When making a youtube video of coding tutorial, is it good to have the keyboard sounds while I'm typing? I'm making a youtube tutorial on programming. But I'm unsure if I should keep the keyboard sound on the video or record on without it.
Does the keyboard sound, even when the sound is very low, it's good? Bad? Does it make any difference?

I presume you generally talk while typing, right? Well, when I need to focus on a human voice, any distracting sound is unwelcome. This includes keyboard typing. I do not see any benefit of such sounds when making tutorials during parts when you talk. Also, keep in mind that people with hearing aids will benefit much from a clean voice with no other sounds.
When you have scenes in the video where there is nothing to talk about but you have to type a lot, the silence might be a bit irritating. However, you could cut the boring part and skip ahead until we see the complete code block. Alternatively speed up the scene.


How to create a lightweight backup for an iMovie project (i.e. without all the videos)? I'm using a single iMovie Library  for my video project so that I can create versions easily.

Once I'm done with my project and have, say 10 different versions in there, I want to upload it somewhere (e.g. to Box) to save it for the future. Even though the duplicate projects for versioning don't create duplicate video files, it still contains a single copy of each video.

If I have 5 videos at 1 GB each, my iMovie Library is at least 5 GB big. My videos are already on Box.com, so adding the iMovie Library will take up an extra 5 GB that is not needed.

Is there a way I can back up an iMovie Library without having copies of the videos?

This may not be the best workflow, but here is one that works.

To create a lightweight backup of a project:

First, create a backup of your Library in case things break.
Ensure you're only using a single library for each of your projects. Otherwise it'll be harder to backup only the project you care about.
In Finder, show package contents of your iMovie library.
Delete all the "Original Media" videos. You can also delete other large files such as "Render Files".
You should now have a lightweight backup of your iMovie project without all the videos.
Ensure your backup can be restored by duplicating it and following the steps below.

To restore a lightweight backup of a project:

Open the iMovie Library for your lightweight backup.
You'll see that a bunch of videos are marked as missing.
Reimport your original video files, and everything will just work!

Another thing that will make this entire process easier/possible is making sure not to rename/edit/delete your original video files.


Ableton Live create video is greyed out I have bought Ableton Live Suite but I cannot create a video from an audio track. Is it even possible? The create video functionality is greyed. Do I need to install some code or something?

It may be caused by a not supported QuickTime Version.
If QT is installed, try downgrading it. For eg with Haali Media Splitter & ffdshow.

This  ug was found 2015. But it may still be the problem.


encoding 4:2:2 in 10-bit with libx264 I believe that libx264 is now capable of doing 10-bit 4:2:2 encodings, but I can't seem to get it to work. I'm using ffmpeg (info below), and I've also tried the x264 encoder directly. I've tried

ffmpeg.exe -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -profile:v high422 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv422p output.mp4

and that produces nice 4:2:2 output, but only at 8 bit depth,

[libx264 @ 00000000055a9de0] profile High 4:2:2, level 4.0, 4:2:2 8-bit

and I've tried

ffmpeg.exe -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -profile:v high10 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv422p output.mp4

and that gives me the error:

x264 [error]: high10 profile doesn't support 4:2:2
[libx264 @ 00000000051ead60] Error setting profile high10.
[libx264 @ 00000000051ead60] Possible profiles: baseline main high high10 high422 high444

In the x264 --fullhelp documentation I find:

  --profile <string>      Force the limits of an H.264 profile
                              Overrides all settings.
                              [...]
                              - high10:
                                No lossless.
                                Support for bit depth 8-10.
                              - high422:
                                No lossless.
                                Support for bit depth 8-10.
                                Support for 4:2:0/4:2:2 chroma subsampling.
                              - high444:
                                Support for bit depth 8-10.
                                Support for 4:2:0/4:2:2/4:4:4 chroma subsampling.

So it can do 4:2:2 at 10 bit depth, and even 4:4:4 at 10 bits apparently, but there's no indication of how to set the output bit depth. There is an option --input-depth <integer> Specify input bit depth for raw input but nothing for output bit depth.

x264 supports both 8-bit and 10-bit outputs, and you don't have to do anything special.

ffmpeg

If using ffmpeg you can see what pixel formats and bit depths are supported by libx264:

$ ffmpeg -h encoder=libx264
  [...]
  Supported pixel formats: yuv420p yuvj420p yuv422p yuvj422p yuv444p yuvj444p nv12 nv16 nv21 yuv420p10le yuv422p10le yuv444p10le nv20le

10-bit pixel formats are: yuv420p10le, yuv422p10le, yuv444p10le.

x264

You can also check x264 for supported bit depths:

$ x264 --help
  [...]
  Output bit depth: 8/10

Previously you had to compile x264 with --bit-depth=10, and then link your ffmpeg to either an 8-bit or 10-bit libx264, but that is now unnecessary. See Unify 8-bit and 10-bit CLI and libraries for more info.


Why does audio have standard bit rates whereas video does not I got into live streaming recently and while I was reading up on encoding settings I noticed that even though there are rules of thumb, there doesn't seem to be a standard set of bit rates we could point to for various requirements of quality like audio (eg 96 128 192 224 etc).

Why is that? Wouldn't a standard set of numbers be handy? Am I looking at this the wrong way?

Thanks

Complexity is the main thing.  Because of how audio works, there tends to not be a whole lot of variation in the quality you get from a given bit rate.  While video often has frames that are very similar from one image to another, audio rarely has the exact same sound playing for a long period of time.

This lack of predictability in audio means that the compression ends up being similarly efficient between one clip and another, so the quality levels can be closely associated to a given bit rate.

Video on the other hand can be predictable or unpredictable.  Some videos sit on the same background for a long time with slow changes between scenes and large areas of similar color within those scenes.  Such videos can be compressed very heavily and maintain their quality since large areas of the same color that remain consistent over time compress very well.

Other videos may have lots of action on complex background with rapid cuts between shots.  Such video requires a much higher bitrate for the same quality because the rate of change within the video is much higher.

This distinction makes video unsuitable for "standard" bitrates because they are no guarantee of quality.  Instead, standard metrics are based around arbitrary, subjective quality levels of video.  Since there isn't a good concrete way to measure quality level, each company ends up using their own definition of what quality their videos are and use the balance of file size and quality to differentiate their offering.


resulting video has smaller dimensions but much more mb in size vegas pro ver 17
original video - 1920x1280 - 17mb
desired video - 1280x720 - smaller file size
project settings:
template - HDV 720-30p (1280x720, 29.970 fps)
render settings:
format - MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4
template - Internet HD 720p 29.97 fps
resulting video is 55 mb in size
any help?

The "Internet HDV 720-30p" template uses as default a data rate of 8 MBit/s.
If you want to reduce the size of your video from 55mb to below 17mb, you should set the avarage bit rate at maximum 2.000.000.
If the file size is still bigger than expected, you may activate "two pass rendering" and see whether that helps.


create video from hand drawing I have a hand drawn image. How can I create a video out of it like this?

What other options would you recommend? I want to create a presentation

To create video from hand drawn images, you will need to prepare yourself for drawing a lot more images, as you likely need one for every frame, which you then photograph as a single image. When there images are combined you get the effect of movement.

It's a lot like the old fashioned flick books we used to draw at school- with a slightly changed picture at the corner of each page so that when you riffle the pages you get the effect of continuous movement.

There are some video packages that will let you build a virtual model and overlay your images onto the model so you can animate it etc. But you will be talking big bucks, and steep learning curves.


Audio/Video Out of Sync with Samsung NX1000 Camera - Why? I'm a total digital video beginner, having a weird (to me) issue in the music videos I've shot with my Samsung NX1000, which is that the video and audio are out of sync with each other, but not in a consistent way (to be clear, I'm talking about video/audio both captured by the camera itself - I'm not using any external mic for the audio). Here's the rundown:

Slightly out of sync when played back in the camera
More out of sync in VLC
Very out of sync in:
Finder windows (when quick-look previewed by hitting space bar)
QuickTime Player 10
Final Cut Pro X

First I imported the movies from my camera to my Mac over USB cable, using the Image Capture app. The files are in .mp4 format, and the related codecs are H.264 and AAC.

Then I tried importing movies directly into FCPX (ticking Optimize and choosing to convert the camera native format into ProRes 422.

Both methods result in un-synced audio/video. However, the amount of delay differs depending on how a given clip was imported. I opened several clips in VLC and was finally able to sync things by adding an audio delay: 200ms for a clip imported with Image Capture, 300ms for a clip imported with FCPX.

Does anyone know what's going on here? I'm sure there are apps I could use to sync the video and audio, but if anyone can help me solve this problem in the camera in the first place, that would really speed up my workflow.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 5,3
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz
8GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

I have a similar problem and that's how I found your question online today... The Mp4 file from my nx1000 was imported as it is on adobe premiere cs3.

The audio and video seem to have same starting and ending point, but the video alone is faster than the original as if it was stretched, and the audio has the normal speed but ends in the middle of the original sound track.

Knowing that I imported the file to a project with the same settings as video, 1080i 29.9fps... I tried again with 25fps and with a video card and without a video card... In vain

The only way I got it right, is unfortunately by decoding it on a software called procoder, to a different format (i chose *.mov), and it worked like a charm on my editing software. But of course I lost resolution... I did not buy the nx1000 so i can decode it and lose resolution for editing!

There should be an answer, I hope you found yours!


How to assemble timelapse In 2002-2005 I collected approx 280000 jpegs from a webcam that updated every 5 minutes, with pictures of a construction job in my local town.

My goal is to make a youtube-video with optimal quality.

Can I do this with free software? How many fps should I have? What codec?

Here are two consecutive original images.

trondal.com/a.jpg

trondal.com/b.jpg

Assuming these have, or can be given, consecutively numbered file names you can do this easily using ffmpeg, avconv and similar utilities. Most have builds for Mac, Windows and Linux.

The choice of frame rate is up to you, and really affects only the total length of the output file (at 30fps, 280000 frames is 2.6 hours; at 24 fps it's 3.24 hours). If you have a target device or platform that needs a specific rate, use that.

You may want to decimate the source stack -- that's a lot of pictures and it's unlikely to be interesting for the entire length. I would convert to 30 fps, then edit the result to eliminate long unchanging sections (nights, etc).

Good luck.


How much time to calculate for legal advice on a feature film based in Switzerland We are planning on shooting our first feature film based in Switzerland. As we have never done that or anything near it, especially the publishing side and official documents and contracts, we want to get a legal adviser who can tell us everything we'll need to know.

How many hours do you normally employ an adviser for a feature film?
Our budget is around 100k dollars.

The service you are looking for is Consulting. The best thing to do is to e-mail this question to the public institutions or organizations of Switzerland that promote film Industry, if you are shooting there.
Or any other country that is your homeland.
You can start from here:
https://www.mediadesk.ch/
https://www.swissfilms.ch/


Do you have to build ffmpeg from source to use 10-bit codecs in Windows? I'm trying to find somewhere I can download pre-built binaries of ffmpeg for Windows with 10-bit codec support.  Apparently, from what I've read, ffmpeg has to be either 8-bit or 10-bit, and the builds on www.ffmpeg.org for Windows are all 8-bit.

This thread on the ffmpeg forums suggests that there were 10-bit releases for a time, but no longer.

My google searching has turned up several sites with 10-bit builds from 2013, 2016, and so on, but nothing consistent over time.

Before I go to the trouble of trying to set up a way to build this from source, I just want to confirm-- there's no site regularly providing 10-bit Windows builds of ffmpeg, right?

Not quite. The x264 encoder, specifically, can be compiled with either 8-bit or 10-bit support, but not both.That restriction doesn't apply to x265 or any other encoders that I can think of. So, unless you need to encode to H.264 10-bit using x264, the regular builds of ffmpeg are fine.

You can fetch standalone binaries for 10-bit x264 from the official site at https://download.videolan.org/x264/binaries/ Too much hassle to compile ffmpeg with all other dependencies if you just need that one 10-bit encoder.

Edit: This is no longer true as of late Dec 2017. x264 now compiles and links as a multilib with both 8-bit and 10-bit support.


Use of time remapping to stabilize the velocity of a rotating object? I have a video of myself inside of a human-powered rotating drum. This video's shot at 60 frames per second, but due to to the unreliable velocity of human operators, this drum rotates at different speeds throughout the video. I need the drum to rotate at a constant speed for use in a video installation.

I'm wondering if there's a processing technique (perhaps in after effects) I could use to programmatically stabilize the speed of this drum, maybe by use of a tracking point on the drum's edge. What I'm doing right now is overlaying eight equally-spaced diameters on top of this video, and attempting to get a constant amount of rotation (one-eighth of a turn) every thirty frames through premiere's speed ramping tools.

Unfortunately, this is not an ideal solution as even within one-eighth of a rotation there are speed variances and minor starts and stops that do not produce a stable rotation.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to approach this? Attached is a picture for reference.

One thing you could do is track the rotation of the drum, so that it's virtually stabilized and then use a Null-object to drive the rotation of the layer. This would give you a fresh, new, smooth rotation all the way through.


Proper HD export format in Sony Vegas Pro 13 for a decent video size? So I have decided to unite in a whole video everything I have of my child. I wanna render it in a sole .mp4 file with 1080p, good audio, etc. I want all that (1:50:00) in 2GB or 3GB, no more. I've seen videos accomplishing this smoothly, but everything I've tried so far ends in 9-12GB.

What I need to do to achieve it?

Thanks.

I assume you're using the Mainconcept AVC encoder. 3GB for a 1h50m video implies a bitrate of 3.7 mbps. That's the average bitrate you need. Set max bitrate to 5 mbps.

Now, usually I render in two passes. First pass is a high bitrate from Vegas  (20 mbps or more) and then encode with ffmpeg, which is a free command line tool.

Command would be

ffmpeg -i vegas.mp4 -crf 23 -movflags +faststart final.mp4

ffmpeg offers lot more variables to adjust but the above should be enough for most size adjustment. Usually a CRF value between 18-28 (lower is better but bigger) works.


How to save a stream to a file that would constantly change over time to have the right duration? How can I save a ffmpeg stream to a file that would contain the last 10 minutes of the stream and would constantly change over time to have this duration?

Computers don't let you delete from the start of a file, so every time you trim video away, would required the file to be completely re written. Not a great idea. It would be better use some a fragmented format like HLS or DASH, and delete old fragments.


Concat 2 video and add watermark first video ffmpeg I have a Video #1, it has audio. Also I have a Video #2, with audio too. I would like to concat the #1 and #2 (or play #1 first, and then #2) and then add a watermark in #1 for the rest of the video, preserving audio timestamps.
I used this command but the watermark appears on the #2 video?
ffmpeg -i Video1.mp4 -i Video2.mp4 -i watermark.png
   -filter_complex
       "[1][2]overlay=5:5[v2];
        [0][0:a][v2][1:a]concat=n=2:v=1:a=1"
   -c:v libx264 -crf 21 -c:a aac -b:a 384k -ar 48000 -movflags  faststart Out.mp4

Concatenate can be found from this link
In case of using same codec
!echo "file 'video_1.mp4'" > list.txt
!echo "file 'video_2.mp4'" >> list.txt

Add watermark at (x=1, y=1) coordinated
!ffmpeg -y -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -i watermark.png -filter_complex "overlay=1:1" output.mp4

I don't quite understand your description, but i think it fits your title.


cross platform software to convert video to image sequence I'm looking for a piece of software I'm even sure it exists.
Here's what I would like this software to do:

be free (ideally open source, but free and closed source is also fine)
be cross platform (at least works on Win and OSX, Linux support would be nice)
import a variety of video formats (mov, avi, wmv, mpg, mp4, ogg, flv, 3gp, etc.)
exports an image sequence from the imported video

Any ideas/suggestions ?

Look at ffmpeg. It will run on just about anything and should do what you want, although it might depend on what your source actually is
Something like this should work :

ffmpeg -i sourcefile.avi -f image2 'img-%03d.jpeg'

(see the image2 section for full reference)


Best Lossless Video Encoder For Editing I'm looking for a good video encoder to compress HD files for editing within Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects.

What video codec would provide the fastest possible encoding and decoding? Also, what are some recommended encoding settings?

The video files must be usable in Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects.

EDIT: Source Clip Info:

Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 8 frames
Bit rate                         : 4 334 Kbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 23.976 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive

The container is Matroska.

I'll start by pointing you to another answer I wrote before, roughly covering the different kinds of codecs.

(Nice edit on your question, by the way, removing the file size limitation helped figure out what you were after.)

My recommendation (again) will be to either use ProRes 422 or Cineform as your intermediate, probably via Magic Bullet Grinder or GoPro Cineform Studio respectively.

Either of these codecs will give you good decoding speed, and both will work with Vegas and After Effects.  Any workflow that involves transcoding and not capturing natively to your editing codec (such as with ProRes on an Arri Alexa or a Cinedeck), is going to sacrifice time for processing, but in your case, it seems like that's a necessity.


What title(s) should a one-person film crew receive in the credit role? I recently worked on an interview series that had the following contributors:

Producer
Interviewer: Person who contacted and arranged the interviews
Me, the "predator" (one-person film crew) who set up mics, selected angles and composed shots (one per interview for 8 interviews) like a Cinematographer/DP, operated the camera during the interviews, filmed B-roll, and edited the footage.

Now I'm filling in the credits and getting ready to suggest what to call me to the client. I was thinking of this (in which I am named as Cinematographer and Editor):

Interviews by [name]
Cinematographer [me]
Editor [me]
Music by [name]
Producer [name]

Does this seem appropriate? Should I limit myself to one line in the credit role? Is there only a Cinematographer when that's a separate person from the camera operator? In other words, what title(s) should I be credited with?

My reasoning is this: I did the professional work of a DP/Cinematographer and also ran the camera. But I don't want to look back on this once I've been doing this longer and think, "Wow, that was kind of pompous."

Sounds like you directed it. Would be simple to just put Director, I think one can assume you did everything then if there is no editor or DP credited.

The director is responsible for the overall vision of the flow of the piece.  They oversee filming and work with a cinematographer, if applicable, to determine the right look for the film, work with actors to get the right performance and then work with the editor to make sure it flows.  They are basically the person chiefly responsible for adapting the screenplay or concept of the film in to a finished movie.

For Example:

If you create a documentary completely by yourself, lets say you spend 20 days in Antarctica, you film everything you narrate, when you get back you edit it, and then do sound and music.  At the end of the day you directed that documentary, which for all intensive purposes is the highest credit you could receive, if the film ends and says directed by x.  People watching are not going to stand up and go "Wait who shot this film?" It is implied that you did it since you directed it and nobody was credited under you.

Another way this is sometimes credited to avoid confusion is simply doing created by


Easiest way to stitch GoPro videos that have been split due to length? I am recording 15-minutes videos with my GoPro Hero 3 Black edition. The camera starts a new file every 10 minutes of recording by default. I do not think I can change this in a setting.

When I do the white-balance and other edits in the GoPro Cineform Studio, I cannot find a function to stitch these videos back together into one continuous clip.

I was somehow expecting that if GoPro automatically splits these videos that there would be a function to rejoin them, too. Am I missing something? Is there such a function in this software or do I have to get another software to do this?

If so, what software should I get, assuming that I do not want to do anything else than that?

For this purpose I like to use SolveigMM Video Splitter. It's very fast and lossless video tool (no recompression) and it fully supports H.264 video (GoPro records in mp4 files using h.264 compression).


How do I improve sharpness of foliage and distant objects during video recording? Lately I have tried recording some video using my old Canon. While I achieve decent results during macro shots and while filming human beings, I have noticed that foliage and distant objects in wide shots often lacks sharpness and are quite fuzzy/messy overall. Last couple of days I have filmed outdoors in strong sunlight implying ISO of 100-200, and while I have seemingly tried all possible combinations of shutter/aperture I can't seem to be able to get crisp foliage and distant objects. Here I can note that I have not tried other focal length that 17mm yet, due to the fact that I want the nature shots to be wide. After some testing I can conclude that it does not seem to be a problem of focus. I have not yet been able to conclude is the problem can be related to camera shake - however while placing the camera on a rail or table the results do not seem much better.
My setup is:
Canon 550D
Canon EFS 17-55mm 2.8 IS
Handheld/handheld while placed on natural surfaces
1920x1080 25 fps
AF during shoot: disabled
Movie exposure: manual
Links to sample footage displaying the problem: (Imgur might slaughter the quality a bit, but it should be good enough as example)
Crisp flowers (55mm): https://imgur.com/hfSabRz
Washed-out foliage (17mm): https://imgur.com/xLltIob
Is it possible to improve the results using my current setup? If not, what parameters should I look for in alternative equipment?
A final note is that I have tried photographing same foliage using same camera and while the result is better than video recording, the results are still somewhat fuzzy in comparison to shots of proximate objects on same focal length.

You are most likely observing Optical Aberration - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_aberration and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defocus_aberration. Haze is also likely a contributing factor, see https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/93585/are-there-tools-used-to-remove-heat-haze-or-other-atmospheric-conditions-for-lon.
The further back you are from the subject, the more light dispersion / scattering you're going to be getting from the subject. Closing the aperture as much as possible will help (so long as there's enough light remaining for the sensor to get an image), if you test this, you should be able to see visible differences in sharpness between aperture fully open and aperture almost closed.
Haze you can probably do less about, you're basically talking about scattering of light due to imperfections in the air - adding more distance between you and the subject is also adding more imperfection. The stack exchange post above suggests use of different filters to assist, that's not something I've tried. I mostly film theatre productions indoors, and there's a definite image quality difference the closer I can get to the stage. But usually I'm stuck at the back (the show is primarily for an audience, not the video guy), and everyone accepts that shooting an extra 20m to 40m through haze in a theatre is going to result in an image that isn't quite as sharp as what we could get up close.


How to fix choppy/lagging video from Canon t3i? I recently started using a Canon t3i to record video. When I upload the files to my computer (PC), however, the video is very choppy-- it lags even more dramatically when I try importing it into my video-editing software.

I tried looking up some solutions online, and I found some that seem to recommend using a program to convert the video files into a different format before editing them. I haven't found any programs that do this and are compatible with Windows. I tried renaming the files to ".avi" instead of ".mov" (their original form) but that didn't do anything.

My knowledge of computers/cameras/technology in general is extremely basic, so I would appreciate any potential solutions in layman's terms :) Thanks for your help!

There's a number of things that can be the issue, and a number of ways to try to work around them.

The first is that depending on the specs of your computer, it might not be able to decode the video files quickly enough, which could cause a stutter. Similar to how people used to have issues trying to watch 1080p videos on Netbooks that didn't have much horsepower. What kind of PC are you using?

What video editing software are you using? Different editing softwares prefer different file formats. What kind of footage and for what purpose? Family footage or more professional presentation work? Are you planning on uploading it to youtube or the net or preserving it on a large hard drive somewhere? With those questions answered, I can recommend some codecs for editing, and codecs that you'll want to export to when you're all edited and finished.

There are a number of free tools for converting video files. FFMPEG is a great one, but it has a little bit of a learning curve if you're not familiar with command line applications. If you'd like to take a stab at it, link below:

http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

If not, there are some GUI front-ends that you can use along with FFMPEG, that basically make it more user friendly by giving it buttons and sliders like applications you're used to. One of which is below:

http://avanti.arrozcru.com/


How do I make video tutorials of someone(s) working through a website on their computer? The trivial way to solve this problem is just to screen record my computer, but I want it to look professional.

I don't want unprescribed mouse movements. I want them to be direct and towards the object they are clicking on. I want to have transitions and maybe an auto-generated voice over?

I'm really really new to this so please forgive me if this answer has been asked or is obvious...

Is there any software that people generally use for this that is relatively affordable and appropriate for a novice. Any kind of software is fine for me. I'm just new to video editing and creation. Software that has built in functionality targeted at this problem would be very helpful, almost like a wizard of sorts.

I want to create a video tutorial of a user using my website.

Ty!

Camtasia is probably the leading software for creating video tutorials, it has the ability to smooth mouse movements, the editor gives you the ability to add text, transitions and other effects as well.

The software is quite expensive. It has a free trial for 30 days, however videos exported will have watermarks.

If you already have access to video editing software, you may be able to reproduce the same effect setting keyframes for start and end positions of a mouse cursor graphic and animating between those two points. You would need use screen recording software that hides the cursor as you will be using your own graphic of a cursor.


poor quality video VHS camcorder: is there a fix? I recently rescued an old Panasonic M40 VHS camcorder. All the electronics work absolutely fine. I bought a pack of VHS tapes and did a quick video test. The video quality is very bad with wobbly lines moving through it all the time and often changing from black n white to colour. The sound quality is atrocious but I can live with that.

Is there anyone who has experience with these old units that knows of an easy fix? I played with the tracking so it's not that. I doubt it is physically the tape because I bought them brand new. Has anyone got any pointers or knows how to trouble shoot the problem? Or is this a massive waste of time?

I love having this big retro beast to play about with and I know it is gimmicky but so far it's cost me a tenner in tapes and an afternoon of fun. I'm willing to put more time and money (up to a point) into it but have no idea of what to do or where to go so any help will be well received.

The AV ARTIFACT ATLAS is a good resource for identifying errors in video. It also gives advice on how to fix them.


An easy way to create videos for YouTube from mp3 files Is there an easy way to convert multiple mp3 files to video files at once? I could of course use a simple video editor, but I was thinking more of an app that would take multiple mp3 files, set the preferred album cover image as "video", and convert them one after another without having to do the same process for each mp3 file manually. I would like this to be an offline app (not a web app). Which video format should I use for this (I would like to keep as much sound quality as possible)?

Thanks to Brads recommendation, I used ffmpeg for the job. Here is a small bash script that converts all the mp3 files to mpeg4 avi files (a jpg image must be included in the folder):

#!/bin/bash
# Requires: ffmpeg
# Usage: ./convert.sh

for file in *.mp3;
do
    ffmpeg -i *.jpg -i "${file}" "${file%.*}.avi"
done

Some more info here and here, but that didn't work for me.. All these options they used made it too complicated and it just didn't work - nothing would get converted (I would get files with audio but without the image in the video or videos with image but without audio, -loop option was unnecessary, -shortest option was unnecessary, works fine without it)..


Adobe Audition Exporting longer audio track than was originally given I am trying to clean up the audio from a video I shot. I imported the video into Adobe Audition and used all the tools to clean it up. In Audition, I can see the video in the video window and it all looks good.

Once I'm done, I export it as a .wav file (have tried .mp3 as well) and when I import it into iMovie I can see that iMovie thinks they're the same time length but near the end the audio becomes out of sync and is a full few seconds longer than the original audio even though they're from the exact same source.

The tools I used are:

De-Reverb
DeEsser
Voice enhancer
Noise reduction process

Can anyone help me out with this?

Edit: I tried importing into premier pro and the same thing happened.

What do Audition/Premiere show as the bit-rate of the audio file in the original source video? What do iMovie/Premiere show as the bit-rate of the audio file when imported back in?

Sounds like possibly the source video is indicating an incorrect bit-rate, i.e. actually recorded at 48kHz, but being identified/treated/exported as 44.1kHz in Audition, which ends up giving it a longer run time. The audio pitch should also be slightly lower when imported back to iMovie/Premiere, possibly not enough to easily notice.

I would check the audio properties in the various tools, and see if that's the issue. If you check the full run time of the clip vs how many seconds extra audio, it would be easy enough to calculate if this is the problem. I would create a project in Premiere where you import the original video (with audio), and import the modified audio as well, and line them up in the same sequence - you should be able to check the properties of the two audio tracks, and spot if the edited track is stretched out overall longer than the original, or if it is some other issue. If you play the project, you should be able to hear if the tracks go slowly out of sync, or if it's some other issue such as jumping out of sync at a specific point.

If this isn't the issue, maybe update the question with info on how the video was recorded, any other tools you might have passed it through, and the exact run times of the original video, original audio and edited audio. I've definitely seen this exact issue caused by 48kHz incorrectly processed as 44.1kHz and vice versa, although it's not an issue I've ever had with any of the Adobe products.


Make white background in MP4 movie transparent I have a short animation clip made with PyMOL software (visualizing molecules), in the MP4 format. I am going to use this animation in future presentations, and it would look much better if the background was transparent. Is there an easy way to achieve this? I am working on a Mac. Obviously free/open source software would be best, but I am interested in any software capable of this.

I also have the option in PyMOL to save each frame of the video as PNG files, which do have an alpha channel. But once I convert this to mpeg or MP4, the alpha channel disappears.

The MP4 format doesn't support an Alpha channel.  The question you've asked is very broad, and I've tried to answer to a certain extent below.  However you may need to decide what route you're going to try and then researching that route or asking further, more specific questions.
The file types that currently support an Alpha (transparency) channel are FLV, F4V, AVI, Quicktime, and WebM.  If you're using free programs, you may find they can export in these formats.  Often, there will be a named codec for an Alpha channel within the settings of these, or a PNG option.  Firstly, I would see if there's an option to export video within your PyMOL software in any of these formats - try exporting them in different ways to see if they have the Alpha channel.
Alternatively, if it's a one off video, you could use the free trial of Premiere Pro or After Effects to create and export your video, although it can be a learning curve if it's a complex project and you have never used Adobe Creative Cloud before.  Lastly, you could export your video and try and remove the background in a video editor. (If you want to use WebM, you need a third-party WebM codec for Adobe Media Encoder.)
PNG import /export
You could import the png sequence into either After Effects or Premiere Pro (free trials available for each).  I'm sure several free programs can import a PNG sequence automatically, or you could manually arrange the images on the timeline, one image per frame.
I mainly use Premiere Pro so below I've listed a couple of ways I can use it to export a transparent video directly from Premiere.  HOWEVER - there are likely to be similar options in other programs - most video programs will export in a variety of formats / codecs.
###Export a movie file with an alpha channel in Premiere Pro ###

Select the sequence.
Choose File > Export > Media.
In the Export Settings dialog box, choose one of the following
options:

Option 1 - QuickTime

Select "QuickTime" in the file format
Select "PNG" from the video codecs
Under Channels, select "RGB + Alpha"

Option 2 - Microsoft AVI

Select "AVI" in the file format
Select "RGBA + " from the video codecs
Under Channels, select "RGB + Alpha"

Once you have changed settings as per one of the sets of options above, continue to set other settings and click Export or Queue to export as you normally would.

Remove background
Another option is that if the background is a consistent colour - white, grey, green etc, most advanced video editors will have options to remove the background using a colour match.
In Premiere Pro, this is done using the Chroma key effect.  In essence, add the effect to the video, take a sample of the background colour, and the background should be removed, it's just left for you to export the video in one of the methods mentioned previously.


Save caption style / create preset I'm doing a lot of small videos, often using the same open captions styles. But for every video, I have to re-enter every parameter (font, font size, color, etc.), repeating those steps for ever caption object. (I use different captions objects for different persons talking, simply changing the color.)
That means that I sometimes have to open the very same parameters 4 times, with the only difference being the color.

Is there a faster way to do that? I would have assumed you can save a "caption style preset" or something similar, but I could not find such a feature. Any idea?

That would depend on what software you're using - would you be able to clarify?

In Premiere Pro you can use Essential Graphics to drive your captions (there is a number of captions presets in the EG panel already, just go to Essential Graphics\Captions and Subtitles and select the one that best suits your video) - the editor has plenty of useful options and you can save your styles as 'Masters' and reuse that style for each subsequent video. Alternatively, you can create your own Essential Graphics template for captions via After Effects to have full control over them.

More info on Adobe's help site.


Working with Premiere and After Effects I am doing a video project now where one of my goals is to learn proper video editing. I will make some effects in After Effects, but will doing the cut in Premiere. I know these softwares will be a good synergy, but I have a question about the process. Should I fix all the clips with different effects (some keyframe animations etc.) in After Effects first, and then import into Premiere? Or should I do everything in Premiere first, and then do the rest in After Effects? What would be the best approach for this?

Use Dynamic Link. This feature has been introduced by Adobe speficically to make it easiert to work with Premiere Pro and After Effects in combination. With dynamic link, you can replace clips in Premiere Pro with After Effects compositions and have them updated in the Premiere Pro project whenever you make changes to the composition in After Effects. You can also import existing After Effects compositions from After Effects project files or create a new one from within Premiere Pro and use them as assets in your Premiere Pro project, in the same way you can work with media assets.

(Note: I'm assuming you have a Creative Cloud subscription. If you use older versions of the programs, dynamic link might not be available.)


What is the colour range of most videos? Colour range (Limited, Expanded) is something I've only thought of recently, and I'm worried I may have introduced colour banding into some of my videos.

When doing a standard MP4 export from ffmpeg, melt, Handbrake, Openshot, SimpleScreenRecorder, whatever, what will the colour range likely be? I would assume the Full range of 0-255, but seeing as all DVDs and Blu-Rays are Limited, I'm not so sure.

It would also be good to know what range YouTube uses. I'm finding it very difficult to find out much more than "TV = Limited, PC = Full".

Video sources I tend to work with:

Component capture (PS2)
HDMI capture (Xbox 360, laptop)
DVDs
MiniDV AVIs
YouTube videos
Screen recordings
Android phone
Webcam
Sometimes various cameras/camcorders from various price ranges

All Standard Definition content is PAL - I hear NTSC is weaker in terms of colour reproduction but haven't seen any difference myself from eyeballing.

Most videos are limited range i.e. luma goes from 16 to 235, and chroma from 16 to 240.

Unless expressly set, FFmpeg does not scale the range from one to another. Whatever the source is, that's the output.*

However, many inputs don't tag this property in their metadata. So, the output doesn't get tagged either. In that scenario, players tend to assume conventional values. So, a 720p video will get treated as a limited-range BT.709 picture, irrespective of the actual encoding. And some players, especially web ones, don't seem to parse this metadata, and aren't provisioned to adapt to non-default values. So, they will always the treat the input as having conventional encoding.

For safety's sake, HD videos should be encoded to BT.709 Limited range and SD to BT.601 Limited range.

*unless the source only accepts a pixel format whose range is different.


When using ffmpeg to encode an MP4 for general consumption, should I set the profile and IDC level? (-profile:v and -level:v) Should I bother setting them at all? Basically, what is the guidance on setting these properties?

The specific ffmpeg flags I'm referring to are -level:v and -profile:v.

The video is intended for general consumption, direct download (not embedded in a web page). So most users will probably play the video however their device tells them to. I would like to know what's the best practice so that the highest number of users can view it without problems.

This question asks something similar, but it has no answer about these two settings.

Let the encoder set the level automatically. The encoder will have a default profile (High for x264) and higher the profile, better quality for a given bitrate or lower bitrate for a certain quality target. Unless you have compatibility concerns, default High is fine as well.


Recommendations for good "bad monitors"? To make sure the songs still sound OK on crap systems like small radios and computer speakers I've been listening to recordings through my computers speakers, a surprisingly good value €50 Creative Labs set of small speakers + subwoofer (you know, this kind of thing). Although that has been useful, it means I can only listen to the mix after I've mixed it down to my computer (I use a Tascam 2525 mixing desk and midi sequencing a lot).

So I'm looking for a set of extra monitors. They need to be "crap" for a certain value of crap, they must be active, and can't cost more than a couple of hundred dollars and not to big. So yes, another set of creative speakers + subwoofers fits the bill, but maybe somebody has good recommendation for alternatives.

I'm struggling trying to answer this in a way that would enhance what you've got already. Because really, you've got a pretty good representation of "everyman's speaker" there with the Creative set you have already.

So I'm going to take a different approach here and, instead of recommending something to buy, I'm going to recommend some techniques I use to test my mix to see if it'll work on other systems (I mix on a KRK Rokit setup and my big mains are JBLs driven by a McIntosh amp).

Test on a clock radio. They are almost the ubiquitous music listening device. We all have them in our rooms. There are a few, guaranteed, in every office space. Your mechanic has one in his office. They are everywhere. And they sound pretty much like poo. I have a line in on my little Sony clock radio. I'll bounce a mix, drop it on my iPhone, and try it out on the clock radio via the line in.

Test you mix without the sub. Most people don't have one. So click off the sub on your Creative setup and see how it sounds. Is there still a reasonable representation of the low end happening when it's just a small speaker setup?

Test your mix in mono. Or rather: move away away from the sweet spot. I like to throw a mix on in a loop and then walk out of the room. Wander around the house. Listen to it like most people listen to music: while they're going about they're day and it's background to their lives. Few people spend the time to sit down in the proper spot, between two nice speakers, and really enjoy all that hard work you spent placing each instrument in to it's own space. Sad, but true.

Test your mix in the car. Music and cars are just kind of like pie and ice cream. It needs to sound good in the car.

Test your mix in headphones. If only to avoid the "Sgt. Pepper's Effect" where you've panned things to extremes and when you listen to them in headphones it becomes a bit like having your head pulled apart by the ears. I test headphones last because I find if I tune for them I'll end up with a mix that's too bass heavy on regular speakers.


Output is shaky after exporting an edit of several clips in Premiere Pro I am quite new to video editing, and I am trying to make a clip out of different source footage:

sources made from my DSLR are at 24FPS
sources from my video camera are at 24.97FPS
Other sources (video clips) are at 29.97FPS

I wanted to edit those videos and to upload the result. However when I choose the "Vimeo 720p" export preset (29.97FPS), the exported final clip appears to shake from frame to frame, which is annoying.

I wonder whether that could come from the different framerates used throughout the project, and if so, how could I solve the issue?

Maybe your footage are shaky, because you filmed it that way? Try to use effect "Warp Stabilizer".

If it will not work, try to described in detail what you mean by "shake from frame to frame".


Projecting slides on a large screen from 40 feet I have a few small projectors for small rooms, but I'm finding that these do not work well for pushing light to a larger screen further from the point of projection.

In looking for possible upgrades, what key features do I need to evaluate in comparative shopping?  Is there a metric or feature I need to look for in a projector that will allow it to throw a bright, clear video projection from further away?  To clarify, I'm not needing to replicate what the local cinema's use - I'm only showing slides not video content.

You'd probably want to look for the following characteristics:

Min and max projection distance (from the data sheet, make sure the projector can focus correctly for the desired distance)
Lumen (some people recommend 500 lumen per square meter projection area, but of course, this also depends on your ambient lighting)
Native image resolution (projecting on a large area the image may become blurry with low resolution)
Diagonal image size (make sure the resulting image size fits your intended projection area)


Timelapse Android App Image Sequence Does anyone know a good timelapse app for Android, but one which records an actual image sequence, not a compressed video? (like Hyperlapse, Framelapse, and similar apps do)
So far I have only found Camera FV-5 to have this option, however, it just refuses to work on my phone (Nokia 6.1, Android 10) and won't record a single image.

Try "Intervalometer" it works as an overlay app over your stock camera app. You can also try to do your own script with app like "Tasker".
BTW: Old version of Camera FV-5 worked too. Unfortunately they implemented a new UI, which doesn't work so well.


Pan & zoom from still image with green screen I look a lot of tutorial with 2.5D animation, green screen tracking and other effects but I need something simpler and faster.
Basically I shoot product videos, smartphones, tablet, small objects.
At office I have a slider and some people that help me, now we are closed at home.
I need a very simple and effective way to create some b-roll, and I'm alone with a green screen.
Is there a simple way to start from a still image of a smartphone, on a green screen, and add some camera movements with parallax?
For example, starting from:

front photo of the smartphone
background image

I set the distance (to simulate depth of field) and I add some camera movement: zoom, pan, focus to a detail. Everything with parallax.
I don't want to calculate every movement, I cannot spent a lot of time with animation.
Any idea? Or pluging?

If you want parallax, you can do it without a video, a still image of the phone could work, and would make things a lot easier and faster.

If you want a video you need to add markers to the green screen so the program can track them.

You could also have just simple moves, for example, your object only rotating, so you do not need to track the background. Some simulated moves for the new background on post could be enough.

For the DOF you can potentially add one problem if you want the DOF on your product. It is better if you film your product very sharply, so the green screen cuts nicely. The DOF would be a nightmare.

Then using a real 3D program you can add your video on a layer, track the green screen, generate a 3D scene, and replace the green screen with another plane with a photo.

I would use Blender for that. But if you want simple moves and not a complex 3D tracking you could go away with HitFilm, which has 3D planes too.


Accessing the Layer Panel in After Effects I want to edit the anchor point path of a layer, and to do that I know I need to open the layer in it's own layer panel. However I can't figure out how to open the layer in the layer panel.

I'm following along with a beginner tutorial, and using the tutorial source files so everything's the same: The instructor says to "double-click on the layer in the timeline", but when I do that nothing happens.

I also tried right-clicking on the layer, but the "open layer" option is grayed out.

Finally, I switched to the "All Panels" workspace, select the Layer Panel, but it's gray and empty and doesn't allow me to choose a layer or add a new layer view.

I'm new to After Effects but experienced with CS5 - I just can't figure out what's wrong

Figured it out- Apparently shape layers can't be opened in the Layer Panel. That includes Illustrator footage layers with "Continuous Rasterization" turned on. If you turn Continuous rasterization off, it will open in the Layer Panel.


ffmpeg to convert and merge 3 videos to a single widescreen video I have three .mov files with video in Apple ProRes (apcn) and audio in PCM S24 LE (in24), of identical length and dimensions (1920x1080), frame rate (23.976024) and each with the same audio track. I'd like to:

convert to H.264 video and AAC audio, retaining very good quality (for public exhibition), and
generate a single widescreen video in H.264/AAC, i.e. it'll be 1920px times 3 wide and 1080px high.

For generating the widescreen I've worked out I can use this command assuming I've prepared the individual mp4 files:

ffmpeg -i left.mp4 -i centre.mp4 -i right.mp4
   -filter_complex "[0:v:0][1:v:0][2:v:0]hstack=inputs=3" triple.mp4

Main Question:

Should I do the process in two steps -- (a) convert files, (b) make widescreen file -- or does that mean the widescreen video is re-encoded therefore it's worse quality? I'd like to keep the separate files so if there's no other impact then I'd prefer to do it as two steps. If I should do the conversion to H.264 at the same time as making the widescreen how do I combine the different commands?

Sub-Questions:

When preparing the widescreen I came across an alternative method using overlay like below. Is there any advantage either way? It seems like the overlay should be slower but in testing seemed about the same.

ffmpeg -i left.mp4 -i centre.mp4 -i right.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v:0]pad=iw*3:ih[bg]; [bg][1:v:0]overlay=w[leftcentre]; [leftcentre][2:v:0]overlay=w*2" triple.mp4
When preparing the widescreen, I think ffmpeg chooses the audio from just one of the input files. Since the audio is the same on each it doesn't matter to me which one. Is that right or is it in some way combining them?
Am I right in thinking a term like [1:v:0] in the filter_complex expression means 'second input, first video track only'?
Here's my command to convert the .mov files, which seems to work as desired. Is there anything obviously wrong with it?

ffmpeg -i left.mov -c:v libx264 -preset medium -tune film -crf 16 -c:a aac -b:a 256k left.mp4

Quality-wise, it's better to use the original MOVs, but if the MP4-based stacking looks ok, that's the final arbiter.

ffmpeg -i left.mov -i centre.mov -i right.mov
-filter_complex "[0:v:0][1:v:0][2:v:0]hstack=inputs=3"
-c:v libx264 -tune film -crf 16 -b:a 256k triple.mp4

When using the originals, it doesn't matter whether you do it in one step or two. For streamlining purposes, I would do it in two - then the two encodes aren't competing for memory or CPU.

The stack filters are somewhat more efficient. They require all inputs to have the same size in the dimension normal to the join direction i.e. same height for hstack. Overlay is a generic filter, so it doesn't. Also, stack filters will freeze on the first and last frame of inputs which start late or finish early.
In digital files, audio and video are independent i.e. they exist within the same file and are synced via timestamps but logically they are distinct entities. ffmpeg relies on -map options to select streams for inclusion in the output. In the absence of any -map option, it picks one audio - the "best" - from among all the inputs. See https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Stream-selection
[1:v:0] ... "means 'second input, first video track only'?"  --> Yes.
Looks fine. The suitability of the tune value depends on the material.


Resynchronizing audio in a variable framerate video with missing timing data I was recording a moderately long (20-30 minute) video when suddenly my camera died, resulting in a corrupt file. I was able to repair the file by following the steps in How to open and repair an m4v or mp4 video file? on SuperUser, but now the audio in the repaired file is horribly out of sync with the video. (Presumably because the data keeping the video in sync was lost.)

The video seems to play at a variable speed, with some portions appearing sped up, and other portions appearing to play at a normal speed. The audio does not appear to have this issue, playing at a seemingly normal rate for the duration of the video.

I tried stretching the video to align two audio events with the video near the start and end of the recording, but because the playback speed of the video appears to be variable, the audio in the middle portion of the recording is still very much out of sync.

Is there a good way to fix this? Maybe a program or something that I can use to go through the recording and manually identify multiple "sync points" between the audio and video to ensure they stay in sync throughout the recording? I'm guessing the video speed will need to change dynamically throughout the recording to compensate for this sync problem.

I suppose I could try doing this completely manually with a video editor, but I imagine doing it that way (at least in Adobe Premiere Elements, which is what I'm using) would require me to make a cut every time the video speed is adjusted, and that sounds like it'd be extremely time consuming. Is there a better way?

No matter how you slice it, this sounds like it's going to be painful if not impossible, mostly because you say the rate changes dynamically. My best suggestion would be to use a software like Adobe Premiere Pro and its "rate stretch" tool to manually adjust individual segments. I'm not aware of any software that can do that sort of thing automatically, mostly because you don't have another (non-corrupted) audio track to compare against. If you did (like, if you had also been recording on an external recorder), you could use Adobe Audition to sync them.

Syncing two audio tracks of varying rates isn't too terribly hard, but syncing a video and audio track of different rates could prove very challenging.


Highlighting current speaker on multi person podcast? Is there any easy way to highlight the current speaker automatically (rather than edit the video file manually) in a multi person podcast, similar to this for example:

Easy way: patch some client for voice conferences, save info about speakers. I did it with Mumble. Then write simple app for rendering such movies, read/write of images and footages can be done with ffmpeg, fftw3 can calculate spectrum for us, grab some filters for image scaling...

Hard way: write each speaker in separate channel (mumble can do this), then place all tracks in After Effects, use there tracks for scaling avatars and adding spectrograms. You can done it without writing code, but if you have many-many podcasts, you will suffer. Also, this not applicable if you want broadcast such video in realtime, for example, with questions and calls of guests.


Using FFmpeg -lavfi to calculate the SSIM of each frame I would like to be able to take a single video, run it through ffmpeg, and have it spit out a log containing the SSIM of each frame with respect to the previous - that is, I want the SSIM scores comparing the previous frame to the current one.

I am attempting to do so by running ffmpeg with the same video input twice, with the second input skipping ahead by one frame.

ffmpeg -i .\a.mp4 -i .\a.mp4 -filter_complex "[1:v]select=gte(n\,1)[f]" -map 0:v:0 -map "[f]" -lavfi ssim -f null -

When attempting to run this, I am given the error:

Cannot find a matching stream for unlabeled input pad 1 on filter Parsed_ssim_0

Is there a way I can correct this so that the second input skips one frame and both are run through -lavfi ssim?

You have to perform all filtering in a single filtergraph.

ffmpeg -i .\a.mp4 -i .\a.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]setpts=N/FR/TB[v0];[1:v]select=gte(n\,1),setpts=N/FR/TB[v1];[0v][1v]ssim=f=stats.log" -f null -


Sharp drop in FPS while recording I've recorded a few Minecraft videos using bandicam before without this problem, but yesterday I went to record it was all going good until out of nowhere my FPS went from like 60-100 to 0-2 for like half a second.

I thought it might be because of me changing my screen resolution from 1360 x 1024@60hz to 1440 x 900@75hz. So I switched it back it didn't change anything I tried recording using ultra high 60fps settings again it records fine then out of no where fps goes to 0 usually I have music playing over the in-game audio I turned that off. I even tried the low-end settings and I still got FPS lag although it was smaller it was still there. I switched the drive that it outputs on also to no avail. I don't have a bad setup its pretty new and shouldn't have any problems running this:

Dell Optiplex 780
Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit
Intel Core 2 Duo@3.00Ghz
8 GB Samsung PCI-8500F(533Mhz) RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4670 PCI-Express x16 graphics card 1GB memory
1 TB Western Digital HDD
320 GB Samsung HM321HI HDD

Also when I playback these recordings they skip sometimes and they speed up almost like I'm watching them at increased speeds. If need be I'll upload one of them so you can see what I'm talking about.

This is a video that I recorded like 2 weeks ago so you know my computer is capable of capturing, I also use the default settings in bandicam (Free Version).

Most screen capture applications are pulling video from the video card down to main memory to compress it and write it to disk. Most video games are uploading textures and geometry to the video card to display it to you. It's possible to get into a situation where more memory is needed on the card to run the game and record the video than you have available. That's usually when you see frames dropping. Depending on the game, it might happen when more characters or scenery is visible (such as when viewing a scene from high up, and it's all in frame). The memory on the card is limited, and the ability to move data around in the computer is also limited. It sounds like you're hitting those limits.


Hissing Sound with Rode NTG2 Phantom I have a loud hissing problem using my Rode NTG 2 when it was hooked up to my Tascam D40. When I record from the internal Tascam mics, there isn't a hiss. So I think it's my Rode mic that is causing the hiss. Has anyone dealt with this before? I've tried different input levels and always have the problem with mic. Should I get it replaced with my warranty or is this something I can fix?

It's the Phantom power.  I've done a lot of testing and the Phantom power adds a lot of noise to the NTG 2. I don't know why, but if you don't run it on phantom power and use it only with batteries, the noise goes away.


Trying to resize a video by cropping the sides and adding height is it possible to do this with ffmpeg? Basically, I want to convert an mp4 file that's in landscape to portrait.  It's a single image on a black background with no sound.  I want to keep the size and aspect ratio of the image intact and my plan is to convert it from 1280x720 to 720x1280.

I'm playing around with crop and padding, but I'm wondering if there's a way to get this done with one command, and if I need to reencode it.

For a target size of 720x1280, you would use

ffmpeg -i img.png -vf scale=-1:1280:flags=lanczos,crop=720:1280:(iw-720)/2:0 out.png


Convert video with ffmpeg to have the same quality I want to make some present for my grandma. And prepare some video. Unfortunately here video player is old and could not read some file formats. She is not at home now, so I don't know which player she has. But I have a file which is OK for here system:

File which is in a correct format:

General
Complete name                            : let.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
File size                                : 688 MiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 35 min
Overall bit rate                         : 1 002 kb/s
Writing application                      : VirtualDubMod 1.4.13
Writing library                          : VirtualDub build 14328/release
FileExtension_Invalid                    : avi

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile                           : Simple@L3
Format settings, BVOP                    : No
Format settings, QPel                    : No
Format settings, GMC                     : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix                  : Default (H.263)
Codec ID                                 : XVID
Codec ID/Hint                            : XviD
Duration                                 : 1 h 35 min
Bit rate                                 : 800 kb/s
Width                                    : 544 pixels
Height                                   : 416 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.141
Stream size                              : 549 MiB (80%)
Writing library                          : XviD 0.0.09 (UTC 2003-03-25)

I have the following file, which here system could not read:

File in the incorrect format:

General
Complete name                            : amf.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
Overall bit rate                         : 2 167 kb/s

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile                           : Advanced Simple@L5
Format settings                          : BVOP1
Format settings, BVOP                    : 1
Format settings, QPel                    : No
Format settings, GMC                     : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix                  : Default (MPEG)
Codec ID                                 : DX50
Codec ID/Hint                            : DivX 5
Bit rate                                 : 1 710 kb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 528 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.188
Stream size                              : 1.15 GiB (79%)
Writing library                          : XviD 64

Could you help me to convert the second file to a format of the first? (It would be nice if output would be of the similar quality)

I have Ubuntu, and I think ffmpeg should be able to do it.

The differences between your "works" and "doesn't work" examples are:

resolution
framerate
Codec Tag
Codec Level

and you can set these using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg.exe -i /temp/input.mp4 -c:v mpeg4 -level 3.0 -vtag XVID -s 544x416 -r 25 -qscale 0 /temp/out.avi

Qscale 0 will produce a large file but maintain the best quality.

Please note that changing the resolution and frame rate will not produce the best output quality, so check if you can just omit the -s and -r parameters to maintain the best quality. Possibly you need to set the bitrate to 800kBit as in your "works" example to make it work on the target device of your grandmother.


Video from image with same image as background I 'd like to create a 16/9 video from an image that is not exactly 16/9;
I can add black lines aside, to fit 16/9, but I'd like to create a background with same image, with a boxblur applied; the result will be the original image, fit at 16/9, with the same image, blurry, visible instead of blank side lines.

I'm trying to do with split filter, something similar to this:

[0:v]split=2[v0i][v1i];\
[v0i]scale=iw*3:ih*3,boxblur=5[v0f];\
[v1i][v0f]overlay=(W-w/2):(H-h)/2[v0];\
[v0]\
scale=iw*min(640/iw\,360/ih):ih*min(640/iw\,360/ih),
pad=640:360:(640-iw)/2:(360-ih)/2\
[v00];\

but I think I miss something ... can someone help me? thanks ...


Correcting video flicker problem caused by camera's auto white balance I have shot a video with a handheld camera that uses auto white balance. Unfortunately, the auto white balance seems to have done more harm than good. The camera was readjusting the white balance every time when it was moved. The video ends up having many transitions from dark to bright then back to dark every few seconds throughout it. The video looks as though it was flickering in slow motion.

I have tried adjusting the colour balance of the video in After Effects but because the white balance by the camera was on every frame, a linear colour balance correction doesn't seem to help.

Is there any way to correct this problem without having to retake all my shots?

Probably not easily.  You might be able to try applying a better auto-white balance and hope for the best.  You could also manually adjust it repeatedly and adjust the interpolation between values (on the animation curves) but this is highly time consuming and still won't get as good of a result as reshooting.

If reshooting is an option, it's going to probably be the quickest, easiest and best looking solution.  If not, then your stuck trying some very painful and time consuming adjustments.


Can too many ffmpeg encodes at once cause loss of quality? Converting ~30 files at once with ffmpeg to mp4, and it took around ~19 hours to finish. My CPU was at 100% the whole time.

Is there any drawback in doing this many encodes at once, if time is not a big concern?

Like can ffmpeg lose frames or something because the CPU is busy and thus corrupt a file, make lower quality files or something.

This is a very broad questions so let me try to answer it in a general sense.

Yes, it is more likely for corrupted files to appear when encoding more files. It is only more likely by a very thin margin though, so using a batch-render-queue is not something to "not do" - in fact, many big budget productions use render-queues to render many many sequences one after another, and I personally wouldn't demotivate you from doing it. However, encoding to mp4 (I assume h.264) always comes with compression, meaning that the file will be lossy and not as good as the original. The CPU being at 100% shouldn't cause any problems though if you didn't overclock your cpu or tinkered with the flags from within ffmpeg (which I assume you didn't do).


Cropping a Video based on a motion track I have some raw footage from a lacrosse game that I filmed and the coach told me to make a video for a collage about a player.  Is there a way to crop a video relative to a motion track.

I would want to track the player and crop the video so the player stays in the center of the frame rather than giving the coach general footage with the player in it. I understand that I will be giving up a lot of quality cropping the video to a small size but just having the ability of doing such a thing would be nice.

Programs to use:
- Blender
- After Effects CC
- Premiere Pro CC
- Any of the programs in Adobe CC

Here's one way to do it. I'll assume you have basic motion tracking knowledge already for the sake of brevity.

AfterEffects

Turn on 3D space for your footage layer.
Track the player in your footage. I'm going to guess that you'll have to do a lot of this by hand, but there's not really a faster way to track a player like this.
Apply the track to a Null, including both X + Y values of course. Turn on 3D space for the null as well.
Create a Camera. Default values are fine. They will match your footage, so you initially won't see any change.
Select the Null and press P to open the position parameter.
Here's the tricky part. Alt+Click on the Position stopwatch for your Camera. This will turn the position numbers red, open up an Expression text box, and reveal some new buttons. Click and drag the Pickwhip onto the Null's position parameter.

Your comp should go black. Good, it's working!
Open up the Position twirly for your footage layer (in my comp it's A037C006_160309CZ.MXF). The third value is the Z-depth. Adjust this to taste - the larger the number, the larger the resulting "crop" of your footage. Here I've set it to 1700 for a pretty extreme crop (and this is also 4K footage) - a more reasonable look, in my case, might be more like 2500. For you it will vary depending on the footage.
As you scrub through the timeline you should be perfectly locked onto the player. Unfortunately, depending on how close they get to the edge of the shot, you may see black appearing at the edge. This means you've "cropped" in far enough that you've hit the edge of the frame. You can reduce the crop (move the footage layer closer to the camera, a smaller number) as necessary to fix this.

You may find that your track is a bit choppy. You can smooth it out a bit non-destructively using some of the techniques detailed here.


Frame rate conversion during playback for maximal smoothness So I watch my 25 fps DVD on my 60Hz LCD monitor...  For now lets assume everything is progressive scan.

It seems that current DVD programs (and all media players on PC's, like youtube, vlc, etc.) just show the exact frames from the source video, and don't do any frame rate conversion.

Surely this leads to unnecessary jumpiness?  Some frames show for 2/60 seconds, while others show for 3/60 seconds?  The effect seems even more noticeable when the frame rate is close to the monitor refresh rate, such as 29 fps, where noticeable jumps can be seen every minute or so.

Are there any media players that use temporal interpolation through motion estimation to convert the frame rate during playback?  (like this:  http://compression.ru/video/frame_rate_conversion/index_en_frcn.html)

The problem I think you are seeing is not because of the difference in framerate directly because this is inperceptable but how it is displayed.  You need to enable vsync to stop tearing and then it should play smoothly.


Premiere Pro imports audio/video unlinked I import clips into the project and when I drag them into the timeline, the clips have video & audio unlinked, which is very annoying for editing.

Toggle on Linked Selection to have Premiere Pro respect the linked status of clips:

copied from community.adobe.com


After Effects distance between two points I have written an expression to get the distance between two points, but it does not work and I haven't a clue why. It's pretty simple:

function findDistance(xa, xb, ya, yb)
{
    return Math.sqrt( (xa - xb)^2 + (ya - yb)^2 );
}
findDistance(682, 617, 310, 342);

The error I get is, "Error at line 0... invalid numeric result (divide by zero?)."

I am so confused by this. It seems so straight forward, so I am not even sure what to ask. Can anyone see what is wrong with this?

EDIT: I am trying to narrow down the issue. Even using the following expression is not working:

Math.sqrt( (682-617)^2 + (310-342)^2 );

Narrowing down further, this finally worked:

Math.sqrt( 5249 );

I also isolated and confirmed that X^2 is the correct way to square something, so what gives?

Hate to spoil all your good work, but it's a lot easier to use the built-in length() function:

length(pointa, pointb)

e.g.

length(thisComp.layer(1).position, thisComp.layer(2).position)

or

length([682, 617], [310, 342]); //raw vector values as an array
length(thisComp.layer("foo").anchorPoint, [310, 342]); //a spatial property and an array
length([123,456,789], [10,9,8]); //works in 3D too.

It's in vector math in the expressions drop-down panel.


How to fix Encoding Overloaded in OBS Studio? I want to record a programming tutorial with OBS Studio in 1080p 30FPS. I have never changed the encoder, the output format is MP4. Although my computer has very good hardware, I get Encoding Overloaded after some time and the video starts getting asynchronous.
I read that the Encoding gets Overloaded when your computer can't handle the game you are playing and OBS recording, but I don't play any game, the only apps I have running are Visual Studio Code, one or two tabs of Google Chrome and OBS Studio.
What can I do?

Edit:
CPU: Intel i5-6600k
OS: Windows 10 Pro
RAM: 16GB DDR4
Video Card: PowerColor Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 480 (8GB V-RAM)
As said, I don't record games, but only have VS Code and OBS Studio running so I can't imagine that my computer is too slow.

Thanks for your help!

Encoding overloaded means that your computer isn't fast enough to encode with the settings as they are now.

There are two options: 1) Encode via hardware (intel quicksync, AMD VCE, Nvidia nvenc) or set the quality of the encode lower (as in a faster/fastest x264 preset).

Without more information (CPU, GPU, Ram, OS etc) it is difficult to know what is the best way forward.


How to automatically pull text out of a video I am currently experimenting with after effects and premiere to see what sort of strange things they might be capable of and was hoping someone had some insight on an Idea I had.

In this situation I have some text, such as some subtitles or even a time code, that is burned into the footage. I do not have any of the project files for this footage, the only thing I have to work with is the final video.

Is there any way to have either Adobe Premiere or After Effects recognize what text is on screen automatically? Bonus points if it can then take this information and feed it into a new title element.

P.S. This is all assuming the source video's text is of decent quality (i.e. the text is static, decently distinguished from the video behind it, and not too tiny.)

I do not know of any existing solutions for this in Premiere or AE.

However, if you know a little about programming, you might be able to write a script using OpenCV that runs Tesseract OCR on video frames, and comes out with the text you want. Once you have the text and time codes, you definitely could write a script to build the titles at the appropriate time codes inside of AE or Premiere.

(I became aware of these open-source tools since I am currently building a mobile app that runs OCR on documents.)

Check out the Scene Text Recognition docs for OpenCV, if you want to try that route.


Which sequence settings in Adobe Premiere for a YouTube video I have a series of photos 3840x2880 which I want to crop to make a 1080 timelapse video to be uploaded to YouTube.

Which sequence setting in Adobe Premiere CS6 I should use for YouTube videos?

There are presets for Youtube specifically already in Adobe Media Encoder.  I would suggest using one of them.  You can also find the technical recommendations from Youtube on how to encode the videos here, however I believe the presets already conform to these recommendations.


ffmpeg: adding blankspace to end of video I'm trying to add blankspace to the end of a video (1 audio stream, 1 video stream) using ffmpeg. I'm curious what the best way of doing this is. I'm not very keen on using filter_complex so if there's another simple/viable method, that would be good. I've been trying to use the color filter using the command below, it's making a video with bad timestamps though. On playback it freezes in various parts of the blankspaced segment, my command is missing something.

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter_complex "color=black:s=1280x720:d=15[b0];[0:v][b0]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0" output.mkv

I receive the green/yellow message below at the point where it starts to render the black frames.

[Parsed_color_0 @ 0000000922e0fd900] EOF timestamp not reliable

This method is effectively making another video and concatenating it to the first one. I'm wondering if in general: Can you create frames in an existing video...? Or is that outside of how ffmpeg works?

Method 1: concat demuxer

Pros: Avoids re-encoding the main video and therefore preserves quality since it is stream copied. Fast.
Cons: Requires several steps. Harder to get right, because the blank video needs to have the same attributes as the main video.

Make the black video using same attributes and same number and type of streams as the main input. This example makes a 15 second black video, frame rate of 24, size is 1280x720:

 ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=1280x720:r=24:d=15 black.mkv

Make input.txt. The order in this text file determines the order that they will appear when concatenating.

file 'main.mkv'
file 'black.mkv'

Concatenate:

ffmpeg -f concat -i input.txt -c copy output.mkv

Method 2: concat filter

Pro: Can all be done in one command.
Con: Filtering requires encoding, so no stream copying of the main video as in the concat demuxer. Some attributes must still be matched.

Use the color source filter to make the 15 second, 24 fps, 1280x720 black video and append it to the end of the main video with the concat filter:

ffmpeg -i main.mkv -filter_complex "color=c=black:s=1280x720:r=24:d=15[black];[0:v][black]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[v]" -map "[v]" output.mkv

If you prefer the black to be at the beginning instead then switch the order for the concat filter inputs, such as [black][0:v]concat….

Method 3: tpad and apad filters

Pro: Easy. No need to match any attributes.
Cons: Filtering requires encoding, so no stream copying of the main video as in the concat demuxer. Relatively new filters: use FFmpeg 4.2 or newer, or even better use a build from the current git master branch.

Append 15 seconds of black video to the end of the main video:

ffmpeg -i main.mkv -filter_complex "tpad=stop_duration=15" output.mkv

If you want it at the beginning instead use start_duration instead of stop_duration. If you want to clone the frames instead, or want a different color than black then refer to the tpad filter documentation.


I keep on getting a brownish-green hue around me I always get a brownish-green hue around me when I edit out the green screen in after effects. Is the problem the lighting, green screen editing, etc. Can someone please help.

Lighting could definitely be part of the problem here. Typically, for green screen work, it helps to have a light between yourself and your green screen to get rid of those shadows behind you (sort of like a backlight).

To fix your current footage, I'd increase the sensitivity of your chroma key in After Effects, since it looks like AE is essentially leaving a thin outline of the screen around you. If you increase your tolerance, you should see that outline shrink a bit. Feathering the edges of your image can help with this, too.


How can I capture/convert HDMI from an HDCP protected input? Basically the situation is I have a PS3 and I want to be able to split a lossless HDMI connection to my TV and something to a capture card. Using an HDMI splitter I can connect to the TV just fine but my capture card does not read HDCP.

I could use a component splitter but that would prevent me from being able to use HDMI quality video/audio on the TV, and not using HDMI as the source means my setup is more complicated; I have other sources (like my Wii U) where I have to use HDMI.

How how can I record from this HDCP HDMI in? I can take HDMI without HDCP or component video, but my searches have been unable to find to find something that either converts HDMI (with HDCP) to component or takes HDMI and spits out something non-HDCP devices can read.

For the record I know of one device that does this: The HDFury4/3. However, the HDFury3 is about $150 above what I'm currently willing to pay, I'm just looking for something barebones. I have seen numerous other devices claiming to do things like convert HDMI to component but they either have multiple 1 star reviews saying "this doesn't work at all" or they have no reviews at all. I'd rather be reasonably confidence before purchasing something like this since it seems like there are a lot of solutions which simply don't do what I need them to.

You would need a device that supports HDCP if your output source is utilizing it.  That's the entire point of the system.  The video signal is encrypted and will only exchange the data with a device which can cryptographically authenticate itself as an authorized HDCP receiver. Getting that certificate requires proving that they are going to follow the rules on what can and can't be done with the content (such as not allowing it to be recorded.)

Occasionally codes are cracked, but these codes are then removed from the valid list of codes in future products and they won't work on newer material until another code is broken.  It is also worth pointing out that (unfortunately), if you live in the US at least, such bypassing is illegal in the United States according to the DMCA which specifically prevents bypassing protective measures even if the use would be fair use.

It looks like it may also be possible to connect the PS3 to a non-HDCP device, which would prevent it from using HDCP.  If that is the case, then if you could find a device that isn't HDCP compatible or that can strip the HDCP information, then you could get an unprotected stream and do an end run around DMCA limitations.  You may have to do a soft-reset of the PS3 to get it to recognize a non-HDCP TV if it was previously attached to an HDCP one however since it starts up in the same mode it was in for the previous display.


Automatically cut out sections of a video delineated by a sound. Is there any way that I can automatically cut a video based on a sound.

I have a couple of long sections of video that contain videos.  I would like to remove the parts of the video that do not fall between two whistles, much like football game footage.

The video format is mp4.  I am looking for some type of software that would allow me to do this.

I have not had any luck with automatic video spliters because they will only split based on file size. Currently, I am cutting this footage by hand using iMovie.

I haven't done this myself, but I think it's quite doable.

First, you'd need to setup a ffmpeg script to demux the video into audio and video portions. Then, you'd need to apply a script that will analyze the audio file. Silence is easier to automatically detect in an audio file, assuming that you can produce the silence on site to mark the intervals (e.g. disconnect the mic for 2 seconds). You'd need to know some programming, but with something like Python it would be quite easy.

Finally, with the output of the script as times to cut between, feed this into ffmpeg again on the original file, using the -ss  -t  command.


Ad Free Video Streaming to Web I'm currently working with a charity that broadcasts our event to the web. The event is about a week long (24 hrs per day), and gets in excess of 2000 viewers at times during the stream.

I am wondering what the best free/low cost option is for streaming to the web that presents no ads to the viewers?

Wowza Media Server on Amazon EC2 is a really cost-effective way to do it, it's very popular among churches because of its on-demand nature and low cost. You spin up the server when you need it, pay a small hourly charge for it, pay for the bandwidth used, and shut it down.


Premiere Pro: Curves for adjusting video effects and its keyframes? I am pretty new to Premiere, so this is probably going to be a "noob" question. So I want to make keyframed adjustments in my clips position (it just moves from one place to another) and I want to make this effect look more natural by making the movement build up speed. The clip would start moving slow then it speeds up, and finally it slows down to the end.
I saw a few random videos including Premiere, where at the place of the keyframe timeline,  there is a curve timeline window. I mean, a window where you can adjust the speed and the direction of a certain effect value by dragging the curve's point on the 2 axises.

I hope I composed this clearly and that I didn't ask something dumb :D
Thank you for the answer.

Here is a screenshot of my test project:

And these are the curves I am referring to (I'm sorry for the resoltuion, but it's from a video):

You can toggle the display of the keyframe timeline by clicking the little arrowhead to the left of each individual effect in the Effect Controls panel. If you can't see the panel, you can open it from the Window menu. If you don't see any effects in that panel, make sure to select the correct clip from your current timeline.

Here's your image with the arrowhead encircled in red (in the top left):

For more information on setting smooth transitions using keyframes, check out my answer here.


Physics and Chemistry Animations in After Effects Are there any plugins/physics simulation engines other than Newton that will be useful for creating Physics and Chemistry content in After Effects??
For example, if I have a requirement to create the motion of electrons in an atom, how do I go about it?

There are a number of physics engines and related scripts available in the Physics Simulation category at AEScripts.

However, without a more specific question about what kind of animation you're looking for (that is to say, I don't know how the electrons in an atom are supposed to move), it's hard to point you to a specific answer.


How to delete an edit in Final Cut Pro (un-blade) I want to be able to "undo" the blade tool, in effect merging clips
  together. How can I do this?

(Answered another question without noticing it was for Final Cut X, not FCP 7, but here is the answer for anyone using Final Cut Pro 7)

If you have made an edit and you want to remove it, you can click on the edit then press delete and the edit will be removed.

fig1. selected edit:

Note that this only works if the time on either side of the edit hasnt changed, as indicated by the red triangles. If you have cut out any video, you cant delete the edit:


How can I efficiently convert MOV / MPEG-4 files for long term storage? I have a Canon 6D DSLR that I am shooting video on. The camera is set to capture 1280x720 60fps IPB MOV / MPEG-4 files. The video files are in the range of 250MB per minute of recording. I have literally no skills in video editing and at this point just capture important family events to potentially edit in the future. I understand compression and the loss of quality from a general perspective.

Is there a format or method that would be a reasonable trade-off between file size and quality beyond leaving the files in their existing state? Should I just leave them alone? Knowing that my DSLR has specific needs to write the file to a memory card immediately, it is understandable that it isn't in the optimal format for long term storage; so that is why I imagine an answer may exist to this question.

Related:
Compress or convert .mov to lighter format

Although @stib's advice is sound, I disagree with "to get an appreciable size reduction you would have to throw away a lot of quality". Cameras have to compress on-the-fly, so they use constrained baseline mode, which is to say, they skip most of the tricks that H.264 codec uses to efficiently compress videos. If space isn't a pressing concern, keep them as-is. But if you'd like to recover some space, you can use ffmpeg, a command-line tool, to compress them while generally retaining quality.

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 12 -c:a copy -c:d copy -map 0 compressed.mov

CRF values in the range of 12 to 15 will give you a smaller video stream, generally by 25 to 40%. Perversely, if your scene has a lot of fine texture detail like a forest or pebbles or embroidered cloth..etc, then compressibility won't be high and using these CRF values will likely produce output which is larger than the source. Skip compression in these cases. For most scenes, filled with smooth gradients or nearly-flat shaded surfaces, compression should yield a smaller file with good quality.


How to choose the right bitrate, H.264 profile and level for Web Video presentation? I want to start producing videos and looking around the internet for usual bitrate ranges (VBR) and H.264 profiles and levels for Web Video exports.

I found some guides with Vimeo and YouTube and construct my own export settings, based on the previous mentioned guides.

I am producing the videos mostly within the EU, so I am shooting my videos in either 25p or 50p to reduce the light flicker effect due to the power frequency (50 Hz).

I came up with the following settings for HD-ready, Full-HD, (true) UHD, and (true) 4K.

1280×720p25.000,     5-10 Mbps,  H.264 High Profile Level 4.0,   HDp25
1280×720p50.000,     10-15 Mbps, H.264 High Profile Level 4.2,   HDp50
1920×1080p25.000,    10-20 Mbps, H.264 High Profile Level 4.0,   FHDp25
1920×1080p50.000,    15-25 Mbps, H.264 High Profile Level 4.2,   FHDp50
3840×2160p25.000,    40-60 Mbps, H.264 High Profile Level 5.1,   UHDp25
3840×2160p50.000,    60-80 Mbps, H.264 High Profile Level 5.2,   UHDp50
4096×2160p25.000,    40-60 Mbps, H.264 High Profile Level 5.2,   4Kp25
4096×2160p50.000,    60-80 Mbps, H.264 High Profile Level 5.2,   4Kp50

The container format will be MP4, with the moov atom at the start of the file (fast start). I will introduce the moov atom as a post process (ffmpeg), since my primary transcoding software does not support the moov atom at all.
The audio is AAC-LC, stereo with 96 KHz and 320 kbps.

My question is: Are those settings suitable for better quality Web Video presentation? Did I miss something while merging the various guides on how to setup the transcoding process?

I would like to point out again, that the above mentioned settings are for the Web Video exports only. When I author Blu-ray releases, I will do much higher bitrates etc.. However this question is only about the Web Video presentation.

If you are looking to get the best possible quality, encode at the highest bitrates you can factoring file size / upload time.

Regardless of what you bitrate you transcode at; nearly all streaming platforms - YouTube and Vimeo included, will re-transcode the files using their own settings for Various Resolutions. Youtube for instance will take a 1080 file and transcode it into 1080, 720, 480, 360, and 240 versions for people who have slow connections.

Your original file on both Vimeo and YouTube will remain available for download later from your Video's Setting Page. I am not sure if you can make that public, but they do retain it if you wish to pull the file back at a later date.


How to make eye pupils look directly at the camera I have some videos with a speaker looking at the side of a camera or directly to the camera, but his or her pupils were running from side to side as speaker reads from teleprompter.
Is there any possibility to move pupils slightly to make them look exactly at the viewer?

That would be a task of compositing using something like Nuke or After-Effects. Here's how I'd tackle something like this:

Grab a frame of the person looking directly in the camera
Track the positions of the eyes ("track_left" and "track_right" as seperates)
Mask out the eyes from the still-frame and separate them into eye_left and eye_right
Link each eye to the corresponding tracking, so that it follows the original eyes.
Perhaps apply a subtle slow flickering (add curves and in the effect-opacity type in the expression "wiggle(0.5, 15)" or something in that area, using After-Effects)
When the person is looking down, try to keyframe the opacity of the eyes so the real eyes are revealed from time to time, depending on how convincing this turns out.

If the tracker doesn't stick very well you can try the mocha-tracker which comes natively with After-Effects for the latest versions. Make sure to only mask out the inner area of the eyes - don't patch out too much of the eyes and only the bare minimum to remain realistic shadows, wrinkles, etc.
I hope this works out for you - if not, please post your results and we'll see how to improve it.


What is the difference between a fishpole and a boom pole? What is the difference between a fishpole and a boom pole? I think I have heard the words interchangeably, but I really don't know the difference between the two.

To be honest, man, I've never heard anyone use the term 'fishpole' in regards to video/film production. Recording audio with a microphone that is connected to an extendable rod is called booming. There are people in the film industry who make a living solely from being a boom swinger.
I think fishpole is just another word used for the same thing, although if someone referred to a boom pole as a fishpole onset they would probably get laughed at.

So yeah, unless you are getting filmmaking mixed up with the honorable profession of capturing sea-dwelling animals, I'd say there is no difference between the two.


Is there a way to directly save DNG Sequences to 16bit exr Sequences in Photoshop or After Effects? I want to prepare my Magic Lantern Raw files for Nuke. I use Photoshop to convert DNG to a 16bit tiff and then re-encode them to a 16bit exr sequence. I wish I could directly save as exr.
I know i could use Davinci Resolve I just don't like the workflow with Davinci...

Using After Effects this is not an issue. After Effects has CameraRAW support and by that also support importing DNG sequences.
You import them just as you would any other image sequence.

Then simply make the sequence into a composition and add it to the render queue.
AFAIK After Effects has the OpenEXR plugin integrated since CS5.5. In case I'm wrong you can get the great ProEXR plugin for Photoshop and After Effects from fnodware (I'm not affiliated). To do the same with a few more format options.