top, and bottom by a certain number of pixels, you will get the rectangle (or square) you want.

But almost any video editor at all has Layers, Scale, Translate, and Crop.  That's what you need to solve your problem.


Concat two MP4 files (side by side) with FFmpeg I'm trying to concat two videos, side by side, using ffmpeg. One of them is 1280x720, and the other 1920x1080. One will be left, one will be right side. The higher resolution will be resized to the lower resolution one.

What is the command to do that?

I tried this command (they used 4 videos, I tried to edit it for 2), but somewhere is wrong and it cuts the first video:

ffmpeg -i activity.mp4 -i mobile.mp4 -filter_complex " nullsrc=size=2560x720 [base];[0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [upperleft]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [upperright]; [base][upperleft] overlay=shortest=1 [tmp1]; [tmp1][upperright] overlay=shortest=1:x=720" -c:v libx264 output.mp4

Use

ffmpeg -i activity.mp4 -i mobile.mp4 -filter_complex " nullsrc=size=2560x720 [base];[0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [upperleft]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [upperright]; [base][upperleft] overlay=shortest=1 [tmp1]; [tmp1][upperright] overlay=x=720" -c:v libx264 output.mp4

The shortest should be applied only to the first overlay.

Also, you can skip scale for the video which is already 1280x720. This output will only audio from one of the inputs.


Digital cameras see black scrolling lines when filming light from my desk lamp Everytime I point a digital camera of some sort (webcam, phone, camcorder...) at my LED desk lamp or its light reflected off an object (only if the object is very reflective and/or near the lamp), I see some scrolling black lines that shift thickness and scrolling speed as I change white balance.

They make it impossible for me to film uboxing and other videos using my desk lamp as light source. What is the cause of this? I also noticed my ceiling-mounted LED light produces a similar pattern as well albeit with thicker lines. Finally, my bedside lamp - also LED - creates no such phenomenon.

A photo of the LED light on my desk

Cheap (to make) LED lights will flicker at twice the mains frequency. There are many ways of overcoming this in the design of lights, such as using a larger smoothing capacitor (which makes the light bulky), using a dedicated progressive LED driver IC (which turns off some of the LEDs but not all of them, so the light dims rather than going out every half cycle) or using a switched mode converter at a higher frequency (which is more complex than the more common capacitive dropper, but allows dimming - adjustable LED panels sold for use in photography will have this technology).

Put a different bulb in the lamp, such as the one that's in your bedside lamp. Generally the more expensive and branded ones will have better smoothing circuitry.


Variable bitrate for AAC - how to reach it? I tried encoding audio stream into AAC with a variable bitrate mode — I followed the advice from FFmpeg VBR Settings and changed my original option -b:a 128k to -q:a 1.3 in this original command

ffmpeg -channel_layout stereo -i sc2.avs -b:a 128k -ar 24000 -ac 2 sc2.mp4

But I still obtained a constant audio bitrate.

Output from MediaInfo:

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 min 26 s
Duration_LastFrame                       : -29 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 119 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 24.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 23.438 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.23 MiB (8%)
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1

The Any Video Converter (the old version 3.5.8), which internally uses FFmpeg, convert the same input into VBR mode:

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 min 26 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 75.3 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 142 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 24.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 23.438 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 778 KiB (9%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-12-19 13:30:13
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-12-19 13:30:13

How to reach VBR audio output?

(I need it because of Dissolve() function in AviSynth source file produces horrible sound for CBR, whereas it's nice for Any Video Converter's VBR audio output.)

According to the wiki, you are likely to get worse results with the default AAC encoder when using VBR. See: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/AAC

One suggestion would be to use libfdk_aac. The other would be to demux the audio, re-encode it using a different encoder, and then remux that file back in to the video using ffmpeg.


Help achieving a specifc effect in DaVinci Resolve - glowing floating head fades in and then out Disclaimer:  I'm a total video newbie.  Until 4 days ago I had never used an NLE before or even heard the acronym.

I'm an experienced musician, and with much of the country shut down, an ex-bandmate and I have started making music together again.  We're working on a video for a rather silly cover.  The music is good, the song is silly, and we want the video to be silly too.  We are working with DaVinci Resolve, and I've spent a fair amount of time on the tutorials.  I think I have a decent command of how to use the tool, I just don't have the necessary familiarity with the many many many features to know how to do what I want...

What I want to do is to use a clip of my friend singing the lead vocal part, and then when his backup vocal part comes in, have just his head come into the scene, mouth the words "I love you", and then disappear.  Ideally it would fade in somehow and then fade out, and maybe even have a glow around it, as if it were some floating angelic being.  It could stay somewhat transparent and ghostly.

I did work through the Resolve tutorial on how to do basic effects work.  I was able to draw a shape around his head in the backing vocal clip and make the rest of the clip transparent.  Step 1 accomplished.  I'm sure I did it in a terribly inefficient way, based on the one effect that was introduced in the Resolve tutorial (delta keying, plus a mask that I drew, and then pulling wildly on controls until it did what I wanted...I'd love to know a way to just draw a shape and make everything outside of it transparent).  But in any case, step 1 done.  I have a floating head.

Step 2:  Change the position of that floating head.  I can't seem to do this though I could swear I've done it in the tutorial.  Would probably find this with enough time.

Step 3:  Give it a halo.  No idea how to do this.

Step 4: Make it fade into being and then fade out.  No idea how to do this.

It doesn't need to look perfect.  I'm not looking for complete answers.  But some guidance would be wonderful.

Thanks so much!

I found this helpful tutorial on basic compositing:

With this I was able to easily do additive compositing with a mask and I can easily adjust the position, opacity, etc.

I wanted a white glow, and as luck would have it the video was filmed in front of a white brick wall. It works great now.


Why is rendered playback slower than my project? I have a project that's 1280X720 @25

I do have clips in the project that are various resolutions, but this hasnt seem to be a problem.

I render as the "Match the Project Settings" and everytime the video plays back much slower.

How to fix?!
Also sometimes my project becomes off time. But if I restart Vegas it fixes itself.

This was resolved due to incorrect audio sample rate with my DAW. In Vegas I was editing in 24 bit 48,000Hz. After render, my systems was attempting to playback the video file at 16bit 41,000Hz which will cause this effect.


Free software to synchronize audio and video recorded at the same time So I just filmed something using two webcams and a separate audio recorder. This means I have 3 files, 2 video, 1 audio and they all need to be synced and then I need some sort of software which will allow me to put all three files into it, sync them together (I clapped at the beginning so I can Sync the Video and Audio) and then throughout the video, choose whether I want File 1 or File 2 being shown.

Free Software is my only option as I don't have funds to buy.

What you need is called a non-linear video editor or NLE.  Basically you can load in the files and then you put them on a "timeline".  Each audio track and video track goes on a horizontal track.  You move the clips right to left on the timeline to synchronize them and once you have them synchronized, you can cut out portions of the top most clip that you don't want and the bottom clip will take its place since it is under the top clip.  You can also add in transitions to switch between the clips.

There is a lot more to video editing as you get in to it, but that should give you the primer you need to get up and running.  Take a look at the duplicate post for suggestions of some NLE software you can use for free.


Converting DVD to still images I have a DVD. Its basically an hour long video that is just a collection of photos that rotate to a new photo every 5 seconds or so. What I am looking for is a program that will convert the entire movie into a collection of jpegs or TIF files. If it converted every frame of the video into an image, that is fine, but preferably I'd like it to detect when the image changes and then capture the image.

I've seen many programs, like VLC that will capture a single image, but I'm looking for something that is more automated. Anyone have any suggestions?

ffmpeg -r 0.25 -i video.mpg -f image2 %05d.png

ffmpeg invoke the program

-r 0.25  force the frame rate of

-i video.mpg  your input file

-f image2 %05d.png  force the format of  the output file

From the ffmpeg site:

  FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode,
  transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything
  that humans and machines have created. It supports the most obscure
  ancient formats up to the cutting edge. No matter if they were
  designed by some standards committee, the community or a corporation.
  It contains libavcodec, libavutil, libavformat, libavdevice,
  libswscale and libswresample which can be used by applications. As
  well as ffmpeg, ffserver, ffplay and ffprobe which can be used by end
  users for transcoding, streaming and playing


ffmpeg take channels 7+8 and make a stereo I have a 8 audio track mov file which I want to encode to mp4 using ffmpeg BUT take the tracks 7+8 and put them as stereo with 320k and 48KHz to that mp4. My line is this:

ffmpeg -i %source% -map 0:0 -map 0:7 -map 0:8 -c:a:0 aac -ab:1 320k -ar:1 48000 -ac:1 2 -disposition:a:0 default -c:a:1 aac -ab:2 320k -ar:2 48000 -ac:2 1 -disposition:a:1 0 -strict -2 -async 1 -c:v libx264 -b:v 9300k -minrate 9300k -maxrate 9300k -bufsize 2325k -r 24 -force_fps -s 1920x1080 -aspect 1:1 -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v high -preset medium -level 40 -partitions partb8x8+partp4x4+partp8x8+parti8x8 -b-pyramid 2 -weightb 1 -8x8dct 1 -fast-pskip 1 -direct-pred 1 -x264-params force-cfr=1 -coder ac -trellis 1 -me_method hex -flags +loop -sc_threshold 40 -keyint_min 24 -g 240 -qmin 3 -qmax 51 -threads 12 -metadata creation_time=now -sn -y %source%_FINAL.mp4

What do I have to change in order to make it stereo instead of 2 mono? I tried adding-filter_complex "[0:7][0:8] amerge=inputs=2" c:a aac -ab 320k at the beginning but it didnt work. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Try something like this:

1) Merge Audio Tracks 7 and 8, put it in Audio Track 1, discard other Audio Tracks from source:

ffmpeg -i "in.mxf" -filter_complex "[0:7][0:8]amerge=inputs=2[mergedAudio]" -map 0:v -map "[mergedAudio]" "out.mp4"

In some cases you might add the option -ac 2 between the end-" of filter complex and the 1st map.

2) 1) combined with all (useful) parameters of your code:

ffmpeg -i "in.mov" -filter_complex "[0:7][0:8]amerge=inputs=2[mergedAudio]" -map 0:v -map "[mergedAudio]" -ac 2 -c:a aac -b:a 320k -ar 48000 -disposition:a:0 default -strict -2 -c:v libx264 -b:v 9300k -minrate 9300k -maxrate 9300k -bufsize 2325k -r 24 -force_fps -s 1920x1080 -aspect 1:1 -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v high -preset medium -level 40 -partitions partb8x8+partp4x4+partp8x8+parti8x8 -b-pyramid 2 -weightb 1 -8x8dct 1 -fast-pskip 1 -direct-pred 1 -x264-params force-cfr=1 -coder ac -trellis 1 -me_method hex -flags +loop -sc_threshold 40 -keyint_min 24 -g 240 -qmin 3 -qmax 51 -threads 12 -metadata creation_time=now -sn -y FINAL.mp4

You had a space in your bitrate -ab:1 320k. I have changed it to the current syntax -b:a 320k

Same with -ar:1 48000 -> -ar 48000

Removed -async 1 because it threw an error


daVinci Resolve: Split-clip shortcut on German keboard What is the keyboard shortcut for split clip on German keyboards in daVinci Resolve 15 ?

While a clip was selected in the edit tab's timeline and the playhead was over it, I tried Ctrl+\ (=Strg+AltGr+ß), Crtl+ß , Ctrl+< and Ctrl+> , but none of these worked.

It seems like this key simply doesn't work on German keyboards.

It's probably because you have to press Alt-Gr to get the "\" sign on a German keyboard, and the software doesn't accept that additional key.

You can, however, redefine this function to another key. In contrast to some documentation, this cannot be found in the project settings, but directly in the first main menu entry "DaVinci Resolve|Keyboard Customization".


Halve framerate without complete re-encoding Is there any tool that can manipulate / transcode h264 or h265 video streams throwing away approximately half of the frames, without performing a full re-encode?
I'm thinking it would be theoretically possible to preserve motion vectors and such computed data, preserve all I-frames, and just throw away approximately half of the B- and P-frames (possibly adjusting the remaining ones.) The result does not need to be CFR.
Is there a way to do this with ffmpeg? (or any other tool)

I think the term for this effort is statistical multiplexing where your proposed framework would be an efficient implementation thereof.


How to include proof of when a video was made, something that couldn't be be faked at a later date? I don't know how to call this kind of proof in English, but maybe if I explain it a little bit further you'll get the idea.

Basically I want to create video/audio proof that something was shot in 2013 and have this "proof" video as evidence later, in 2015.

The question is what to do so the people will believe that the video from back in the days is authentic and not fabricated in 2015.

I was thinking that it should be one-taker and that
it should contain some evidence of the date and time and
some things that were unique for that time and don't exist anymore or something like that e.g. building that will be destroyed, people who will be dead in 2 years ;D etc.

But I need something easier to accomplish, because the newspapers and TV, radio could be faked. Something more bullet proof would be needed.

Any ideas how to accomplish that? Thanks in advance for every take on this. I am really curious how would you solved this problem.

There isn't any way to do it within the video.  You can easily prove a video was made (or altered) after a particular time, but you can't prove that it happened before a particular time via the media itself, since you could edit things in from previous time to make it look that way.

The non-video answer would be to generate a signature of the video file and get it cryptographically signed by a reliable time stamping service.  This would prove that the video files had been unaltered since the time the stamp was applied.  Most Certificate Authorities can do this.  I personally use StartSSL because they are pretty cheap but reasonably well respected.

Alternately, you can have a document from a notary about when the video was made, though that won't prove it wasn't altered in some way.  The notary may have more legal baring than a particular CA's time server though depending on if anything causes a loss of faith in the Certificate Authority.


Timeline isn't yellow above a section of a Multicam video Normally when you have a multicam video (or any video for that matter) in your timeline, you'll see a yellow bar across the entire length of the timeline showing that there is something that will be output in the final video.

I just finished editing a project, closed Premiere, then reopened, and I noticed that parts of the video were black screens. These lined up to those that didn't have yellow bars on top:

How do I get the bars back on top?

Looks like this one was a bug in Premiere. First, I noticed that the yellow bar was only missing for one of the clips that was part of the Multicam video. E.g. I noticed there were multiple "holes" in the timeline, but these only happened whenever the multicam sequence was trying to use "Video1".

I went into Multicam edit more by right-clicking the Multicam video in the project editor, and choosing Open in Timeline.

Not sure what fixed it, but I toggled both the Toggle Track Output (eye icon) off then on again, and also Disabled and then Enabled the clip in question. This resolved the issue.


How to mark multiple ins and outs in Adobe Premiere? I need to cut multiple fragments from one video. If I use IN and OUT markers, then I can't accomplish the task, because when I set second IN marker, previous one disappears.

I would like to mark multiple fragments.

How to do that?

In and out markers are used for clip selection, however you have to put the clip somewhere once you select it.  You can either drag or insert it to a sequence or you can drag it to your Project window to have a copy of it saved with that in and out point.  You could later drag from that copy of it in the project to the timeline and it will use the in and out point you had set on it.

The reason you can only select one clip at a time is because the in and out point are designed to be used as part of three point editing.  In three point editing, you specify any 3 of these four points... source in, source out, destination in, destination out.  Whichever one you have the beginning and end of defines the length of the edit and the beginning or end on the other tells it either where to pull the clip from or where to place it.

This is a traditional way of editing and is how linear systems were used back in the day. The practice carried over to NLEs (non-linear editors) because the process itself is actually pretty quick and easy to use and is what many editors were used to.  It is the least information you need to define an edit.


Workflow for Adobe Premiere? I'm new to editing. I'm from a photography background, using Lightroom. I've a set workflow for processing my images there, taking them from initially applying metadata, through triaging into folders and then preparing for display.

I'm looking for a workflow process for premiere. I'm aware of how to capture my footage, but then what? In brief please summarise your Adobe Premiere workflow. I'm not asking how to do each step but rather indicators of steps I can then go and research myself.

I'm asking about 'workflow' process in the vein of http://ericscouten.com/blog/2012/03/05/lightroom-technique-how-i-organize-my-catalog-and-why-2012-edition - not the full details just the steps.

It depends on the type of production. If it's say, a documentary where you have hours of unscripted footage; a drama where the shots are organised by scene, shot and take and you are working to a script; or a short-form piece like a TVC where you are cutting a small amount of footage down to 30 seconds.

That said, the process of editing is basically one of organisation, and it involves getting to know your footage, and then making decisions about what helps the story and what doesn't.

Getting to know your footage can involve any or all of these steps: logging - actually going through and taking notes of what happens when in the footage, choosing good or NG takes and marking them up in your project, sorting into bins, and even just naming your clips in the project. Actually, I find that naming your clips is one of the best things you can do to get your edit started. The more time you spend watching and organising your rushes the easier it is to cut them.

From there you need to start deciding what's in or out. An assembly edit is the first step – where you put in all the shots in rough story order, without worrying too much about matching cuts or sound or any finesse. At the end of the assembly you'll have a good idea of what your coverage is like, and this can sometimes be the point where you decide to shoot more footage if you can. At this stage the timeline is usually way longer than the final cut.

Then it's a process of finessing the cut, starting with the rough cut. This is where you focus on what shots are needed to tell the story. You may go back to your rushes to find extra angles, or cut-ins and cut-aways to help the cuts work or to improve the storytelling. You won't be doing any sound or colour tweaking, titles, effects or any other malarky at this stage. You may be using placeholders for effects shots etc.

From there it's a matter of making the editing seamless; making good motivated cuts, watching the pacing and rhythm. This is your fine cut, and it's the last stage before you lock down your edit and start doing the online stuff. If you're cutting to a set time this is when you might be making hard decisions about what's not absolutely necessary, and tightening up the cuts.

The "online stuff" includes adding graphics and effects, titles, music, and lastly colour grade and sound mix. Colour grading is where you firstly balance the colours between shots, and then give your shots the look that you want. Sound mixing is similar: you try to make the sound seamless between shots in a scene first, and then add other sound elements like sound effects atmos and music.

In reality there's really not hard division between the assembly, rough and fine cuts, they flow into each other. The trick is not to start worrying about getting a cut exactly right in the assembly edit because you might want to lose the shot altogether later on, so you'll be wasting your time. The idea of the assembly and the rough cuts is to focus on the whole piece without getting bogged down into individual shots.

I find that non-linear editing does make it very easy to get sidetracked into doing fine cutting too soon (when you cut on film you didn't want to cut scenes too short too soon, because it was a damn nightmare finding those one-frame trims in your trim bin and sticky-taping them back on).

There is usually a boundary between editing and stages like colour grading. You want to have your shots "locked off" before you start grading or you'll waste a whole lot of time going back and forth. Though recently colour grading packages have started to have the ability to dynamically respect edits that you make after starting the grade, so you now have the option of grading and cutting in parallel.

Effects too will often require the edit to be locked off, so that you don't waste time doing work on parts of shots that aren't used. But again, you may have to do a bit of to-and-fro between effects and edit. Packages like After Effects and Premiere work well together: if you have shots in your sequence that require effects work you can export them from the timeline via dynamic linking, so that you can watch the effect in your edit without having to render out to file.

There is no set-in-stone way of doing this, everyone and every project needs an individual approach, but this should give you a general idea of the way I like to do things.


Kung Fury VHS effect I hope everybody seen this amazing trailer of upcoming Swedish masterpiece:

FULL HD TRAILER

So, I wonder, how to achieve this cool video effect. Please, pay attention on the edges:

The image some kinda decomposes into 2 channels.
How to reproduce this?

Ok, after a research I found the solution.
Watch this tutorial.

At a glance:

Create Adobe After Effects project.
Add "Channel set" effect.
Duplicate layer 3 times.
Adjust each layer to show only one channel (Red/Green/Blue).
Set Blending Mode as Screen.
Add transformation for each layer. Play with rotation/scale.

Voila! Check my example.

Original frame (sorry for low bitrate)

RGB shifted

I think it's cool as hell!


Switch between 18-?? hdmi PC sources for live production I'm looking for a device that takes a minimum of 18 HDMI-PC (max 36) sources at 1080p60 for a possible venture I'm going to getting in to. I'm going to be taking these sources and using them for monitoring/broadcasting/recording a show. (Edit: Note: Some of the inputs will only support 1080p60 and 720p60. No in-between. (Can't do 720 due to requirements in business agreement))

I know of the ATEM devices by Blackmagic, but, they don't state they do 1080p60 and this may present a problem. Not to mention in order for all 18 PCs to connect i would have to buy a converter for each connection as SDI is not usually a native connection on most PCs.

(Notes: SDI is a completely new connection to me as of today. I have never done anything with broadcasting equipment)

Only the 4K models of the Atom switchers support 1080p in 60 fps, like the ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K.

Although a software control panel is included, I would prefer a hardware panel. Switching between 18+ input sources will be so stressful, that you don't have time looking where the mouse pointer is. A hardware panel has big buttons and knobs that you can operate without looking at it.

These switchers all work with SDI, because HDMI only works with cable lengths up to 10 meter, whereas SDI cables can be up to 300 meter long. See this comparison.


Android Streaming and Recording at Once PROBLEM: Video should be streamed (Youtube) with low resolution for live view, but recorded in HD resolution for later review.

RESEARCH: I can stream and record separately. But using Android camera by two apps simultaneously is prohibited. Android 7 is used.

QUESTION: How to stream with low resolution and finally get video with high resolution?

Some background: when you want to use Camera in Android (as an application), you must setup it by specifying some constants. You must specify resolution, framerate, encoder options. This data usually used by internal CPU (DSP) for producing encoded stream in your hardware, you can't programm it. So, you must setup some options and get encoded stream for this options.

So, sorry, you can't use multiple applications at same time. At least, with different options (framerate).

But you can do workaround: you can decode HD stream, scaledown, encode again and stream to any service you want. This is very heavy task for CPU (in which apps works), so even if your phone can do it, it will very fast drain battery. Better way if to stream HD to some PC or server, recode it and re-stream to any other service.


Morphing software in Linux I'm trying to morph from one video to another (not just two photographs). At the moment I'm using gtkmorh, but AFAIK it only allows photograph morphing and not sequence morphing.

Does anyone know what options are available (if any) to morph video sequences in Linux?

I don't have lot of experience in working with video in Linux, however, there is Blender, which is capable with video editing, and it also can morph still images and meshes. And of course more complex 3D objects.

Maybe you can achieve your goal, by combining those techniques.


After Adding a few Clips to the timeline, audio is no longer imported? I'm using Premiere Pro CC 2014 trial to evaluate if I want to switch from Vegas Pro 2012 to the Adobe Suite. I'm editing a short video I made in Denver, CO this past summer that I shot with two cameras; the Canon 550D, and the DMC-LX5. After adding a few clips to the timeline (approximately 15 or more), every video after that does not have an audio track automatically added but does have a video track. I'm simply dragging and dropping videos to a single sequence. If you play the videos in the project window, they play with audio. What's going on?

Thanks,

Adobe Newb

Adobe has this concept of "target tracks" in the sequence window.  On the left side of the media locked/unlocked icon is the "source patching for inserts and overwrites".  On the right side of the media locked/unlocked icon is the "toggle track targeting for this track".  When off, the track name (such as V1 or V2 or A1 or A2) is gray and when on, it's blue.

Chances are good that you left those targeting features well enough alone, and the Adobe defaults are to indeed enable track targeting for your tracks.  When track targeting is blue for only empty tracks, inserting a new video clip does just what you'd expect: it puts the new video and audio into unused tracks.  However, if targeting is on for tracks that already have audio, then when you go to insert the new clip does what you might not expect: it just overwrites the audio clip of the targeted track and that's that.  It does not create a new track for your audio.  If you've inserted 15 clips, it's quite possible that you have audio only from the last clip you added, and that it overwrote the 14th clip's audio track which overwrote the 13th clip's audio track, etc.

There's an answer on VP as to how to restore the lost audio clips (Adobe Premiere - Restore Audio to A/V Clip After Deleting).  My answer explains how to not do that in the first place.


Create video file with multiple audio tracks? I have an animated movie in three different languages. The picture is exactly the same for each langauge, only the audio is different.

I want to merge all these files into one, so that I have a single video file where I can switch easily between the audio tracks in VLC.

How can I merge the audio tracks into a single file?

I can use any OS for the job, but my preferred order is:

OS X
Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint)
Android
iOS
Windows desktop

It's not really important, though, I'll take suggestions for any platform happily.

The only function I really need is the merging itself. Lightweight solutions are a a plus.

I prefer GUI solutions.

FFMPEG can do it. FFMPEG is command line video (and audio) processing software, available here.

If you have FFMPEG here is the command you would use:

ffmpeg -i video.avi -i audio1.mp3 -i audio2.mp3 -map 0 -map 1 -map 2 -codec copy output


Setup for Premiere Pro on Laptop with SSD/HDD I am about to install Premiere Pro on a laptop with 500gb SSD and 750gb HDD, how can I optimise it in terms of where to install the OS, other apps and where to put the video files. I also have an external drive where I store footage, am not sure if that should come into the mix.

Thanks

The question is whether disk performance is critical in your normal workflow, in which case you'd want to place the footage on the SSD.

I have a similiar setup with Sony Vegas and I observed that, disk performance is rather uncritical during rendering, because it's always the processor that's the bottle neck. But your situation may differ from that. Especially, if you have a very fast CPU and a very slow HDD.

Alternative 1:

The following configuration works well for me:

OS on SSD to have fast boot time
Vegas/Premiere on SSD to have fast startup time
Video footage on HDD to have all footage in a single location.
External drive for backuping your footage
All other stuff: where-ever there is room left. Just make sure there is enough storage for your videos on HDD. 750GB fill up very quickly with HD footage ;-)

Disadvantage: May be slow with fast CPU's and slow drives. Project opening times may be slow as well.

Advantage: Fast boot and programm start. All footage in one place.

Alternative 2:

Of course, if OS+Premiere+Video fits to the SSD, put it there. This will give you the fastest experience. Plus the option to have a very fast backup to the HDD and a second slower backup to the external drive.

Advantage: Fast. Double backup.

Disadvantage: Not much storage for footage.

Alternative 3:

Put OS+Premiere to SSD and video to HDD. Place the one project that you're currently working on to SSD. This configuration is also very fast, but I sometimes experience issues with moving projects across the drives, so I try to avoid that.

Advantage: Fast.

Disadvantage: Possibly issues with moving footage/projects around.


Compressing to youtube quality before editing As my old version of Premiere Pro didn't support .mts files (files straight from my camera) I used to have a ridiculous workflow:

Upload the video to youtube
Download video as mp4
Make relevant edits
Export video
Upload to youtube

This seemed like a totally ridiculous workflow, so I started using DiVinci Resolve as it supported mts files.
The problem I have now is as the file is still in it's original (massive) format, it is slow to do anything and rendering takes hours.
I'm more than happy with the quality of the tiny .mp4 file that youtube returns to me so is there a way I can do the same kind of conversion with Resolve? It seems so ridiculous to upload to youtube then download, but at the moment seems to still be the most efficient.
Thanks!

Use proxy videos to transcode the mts files into something usable. Here's a short tutorial to get you started:


Add intro and outro to multiple files (batch) I am fairly new to video editing but I have a ton of video files that I need to add an intro and outro to. I do a lot of other print work and in photoshop I can batch file folders to repeat the same action to all the files in the folder. I would imagine there is some way of adding the intro and outro in the same manner with a video editing program like Adobe After Effects so I can select the folder and automates all the adding and publishing. Is this possible with any system???

This is indeed possible with After Effects via its Scripting Interface, though this is a bit harder to use than Photoshop Actions. You will need to learn Adobe ExtendScript and how to use it in conjunction with After Effects.

For this particular job I'd suggest a different approach using FFmpeg. It's an open source video encoding and processing tool that is used for many video automation tasks in the industry.
You will have to write a script here aswell but that would be a LOT easier and shorter than digging into Adobe ExtendScript in conjunction with After Effects.

Assuming you have an rendered video of your intro, outro and main media file in the same codec. You can then use the concat command in ffmpeg to mux the three file into one, which results in a joined video without any re-encoding of the source media.

Here is a tutorial on how to do that in the Linux bash but you can do the same thing with AppleScript or Windows Batch script. You want to generate a filelist like shown in the tutorial:

file '/path/to/intro.mov'
file '/path/to/main.mov'
file '/path/to/outro.mov'

You would generate this filelist for every main media file and only change the path for your main media file for every "export".

Just for reference, this is the final command you would then use:

ffmpeg -f concat -i filelist.txt -c copy output.mov

How the script part looks that comes before the FFmpeg command that generates the file list, completely depends on your operating system and or choice of scripting language.
Note that you don't have to use the source codec, instead of doing copy you could also encode the output file into a different codec by specifying a codec with encode setting instead.

For example:

-c:v libx264 -preset medium -f mp4


Putting a Lower bitrate of my video stream in my current mp4 container Sorry if my question is too noobish, this is my first question.

What I have is:

An mp4 movie with a video stream and an audio stream.

What I want in the output:

Is an mp4 file containing: the same video stream + the same audio stream + the same video stream with a lower bit-rate

Can anyone please tell me the appropriate ffmpeg command?

Answering the question as asked,

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map 0:v -map 0:a -map 0:v \
-c:v:0 copy -c:v:1 libx264 -b:v:1 <lower-bitrate> -c:a copy -movflags +faststart out.mp4

The lower-bitrate version of the video is the third stream. Players typically will play the original video which is the first stream in the output.


Looking for a Graphics program I Am looking for a good program to make graphics for 2d games. I have a lot if experience with adobe after effects but want to expand and make some game graphics for my friend who programs c# with a xna framework. Any suggestions for a good program?

The free and open source alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator are Gimp and Inkscape, respectively. While Adobe has introduced some flexible payment options, their cost can be prohibitive to the non-pirating hobbyist or independent developer.

Don't overlook Paint.NET on Windows; it's actually pretty capable as an image editor.


How to make an Ableton Live project a set time I'd like to make be able a project file only ninety seconds, and have Ableton discard any music that runs over that time as a result of any midi tranformations or effects.

Go into arrange view, expand the master track

Enter draw mode: press ctrl+b or click on the pencil button at the top of the screen next to the little keyboard. You want it to be yellow.

Use draw mode to zero out a region of the Master Mixer - Track Volume automation

Exit draw mode: press ctrl+b again, or click on the pencil button so that it is no longer active.
Use the pointer cursor to click on one of the automation corners to the right, deleting it.

Delete the other rightmost automation corner. Now the automation curve should be down at the bottom for the rest of time.


How to export AviSynth project to video file? I am just starting on AviSynth for video production. My understanding is that AviSynth only does frameserving and not file export, but several export filters are available. TWriteAVI seems the tool for the job but the plugin link is no longer available on the host.

The title links to a forum with what looks like VB code:

#######

ForceProcessAVI(clip c,bool "Debug"=True)
 Force Process clip c, ie read from first to last frame, for TWriteAVI writes the AVI file (Video + Audio) without having to play clip.
...

I didn't see how to turn this code into an executable, as I mostly use Unix and Windows is for AviSynth only.

How can I hook this code into AviSynth, or how can I export an .avs text file to a movie file?

Forget about output filters.

Use FFmpeg  (Linux, Mac, Windows) with this simple command

ffmpeg -i your_avs_file.avs  output.mp4

(or output.avi, output.mkv, ...),

or any conversion program which accepts .avs files as input, e. g. Any Video Converter Free (for Mac and Windows).

Note 1:

The Windows link points to the site for downloading Zeranoe's FFmpeg build. Unpack the downloaded file and use it — no installation is needed, perhaps only adding the path to ffmpeg.exe into your PATH environment variable.

Note 2:

If you want build FFmpeg by yourself, don't forget add --enable-avisynth option.

Note 3:

You may directly play back your AviSynth script files (.avs) with some Media Players, e.g. with Media Player Classic.


Need good free HTML5 video player for integrating video ads and Vimeo videos We're trying to implement ads on our video platform. Could you recommend a reliable HTML5 video player that works with Vimeo, compatible with the VAST standards? I've already tried video.js and checked out jw player. Are there any alternative solutions?

I'd suggest you looking at the built-in HTML5 outstream video player AdPlayer.Pro.
You can use this video ad player and host your video on AdPlayer.Pro platform or you can use HTML5 player separately. It's compliant with all major video advertising standards, like VAST/VPAID and Google IMA. Also I like the UI and additional tracking tool, which provides watch time, click rate, estimated revenue etc.


The cable of the tv antenna lies on the heater It might be a silly question, but the cable connected to my tv antenna is lying on my heater in my room.

The heater isn't particularly hot, but I was wondering if it might damage it in the long run.

Thanks

It is very unlikely this would damage it - if it is a standard co-ax cable, then it can withstand much higher temperatures than your room heater will cause.

Mechanical failure is generally much more of a problem if you move the antenna a lot (wear on the cable as it enters the connectors is quite common)


How to ignore file name extensions while replacing source files for online editing in Premiere? I'm encoding all my source files for offline editing with Premiere Media Encoder. I have MP4 and MTS files, and I thought of converting them all to AVI DV-PAL.

Problem is I guess I'll have some problems when I'd like to replace the files back to original resolution, because of the different file names.

How should I approach this? Is there a way to ignore file name extenstions while replacing source files for online editing in Premiere?

You can use "Replace Footage" (right click on a source clip in the project) to swap a file with another file, but I don't know of a good automated way to do a bunch of files at the same time.  I think it might be a manual process to wire up the clips unfortunately.


How to shoot a scene of someone riding a bike? I'm shooting a short film and there is a scene I'd like to film where a guy is biking and the camera follows him through his bike ride. All I have to film on is a Sony a3000 camera, I don't own anything fancy. How can I film this scene without buying any expensive equipment?

Well, its a bit of a generic question.
Almost like asking how to take a movie like shot using your camera.

The answer is equally generic.

Lighting, to prevent blowout or shadows take the shot when its cloudy, or near sunrise or sunset. (Unless you wanted a grunge harsh hot feel and maybe over exposed is the effect you are after, so take it at noon).
Make sure the light is behind you so you capture the image flush.
Make sure you take shots in scenes. A closeup of peddling (running alongside with a macro lens can work). Take a closeup shot. Take a shot that first places them in the scene (unless you are adding mystery and sometimes you place that scene at the end).
Tell a story, have an element in the foreground like a thumbs up to hitch a ride, out of focus is the rider coming up, then comes into focus the thumb is blurred. Then cut reaction shot, or maybe maybe headphones not seeing shot. etc, I mean just go with the story, and tell the story with your shots.
I guess I could also go with settings, I am a big fan of large apertures (low f stops) like f2.0 - f4.0. And high shutter speed 1/125th or higher to minimize blur on fast moving objects, again depending how you want the end result to look, all these rules can be broken. Large apertures (low f stops)  tends to create a bokeh effect (out of focus the background if focus is on subject) making it obvious to the audience what is the focus of the story.


What Effect is this? I am new to AMV editing and one of my favorite editors is zneptun. I've been trying to figure out what this effect he uses in his videos is but I've had no luck. If any of you guys know please tell me cause I'd love to use it!! It's not just a simple invert either, the look is completely different which is what confuses me as well.
Here's a link to the video, you can see the effect between 3-4 seconds, and 6 seconds. Pretty much every transition:

Any help is appreciated.

There are dozens of ways to get that kind of colour shift. The way I would do it is by using colour/response curves, and perhaps hue / saturation controls. Most compositing, grading and editing software have these effects.
Here's a two minute attempt in AE, trying to match the leftmost panel to the 2nd from the right. It needs work, but I got bored.

Looks like there's some chromatic aberation or mis-registration effect there as well. You can do that by making a copy of the original layer, altering the curves and using transfer modes (add, overlay, multiply, whichever works) to composite it with the original. Below, I copied the original layer, used overlay transfer mode, Nudged it 20px to the right and mucked around with the curves (mainly just inverting the luma value). You can see the effect control for this layer in this screenie:

Then you can animate all the parameters.


Which software is used to produce this video? Its an animation video. Can someone specify the software ? LINK

My guess is maybe ToonBoom.

But regardless what software they used to stitch the final cut together, there were a host of software applications involved.

Illustration, likely Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Compositing, Could be ToonBoom, AfterEffects, or others. Audio was done separately, on the tail end. And I jumped over myself, they likely storyboarded all of the animations out in advance, ToonBoom, likely a good choice for that even if it's not what they used for the final mesh.

In addition, they undoubtably used a host of plugins, perhaps some free, some paid, some very expensive to assist with the motion control and character animation. And last, they likely also relied of pre-existing works, templates, which can be purchased.


Filming in a house of mirrors How do they film in a house of mirrors?  Obviously the reflection of the cameras would be seen.

Do they use a green screen and a lot of editing?

I really don't know anything about video production, but I was watching tv and it had me thinking..

One thing that you learn pretty quickly when you begin producing film or video, is that what looks right in a mirror in person usually doesn't look right to the camera. You end up having to place the mirrors at very different angles than you expect.

Fun houses/houses of mirrors are usually recreated on a sound stage or other set. Fun house mirrors can be rented and placed to accommodate production equipment. On screen, you will often see fewer mirrors than what might be used in an actual house of mirrors.

For instance in this Bruce Lee sequence, except for the final shot, you only see mirrors on one side of the actors. In that final shot, the mirrors behind Lee are obscured by other set pieces. The actors probably could not see the image of their opponent that they were punching in the mirror, everything was staged specifically for the camera.

Similarly, in this Key & Peele sequence, the mirrors are noticeably far apart, you generally see only one actor in a mirror at a time, and mostly only see mirrors on one side of the actors at a time.


Adding blurred background to portrait videos with ffmpeg I have a lot of videos that are either 720x1280 or 1280x720. I want to convert all of them to 1280x720, but for the ones that are portrait I would like to show the full video with the remaining space to the left and right being a darkened, blurred version of the video.

I think this is pretty close to that, but it seems to go on forever (maybe because the color keeps providing frames?)

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -lavfi "\
    color=color=black@.3:size=720x405[dark];
    [0:v]crop=720:405[blurbase];
    [blurbase]boxblur=lr='min(h,w)/20':lp=1:cr='min(cw,ch)/20':cp=1[blurred];
    [blurred][dark]overlay[darkened];
    [darkened]scale=1280:720[bg];
    [0:v]scale=-1:720[fg];
    [bg][fg]overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2" \
    -vb 800K video_out.mp4

You can see that it just starts adding duplicate frames after it hits the end of the video (in the logging below the video is ~24 sec):

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 (h264) -> crop (graph 0)
  Stream #0:0 (h264) -> scale (graph 0)
  overlay (graph 0) -> Stream #0:0 (libx264)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (aac (native) -> aac (native))
...
Past duration 0.999992 too large    2256kB time=00:00:24.33 bitrate= 759.4kbits/s dup=1 drop=0 speed=1.36x
Past duration 0.799995 too large
frame= 3177 fps=101 q=-1.0 Lsize=    3797kB time=00:01:45.80 bitrate= 294.0kbits/s dup=407 drop=0 speed=3.37x

How do I fix the issue of the encoding not completing when the end of the video file is reached?

Also, is there a way to conditionally only do the blurred background work if the video is portrait so landscape videos don't spend a lot of unnecessary CPU on blurring the video?

Limit the color output to a few frames. In the first overlay, it will repeat the last frame of the color once that stream ends. So,   color=black@.3:size=720x405:d=1[dark];

Filters can't be executed conditionally, so you will need to probe the input in a separate command beforehand and then execute a command with the filters or one without.

The command below

ffprobe in.mp4 -show_entries stream=display_aspect_ratio -of compact=p=0:nk=1 -v 0

will produce an output like this:

16:9

Just wrap a script to check that value.


Music-sync'd Strobe effect in video What's one way to get a strobe flash effect in video (you know, virtually, in software) that's synchronized to the beat of a music track?

Or for that matter, how do I synchronize ANY effect with music?

Trapcode's Sound Keys will do the job:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/trapcode-sound-keys/

From the promotional text:

  Now it's easy to synchronize motion and sound in After Effects. With
  Trapcode Sound Keys, your audio-intensive animations no longer require
  extensive keyframing. Visually select parts of an audio track and
  convert them into keyframes, syncing footage with audio using
  amplitude or frequency ranges. Sound Keys is applied as a regular VFX
  effect, so you can save its settings with your project, generate
  keyframes into output parameters, and link keyframes to expressions.
  The possibilities are huge, just like the beat.

By using the generated key frames you can hook them up to almost any effect or behavior that you want.

A basic example of using this plugin to drive a few "strobes":


Any video editing software with own codecs? I just tried the new Lightworks and even though I followed the installation instructions rigorously I managed to hit codec problems.

Is there any (preferably proprietary) video editing software with own codecs so that it would run on any Windows? I just want the software to work. Preferably without crashing.

I installed Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD ($34). The download took half a minute, the same to install it, no prerequisities ( except the software updated windows installer ) and everything worked and has been working like a charm.


How to change the start time of track in Final Cut Pro X? I'm exporting a project from iMovie to Final Cut Pro X.

It's really a mess, but working patiently on the project on FCPX can achieve some better results... in any case, during the exporting many videos and sounds chenged their start and end time.

So, to give an example, if I had an audio of me reading the sentences "Hi all, how are you? Today I'm not fine because I'm getting crazy", and in iMovie I had cut the
"how are you" sentence, then in FCPX it gives me the "I'm getting crazy" part of the track.

So I have two question:

do you know how to fix this? Is there a known issue? I searched a lot but I couln't find anything!
in case there is not a solution to this problem, is there a FAST way to change the start time and the end time of a track?

I tought it was simple to do with the "open in timeline" menu, but it is not possible.

When I open the audio track in the timeline, the active part is eveidenced, but appartenly there is no way to MOVE the part I want to use...

I hope I made myself understand.

Try using the trim tool (keyboard shortcut "t").


subtitles: show timed-fragments of the same text line Note: this is all about editing .ass (or Advanced SSA) subtitles.

I just happen to download Death Note series with chapters in mkv format, and found what seems to be a new subtitling method being used; instead of the usual line after line, it grabs the entire sentence and shows portions of it over-time.

Example of usual method:

  N-No! It can't be!

Example of this new method:

  N-
  N-No!
  N-No! It can't be!

The sub is always centered and uses the same space for the end sentence, in all the sequences, therefore N- and N-No! won't center themselves.

Another detail: with MPC player I always force the font into default style (Arial) instead of the one that comes with the mkv file, and it still works perfectly, so apparently this method works with any font besides the one provided.

Does this method have a name so that I can get started learning about it?

After suprisingly open the mkv with Aegisub itself, I found out that to achieve this effect, it uses a tag called alpha (like so:{\alpha&HFF&}) that changes the transparency of the text.

To do this effect, you need to duplicate the same line as many times as you need (no need to cut the original transcription), then use the alpha tag to make the text invisible afterwards, like so:

N-{\alpha&HFF&}No! It can't be!
N-No!{\alpha&HFF&} It can't be!
N-No! It can't be!

To achieve this:

N-
N-No!
N-No! It can't be!

Bear in mind that putting the tag before a comma or a dot could cause some trouble with text positioning (it is supposed to be centered). Instead I recommend use this after the comma or dot.


Lag during clip playback in Premiere Pro CS5 I am using the 30 day trial of Premiere Pro CS5 trying to edit some clips of some game footage. The clips are in 1680x1050 and are roughly 3.5GB each.

All the clips are saved on to my external USB 3.0 hard drive, which I've also set as the scratch disk in Premiere.

The clips will usually lag for the first 3-4 seconds, and then play smoothly for the remainder of the clip. Sometimes it begins lagging briefly in other parts.

So I would like to know what the optimal set up for video editing would be.

Here are my computer specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 965 Quadcore, 3.4 GHz
GPU: ATI HiS IceXQ Radeon HD 6950 with 2GB DDR5 memory
RAM: 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws RAM
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (On a 3GB/S Sata HDD)
Verbatim 1TB USB 3.0 External HDD (Scratch Disk, file source)

Have you rendered the work area? Unrendered clips can lead to lag in the playback.

If you have rendered your clips the bar above your clips in the timeline should light up green instead of red or yellow (see picture below).

If the bar isn't green, go to Sequence->Render Entire Work Area.

Done!


Making Premiere Pro Project Codecs Cross-Platform Compatible (Windows & Mac) I work on a Mac and I need to send a Premiere Pro CS6 project file to someone who works on Windows. He has QuickTime Pro 7 installed.

The project contains the following types of clip assets:

Apple Animation (with alpha transparency) - .mov
H.264 - .mov
H.264 MPEG - .mp4

All sequences in the project have the following settings:

When he tries to open the project in Windows, he gets the following error:

  This project contained a sequence that could not be opened. No sequence preview preset file or codec could be associated with this sequence type.

Could someone help me understand this error, and perhaps help in resolving this issue? Is it caused by missing codecs for the actual assets (I suspect the Apple Animation file) or simply by some settings in my project?

It has nothing to do with a codec or Apple (I assume he/she has QT installed on the PC anyway).

Here's what's going on: the PC version of Premiere is cracked and/or was not fully installed/updated. As such it is indeed missing the "Sequence Presets" that you have on your Mac. Hence the translation problem.

By "Sequence Preset" I mean the DSLR, RED, etc presets you see when you decide to "Create a new sequence". A cracked and/or poorly installed copy of Premiere will have all the important presets missing.

I recommend getting your hands of a legit copy of the program or running a thorough update of the program (it should solve your issue then, if the PC version is legal). Et oui!

The "Sequence Presets" look like this on Premiere CC (and are very similar on CS6 and previous versions):


What is the correct format of media creation time? I noticed my GH5 via ffprobe has metadata such as:

 Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2018-12-31T09:17:48.000000Z
      timecode        : 06:19:42;19

This is actually my local time, so off that bat, the timezone of UTC is wrong IIUC. Nonetheless is there a date/time video standard format for times?

Since I am not 100% sure what format that is, or how to create it via ffmpeg. Is it -metadata creation_time="$(date -u "+%FT%T.%6NZ" -r "${input}")"?

A note about the time zone:

ffmpeg interprets the input as local time, then converts it to and stores it as UTC.

If you want to give it UTC, add 'Z' to the end; ffmpeg then accepts it as UTC and does not change it.

Edit: ffmpeg's behavior is following an ISO 8601 rule: "a date and time [without Z] is assumed to be in some local time zone. ... to indicate that a time is ... (UTC), you can append a capital letter Z ...". Source: Markus Kuhn, https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html, which I think is an easier introduction than the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601).

I discovered this while testing by encoding to mkv, then reading metadata with ffprobe.

Writing in Python, I tried both local: time.strftime( fmt_string, time.localtime() ) and UTC: time.strftime( fmt_string, time.gmtime() )

With localtime(), my fmt_string was "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", and there was no problem.

With gmtime() it needed 'Z' on the end; I tried these formats and they gave correct results: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ" and "%Y%m%dT%H%M%SZ".

When I used "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" (without a Z) with time.gmtime(), the result was a doubling of the offset: At about 21h local time, the time that gmtime() produced was about 11h (I'm in AEST, 10 hours ahead of UTC); ffmpeg took this as local time and subtracted another 10 hours, so the result that ffprobe showed was around 01h.

The standard says there must not be a space before the Z, so I didn't try that.

Regardless of the input format, ffprobe always wrote creation_time formatted as in this example: "2019-03-27T03:01:29.000000Z". I don't know whether the time is stored in that format, or as a simple number such as a unix timestamp.

Note the Z on the end, which shows that ffmpeg thinks it's a UTC time.

If you write a time in another tag, such as 'comment', it's just a string and stays the way you formatted it.

Using the deprecated option -timestamp (as e.g. -timestamp now) produced a creation_time tag, which ffprobe showed in the same format as shown above.


Actively Used and Developed Motion Capture Systems I am looking for Motion Capture Systems that are actively used in the Movie Production Business.

I am currently aware of Organic Motion and it's OpenStage2 which can easily cost about 40.000$.

I would like to know if there are any alternatives that are either in the same Price-League or maybe cheaper. Most important is that it is indeed used and that it is actively developed.

We used the NaturalPoint OptiTrack S250e at my company for a big project that is still in active use today. We used it for a sort of game like exhibition on fairs. So it had to be quite robust and offer stable tracking in changing environments.

It is primarily used for movies and video games though. They offer quite a few different systems in price ranges far below your 40.000$ and far above that, depending on how many cameras you need and what precision you need. The prices are per camera.
They have a nice system configurator here, which makes choosing camera count and camera system a bit easier.

Some of their bigger customers can be found here. Seems like they have been proven in many bigger productions.

I have not affiliation with NaturalPoint and it's the only MotionTracking system I had contact with. There might be better solutions that I don't know of but we used their products and the result were satisfying for our special requirements.


Play is sometimes very slow and other times it's very fast in After effects. Why? I've just installed after effects and I would like to learn it.

When I click the play button, it seems like it starts to render so the frame rate is very low ( one frame per many seconds) and the the whole interface is laggy.

After rendering few frames, I don't remember what I really did but I clicked the play button again and the video was played smoothly.

I clicked the play button again and it became laggy one more time.

I think the preview process should be different from the rendering process in After Effects (just like 3D max or any other similar software. There is a 3D view port that doesn't render the exact materials and lighting). The two processes are separated to make the play/pauses fast.

I would like to know how do people use after effects with this mixed (Rendering & Preview) processes? Of course, I know that there is a method to get around it and I'm missing it. I would appreciate it if you give it to me.

You've answered your own question; when you preview in After Effects it renders first, then plays back. The default setting is that if you hit numpad-0 to initiate a preview it will render the frames it can until it either fills up the available RAM, gets to the end of the preview area (work area or end of comp), or you hit numpad-0 again, at which time it will play back from RAM, theoretically much faster.

In recent iterations of the software, the playback performance has got significantly worse. I don't know why AE can't easily play back even UHD previews from RAM or even from disc at real time or faster, just like every other free media player app can. You get better playback performance if you have a comp dynamically linked in Premiere, it makes no sense. Unfortunately that's just the way it is, and the only thing you can do about it is learn Nuke, Fusion or Blender.

Some tips for better real-time playback: updating the UI seems to take an inordinate amount of processing power. So having things like the graph editor, Lumetri scopes or even just the timeline visible while previewing will slow it down. I work on two monitors, and if I can't get real-time playback I will maximise (~) a window that doesn't get refreshed during playback, like the tools window, so that it fills the entire monitor, and that improves performance dramatically. Also making sure the comp window is zoomed to 100% will help, and if that doesn't work, lowering the preview resolution ctrl / ⌘shiftj to half or quarter ctrl / ⌘shiftaltj will speed things up.


Very simple question: converting DVD/VOB to (say) AVI I recently converted an old 90-minute VHS to DVD. I then copied the DVD files onto my PC: VIDEO_TS.BUP, VIDEO_TS.IFO, VIDEO_TS.VOB, VTS_01_0.BUP, VTS_01_0.IFO, VTS_01_1.VOB (1GB), VTS_01_2.VOB (1GB), and VTS_01_3.VOB (938MB). I can open VIDEO_TS.IFO with VLC media player and watch the entire video. No problem.

But when I try to convert the VOB files to AVI, I get problems. VTS_01_1.VOB only has nine seconds, and VTS_01_2.VOB only has ten seconds! VTS_01_3.VOB has only the last 26 minutes of the video. The software I've tried includes Windows Live Movie Maker, Convert VOB to AVI, and VOB to AVI: they all generate the same problems.

I just want the video in a single easy-to-watch file. Does anyone know what to do? Thanks.

I suggest you use Handbrake. It's one of the best transcoders I know of, and have used it myself many times to convert DVDs to video files.

It is pretty simple and straight forward to use, but if you need any help/guidance this page covers pretty much all you need to know.

Have fun! And if you have any further doubts don't hesitate to comment.

Kevin.


How can I demux avi? I want to demux the audio from avi files, so that the files are lossless. I tried both Yamb and Ffmpeg. Both produce files less than 1 MB (for a video of 80 MB), which are unplayable through VLC. I tried avidemux, and it says it can't export in copy mode.

Your audio is PCM, but you're trying to streamcopy to AAC, which won't work.

To extract the audio to WAV, use

ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec copy -y a.wav

To transcode the audio to AAC, use

ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec aac -y a.aac

Note that AAC isn't lossless. But FLAC is a lossless and compressed codec.

ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec flac -y a.flac


How to change After Effects frame rate so that it doesn't speed up I recently imported a 59.94 fps mp4 file into After Effects, and due to myself wanting the edit to be smoother, I changed up the fps to 120, but it changes the video speed to a much higher rate. How can I make it so that the fps can be at 120, but the video stays the same speed?

If I get the question right, what you're wanting to do is add more frames to the footage to make it play smoother. You have to add the frames because your footage was shot at 59.94 frames per second, and you want to double(ish) the number of frames displayed every second to 120. So every frame there has to be an extra 60 (ish) frames to display to make up the shortfall.

Ok so the first thing to do is to make a comp containing the footage and set your comp to 120fps. You do that in the Composition settings dialog. ctrl/cmdk will summon that boi.

So now the composition has two frames for every frame of the source. Being the professional program that it is it will still display your footage at the correct speed, and by default it will do that by displaying every frame twice. This is pretty much the same as playing back your footage at the original fps. We need to make up some frames that don't exist in your footage.

To generate the in-between frames you have to turn on frame blending. This can be done in the layer switches for the layer (Hit f4 to hide/show them). Clicking in the frame blending square once turns on frame-mix blending , clicking again turns on pixel-motion blending .

There are two options. Cheap and cheerful frame mix basically makes a 50% blend of the previous and the next frame to come up with the new frame. The second mode is the computationally intensive, sometimes brilliant, sometimes very weird pixel motion. It uses all sorts of clever algorithms to create a new frame by looking at the motion in previous and following frames and warping your pixels to match. A bit like you added a morph between successive frames.There are also 3rd party plugins for time-stretching, notably Twixtor.

Now you won't see anything when you turn on frame blending for a layer, because by default it's not shown in the preview you see in the comp window, because it slows rendering down a bit. You can turn it on for the preview by hitting the frame blending button in the timeline window, as seen below. It goes blue when it's on.

You also have to make sure that frame blending is on in your render settings if you want the final result to render out with frame blending.

You should prolly read the documentation, it sounds like you're a bit confused about things like interpret footage and time stretching and so on.


How do I create a fading effect in my videos? I am trying to make a seamless tunnel ; so I want to fade it in distance. I have tried using set matte but doesn’t seem to work.Any help…..
I have attatched the project file here https://bit.ly/3obiTPA

While it really does depend on what software you use, I'll provide the steps on how you do it with ClipChamp Create (the software I use)
In the video editor:

Click on the element you wish to create a fading effect
Select the Fade option at the top of the screen
Adjust the sliders to your liking!

Hope this helps!


Recording in a training room with upside camera mount from the top I would like to setup a remote camera in a training room to do HD recording.

I already have a standard HD video camera and a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle.

What I would like is a camera which I can mount from a ceiling bracket. The ceiling bracket I have seems to be designed for CCTV cameras, so will only really support cameras with a screw hole in the top. So to use a video camera, it would have to be upside down as the screw hole is on the bottom of the camera.

Can I use a standard video camera upside down and yet record the right way up, as it were?

Also, what are some options regarding remote HD recording cameras which can be controlled remotely? I have looked into HD CCTV cameras, but it seems that the color is not all that great.

You can record video upside down, and then flip it using PC software. Eg. Avidemux, which is freeware can flip videos.

For sports or action, GoPro Hero is very good camera. I can stream to PC or Mac. It also can record upside down. And there are a lot of accessories to mount it in many places.


How to create circle gradient in Final Cut Pro? I'm starting out with Final Cut Pro and I want to create a circular gradient to white in Final Cut Pro so that the movie looks like the image below.

I searched around and found a Graduated Mask effect. That is only a linear effect though, and it does a gradient to black (and I can't find a setting to change the color).

Does anybody know how I can do this in Final Cut Pro X? All tips are welcome!

Add a new custom generator and set the colour to white.

Add your media above. In this example, I will use a photo.
Apply the Draw Mask to your image.
Click to add 4 control points, then set the control point positions using the inspector.

Choose B-Spline as the Shape Type, then set the Feather and Falloff as appropriate.


Custom timeline settings - how to use that? On Resolve index page I found this article:

But I can't find information about it, how to use that and where is located?

That particular menu is only available on the cut page, AFAIK.  The BMD website is referring to the fact that as of R16, projects can contain multiple timelines with different resolutions.  In previous versions of Resolve, timeline resolution was set at the project level; you could have multiple timelines in a project, but they all had to be the same resolution.

But if all you need is that little menu, here are the steps to find it:

Switch to the "Cut" page.  It's icon looks like this:

Then click on the Icon in the upper-right side of the screen that looks like this:

This little window is really just a shortcut, which sets a few things in the project settings to commonly used values.  To put it another way, changing the "Timeline resolution" dropdown menu in Project Settings->Master Settings (gear menu) to 1920x1080, 3840x2160, etc, does exactly the same thing.

There are a few other places in Resolve's interface where you'll find shortcuts to the project settings, but all the magic really happens under the gear icon.  For example, when you create a new timeline via File->New Timeline, then click the "Custom Settings" button, and switch to the "Format" tab, you'll get a dialoge that looks like this:

Again, these settings are just shortcuts to the main project settings, and you can change everything besides timeline framerate after the fact (which actually is possible, but that's another topic.  Best to just get it right the first time).

And just for good measure, here's a screenshot of the master "Project Settings", which you'll find under the gear menu on the bottom right of the UI:


How to extract and modify data rate and time scale from OpenDML (AVI) file I'm working on a Python script to bulk transcode video files. These files will have different framerates, and one of the goals is to get them all to the same framerate, by making some intelligent decisions on whether to slow down or speed up the playback or to decimate or duplicate frames. As I understand it, the framerate is stored as two 32-bit integers, for example 29.97 fps is actually stored as 30000/1001, and I need to work with these values. I'll also use these values to calculate how much to stretch and pitch shift the audio. The framerates of the source files are not necessarily standard ones, but they may be anything from slightly off from PAL or NTSC to completely screwed up, and using the values that are actually in the files makes it easier to make the calculations.

So, how can I extract them, and, in the case of slowing down or speeding up the video, write back modified values?
Preferably a commandline tool (needs to run on FreeBSD).
I'm also open to parsing the headers directly from the script, but unfortunately I don't know where to find them.

The specs I've found more or less list the various structs (as defined in C) for the various headers, and a more skilled programmer may be able to use this, but I need a simpler explanation. I don't need help with the actual scripting, I just need help understanding where the information is located.

OpenDML AVI File Format Extensions
AVI File Format

ffprobe can supply the frame rate as a rational value

ffprobe in.avi -show_entries stream=r_frame_rate,avg_frame_rate -select_streams v -v 0 -of compact=p=0:nk=1

The first rational value is from the stream header; the 2nd is the computed value which will differ for a variable frame rate stream


How do I create a zoom transition in Premiere Elements 9? Could you tell me how do I zoom in Adobe Premiere Elements 9? And I mean a slow zoom transition, not a non-transitioning zoom that "jumps" into zoom from one frame to the other.

Thanks

I'm no expert, but here's what I use. Right-click on the piece being edited. (I usually view them in Timeline rather than Sceneline.) Choose "Show Properties." The important property for this purpose is Motion. Click on the little clock at the right end of the Motion heading. That will show you arrows where you can go forward and back, to see what keyframes you have set. (You can also right-click on the image and choose Show Clip Keyframes, but what you see is not necessarily very informative.) Add keyframes at the beginning and end of a clip, for Position, Scale, and Scale Width. (To add keyframes, click on the diamond, not the arrows, under the Motion clock.) If the little dot on the Timeline disappears (assuming you have selected Show Clip Keyframes), that means you turned the keyframe off, not on. Arrow back and forth to make sure your keyframes have been added for each of those three parameters. Now go somewhere in the middle of the clip and drag your image around in the viewing window and/or use the Motion sliders. Get your image where you want it and add those same three kinds of keyframes there too. Now, optionally, click on the camera picture, at the corner of the viewing window, and add a still image of your zoomed frame. Hope that helps.


Increment a number, based on number of keyframes in After Effects? I'm working on a video comparing old and new games, and I'm scrubbing through some footage frame by frame trying to count button inputs in DOOM over a period of time. I was wondering if there was a way to increment a number based on the amount of keyframes present. So ideally it would automatically go up by one for each keyframe placed on the timeline, without having to manually increase the value on a per keyframe basis. Is there an easy way to go about this or will I have to manually set the value per keyframe?

I've never really used expressions before so this is new territory for me, and I don't know where to start.

Thank you.

Yep, just do

var p = <pick whip the property with the keyframes here>;
var k = p.nearestKey(time);
if (k.time <= time){
    k.index; //key is in the past
} else {
    k.index-1; //nearest key is in the future, return the previous key
}

On the first line you have to reference the property with the keyframes. The easiest way is with the pick whip (the curly thing in the expressions buttons). Drag it to the property you want to reference.

So the first line should look something like this:

var p = thisComp.layer("Pale Gray-Magenta Solid 2").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");

or

var p = transform.position;

Don't forget the semi-colon at the end.


Missing video codec in Quicktime I have a quicktime video recorded on a Atoms Shogun.

When I tried to play the file it is only playing the audio and no video is coming up at all.

Delving deeper, I found out that no codec for the video was embedded in the file, only audio.

Is there any way to add the file codec to it?

General
Complete name                    : L:\9e550a82-d3ed-460f-a10d-f25be5c87a03.mov
Format                           : MPEG-4
Format profile                   : QuickTime
Codec ID                         : qt
File size                        : 33.3 GiB
Duration                         : 1h 52mn
Overall bit rate                 : 42.3 Mbps
Encoded date                     : UTC 2024-12-01 19:09:30
Tagged date                      : UTC 2024-12-01 19:09:30
Writing library                  : Apple QuickTime

Video
ID                               : 2
Duration                         : 1h 52mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 36.0 Mbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate mode                  : Constant
Frame rate                       : 25.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.694
Stream size                      : 28.4 GiB (85%)
Language                         : English
Encoded date                     : UTC 2024-12-01 19:09:30
Tagged date                      : UTC 2024-12-01 19:09:30

Audio
ID                               : 1
Format                           : PCM
Format settings, Endianness      : Big
Format settings, Sign            : Unsigned
Codec ID                         : in24
Duration                         : 1h 52mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 4 608 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 4 channels
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 24 bits
Stream size                      : 3.63 GiB (11%)
Language                         : English
Encoded date                     : UTC 2024-12-01 19:09:30
Tagged date                      : UTC 2024-12-01 19:09:30

You can try to repair the file with ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, like so

ffmpeg -analyzeduration 1G -i input.mov -c copy -map 0 out.mov


Tranferring an iMovie project from iPhone to MacBook Pro Is it possible to transfer an iMovie project from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro?

Right now, my project consists of clips that I shot directly using iMovie, but they don't appear in my Camera Roll on my iPhone. Is there a way to make them appear on my Camera Roll (or other folder) so that I can simply copy and paste the individual clips onto my computer?

I have tried the new update of iMovie 10.1, but it gives a strange error when I try to import. What I have done:

Goto the projects in iMovie for iPhone, open a project, export to iTunes.
Download the "projectname.iMovieMobile" file from iTunes onto my computer.
Open iMovie version 10.1 (the new update). File > Import iMovie iOS Projects... > select the project.iMovieMobile.
When I try to import them, it gives an error after a few seconds:

  Error in iOS Project Import
  Failed to import iOS project. The project's version is too old. Please update the iMovie app on your iOS device.

However, I have checked that I have the correct versions. I will try updating my iOS and get back to here.

Additional Info:

Mac Book Pro (Late 2011)

I just installed the 'El Capitan' update, but it doesn't to appear to actually be working; will try reinstalling.

iPhone 6S, iOS version 9.0.2 (latest)
iMovie (on MacBook Pro) v. 10.1
iMovie (on iPhone) v. 2.2

Turns out I finally found my own solution:

Make sure you have the latest versions of iMovie, especially on iOS. This was the main problem causer for me, as iMovie claimed to be updated and would not show up in the updates in the App Store until I restarted several times.

From your iPhone: export the project you wish to transfer to iTunes. Connect your iPhone to your computer via a USB cable and download the filename.iMovieMobile file to your computer.

Open iMovie on your computer, and click File > Import iMovie iOS Projects....

You should have the project imported to iMovie on the computer! Now, you can even transfer to Final Cut Pro X (see here for info on how to do that).

Make sure you are running the most recent versions of iMovie!


How to animate text overlays, in iMovie or similar I agreed to cut edit a video for the team I'm working with at university even though it's not really in my expertise (and I said that, I believe they overestimate me though).

I got sent a video that's supposed to serve as reference and I want to replicate a certain effect for blending in text. (best would be in iMovie but other programs are fine as long as there's a free demo like with Final Cut Pro)

https://imgur.com/Xs7hzVf

Do you know whether there's a simple option for this in any program. I could of course try to do it frame by frame in affinity photo but I'd like something more convenient.

Since you asked for a program...

If you're referring to the title specifically, this can be accomplished is After Effects with relative ease.

You'll simply need to...

create the three text box shapes
the three lines of text
parent-child them together
animate them all with keyframes

If you're referring to the changing of speed effect, this can also be done in After Effects.  You can simply animate the speed with keyframes.


Variable Bitrates for Streaming? I'm building presets for our users to convert the videos into an appropriate format for our online video repository. Since it's been awhile since I've built something like this from scratch, I've been looking at what others recommend, and notice that a lot of them specifically recommend variable bitrate encoding. For example:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Even with progressive or pseudo-streaming, wouldn't that just introduce pausing and stuttering in playback once you hit a segment with a high bitrate? It just seems odd as a general recommendation when that's likely to create a poor playback experience. Or am I just overestimating the problems since it's been some years since I last looked into it. Do you generally use a variable bitrate for online delivery these days?

Players buffer streams.  The bigger the buffer size, the longer window the encoder has to use higher bitrates for hard content, and then fewer bits earlier or later on easy content, to achieve similar quality for the whole video.

I'll assume you're going to use h.264 (aka AVC) as a codec, as it's the de-facto standard for streaming video on the Internet.  VP8 is not as good quality.  VP9 can look better than h.264, but support is limited.  HEVC (h.265) is also better than h.264, but again player support is limited.  (And hardware decode acceleration won't be widespread for years.  This matters, because HEVC is very cpu-intensive to decode, more than AVC.)

The quality comparisons I'm talking about are with the best available encoders for each codec.  x264 for AVC, Google's VPx for VP8/VP9, and x265 for HEVC.  All with settings cranked up nearly all the way.  x265 will start to get into seconds-per-frame instead of frames-per-second for 1080p with settings that slow, though.  (x264 orders of magnitude faster, since it's been essentially mature for a couple years now, with few new speedups or quality gains being found.)

All these encoders are free open-source software.  It's nice that you don't have to pay anything to get world-class quality codecs these days.  :)

A random google hit on x264 vbv for streaming:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=147460

An example from x264 --fullhelp:

  Constant bitrate at 1000kbps with a 2 second-buffer:
        x264 --vbv-bufsize 2000 --bitrate 1000 -o <output> <input>

(don't actually use one-pass target-bitrate mode, though.  Either 2pass if you have a specific target bitrate, or crf with a target quality.)

edit: recommended usage for streaming, according to the x264 lead developer (Jason Garrett-Glaser), is quality target (CRF) mode with VBV-constrained bitrate.  e.g.

x264 --vbv-bufsize 2000 --vbv-maxrate 1000 --crf 22 -preset slower -o <output> <input>

vbv-maxrate is the max speed the buffer can fill at.  (i.e. the max network bandwidth).  vbv-bufsize is of course the size of the buffer, which allows for non-sustained bitrate peaks higher than vbv-maxrate.

And of course, if you're encoding once to create a file which will be streamed many times, throw as much CPU time at it as you can.  Encode time is of little importance compared to getting the most quality per bitrate (rate-distortion tradeoff, aka RD).  The encode only happens once, and any bits you can save (while maintaining the same quality) are saved for every download.  e.g. Use x264 with --preset veryslow.


How to slow down a typography effect in after effects? I'm using Adobe After Effects 2014 and I have got a royalty-free template of a typography effect. And it's really fast, I want to increase the duration of the effect(when the text is in focus in the video so I can give it a bit more reading time) without distorting it by like slowing the whole video down. How can I do that?

Assuming that it is a template applied to a text layer in a comp, select the text layer and press "u" to reveal any keyframes on that layer.  Drag the keyframes out to the duration you need.

If the comp isn't long enough, press Command K to reveal the comp settings, extend the duration.  Extend the duration of the text layer by dragging the end of it further to the right.


Software to move graphics over another. i.e. a bus over a map I want to portray the tour of a group of students from the Uni to an exterior site and back.
The idea ist to have a map (static or scrolling) and move a picture of a bus on it.
The look is supposed to resemble a cut out bus being moved of a paper-map.

I am looking for a suitable (free) software to do this.
I am also open for other suggestions to achive that effect.

You could try stop-motion. Basically your taking a pic of the bus everytime you move it on the map, then putting it together as a sequence in your editing program. Bout the only free way I can think of


How match this broadcast standards with Premiere and ffmpeg I have to export an MXF file for a program that have certain limitations:

  Conform to SMPTE 274M, “1920 x 1080 Scanning with no visible video impairment such as blocking errors or pixelization artefacts.
  Luminance and color difference signals must not exceed the bounds of legal gamut. Video technical standards are fully detailed in ITU-R
  BT.709.5.

  For the video levels, sync and blanking must be in accordance with EBU recommendations, the component video levels must not exceed
  700mV ±3% for the luminance channel and ±350 mV for the color
  difference channels.  No excursions below black level can be tolerated
  in the luminance, never below 0mV.

I marked in bold the parts where I'm not confident with.

Let's say that I have already exported an intermediate ProRes or DNxHD file and I want it to be used as input in the timeline for the new export as the definitive MXF.

How can I meet that requests with Premiere ? I saw under the Color Correction filter category some plugins like Video Limiter and Broadcast Colors but the amount of tweaks given seems poor to me and I can't find values expressed in mV ..

What I am missing ?

My request is how to do it with Premiere.. and if is possible do the same also with ffmpeg, thanks!!

I'm already working in rec 709 environment:

MediaInfo says:

Color primaries             : BT.709
Transfer characteristics    : BT.709
Matrix coefficients         : BT.709
matrix_coefficients_Origina : BT.709

This is my ProRes input.

To legalize video with the Video Limiter:

Set the Reduction Axis to Chroma and Luma.
Set the Signal Minimum to 0% (=0 mV).
Set the Signal Maximum to 103% (=700 mV + 3%).

The rest of the settings may take some experimentation to find something that looks good for your project.

I strongly recommend double checking you are within limits with a good gamut visualization. I'm partial to the Tektronix split diamond display, but other test equipment vendors have other good versions. If you are going to be delivering a lot of files, a file-based QC system will also be able to check for legal colors and some can even do the correction.

Something to take in to consideration, depending on the broadcaster you are delivering to, they may not enforce the gamut requirements all that strictly. I know that most in the US don't, unless you are severely and noticeably out of gamut.


Crop HD (1920x1080) video ratio from the center in ffmpeg I have an HD video (1920x1080). I am trying to crop the video from the center so the resolution is (960x1080) and looks like a portrait video. I have tried the following command with no luck:
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -filter:v "crop=960:1080:480:0" -c:a copy out.mp4
This just outputs a video at the same size: 1920x1080
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Your command is doing fine, and ffprobe will show the resolution as 960x1080
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf57.83.100
  Duration: 00:10:45.14, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1969 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 960x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 8:9], 1838 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 12800 tbn, 50 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : VideoHandler

My suggestion is to go through some of the examples from https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#Examples-52 to see if you have any expected result.
Good luck.