Tips to make a stopmotion walk I'm making a game using photographs for the animation. I've asked a friend to walk in place, and taking pictures of each step, using a 6-steps cycle.

It ended "cool", but as the photo session was made in like 20 minutes, it needs to be improved.

I myself added some tips:

Use a better camera (right know I'm using a standard digital camera).
Place the camera on a tripod.
Use a greenscreen to better separate the subject from the background.
Don't use auto, because the lightning can't vary from picture to picture.
Trace a line on the floor to indicate where my friend has to stand.

Do you have any more ideas to help me with this? What I don't really know is how to make the walking to appear as "natural" as possible.

You can play what I've done so far here. (Or just watch a video if you don't have the patience).
You can also see a making-of in this video.

And finally, these are the pictures I'm currently using (don't mind the posterize, that's just a filter for the game):

I'm not sure you need a better camera for this. since you are downgrading the images to a pretty low quality anyway. The secret to good green screen photography is in the lighting more than in the camera. You need to light the background as evenly as possible, and use a background color that is not present in the subject's clothing. In your example blue would not work due to the shirt, but green might. You can also use a white sheet if you make sure no part of your subject gets blown specular highlights. You need to make sure your subject is not too close to the background, as it may catch reflected light from it. This is particularly important if you go with blue or green background, maybe less with white.

The camera on a tripod is a good idea, but don't expect you'll get images that will be perfectly registered. I expect you will still need to align them, but the job will be easier when the camera was fixed on a tripod.

The camera should be in manual. If you don't want to mess much with the settings just take a few test pictures in auto mode (no on-camera flash, try to use other light sources from the sides, to not create shadows on the background) and once you find one that you like switch to manual and copy the exposure settings.

I think you want to mark a spot on the floor that your subject can use to position himself for the pictures. A line does not seem too useful, since your friend isn't really walking.

My final advice (the one that might be off-topic for this site) is that you grab a good book on animation and learn the animated walk cycle. You just need to have your friend pose in those proven positions that make up natural walks in cartoons. My recommendation is the Preston Blair book, Cartoon Animation.

Good luck with your game.


Projection mapping as an external display for a computer I'm using a projector to display the content of my computer, as one would do with a regular screen. Now I want to do the projection on several panels that have different orientations. Hence I'm looking for a projection mapping solution.

Is it possible to do projection mapping with the HDMI output of my computer as projected content? If it is, could you recommend me a tool to do so? So far, the projection mapping softwares I've found can only project content that is internal to the computer and defined in advance, such as solid colors, video or pictures.

Try Resolume Arena, at youtube you can get tons tutorials


Screen capture AND audio recording in ffmpeg I am using ffmpeg built from source at this revision in Fedora 20.

I am able to record audio perfectly fine with the command:

FFmpeg/ffmpeg -f alsa -ac 2 -i pulse -- output.wav

However, when I try both screen capture and audio, like this:

FFmpeg/ffmpeg -video_size 800x600 -framerate 25 -ac 2 -f x11grab -i :0.0+0,0 -ac 2 -f alsa -i pulse -ac 2 -acodec copy output.mpeg -ac 2

I'm getting a video with 0 audio channels, which I can check running FFmpeg/ffplay output.mpeg

Input #0, mpeg, from 'output.mpeg':
  Duration: 00:00:09.44, start: 0.540000, bitrate: 2743 kb/s
    Stream #0:0[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg1video, yuv420p(tv), 800x600 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 104857 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 25 tbc
    Stream #0:1[0x1c0]: Audio: mp2, 0 channels, s16p
   7.26 M-V:  0.000 fd=   0 aq=    0KB vq=   33KB sq=    0B f=0/0

and no audible sound is played. The position of -ac 2 doesn't change the behaviour, nor does repeating it only once. This is despite ffmpeg claims to record the audio with 2 channels, here is the input:

ffmpeg version N-71312-ga66dcfe Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 4.8.3 (GCC) 20140911 (Red Hat 4.8.3-7)
  configuration:
  libavutil      54. 22.100 / 54. 22.100
  libavcodec     56. 34.100 / 56. 34.100
  libavformat    56. 29.100 / 56. 29.100
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5. 13.101 /  5. 13.101
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  1.100 /  1.  1.100
Trailing options were found on the commandline.
Input #0, x11grab, from ':0.0+0,0':
  Duration: N/A, start: 1428348285.201679, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo (BGR[0] / 0x524742), bgr0, 800x600, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1000k tbn, 25 tbc
Guessed Channel Layout for  Input Stream #1.0 : stereo
Input #1, alsa, from 'pulse':
  Duration: N/A, start: 1428348285.225901, bitrate: 1536 kb/s
    Stream #1:0: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1536 kb/s
 File 'output.mpeg' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N] y
[mpeg @ 0x2d079a0] VBV buffer size not set, using default size of 130KB
If you want the mpeg file to be compliant to some specification
Like DVD, VCD or others, make sure you set the correct buffer size
Output #0, mpeg, to 'output.mpeg':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf56.29.100
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg1video, yuv420p, 800x600, q=2-31, 200     kb/s, 25 fps, 90k tbn, 25 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.34.100 mpeg1video
    Stream #0:1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (rawvideo (native) -> mpeg1video (native))
  Stream #1:0 -> #0:1 (copy)

I'm clueless. If anybody can tell me how to get this to work by either:

fixing my mistakes in the command line flags
if it's a regression, which revision to build from.
any other way

I'll buy him/her a pint.

The solution seems to be to use both a different video and audio encoder. This line works:

FFmpeg/ffmpeg -video_size 1024x768 -framerate 25 -f x11grab -i :0.0+0,0 -f alsa -ac 2 -i pulse -acodec aac -strict experimental output.flv

I couldn't get it to work without -acodec aac -strict experimental, contrary to the HOWTO on ffmpeg wiki.

The error message I'm getting is:

Output #0, flv, to 'output.flv':
    Stream #0:0: Video: flv1 (flv), yuv420p, 1024x768, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.34.100 flv
    Stream #0:1: Audio: adpcm_swf, 0 channels
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.34.100 adpcm_swf
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (rawvideo (native) -> flv1 (flv))
  Stream #1:0 -> #0:1 (pcm_s16le (native) -> adpcm_swf (native))
Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:1 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

Neither could I get this to work using:

FFmpeg/ffmpeg -video_size 1024x768 -framerate 25 -f x11grab -i :0.0+0,0 -f alsa -ac 2 -i pulse -acodec copy output.mpeg

which contains -ac 2 probably in the right place. The error I'm getting repeatedly is:

[mp2 @ 0x7faffc007da0] Header missing

This most likely is a bug/regression.

To sum up, I've found a probable bug in both ffmpeg and on ffmpeg's wiki. And it looks like I'll have to buy the promised beer for myself ;)


How does the source encoding reflect the settings used to export? I filmed Video during Christmas with my Canon 5D mark II.  My input source is H.264/MPEG-4 (Base Profile @ L5) from my camera.  I have edited the movie and just want to save it to the hard drive for long term storage.

When choosing the profile for encoding for storage, should I use the same H.264/MPEG-4 (Base Profile @ L5) profile to keep the quality, or lower to save space.

How does the source encoding reflect the settings used to export?

The quality you use to export the video for long term storage largely depends on what you will be doing with the footage at a later date.

If you will be mostly using it for personal viewing, a lower quality may be sufficient.  If you will be editing the footage and using it in another video, you will want to encode it a higher quality.

The only scenario I can think of for encoding to a higher quality than the original video is if you were including the clip for use with other videos of higher quality in a project that will ultimately be encoded with the higher quality.

To sum up:

You should encode the video in the highest quality you can without exceeding the original and without going over your space requirements.  Since large hard drives are relatively inexpensive these days, this will likely mean that you encode to the original quality of the video.


Fast subtitle workflow in Sony Vegas? In Vegas is quite time consuming having to insert text using only visual cues, for example:

Inserting new text media requires to choose presets instead of having a default style on the go.
No keyboard shortcut for "Insert Text Media..."
Copying and pasting existing Text in the timeline requires clicking on the "Generated Media..." icon to start editing the new instance.

Is there a way to simplify or speed-up this process?

Keyboard shortcuts, third party plugins? Please give your thoughts.

Thank you.

Vegas' text capabilities are rather limited. It allows you to insert captions only one by one.

There is an extension for Vegas Pro, which is called Vegasaur. It contains Text Generation Wizard that can import text from subtitle files (srt, sub etc.) or just from the Clipboard

http://vegasaur.com/Vegasaur


Fix vertical panning I have a video i want to loop (about 6  seconds long) that gradually moves downwards. Which video tool or filter can I use to realign the image?

I experimented with Davinci resolve but it the panning/stabilizing tool has no option to limit it to vertical only.

I fixed it with a panning / zoom plugin I found for virtualdub


Export settings for audiobooks Suppose I'm making an audiobook with a simple JPG image as the only visual content and a single MP3 track as the only audio. What settings can I use to ensure that:

A) The picture is still sharp, ie, the image remains at full resolution.

B) The audio is undistorted, native resolution (VBR 320).

C) The video is as small as possible.

I'm aware that I can use multiple encoding passes to decrease filesize, but how can I tweak frame rate, video resolution, etc to simply show this 490KB image with the ~550MB of audio at the smallest total file size for streaming?

I'm working in Windows with Adobe Premiere, but open to other suggestions.

Thanks!

If your audiobook is audio only, and there is only a single image associated with it, I would simply distribute it as audio with the image.

If you want to upload to YouTube or another streaming distribution site, use the preset meant for YouTube, or specify what site.

For a technical answer to your question assuming you're using H.264 or H.265; make the keyframe distance as long as possible, use 2 pass encoding, and use the native resolution and frame rate of your distribution medium.


Is HDMI 1.4 backwards compatible with 1.3? I'm installing a Hitachi MS-1 switcher, and it's HDMI output works fine with an HDMI v1.3 cable, but not with a cable v1.4.  I've tested the v1.4 cable on a different output device (DVD player) and it works fine.  I've also tried two different display devices (monitor and projector).

My question is:  Is HDMI v1.4 supposed to be fully backwards compatible, or are there some caveats?

Also, has anyone else encountered any equipment that worked with HDMI v1.3 but not v1.4?

A 1.4 cable should work fine with a 1.3 signal, however an HDMI 1.4 signal will not work with an HDMI 1.3 cable or an HDMI 1.3 output unless the source is capable of using a prior standard.


Properly working with vector files I have a project that I've edited in Davinci Resolve 12 where I want to add a logo in the beginning. However, Resolve won't import either PDF, SVG or EPS format, so I created a high resolution PNG of the logo instead. Even though the PNG file looks fine on its own when looking at it, when bringing it into Resolve, it gets very pixely.

As a backup solution, I tried importing the original PDF into Final Cut Pro X instead and exporting a MOV file that I could bring into Resolve. However, the logo got pixely when exporting it from FCPX as well.

So, I'm at a bit of a loss here. How could I properly work with vector files so that the result looks smooth?

Ok, so I solved it myself, and it wasn't pretty.

To be able to work with my vector file in Davinci Resolve 12 (and in Final Cut Pro X without loosing any detail), I first had to convert it into a font. Yes, you read that correctly. I had to create a font where I assigned my logo to a specific character and then use the font in my editing program.

More specifically, to achieve this, I used the excellent Icomoon web app where I could import my vector image, assign it to a character code (in my case, I used "30", which stands for numeric zero in standard UTF-8 encoding).

Then I simply downloaded my font, installed it on the system as any other custom font, and accessed it as a text object in Davinci Resolve 12.

What a time to be alive!


Canon Vixia HF R600 - MP4 vs AVCHD I just bought a Canon Vixia HF R600. It's giving me the option to save files as AVCHD or MP4. I will be importing them to my PC and editing them in Adobe Premiere CC.  I'd heard that AVCHD has a better picture quality, but I also heard that AVCHD requires multiple files (???). My questions are:

Can Adobe Premiere CC work equally well with both file types?
Which file type will give better image quality?
Does a single AVCHD clip really comprise multiple files that I'll have to import?

Thanks!

Generally, MP4 is better for compatibility, whereas AVCHD provides the better quality. MP4 (which by the way can mean a million different things, in this case it probably refers to MPEG-4 Part 14) files will be compatible with most devices and media players as is, and will be smaller in size compared to AVCHD. This is the option I'd recommend if you wanted to film your vacation and show the recordings as is, without further editing.

If you want the best quality, go with AVCHD. Files will be bigger in size and won't play back on most devices, but you can import them into Premiere Pro and export your edited video to every format you want anyway. Chosing the AVCHD will also open up other recording options on your camera. According to the manual, the highest bitrate avaiable for MP4 is 35Mbps. For AVCHD, the highest possible bitrate should be even higher, though I couldn't find an exact value.

  Can Adobe Premiere CC work equally well with both file types?

Yes. MP4 will record, well .mp4 files. AVHCD will probably come as .mts or .m2t/.m2ts files, both of which Premiere Pro can handle.

  Which file type will give better image quality?

AVCHD with the highest recording quality settings. Keep in mind that this will fill up your SD card pretty quickly, according to the manual at about 4 GB per 20 minutes of recording. If this is a problem for you, MP4 might be the better solution, as it offers the better quality/filesize-ratio.

  Does a single AVCHD clip really comprise multiple files that I'll have to import?

Not really sure about that. Normally, it should produce one container file every time you press record. Many cameras will split the file at 4 GB or stop the recording when a continuous recording reaches that size. Since you already bought the camera, just try out both options and see what files you get. But Premiere pro should be able to handle whatever you throw at it.


Closed Captions missing when converting from mp4 to ts This is a follow-up question from my previous question HERE. I'm trying to convert a caption-embedded .mp4 video into a .ts file, simply changing the container format. But once I convert the video, the caption looks different. Not sure what's going on.

Here is the sample .mp4 video. At second 00:34" for example, you see the caption says GARBLED CAPTION INSERTED. But that's not there in the converted .ts file.

What's happening? Any clues?!

The subtitles in the MP4 is a mov_text (tx3g) stream which isn't supported in MPEG-TS.

MPEG-TS support either DVD subtitles or DVB teletext. The former is a bitmap subtitle format and ffmpeg can't convert text to bitmap. FFmpeg has no encoder for the latter. Your best bet is to burn the subtitles but this means re-encoding the video.

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf subtitles=in.mp4 -c:v libx264 -c:a copy out.ts


First steps in time lapse I've always been fascinated by time-lapse videos, and i wanted to give it a try.
I don't have much, just a Canon Digital IXUS970, which can record up to 4GB of video. (and i think this is enought to start)

What kind of editing should i do after i registered my video? What are the best scene setups for lights, positioning etc? What software should i use to edit and create my video?

Basically, how do i start making timelapses?

to answer your question:

basic setup: camera, scene, computer with editing suite (after effects, premiere, vegas, final cut express, quicktime)

You must trigger record frame every second or predifined interval of time, setup your editing timeline at 25 fps and import your footage.
if you are doing frames you must import frames interpet them and put it on timeline (depends on what software pack are you using)

so, if we want to capture/record every second per frame, that is 60 frames which is 2 seconds and 10 frames on PAL or 2 seconds straight on NTSC (25 fps PAL / 30 fps NTSC), that is, in 2 seconds you will see 1 minute of real time. and the mathematics goes on.

so this is the concept.

some cameras lets you get a movie out of record frames, some do it manualy.
after we have shot as many frames / time we wanted we can move on to assemble those frames and edit them.


Fixing audio/video out of sync when editing recorded broadcast I have recorded broadcast-ed material using a DVB-T tuner.

That produces several TS files per recording (most likely to keep filesize within FAT32 limitations).

I have concatenated each recording into a single TS file using:

ffmpeg.exe -f concat -i $filelist -c copy -y $outputfile

From there, I need to perform edits to remove commercials, strip extra stuff from the start and end, and optionally extract each episode into a separate file.

I own Pinnacle Studio 23 Ultimate, that doesn't support TS as input so I'm converting TS to MP4 using something like:

ffmpeg -y -i foo.ts -crf 18 -ac 2 -r 25 -c:v libx265 -ar 48000 -b:a 192k -c:a aac -aspect 16:9 bar.mp4

(I've tried several ways/options, including using HandBrake for that conversion).

What happens is that in the resulting edited material, audio and video are out of sync. Can be in the whole file, or only in some sections.

This could be linked to glitches (missing frames...) in the original recording.

But when I play the original single-file TS, or the MP4 version, in any player such as VLC, audio and video are properly aligned. So these players are able to deal with the aforementioned glitches and "re-align" the audio and video streams.

How can I "rewrite" the whole input file in such a way that audio and video are "fully synchronized" so that editing will be possible?

Thanks in advance for your help.

My DVB-T recordings always have this issue. Try MC-TVConverter2!

It is a (old but still reliable) graphical interface for several video tools. Try converting your original ts recording(s) using the MPEG2 HQ setting - I've found this option to be more of a repair than a re-encode, as the conversion is quick and the resultant file size is very close to the original recording.

There are numerous other conversion options, but the MPEG4 one takes a long time to re-encode, even with MPEG4 based ts files. It also has ad detection but I haven't tried it.

You're unable to use an ntfs formatted drive for recording?

Report back on how you go!

http://mctvconverter.vivolum.net/


Recommendations on Video Editors similar to Movie Maker I used to create videos a lot in the past, and I am trying to get back into it. I used Windows Movie Maker back when it was 2.6 and really liked that version of it. I liked the ability to click and drag the clips into the timeline as well as when you imported the video you could click a checkbox and it would turn the video you were importing into smaller manageable clips that I could then click and drag into the timeline from the Collections section. I was hoping to find something similar to those features as well as had the ability to add in some cool effects. I was able to find something similar called Filmora. It is so close to having everything that I need. It even has a scene detection feature that is similar to the "Create video clips" feature that Windows Movie Maker has. But the clips stay in the timeline. I can't have them set aside in a collection out of the way so that I can click and drag them into the timeline in the order that I want. Does anybody know of any video editing program that is similar to Movie Maker that isn't too expensive? I don't need anything fancy. Just a few effects that I can add, a timeline editor, and the ability to create video clips when importing a video. Any suggestions?

Avid just came out with a free version of Media Composer, looks very capable. "It's a fact that over 95% of all mainstream movies released in 2016 were edited on Media Composer. And so were most TV shows, too! Media Composer | First is a completely free version of the same video editing application, available on either Mac or PC. If you are an aspiring filmmaker or vlogger looking to get a start in editing, there’s no better way..."
Adobe Premiere Elements is in the price range you mention.


A framerate of 30.30 has become common the past couple years. What is it about the number 30.30 that is significant? Why not an even 30, for example? I typically resample the framerate to 30 when I'm encoding (much of my source video was streamed and has unreliable native framerate). But these 30.30 videos I tend to leave at 30.30 just because I don't know why it's like that and don't want to mess with it.

30.30 isn't a standard frame rate. I think you see it a lot because mobile phones (especially iPhones) only "target" certain frame rates, they don't necessarily perfectly deliver them.
https://www.provideocoalition.com/understanding-iphone-framerates-for-shooting-editing-distribution/
Interpreting a 30.30 frame rate video as 30fps won't cause significant issues unless the clip is longer than a few minutes, in which case you may have lip-sync issues with the audio vs the video.


What mounting adapter do I need for this shotgun mic? I am looking at this shotgun mic and I am making a boom pole from this video. I know there is a mic adapter and shock mount in that video, but since the shotgun mic comes with a shock mount, what mounting adapter/connector do I need for the shotgun mic to connect to the boom pole?

If you're on a budget, and if you are making your own boom pole - I'm assuming you are, you could try this...
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/621574-REG/Interfit_STR116_STR116_Hot_Shoe.html

I'd gaff tape it for insurance.


scale an image inside a mask Pretty new to after effects.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to scale an image contained inside a mask.

Similar to photoshop. In Photoshop you create a mask and if you want to scale the image you simply unlink the mask and scale your image.

Can this be done in after effects?

This is what I have going on.

Video playing in background
Created a new image layer in the bottom right position of the video to show a more in-depth example of what the person in the video is talking about.
Want to add a scale effect to the image layer contained in the mask

When I try and scale the image it scales the mask. I only want the image to scale inside the mask.

Any help would be appreciated.

After some serious Google time I found a solution.

Here is the link, but just in case is gets removed this is what they said to do.

You want to use a track matte.

Create a mask on a solid layer that lies on top of the layer you want to cut out. Then click on the TrkMatte dropdown menu on your footage layer, select Alpha Matte.

Here's the layer order for you:

Masked solid
Your footage / image - Apply Track matte and apply Alpha Matte
Background (if used)

Now you can move your footage layer around and the mask won't move.

This worked like a charm.

If anyone has any better solutions, please let me know.


Fastest way to add a video event in multiple cuts I made a lot of cuts from many videos. Now, what if I want to add a video event in multiple pieces?

I could click, in every piece of video, the video event button to add one, and do the same thing over and over again... but that would consume tons of time and will. And if I highlight multiple ones and right click in one of them, the option goes grey.

Is there any trick to do this?

If by Video Event, you mean Video Event FX, then apply the effect to one event. Right-click and select Copy. Then select the remaining clips, right-click and select Paste Event Attributes. Note that all the original Pan/Crop and effects applied to the other clips will be overwritten with those in the copied clip.


Premiere CC: How to select/drag clip in program window? Running Premiere Pro 2018 on Windows. Previously, I could animate the scale and position of the clip in the program window by clicking to select it and using handles to scale, or drag it around within the program monitor. This would create keyframes and update the scale and position settings. It made it very easy to do "pan and scan" type zooms and rolls.  I'm not sure if I was using an earlier version then.
On my current project, I can't select the clip in the Program monitor. I click it with the selection tool and never see handles on the image. Selecting it in the Timeline doesn't do anything either. I can add key frames and adjust position numerically in the Effects Monitor panel, but I'd like to use the mouse in some cases. Does anybody know what I'm missing?

To answer my own question, I found a solution by clicking around finally. In the Effects Control panel, clicking the Motion property label causes handles to appear on the video in the Program Monitor. Then, with the Selection tool, you can drag the image to reposition it, or drag a corner handle to scale it. I believe I was able to do this in earlier versions without first selecting the Motion label, but at least I can do what I want easily now.


What is the size of 1 minute video at 1920 x 1080 (60 fps)? I would like to know what is the size in MB for 1 minute video captured in the following format:

1920 x 1080 (60 fps) AVCHD

and

1920 x 1080 (60 fps) MPEG-4

with peak data rate of 24Mbit/sec

How to calculate it?

Try those calculators, they should do the trick.

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/webapps/videocalc


What are display and pixel width reported by mkvinfo? For one movie, mkvinfo says:

|   + Pixel width: 704
|   + Pixel height: 480
|   + Display width: 853
|   + Display height: 480

What are these values exactly? Why the difference?

The pixel values refer to the actual number of samples stored per frame. The display values refer to the dimensions that the player should render the video at. The ratio of 853/704 = 1.212 is the pixel or sample aspect ratio. This is an example of  non-square pixels, a legacy of analogue video signals and usually seen in digitized forms of NTSC/PAL format signals.


Convert variable input formats to black and white MP4 I am currently using an FFMPEG command like:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf scale=1920:1080 output.mp4

to convert varying input format file to a fixed resolution MP4 output file.  One final step I need is to make the output Black and White (the input files will be full color).

I have tried both
    -pix_fmt gray
and
    -vf format=gray,format=yuv422p

but both just result in a black output video.

After much trawling of google, it looks like the FFMPEG exe I downloaded (for windows) wasn't compiled with the "-enable-gray" option, but I don't know if this makes any difference and don't know how to obtain a windows FFMPEG with this option enabled (building FFMPEG myself looks like a lot of hard work).
Any advice welcome!  Thanks.

PS I should add that the conversion I'm currently doing and any grayscale conversion could be separate steps if required.

Yes, you do need a ffmpeg build with gray pixel format enabled. You should get your binary from the Windows link at ffmpeg. Download the latest 32-bit static build.

You can check if your build has gray enabled by running

ffmpeg -pix_fmts | findstr /r gray

It should list an entry for gray.

And use format=gray in your vf chain and -pix_fmt yuv420p together for broad compatibility.

  The command below is for linux. grep will work as findstr!

ffmpeg -pix_fmts | grep -i gray


Environments in which to stage an animated scene I'm looking to shoot a short computer-based set of scenes, however I'm not sure what suitable (3D) engines/environments would be available to facilitate this.

I'm aware of the Source engine, in which I can place models and script the movement of characters - this engine also includes a number of existing character models, however my fear is that going down this route would result in the scenes having a "Clear Skies" feel about it.

So, what options should I be considering?

(I am happy to create my own models from scratch using Blender or any other tools associated with the environment. I could also program the necessary scenes in software myself, however I'd rather not go down this route as it's likely to be much more time consuming than this project would already be!)

Also, the options do not need to be free or open source, as I am willing to purchase software if it looks worthwhile (but free is good too!) :)

One final note - while my main machine is a Mac, I also have windows an Linux based machines at my disposal, so recommendations can be for any of these platforms.

Thanks

Have you looked at Maya?

Lovely showreel here.

It's an excellent platform for animation, rendering and development.


Which web server is better for HLS streaming? I am trying to create a server that streams HLS to client. I created .m3u8 file and for receive from client use Apache web server. Some times, changing the source of video takes more than usual time... I think that it refers to web server that responds to client with delay. Can anyone help me which web server is best to put m3u8 file in that and get client stream from that?

My m3u8 file is :

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:11
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:11
#EXTINF:10.080000,
21.ts
#EXTINF:10.080000,
22.ts
#EXTINF:9.760000,
23.ts
#EXTINF:10.880000,
24.ts
#EXTINF:9.600000,
20.ts

I'm working in a Live Streaming company in Singapore, and we use Nginx as the web server for HLS. Since Nginx is way better at processing static files. You never need to worry about the performance, nginx can utilize the 10G network card easily.


inserting video clip into another video but keep original audio I need to replace video in a larger mp4 file with a smaller mp4 clip - but leaving the original (larger clip) audio intact.

So for example I might want the first 2 seconds of SmallClip.mp4 to replace the video in LargeClip.mp4 starting at (say) 10 seconds in to LargeClip.mp4.

The format of both clips is likely to be identical, so I'm hoping I can copy instead of decoding for speed etc (I'll have to do it a lot).

Finally, I might want to do exactly the same thing but in several places in LargeClip.mp4 - all places in the output getting the video replaced with the same input clip's video.  I'd be happy to do this in multiple oerations if neccessary but if it were possible on one command so much the better :)

I'm reading up on the options for ffmpeg but I'm new to it and haven't figured it out yet.  Any help much appreciated!

You can use the concat demuxer in ffmpeg to do this. For accurate splicing, re-encoding is needed which is what the commands below do.

Step 1 Prepare the concat text file

You must first create a plaintext file, say, concat.txt, like this

file 'LargeClip.mp4'
inpoint 0.0
duration 10.0
file 'SmallClip.mp4'
inpoint 0.0
outpoint 2.0
file 'LargeClip.mp4'
inpoint 12.0
duration 5.0
file 'SmallClip.mp4'
inpoint 23.0
duration 4.0
file 'LargeClip.mp4'
inpoint 21.0

This shows the first 10 seconds of LargeClip, then the first two seconds of smallclip, then resumes the Largeclip at 12:00, shows it for 5 seconds, then splices in 23:00 to 27:00 of small clip, switches back to LargeClip at its 21:00 and keeps it till its end. These timecodes, in seconds, refer to the source file timecode, not of the assembled output.

Make sure that the sync of LargeClip isn't broken, i.e. after switching to SmallClip for 12 seconds, you want to resume LargeClip 12 seconds later from where you left it off.

Step 2 Concat the video streams

This command will skip the audio since we don't to splice the audio streams.

ffmpeg -f concat -i concat.txt -an -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -fflags +genpts spliced-vid.mp4

Step 3 Insert the audio from LargeClip

ffmpeg -i spliced-vid.mp4 -i LargeClip.mp4 -c copy -map 0:v -map 1:a Final.mp4


What is a good workflow for producing High quality High definition Videos suitable for a final upload to the internet. I'm entering my third week into the video editing world, and have already put up a few test videos to youtube. But overall, I am unhappy with the results so far.

Quick background: I am recording video game footage using fraps, and eventually want to create professionally edited productions in the future, for now, I'm still learning.
I have tried h.264 from vegas studio 11(trial)... it looks terrible. I have also tried wmv: that looks much better... but is grainy, so still unacceptable for me (also file size is large in wmv).
And for the last week and a half, I have been playing around, googling, testing programs, researching methods for video production, trying not to ask questions(because the info might already be out there), but I just can't seem to figure this out: I'm stuck.

What information I need:

I would like to know what steps I need to go through in order to end up with a high quality, high definition video with accurate colours(within acceptable parameters of course... i.e. not super dark compared to source video, which is what happens with vegas avc/h.264).

I think I have some idea as to the steps involved, and I will post it below, please fill in the gaps with as much detail as you care to provide, post links to other answers, and also other websites which have supplementary information:

1.Record Video in fraps at 1080p - 29.97fps
2.Encode into intermediate codec (having trouble here, one spot I need help with).
3.Import into video editor (I'm currently trying to use avid studio due to it's unlimited track nature, if vegas studio 11 is better for me, please say so).
4.Edit the video, adding effects and transitions and splicing together video footage.
5.Export the video to h.264 at about 8000kbps or to another much higher bitrate codec.
optional 6. encode into final codec using handbrake or some other encoder.
7. Upload.

So that's what I think the steps are, please correct me if I have them wrong. As you can see, I am stuck at step 2, because I keep getting no video footage after encoding into my intermediate format.
     The intermediate codecs I have tried are: ffmpeg huffyuv, ffmpeg dnxhd and they both get no video output.

If anyone is still wondering what question to answer, I'll abridge it here:
What do I need to do and what programs should I use (max budget $150 total), in order to get a VERY GOOD quality video with fast editing speeds.

Note: I may not have the correct playback codecs, I don't know, I only have the default windows codecs installed at the moment for decoding, the rest are included in ffmpeg.
note2: I am using avantigui to use ffmpeg.

In video, there is no "I don't have disk space" or "I want to add compression to files to lower my disk space usage and caching".

You should record uncompressed, work uncompressed, and at the final stage export the uncompressed video to a suitable format for delivery.

Record your video.  Edit wherever you want (I suggest Vegas, because is the fastest on pc).  Cut.  Edit.  Do whatever you want.  Then export your timeline to h.264.

I suggest using Adobe media encoder cs5 + to do the job.  Don't encode already encoded video files, because it will degrade your quality.

Check youtube/vimeo/... what formats they play the best (usually there is a guide for file formats and upload)

One more thing:  FRAPS ENCODES in its own codec.  You need a properly installed DECODER/ENCODER for Vegas/Avid/Premiere to see the files properly.

I did a lot of gaming videos before and after HD was introduced.  I did it with FRAPS, game engines....  Uncompressed is what you want.  Or you could force FRAPS to use Avid's DNxHD code c(you can get it on Avid's site.)


How to show number of available streams using ffmpeg? I just want to see how many streams are inside my video file.

I looked at the official documentation and I cannot see what option I can use. Perhaps another command/terminal app can do something similar?

Any ideas how it can be done?

If you have ffprobe installed:

ffprobe <input> -show_entries format=nb_streams -v 0 -of compact=p=0:nk=1

You can also filter for video or audio streams by adding -select_streams v or -select_streams a, respectively. See the manual for more details.

If you do not have ffprobe, ffmpeg can be used too, but in a slightly less robust way (i.e., this may break if the output format changes or something contains the words "Stream #" in the output):

ffmpeg -i <input> 2>&1 | grep "Stream #" | wc -l


How to save playable infinite video? The situation is described here.

In short, I need a way to save infinite video real-time, playable while being saved. Suppose, there are ways to do this.

I imagine it's done like in web DASH, in chunks, but saved locally.
Ideally (though not necessary) so that any modern player program could play it by clicking on file.
Also prefer open software and standards like ffmpeg and vp9.

Thanks for help!

All you have to do is output to a .ts container.  It's designed for broadcasting systems, so it works fine with incomplete files.

ffmpeg -i INPUT -c copy OUTPUT.ts

You just have to put a compatible codec in the container.  I haven't been able to find a list of what's compatible, but through testing I've found that H.264 and H.265 work.

.ts containers aren't the best once the file is complete, though, because seeking can take a while and they're about 7% bigger, so you can copy the data into an .mp4 container (assuming you're using H.264) when you're finished with

ffmpeg -i INPUT.ts -c copy OUTPUT.mp4


What are the basics of high-speed videography? I am particularly interested in high-speed videography. Any tips on how to get started, what equipment should I have, understanding about lenses, apertures, what are the laws I need to obey, what should I learn and from where? Clearly I am lacking in basic knowledge.

Perhaps a better question is what books or courses should I take to bring me to the point where I will be able to just Google the questions I have. The problem is, that I have zero background knowledge about video taking and photography and therefore my vocabulary regarding things I need to know about videography is nonexistent.

Ok this question should probably be put on hold as it is way too broad for a single answer. If I understand you correctly, you're asking about both the technical and artistic aspects of both photography and videography, topics which people study for years in universities. So if you really want to learn all that stuff, sign up for a course at an university. That said, here are some pointers.

First a disclaimer, you're not gonna 'master' any of this by watching Youtube tutorials, reading blogs or even books. The only way you're gonna become better is by practicing a lot. I know people who know all there is to know about their fancy camera, but couldn't compose a decent shot if their life depended on it. But what sucks even more are those who can't compose a shot and can't handle their fancy camera, so ...

Technical skills

Since you asked about photography, I recommend the reddit photoclass archive. It's a great ressource to start learning the basics of DSLR cameras (most of it will also apply to medium- to high-end video cameras). There's also a list of additional ressources at the end of this post.

Here's an excerpt (Disclaimer: I don't know all of those myself):

  Ansel Adams - "The Camera", "The Negative" and "The Print" - The reference. A bit outdated and dealing mostly with print, but still very useful reading for any serious photographer
  Scott Kelby - "Digital Photography Vol. 1-3" - very easy to read and quite complete, a good introduction text
  1x.com - for inspiration.
  /r/photography - reddit's own photography experts.

The photography subreddit has a weekly beginner's question thread, might be useful for you. Also check out /r/askphotography/.

Again, those are only the very basics.

Artistic aspects

I've already written a lengthy post on that, check it out here. This also contains some links concerning the technical aspects of videography (in this field, technical and artistic goes very much hand in hand). Also check out the second answer for some additional links.

Again, practice. It might also help to look at other people's work. For photography, you can check out the following sites:

Instagram (Yes, seriously, there are some real photographers there.)
Gurushots (Photo competitions. Look at all submissions, not only the winners.)
/r/photocritique (Read the comments to learn a lot about how photographers think about photos and what makes a good photo)
500px (Photo sharing site aimed at professional photographers. I'm not using it, but photographers often recommend it.)

For movies, well, just watch good movies. The post above contains a link to a list of movies to watch.


Two questions regarding setting up a podcast with Behringer 1202fx mixer and a dual channel compressor limiter gate I would like to know what is the proper way to connect the mixer to the compressor limiter gate to my Behringer1202fx mixer? any ideas?

Also, I would like to know if anyone has or knows how to set up at least one Skype call with  mix-minus into the same 1202 mixer.

Ideas much appreciated, Thanks in advance

Silas

I have the 1204USB for a while a ended up throwing out the USB adapter and getting a Saffire PRO 24 Firewire interface. This mixer and the 1202 are great but if I had the chance I would have gotten the Mackie Onyx 1220i which has the Firewire built in.

However I did manage to make the mix minus work with this desk. You need to listen and monitor from the desk but record from the computer. Next you bring the audio back into the desk via the line out of the comp and into the 7/8 channel of the desk. Leave the POT panned down and listen to the the channel in PRE and make sure you live monitoring is also playing out the PRE to the headphones (PRE never goes out to main). Looking at the PDF for the deck: http://www.behringer.com/assets/1002FX_P0572_M_EN.pdf  I'm not sure if the 1202 has PRE setting but without it, you will not be able to do this.


How to convert video for viewing on Sony Ericsson C702? I'd like to convert some of my videos for viewing them on Sony Ericsson C702 cell phone. But I couldn't find the right set of parameters (a/v codecs, container, etc.). I'd prefer a solution using ffmpeg or another tool available on Linux. It seems that different phone models even from the same manufacturers have different video decoding abilities, so the more specific answer the better.

Update: As suggested, I'm posting ffmpeg's output of one of the videos recorded by the phone itself:

ffmpeg version 0.7.13, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Jun 13 2012 14:01:54 with gcc 4.4.5
  configuration: --enable-libdc1394 --prefix=/usr --extra-cflags='-Wall -g'
    --cc='ccache cc' --enable-shared --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl
    --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libxvid
    --enable-postproc --enable-x11grab --enable-libgsm --enable-libtheora
    --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libx264
    --enable-libspeex --enable-nonfree --disable-stripping
    --enable-avfilter --enable-libdirac --disable-decoder=libdirac
    --enable-libfreetype --enable-libschroedinger
    --disable-encoder=libschroedinger --enable-version3
    --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libvpx --enable-librtmp
    --extra-libs=-lgcrypt --disable-altivec --disable-armv5te
    --disable-armv6 --disable-vis
  libavutil    50. 43. 0 / 50. 43. 0
  libavcodec   52.123. 0 / 52.123. 0
  libavformat  52.111. 0 / 52.111. 0
  libavdevice  52.  5. 0 / 52.  5. 0
  libavfilter   1. 80. 0 /  1. 80. 0
  libswscale    0. 14. 1 /  0. 14. 1
  libpostproc  51.  2. 0 / 51.  2. 0
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '/media/sde1/DCIM/100MSDCF/MOV00456.MP4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : 3gp5
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: vfj13gp43gp5mp42emp
    creation_time   : 2012-05-19 12:27:58
    copyright       :
    copyright-eng   :
  Duration: 00:01:21.79, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 382 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(jpn): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 320x240 [PAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 348 kb/s, 29.60 fps, 30 tbr, 1k tbn, 30 tbc
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2012-05-19 12:27:59
    Stream #0.1(jpn): Audio: aac, 16000 Hz, mono, s16, 31 kb/s
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2012-05-19 12:27:59

Devices are often picky, and specifications are usually too uninformative so it's always trial and error. For example, your link indicates that the phone supports MP4 playback, but that is simply a container than can utilize several video and audio formats.
MPEG-4 part 2 video and AAC-LC audio
(partially based on the working video details you provided)
ffmpeg -i input -vf scale=320:-1 -c:v mpeg4 -b:v 400k -c:a aac -strict experimental -b:a 32k -ar 16000 -ac 1 output.mp4

Some recommendations:

Try increasing the audio bitrate since -c:a aac is not very good
for low bitrates, and because your build does not support better AAC
encoders.

Consider removing -ar 16000 and -ac 1. It's best to try to preserve the original file audio rate and number of audio channels if supported by the phone.

Try replacing -b:v 400k with -q:v using a value of or between 2 - 5 (lower is higher quality) to set a constant quantization parameter instead of an arbitrary bitrate.

Results may vary.
H.264 video and AAC-LC audio
ffmpeg -i input -vf scale=320:-1 -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -crf 28 -c:a aac -strict experimental -b:a 128k output.mp4

I'm unsure if this will work on your phone, but it's worth trying. See the FFmpeg and x264 Encoding Guide for more info on encoding with x264.


ffmpeg: Crop 21:9 out of 16:9 video I've several old VOB's (self-recorded DVD's) with 21:9 content that is embedded in 16:9 videos…

Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9

I want to crop the 21:9 part from it and re-encode everything.

cat *.VOB | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec mpeg2video -q:v 0 -q:a 0 -flags +ilme+ildct -alternate_scan 1 -top 1 -vf crop=720:432:0:72 -aspect 21:9 -s 720x432 test.mpg

This works (nearly) as expected, but the video is displayed with 2.21:1 or similar strange aspect ratios in VLC or Kodi. Any ideas what's wrong with my ffmpeg arguments?

Input #0, mpeg, from 'pipe:':
  Duration: N/A, start: 0.118367, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0[0x1bf]: Data: dvd_nav_packet
    Stream #0:1[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p(tv, bt470bg), 720x576 [SAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], max. 9400 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
    Stream #0:2[0x80]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 256 kb/s
[mpeg @ 0x1d25880] VBV buffer size not set, using default size of 130KB

Output #0, mpeg, to 'test.mpg':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf56.40.101
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 720x432 [SAR 7:5 DAR 7:3], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 25 fps, 90k tbn, 25 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 mpeg2video
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 384 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 mp2

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:0 (mpeg2video (native) -> mpeg2video (native))
  Stream #0:2 -> #0:1 (ac3 (native) -> mp2 (native))

Best to make it a square-pixel stream:

... -vf crop=720:432:0:72,scale=iw*sar:ih,setsar=1 test.mpg


GPU problem/replacement ? For Lightroom and Vegas I use both Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe Lightroom.
In my new computer is an Asus Strix GTX980 GPU card.

In Lightroom: I had to disable GPU acceleration
In Vegas: I have crashes as soon as the preview windows is resized of plays video. Even with GPU acceleration disabled. (Rendering works fine but I cannot work the video that way.

From what I read, there may be something wrong with applications support of Nvidia GTX9xx .
Maybe I can exchange the GPU for another.

Do you know if that GPU may be the problem ?
What GPU in the same price range would you recommend (with 3 screens in mind, 2x4K and 1xFullHD).
Should I go AMD?

Thank you for you help.

Problem solved for Vegas

Solution A

(optional) I have installed thedriver version I wanter (in my case I took the latest drivers,359.00 currently).
CTRL+Shift on Vegas icon, checked clear cache data. (Beware that you may lose some configuration in the process.)
After maybe a few starts (can't tell precisely), it finally works, WITH GPU acceleration.

Solution B
The problem happened again. Solution this time. It might look like a random thing but I've done it multiple times and tested alternatives.

(There was no driver update this time.)

Start Vegas with a blank projet.
Display Preview Window (content should be all black).
Resize preview window (not sure if this is optional, but if it doesn't crash at this point, that's a good sign).
Open the project you initially intended to work with.

Regarding Lightroom: no solution yet.


Cropping a video by timestamps I am new to video editing.
I have a video of 30 minutes. I want to delete some part of it and keep some part. for example

00:00:00  till 00:05:00 (keep)
00:05:01  till 00:10:00 (delete)
00:10:01  till 00:30:00 (keep)

I have many timestamps like above. What is the best quick way to do this?

I have done this sort of thing using ffmpeg and powershell core (both free software).
You can use any other scripting language to loop over ffmpeg once for each section of video that you want to keep. The ffmpeg command that you want looks like this:
ffmpeg -ss [start_time] -i [input_file] -to [end_time] [output_file]

So, and example would be:
ffmpeg -ss 00:10:01 -i source_vid.mp4 -to 00:30:00 output_vid_2.mp4

And if you have a whole lot of such pieces to cut in a batch, you can then use powershell or some other scripting language to loop through a list of pieces to cut:
$segment_list = @(
@{ id = "1"
   start_time = "00:00:00"
   end_time = "00:05:00"
},
@{ id = "2"
   start_time = "00:10:01"
   end_time = "00:30:00"
}
)

foreach($segment in $segment_list) {
   ffmpeg -ss $segment.start_time -i source_vid.mp4 -to $segment.end_time ("output_" + $segment.id + ".mp4")
}


Recompressing 1080p h264 collection to HEVC - Target Bitrate For Minimal Loss My understanding is that HEVC (aka h265) can provide roughly the same video quality as h264 in roughly half the space, for 1080p+ footage.  I have a large collection that I would like to re-encode to reduce my storage needs, and am trying to determine the "best" compression options to use.  I understand that "best" is very subjective, but generally speaking, my goal is just to save as much space as I can while (ideally) not reducing visual quality by a noticeable / perceptible amount.

I'll be using Adobe Media Encoder (w /a GPU).  My collection is recorded at 1080p, between 35 & 45MBps.

For instance: if HEVC can be expected to yield comparable quality in half the space, does that mean I could compress a 40MBps h264 video to 20Mbps h265 (50% bitrate), and expect visually similar results?  And therefore if I wanted to really minimize the risk of noticeable degradation, I could set the encoder to, say, VBR target = 70% of the source bitrate (28MBps), with a max a bit above that?

Are there other things I should consider when setting up the encoder? Other relevant options: Quality (from highest/slowest to lowest/fastest), Use Maximum Render Quality (checkbox), Render at Maximum Depth (checkbox).

Any guidance would be appreciated :)

I've transcoded some of my AVC (h.264) 1080p movies to HEVC (h.265) with 2 pass encoding (using my GPU) and target bitrate set to 50% of original. The other streams (like audio and subtitles) were only copied into the new file.
Mostly I'm using Potplayer to play these files with Madshi renderer, and I can't see any difference on a 55" 4k HDR TV with naked eye. The only thing, that I've noticed at some movies, if there are dark scenes with big black backgrounds, the transition from one shade of black (dark grey) to another is built from much more bigger blocks in HEVC, like in AVC version. I say again, these blocks are visible both on AVC and HEVC but only in some of the movies and in HEVC they are a little bit more noticeable.
But I'm only a home user, I'm not making professional videos and the 15GB video file vs the 30GB worth it to me.


How can I rotate a video by a few degrees? I've taken a fairly tilted video and want to rotate it to be level, how can I do this? I'm open to any third-party apps but purely apple solutions are better.

Thanks for you help!

Using FCPX, a Transform effect will do the trick.

Using FCP 7, you can access rotation along with scale and position in the Motion tab of the Viewer.


How do I playout rtmp stream to SDI (Decklink Studio 4K) using FFMPEG command?we are using Windows 7 operating system ffmpeg -re -i rtmp://server/live/streamname \
-c:v rawvideo -pix_fmt uyvy422 -vf scale=720x576 \
-c:a pcm_s16le -ar 48000 -ac 2 \
-f nut - | /bmd/bmdplay -C 0 -m 2 -f pipe:0

Kindly share the exact command to take this rtmp stream to Decklink Studio 4K card(SDI).

As the docs say,

  you need the Blackmagic DeckLink SDK and you need to configure with
  the appropriate --extra-cflags and --extra-ldflags. On Windows, you
  need to run the IDL files through widl

If so, run

ffmpeg -re -i rtmp://server/live/streamname -c:v rawvideo -pix_fmt uyvy422 -vf scale=720x576 -c:a pcm_s16le -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f decklink "Device"

where Device is to replaced with the name of 'Decklink Studio 4K' as indicated by ffmpeg -f lavfi -i nullsrc -f decklink -list_devices 1 dummy


Video camera for online course creation I am starting an online course project and need to create  video files as a part of  lectures. There will be lots of DIY excersizes  so I need decent camera that could be attached to the small mount and placed on the table while teacher is showing how to do things. The main emphasis is on the DIY excersizes so the viewer shoulde be able to see the creative process very clearly.

I am considering to do some high speed/fps scenes as well as a part of the lessons.

Most of the time camera will be static, so there will be no movement around the scene.

What camera should be the best choice for this project? Please could you recommend any particular type/brand based on your experience?

Many thanks

I would whole-heartedly recommend the Panasonic HC-WX970K 4K Ultra HD Camcorder for this purpose:

When shooting 4K video, you can shoot wide enough to capture unexpected or exceptional things that happen outside your normal framing area while still having plenty of resolution for an excellent 1080p video.
It happily shoots exceptional quality 1080p120, which is true slo-mo.
It is small so it can fit on a bench without great disruption.
It has built-in ND filters, so you can have your bench inside or outside and still use sane aperture and shutter speed combinations.
It costs less than $800.

n.b.  If you shoot at 4K with a consumer camcorder, chances are you'll be shooting at 24fps or 30fps, which means there will be motion blur.  But if you can tolerate that, you'll get gorgeous still shots you can crop to whatever size you like.  If you shoot at 1080p60, you will greatly limit motion blur, but you will also be more constrained in how much you can crop, and how good the image looks when frozen as part of a diagram.  But a 4K camera such as the above will allow you to experiment and find the best of both worlds.


Simple way to downscale from 1080p@60 to 1080i@60 I have a Canon LEGRIA HF R56 which only outputs 1080p@60 from its HDMI port. Are there any methods to downscale this to 1080p@30 or lower?

Googling this doesn't seem to throw up light. I guess I could use a HDMI capture device to downscale the signal, but then that would defeat the object of downscaling it, as I could just use that device to perform my capture.

I am doing this because my capture device, an Intensity Shuttle, has a maximum input rate of 1080p@30.

EDIT:

From @ProfessorSparkles answer below, the HDMI output could be 1080p@50. I realize that my TV simply says 1080p as the input signal, rather than the framerate.

According to the specs on the Canon site your camera can record in 50i/p and 25p 1920x1080. Are you absolutely sure you can only get 60fps on the HDMI? Because that sounds rather weird that you get more FPS on the HDMI than the camera can actually record.

If you set the recording option to 25FPS normally on canon cameras the FPS should also apply to the HDMI output.


Advice on how to determine right camera equipment and set up for multi-sport court? We are building a 65ft x 30ft multi-sport court with 13ft walls all around (similar to the one pictured) and we would like to know what video camera equipment would be the most appropriate in order to get a live feed of the action 24/7.

We would like the cameras to be up high, anywhere around or on top as needed. Fixed, unmanned. They also need to be able to withstand being hit by (tennis, basketballs, soccer balls, etc) and have HD quality of at least 720p. No need to be able to move it or zoom with it remotely.

According to my research, there are security cameras that could possible do the work, considering they can shoot HD, but would the video look smooth? Would fps be a limiting factor?

Some other questions:

What are some of the minimum specs I should be looking for in order to shoot live sports?
Would 2 cameras be enough? Or 4 be needed? Could a wider-angle camera replace the need for more than two cameras? We're aiming for <400$, per piece, is that realistic?
Would it be better to place them on (top of) two opposite corners or right on the middle at either end? Or maybe in the middle of the court facing opposite ends?
We want to have every inch of the court covered. And most be able to see up high for basketball goals and down low for small soccer goals.

I understand we should be looking for HD-SDI (over HDMI) able equipment as it would allow us to run longer cables as needed, correct?

With all cameras in place, where would all feeds converge? Would it require a tricaster/studio board or could it go directly into a video card/laptop? Trying to keep it as simple and cost effective as possible.

The main purpose of the live feed is to show it in screens for spectators outside, with streaming as a second priority.

Lastly, is there any software that would allow me to plot or draw the vision field of a camera? Or anything remotely similar using geometric and physical data? Not even sure if those are the proper technical terms but hopefully you get what I mean.

Thank you very much.

The GoPro would be a perfect candidate for what you want.
It's a so called "action camera" and is a very robust (water tight with case) wide-angle camera that can shoot in very high frame rates with HD resolution (even more at lower frame rates).

Suitable recording options for high speed sport events would 1080p @ 60FPS or 720p @ 120FPS.
The camera also has a live raw HDMI output, its very suitable for live monitoring and recording.

Also the camera has in-offical scripting capabilities which makes it very easy to set the camera up for un-manned opertation.

You will only need to get a DC battery pack adaptor because the GoPro cannot be used without a battery inserted. It's a dummy battery that connects the camera to a DC power supply.

The GoPro Hero3+ Black, their best model, is available for 400$ or a bit less depending on the shop. There is also the Silver Edition for 300$ which should be enough for what you need, it also has HDMI out and 1080p @ 60fps.

Regarding your question about Security Camera, most of them have a rather bad video quality (in comparison to film cameras) and usually low frame rates that aren't suitable for sport events. They are very specialized cameras that often directly record to files instead of giving you a live stream (atleast the cheaper ones).

The capturing on the other hand can get quite expensive, you can of course use a standard PC to capture a camera but you would one capture card per camera and capture cards that support 1080p @ 60 FPS are rather expensive in the 700-1500$ range.
There is also specialized studio equipment for these kind of things that handle multiple inputs but that again is also very expensive and will cost your around 10.000-15.000$

I'd say with a GoPro in wide-angle mode about 2 cameras are enough to cover the whole court when you put them in opposite corners. 4 would probably offer nicer perspectives but that depends on your budget.

If you are on a really tight budget I recommend you opt for 30FPS, not as cool for sports but then again most users don't even have the bandwidth for 1080p@30FPS.

Then you can opt for the even cheaper GoPro White Edition and use a lot cheaper capture card like a BlackMagic DeckLink for 145$ in combination with a standard PC.

When it comes to setting up streaming servers that handle the capture from the PCs and stream it to the web I recommend you hire a professional developer, this is not an easy task at all and can give you a lot of headaches if you have no experience with that matter.

Alternatively you can opt for one these things, they are rather in-expensive and are more compact and would spare you the hassle of a complicated server setup. It automatically streams to streaming services like ustream or YouTube, or have your own website integrate the RTMP stream that it produces.

It would definitely be the cheapest solution, though 1080p @ 60FPS is not possible with this solution, when opting for this device I would go with the GoPro White Edition aswell.

Though 720p@60FPS is possible with this solution, so that might be good alternative if resolution isn't as important as frame rate to you. I'd probably recommend the 720p@60FPS option, its the overall cheapest and high frame rates always win over high resolution when it comes to sport (in my opinion).

Hope that helps you.


What is the name of this minimalist film genre? There is a category of film and a contest I read about some years ago.  The rules were:

sixty seconds or less
black and white
no cuts fades or edits
stationary camera
no sound

the idea was to mimic filmmaking technology available at the dawn of time.  I want to introduce the idea to my son but can't remember where I found it or the name of it.

Generally "Minimalism" is more about shedding content to focus on the essence, "eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts." This does not necessarily require the elimination of sound or strict use of b/w.

Another term used for a Minimalist like film back in the 1970s was "lean".

What you are describing is more like emulating a silent film which reached its peak in 1928.

If you only use b/w, 60 seconds, no camera movement (pans, tilts, tracking), no cuts, no edits what you have is one clip from a stationary camera. This in itself does not fulfill what "Minimalism" in cinema is about as the balance of this question rests with whether the content is in fact Minimalism.

Also, specifying certain aspects such as b/w and no sound are somewhat superficial now.

Consider that before 1928 that sound was generally limited to what music or sound effects could be played live with the film. So too, color films were not widely available so only hand tinted films existed. Before 1928 the cinematographer generally did not have the option of synchronized sound and color. To go back to this approach is a conscience artistic choice today where as back then, you did not have this choice cause that's all you had.

I would call the genre you are describing as approaching Neo-Silent but not quite there as these guys use hand-cranked gear etc, as described in their manifesto:

http://www.silentmovies.com/neosilent/neosilent.htm

So perhaps, "Post-Neo-Silent" is a more accurate term?

In any event what you are describing is actually very popular in some cinema circles. Consider director, Blake Whitman's "1 Minute Vimeo Project":

https://vimeo.com/groups/1minute

Wherein Blake offers:

"Welcome to the 1 Minute Vimeo Project Group. Add one video, comment on two!

With the chaos of everyday life consuming our senses, it is nice to sit back and enjoy moments and experiences that are often overlooked. This project aims to study the forgotten moments and times in life that we often pass by without acknowledging.

The rules:
-Video must be exactly one minute long
-No camera movement (no panning, tilting, etc)
-No editing whatsoever
-Use original sound
-Tag with '1 minute'

-Have fun"

Aside from allowing color and sound, this is pretty close to the criteria you have defined.


Need overlay the image on video by taking the array of positions I need to overlay the image on video by scrolling the image on video .
I want to generate the video with the image in scrolling positions

I believe what you're looking for is called tracking. If you have a video in which scrolling happens and need the image to stick on the video, meaning that it follows the scrolling, do the following:

Open up After Effects and import both the image an the video.
Create a comp with the settings of the video and drag the video in it.
Create a Null-Object
On the right hand side, there's a panel called "tracking" or "tracker". Open it.
Select the Video since you want to track its movement and drag the tracking point (you only need one but can use however many you want) on a point of the video with high contrast, like edges or spots. (that makes it easier for the tracker to recognize the movement.)
Track the footage and check if the tracker sticks, correct it if you have to.
As the target, select the null-object and click apply. You need the y-axis at least, having both y and x doesn't hurt though.
Now, drag in the image and pick the whip (the little curly thing) and drop it on the null-object.

If you did all of this, the image will follow the scrolling video. You might need to adjust the size and position of the image, but it will nonetheless follow your track.

Hope this helps, have a good one :)


Convert interlaced(?) video to progressive I have a video with the following details:
Format                      : MPEG-TS
File size                   : 6.49 GiB
Duration                    : 1 h 35 min
Overall bit rate mode       : Variable
Overall bit rate            : 9 694 kb/s

Video
ID                          : 512 (0x200)
Menu ID                     : 1 (0x1)
Format                      : AVC
Format/Info                 : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile              : High@L4.1
Format settings             : CABAC / 3 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC      : Yes
Format settings, Reference  : 3 frames
Codec ID                    : 27
Duration                    : 1 h 35 min
Bit rate                    : 8 827 kb/s
Width                       : 1 920 pixels
Height                      : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio        : 16:9
Frame rate                  : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard                    : Component
Color space                 : YUV
Chroma subsampling          : 4:2:0
Bit depth                   : 8 bits
Scan type                   : MBAFF
Scan type, store method     : Separated fields
Scan order                  : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)          : 0.142
Stream size                 : 5.91 GiB (91%)
Color range                 : Limited
Color primaries             : BT.709
Transfer characteristics    : BT.709
Matrix coefficients         : BT.709

Audio
ID                          : 513 (0x201)
Menu ID                     : 1 (0x1)
Format                      : AC-3
Format/Info                 : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name             : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                    : 129
Duration                    : 1 h 35 min
Bit rate mode               : Constant
Bit rate                    : 384 kb/s
Channel(s)                  : 6 channels
Channel layout              : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate               : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                  : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode            : Lossy
Stream size                 : 263 MiB (4%)
Service kind                : Complete Main

I want to convert (using ffmpeg) from 1080(?) to 720p, the point is, I don't know if it's interlaced or progressive, is the first time I see MBAFF.

Scan type                   : MBAFF
Scan type, store method     : Separated fields
Scan order                  : Top Field First

MBAFF Information can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding
Not sure how did you get such information, MediaInfo? But those Scan information can't be a progressive.


How do make a layer visible only when overlapping other layers in After Effects How do make a layer visible only when overlapping other layers in After Effects.

Below are the layers:

I want the shadow from the bow to only be visible when over the verticle lines.

Below are the layers in the pre-comp:

Above is the semi-transparent stroke as the shadow if the bow and a repeated verticle stoke. I want that shadow layer to only be visible over the verticle lines. How can I achieve this?

You can use a Track Matte. If your vertical lines aren't already precomposed, precompose them. Duplicate the Precomposition in your main composition. Place the shadow layer between the two precomps. Set the shadow layer's TrkMat setting to Alpha. (If you can't see the Track Matte [TrkMat] dropdown press the Toggle Switches/Modes button at the bottom of your screen).


Panasonic SDR-H100 Multiple Program Files I have a Panasonic SDR-H100 camcorder. When I shoot videos, with stoppages, i.e. many clips, the videos are put into two different program folders within the sd_card folder on my SCHD. I was wondering if there was a way to ensure that those video files are put into the same folder?

If the camera is following DCIM standards, then there should be a 4 digit ID number appended to the end of a 4 digit prefix to form the filename.  The standard is that when a folder is filled (the counter reaches 9999), a new folder is created and the counter starts over again at 1.

While there does not appear to be a way to combine these folders on the camera itself, it should be possible for you to simply copy the files in to the same folder on your PC as long as the names don't overlap.


How can I stabilize very shaky video in After Effects? I'm new to After Effects and am trying to stabilize some VERY shaky hyperlapse video of a waterfall. The warp stabilizer with the default options fails. I've been trying to use the Tracking window to set points that shouldn't move but I don't understand how it works well enough to do it. If someone could explain the general idea to me or point me to a tutorial on the subject I would appreciate it.
Thanks!

Edit:
Here's the unstabilized video that I'm working with:

Another possibility is to stabilise it by hand, frame by frame. I've done this before on wobbly walking time lapses, and the results are usually better than just using a warp stabiliser. In order to do it, you need a point of reference in your shot, that you can line up to a pair of horizontal and vertical rulers in each frame. Takes ages, but it's worth it.

Without seeing your footage, it's hard to show, but I'll give an example:
We did this on the timelapses in this programme:

https://vimeo.com/52539719

Take the first shot.  The camera was moving between every frame, but the peak of the roof does not move, and is in every shot.

We decide whereabouts in the shot we want the peak to be in the first frame.

We place one horizontal guide and one vertical guide in the comp, so that they cross over at the centre of the peak.

We scale the original footage up slightly, so that any repositioning of the frame doesn't result in black edges to your shot.   It's best to shoot in a higher resolution than your final output resolution.  Our shots were on a Canon 5D, full frames, so much higher than the final 1920x1080 HD output.

Set a position keyframe, then go to frame two.

The roof will have moved in the frame, because the camera is wobbly.
Reposition the frame, so that the roof is in the middle of your two guides again.
Make sure a new position key frame has been set.
Keep going, frame by frame, with lots of coffee and music playing :)

update: Looking at your footage, I'd probably use the right edge of the waterfall, as it's fairly central in the shot... But I don't think you've got enough frames to ever make a nice smooth timelapse, even if you slow it down with some frame/motion interpolation afterwards...


Create time-lapse gif centering point of interest My wife is currently very pregnant and I have taken a photo every week of her bump. I now want to make a gif or something similar showing the bump growing. I used the first free gif maker I found (gifmaker.me) and realised that I need to somehow make the bump the centre of the image for each frame of the gif for it to look really good. I figure I need to edit/crop the images somehow.

Any ideas out there how best to do this?

You don't necessary need to make it the center of the image but always appear at the exact same point in the frame. The center is usually an easy referencing point for that purpose, so why not use that.

Obviously the easiest would be to make the photographs in a way that they don't need postpcessing. If this chance has passed already, you can get a (free) image editing software like the "gimp" and move & scale alle pictures in a way that they have approx the same size and center.

BTW good luck with the baby, ours is almost 3 months already and it has been quite some experience so far.


Live Streaming IP Camera Stream to Youtube Using ffmpeg My Objective : To Transcode mjpeg stream from ip camera to youtube using ffmpeg

My Command :

ffmpeg -re -f mjpeg -i "http://192.168.0.101" -c copy -movflags +faststart  -vcodec libx264 -f flv "rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/<key>"

My Reference for above effort : Streaming Guide

But when i try to run the command, it seems something is being transcoded and transmitted but youtube live i am not able to see anything, below is the screenshot of command output

Last time I checked, Youtube requires an audio stream even if there is no input audio, so supply a dummy one.

ffmpeg -re -f mjpeg -i "http://192.168.0.101" -f lavfi -i anullsrc -c:v libx264 -g 60 -c:a aac -ar 44100 -ac 2 -f flv "rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/<key>"


How to encode Apple ProRes on Windows or Linux? Is it also possible to encode video with Apple ProRes on Windows and Linux?

As of December 2018, Adobe Creative Cloud aps, such as Premier, After Effects and Adobe Media Encoder give you the ability to encode in ProRes without any post-hoc conversion.
If you don't use Adobe CC aps or want a free, open source tool, ffmpeg can encode video using ProRes, and runs cross-platform. ffmpeg is a command line tool, which means that it can be automated.
There are a plethora of free GUIs for ffmpeg for those unfamiliar with the command line.
This ffmpeg command:
ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 3 -c:a pcm_s16le output.mov

will do the trick.
The -profile switch takes an integer from -1 to 5 to match the ProRes profiles:

-1: auto (default)
0: proxy ≈ 45Mbps YUV 4:2:2
1: lt ≈ 102Mbps YUV 4:2:2
2: standard ≈ 147Mbps YUV 4:2:2
3: hq ≈ 220Mbps YUV 4:2:2
4: 4444≈ 330Mbps YUVA 4:4:4:4
5: 4444xq ≈ 500Mbps YUVA 4:4:4:4

The approximate bit-rates are for 1920×1080p footage. All of the profiles are progressive, 10-bit, and little-endian (byte order).
The profiles are explained on the Apple website. There doesn't as yet seem to be support for RGBA encoding in 4444 and 444xq which the official Apple codec supports.
You may also use prores instead of prores_ks, which may be a little faster, but does not offer the 4444 profiles. For more background, please read this FFmpeg Wiki article.


Highest quality convert of wav to aac to fit in mp4 container? Edit: These should probably be merged as they both go back to the same issue now:
https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/45177/exporting-wav-as-m4a-creating-sync-issue-in-audacity

So I need to convert a .wav f32 track into the highest quality format possible that fits in a mp4 container.

It says Mp4 will support: MP2, MP3, LC-AAC, HE-AAC, AC3

From what I read online, LC-AAC is the highest quality of the bunch.

Basic command seems to be:

ffmpeg -i input.wav output.m4a

But I get an out of sync issue where the m4a is playing about half a second later throughout than the original wav. And the bit rate of this output seems to be very low, 100's.

"When compatibility with hardware players does matter then use libmp3lame or ac3 in a MP4/MKV container when libfdk_aac isn't available."

Is this...what I'd want below? Or are there other things to improve quality I can specify? or maybe its just wrong syntax already.

ffmpeg -i input.wav -c:a "something" -q:a 330 output.m4a

LOG AND IMAGE TEST UPDATE:
First picture is a wav audio file at the top. Then the aac created in ffmpeg, sync issue is present.

The output is fine. Audacity uses an old version of ffmpeg, which does not skip the priming sample. Other players should skip it. AAC streams will be encoded with that sample, so it's all about the player's handling.


how to use h264_omx on RaspberryPi I'm using RaspberryPi 1gen B+, for push stream to web through rtmp. But I find my CPU usage came up to 90%+. This is how I use it:

ffmpeg -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -vcodec copy -acodec aac -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

so I want to use the GPU for decode/encode. After google research, I found "h264_omx", and I've implement the h264_omx:

pi@pi:/usr/src/ffmpeg $ sudo ./configure --enable-omx --enable-omx-rpi
sudo make
sudo make install

so I use:

ffmpeg -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -vcodec h264_omx -acodec aac -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

here is the output:

But the CPU usage still runs to 90%+, what's worse, the video become indistinct and only have 5fps.

so, what's wrong with me? Is it possible for 1gen B+ to hardware codec?

The first priority here is to determine the bottleneck, particularly on the encoding end first, then moving on elsewhere.

This is noted by the comment on the choppy video stream, indicating frame-skipping.

To do that, we need to isolate the task that takes up the heaviest CPU load.

Try running the FFmpeg snippet with audio encoding only, as you copy the video stream, then monitor CPU load:

ffmpeg -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -c:v copy -c:a aac -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

That omits the video encoding phase, so see the new CPU load.

Next step, enable the video encoder but copy the audio stream intact:

ffmpeg -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -c:v h264_omx -c:a copy -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

Now, with that snippet, monitor the CPU load again.

You're likely to observe that its' either workload (video or audio encoding) that takes up the larger share of the CPU load, and from there, you can then tune the encoder(s) as you see fit.

To see encoder options for the h264_omx encoder, run:

ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_omx

And for the aac encoder:

ffmpeg -h encoder=aac

Then tune the culprit with an acceptable preset and/or settings until an acceptable compromise in quality vs CPU load is reached. Note that some functions such as auto-inserted filters tend to run on the CPU, contributing to the heavy load on the encoder's end.

You can confirm this by running:

ffmpeg -loglevel debug -re -f concat -safe 0 -i playlist.txt -c:v h264_omx -c:a aac -f flv "rtmp://example.com:1060"

And monitoring the output. Learn what filters are being auto-inserted, and see if modifying the filter strings (via -vf) assists with the processor load.


CamTwist + Blackmagic Intensity Thunderbolt Shuttle Settings I'm trying to set up CamTwist + a Blackmagic Intensity Thunderbolt Shuttle on a MacBook Pro but am getting a black screen in CamTwist.

What are the correct settings?

Thanks!

Solved the problem...

Go to: Mac System Preferences > Blackmagic Design

Set default video standard as HD 1080i 59.94 CamTwist > Blackmagic HD 1080i 59.94 - 8 Bit

I figured out my camera settings using the Blackmagic Media Express app, which did detect the camera. Just take a look in the app's settings to find your camera's connection settings.


What is the CRF range for VP9 conversion using ffmpeg? My Problem
I am converting a .mov (h264) file to VP9 / WebM using ffmpeg, and I don't know what the CRF numbers mean.
What Have I Tried
I have read this ffmpeg manual about 2-pass conversion, which states that:

To trigger this mode, you must use a combination of -crf and -b:v

In Google's VP9 documentation, I see that:

-crf     Sets maximum quality level. Valid values are 0-63. Lower numbers are higher quality
Note: Other codecs in FFmpeg accept the -crf parameter but may interpret the value differently. If you are using -crf with other codecs you will likely need different values for VP9

However, on the ffmpeg documentation, I only found reference to CRF for .h264, not for the target VP9:

The range of the CRF scale is 0–51, where 0 is lossless, 23 is the default, and 51 is worst quality possible

So, there seems to be a conflict between the VP9 CRF range on Google's site and the ffmpeg CRF range on the ffmpeg site.
My Question
What is the scale for CRF values using ffmpeg to encode in vp9 / WebM format?

libvpx is a software encoder developed by Google, and used in ffmpeg, to encode VP9. And as the Google docs say, 0-63 is the applicable range for encoding VP9 with libvpx.


Resize video while live streaming with ffmpeg My server uses this command to stream a video (1280x544):

ffmpeg -re -i c:\ffmpeg\This.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -movflags faststart -f mpegts tcp://192.168.1.82:1234?listen

Now, I would like to reduce the original resolution while streaming. I tried this:

ffmpeg -re -y -i this.mp4 -vf scale="480:-1" this480.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -movflags faststart -f mpegts tcp://192.168.1.82:1235?listen

but the resolution does not change.

Can this be done or I am asking the impossible? Thanks.

You wanted to resize your video (-vf scale="480:-1"), and at the same time you wanted don't to use a video codec for encoding such resized video (-vcodec copy).

It's impssible — video codec copy means no decoding, no encoding, no filtering - simply copying without any change. It is not a real codec.

Try omitting -vcodec copy to enable FFmpeg to choose an appropriate codec.


Best way to output two streams, and add lower thirds keying to one stream? We are looking to enhance our production with some lower thirds keying on our video.

We currently output a single HD stream and encode it in real time. This output doesn't have any keying because it's application requires it to NOT have this.

A new request that has come in is to have a separate recording that DOES have lower thirds keying for a couple of select applications.

We could add the keying in post production, however this is time consuming and we'd rather not.

I've attached a diagram of how our system is currently configured.

I'm wondering what the best way to add lower thirds keying would be if we're doing it in real time on a second stream... and is this possible with our current equipment list?

My thought on this would be to throw a Mac mini on the second preview output and use software to key the output of the Mac back into a second input card on the StreamZHD.

I'm a little nervous in using the built in keying ability as it would require a single operator to be managing ALL of our production.

Much like your Mac Mini approach, you can set up a PC with a free demo of vMix (http://www.vmix.com.au) and see if it will work for you.


How to use hardware acceleration with FFMPEG for trimming and concatenation purposes I am running FFMPEG on a Windows 10 (64-bit) laptop with Intel i3 (6th generation) processor and AMD R5 M430 GPU.

I shot many videos on a recent trip. Cumulatively, they are over 100 hours long. Each video occupies 2-3 GB minimum and is at least 1 hour long.

I need to trim 2-4 videos and then concatenate them into one single file. This operation needs to be performed for all these videos.

Right now, I am trimming individual videos using the following command:

ffmpeg.exe -i "INPUT_VIDEO" -ss START_TIME -to END_TIME -c copy "OUTPUT_VIDEO"

And then I concatenate the videos using this command:

ffmpeg.exe -f concat -safe 0 -i VideosToBeConcatenated.txt -c copy "CONCATENATED_OUTPUT_VIDEO"

where VideosToBeConcatenated.txt contains the file names of the videos to be concatenated.

Running these commands in a single Command Window gives me a speed of 20-25x. Running them in two Command Windows simultaneously drops the speed to 10-12x, while also making my system lag/freeze.

Is there a way I could use my GPU to speed up these operation? Say, using the i3's Quicksync or R5's AMF/VCE?

I tried using -hwaccel dxva2 in the above mentioned commands as follows:

ffmpeg.exe -hwaccel dxva2 -i "INPUT_VIDEO" -ss START_TIME -to END_TIME -c copy "OUTPUT_VIDEO"

and

ffmpeg.exe -hwaccel dxva2 -f concat -safe 0 -i VideosToBeConcatenated.txt -c copy "CONCATENATED_OUTPUT_VIDEO"

However, I don't notice any increase in speed.

I also set ffmpeg.exe and cmd.exe to "High Performance" in the AMD Switchable   Graphics settings. But the in-built Switchable Graphics Monitor suggests that neither of the processes are using the dGPU.

Is there a way I could use my GPUs (i3's Quicksync or R5's AMF/VCE) to speed up these operation without compromising the quality of the output videos?

[Edit:] I am trying to make sense of FFMPEG's Quicksync documentation but it's too mature for an amateur like me.

Since you are using -c copy in your commands, there is no decoding, filtering or encoding taking place and so hardware acceleration isn't relevant at all. The main bottleneck is disk I/O. On a regular internal HDD (with a 3rd gen CPU) I get speeds of 400x so I suspect you're reading or writing to an external drive. Or your internal drive could be slow, have a smaller cache. The biggest boost will come from writing to a different drive than the drive on which the inputs reside, with ideally both drives being internal.


Doubts about color spaces and chroma subsampling Hy everyone, I have some questions about color spaces and chroma subsampling that I haven't been able to solve just by searching the web.

Are YUV and YCbCr the same thing? When I take a look at the information of a random MP4 video file with ffmpeg or MediaInfo, I see that the color space is indicated as YUV. Is that actually YCbCr since we're talking about a digital file?
It doesn't make any sense to say RGB 4:2:0, right? Because chroma subsampling only applies to the YCbCr color space, taking the (Cb, Cr) components, and deciding how many of them should be but in a 4x2 pixels region. Is that correct?
When ffprobe outputs that a video has a bits_per_raw_sample (or bit depth) of 8 bits with a yuv420p pixel format, what does it mean? What is the "raw sample" here? Is the 8 bits value referred to the number of bits used for each component (Y, Cb, Cr) before doing chroma subsampling? In that case, how should I calculate how many bits per pixel (or per 4x2 pixels region [?]) are used after chroma subsampling?

I hope it's ok to have multiple questions in the same post. Thank you.

Are YUV and YCbCr the same thing? → strictly, no. The former is applied to analog signals, and the latter to digital. But media apps (like Mediainfo) use YUV as the designated term.

It doesn't make any sense to say RGB 4:2:0, right? → Not theoretically incoherent, but I haven't seen any codec that implements subsampling for RGB pixels except for Bayer RGB streams possibly. Don't know its details.

What is the "raw sample" here? → a stored single value of a pixel component i.e. any of R,G,B,Y,U,V (or alpha).

Is the 8 bits value referred to the number of bits used for each component (Y, Cb, Cr) before doing chroma subsampling? → it is the resolved bits per individual sample i.e. a 12-bit value has to be stored as a 16-bit datum, so 12 bits is the raw sample size and 16 bits is the coded sample size. 4 bits are for padding.

how should I calculate how many bits per pixel → in terms of luma/chroma resolution, it's the raw sample size. In terms of storage space for a raw uncompressed stream, you sum up the counts in the sampling scheme and divide by maximum count. Multiply by (no. of components x coded sample size).

So, for 4:2:2, that's

(4+2+2) / (4+4+4) = 2/3 and then 2/3 x (3 x 8 bits) = 16 bits per sample


How to deparent object between frames in Maya? I'm a computer-science student making a video with motion-capture data in Maya for a course. I am a real beginner.

In our story we have a character that loses her sword at a certain point. Our sword is parented to her hand and we have motion capture data (of the character) losing it. How do we deparent the sword in the middle of that animation to animate it separately? (Or, preferably, apply a basic-physics system to it so it falls realistically?)

Use constraints to do this:

Select the parent (the hand), then shift + select the child (the sword). Warning, selection order matters.
Rigging > Constraint > Parent Constraint > activate Maintain Offset if there's an offset between both pivot points.
Set a translation keyframe (shit + w) and a rotation keyframe (shift + e) on the sword.
By setting those keyframes, the sword now has a new attribute in the Channel Box, called Blend Parent 1. You can animate it to choose between unconstrained (value = 0) or constrained (value = 1) by the hand. If unconstrained, you have to set keyframes on the sword to place it inside the worldspace.


How to create a pseudo 3D/virtual POV effect I was wondering, how American Football and Soccer Experts in the studios can move the field and camera perspective at their own will, even to places where there hasn't been a camera yet.

I'm talking about something like this:
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/fox-super-bowl-li-virtual-player-pov-replays-1201959112/

or

http://www.vizrt.com/products/viz_libero/

I guess they have a 3D generated field, where they map the different camera perspectives on, and where the images don't line up, is a player generated, where they map that picture on from different sides.

I could be totally wrong.

How is this effect originally achieved and how could you recreate it with "traditional" video editing software?
(besides the viz liberto)

Th general technique is called camera mapping, projection mapping, or videogrammetry. It works by taking a photo or video from an angle and projecting the image onto geometry.

As a simple example, think of a picture of a typical A-frame house taken from the front of the house. You could easily create the geometry of the house in a 3D application like Max, or Maya. You'd need a plane for the front of the house and planes for the sides of the roof and any dormer windows. If you projected the image of the house onto your plane and masked out the parts that were not house (the sky, ground, etc.), you could then move the virtual camera around it and it would appear you were moving around the front of the house in 3D.

Of course, as soon as you got far enough over to the side, you'd see there's no side to the house. So you'd need a picture from the side, and you'd need more geometry for the side of the house to project it onto.

In the case of a game like the Super Bowl they have cameras all over the stadium, and they know the geometry of the stadium, too. Mostly you just need a ground plane to project the field onto, and a rectangle for each player. Given that the field is green, you may be able to chroma key the players out from the field. You'll need to fill in where they were with at least something green.

There are tools to help with this. It's tedious, but in After Effects you can use lights to project footage onto a solid. There are also plug-ins to help, such as Buena Depth Cue's Camera Mapper.


Platform used for creating following video This may be a subjective question, but I'm not sure where else to ask, so apologies in advance!
I want to know the name of the software being used to make such purple, pink blocks as shown in the video below

It is most likely simply a presentation program. The best known is PowerPoint, but you can get one free using Libre Office https://www.libreoffice.org/ or some web-based like google docs.
Libre Office has two programs that can be suitable. Impress and Draw.


Software to host multiple camera images at once We are looking to set-up a page of multiple camera outputs on the same website and make it available to multiple people via the web. Kind of like a security or traffic camera screen with multiple cameras always in view. It is even fine if it's just still images getting updated every 10 seconds or so. The main requirement is that it should take zero set-up for the users, nothing to install, no long loading times, etc. Ideally just a webpage showing the images of all cameras.

I am sure there must be existing solutions, that we can just plugin into, something in the security or traffic space. But I can't find anything online, I think part of the problem is also that I don't know what terms to search for. Does anyone have any hints for me?

Since the advent of HTML5 you can do this with a standard webpage that contains multiple  elements, with no special software required. This will embed a video in a page that any modern browser can see.

<video width="320" height="240" controls>
  <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
  <source src="movie.ogg" type="video/ogg">
Your browser does not support the video tag.
</video>

A primer on the HTML5 video element here

Since you're streaming the video it's a little more complex, you need to use the media source extension. If you want to look at how streaming works, there's a good guide here


Sites for learning the business side? (Sorry if this is off-topic. I couldn't find any place more appropriate for the subject).

Most of the questions that are asked in this board, and most of the courses that you find when you search online for subjects like "video production", are related to the technical and creative side: how to learn Final Cut/Premiere, how to light a greenscreen, how to use a 3D program, how to format and write a screenplay...

However, I have found very few courses about the business side. Things like: how do film/TV rights get sold around the world, what's the decision-making process when putting together a TV schedule, how to decide which shows to develop...

To put in other words: most of the courses and questions I find are about learning how to be a good camera operator, editor, director... Where are to courses to learn how to be a... say, TV or production company executive?

I suspect that I'd have to join a MBA specialized in media, or something like that. Am I right? Are there any online courses (Coursera, EdX, etc.) that cover this subject?

Most undergraduate media programs have a "The Business of..." course in their curricula. It used to be "The Business of Television" or "The Business of Film". Nowadays, it is probably listed as "The Business of Media" or "The Business of Digital Media."

Unfortunately, those classes seem to be offered only intermittently. As an undergraduate I found the business class I managed to take essential for understanding the industry I was trying to break into. Now, as a seasoned professional, I cannot understand why those courses aren't required to graduate. But those aren't the fun or sexy classes, unlike the production classes.

The most relevant MOOC I could find was on the music industry. I suspect most media programs haven't adopted online delivery because of the difficulty in producing media without the group work you get with an in-person class.


ffmpeg multi quality conversion? is there any way in a one line of command i convert mp4 file to ts ,but with 3 different quality as output files ? for example 480p 720p 1080p ?

Regards,

See here, specifically "Same filtering for all outputs":

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Creating%20multiple%20outputs


Masking Radio Waves in After Effects I created a mask around one part of a radio wave in after effects, to hide that part of the wave. However, when I lowered the opacity of the mask, that left part of the wave doesn't disappear. I've attached a photo below.

I'm using Adobe After Effects 15.1.1. Any help is appreciated.

Yeah, that's a weird thing with the radio waves effect. It seems to be applied after the layer masks, and thus ignores the masks for the layer. This happens for a few effects, particularly ones that generate alpha. It might have something to do with that effect dating back at least to the Bronze Age—you'll have noticed how dog slow it is.

The only way to get the masks to do what you want is to precomp the layer with the effect on it (cut the mask off the layer, then hit cnd / ctrlshiftc and choose move all properties into new composition), and then paste the mask on to the precomp in your original composition.