How to Record a Dark scene without any Noise? I am using Nikon D3200, I am trying to shoot a dark scene. The scene is so dark and there is minimal amount of light. I am shooting in manual mode and these are my settings. ISO 200, f/5.2, Shutter Speed 1/50.

With all these settings i am getting so much noise in the scene. Kindly tell me how to avoid noise in the Dark Scene.

Thanks

Taha

With low light levels your brightest signal will be close to the noise floor, so you only really have three options:

a camera with better low light performance (although this can only take you so far)

More expensive sensors can give a lower noise floor, allowing you to resolve more detail

a faster lens

As Jason commented:

  If the widest aperture on your kit lens is 4.0, then you could double the amount of light your camera sees by purchasing an f2.8. Every additional "stop" doubles the light, so if you could find an f1.0, you'd be getting 16 times the light that f4.0 allows.

more light

Your easiest option may be just to increase the illumination and then reduce brightness in post. Remember that if you do this, you also need to watch for shadows that look too sharp.


What's the difference between 3G-A SDI and 3G-B SDI? Can someone point me at a description of the difference between a 3G-A SDI signal and a 3G-B SDI signal.

I have a rack with a BlackMagic ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K and a bank of 3 SWT Pro-HD monitors.  The ATEM is set up to run 1080p59.94. The monitors show "No-sync" when fed from the Aux outputs of the ATEM.

If I insert a Decimator MD-HX between the Aux output and the monitor's SDI input, it shows the SDI input to the MD-HX running 3G-B 1920x1080p59.94.
The SDI output of the MD-HX is switchable between 3G-A SDI and 3G-B SDI. Switching he output to 3G-A makes the signal appear on the monitor.

The problem does not appear if I run the ATEM at 720p59.94.

Wikipedia's article on SDI does not mention the A and B variants of SDI.

Wikipedia does mention it - with a reference link included:

  Within this standard there are three formats known as Level A, Level B
  Dual Link (B-DL) and Level B Dual Stream (B-DS). The Level A format is
  the direct mapping of uncompressed 1080p (up to 60 fps) video into a
  serial digital interface at the nominal 3 Gbit/s. The Level B-DL
  format is the mapping of dual-link HD-SDI/SMPTE 372M (i.e.: 1080p up
  to 60 fps) in a single serial digital interface at the nominal 3
  Gbit/s. The Level B-DS format is the dual-stream carriage of two
  independent HD-SDI/SMPTE 292M signals (720p up to 60 fps or
  1080i/1080p up to 30 fps) in a single serial digital interface at the
  nominal 3 Gbit/s

The PDF reference has the descriptions starting on pg. 17.


Camera configuration - Should I select an AVCHD interlaced format over MP4? I just bought a 2016 Full HD (not 4K capable) video camera and it supports encoding in AVCHD (I believe this is AVCHD 2.0) and MP4. The available Full HD formats are:

AVCHD

1080:60p 1920x1080 60p 28mbps
MXP 1920x1080 60i 24mbps
FXP 1920x1080 60i 17mbps

MP4

1920x1080 60p 35mbps
1920x1080 30p 24mbps
1920x1080 30p 17mbps

I read multiple sources of information online saying that AVCHD was of higher quality and that it should be the preferable option. However my concern is that, unless I choose the high bitrate AVCHD 108060p option, AVCHD is an interlaced format. Here are my questions:

Isn't interlaced a thing of the past that should be avoided nowadays because interlaced screens are just don't available anymore ?
When editing my video, I will plan for the final product to be encoded in a 1080:30p mp4 file. Will the deinterlacing process reduce the quality when compared to shooting in 30p right from the camera ?
Like mentioned earlier it is often mentioned that AVCHD is of better quality, in my camera I have 24mbps and 17mbps options for both formats, will AVCHD look better even if the bitrate is the exact same (and as far as I'm concerned the codec used is also the same H.264 but I guess encoding parameters may differ) ?
Finally, when AVCHD 2.0 was defined, 1080 at 60p was included in the standard, why wasn't 1080 at 30p also included since most if not all video equipment is now using progressive displays.

Sorry for the long question but I think this is all related and I never found a good source of information online that was answering these questions.

Thanks.

I will answer only to the 'interlaced' part.
Yes, it's a thing from the past. Deinterlaced video always will be looking worse than progressive. It's like shooting through the cracked lens and then trying to fix the footage on post. In any circumstances don't shoot a scene with chromakey in interlaced mode. I won't go into details but the results will be terrible.
Advantages of 60p: you will always be able to make slow motion; due to less motion blur, it'll be easier to key the footage.


mp4 file expands wildly when shortening clip noob here,

I took a video of myself for a wedding greeting with my phone (LG Nexus 5 [Android]) sitting (the phone that is) in a windshield suction holder.
The video is 3'42" long and when downloaded to my PC from Google Photos it was 55 MB, more or less as expected.

I then wanted to edit out the beginning and end of the clip where I stand up from my chair to start at stop the video shooting.
At first I downloaded Lightworks, cut out the beginning and end and exported the sequence (for YouTube 720. My only other option not having the pro version was for Vimeo). The new file being 5% shorter took up 181 MB.

OK, so clearly there is some format/compression thing going on that I'm trying to avoid going too deep into.
Instead I found out I could just cut the beginning and on my phone hoping to preserve the native  formatting/compression. The editing tools there were rather coarse but it did the job. It then took forever to save the edited video. The new shortened video (still 5% shrunken) takes up 905 MB of space.

My question is. Is there a simple (and free) way to simply cut down the length of a video clip while preserving the formatting and compression so that the file will just shrink in size proportionally to the shrinkage of duration?

Looking forward to you advice.

Thanks
Simon

Not sure what's happening, but, when you export your edited film, keep an eye on the data rate. That's really how you keep files small. The lower the data rate is, the lesser the quality of the video image though.

So, when you export:

For a 720p final file, make sure your data rate is no smaller than 5
Mbps.
For a 1080p final file, make sure your data rate is no smaller than
10 Mbps.
Codec: H264.
Field order: progressive usually (depending on your raw footage).
Aspect: square pixel usually (depending on your raw footage).
Audio: AAC, 4100Hz, Maximum Bitrate.

Note: I'm not familiar with Lightworks' settings, so some of the options mentioned above might not be available to you when you set up your export.

Let us know if this keeps your file small.


Footage feels "faster" when exporting from After Effects I'm editing a project with premiere, and using After Effects to edit some of the footage (color corrections, some masking etc').

All raw footage was captured with a Canon 550D, 1280*720 at 50fps.

My premiere sequences are defined to be 50fps, as well as my AE compositions. However, when exporting edited footage from AE as 50fps H264, the exported edited footage feels "faster", compared to the original footage, even though thee clips have the same length. The discrepancy is very noticeable.

How can I resolve this issue?

I had the same problem!

So let me explain the answer :

After effects imports your video at the wrong frame rate, so to fix it follow these steps :

Open the Project panel (by default on the left of your screen)
Right click on your footage and go to Interpret Footage -> Main... as shown below.

In the screen that opens up input the desired framerate (15fps in this case) in the textbox next to Conform to framerate. Press OK.

Now After Effects should know that the footage is 15fps.


How to loop outer glow layer style in After Effects? I have a layer in After Effects to which I have applied an outer glow as a layer style. Ideally I would like the glow to turn off and on, in a loop, starting at a point in time and then stopping. Is this possible—perhaps with a script?

I'd suggest animate the 'Opacity' property of the outer glow:

Click to enlarge

Create a keyframe by clicking on the stopwatch of outer glow 'opacity' and set its value to 0%
Create a second keyframe and set its value to 100%
Alt-Click the stopwatch to create an expression and insert loopOut(type = "pingpong") to get an endless loop of both values

Composition length: 49 Frames,
2 Keyframes: frame 0 > opacity 0%, frame 25 > opacity 100%

Note: In order to create a less generic animation, you can also create 3 or more keyframes by using loopOut(type="cycle") expression instead.

To start the animation at a predefined time as well as stop the animation as you like, you can either duplicate the layer twice and remove the layer styles of both duplicates in order to concatenate all 3 layers by hand or write a simple condition like this:

// get the current frame of the composition
currentFrame = timeToFrames(time, 1 / thisComp.frameDuration, false);

// check if the current frame is in the predetermined range
if (currentFrame >= 20 && currentFrame <= 60) {
  // loop all keyframes
  loopOut(type = "cycle");
}
else{
  // if the current frame is not in predetermined range set glow opacity to 0
  thisLayer.layerStyle.outerGlow.opacity = 0;
}

Composition length: 80 Frames,
Loop animation range: Frame 20 - 60,
3 Keyframes: frame 0 > opacity 0% , frame 10 > opacity 100%, frame 20> opacity 0%

Official expression language reference


FFmpeg does not preserve colors after resizing I would like to resize a 4K mkv video to 1920×1080 with ffmpeg version 3.4.6-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 on Ubuntu 18.04. The original file has the following features:

Input #0, matroska,webm
encoder         : libebml v1.3.9 + libmatroska v1.5.2
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: hevc (Main 10), yuv420p10le(tv, bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084), 3840x2160 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 23.98 tbc (default)

This version of FFmpeg may not support x265. I compiled a new version from the current Git repository, explicitly enabling x265. Now, ffmpeg -hide_banner -pix_fmts has, in its output:

FLAGS NAME            NB_COMPONENTS BITS_PER_PIXEL
-----
IO... yuv420p10le            3            15

This format should now be supported both for encoding and for decoding. I tried:

ffmpeg -i original_file.mkv -c:v libx265 -pix_fmt + -vf scale=1920:1080 -colorspace bt709 -c:a copy test_output.mkv

This produces:

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'test_output.mkv':
  Metadata:
    ENCODER         : Lavf58.35.100
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: hevc (Main 10), yuv420p10le(tv, bt709/unknown/unknown), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 23.98 tbc (default)

So, it is apparently ok. However, test_output.mkv colors still seem to be half the intensity of the original one, as if a grey layer was overlapped to the 4K video. I opened the file with both vlc and mpv, with no difference.

How to preserve the original colors as much as possible?
If it is possible, I would also like to lower the bitrate, but my attempt

ffmpeg -i original_file.mkv -s 1920x1080 -b 1700 output.mkv

produced a solid grey-only video with some moving squares.

I always get this message:

[matroska,webm @ 0x55a5507ad100] Could not find codec parameters for stream 1 (Subtitle: hdmv_pgs_subtitle (pgssub)): unspecified size
Consider increasing the value for the 'analyzeduration' and 'probesize' options

FFmpeg built from source has the following configuration:

ffmpeg version N-95768-gd831edc387 Copyright (c) 2000-2019 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 7 (Ubuntu 7.4.0-1ubuntu1~18.04.1)
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265
libavutil      56. 36.100 / 56. 36.100
libavcodec     58. 62.100 / 58. 62.100
libavformat    58. 35.100 / 58. 35.100
libavdevice    58.  9.101 / 58.  9.101
libavfilter     7. 66.100 /  7. 66.100
libswscale      5.  6.100 /  5.  6.100
libswresample   3.  6.100 /  3.  6.100
libpostproc    55.  6.100 / 55.  6.100

Ad 1:

Try adding the -pix_fmt yuv420p10le option (e.g. before -vf). Or only -pix_fmt + for using the same pixel format as the input video has.

If it doesn't help, you obviously have an inappropriate, albeit more common FFmpeg version — only for 8-bit colors. (Your original video uses 10-bit colors, and FFmpeg will try use the best 8-bit pixel format in this case — with the colors' degradation, of course.)

FFmpeg may be built for 8-bit colors or for 10-bit colors, or — in recent time —  for both of them (for your HEVC encoded video).

So you need to build (or obtain by other way) version for 8-/10- or 10-bit color depth.

Ad 2:

Bitrate of 1700 is very low — only 1700 bits per second, i. e. about 212 bytes per second.

To reach such a low bitrate and at the same time reach your 23.98 frames per second, the encoder is limited with  average size for 1 frame about 212 / 24 = 9 bytes only!

Did you see a picture of such small memory? It has almost no information, so the gray image.

You probably wanted 1700k (Kilobits per second) — or, more probably — 170k:

-b:v 170k

so correct your command in this way.

Addendum to Ad 1:

You use the (default) 4:2:0 chroma subsampling (with inevitable color and contrast degradation).
Try the maximum quality, i.e. 4:4:4 (no subsampling), or — if it will be sufficient for you — 4:2:2.

To reach this, use -pix_fmt yuv444p10le and change the video profile to main444-10 (with option -profile:v main444-10).


Connecting camera to computer to film I am not sure if this is the right area for this but anyway: I want to hook my camera (Pentax K-R) to my computer to give me a live preview of what the camera sees. Then for the camera to save straight onto my hdd. Similar to PK tether.

Are you trying for photo of video.  For video, it seems likely that this functionality is not well supported.  I took a look at the code for Pentax K-R and it is simply grabbing a buffered image from the camera for display, but this doesn't work well for video as it a) doesn't have audio and b) doesn't have reliable frame rates or updates.

If you simply want to capture still images, then using PK Tether as it currently is would work fine.

If you want video, your best bet is likely going to be to use HDMI out if it has it available and capture that output on your computer using an HDMI capture device, such as the Matrox MXO2 or Black Magic Intensity.  Alternately, if quality isn't a major concern, you could us AV out functionality and capture a lower quality feed.


`Format profile` property in MediaInfo I got two media files: the first is an application window capture, the second is desktop cature. The only difference between them is that one has format profile section with value OpenDML in MediaInfo, and the other hasn't. All other information are the same (besides only file specific: size, duration and bit rate).

What does the format profile field mean? The files are produced by one media program with the same output settings. How it may affect media file?

UPDATE

I'm just interesting how the encoding software chooses what to put into this field. Is that field just a text info provided by encoder on its own (like description, notes, etc) or it is some kind of property for decoding software to take appropriate actions?

OpenDML is just a slight difference in the internal arrangement of an AVI file allowing it to go beyond the 2GB limit and supports a few other new features.  It shouldn't have any particular impact on the data within the file, though I'm unsure why one file was stored that way and the other was not.  Perhaps the software you were using only includes the extra format data if going beyond 2GB.


Export EDL from Movie Maker WLMP (Windows Live Media Project) I am editing a video and the director pre-edited some footage using Windows Movie Maker (no need to tell me how absolutely inadequate a tool MovieMaker is).

Is there some way to export something like an EDL (in any readable format, even if i have to manually convert) from a WLMP project so that i can import the project into another NLE?

A WLMP file can be opened as an xml.  Save a copy of the project changing the extension to XML.

Convert XML to CSV using one of various free converters available online.  Open the CSV file as a spreadsheet (Excel, Calc, etc).  Now you can access the filenames and durations of each edit.

You must reformat your spreadsheet to match an EDL format supported by your NLE.  Once you have the correct format, export spreadsheet (sometimes you must convert to CSV, open in notepad and save again with the desired extension).

This is an example of the cuts once converted to csv / spreadsheet format:

_id,_filePath,_arWidth,_arHeight,_duration,_songTitle,_songArtist,_songAlbum,_songCopyrightUrl,_songArtistUrl,_songAudioFileUrl,_stabilizationMode,_mediaItemType
159,F:\video\img(7).jpg,2448,3264,0,,,,,,,0,2
106,F:\video\img(8).jpg,2448,3264,0,,,,,,,0,2
160,F:\video\img(50).jpg,960,960,0,,,,,,,0,2
107,F:\video\img(51).jpg,667,667,0,,,,,,,0,2
161,F:\video\clip (32).mp4,1280,720,26.026,,,,,,,0,1
108,F:\video\clip(20).MTS,1920,1080,12.69,,,,,,,0,1


How do you edit a sliding effects for a behind the scenes reel in the below video I want to edit in premiere pro cc and maybe after effects, to show vfx and grading.

That effect is known as a wipe, it's a transition effect in Premiere. Have the graded and ungraded effects above each other in the timeline and apply a wipe to the top one. Adjust the timing as you like.


Questions on workflow: 12G-SDI to 500Mbps to RTSP stream (Background: I'm relatively familiar with using ffmpeg and libx264 to produce videos on demand, but I'm quite new to live streaming)

I'm currently tasked with a project to compress a 4K camera's raw 12G-SDI or 6G or 3G feed and live-stream the compressed feed through RTSP over UDP. I also need to decide which equipments to purchase. The requirements are as follows:

The compression target can be one of the following: 100Mbps, 200Mbps, 500Mbps, 800Mbps. The target will not be changed on the fly once set.
Codec must be h.264 or h.265.
The latency from camera to RTSP output needs to be <1s.
No budget limit, although < $25K would be better.

Currently I'm thinking of the following setup:

4K camera -> capture card -> Linux PC (compression) -> RTSP

My questions are:

Are blackmagic ursa mini 4K and decklink card able to do the first 2 stages respectively?
Is ffmpeg + libx264 able to perform real-time compression at such a high bitrate? If not, any recommendation for hardware encoding card?

Thanks!

I've worked through a similar project over the last 6 months, and performed more tests than I can keep track of now.  So this is a little fresh for me.  With your questions:

4K camera -> capture card -> Linux PC (compression) -> RTSP

This will work well

Are blackmagic ursa mini 4K and decklink card able to do the first 2
stages respectively?

Yes

Is ffmpeg + libx264 able to perform real-time compression at such a high bitrate?

It's possible, but I'm going to say that whichever way you spin it, you're likely going to arrive at getting a hardware card.

If not, any recommendation for hardware encoding card?

nVidia Quadro cards are excellent.  Anything with a Maxwell GM204 chipset or higher.  Even a sub $1000 card will open up the world of possibilities, especially when it comes to hardware accelerated resizing, format conversion, and producing multiple outputs.
A note about libx264
I advise care getting advice from anyone who hasn't used it for the purposes you're trying.  The theoretical and unit tests don't always account for everything.
libx264 is an excellent encoder.  It's well known it produces superior quality encodes than say a hardware accelerated h264 encoder for the same bitrate.  It also has a whole heap of specific options that can maximise efficiency and produce a video with multiple 264 layers that is friendly to all types of clients.
The strength of libx264 isn't realtime encoding though.  Yes it has zerolatency tuning options, and crf modes to reduce cpu demand, but every small change can make a major impact on encoding time.  The difference between doing a 2560x1440 encode and a 3840x2160 encode is drastic.  The difference between a yuv420p and yuv444p is also drastic.
Also, importantly, many of the options that make the significant difference in libx264 are lookahead options, these unashamedly prfioritize the end product as opposed to the performance of getting to the end product.
No implementation of x264 that I know of, does threading very well.  You can have a rack server with 200GB ram, and 24 actual CPU cores, and max them out very quickly.
One of the "gotcha"'s of libx264 is that you can seemingly have it running so well that it looks like a video player - i.e. - you plug something into the SDI port, and it shows up on the network player.  Amazing.  You can have it running for days... Then all of a sudden when the input signal becomes very complex (i.e. low lighting, stage effects like haze, fast detailed motion, fades and transitions, etc.), all of a sudden the roof comes tumbling down reveal 35 issues that look like one.  You remove the issues one by one, and by the time you have it running a treat, you may decide that x264 isn't going to cut it.
Having said that - running at a higher bitrate, requires less compression, and does run noticeably better than at low bitrates.
Given the cost of hardware cards, the doors they open up, and putting that up against the scope of your project, I would highly recommend getting one, whether you use it or not.
At high bitrates - the benefits of libx264 are negated - in fact - h264_nvenc can do realtime 2pass encoding, with spacial and temporal motion filtering and lookahead.  Since you want less than 1s latency, you may not use these, but they are included in some low latency presets.
Blackmagic
The decklink SDK works well with linux.  It's simple to configure card options, change inputs, and using the tools provided you build your own capture tools if required.  Even a $199 Decklink 4K Mini Recorder PCIe card works well.
Example pipeline
Blackmagic -> Encoder -> RTSP
From that RTSP signal you could then run all of these at the same time:

RTSP -> Low bitrate preview / wifi stream
RTSP -> Archive
RTSP -> Create RTMP stream -> Send to live streaming site
RTSP -> Create a 1080p stream -> RTSP
RTSP -> Create an adaptive DASH stream with multiple resolutions


Will adding more RAM to my system speed up rendering? When I render any AE composition, through AE or Media Encoder it seems to take a long time. I want to increase my render times.

I have noticed that my CPU usage seems to fluctuate consistantly where as my RAM consistanly stays around 70% usage.

Is there any way that I increase the amount of CPU and RAM AE uses to speed up the render time?

Also would adding more RAM to my system actually speed up render times?

Thanks in advanced

EDIT: I am rendering the save to a different hard drive from the one the render is running from. Both are internal disk drives.

If your external drive is a spinning disk, and your internal drive is an SSD, you may find it faster to host the project and render everything on the internal drive.

This is what I do - the problem is keeping enough available space on the drive as SSDs are expensive and small.


Do Canon DSLRs and Camcorders use the same internal mics? I don't know much about the topic, but I recently saw a Canon 650D DSLR in action and its internal mic was really good. If I got a camcorder such as the Canon Legria R406 would it use the same internal mic components?

The mics are not all the same across all Canon products.  I can't guarantee that the same mics aren't used in some different models, but I can guarantee they use more than one different mic.  Additionally, even if they do happen to use the same microphone, the placement of the mic within the device as well as amount of noise the mic makes and the quality of the analog to digital converter are going to make a big difference on how it sounds.

In other words, internal sound quality is not directly comparable between devices, other than by actually recording and listening to how it sounds.


Automated rendering of After Effects or similar Initially posted on graphicdesign.stackexchange.com:

I'm looking for a way to integrate animations into our existing product. The animations would essentially be 30 second commercials containing some variable data (names, dates, numbers). The system needs to automatically render the animation when the user pushes a button. These are non-technical users, so it needs to be all very black-box.

It looks to me like we could use After Effects for this, but I am not a designer so I'm looking for confirmation and suggestions from the experts. This is how I see it working:

We have a designer create an AE project for each desired animation.
The AE project is set up to pull the variable data from a file at render time.
When our user pushes the button, the system generates the data file and puts it into a folder known to the AE project.
The system then kicks off the render using aerender.exe.
When rendering is complete, the system shows the animation.

Does this sound like a reasonable way to proceed? Any alternative suggestions?

One area I'm concerned about is the data merge part. Can an AE project be set up to automatically do that at the time of rendering (i.e. initiated by aerender.exe)?

After Effects can be automated using the Adobe extendscript scripting language,  and can be run from the command line, meaning that it can be integrated into other processes.

Extendscript is JavaScript and it works across Adobe's product line (to varying degrees, you can use it to script Photoshop for instance). If you have a JavaScript developer available then this would be a relatively straightforward task.

There are also third party frameworks such as Dataclay that make the process easier for non-technical users to avoid scripting, but they are relatively pricey, though they might work out cheaper than hiring a developer and rolling your own.


ffmpeg: keyframe extraction with pts I have an ffmpeg newbie question, I am extracting keyframes from streams using this command:
ffmpeg -skip_frame nokey -i {0} -vsync 0 -r 30 -f image2 keyframe-%09d.jpeg

However, instead of an auto-incrementing counter, I would like to save by frame pts. for example keyframe-0003456.jpg as the pts. How can I mod the command?

Use

ffmpeg -copyts -skip_frame nokey -i {0} -vsync 0 -r 1000 -f image2 -frame_pts 1 keyframe-%09d.jpeg

This will print the pts as milliseconds in the filename.


How to apply opacity to one clip without being effected by the opacity of other clips? I have several clips with different opacities, eg:

clip 1 (100%), clip 2 (33%), clip 3 (100%) ...

Premiere Pro CC seems to automatically transition from one opacity to the next.

So when the video plays, the opacity changes over the course of the clip.

How can I make Premiere Pro CC respect the opacity for each clip, for the duration of each clip?

When you set Opacity on a clip in the timeline, you can set it for the entire clip, or you can set it using timing markers, which Premiere will then gradually adjust to each Opacity as per the timing you've set within the clip.

Double check in the Effect Controls panel that you haven't set timing markers on your Opacity changes - this would result in the effect you describe. If you've got timing markers set, toggle them off, and then just go to the start of each clip and set the opacity you want for the entire clip.

The following help page may provide further info if this is the issue:
https://helpx.adobe.com/au/premiere-pro/using/adding-navigating-setting-keyframes.html


Using a creative commons image in a video I will create a video and publish it on YouTube. A segment of the video is a voice-over slideshow-like sequence of images. (I will zoom some images, also some "slides" may be a combination of multiple images.) Some of these images are under a CC-BY-SA license.

Is such video a derivative work of the images? If the answer is yes, then how one could include images in a video without making it a derivative work?

Note: It seems that any inclusion of music in a video makes the video a derivative work of the music. But for images, I couldn't find what the consensus is.

Is such video a derivate work of the images?

Yes.

  If the answer is yes, then how one could include images in a video without making it a derivate work?

You can't. At least not if the images are distributed under a CC-licence. Even if it's just one image (or song), you have to follow the ShareAlike clause. Also, if you use multiple works by other artists (regardless of what it is, i.e. images, songs, video snippets ...) that are licenced under different CC licences that include the ShareAlike clause, you can't publish your video at all without violating the licencing terms of at least one of those works. See the remix chart here for more information on how material licenced under different licences can be used together for derivate works.


How to change menu bar color in premiere pro cc 2018 in windows 10? I want to change the menu color in premiere pro cc 2018 from white to black so that it matches the inner interface.

The answer to your question lies here. You may not be able to change the appearance to the point where is also affects scroll bars, title bars and menus that aren't inside panels. I have highlighted the related section of text in that link below:

  Brighten or darken the interface You can lower the brightness, as when working in a darkened editing suite or when making color
  corrections. Changing the brightness affects panels, windows, and
  dialog boxes but does not affect scroll bars, title bars, and menus
  that aren’t inside panels. In addition, the change doesn’t affect the
  application background on Windows.

  Choose Edit > Preferences > Appearance (Windows) or Premiere Pro >
  Preferences > Appearance (Mac OS). Drag the User Interface Brightness
  slider to the left or right. Click Default to restore the default
  brightness level.


Does file size affect render speed in Sony Vegas? This is probably a dumb question but bear with me. If my raw video file size is smaller, will that speed up rendering time? Let's say I have a 500 mb video clip, and one that is 250 mb, but the same length. Will the 250 mb one render faster on the same settings?

It depends of codec/frame size in these files.

H.265 will render slower then H.264
FullHD will render slower then SD

More information about source files needed.


Creating series of instagram videos with the same templates in premieme pro I am a content provider and have an instagram account with 86K followers. I need to upload at least 4 videos everyday. Until now, I created about 300 videos. All of them have been edited in just one premiere project. My problem is that the more videos that I add to this project, the slower it gets, logarithmically.

One solution is to create each video in its own project. While this works from the point of performance, it poses a new problem in reusing common resources across projects.

So, my question is how do people manage large numbers of similar videos for social media?

I would recommend creating a master template project which is setup with all of your folder hierarchies and the common assets you need to access for the edits.

You could save this project as "Master Project Template", and save it within it's own folder with all of the assets, or if the common assets you access take up a lot of disk space, you may want to have two folders- 1.) Master Project File, 2.) Assets. You'll want a 3rd folder where you have all of your unique project specific assets; 3.)Instagram Videos, with subfolders for each day, using a simple naming convention YYMMDD.

Regardless of whether it's one or two folders; to make sure you don't have issues linking project assets down the road if you migrate to a new system or drive; I'd set them up on a drive so they are one level above the root directory for that drive:

D:\Instagram Videos\Master Project Template\Master Project Template.prproj
D:\Instagram Videos\Master Project Assets\ (Here you can host all of your common assets in one folder or organized into multiple folders. I personally recommend if using multiple folders, to name your Premiere Pro Bins identically to the naming convention and folder structure so what's on the drive in your assets folder, can be found in the exact corresponding system folder).

Now that you've set up a "Master Project Template", you'll want to make your first "Project".

Copy the Master Project Folder, and paste it into the same directory. When prompted by Windows, select create a 2nd copy. Now you'll have a 2nd Copy with "copy(1)" added to the end of the folder name.

Now right click the "copy" and rename the folder.

Just my recommendation, but create a folder naming scheme either using a simple three or four digit numeric prefix "0001 - Instagram Videos", or use YYMMDD (Not DDMMYY), so you can sort the list of project folders by date correctly: "181013 - Instagram Videos".

You now have a new project folder which regardless if your assets are located in the master project folder, or in a sidecar folder (same root directory), which you can open and create your videos from.

You can choose how many videos per "master folder" you want to create, perhaps 1 folder per week, or month.

Final thought, for your master project "project", set up all of your timelines, including nested timelines, with all of your audio filters already applied, your adjustment layers already in place, etc, so you just have to drop your video assets in.

I would also recommend creating a simple TXT file in the master project folder named "README.txt" which you can write notes/add info on updates to the master project folder, such as adding assets, etc.

You'll want a 3rd folder in the root directory that contains your assets that are not common; organized likely by folder using a simple YYMMDD naming scheme. It would look like this:

D:\Instagram Videos\Online Assets\181013
D:\Instagram Videos\Online Assets\181014
D:\Instagram Videos\Online Assets\181015

This will keep everything organized, it will keep your Premiere Pro project file lightweight so you don't have performance issues, it will allow you to easily update the "Master" project file at any time, which for each time you copy for a new batch of videos, would thus include the new version with new added common assets.

Hope this helps.


Find frames in video that contain an image I would like to find all frames in a clip that are likely to contain an image at a known position.

My idea is to grab a still from the video, cut the image and create a mask, feed the video and mask into ffmpeg, use a filter to apply the mask over the video, calculate the difference between the current frame and mask and try to detect if the entire image is black which would indicate that the image is present in the frame.

For example, suppose I have a video where the logo on the right appears at exactly the same spot with the same dimensions several times throughout the video:

My idea is to create a mask that looks like this:

And apply it to the video such that when the image is not present the resulting frame "looks" like this:

But when it does match the blended difference should result in a black screen which I can detect using blackframe.

I've gotten as far as blacking out the actual image, but I'm not sure how to black out the surrounding part of the frame.

Is this possible using ffmpeg, or is there perhaps a different way of doing the same thing?

You don't need to black out the entire frame. Once you've blacked out the logo portion, apply crop filter to select a rectangular portion entirely within the logo area. Then run blackframe/blackdetect on that canvas. The cropped result will srill retain the original timestamps.


Some MP4s have keyframes on scene changes. Others seem to have random keyframes, or keyframes every X seconds. What causes this discrepancy? Some MP4s have keyframes on scene changes; others have keyframes seemingly randomly placed, or placed every 5-10 seconds. I prefer the former, both for ease of editing and because, unless I'm misunderstanding the mp4 codec, it's the most efficient.

How would I force one behavior or the other in ffmpeg or Avidemux? (Specifically I would like to force the former, although I would like to know what causes the latter just out of curiosity.)

Putting keyframes on scene changes is more efficient encoding wise on average, but it can cause trouble for decoders with very small buffers. Constant keyframe intervals (GOP Length) and CBR were more necessary when people were viewing videos on iPods with very little memory, as opposed to phones with a gigabyte or more of RAM.

This is an answer explaining how to configure it in FFMPEG: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41735741/8599496


Easiest way to narrate video with freeze frames etc.? I currently have a bit of experience with Premiere Pro and Windows Movie Maker. What I'm looking for is a way to basically narrate a video in real time and pause it (hold the frame) whenever I want while narrating my way through it.

Example:

How is he manipulating the video while seemlessly narrating in real time like that?

Thats not how you do it, you record a text and time your video cuts based on your voice over. Unless you stream live you dont do live editing while you do a voice over, its very impractical and makes your live a lot harder as you will not record a 5+ minute text in a single take and you will have to do everything over and over again instead of editing your video once.


Adobe Audition CS6 Crashing I am running Adobe Audition CS6. Each time that I try to work in my project, it continues to crash due to a “fatal error”. I have reset the preferences, but it continues to crash. I am running windows 7 professional. Here is the Log, the last entry in the log looks to be the culprit.

 Ticks = 107781      <1556> <AuLog.Error> <5> Unhandled exception caught in aui:ErrorManager::ExecuteFunctionWithTopLevelExceptionHandler()

Thanks
J

An und handled execption is never a good sign. That means its either a bug in the application, in that case there is usually not much you can do other than sending Adobe a detailed report about the crash. Another possibility can be a malfunctioning driver or a hardware failure.

Maybe you have recently installed something or updated a driver? Reverse that installation and see if the problem persists.
Also check your RAM, something that is the cause for a lot of random crashes is corrupt RAM.

You can check the health of you RAM with a tool like memtest86+. Best to run it over night as it needs many iterations to really ensure healthy RAM.


Can you keep the edges of vector elements smooth past 100% zoom in After Effects? I often make animations in After Effects that use vector resources made in Illustrator.

Often times, I need as much accuracy as I can get, to align anchor points to the center of rotating elements for example.

However, when I zoom further than 100% in my After Effects timeline, vector assets get pixelated.

I do understand that it is After Effect's way of showing the user what the result will look like, however, this seems to defeat the purpose of using vectors and the precision they can add to a workflow.

Here's an example:

I made a dot in the middle of the helix to be able to align the anchor point to the middle and then rotate it endlessly without axis shift (yes it's very tiny):

But in After Effects, aligning the Anchor Point to the red dot is very imprecise even at 800%:

One way would be obviously to scale up and start projects at 1000% of final size - which, for computer memory and time reasons I would only do in last resort.

How do I get precise zoom on vectors in After Effects?

Don’t zoom in on your display to do this.
Adjust the scale on the layer to zoom in further.
If the sun icon is enabled on the layer, you will get sharp edges as you scale up. Then position your anchors accordingly and scale back down if necessary.

Zooming in on the display will only show you pixel level accuracy for the resolution of your comp, so if you comp is HD you will never see higher resolution than 1920x1080, as that is the resolution at which the comp will be rendered.


I don't know how to explain but it is about limiting audio How can I limit the audio up limit like this one in Premiere? Thanks in advice.

The second one looks hella clipped, isn't it distorting?

Anyway the effect you're after is unsurprisingly called a limiter. A limiter is a form of compressor, so a compressor can also be used, by setting the compression ratio high.

Premiere ships with a filter called hard limiter, and a compressor as well, but there are plenty more free and commercial VST limiter plugins out there, and scads of compressors if you want more knobs to twiddle.


Manual white-balance for non-neutral lighting When you put an 18% gray card under, for example, an incandescent light, it's not supposed to look neutral gray. It's supposed to look orangish-gray, like your eyes see it (because it's reflecting some of the orangish light from the lamp). In such an environment, if you set manual white balance in-camera using that card, then the card will be captured as neutral gray, but the rest of the scene will have a much cooler tone than in real life.
Assuming you can't make significant white balance changes in post-production (e.g. because you're recording 8-bit, not raw) and you want to preserve the effects of the scene's lighting in the captured image, what is the correct strategy?
Should you just estimate the color temperature manually? Treat the gray card as neutral and hope you can fix everything in post?

I think your eyes acclimatise to the ambient colour temperature in the room, so one tends not to notice that whites are looking warmer under incandescent light, unless there is a cooler light source nearby to compare it with.
If you don't plan to do any colour correction in post, then you should shoot as close as you can to your desired output. But this is difficult to achieve because of the acclimatisation I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
This is why people shoot to a neutral standard of white that can be defined using their camera's metering.
In general I have would say that there is no neutral lighting - all light has a temperature, whether cloudy outdoors, fluorescents, incandescents etc.
What is more important is to avoid mixing different light sources on the same subject, because it then becomes very difficult to make any corrections without everything else looking wrong.
Small amounts of colour correction from 8 bit material can be done without the image falling to pieces (although it's not ideal). The bigger problem with 8 bit video is when you try to raise shadows or recover highlights.


Is there an optimum position for placing a bug or DOG? I'm creating some How To type videos to go online, and I'm looking to add a bug or DOG to the videos. The videos will contain some screen captures of a website with the full logo in the top left but it will not always be visible. I'd like to add the glyph part of the logo to 95% of the video.

Is there any established rules or general consensus on where is best to place a bug or DOG?

My first idea was to go top right (as top left would mean a logo over the top of a logo for parts of he video). This seems to fit with what most traditional TV stations would do. However I've notice a lot of YouTube creators have started to add them to the bottom right.

On most of my Google searches, I've only really found people asking or explaining how to actually place a watermark, and not any advice on where to place them.

If you are talking about a bug or DOG and not a watermark for copyright protection, then the optimum placement is whatever is appropriate for your video's visual style. There is no magical location on the screen to place it. Most US broadcasters started out placing their bug's in the lower right corner, but that has evolved depending on the channel's look and feel.


Transferring old metal particle Hi8 tapes Recently I was playing a Hi8 tape from 1998, when I tried rewinding and rewatching a part (stopping the tape, before rewinding).  The part of the tape I had just watched was highly distorted and black and white.

So, I've learned the hard way that old metal particle tapes are prone to being erased, when watched.  Presumably, the 'MP' on the tapes stands for metal particle?  These tapes have been stored in a safe place.  How many years before this problem arises with MP tapes?

Is there a better alternative than playing these tapes into a capture card?  If not, I realize that I only have one chance to capture this video.  If this is the only option, I'll expect to capture until the read head becomes too affected by residue, and then stop and clean the head, and repeat.  Any advice would be appreciated.

You do need to play the tapes onto a capture card, yes. And the sooner the better. You don't just get one attempt, but you will get a slight degradation of quality every play, so you are best off aiming to do it in one pass if possible.

I recently captured about 50 tapes from the late 80's to the mid 90's and I did about half of them then cleaned the head then did the other half. Degradation wasn't noticeable, but I just thought I should do it just in case.

As to how long you can store them - is the safe place shielded from EMF, heat and humidity, then they can last for years, but due to the nature of magnetic tape, the magnetic field strength of particles affects adjacent particles, so quality will degrade no matter what.

When configuring your capture, set it for the highest quality you can afford - as there are utilities which can clean up some noise and speckle once the signal is digitised.


How do movie makers navigate point-of-view among still characters Some movies seem to move the camera amongst the people in a crowded scene, but everyone and everything is completely still.  For example, in the series "The Flash", season 3, episode 16 starts off with such an effect.

In "The Matrix", various angles on a still situation were shot by having a series of adjacent cameras, and I suppose some image processing was used to interpolate between their images to achieve the effect of continuous panning. This can't, however, be used to seemingly weave a camera among the people in a crowd.

Was the effect achieved by computer-generated imagery (CGI)?  The characters looked so real, and CGI characters are usually pretty bad.  Unless the technology has advanced so much, and the challenge of achieving realism is simplified by the fact that they characters aren't moving.

To those who marked this question as duplicate: I already referred to the Matrix in my post.  I explained that the puzzling aspect of this question was that the POV seemed to traverse amongst the group of people.  Hence, this seems to differ from the previous question that was referenced, the answers to which contained links about techniques involving cameras positioned outside the group of people in the scene, i.e., as per the Matrix film that I mentioned.

You assume that the Matrix technique cannot be used to weave a camera among people. The exact same technique - a combination of multiple cameras, cgi, and interpolation - can do exactly this.

That said, the Flash has much more mature cgi technology than the Matrix, and in fact is famous for the cgi quality. Check out this video for some behind the scenes info. The majority of the intro you mention appears to be cgi.


are there any online Visual effect schools/courses? If you want to learn how to animate you have a couple of options. You can either go to a raditional school or university, or you can take online courses on various sites.

Are there similar online courses for Visual Effects?
I could only come up with fx PHD or some online course from Gnomon

Are there any other online provider of visual effects training?

It depends on whether you just want to learn animation or actually need a diploma. Many online sources won't issue one, so you will 'just' learn how to do it, but not have any trustworthy certificate.

If you just want to learn, there are so many good sites that offer courses and trainings (most of them commercially), it depends on what kind of animation you want to learn. In general, lynda.com is a great source for high-quality tutorials for software. A particularly useful branch of lynda is video2brain (if you speak German, French or Spanish, visit video2brain.com, there you will find localised tutorials in these languages).

The thing is, those trainings - even the good ones - will usually only teach you how to use a specific piece of software, but not include the aesthetical/artistic side of the craft. Of course, this stuff can be learned online, but it's harder to find good resources, and they are potentially much more expensive. The two sites you found seem to do exactly that, but it would appear they have similar entrance barriers (i.e. require application and are very expensive) as traditional university courses.

That said, you can learn so much online these days, even for free, but it will take much time and effort (even to find the right resources). There isn't one correct answer as to what you should do, it all depends on where you live (some countries have student fees, others don't), what branch of animation you want to learn, what industry you want to end up in et c. Since you seem to be willing to invest some time and money into learning animation, I suggest you put an respective amount of effort into finding a university/online course that will actually be right for your specific interests and needs.


iOS 8 Video Editing App That Lets You Hear The Audio While Trimming? I'm interested in making perfectly-looping Vine videos of me playing guitar riffs. I'd like to shoot and edit these videos on my phone (iPhone 5, iOS 8.1), without using a desktop editor. Is there an app that allows you to hear audio while editing?....

Now that you can import videos created elsewhere into Vine, I thought this would be a pretty straightforward thing. However, in order to create a video of this type that loops the way I want it to, I'll need to be able to hear the audio while trimming the clip in order to set the start/end points correctly…and every video editing app I've found silences the audio when you're in editing mode. Right? Am I crazy?

I've tried:

iMovie
Splice
uh...a few others I can't remember right now

If anyone knows of a video app that lets you hear audio while you're editing and could tell me about it, I'd be eternally grateful. I feel like I must be missing something here…

Thanks!

There're many great video editing apps in the AppStore. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to name a specific app according to the StackExchange policy (my previous answer was banned). Some of them play sound while you do video editing (trimming, applying video effects, etc.)

For sure smartphones now have enough computational power to do very complex video editing, they have GPU for even better performance. As a such kind of apps developer I admit that only a tiny fraction of professional desktop video editing software features couldn't be implemented on a smartphone. The major limitation is the screen size. It is freaking hard to make an intuitive user interface and a great user experience on such a small screen.


Cheap or diy lighting for video production I am new into video production. I am a maker, I do a lot of electronic projects and write the step by step guides about it in several places of internet. From now I would like to make video about my projects.

My problem is my lab is in a low light condition even in day time, there is no enough light in the room. The video always look dull and noisy grain in the videos that I take. I have two 32w cfl lab laying around and I used it but the video not perfect.

My gear is a Canon EOS t3i(600D) along with a 55-135mm lens and a 50mm prime lens. Here is a similar YouTube video that I would like to produce. Similar video.

I am a student so I don't have a big budget. I have some led strips(15meters), 2x 32w cfl and 200w led flood light in my lab, may be can I make them useful for this? Or please help me to setup a good video light to take good quality videos.

LED's especially strip LED strands may give you flicker problems, especially if your shutter isn't locked to the same Hz of the AC the LEDs are running off of.

Best bet, cheap shop lights from a Home Depot type store. Buy tungsten oldschool bulbs, highest wattage the lamps support, and bounce the light off of sheets of foam core board.

This will give you nice white soft light provided you white balance to 4300K.


What software do you recommend to easily import and edit tapes? We've got loads of tapes filmed with an old camera that are just sitting there never being watched, and we want an easy way to import and play with them.

We purchased the Dazzle DVC100, which seems to be working fine, but I'm trying to find the right set of tools to import them.

I gave Pinnacle Movie Studio a try, but although the scene detection is really good (detects all the missed footage, blue/black screens, etc), using the software itself is rather agravating and complicated.

So, keeping in mind my father, who isn't very tech savy, is going to be doing the importing, what software would you recommend for us ?
We need to :

Be able to work with the Dazzle DVC100/be able to import footage easily
Be able to detect scenes, so we can get rid of blue/black screens and things we don't want
Be able to add little transitions and a tittle at the beggining
Needs to be fairly easy to use

Any tips on what I should try/buy ? Currently trying Pinnacle Movie Studio 17, but it's pretty heavy, and is probably a bit too advanced for something as simple as what we are trying to achieve.

Thanks a lot !
Mark

I used to translate videos from tape to digital with a capture device.
The program i used was Ulead Video Studio which is really easy to set up and use. Right now it is called Corel VideoStudio.

It has a bunch of transitions and media generators to add titles and credits.

http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4900075

Oh the other hand, going to a much cheaper option, you could try  Lightworks, it is a lightweight program that has a lot of functionallity suitable for what you are asking.

Hope it helps


Transfer videos from Sony HC9 tapes to Windows 10 laptop I have an old Sony HC-9. I used to use the iLink cable to output the video to my Sony Laptop (Vegas Pro). I no longer have a Sony laptop or Vegas Pro, but now have a Dell Precision 5530, which does not have an iLink port at all, or any Firewire port that I can see (not even on the docking station).

How can I transfer my old tapes on my HC9 to the Dell? Do I need an adapter, maybe iLink to USB? The Sony HC-9 camera has an HDMI output, can I transfer my videos via HDMI? Or is the iLink firewire necessary for video transfer? If an adapter is needed, what is a good adapter to use? Help!

iLink will give you a lossless digital transfer of the source material, if maintaining perfect quality is important, I would go with that connection. DON'T attempt an iLink/1394 to USB adaptor, if you do some research, those adaptors just don't work. You'd need to buy an interface card for your laptop to go this way, depending on whether your laptop has an ExpressCard or PCMCIA slot, there are interface cards available.

Otherwise search "HDMI to USB" on google, there are plenty of devices to connect that way as well. Downloading the video this way will re-encode it on the laptop side, so it might degrade the quality a little (although in most cases not noticeably), and might be a little more CPU intensive on the laptop, so just be aware of that.


How to fade out mp4 audio AND video with FFmpeg? How to fade out audio AND video in *.mp4 file?
If I try code from this answer:

ffmpeg -i "c:/input.mp4" -filter:v 'fade=in:0:30,fade=out:227:30' -c:v libx264 -crf 22 -preset veryfast -c:a copy "c:/testsong.mp4"

I get:

[AVFilterGraph @ 000001e0f41affc0] No such filter:  fade=in:0:30,fade=out:227:30'
Error opening filters!

Complete output:

  ffmpeg version N-86994-g92da230 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers
    built with gcc 7.1.0 (GCC)
    configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-cuda --enable-cuvid --enable-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-libfreetype --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libilbc --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenh264 --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --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. 74.100 / 55. 74.100
    libavcodec     57.102.100 / 57.102.100
    libavformat    57. 76.100 / 57. 76.100
    libavdevice    57.  7.100 / 57.  7.100
    libavfilter     6. 99.100 /  6. 99.100
    libswscale      4.  7.102 /  4.  7.102
    libswresample   2.  8.100 /  2.  8.100
    libpostproc    54.  6.100 / 54.  6.100
  Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 's:/dummy.mp4':
    Metadata:
      major_brand     : mp42
      minor_version   : 0
      compatible_brands: isommp42
      creation_time   : 2016-08-24T16:42:38.000000Z
    Duration: 00:03:50.34, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 980 kb/s
      Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 960x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 851 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc (default)
      Metadata:
        creation_time   : 2016-08-24T16:42:38.000000Z
        handler_name    : ISO Media file produced by xyz...
      Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 125 kb/s (default)
      Metadata:
        creation_time   : 2016-08-24T16:42:38.000000Z
        handler_name    : ISO Media file produced by xyz...
  Stream mapping:
    Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> h264 (libx264))
    Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (copy)
  Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
  [AVFilterGraph @ 0000000002d64580] No such filter: 'fade=in:0:30,fade=out:227:30'
  Error reinitializing filters!
  Failed to inject frame into filter network: Invalid argument
  Error while processing the decoded data for stream #0:0
  Conversion failed!

What' wrong here? Thanks in advance!

Fade both video & audio

First of all, the command you've provided won't achieve the desired effect: the fade filter only applies to a video stream, plus you specifically apply it to your input video stream with -filter:v.

To fade both audio and video, you'll need both afade and fade filters.

E.g.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "fade=in:0:30, fade=out:1770:30" -filter:a "afade=in:0:44100, afade=out:2601900:44100" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac output.mp4

This command fades in and out the first and last 30 video frames and 44100 audio samples, on a 1800 frames-long and 2646000 samples-long video (which, if your framerate is 30 fps and samplerate 44100 Hz, will be the first and last second of your 60 seconds-long clip).

Working with frames and samples can be highly impractical, so to work with start and duration in seconds, use the st (start) and d (duration) parameters, like so :

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "fade=in:st=0:d=1, fade=out:st=59:d=1" -filter:a "afade=in:st=0:d=1, afade=out:st=59:d=1" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac output.mp4

(fades in and out first and last second of a 60s clip)

See afade and fade filters documentation for more details on parameters.

Alternatively, you can also use a complex filtergraph as suggested by Manul Hüttinger, which can be handy if you need to apply further filters to your clip:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex \
  "fade=in:st=0:d=1, fade=out:st=59:d=1; \
   afade=in:st=0:d=1, afade=out:st=59:d=1" \
 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac output.mp4

Regarding your particular error

I'm not sure where your error comes from, but you should try the following:

First, update your ffmpeg: your libavfilter is in version 6.99.100, latest is at least 7.6.100
I guess you're on Windows, given the filepath and build number. Beware that you cannot use single quotes (') on Windows, you must use double-quotes ("). Looking at the console output, this might be the origin of your error:

  [AVFilterGraph @ 0000000002d64580] No such filter:
  fade=in:0:30,fade=out:227:30'

Then, if it keeps failing, try with a different input (the error message might indicate an encoding/decoding error:

  Failed to inject frame into filter network: Invalid argument Error
  while processing the decoded data for stream #0:0 Conversion failed


How to recreate this motion? Recently saw this motion graphics on Instagram which reveals a Malayalam letter. I assume it is created using After Effects.

How could I create something similar like this?

The author in the comments says it was made using Cinema4D.

It looks a lot like this tutorial:

http://cgterminal.com/2017/08/10/cinema-4d-hyper-realistic-3d-acrylic-paint-stroke-tutorial/


Automated speech to text layer subtitles in After Effects Hi I have a video in After Effects that I want to add subtitles as text layers. Previously  I have been typing them out manually. Does anyone know of a way to either automate the subtitling process or any ways to improve the efficiency.

Assuming it's a video you are happy to make public, you could publish it through youtube and gather the subtitles from there as an .srt file.

Be aware that automatically generated subs tend to have mistakes in them.

You could manually make subtitles using a free tool like Aegisub

Or you could pay a fee to a company like 3playmedia to generate the subtitles for you.

Once you have the subs as an .srt file:

Then to apply them in After Effects as burnt-in text, you could use a tool like PT_importsubtitles to convert the .srt file to timed text layers.


Can you measure the width of a character in an AE expression? I have a type effect that requires a couple of layers, one with the type, and another moving behind the letters as they appear (simulating the little text bubbles you get when typing on an iPhone). It's very tedious animating the position of the bottom layer to match the text, so I'm wondering if it's possible to use any javascript tools to measure the characters and drive the position value.

Currently I have an expression driving the opacity like this, to automatically turn the background off for spaces:

theOffset=thisComp.layer(1).text.animator("Animator 1").selector("Range Selector 1").offset;
if (thisComp.layer(1).text.sourceText.substr(theOffset, 1) == " " ){0} else {100}

and another that folows the text animator range selector so that I can retime if I want without having to nudge keyframes till doomsday:

theOffset=thisComp.layer(1).text.animator("Animator 1").selector("Range Selector 1").offset;
try {
    transform.position.key(theOffset + 1).value
}
catch(error){[-10000,0]}//effectively hide it on errors (like the index going out of bounds)

…but this relies on me going through and creating keyframes to match the spacing of all the letters in the text, and frankly I'd rather be doing something else with the time that takes. so I'm trying to find a string method that I could use like this:

xOffset = thisComp.layer(1).text.sourceText.substr(1, theOffset).getTextWidth()

but getTextWidth obviously isn't a valid method. Is there a JS method that can get the size of a string on screen? There seems to be several solutions for this when the client is a web browser, but I can't find any that work for AE expressions.

So you want the width of the whole text object no single characters?
In that case you could use this: http://motionboutique.com/text-bounds-expresssion-580/
A tutorial plus sample project on how to get the bounding box of a text layer.

In case the link dies, here is the complete expression they use to determine the bounding box.

step = 1.0; // higher values speed things up (2 means two times faster) but reduce precision
L = thisComp.layer("MyTextLayer"); // text layer whose size must be evaluated

w = thisComp.width;
h = thisComp.height;
halfW = w / 2;
halfH = h / 2;
halfStep = step / 2;

left = w;
right = 0;
top = h;
bottom = 0;

// find left
found = false;
for (x = 0; !found && x < w; x+=step)
{
    if (L.sampleImage([x,halfH], [halfStep,halfH], true)[3] > 0)
    {
        found = true;
        if (x < left)
            left = x;
    }
}
// find right
found = false;
for (x = w; !found && x >= 0; x-=step)
{
    if (L.sampleImage([x,halfH], [halfStep,halfH], true)[3] > 0)
    {
        found = true;
        if (x > right)
            right = x;
    }
}
// find top
found = false;
for (y = 0; !found && y < h; y+=step)
{
    if (L.sampleImage([halfW,y], [halfW,halfStep], true)[3] > 0)
    {
        found = true;
        if (y < top)
            top = y;
    }
}
// find bottom
found = false;
for (y = h; !found && y >= 0; y-=step)
{
    if (L.sampleImage([halfW,y], [halfW,halfStep], true)[3] > 0)
    {
        found = true;
        if (y > bottom)
            bottom = y;
    }
}

/*"Size of text\n" + (right-left) + "x" + (bottom-top)*/
left + "," + top + "," + (right-left) + "," + (bottom-top)


Motion trail for a layer as it moves I'm trying to recreate the effect of an error window that duplicates itself as it's dragged along, similar to this:

I would like the layer to leave a trace/a copy of itself as I move it around (via Position). I've tried using the Echo Effect, in addition to a few expressions with no luck. Could anyone recommend a method of accomplishing this?

Using expressions to create the trail will work, but it will have the disadvantage that you will need as many layers are there are frames of the trail, and since each one will be driven by expressions it's going to get really slow.

An alternative is to make a comp with just your moving layer in it. now make a new comp with say ten of your original comps in it, and use the Animation Assistant to stagger them by one frame. Now make a new comp with this comp repeated ten or so times, and stagger then by ten frames. This will have 100 copies of your original video. If you then nested that video ten times you'll have 1000 copies, then 10,000, 100,000 etc. This should render faster because it's all based on precomps, which get cached by AE and tend to work better than separate layers.


Is it possible 3D Transform a video clip in Final Cut Pro X? All i've ever seen in Final Cut Pro is 2D Transform on a video clip. I know you can do that in After Effects but I want to stay within Final Cut Pro X to do the 3D transform.

Is there any plugins that could allow me to set a video clip in 3D Space ?

Apple Motion will let you create "motion templates" which are usable in FCPX.  You can apply 3D transforms with Motion, and publish to Final Cut.  This approach is easy to learn, but limited in scope.


In After effects how can I store the start and end point values of a gradient on one layer to generate the opposite values in another layer my composition width is 4480
I have 2 layers with a gradient ramp on each
once I've entered the start and end position of the gradient on the first layer I need to have the opposite equivalent start and end position values of that gradient generated in the second layer's gradient.
So with a comp width of 4480 if gradient 1 start x is 1000 and end x is 1250 then gradient 2 start x should be 3480 and end x is 3230. The Y is going to have a fixed position.
Ideally I'd like to tie in the start x and end x of the first graident to an expression control such as a slider so i can  adjust the position of the points simultaneously.

This is very similar to your other question:
In After Effects how can I generate the value of an opposite x position and then send that value to an effect on another layer?
The answer is the same. Use a pick whip to link two controllers together.


Chaining Matroska files Often there is a case where one has a series of the already muxed Matroska files, and they have a logical order. It may be desirable to chain them all together, giving a hint to the video player, that after finishing one of these files another one should start playing.

Although the standard permits prev-uid and next-uid metadata tags it can be quite difficult to set them up on all the files, doing it by hand will all but guarantee some human error in pasting, and is way too tidious anyhow.

The mkvtools package provides a way to read and to edit the metadata of any Matroska file without the need to remux directly from the command line. This allows one to write a relatively simple bash script that does the job.

In here the job is broken into three steps:

UID of each file is read by mkvinfo, cleaned, and recorded into the .uid file. At the same time these files are copied to the previous and next file with the extensions .nextuid and .prevuid.
Option file is generated by taking data from .nextuid and .prevuid files where they exist, this option file is saved with .seqtags extension.
The tool mkvpropedit is used to write the information, and the temp files are deleted.

The reason why it is not done in a single step is to allow the user to abort during the read process and to know that no files have yet been altered.

mkvsequence.sh

#!/bin/bash
# GPL3.0
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

FILES=$(ls *.mkv|sort)

echo First reading all the information
for FILE in $FILES
do
    echo Processing $FILE
    exec mkvinfo "${FILE}" | grep "Segment UID: "  | sed "s/^| *+ Segment UID: //g" > "${FILE}.uid"
    if [ $PREVFILE ]
    then
        cp "${FILE}.uid" "${PREVFILE}.nextuid"
        cp "${PREVFILE}.uid" "${FILE}.prevuid"
    fi
    PREVFILE=$FILE
done

echo Creating the necessary option files
for FILE in $FILES
do
    echo Processing $FILE
    if [ -f "${FILE}.prevuid" -o -f "${FILE}.nextuid" ]
    then
        echo $FILE > "${FILE}.seqtags"
        echo --edit >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
        echo info >> "${FILE}.seqtags"

        if [ -f "${FILE}.prevuid" ]
        then
            echo --set >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
            echo prev-uid=$(cat "${FILE}.prevuid") >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
        fi

        if [ -f "${FILE}.nextuid" ]
        then
            echo --set >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
            echo next-uid=$(cat "${FILE}.nextuid") >> "${FILE}.seqtags"
        fi
    fi
done

echo Now writing all the data
for FILE in $FILES
do
    echo Processing $FILE
    mkvpropedit "@${FILE}.seqtags"
    rm "${FILE}.uid" "${FILE}.prevuid" "${FILE}.nextuid" "${FILE}.seqtags"
done

IFS=$SAVEIFS


Resizing a video in Premiere without scaling I have a video that's 1280x720.

I want it to be 720x720 without re-scaling it (e.g., I simply want to cut off the excess on the right). I need to embed it on a website which is why the sizing sounds strange.

How do I do this?

Create a sequence that is 720x720, drag the clip on to the timeline, and in the canvas window use the arrow tool v to double click the layer which brings up the layer controls. Position it the way you want, export.  I'm pretty sure Premiere doesn't scale non-uniformly by default.

If it does for some reason, you'll probably want to use the conform options to adjust how it is conformed to the sequence.

You'll need to use a custom sequence setting since none of the presets will match your 720 by 720.  You'll also want to make sure you use square pixels (1.0 pixel pitch) if you are looking for a perfectly square output.


which digital format for old Hi-8 home videos? I have a rather large number of old Hi-8 PAL videotapes, that I managed to convert to digital video using El Gato EyeTV Hybrid through an S-VHS cable.

That solution worked fine. It may not be the best quality, though I think that there isn't much quality to preserve beyond what I got. I don't know that, as I have no way to compare to other solutions. Comments welcome.

One fact about that solution is that it produces MPEG-2 video. The total disk space used for my videos is 168 GB.

I don't like MPEG-2 as a format: its compress rate is not great, it's difficult to process. What would be a better format for archival? Relevant features (in no order):

compress rate vs quality (saving disk space is low priority, preserving quality, poor though it is, is high priority)
long term support (avoid bit rot)
adequate for video editing (at least easy to import in common non-linear editing software. I am on Mac, so that would suggest Final Cut or maybe even iMovie).
interoperability/compatibility with Plex and typical DLNA servers/players.

Despite being a bit weak for point 3, I tend to favor H264. I converted all my videos to H264 using Handbrake, with its default H264 HighProfile preset. I saved a moderate amount of space, going down to 1.22 GB total.

Is there any point to converting those videos to any other format (codec/container) for archiving?

Thanks

Difficult to reply without knowing if you aiming for a full lossless codec or a lossy one can go too. You talk of H264, but this codec can also be used in a lossless way.

If it was for me, and storage doesn't matter I would go for a true (pixel per pixel) lossless codec.

Here, excluding some other "good but insane storage hungry" lossless codecs your choice is between:

FFV1 codec, a pretty good choice for archival purposes.
H264 codec used in loseless fashion, that take less than the above, but is also handled not so well by NLE out of there.

In case instead you want to retain only a good video quality (let's say visually lossless but not pixel per pixel) you can go for an H264 with a crf let's say about 16 or 18.

Obviously is pure nonsense use lossless codecs if you already acquired media with a poor mpeg2. My suggestion is referred to the first video capture itself. So you should capture and save directly in FFV1 without any intermediate steps, then decide to transcode in lossless h264 or lossy h264 or just keep the FFV1 based on your storage needings.


How can I seamlessly loop with turbulent displace filter in AE? Please have a look at my website solstice.co.il on a chrome browser.  On the left you see a looping movie of the tree wobbling around. This was made by tweening the evolution filter of the turbulent displace filter in After Affects.

The problem is that because of the fractal nature of the effect, I could not find a way to seamless loop the animation, which led me to resort in an ugly cross-dissolve.

How can I create a more pleasing seamless loop with this effect?

update

I've redone the animation manually using the puppet tool, which is closer to what I wanted but not perfect, so the question still stands. The old animation for reference can be found here:
http://solstice.co.il/videos/tree_old.webm

In order to get a fluid and seamless loop, it's key to enable Cycle Evolution and move the last keyframe 1 frame beyond the end of the composition.

Add the Turbulent Displace Effect onto the footage

Open up Evolution Options

Enable Cycle Evolution

Go to the first frame in the timeline

Click on the stop watch of the Evolution value:

Go to the last frame in the timeline and set the Evolution Times value to 1x, this is equal to 360 degree (one revolution)

Move the second keyframe 1 frame beyond the end of the composition:

Example

Composition length: 51 frames
First evolution keyframe value: 0x at frame 0
Second evolution keyframe value: 1x at frame 51

Note: This seems to work with all fractal effects.


How to quickly remove unnecessary sounds in FCPX? I'm editing audio in Final Cut Pro X; I have exported the audio from Davinci Resolve because FCPX has a variety of equalizers and noise reduction built-in.

In this audio, I am talking but I occasionally smack my lips together and make other unpleasant sounds.  So, I am trying to remove them as fast as possible.

I realize that there is no good way to automatically identify them, so I am listening to the track and, when I hear an unneeded sound, making four keyframes using ALT+K as shown in the photo:

This isn't too difficult to do but it is a little inconsistent for the following reasons:

After I make the four keyframes with the keyboard shortcut, I have to select the middle two keyframes to pull the audio down with the mouse, and making this selection is tricky sometimes even with the timeline zoomed in.
When I pull down the audio, it's usually about -30 db, but it's hard to precisely line up; when I do this several times per file, I am unlikely to make them all exactly the same.  This probably isn't a big deal but it is inconsistent.
There's no way (I can tell) to copy-and-paste sets of keyframes.

Is there a faster way to do this, or is what I'm doing about as good as it gets?

There are 2 methods that might help with this.

Press the I and O keys to mark a range around the audio you want to fix. Then press CTRL+OPT+L and type a number value for the amount you want to the audio to drop (eg:-60db)
Make your keyframes, select them, then OPT+SHIFt+C to copy them, then OPT+SHIFT+V to paste them where you need them.

Method 1 is probably more flexible as you can customise the range if need be.


Best softwares for heavy pan/zoom editing? I use to do a lot of pan/zoom editing with Sony Vegas Pro.
Now that I read that Sony plans to discontinue Vegas (they said it will remain supported but there will never be a new version again), I am checking other softwares, so far I have tested those but I would like to hear recommandations.
(I am also making heavy use of "Velocity envelope" in Vegas, I have not tested it in other softwares yet but I'm interested in feedback about similar or alternative features through different softwares. Maybe I should make it a different question.)

Sony Vegas: Maybe it's because I used it for more than 10 years now but I think its pan/zoom tool is extremely flexible, and you can
set transition speed/acceleration on keyframes.
Adobe Premiere Pro: In their pan/zoom tools, it is possible (and seems to happen quite a lot if you do a lot of pan) to lose the corner
outside of the interface. I don't find it intuitive at all. Maybe
Premiere users are used to edit numbers rather than to manipulate the
visual tool?
Adobe After Effects: Looks like the best alternative so far as the tool's corners remain visible even when they are "behind" the
interace. Though it is very close to that of Premiere, I found this one more intuitive. From a tutorial I watched this software's tool actually looks more precise than that of Vegas, but quite more complex to manipulate and obtain similar results.
Corel VideoStudio X8: I am quite lost here and the interface gives me the feeling of a toy.

(Note: I use Windows so Final Cut is not an option.)

Go with After Effects, it's a tool that will most likely stick around. If necessary you can also take advantage of the more advanced tracking an compositing features.
If you end up editing in Premiere (which pretty much is the best option if you don't want to dive into Avid) the integration between AE and Pr is crazy useful. I find myself even making titles there because it's just a faster and lets me do prettier stuff.
Let me know if you have any questions.


ffmpeg : error when added scale I am trying to encode batch mkv videos which will give a output with a watermark in it.

But when I add the -vf 840:480 or other resolution (like 720p or 1080p),
it don't run but without -vf scale it works fine but I need to set resolution for the video.

Without -vf

for %%I in ("*.mkv") do ffmpeg.exe -i "%%I" -i a.png -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=25:25:enable='between(t,0,20)'" -map 0 -vf scale=840:480 -codec:v libx264 -preset veryfast -crf 18 -codec:a copy "480\%%~nI.mkv"

With -vf

for %%I in ("*.mkv") do ffmpeg.exe -i "%%I" -i a.png -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=25:25:enable='between(t,0,20)'" -map 0 -vf scale=840:480 -codec:v libx264 -preset veryfast -crf 18 -codec:a copy "480\%%~nI.mkv"

Please help me with how to run the command with -vf scale

Use

for %%I in ("*.mkv") do ffmpeg.exe -i "%%I" -i a.png -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=25:25:enable='between(t,0,20)',scale=840:480[v]" -map [v] -map 0:a -codec:v libx264 -preset veryfast -crf 18 -codec:a copy "480\%%~nI.mkv"

All filters acting upon a stream should be within the same filtergraph.


Free video editing software I'm looking for a free video editing application that works on windows that must have the following requirements:

Must be able to take segments (cuts) of videos and add them together.
Remove audio from the clips and add in a single song for the whole video.
Add in text that can show/hide at specific points in time.
Has no horrible watermarks that make the video un-viewable.
Is free since it is only for fan video use (so not corporate whatsoever).

Cheers.

Similar Questions: Simple Video Editing Tool? and What Beginner Video Editing Software Should I Use?

Have a look into the new Blackmagic Davinci Resolve, which includes an NLE and color correction tool. it is free and can output a maximum resolution of 3840x2160.


Ultralight image stabilizer Recently I took a video in a remote cave. Thanks to my 320 lumen headlamp there was a reasonable amount of continuous light for my DSLR, but the shaking is just too strong. The image stabilization in iMovie was not enough to smooth it out. Does anyone know of an especially small and light stabilizer? I suppose the answer is to bring a light camera, such as a GoPro, which has lighter stabilizers.

Or any other ideas about how to take stable videos while walking or crawling in a rugged cave? These are remote places, so ultralight equipment is a must.

Is there blurring in most frames?  (i.e. if you pause it, do most of the still frames that make up the video look ok on their own?)

If the shaking didn't blur out your image too badly, you might be able to recover something usable with ffmpeg's vid.stab filter.  It has some parameters, like speed of camera moves to not count as shake.

IDK how it compares to what iMovie has, but if your video keeps some of what you want in-frame most of the time, and isn't blurred to hell, software should be able to give you something.  (cropped to contain just the part that the camera kept in-shot for most of the frames).


Different transform options of shape layers When dealing with shape layers, you get 2 transform options. One is inside Group sublayer and the other is just plain transform. This image shows what I mean:

When should I use Transform Group and when just Transform? My shape only has 1 group. In that case, does it matter which transform I use?

Shape layers can comprise more than one shape, indeed they can contain multiple groups of shapes. So when you have multiple elements in a shape layer and want to transform one of them but not the others you use the individual transforms for that part, when you want to transform the whole layer you use the normal layer transforms.

If your shape layer only contains one element then there is really no difference, except that the layer transforms are accessible to keyboard shortcuts, e.g. P for position, S for scale etc., and work with nudging, e.g. the arrow keys or num pad + and num pad - for rotation.

Of course you can achieve the same result as having multiple parts to a shape layer by creating multiple shape layers each containing one part and grouping them by parenting, using expressions or precomping them.

Whether you make shapes with individual parts per layer or all in one layer is a matter of taste. I tend to switch between the two, but mostly favour individual parts per layer - I like my keyboard shortcuts.

I kinda think the AE layer shapes implementation isn't AE's strongest feature. For anything complicated I always do it in Illustrator and import.


What is the relationship between hardware acceleration and DXVA/QuickSync/Cuda? Many video playback applications (e.g. VLC Player, MPC-HC, etc.) are highly configurable. For example:

VLC Player allows you to enable: QuickSync and/or DXVA
Freemake allows you to enable: CUDA and/or DXVA

What I am trying to understand is... what is the relationship between hardware acceleration and these technologies?

For example, can you enable DXVA to leverage GPU based hardware performance AND enable QuickSync to leverage CPU based hardware acceleration?

It is my understanding that...

DirectX Video Accelerator (DXVA)

This type of hardware acceleration improves video encoding/decoding performance by routing 'work' to the GPU (integrated or discrete).

Intel QuickSync

This type of hardware acceleration improves video encoding/decoding performance by routing 'work' to the CPU - specifically a dedicated processor die that is responsible for performing video encoding/decoding operations.

Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)

Is a closed API developed by NVIDIA that not only gives direct access to the the GPU's virtual instruction set, but also allows for data to be retrieved from the video card so that additional processing can be performed.

They are all forms of hardware acceleration, which broadly, just means that specialized hardware is doing things faster than the basic CPU normally could.  The exact nature of what each type of acceleration does depends entirely on the software you are using and the hardware you are using.

Some hardware is very purpose specific.  Something like Intel QuickSync is a specific hardware encoder and has limited functionality because it can only serve it's purpose driven role.  This is similar to any other dedicated encoder, such as the integrated encoder used for NVidia Shadowplay or the dedicated encoders on devices like the Matrox MXO2 or BlackMagic Intensity.  There are other rolls other than encoding that could be filled by a purpose driven card, but encoding is certainly one of the most common.

Other hardware, such as modern GPUs (CUDA or OpenCL based, I think ATI has a term too, but can't remember it) and video editing or mixing acceleration cards, such as Black Magic's ATEMs or Matrox's older RT line of real time editing cards, are designed to provide more general purpose functionality.  Depending on the hardware they may either offer a wider array of specialized functionality or simply a general purpose parallel processor that works better for video purposes.  In these cases, the functionality is made available to software, but it is up to software to utilize the processing capabilities of the hardware and the exact nature of the acceleration will depend on which algorithms and processing they choose to offload to the hardware.

Another option, as far as APIs are concerned, is something like DXVA, which strives to unify multiple technologies.  DirectX in general is a system for interfacing software and diverse graphics hardware.  It looks for any hardware that tells it that it can fill a role and then will utilize that hardware to do a job when software asks for the job to be done.  I'm not super familiar with DXVA, so I don't know if it puts any specific requirements on hardware (some directX stuff does), but on the hardware end, the implementation could potentially differ greatly and could use either CPU features or GPU features, depending on what's available to it.  It may or may not be directly implemented in terms of the more hardware specific feature sets (CUDA, QuickSync, etc), but it is designed to work across diverse hardware, so you know less about what is going on under the hood.

All of the technologies can be used to speed encoding, but the general purpose technology can also be applied to just about anything that you can process in parallel, so they can (potentially) impact render times as well (the time it takes to make the images that are going to be encoded).


Add border to video, maintaing aspect ratio, and insert subtitles in the border I have an MKV wrapped 1920x800 video and a sidecar .srt subtitle file. I want to convert the video to 1920 x 1080 and add black border on top and bottom while keeping the original aspect ratio. I also want to insert the subtitles on the black border.

I have an idea on how to insert the subtitles, but I'm not sure how to add the border. I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to do this all in one pass so that I lose at little quality as possible.

You can use FFmpeg, a free command line tool to do this:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf pad=1920:1080:0:140,subtitles=filename.srt -crf 20 -c:a copy out.mkv

The subtitles filter accepts ASS styling parameters, such as font size and margins.


Opacity and feather doesn't work at mask currently I have the problem that I cant change the opacity of a mask.
It's just on (1-100%) or off (0%).
I noticed that the feathering doesn't work too.

Here is a example picture.

There are two masks, one with less opacity than the other, but they are still appear to be the same.

I tried different things but nothing worked and I can't find anything about this in at the internet.
Is it maybe because of the effects?

How can I change the opacity of the masks respectively the feather?

Normally effects are applied before masks, but some aren't. For these effects it means that you need to precompose the layer with the effect applied, and then apply the mask to the precomp. I don't know why, it's pretty certainly a bug, but Colorama is one of those effects.

Turn off Colorama and your masks should start behaving normally. So what you need to do is pre-comp the layer with the effects on it, but not the masks (just select the masks and ctrl/⌘-x to cut, then precomp the layer choosing "Move all the attributes into the new composition", then paste the masks back).


How do you open multiple videos with multiple subtitles in VLC from command-line? Usually, you can use this command to open a video with a subtitle in VLC, if it isn't detected automatically:
vlc.exe path_to_video.mp4 --sub-file path_to_sub.srt
But I want to open multiple videos, each with their own subtitle file. How do I do that?
Neither vlc.exe video1.mp4 video2.mp4 --sub-file sub1.srt sub2.srt
nor vlc.exe video1.mp4 --sub-file sub1.srt video2.mp4 --sub-file sub2.srt seem to work.

This is a workaround which converts the files to another container format. It happens almost as fast as your hard disk can write data because nothing is re-encoded.

use MKVToolNix (specifically mkvmerge) to combine the mp4 files and their srt files into mkv files (perhaps you can automate this with a loop). I never use this tool via command line and cannot tell you the exact command, but you'll find more information here https://mkvtoolnix.download/doc/mkvmerge.html
use vlc.exe *.mkv afterwards.

Maybe this question helps too https://superuser.com/questions/609113/how-to-add-and-remove-subtitles-in-an-mkv-file which should also work with an mp4 file as input.


Acceptable to adjust colour levels dynamically I am using Premiere Pro CS6 to produce a short film and have some questions about the levels video effect.
Is it generally considered good practice to make adjustments to the RGB levels throughout a clip? For example, I have a single take clip where the scene changes drastically over a few seconds from an environment with heavy reds to an environment with heavy greens and blues. Trying to even out the scope at only 1 of these points means that I'm clipping the highlights at the other unless I make some changes.

Obviously this is an extreme scenario but I'm thinking about perhaps scenes where a character walks across the shot wearing brightly coloured clothing that causes one or more channels to clip. Should you adjust the levels dynamically then or just set them so that they won't clip at the highest points so as to avoid strange color casts during that short period. Or should it even be more involved with something like rotoscoping to create a mask over the object and adjust that separately?

I know these are pretty loose examples but I'm just trying to avoid getting into bad practices if there's generally a right way to go about things like this.

What you're describing is color grading / color correction and yes, it's perfectly acceptable, almost mandatory for a good presentation. Usually it's done scene by scene, but it's not at all unusual to correct within a single shot, or even different areas within a shot.

To do it well you should explore a dedicated grading tool like DaVinci Resolve Lite.


Camera for live feed-transfer to external monitor in adjacent room? I need a camera that functions like a surveillance or webcamera but that I can output to a computer monitor (via adapters) with a VGA-cable. I could perhaps use a normal camcorder for this, but I find those to be too expensive for our simple needs.

Basically, I want the cheap price and simple functionality of a webcam but the possibility to connect it to a computer monitor using only adapters (not running through a computer).

Any tips?

A Raspberry Pi might be what you are looking for.  It is a credit card sized Arm based computer running Raspbian (a Debian variant), and at $25 it may even be cheaper than buying several adapters.

You could simply attach a web cam to the Pi and attach the monitor or TV via HDMI or Component out.  To get to VGA you will need a converter which you can get for about $30.


Green Screen Video to Transparent PNG's I am looking for way to extract frames from a video shot in front of a green screen. This is the source video, so nothing has been chroma keyed on to it yet. I want to save the frames as PNGs with the green replaced by transparent.

I see its possible to get transparent video based this question, but I am looking to save as transparent PNG's, not video.

Assuming you are satisfied with the chroma key quality from ffmpeg, it's just

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf chromakey={...} -vsync 0 out%d.png

where {...} is replaced with your chromakey filter arguments.


Scripting - Where is the documentation for the Layer#Effects attribute? I have been trying to make a script that will automatically apply an effect to the selected layer. So far, it looks like this:

var myLayer = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[0];

I have seen here and here the use of the Effects attribute, which is used like this:

var myEffect = myLayer.Effects.addProperty("My Effect");

The only class I found in the CS3 scripting guide that has the addProperty method was the PropertyGroup object, found on page 147. There is no mention of myLayer.Effects. In fact, I have not seen an attribute with a capitalized first letter before.

I am going to use this to automate creating around 100 circles on a layer. (This effect is found under Effects & Presets > Generate > Circle.) I want to be able to provide a list of X/Y coordinates and for each one generate a circle with this center and a fixed size. This list could come from a file or from a list of each null object on the same layer.

I actually found the answer in the CS3 scripting guide. CompItem#selectedLayers actually returns an array of AVLayer objects. AVLayer is a subclass of Layer and has quite a few  attributes. Here are a few of them:

Masks
Effects
Anchor points
Position
Scale
X Rotation
Y Rotation
Opacity

Oddly enough, when calling these attributes you need to pay attention to if the attribute is one word or two. If it's one word, the first letter will be capitalized, but if it's two words the first letter will be lower case and the rest in camel case fasion.

For example, if you have an AVLayer instance called myLayer and you want to get its list of effects you call myLayer.Effects, but if you want to get its X rotation you call myLayer.xRotation.

As for my end goal of creating circles on a selected layer, this is what I came up with (works in CS5.5 although it also needs error checking to see if a layer is actually selected!):

function createCircle(layer, coords, radius) {
    var x = coords[0];
    var y = coords[1];

    var circle = layer.Effects.addProperty("Circle");
    circle.Center.setValue([x, y]);
    circle.Radius.setValue(radius);
    return circle
}

var myComp = app.project.activeItem;
var myLayer = myComp.selectedLayers[0];
var circles = [];

//coordsList could come from an external file or another function
for (var i = 0; i < coordsList.length; i++) {
    circles.push(createCircle(myLayer, coordsList[i], 75));
}


Which Text falling and flipping animation preset or plugin is used in after effects If you open this video on vimeo.

Then fast forward to 00:56 on the timeline you can see a text animation where the blocks of text appear like there are being flipped and falling. I want to know what plugin or pre-set animation they are using in After Effects to achieve the same.

If you need more clarity on the question please let me know. Thanks

They haven't used a preset or plugin. They have animated it.

Achieving this effect in After Effects is done by enabling 3D on the layer, positioning the anchor point and then animating the rotation.