What causes audio sync drift when digitizing VHS? In the process of digitizing family VHS tapes, amateur video producers often encounter audio drift or skew where the audio track becomes out of sync with the video:

It slowly dawned on me that the audio and video weren’t simply offset — they captured at different rates. They diverged more and more throughout the tape. To keep them in sync, I’d repeatedly have to adjust the audio manually every few minutes of tape.
https://mtlynch.io/digitizing-1/

What causes audio drift when digitizing analog video such as VHS tapes?
How can audio drift be avoided at record-time when digitizing analog video?
Common advice across the web is to use an advanced VCR with an integrated Time Base Corrector. Does using a TBC do anything to correct audio drift?

Audio drift can have a couple of causes, dropped frames (which a TBC can help with), and unstable clocks, where the audio isn't recorded at quite the precise rate it should be, causing drift, as Michael correctly pointed out.
Dropped frames caused by tape dropouts are a problem if the device skips a frame, without skipping the corresponding frame of audio. A TBC helps with this, as it will ensure the vertical sync pulse is there for each frame, even if the tape has quality issues - it will ensure your capture device always sees a frame. LOTS of older PC capture devices I tried were impacted by dropped frames. The most reliable method I found was using a dedicated HDD/DVD recorder unit, all the ones I used would always maintain the correct frame rate (without input via TBC), and the audio would always be in sync. I also sometimes used a MiniDV deck to achieve the same, which has no choice but to always record a frame, and therefore keep audio/video in sync.
Doing it via PC, I've only had success with 1 device, a "Dazzle DVD Recorder HD" that I bought in 2011. It came bundled with a copy of Pinnacle Studio HD, and it all runs on an old Windows XP machine I keep for that purpose. I don't know if it is the hardware or the software (or maybe the combination), but this device has worked for me in transferring tapes and keeping things in sync, and I've not had to buy another device since coming across this one.
If you can find a combo VHS/DVD recorder unit (I'm pretty sure they are no longer manufactured), they are usually the most reliable solution to doing this without a lot of effort. A DVD Recorder (with analog inputs) will also do the job, mine had a HDD which you would record to first, and then output those files onto a DVD. I stopped using the unit when the DVD drive eventually failed. Otherwise you are stuck just trying the various analog USB capture devices on the market, which like I've said, I've found to have mixed results, and only come across one device so far that does the job reliably.


Why is this ffmpeg command outputting such long clips? I am trying edit out a two minute clip from a long movie.

This is the command I'm using:

ffmpeg -ss 01:05:16 -t 120 -i input.avi -vcodec copy -an clips/output.avi

I thought that 120 would be in seconds, giving me a two minute clip. But the clip I get is over 45 minutes long. It seems to be as long as from the start time to the end of the film.

Why is this not working and what command should I use to get a two minute clip?

I found that the time after -t has to be in the format 00:00:00. So, for a two minute clip, the command is:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -sameq -ss 01:05:16 -t 00:02:00 clips/output.avi


How to track and zoom in AE I want to learn how to make the effect that is presented in the video from 0:29 to 0:31, that is, cursor tracking and zoom.

Here is how I would do it:

Track the cursor in After-Effects (using the tracking-panel)
Apply the movement to a Null-Object
Create a camera
Parent the camera to the Null
Change the focal length in the camera to achieve the zoom

Now your camera should follow the cursor.


Best software for homemade YouTube videos I would like to get started with making some home videos to post them on YouTube. What are some of the best references, tutorials, and software to use for this task? Thanks.

A great choice that works on both Mac and PC is DaVinci Resolve.  The Lite version is free, and if you use only the basic features, it is very intuitive and easy to learn, from drag-and-drop media to basic editing to automatic delivery to YouTube.

A second recommendation is this: software is great for controlling edits, meaning cuts, transitions, wipes, dissolves, and generally assembling footage so that a sequence of shots tells a story, possibly syncrhonized to music, sound effects, or whatever.  However, a great edit will get you only so far when your footage is sub-standard.  Don't waste your time looking for software to fix sub-standard footage.  Learn about lighting (especially 3-point lighting), camera movement, and camera support.  If you don't like your audio, don't waste your time looking for software to clean it up.  Learn to record audio properly, with microphones positioned appropriately.

It may well be that you are very happy with the audio and video you are capturing, and that editing really is the only thing you need to worry about.  Good for you!  But if you are trying to get better looking video or better sounding audio, fix it at the source--with lighting and proper mic techniques.  It takes years of practice and the very best to work magic with software to fix what should have been done right in the first place.

Once you have learned lighting and audio, then you can really go nuts with Resolve, making good footage look great.


Achieve a video warping effect, where it appears like the camera was shifted I am writing this topic in regard to a very interesting effect I've observed while watching tennis games. An example can be found on the Facebook page called "Tennis Channel", e.g. the last posted video there with the shots of Grigor Dimitrov.

In the video, one can see that there is an effect of a "moving camera" that moves to the left/right when the footage is paused on a particular frame.

During this simulated movement of the camera the audience gets slightly blurred so this appears to be some video simulation or similar? I am pretty sure that there is no hawk-eye involved here. In addition to that there are other effects of zooming in and some "paint" alike effects on the relevant parts of the court.

How can I create such an effect?

This particular effect couldn't be done without some pretty advanced computer vision algorithms and a whole lot of processing.  Based on the screen shot alone, it appears that it tries to identify flat surfaces and objects within that space so that it can alter the camera's perspective.

Note that this is quite imperfect as you have no material for the actual side of people's heads and such.  Additionally, you can see that the system they were using doesn't understand transparent objects well.  It saw the net as a wall and modified it differently from the court, which is why we end up seeing that disjointed line where the net is.

I'm not aware of any specific system that does this, but I wouldn't expect it to be cheap and I really, really wouldn't expect it to be free.

If you don't care about cost, the fundamental start to it would probably be something along the lines of SynthEyes, as long as the camera does move some.  This can track where the camera actually moved and use that data to establish what depth things were at and what backgrounds looked like.  From that, it may be possible to create a virtual scene which you can effectively move the position of the camera in.

If the shot isn't moving, then I couldn't find any tools that would be helpful and your best bet might be to try contacting the company that produced the video directly to ask them what they used.  It appears to be something very specialized and not particularly well advertised as far as I can tell.


Tips on making a YouTube channel I had the idea of starting a YouTube channel (called 'Hardcore Durability Test') focused on creating entertaining durability tests on all sorts of items. The show would be presented by two children (one 13 and the other 11) who are actually much more sensible than their ages suggest. Does anyone have any general tips on making this? Thanks!

This is an extremely broad question, but I'll do my best to provide a quick surface overview.  Producing good quality video is HARD.  To put it in perspective, I'm working on an indie level web series right now and I'd guess it takes probably around 10 man hours of work per minute of video.  Making a successful video involves lots of planning and high quality execution, all of which takes time and a variety of different skills.

You start out with writing.  The concept of the show needs to be flushed out.  Improv is an option, but the basic premise still needs to be there and the topics, items to test, etc all need to be determined in a way that gives the foundation for producing content that holds together and is interesting to viewers.

Then you need to begin producing the video.  This involves gathering and organizing the resources you will need to make the video.  You will need products to test, your cast is already selected, but you'll need crew (possibly yourself for now) and equipment that can be used for actual production.

Once everything you need for production is gathered, you have to actually execute the production.  This involves making sure you have good sets, lighting, sound, video, etc.  You need to make sure that the video both looks and sounds good and that there is good content in the raw footage you shoot.

Next, you move in to post production once all the footage is shot.  This is when you work on editing the footage in to the final consumable form.  You have to work out pacing of the content and add any post production elements like titles and graphics and any additional sounds in order to make sure that the final product is interesting to watch.

Finally, you move in to release and marketing.  In this case, you've already decided that you want to release on Youtube, but just putting a video up on Youtube isn't going to get people to watch it quickly.  You need to let people know about the video and raise awareness about it.  This can be as simple as making social media posts about the videos to your various networks or as complicated as actual paid advertising to reach out beyond your direct network.  You might also consider trying to get news coverage of the show for some free marketing if you can get any news sources to pick up the story.

As an added bonus, there is also the luck factor.  Even if you do everything completely wrong, there is a large luck factor in any release, especially on places like Youtube.  Certainly well maintained and high production value channels tend to have the most staying power, but just about any video has the possibility of going viral regardless of almost any other factors if the stars align just right.  Even if you do everything right, there is still no guarantee of success.  It's notoriously hard to tell what people will or won't find interesting and even major large budget projects fall victim to this.  It comes down to how things strike people's fancy and people are fickle.


Subtitle format guide I was asked to subtitle a student movie. I don't care much about which subtitle format to use - I'd probably use vim for typing them, and still it is interesting which formats are most common and what are the benefits for using them.

SBS - Australia's Special Broadcasting Service has an extensive and international reputation for quality subtitles. from http://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/faqs/index/id/120/h/Subtitles

  SBS subtitles the majority of its non-English language programs in-house. The distinctive colour, font and size of subtitles were adopted after extensive research. For the majority of our programs, which are broadcast in colour it was found that yellow letters with thin black borders provide the maximum degree of contrast. For black and white material we use white subtitles with thin black borders.

Madman is an Australian distributor (originally of anime) their subs match SBS:

  Most of the time Madman uses Arial, size 36. The yellow is straight-up no frills yellow: R=255, G=255, B=0.

A similar match is these settings (obviously size depends on your video aspect ratio).

Font: Verdana, Regular
Size: 22
Primary Color: Yellow
Outline Width: 1
Shadow Depth: 1
Border Style: Outline + Shadow


How To Get The Webcam To Record From Guitar Rig Directly i am trying to figure out how to get my webcam to record directly from Guiat Rig. Currently i have to manualy sync the audio and video.
i have the focusrite scarlet 2i2 audio interface. If possible i don't want to use a mic.
When i see the recording sources in webcam I see either the laptop mic or the line in from focusrite audio interface. I choose line in from focusrite. The guitar recording happens but the effects from guitar rig don't get recorded.

Please suggest.

The focusrite scarlet 2i2 has no inbuilt mic, you need to connect an "external mic" to it, or connect the guitar lineout to it. If you have effects pedals, just connect the last 1/4" connector n the chain to the input of the Focusrite.

Please update why you are having sync problems. Anyway don't not rely on a webcam to give synced audio/video. I would say that if you record video & audio from different sources, almost always you have to sync audio with video. Professional gear have a "sync clock" that makes it automatic but this is expensive. At less expensive level you have to work "hard sometimes" with sync. Having a good program like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere helps.

Apart from the discussion of how to fix this (Zoom Q3HD Video Recorder) to the guitar, this is a very practical audio/video recorder, you can even connect external input to it.


FFMPEG convert video with multiple audio streams? Ok so I have a video made from dxtory. The video is using dxtory video codec and unknown audio codec. When I pop the file into avimux, I can clearly see two audio tracks/sources. I have successfully converted the video without loss of quality with the following.

ffmpeg -i "The Bunker.avi" -vcodec h264 TheBunkerMix.mp4

But, the resultant file only had one track/source. Basically I recorded game footage and the original file had both the in game sounds as well as the mic recording commentary on top. But, when I did the conversion my audio commentary track/source got lost in conversion. What other options can I include to get my audio tracks?

EDIT 2:

I've gotten close now, but still not right. I have used the following but again its seems to ignore the first -map option. If I flipped which map comes second, that is the stream that is audible in the output. How do I mux them together so they both play?

ffmpeg -i "The Bunker.avi" -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -map 0:2 -vcodec h264 -acodec:0 mp
 -acodec:1 mp3 TheBunkerNwMix.mp4

This is the stream mappings so I have no idea why it isn't mapping correctly?

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (dxtory -> libx264)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (pcm_s16le -> libmp3lame)
  Stream #0:2 -> #0:2 (pcm_s16le -> libmp3lame)

If you copied your command there then your issue is probably -acodec:0 mp. That should be -acodec:0 mp3.

You can just use -c:a mp3 to apply the encoding options to all audio tracks at once, no need to apply them for each individually.

Other than that your mapping is correct and shouldn't be the issue.

Edit: To conclude the discussion in the comments regarding the actual reason behind the question: When it comes to editing it is no problem to just transcode the video stream if the source codec makes problems and import the audio from the source file by either muxing the audio into a new container with the transcoded video stream or just importing the transcoded video and audio streams separately (by demuxing the source) into your editing program and skip on the container format.


How does an optical viewfinder on a film camera work? As we all know, a DSLR camera works by moving a mirror out the sensors way when taking a picture and then going back to start, not exposing the sendor.
How does this process work, on an optical motion picture camera, while filming?
How can the dop/camera operator see what's beeing recorded?

There are three ways that film cameras do this:

Using a rangefinder, i.e. a viewfinder that doesn't actually view
through the lens. Common on cheaper consumer format cameras such as
super-8
Using a beam splitter. The ubiquitous Bolex 16mm cameras
have a prism in the light path that splits the light coming through
the lens, so that some of it goes to the film gate, and the rest
goes to the eyepiece.

This has the advantage of being through the
lens, and continuous, but at the cost of brightness for the viewer
and a stop or so of exposure for the film. From personal experience,
in low light it can be really hard to focus a Bolex.
Using a rotating mirror. In this setup a reflective mirror interrupts the
light path to the film, similar to a DSLR, but instead of hinging up it rotates.

When the camera is
stopped the mirror is parked so that it sends the light to the
viewer, and when shooting it rotates, acting as the shutter. While
the mirror is sending light to the viewfinder the film is being
pulled down to get the next frame in position in the gate. Then the
frame is exposed, during which time the viewfinder will be black. This cycle is repeated for each frame

This has the advantage that all the light available goes to expose
the film, but at the cost of some flickering in the viewfinder (I
found that helpful: it lets you know that the camera is running—on
silent cameras it can be almost impossible to tell otherwise).


How to achieve the short particle bursts in this gif? I've tried to create the short bursts similar to this gif but I can't seem to get the exact effect. I'm using particle world in after effects. Another problem I'm running into is the texture has some color overlay I can't get rid of.

Generally its totally possible to achieve this with Particle World, just play around with gravity adn particle emission rate and animate them accordingly.

If you need a more advanced particle system use a plugin called Particular by Red Giant Software. Though its not free and costs money.


How can I preview with audio in After Effects and be able to pause / resume the preview? I am working on a series of animations which have elements that are timed to the beat of the background track in AE. It's crucial that they are lined up perfectly to the audio (they are DJ training videos).

I'm used to Premiere, but am pretty new to After Effects. In Premiere you can preview the audio by pressing space, and then press space again to stop the preview. In After Effects, when you do this there is no audio.

The only way I've been able to get a preview with audio is to use the RAM preview, but when I press space to stop it, it goes back to the beginning of the timeline / render area.

I need to be able to listen to the audio, and then stop it on a beat so the timeline marker is in the right place for an effect / keyframe. Is there any way I can do this?

To enable the audio playback, only way is to use the RAM-Preview. Press Numpad 0 or the associated |||> in the Preview Panel to start the preview rendering process:

Press Numpad 0 again to stop it
Press Numpad 0 twice to stop and playback the previously rendered (green) frames

In terms of correct audio playback:

Set the Frame Rate to the composition settings
Enable From Current Time option
Enable Sound Preview (6th button in the first row)

In order to facilitate the work:

Set the rendering resolution of the view to a lower value for e.g. to half or quarter
Limit the work area in your timeline, press B to set the start render point (Begin), press N to set the end point (End)
Enable Loop preview (7th button) to repeat the preview of the current work area

Note: As @Emir Dupovac mentioned, also check your waveform:

See this related answer: AE - Composition video file/layer missing audio


How to convert a sequence of images to a video with different number of digits in the names? I'd like to turn a sequence of images into a video using FFMPEG. They are numbered but with different "digits". Eg:

a0001.jpg

a0002.jpg

a0003.jpg

.

.

.

a654321.jpg

a654322.jpg

a654323.jpg

The first part consists of 4 digits but due to a very large number of images (more than a million). The number of digits can be up to 6.

after reading this wiki article, the following code didn't work:

  ffmpeg -framerate 24 -i a%d.jpg video.webm

Error msg:

  Could find no file with path 'a%d.jpg' and index in the range 0-4
  a%d.jpg: No such file or directory

Version:

ffmpeg version N-92899-g1dcb5b7dca Copyright (c) 2000-2019 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 8.2.1 (GCC) 20181201
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-sdl2 --enable-fontconfig --enable-gnutls --enable-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libfreetype --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libzimg --enable-lzma --enable-zlib --enable-gmp --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libmysofa --enable-libspeex --enable-libxvid --enable-libaom --enable-libmfx --enable-amf --enable-ffnvcodec --enable-cuvid --enable-d3d11va --enable-nvenc --enable-nvdec --enable-dxva2 --enable-avisynth --enable-libopenmpt
  libavutil      56. 25.100 / 56. 25.100
  libavcodec     58. 43.100 / 58. 43.100
  libavformat    58. 25.100 / 58. 25.100
  libavdevice    58.  6.101 / 58.  6.101
  libavfilter     7. 46.101 /  7. 46.101
  libswscale      5.  4.100 /  5.  4.100
  libswresample   3.  4.100 /  3.  4.100
  libpostproc    55.  4.100 / 55.  4.100

Windows 10

Under Linux I use such command:

ffmpeg -f image2 -pattern_type glob -framerate 30 -i *.jpg output.mp4

Of course you should add encoder options etc. Or you can add leading 0's (zeros) to filenames, eg.: a000123.jpg instead of a123.jpg. Then -i a%06d.jpg should work.


Recording 720p source with 1080p I have started video recording some of my game sessions recently. Some of the consoles I am using output 720p and I was wondering what the effect would be, if I record them with 1080p:

How does that impact the file size?
How does that impact the sharpness of the imagery?
Do I gain some advantage this way?
Should I record 720p always with 720p?

It is best to match the source dimensions with your recoding dimensions. Using a larger number of pixels requires more data or bandwidth to encode the scaled source. You wont be able to make a sharper image as there isnt any additional information being generated and in fact the scale up might make the image softer or add artifacts like aliasing.


Component AV, higher resolution source into lower reciever? If I have for example 720 or 1080 component (analog YPBPR) output from one device going into another device that only does 576 will it work ? what will be the result ?

It won't work... that will be the result :-) The answer is in your question: if the device only does 576, then it won't handle anything else.


How to extract a video frame using NVIDIA card I want to extract a frame from the h264 video stream using NVIDIA card.
First of all we need to decode this stream via h264_cuvid decoder:

  ffmpeg -hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -i ...

As I understand currently we can't extract a video frame using only NVIDIA card in FFmpeg as this functional doesn't exist, like doesn't exist a codec like mjpeg_nvenc or something else. Please correct me if I wrong.

I think we should be able to decode a video stream on the NVIDIA card then extract a frame via CPU codec, for example, mjpeg:

  ffmpeg -hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -i video_source -vcodec mjpeg
  -vframes 1 /tmp/frame.jpg

In this case we will get the following error:

  Impossible to convert between the formats supported by the filter 'Parsed_null_0' and the filter 'auto_scaler_0'
  Error reinitializing
  filters!  Failed to inject frame into filter network: Function not
  implemented

NVIDIA decode video to NV12(by default) or NV21 pixel format and it's not appropriate format for the mjpeg codec. Please also correct me if I wrong.
Let's try to change the output resolution and convert the pixel format via scale_npp to yuvj420p as mjpeg codes support it:

  ffmpeg -hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -i video_source -vcodec mjpeg
  -vf "hwupload_cuda,scale_npp=w=1024:h=70:format=nv12:interp_algo=lanczos,hwdownload,format=yuvj420p" -vframes 1 /tmp/frame.jpg

I got the same error:

  Impossible to convert between the formats supported by the filter 'Parsed_null_0' and the filter 'auto_scaler_0'
  Error reinitializing
  filters!  Failed to inject frame into filter network: Function not
  implemented

According the FFmpeg documentation format conversation isn't supported: "Note that automatic format negotiation and conversion is not yet supported for hardware frames"

How to decode an input h264 stream via h264_cuvid decoder then convert the decoded video pixel format to yuvj420p and extract a frame via mjpeg codec?  Or please share your thoughts how to extract a frame from a video stream with decoding or decoding and encoding on NVIDIA card to any picture format.

Since the video bitstream is being decoded on the GPU, CUDA upload isn't required.

Command with format conversion is

ffmpeg -hwaccel cuvid -c:v h264_cuvid -resize 1024x70 -i video_source \
       -vf "scale_npp=format=yuv420p,hwdownload,format=yuv420p" \
       -pix_fmt yuvj420p -color_range 2 -vframes 1 -y /tmp/frame.jpg


Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12.0 - 21:9 / 2560x1080 I recently brought a new monitor which is 21:9 (2560x1080) and I use ShadowPlay to capture interesting moments when I'm gaming. I always use Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12 to cut down and edit these clips to then upload them to YouTube, however I've been struggling to figure out how I can render videos in 21:9 to then upload. I've tried the MP4 Internet video setting and then selected a custom aspect ratio, however it throws an error that Movie Studio can't do this size. Does anyone have any ideas / a way I could get around this issue (other than render in 1920x1080 with a border)?

Thanks,
Tom

YouTube does not natively support 21:9 aspect ratios.  If you upload a 2560x1080 video, it will scale the video down to 1920x1080 and letterbox it (put black bars top and bottom).  You are better off rendering 1920x1080 in your video editor and doing your own letterboxing.


Resolve - Blur the edges of an inserted clip I am totally new to DaVinci Resolve. I have included a small video on top of another footage, in the bottom right corner. How can I blur the edges of this inserted video?

I am able to blur the content of the video, what is inside, but I would like to blur the edges/border of the small video, so it blends better on top of the other one.

I found the answer:

Go to Color at the bottom.
Select the clip you want to modify (the small video on top).
Add your usual nodes as needed.
Right click and Add Alpha Output. This will create a new blue terminator.
Right click and add a new Corrector node and use the rectangle, ellipse, or whatever shape you need to define the transparent/opaque regions.
Connect the previous nodes to the recently created node. Now link the green and blue points. This will make an alpha channel, making the region you marked as transparent/opaque.
If you need to use the same ALPHA node in other clips, you can create a Shared node that can be reused in other clips. Instead of adding a Corrector node this time, use your shared node.

See the image below for a clarification:

Source:


What metadata can be stored in a .dv file? I'd just like to know what information I can expect to extract from a dv file. A lot of file formats have provisions for embedded metadata of all sorts, so my question is what if any data could a .dv file have?

you can check http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DV_Datecode and http://www.avpreserve.com/dvanalyzer/dv-metadata/
the rest is on google :)

i was using an automated software developed in house to extract the info, later on we moved to FinalCutServer so we get to manage everything in there...

edit: this link could help you. http://premierepro.wikia.com/wiki/DVMP


How do I automate the export different layers combinations ( turning on and off ) in After Effects I have a comp that has various layers that I would like to toggle on and off in combination. Lets say I would like to turn on and off layer to create 60 distinct combinations. I do this by hand, add to the render queue one at a time and then export, but this is a real pain.  Is there any way in after effects ( perhaps even through scripting ) to create something like "layers comps" and "layer comps to files".

Templater can do this.
https://aescripts.com/templater/
You feed it a load of google (or excel or CSV) tables, with specified values, and it can churn through a load of files to export different comps with different arrangements.


How to add an image from the video to the beginning of composition? (Just an image, not a clip) I have a composition which is a union of 2 composition, and I want to add a snapshot from the composition to the beginning of it - is there any shortcut for it?

I tried searching for it Google but did not find relevant results.

In the menu (at the top or by right-clicking a layer) choose Layer>Time>Freeze Frame

Adobe have a user's guide, it's a good place to start. Read more here.


My ffProbe script only seems to work with MKV files Just learned about ffprobe yesterday, and I was able, after much googling, to assemble a command line BAT file to get the meta info I want.  Then, it turns out that it only works about half the time.  After some experimentation, it seems that it's working only on MKV files.

I don't know if there's a bug going on here, or if my command line needs improvement.  Maybe ffProbe only works on certain files, but I was assuming it would work on most popular vid formats.

I'm using AutoHotKey to create a BAT file, which I then launch.  So we really just need to look at the BAT file.

Here's my BAT script...

C:\PROGRA~1\ffmpeg\bin\ffprobe.exe -pretty -select_streams v \
-show_entries \
format=filename,size,duration,bit_rate:stream=codec_name,codec_type,bit_rate,width,height,display_aspect_ratio \
-of ini \
"S:\myTVshows\SampleName - S01E01 - SampleTitle.mp4"

After this is run, the console outputs only the #ffprobe output header and then hangs.  If it runs on an mkv file, then it instantly outputs all the data I want, as expected.

Update: when I add -report as a parameter, I get the report log file, of course... but I also get the output I want (instead of it hanging as before).  I wonder if it means this is a bug.

Notes

I reduced the path for ffprobe to 8.3 format so I wouldn't have to worry about quotes around that part.
I'm working with a very current install of ffmpeg/ffprobe (ffmpeg-20170404-1229007-win64-static).

Below is the console outupt...

ffprobe version N-85266-g1229007 Copyright (c) 2007-2017 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 6.3.0 (GCC)
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-cuda --enable-cuvid --e
nable-d3d11va --enable-dxva2 --enable-libmfx --enable-nvenc --enable-avisynth --
enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-iconv
--enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-li
bfreetype --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libilbc --enable-libmodplug -
-enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enabl
e-libopenh264 --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-li
bsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolam
e --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx
--enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable
-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg --enable-lzma --enable-zlib
libavutil      55. 59.100 / 55. 59.100
libavcodec     57. 90.100 / 57. 90.100
libavformat    57. 72.100 / 57. 72.100
libavdevice    57.  7.100 / 57.  7.100
libavfilter     6. 83.100 /  6. 83.100
libswscale      4.  7.100 /  4.  7.100
libswresample   2.  8.100 /  2.  8.100
libpostproc    54.  6.100 / 54.  6.100
# ffprobe output

Link to Log file when '-report' param was added

Since the implementation of the new decode API, ffprobe's readout for MP4 files takes much longer to be printed, and depends on the duration of the video. Switch to a version earlier than April 2017.


A program or script to overlay several video clips I have a few hundred few-second-long video clips (c001.mp4-c999.mp4)
and need to merge them into a clip slideshow.  This is very easy - I drop them into iMovie and click "slideshow", done!

However - I want to fit more clips in less time.  So I was hoping to show 2 clips at once, and stack vertical-video clips side-by-side.

Ideal would be some way to take a script of start times and upper-left positions, and render it to a combined flattened video?  (assuming basics like "no resizing" and "later clips are stacked on top of earlier clips if the earlier clip hasn't finished playing yet")

file:c001.mp4, t:0:05:15, x:500, y:0
file:c002.mp4, t:0:09:25, x:0, y:0
file:c003.mp4, t:0:12:00, x:500, y:0
etc.

While having some fun in Python programming language I found a library that allows users to write custom code to overlay (possibly) infinite amount of clips.

MoviePy

Hope this helps!


how can I convert slow motion video into normal speed without losing fps or audio sample rate? I want to download a slow-motion video playlist (with the frame rate of the videos being either 480 fps or 1000 fps.) and be able to speed up the videos at least 16x without losing the frame rate or sample rate. So, if anyone could help me with this I would really appreciate it!

Thanks!

This is a contradiction.

If you want to change the frame rate speeding up you have to change the frame rate.

You could try to playback a video at 16,000 fps... Why would you need to playback a video to 16,000 fps if no human or living being could notice the difference to let's say 120 fps?

You also need a monster of a computer to playback that among other technical problems.

  But then when I need it slowed down, I could use software or something to view it in slow motion

Ok, so have two versions of it, one converted to normal speed and the original.


Looking for an accurate Playback FPS from a video I've made a 1080P video using After Effects, and after it has been rendered the playback is a bit stutter-y. Now I am fairly certain that this stuttering is a result of the computer struggling with the playback, but I need to be able to prove this.

I was kinda hoping VLC has a way of displaying the FPS of the video being played, but as far as I can tell it has no such thing (only display the FPS of the rendering).

Can anyone point me in the direction of some software that will give me the Playback FPS of a video?

Many thanks!

Personally, I use fraps. The only reason I use fraps is because I used to record desktop footage a ton. However, if you get the free version of fraps, it should allow you to see the framerate of the video playing back while the program is open.


Prerender nested sequence I have added an after effects project to my timeline, and that takes a lot of cpu resource to render.
What I want to do is to prerender only the nested subsequence containing that AE composition to aid the renderer in premiere, but that seems to be ignored, it still plays awfully slow.
Why?
I do not want a solution where I save the background to a video file manually because that will obviously affect the quality of the final video rendering.
Details

This is the particle background that I created in AE with the aid of the tutorial on

            .
So I created a nested sequence of it and prerendered that one (selecting the clip and in the menu use sequence->render selection.

After half an hour, the three minute long clip has been rendered as you see above and the red bar at the top has turned green.
It also plays nicely.

The parent clip as you see shows that bar in red.

When I try to play the video in premiere, it seems like it does not make use of that prerendition of the nested sequence because it is awfully slow playback.
What did I do wrong?

You might be doing nothing wrong.
I find dynamic linking between Premiere and After Effects still slow and buggy in CC2020.
If I have a complex comp in AE, I would pre-render in AE, not using the pre-render function in the Compositions menu (because that seems to irreprably delete the original comp, unless anyone else knows otherwise?), but by exporting the comp as a ProRes file.
Then you have two choices:

If you trust dynamic linking:
Place your pre-render video above everything else in your comp in AE, and see if it beahves better in Premiere.

If you don't trust dynamic linking:
Bring your pre-rendered ProRes .mov file into Premiere, where it will play quickly, and disable your dynamically linked comp.


Producing Portrait orientation stop motion videos I wonder about the following problem:

The usual orientation of a smartphone is portrait.

The usual orientation of a movie/video is landscape.

When I have a lot of portrait pictures I can easily watch them on my smartphone holding it upright:

When I make a stop motion video out of these pictures, the video is usually forced to be landscape, e.g. 4:3 or 16:9. Watching this video on an upright held smartphone results in:

Even when I rotate my smartphone I still get something like this:

which is not satisfactory.

I'd like to see my stop motion video like this:

My question is:

  How do I produce portrait orientation videos (in format 3:4 or 9:16) that are
  naturally displayed on upright held smartphones?

I am looking for specific advices concerning specific video-producing software, preferably Windows MovieMaker and MAGIX Video.

This is most likely a problem related to the app you are using to create/view these stop-motion videos. If you have portrait-orientated pictures, creating a video accordingly is simply a matter of setting the right video dimensions (i.e. video width and height in pixels); basically every video editing software allows you to set this manually or choose from a number of presets. If your smartphone displays it like this:

the video was probably exported with incorrect settings, e.g. a widescreen preset; in that case, the video might contain black borders at both sides, which might be why your phone is displaying the video like this. How did you create this stop-motion video in the first place? Your questions sounds a bit like you used some smartphone app, which leads to all kinds of problems, including the video dimension and orientation issues you get when you can't set custom video parameters.

Edit: Since you used the windows-movie-maker tag, I should mention that this is the single most useless video editing program in all known and unknown universes, dimensions and planes of existance. The best solution to any problem related to Windows Movie Maker is switching to another program that actually does anything of what it's supposed to do.


Identifying source of audio drift between camcorder and recording PC I'm recording our church's sermons using a standard consumer-grade camcorder (Handycam HDR-CX380). Depending on mixer circumstances (our church moves around a lot), I'll either run a line from our mixer to the camera's microphone in, or use the camera's internal mic.

Unfortunately the audio quality isn't so hot. Lately I've been researching some options for improving the quality going into the camcorder's mic, but I'm not sure those will pay off. So what I do is split the audio from the .m2ts file using ffmpeg, import it into Audacity, and line it up with another file that we record on a PC (also using Audacity, but separately). I used to do this by manually subtracting timestamps, but since discovering Audacity's Time Shift tool I decided to start using that for greater precision.

But what I'm finding is that when I use ffmpeg to extract the audio from the camcorder's audio track, there's a very small difference in the recording rate, where the camcorder's audio track is shorter than the PC's audio track by a constant rate. I haven't been able to nail down what it is precisely, but my best estimate is .20-.25 seconds per 50 minutes -- so the camera's recordings are about 99.99% the length of the PC's. It doesn't sound like much, but it causes the lip-syncing to be off about 6-8 frames.

My suspicion is either that the clock in the camcorder is bad, or that the clock in our (admittedly rather cheap-looking) USB audio interface is bad. (The error rate appears to be the same on multiple computers.) I know that I could test it using a clapboard & stopwatch, but I estimate it would take about 8 hours of dead audio/video before the rate difference got to the point that I could reliably determine the problem by looking at the waveforms and timestamps. (And that's a lot of stuff to set up for eight hours.)

So, has anyone experienced similar problems before, that could offer advice on likely causes and remedies?

What you are experiencing is indeed clock drift between your camcorder and your PC. Whatever their quality, two independent clocks will drift eventually. If the drift ratio is small enough and your takes are short, it will not be noticeable.

Common way to solve this issue is to use a common clock on both devices, which requires a ref input on the camcorder and a ref or wordclock input on the sound recorder, as well as a master clock generator.

In your situation, I would suggest either

to edit at appropriate points to get back in sync. As your audio is shorter than video, it means finding places where you can cut a few video frames without it being noticeable. Not easy if the speaker is on frame all the time but it can be done if you use some other shots

or

find out why the audio recorded on the camcorder is not good enough
for your use. Camcorders audio inputs can be tricky and require an
appropriate adaptation of the audio signal in order to get best
results.


Youtube-like video stabilization on Linux Does anyone knows a free video stabilization software for Linux (ubuntu, fedora or something else), whose result is like the Youtube Video Stabilization?

At this moment, to stabilize my video I need to upload my files on youtube and wait a lot until stabilization finishes and then download my files. One software for computer will be helpful, and save a lot of time.

Does anyone knows one?
Thank you!

To stabilize your video you can use the ffmpeg command line tool.
The easy way: one pass using deshake filter
ffmpeg -i shaky-input.mp4 -vf deshake stabilized-output.mp4

The deshake filter has also some optional settings.
The better way: two passes using vidstab filters
For better results you can try the two-step process using ffmpeg's vidstabdetect and vidstabtransform filters: (Thanks @Mulvya)
ffmpeg -i shaky-input.mp4 -vf vidstabdetect=shakiness=5:show=1 dummy.mp4

This will output a transforms.trf that will be read by the second pass:
ffmpeg -i shaky-input.mp4 -vf vidstabtransform,unsharp=5:5:0.8:3:3:0.4 stabilized-output.mp4

The vidstab filters documentation explains all the configuration options.


Hardware and internet requirements for 1080/30p streaming, if video source is external I have a Panasonic X1 camera that can be connected to a pc using an acquisition card. In that case its video stream could be broadcasted using OBS or similar programs.

What I miss are the requirements of the pc hardware and of the internet line. If I understood well the first should be pretty low considering that all the videomaking would be demanded to the camera and to the acquisition card, and OBS would only have to throw it online. Yet, I don't even know which parte of the PC would be needed for such a job. The CPU? The video card? The RAM?

Concerning the line, I really have no clue. Streaming 1080/30p sounds heavy but there are cell phones able to do that with a 3G connection. Would a tethering connection to a 3G/4G phone be enough?

Connection Speed

For H.264 1080p30 streaming with typical compression (6 Mbps), I would recommend an Internet upload speed of around 10 Mbps minimum.

Hardware

OBS Studio suggests the following system requirements:

AMD FX series or Intel i5 2000-series processor (dual or 4-core
preferable) or higher.
At least 4 GB of RAM (recommended, but not necessary).

For Windows:

DirectX 10.1 compatible GPU.
Windows 7 SP1 or newer.

For macOS:

Intel CPU (PPC is not supported).
OpenGL 3.2 compatible GPU.
macOS 10.11 or newer.

As for mobile streaming, 4G LTE (between 2-5 Mbps) can manage 1080p30 - albeit with high compression.


How would you go about finding out when a digital video was made? How can you determin when a digital video was made? I know one possibility would be just looking at the meta data but sometimes they are faked or missing. I need some more ideas since I have to write 10 pages about it...

Is there any trick like figuring out what codec was used recording the video, and that this codec is only used by this type of phone, that is only available since then and so the video can not be older than...

I need some ideas in this direction but I am stumped. One idea I have is to analyze the picture quality of multiple copies of the video found online and since every recoding results in loss of quality, you could try to determin which one might be the first since it has the best quality.

But this would only be one method. Any help would be brilliant! I don't expect ready to use answers but suggestions would be wonderful! I am hoping to find something in the line of the Kodak Edge Codes but for digital videos.

When data is in digital format they can be manipulated in any way you want, so the initial data would not be certain in any way.

Videos on mobile phones is a fairly recent thing, however video over phone is nothing new and the first video capable phones are based on codecs back from the 80's. Only the later years you will see phones with more modern video formats due to the increased processing power of the phone.

Meta data and it's possible date data can be wrong. See if you can get the phone's brand and model from the meta data - then you can establish a more accurate period as phones come and go at a rather fast pace.

Then you can combine these data (codec used) to see if you have some overlap time-wise.


Unselect after making a cut in Davinci Resolve 15 After I make a cut in the middle of the clip I would like to have only the part of the clip I want selected not both (previously only one) clips selected, since it takes more time to than deselect both and select only the one i want deleted.
Any advice?

Assuming you work in the edit window, I guess you're using following:

press B to select Blade cut tool
mouse click on clip where you want to cut it
press A to switch to select mode
select cutted part I want to delete
press Delete

You can achieve something similar with Trim tool:

press T to select Blade cut tool
mouse click on clip where you want to cut it
press Shift+[ to Trim start (from left)
or Trim End with Shift+] (from right side)

This will make the clip shorter and if you click on the clip you'll see that it continues (the white box) only some part is shown:

now you can move which part of the clip is shown by pressing < or > (comma and dot keys)


Using Secondary HSL in Lumetri on a masked part of a clip I am grading a clip of video in Premiere CC 2018 using Lumetri.
I have a clip where I have done an overall Basic Correction.
I now want to brighten faces using the HSL Secondary.  There are other areas of my clip which contain similar colours, which I do not want the HSL Secondary to affect.

Currently I do this:

Make the basic grade
Copy my lumetri settings
Paste them onto the same clip again so there are now two sets of Lumetri effects on the clip.
Switch off everything except Secondary HSL on my new copy of
the Lumetri effect.
Mask the area I want to brighten on the second version of Lumetri
Apply Secondary HSL to the masked area.

My question is:

Do I have to use two Lumetri effects on a single clip to achieve this with a mask?

You do need a second copy of the Lumetri effect, but you don't need to duplicate the clip, whether or not you keep the extra copy.  Instead of your current workflow, try using Adjustment Layers:

Perform your primary color corrections as you normally would on a single lumetri instance.  By "primary color corrections," I mean white balance, exposure, overall adjustments, and anything that affects the whole frame equally.  No matter what color grading software you use, it's best practice to keep these "color primary" operations logically distinct from operations which require keys, masks, mattes, windows, etc.  One reason for this is that keeping primary adjustments logically distinct allows them to be baked into LUTs (a topic for another discussion).  But as you've discovered, it also helps keeps your work organized so that local adjustments can be accurately targeted.
Add an adjustment layer.  To do this, make sure your project panel is active by clicking in it, go the the File menu, and select New->Adjustment layer.
Drag the new adjustment layer from the project panel to your timeline and drop it on a layer that's above your footage.  In a sense, Adjustment layers are "empty" because they don't contain any video information, but in another sense, they're "transparent" and let you stack effects.  It's because of this transparency that you don't have to duplicate the underlying lumetri primary correction that you performed earlier.  The white balance, exposure adjustments, etc, "show through" to the adjustment layer.
Draw your mask on the adjustment layer, and perform your "color secondaries" there by adding a new instance of the Lumetri effect to the it.  There, you can brighten the faces as you see fit, you can keyframe the movement of the matte if you need to (aka "rotoscoping"), and your color primaries will remain intact.
In this way, you can add as many adjustment layers as you like, and isolate as many different areas of the image as necessary, each with its own unique color transformation.  You can even use mask blending modes to perform boolean operations to the masks, generating complex unions, intersections, cutouts, etc.

There are some limitations and restrictions to Adobe's color workflow, which is why people turn to other software as their grades become more complex.  Tracking multiple masks is problematic, for instance.  However, for basic color work, Premiere is often a simple, quick, and effective solution.


Is there a Video converter, that can convert like the reference file? I have a  video file, with this details:

I have another video (in .avi format) and want to convert to exactly like this format... Is there any Video Converter, that can convert to the file, exactly as Reference file?

As far as I know, there's no "make like this one" option, but seeing the options of the reference file, many apps allow you to make a template for batch exporting, e.g. https://documentation.apple.com/en/compressor/usermanual/index.html#chapter=1%26section=2%26tasks=true


Vegas Pro will not properly render PCM audio in avi file on the timeline I have an avi video with video codec mp4v and PCM audio. When I bring the video into Vegas Pro, it loads up fine except the audio gets seriously messed up. It gets chopped. See the waveforms below.

I used ffmpeg to extract the audio using the command ffmpeg -i video.avi -vn -acodec copy audio.wav. The resultant file will load correctly in Vegas Pro. See the waveforms and compare. These should look exactly the same.

What is causing this and how do I fix it?

ffprobe reports the following on the file:

Input #0, avi, from '01-1.avi':
  Duration: 02:01:44.47, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2060 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (Simple Profile) (MP4V / 0x5634504D), yuv420p, 1024x768 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 626 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 30 tbn, 30 tbc
    Metadata:
      title           : DVI2USB 3.0 [D2S354466]
    Stream #0:1: Audio: pcm_s16le ([1][0][0][0] / 0x0001), 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1411 kb/s

I've been able to solve the issue recently with the following command in ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i "input.avi" -c copy "output.mov"

I still have no understanding why Vegas would not work with the AVI. My system does this container rewrap at about 350x, so it's very fast. The only issue is if you have a ton of videos and you create a batch file, you should check your hard drive space before you try it.


Lighting and Camera Angle of the Video I'm trying myself with my first video. I made the figures with crayon/colored pencils. I have made the video at night with a desktop light.

The pencil drawings seem to glow, how can i prevent this? (Some post processing?)
How is the overall angel of the video? Should it be different?

This is the video:

I don't know how you are lighting this, but generally speaking photographing flat work requires an even light source. Usually two diffused lights above the surface at 45 degree angles should accomplish this task. Your lighting suggests that you are not using a diffused source(s) as witnessed by the hot spot in the middle of your screen hence the halo effect.

Another thing I noticed is that you are using a camera with auto-exposure mode engaged, subsequently every time you move your hand into the frame the light value shifts. If this is a Point & Shoot camera then there is not much you can do about this, but if it's a DSLR you need to lock down the exposure so it is not changing.

There are three manual controls that generally should be locked down before recording:
1) white balance,
2) focus,
3) exposure,

Many Point & Shoot cameras will allow you to set the white balance and focus, but not exposure.

If you are in this situation, then the only way to defeat the exposure changes would be to keep the light even through out the frame and sequence. For instance if you were wearing white gloves this would help keep the auto exposure from going lighter to capture your skin tone, or if you changed the back ground, and made it the same value as your hands--awkward yes, but even light would likely improve the entire scene.

Hope this helps


Set file size limit for video on Canon 5D mark iii Contrary to what it seems like everyone else is trying to do with their DSLR's, I was wondering if anyone knew how to limit file size for a single recorded file to 2GB instead of the usual rate of 4GB. Due to streaming requirements, I need my recorded files to not exceed 2GB and it's way, way more work to split the files manually. Is anyone aware of a way of accomplishing this on the camera (Canon 5D mark iii) itself?

The 4 gig limitation is there cause most memory cards are formatted with FAT32 which can't handle files larger than 4 gig.

Refer to Manual page 234, http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/8/0300007348/05/eos5d-mk3-im7-en.pdf

The only way to limit the file size, is to limit the recording time.
You can always do the math and find out how many minutes to record to hit 2 gig.

EDIT: the link no longer works.  Here is a screenshot of the page -


How can I change the default Production file save location in Camtasia Studio? When producing a video, Camtasia lets you pick the save location for the produced file but I can't find an option to change the location for this. I have set the recording and temp directories through other menus, but Camtasia asks for this location each time I produce and I have to manually change it each time.

The default location is /users/documents/camtasia studio/ but I'd like to dump them into a different directory for ease of access.

Is there any way at all to change this location? If it matters I'm testing Camtasia Studio 8, but I've always had the same problem in Camtasia 7, and will be going back to Camtasia 7 if I don't like 8 enough to purchase it.

In camtasia, if you choose a certain location that it will store it in your used places. Then you can access it easily through the dropdown list. Here is an image:

It isn't possible to change the default output folder though....


(ffmpeg - Audio) Two streams, One Channel, Two Languages I need your help with a command line for ffmpeg that I just started to use.

Here's the deal :

I have a .MOV file witch contains 18 audio streams (for 7.1). Stream 1 to 10 is for original language and stream 11 to 18 is for French version.

What I want to do :

merge stream 1 (Lt) and 2 (Rt) in a single orginal language stereo track
merge stream 10 (Lt) and 11 (Rt) in a single French language stereo track
Tag them properly to identify them when playing the video.

Here's my command :

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:15:00.00 -i input.MOV
-map 0:v:0 -map 0:a:0 -map 0:a:1 -map 0:a:2 -map 0:a:3 -map 0:a:4 -map 0:a:5 -map 0:a:6 -map 0:a:7 -map 0:a:8 -map 0:a:9 -map 0:a:10 -map 0:a:11 -map 0:a:12 -map 0:a:13 -map 0:a:14 -map 0:a:15 -map 0:a:16 -map 0:a:17
-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge=inputs=2[a];[0:a:10][0:a:11]amerge=inputs=2[a]"
-map "[a]" -map "[a]"
-metadata:s:a:0 language="eng" -metadata:s:a:0 title="Stéréo - Version Originale"
-metadata:s:a:1 language="fra" -metadata:s:a:1 title="Stéréo - Français"
-c:a output.MOV

My problems :

video is not include and audio streams are "inverted"
When I execute it, I have these warnings :

[Parsed_amerge_0 @ 000001f8f0340240] No channel layout for input 1
[Parsed_amerge_1 @ 000001f8f0283940] No channel layout for input 1
[Parsed_amerge_0 @ 000001f8f0340240] Input channel layouts overlap: output layout will be determined by the number of distinct input channels
[Parsed_amerge_1 @ 000001f8f0283940] Input channel layouts overlap: output layout will be determined by the number of distinct input channels

How can I fix this ?

I precise that I don't wan't any loss of quality.

Thank you all for your help ;)

Hello erik and thanks for your answer.

Well, I finally (partly) succeeded to get a proper command. I had to precise the codec of the audio streams (MediaInfo).

So now, I have :

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:10:00.00
-i G:\input.MOV
-filter_complex "[0:a:6][0:a:7]amerge=inputs=2;[0:a:14][0:a:15]amerge=inputs=2"
-metadata:s:a:0 language="kor" -metadata:s:a:0 title="Stéréo - Version Originale"
-metadata:s:a:1 language="fra" -metadata:s:a:1 title="Stéréo - Français"
-c:v copy
-c:a pcm_s24le
G:\output.MOV

And it works as expected !!!

The only two small problems I still have :

1. [Parsed_amerge_0 @ 000001f8f0340240] No channel layout for input 1

I just don't know how to set a chanel layout...

2. In the output result, video became stream 3 and not first as it should properly be.

They are not big deals but if I want to be perfect in what I'm doing ;)

Thanks again !!


Premiere proxies no audio, codec issue? I'm away from my main desktop, and working on my underpowered laptop. I'm creating proxies for some .MTS files that a client gave me (I don't know which camera was used). Unfortunately after Media Encoder generated my proxy files there is no audio. I checked the original source video file in encoder and it says it has no audio, even though there is audio, and it is recognized in premiere. Note: when I first important the original video files into Premiere it said it had to install a Dolby codec and did so.

Any idea how I can get audio from the original files recognized in Media Encoder so I can generate proxies with audio?

Here is a sample video: http://www.filedropper.com/intro1jan

Renaming the files to .m2ts seemed to have solved the issue.


Sync several movie clips with one audio file Have several video clips from DSLR with terrible sound, and one audio file from zoom. It was a bend concert.
Zoom was recording all the time but clips are separated, as there were breaks from song to song and break where i did not want to record.

I am aware there is option to combine one audio file and one video clip, but is there a way to import all clips and audio file at once and have them sync, atleast some of them ?

I am using Premiere and FinalCutX.

This sounds like a perfect candidate for using multi-camera editing. You can automagically synch all the clips using their audio, and turn them into a multicam source, which lets you edit from the multiple synched cameras quickly and easily.

How to do it in premiere:

Select your clips in the Project panel. Then, right-click the selected clips and choose Create Multi-camera Source Sequence from the context menu.

It will then let you choose the synch method, in your case use audio. Also set the audio Sequence Settings to the clip with the good audio, and it will only use it in the sequence.

You now have a multicamera source clip, you can edit from it as if you were doing a live vision mix by choosing the camera you want to use while it plays (with of course the luxury of being able to go back and redo it and tweak the edits. The details of how to do multi camera edits are here.

The workflow in FCP7 was very similar to Premiere, but I'm not familiar with FCX, have a look here to get started.


Relative Animation Presets Is there any way to create an animation (a bubble for example, that rises up on the y axis and fades in from 0 to 100 opacity), that can be saved as an animation preset, then that can be added to another bubble (from animation preset) in another position, and to have it take the change in position into effect?

Thanks,
Andy.

If you're trying to make multiple bubbles rise up, you'd probably be better off designing a single bubble, then using it as a particle, inside a particle engine (AE has free particle engines like "CC particle systems" built in, but it's tricky to use).  Trapcode Particular is quicker and easier, but not free.

e.g.
http://people.redgiantsoftware.com/explore/presetdetail.aspx?presetid=831


After reading separate video and audio tracks (in Shotcut), just export a portion of it as one video I am using Shotcut for my video editing (I am a beginner). I record one big video file, and one audio file separately, but when I load them into Shotcut actually I just need some portion of it. Is there a way then when I have read in the video and the audio into separate tracks to just export a portion of it (like from 1min - 2min or so)?

The way I do it now goes like this: I add them both to Shotcut, export everything, so that I end up with one big mp4 file. Then I reread this into Shotcut and just add the portion (with the blue/red-slider beneath the preview) I actually want (as a track), and then I export this again. But this additional step of exporting (and thereby rendering) everything I wish to skip, as it takes some time. So is there a way to do this?

I am using Shotcut in version 17.03.02. There are probably more ways how you can accomplish this.

The simplest is to mark in and out points in you video after adding it to the playlist. You can do this using keyboard (I - for in) and (O - for out) also while playing the clip.

Then you can right click the file name in playlist and either Replace the clip with the new cut points or Insert cut, basically inserting a second clip with the cut points marked. Then you can append the file into the Video Track. Do the same with your audio file. Create cut points and append it to a new audio track.

You can do some additional trimming in the track editor. For example using the Split At Playhead and delete the parts you don't want. That way you can trim both files to the same length. Now you have to export the project.


In Premiere, is there an easy to way to extract sequences into new projects? I started a Premiere project that eventually spawned multiple videos.  Each of those videos is in its own sequence.  I'd like to extract them into their own projects, both to clear out the project manager and leave it more organized, but also so I can "Clean" the Media Cache (I don't expect to re-open these sub-projects anytime soon).

Is there an easy way to move the sequences (and associated assets) into new projects?

There are two ways to do this; since they both have their merits, I'll include both of them.

1. The Project Manager

Open File → Project Manager. It's pretty straightforward, just select the sequences you want to export. If you want to clean up the preview files, uncheck Include Preview Files. Select the target directory and click ok. Repeat this for every sequence you want to export to an individual project. The problem with that approach is that this will also copy your media assets to the new project's directory, which you might not want.

2. Importing sequences

Another option is to import sequences from other Premiere project.

Create a new project in Premiere.
Select File → Import.... In the pop-up window, select your old project file that has all the sequences in it.
Another dialogue window will pop up asking you whether you want to import the entire project or individual sequences. Select Import Selected Sequences.
This will open another window where you can browse your old project and select the sequence(s) you want (to select multiple sequences, hold CTRL / CMD while selecting them).

This will not copy or move your media assets to a new directory. Instead it will just import the selected sequence(s) and all media assets it contains into your new project. This however will not import any assets that aren't used in your imported sequence(s). So if you're still working on one of the imported sequences in the new project and want to add clips you had already imported in the old project but hadn't used yet, you'll have to import those manually. To prevent that, import all media assets that are relevant to the sequence into your new project before importing the sequence and make sure Allow importing duplicate media is unchecked in the import dialogue.


Video compressed with ffmpeg is distorted when opened in cs6 I compressed output video from fraps with h264/aac with ffmpeg but this results in distorted video in adobe cs6.

How can I fix this?

I fixed this by using the flag -pix_fmt yuv420p, for some reason the default pixel format is not supported in premiere pro cs6.


Calibrate EQ Using Speaker SPL Graph I have a pair of old speakers that I want the EQ calibrated for, and I found their manual with its SPL graph. However, I'm wondering if the graph is even accurate now (the speakers are around 15 years old). I'm also wondering how the read the graph, since there's more than one line and I don't know which one to use when calibrating my EQ.

Well, calibrating EQ for home speakers is not a common practice. However it seems that the easiest and cheapest way to do it is just play some music through them and record the output. Then you could use one of the free audio software (e.g. Audacity) to import the recorded audio and get the frequency spectrum graph. Using this graph you might get a general idea of salient frequencies.

And now regarding the graph you see.. You're right, usually the frequency response is represented with one line in dB/Hz units. However in your case there are actually 6 different graphs in one picture:

Regular frequency response (one of the 3 bottom lines with no comments near it)
Frequency response of 2nd and 3d harmonics distortion (the ones wit 2nd HD and 3rd HD comments near them)
What seems to be a phase response (the 3 graphs on top). This one is pretty unusual, especially for home speakers.


How to create a rolling ball with Python in Blender? My friend told me that you could create games in blender and it has an game engine in it. Now I want to do some simple things with blender such as rolling ball, the topic now in this question.

Basically, my problem contain

Problems

  a learning problem and reference-request.
  I am using DVO -layout where many keys such as " and ' are broken -- and many hotkeys are broken (things are apparently hard-coded to QWE -layout).
  I find it hard to find help about using python inside Blender, besides broken window-paste-board in X, lack of TAB as auto-completion
  and lack of good examples.

Helper questions

  what kind of modules and functions does it have to edit and tune the Blender -objects?
  How can I do a rolling ball such as from (-500,0) to (50,0) with 7-turns in 7 seconds?
  Is it possible to handle basic operations in the Python console?
  Where can I find Blender-Python code to see examples?
  How can I render and open up the render-result to a new window with the console?

Answers

    I. a learning problem and reference-request.

  Please, see very good examples here. The code can also become
  useful
  here. Good tutorial video here. Main docs here.

    II. I am using DVO -layout where many keys such as " and ' are broken -- and many hotkeys are broken (things are apparently
    hard-coded to QWE -layout).

  Press AltGr + <quote key> or select no-dead-key-keyboard, keys such
  as shift-space tend to interrupt with Blender -keys.

    III. I find it hard to find help about using python inside Blender, besides broken window-paste-board in X, lack of TAB as auto-completion
    and lack of good examples.

  The key is auto-completion (not with TAB for some odd reason but
  CTRL+SPACE) and the key command is $ bpy. I haven't yet found a solution for the clipboard, investigating.

    Example 1: specify a ball to origin with Python in Blender

    Select your ball in 3D mode and then:

$ bpy.context.object.location.xyz=[0,0,0]

    so you have your ball in origin.

Animation

It is not easy to explain this so some puzzles while also working on it.

  Puzze 0: show the details about things

>>> for object in bpy.data.objects:
         print(object.name + " is at location " + str(object.location))

  Puzzle 1: create cubes (source)

 >>> mylayers = [False]*20
 >>> mylayers[0] = True
 >>> add_cube = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add
 >>> for index in range(0, 5):
 ...     add_cube(location=(index*3, 0, 0), layers=mylayers)

  Puzzle 2: perhaps useful things

>>> bpy.context.object.animation_
data
data_clear(
data_create(
visualisation

Related Questions

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10972637/how-can-i-access-bpy-in-standard-python-console-bpy-is-the-blender-python-thin/10973302#10973302
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3924294/blender-python-scripting-tutorials?rq=1


Delaying video overlay in ffmpeg without frame drops I'm trying to play 2 videos overlaid against a static background, with the 2nd video (and its audio) delayed by a couple seconds.  When I do this, ffmpeg complains about buffer overflow and the 2nd video drops tons of frames.  How do I prevent the frame drops?

ffmpeg -y -loop 1 -i ~/Desktop/FP2.tiff -i ~/Desktop/fp.mov -itsoffset 2 -i ~/Desktop/fp.mov -lavfi \
"[0:v]fps=60[bg]; \
[bg][1:v]overlay=10:(main_h/2)-(overlay_h/2):format=rgb[v1]; \
[v1][2:v]overlay=460:(main_h/2)-(overlay_h/2):shortest=1:format=rgb[final]; \
[2:a]adelay=2000[a2]; \
[1:a][a2]amix=inputs=2[audio]" \
-map "[final]" -map [audio] -c:v ffv1 -level 3 -c:a pcm_s16be ~/Desktop/filtergraph.nut

Try

ffmpeg -framerate 60 -loop 1 -i ~/Desktop/FP2.tiff -i ~/Desktop/fp.mov -i ~/Desktop/fp.mov \
       -lavfi "[0][1:v]overlay=10:(main_h-overlay_h)/2:format=rgb:shortest=1[v1]; \
               [2:v]setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)+2/TB[2v]; \
               [v1][2v]overlay=460:(main_h-overlay_h)/2:shortest=1:format=rgb[final]; \
               [2:a]adelay=2000|2000[a2];[1:a][a2]amix=inputs=2[audio]" \
 -map "[final]" -map [audio] -c:v ffv1 -level 3 -c:a pcm_s16be ~/Desktop/filtergraph.nut

If this still drops frames, then you should insert a FIFO filter for the 2nd video after the setpts, like this:

[2:v]setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)+2/TB,fifo[2v]


Is there a way to link the animation of two layers? I am building a kinetic type-style video and am struggling to get some of the animations to sync correctly.
In this particular example I am trying to have a text box (imported .ai file) rotate with the text inside (made with an AE animation preset) but at the moment they fall out of alignment part way through the animation.
Is there a simple means of link their animations so they stay in the same position (relative to each other) or do I have to fiddle with the registration point to make sure their animations sync together?


How to delete folders from Library > Gradients in Motion 5 I just installed Motion 5 but I've already run into a weird frustration. In the Library inspector I found a list of gradients. I clicked the + button at the bottom of the panel and discovered it creates folders. Ok. But now I have ended up with two folders I don't want and I can't find any way to delete them.

I have tried:

right-clicking (no menu)
selecting with mouse then delete or backspace keys
looked through all the menus
right-clicked on an actual gradient from the 'All' folder and revealed in finder... the folders do not show up in finder though

Select the Folder
In the Motion Menu (at the top) go under "Edit" then select delete.


After subtitle video one of my audio track is missing I have a video and a soft subtitle of the video.The video had 3 audio(track1 track2 track3) I use this command
ffmpeg -i /sdcard/input.mkv -vf subtitles=/sdcard/input.ass /sdcard/hrdcoded.mp4
In this command I not only hardcode subtitles but also convert the video to mp4. The process start properly but when it finished I saw I was have 3 audio track(track1 track2 track3) now it have audio track1. Other tracks are missing. What command should i use to have all audio track

FFmpeg, by default, only picks one stream of each type (video, audio, subtitles). The user needs to set map option to select tracks for an output.
ffmpeg -i /sdcard/input.mkv -vf subtitles=/sdcard/input.ass -map 0 -c:a copy /sdcard/hrdcoded.mp4

See https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Stream-selection


Video transformation Is it possible to use a low resolution camera with low mega pixels and make it look like the video was shoot with a camera with high mega pixel (120 MP to say) after using adobe after effects?

If you're asking whether you can use AE to increase the actual or apparent resolution of a low-res source, the answer is no. You can't create resolution where none exists. If you could, no one would ever spend money on hi-res cameras.

What you can do is 'sharpen' an image, which increases the contrast of edge detail and may increase apparent resolution a little bit. But this doesn't increase actual resolution; it actually reduces it slightly.


One flac file - many tracks - no cue - yet it's 'split' somehow I have a music album in one FLAC file. There is no CUE file. When I try to play it with VLC or CMUS, it doesn't recognize individual tracks and plays it as one large file.

BUT if I import it into Vox player, it automatically recognizes individual tracks and splits it (gives it proper names and all). How is it possible? What am I missing? How do I make VLC and CMUS recognize the splits without CUE?

EDIT:
When I opened the flac file in a hexeditor, after a couple hundreds of symbols I found a long string starting with "CUETools 2.1." and containing all the cue information. How is it possible? Can I extract it? Why does almost no program recognize this type of internal cue instead of external cue file? It even contains the album cover image which is otherwise nowhere to be found in the file folder!

You can use metaflac to export both the cuesheet and cover image.

metaflac--export-cuesheet-to=out.cue --export-picture-to=out.png input.flac


Animating stills in After Effects I did a short corporate composition that used alot of stills. I animated alot of the stills by zooming in and out and panning across. Pretty basic. I have trouble with unexpected movements when I animate both scale and position of the image. These are little sudden changes of position of that happen at the end of the movement. How can I control these animations better? I will try to post a sample of what I mean if this question is not clear.

From my experience all unexpected movements when keyframing are fixed by editing bezier curves of those keyframes, make them linear or something.


Livestreaming Youtube I have a Vlog on Youtube that I would like to stream live via LiveStream, but the quality looks like complete garbage. It's blocks and just all around not what it looks like in the browser. Does anyone know of a way I can boost the quality of these youtube uploaded recordings so I can stream them from LiveStream?

What you are asking is extremely difficult without some very expensive and complex software and video studio equipment. I learned some techniques in After Effects that were supposed to make an enlarged video look better (certain blurs and sharpeners, deinterlacing, etc) but I was NEVER satisfied with the results. Every technique made the enlarged version blurry or grainy. These techniques I just mentioned do improve the quality somewhat, but does not magically or vastly improve the quality like what everybody expects expects (not saying you do but in general).

It's would be easier for you just to stream from Youtube Live since it can be set to automatically record and upload your stream once its completed. It does so in HD or at least matches the quality of the stream.

I also find Youtubes general stream quality to be much better than LiveStream's.

Here is the official Youtube user guide on how to setup live streams. The guide little lengthy but it explains all the steps quite thoroughly.

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=2474025

Notice Step 1, Part 8 with information about recording the live stream. Just remember that if your live stream is going to go over 4 hours, which in my opinion is tremendously long, you cannot use the recording feature. If this is one of the rare events or streams that would go over that time limit (maybe a huge concert or music festival) then a solution would be to have an "intermission" where you stop streaming at 3 hours and 50 minutes just to be safe. Then have a nice 10 minute break to do whatever you want!

One important thing to note when recording live streams with Youtube is that you can't edit the recorded stream once it exceeds two hours. This is kind of lame but I understand why it was necessary.

Additionally, it would be a good idea to record a local copy using an HD screen and audio recorder. In this answer I listed a few popular examples of screen recording software.


How to center and align things in Premiere Pro? One thing I always face trouble with is aligning things in Premiere Pro.
In Photoshop, if you have an image you can just align it with align tools. If you want to align multiple things, you group them and align them in left, right or center etc.
I want to achieve something like that with videos.
For example these 3 clips are placed randomly with a guess that they are visually aligned. But they aren't perfect. I just adjusted them manually.

So how can I a) select those 3 clips and align them horizontally (marked by yellow)? b) Align the right most 2 clips horizontally to each other (marked by green)?
Right now all things seem aligned but I did hit and trials and it took a lot of effort.

Something like this is usually not done in Premiere, since it involves motion-graphics that are way easier done in After-Effects.
If you have to do this in Premiere though, the only way to make sure that - the two smaller pictures for example - align perfectly on their vertical axis is to take a look at their position and put in the same value for the x-axis (the first value).


Snapping all clips together in Adobe Premiere Usually when I speed up a set of clips, their duration changes in the timeline.

Is there a quick way to snap them all together?

If you have a recent version of Premiere you can use the close gaps function, found in  Sequence > Close Gap.

For previous versions (pre 2018), try the method in this video: Deleting multiple Gaps in Premiere Pro all at once, where you add a matte layer, then drag the existing clips over it to cut it into chunks where the gaps are, then ripple delete it. Works in any version of PP.


Please help identify this rack-mount case Can anyone point me to where I can find something like this?  I have a Smartview 4K monitor, and I'd like a good way to carry it around.  It seems like all of the other boxes I've looked at open on the small side and don't have the hinge.  This image came from the Blackmagic design website.

I know it's a long time since you asked this and likely no longer need it, but in case anyone else comes across this thread looking for the same kind of case (as I did!), look for "pop up" rackmount cases for audio mixers.


Premiere Pro sequence adds black stripes on both sides of the video I'm trying to edit a footage video with Premiere Pro CS6. The raw file is 1920x1080 HD shot with a wide lens camera. So I created a new project in Premiere Pro and I made a custom sequence using exactly the same numbers: 1920x1080

However, the result is not what one would expect. The resultant sequence has two black stripes on both sides of the video. I verified both the properties of the video file and the sequence and they both say 1920x1080 but you can see the result on the screen shot. The sequence is on the right with the black stripes on both sides. On the left, you can see the preview raw footage window that looks just fine... Obviously if I render out the video, what goes out is the one on the right and I do not want to have the black stripes on both sides but I can't get rid of them.

So my question is why is this happening and how can I fix it?

Aj Henderson is right.
Your pixel aspect ratio is different in each video.
You can see that from the pool table, the one on the left is stretched out, while the one on the right is squished, it almost almost like you have 16% black bars on either end of the video on the right. Pixel aspect ratio, anamorphic 1.333.

2 ways to fix it:

1) Square pixels

If you wish to keep the pixels square
Crop the video (scale in) until the crop lines disappear, but of course you will also crop out some content on the top and bottom of the video

2) Create new sequence

Create a new sequence, I am assuming AVCHD, select 1080p folder and then select the item AVCHD 1080p24 Anamorphic (or the 25 frame one, dont know what video setting your source is at). Also note there is a little tab at the top called settings when creating a new sequence, you can click that to view your pixel aspect ratio.

That should fix the issue.


Should color grading be performed on raw clips, or final sequence? Camcorders that record in .mts (.mp4) files usually split recorded files according to some maximum time limit per clip. For example, after recording straight for 30 minutes, we might find the entire stretch split into 3 separate clips because of a maximum limit of 10 minutes per clip.
Let's say all three of these clips belong to the same scene, and are only disjoint in file structure. In other words, they should be color graded identically. Should color grading be performed on each of the raw clips separately with the same template, or should the clips be merged into one .mts file first on which color grading should be performed once?

Grading multiple clips in Premiere is still a bit fiddly compared to something like DaVinci Resolve. If it was only three clips, I would do the grade on one clip, then copy and paste the Lumetri settings onto the other two.
The other option is to use Master Clips in Premiere, where you can apply the correction to the source clips, and then it doesn't matter how many times you chop them up in the edit - they will still have the same correction applied.
The third option is to do use an Adjustment layer over the clips. So you only have to make one Lumetri setting, and apply it to the adjustment layer, then put the layer above all of your clips.


After Effects Not Rendering Transparency (Quicktime Movie) I have a comp that I made that is a write-on effect.  I have selected the alpha channel toggle so in my view, I see the checkered background.

When I queue to render, I select lossless + alpha (I've also tried custom RGB + alpha) with quicktime selected and it renders a white background instead of transparent one. I had selected the white background, but transparency was toggled when I did the export, and so was the lossless + alpha.

Please help.

There actually is no such thing as a "transparent" background in video.  Instead what you have is either 3 channel video (red, green and blue value for each pixel) or 4 channel (red, green, blue and alpha values for each pixel).

The Alpha channel provides details about how opaque each pixel should be, however unless the video player playing the video file supports reading this extra channel of data, it won't actually do anything special.

Generally, unless the background image will actually be different for different users, your best bet may be to actually import the portion of the graphic that will be behind the video and actually record the video with the background behind it.  Then, when you position things together correctly, it will appear relatively seamless (though you have to be careful about the color encoding to make sure colors match.)  There is also some possibility that people's players will apply a color profile anyway and thus make the video frame have a slight color alteration from the normal background.

Otherwise, the jquery-seeThru project that Professor Sparkle mentioned is probably the best bet.


FFmpeg issue with aspect ratio I'm using the following command (in my android application) to overlay an image on top of a video:

"-i", video.mp4, "-i", image.mp4, "-filter_complex", "[0:v]pad=iw:if(lte(ih\\,iw)\\,ih\\,2trunc(iw*16/9/2)):(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2[v0];[1:v][v0]scale2ref[v1][v0];[v0][v1]overlay=x=(W-w)/2:y=(H-h)/2[v]", "-map", "[v]", "-map", "0:a", "-c:v", "libx264", "-preset", "ultrafast", "-r", outFPS, output.mp4

I implemented the above after asking this question.

This works perfectly fine when the video aspect ratio is 16:9, but I have users that complain that the image is not at the correct position. I noticed that this is on devices that has a different aspect ratio, for example 13:6.

Is it correct if I change the command to the following, if for example, the aspect ratio is 13:6?

"-i", video.mp4, "-i", image.mp4, "-filter_complex", "[0:v]pad=iw:if(lte(ih\\,iw)\\,ih\\,2trunc(iw*13/6/2)):(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2[v0];[1:v][v0]scale2ref[v1][v0];[v0][v1]overlay=x=(W-w)/2:y=(H-h)/2[v]", "-map", "[v]", "-map", "0:a", "-c:v", "libx264", "-preset", "ultrafast", "-r", outFPS, output.mp4

I don't have a device to test with, thats why I decided to ask a question.

EDIT:

I tested with the command above using a video with the following dimensions - 1980x1020 - aspect ratio of 16:9, then the video dimensions change to 1040x480 - aspect ratio of 13:6.

That is exactly what I wanted, here is the issue:

If I use the video mentioned above (1040x480 - aspect ratio of 13:6) and I try to change the aspect ratio to 16:9, using the first command in this question, then I get the following error:

[Parsed_pad_0 @ 0xeeb3f540] Input area 0:-94:480:946 not within the padded area 0:0:480:852 or zero-sized
[Parsed_pad_0 @ 0xeeb3f540] Failed to configure input pad on Parsed_pad_0
Error reinitializing filters!
Failed to inject frame into filter network: Invalid argument
Error while processing the decoded data for stream #1:0

Edit2

Running the command mentioned in the comments of the answer, this is the result.

After FFmpeg:

Without adding -noautorotate

After adding -noautorotate

EDIT 3

Here is the log without using -noautorotate

I used this command:

String[] s = {"-ss", valueLeft, "-i", mStringFilePath, "-i", drawingPath, "-filter_complex", "[0:v]scale=iw*sar:ih,setsar=1,pad='max(iw\\,2*trunc(ih*16/9/2))':'max(ih\\,2*trunc(ow*9/16/2))':(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2[v0];[1:v][v0]scale2ref[v1][v0];[v0][v1]overlay=x=(W-w)/2:y=(H-h)/2,scale=-2:min(1080\\,ih)[v]", "-map", "[v]", "-map", "0:a", "-c:v", "libx264", "-preset", "ultrafast", "-r", outFPS, path};

Here is the log with using -noautorotate

I used this command:

String[] s = {"-ss", valueLeft,"-noautorotate", "-i", mStringFilePath, "-i", drawingPath, "-filter_complex", "[0:v]scale=iw*sar:ih,setsar=1,pad='max(iw\\,2*trunc(ih*16/9/2))':'max(ih\\,2*trunc(ow*9/16/2))':(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2[v0];[1:v][v0]scale2ref[v1][v0];[v0][v1]overlay=x=(W-w)/2:y=(H-h)/2,scale=-2:min(1080\\,ih)[v]", "-map", "[v]", "-map", "0:a", "-c:v", "libx264", "-preset", "ultrafast", "-r", outFPS, path};

Here is the links to the videos:

Link to original video
Link to video that doesn't use -noautorotate
Link to video after using -noautorotate

Use

"[0:v]scale=iw*sar:ih,setsar=1,pad='max(iw\,2*trunc(ih*16/9/2))':'max(ih\,2*trunc(ow*9/16/2))':(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2[v0];[1:v][v0]scale2ref[v1][v0];[v0][v1]overlay=x=(W-w)/2:y=(H-h)/2[v]"

First, the scale and setsar make sure the image becomes a square-pixel input. Then the pad checks each dimension and pads to a 16:9 frame size.


How to mask footage video with text? I want to make a footage video "shine" through a text, so that the letters serve as a mask and only what's inside from the footage will shine through. Also, 3D Camera movement should be possible afterwards.

How could I do this? I know I can create masks from text, and then copy that letter masks on my footage clip. But that will only work for 2D. How could I achieve the same for 3D?

Thats rather simple if I understand correctly what you want to achieve. One way to do it is to right click your text layer and choose the "Create Masks from Text" option. Then pre-comp your video layer and copy the masks your just created (AE creates a new solid that contains the masks) onto the video comp layer. Now make the video comp layer 3D and you can animate your camera however you want in your master comp and also go into your video comp and animate the camera there as well for some parallax effect.


What is this filming technique called and how do I do it? I hope I'm in the right forum for this question!

Basically, I'm trying to create this effect, where the camera zooms in on Simba's face and the background seems to zoom in at a different pace.

I'd like to know, first, what this effect is called. I want to see if I can recreate it in the opposite way. So basically, I want to make it seem like I'm zooming out in the same way this effect is zooming in.

Second, I'd like to know where I can find out how to do this. I'm really a complete n00b at filming and I don't have any fancy filming material, just a basic camera that can record. I'd love some suggestions. :) Thanks a ton!

It's called a dolly zoom, and you achieve it by moving the camera towards your subject and zooming out at the same time (or moving away and zooming in).


ffmpeg - 'Unable to find a suitable output format for 'libfdk_aac'' I'm trying to run the following command:

ffmpeg -y -loglevel info -threads 0 -f lavfi -i aevalsrc=0 -framerate 60 -i image.jpg -start_number 000000 -apply_trc bt709 -framerate 60 -i /myseq.%06d.exr -r 60 -preset medium -codec:v libx264 -profile:v main -tune fastdecode-c:a libfdk_aac -ac 2 -vbr 5 -shortest -strict experimental -sn -vsync 1 -pix_fmt yuv420p -b:v 31457280 -movflags +faststart -vf scale=3072:1536 -map "2:0" -map "0:0" /output.mp4 2>&1 | tee -a /log_file.log

And i get the following error:

Unable to find a suitable output format for 'libfdk_aac'

Any idea why?

Thanks!

There is a space missing in -tune fastdecode-c:a libfdk_aac, so FFmpeg thinks the value of tune is fastdecode-c:a and thus the next word is the output filename. Insert space after fastdecode.


ffmpeg hardcoded subtitles from the top, bigger, with thicker stroke, on a dark background I found this page (I can't comment or answer there so here's a new question):

Render srt subtitles to video?

with this line which works fine:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v subtitles=subtitle.srt -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -crf 22 -preset veryfast output.mp4

I need the following and can't get it done:

subtitles lines start from the TOP of the canvas
subtitles have bigger character size and thicker stroke
subtitles area has a semi-transparent dark background

mencoder might be another viable manner to do it.

Aegisub

Use ASS subtitles. Style them in Aegisub. You can style each letter or word individually, or apply the desired styling to all subtitles. See the documentation for detailed instructions.

Example ASS file:

[Script Info]
; Script generated by Aegisub 3.2.2
; http://www.aegisub.org/
Title: Default Aegisub file
ScriptType: v4.00+
WrapStyle: 0
ScaledBorderAndShadow: yes
YCbCr Matrix: None

[Aegisub Project Garbage]
Last Style Storage: Default

[V4+ Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, OutlineColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, Underline, StrikeOut, ScaleX, ScaleY, Spacing, Angle, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Encoding
Style: Default,Arial,48,&H00FFFFFF,&H000000FF,&H00000000,&H80000000,0,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,1,6,0,8,10,10,20,1

[Events]
Format: Layer, Start, End, Style, Name, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Effect, Text
Dialogue: 0,0:00:00.00,0:00:05.00,Default,,0,0,0,,Top of canvas. Bigger font size. Thicker stroke.

Without Aegisub

You can apply styling via the subtitles filter force_style option in ffmpeg. This should work with any format that the subtitles filter accepts.

ffmpeg -i input -vf "subtitles=subs.srt:force_style='Alignment=6,Fontsize=48,Outline=8'" output

Refer to the example ASS file for accepted force_style options, but it will not allow you to style each letter or word individually as you can in Aegisub.

Note that ScaleX and ScaleY values when used in force_style are a factor, not a percentage, so the accurate values would be 1,1 (not 100,100) in that case.

Transparent background

This can be tricky due to some limitations of libass, but it is possible. See How to set background to subtitle in ffmpeg?


What are the pros and cons of a few of Photoshop's video format export options? I'm outputting a video in Photoshop and there are a wide range of export options with seemingly very few if any blogs or tutorials explaining the pros and cons of the different options. I've researched enough to know that different file types don't necessarily affect quality in themselves, but rather the video codecs they support.

For example I just exported this in AVI mode at 1080p, but have a weird flicker. This isn't really a problem, since I can just export in a different format and get a better result, but I'm just interested in a basic explanations of the pros and cons of a few different formats available in PS.

To go over a range of options I'm talking about:

QuickTime Movie

H.264
Animation
DV - PAL
DV / DVCPRO NTSC
DVCPRO PAL
JPEG 2000
MPEG-4 Video
None
Photo - JPEG
PNG

AVI

Cinepak
DV* options listed above

Cinepak offers some weird options such as "Keyframe every x seconds" and "Limit data rate to x".

H.264 also offers "Keyframes every x seconds", "Frame reordering", and "Limit data rate to x"

Most of them offer a depth and quality setting ranging from low to high or best - I always choose the best quality, but I'm not sure it's necessary.

If someone could very briefly explain the pros and cons of these different compression formats, and their effects on the resulting video, purposes, etc, it'd help a lot. I'd just go through and render different options to see the differences, but this is a complex animation and even with a powerful graphics card the rendering takes 30 minutes to an hour.

You don't need to worry about most of those formats. Over the last decades, different formats have emerged for different purposes. Since most of those purposes still exist somewhere, software such as the Adobe suit still supports most of them, but for general online video purposes, you don't need most of them. For a normal video that is intended to be watched on computers, uploaded to the internet et c., MP4 or AVI videos with the H.264 codec is what you will want to use, as it is supported by virtually all applications and hardware. QuickTime Movie (usually used with .mov files, though the codec can be used in other container formats as well) is another option.

  "Keyframe every x seconds"

In the context of encoding an H.264 video, the term 'keyframe' refers to I-frames. For compression purposes, many codecs don't save each individual frame fully. Instead, they save one full frame (similar to one image file) every few seconds (or in irregular intervals) and for all the frames in between, only the difference between the last I-frame (keyframe) is saved, reducing filesize. The keyframe interval controls the frequency of the keyframes. Most encoders can also place them irregularly whenever there is a large difference between two adjacent frames (which usually means a scene change), which is what you want if it is an option and you don't have a special reason why you need to set the keyframe interval manully.

  "Limit data rate to x"

Probably refers to the bitrate (I never understood the tendency of different developers to give their settings special names, even though it's the same damn thing every time. Talk about confusing users). The bitrate is the amount of bits (i.e. information) per second. The higher the bitrate, the better the quality (non-linearly though, after a certain point there are diminishing returns in quality increasement). And the higher the bitrate, the larger the resulting file.

Edit: As Mulvya pointed out, this setting probably refers to the maximum bitrate rather than the target bitrate. That is, the encoder will never exceed that average bitrate, it may however use a lower value if feasible. In this case, the quality slider (see next section) would control the target bitrate.

  Most of them offer a depth and quality setting ranging from low to high or best - I always choose the best quality, but I'm not sure it's necessary.

Quality sliders usually control the compression level, which in turn is related to the bitrate. Higher bitrate = higher quality = higher filesize. You will have to experiment with that to find a setting where you don't notice any artifacts in the rendered file while the filesize is still acceptable.

  For example I just exported this in AVI mode at 1080p, but have a weird flicker.

Looks to me like a framerate issue, but could also be caused by messing with the keyframe interval. As you said, try a different format, preferably MP4/H.264. In general, don't meddle with a setting if you don't know what it does. Setting an unusual keyframe interval for instance can yield unexpected results.

  but this is a complex animation and even with a powerful graphics card the rendering takes 30 minutes to an hour

I had to wait about three days for an animation rendering to finish once (blender using cycles engine though), just to put that into perspective °v°