Is it possible to convert output of TV Channel (set top box 720p) to 1080p? I have Toshiba 29PB200ZE (just purchased). Now the problem is it displays pixels with very blur effect. Reason is that the Cable operators in India (using Standard Channel Broadcasting) broadcasting 720p resolution output. As I have 1080p HDTV it does not displays output properly. Means that tiering the pixels.

Is there any converter available that converts 720p output from Channel (set top box) to 1080p so that I can view output properly.

If I go for HD Channels then issue will not be arised. But as HD channels have very high price range so could not afford them.

Edit: I am using 3 pin (red, yellow and white) cable which connects Set Top Box (digital signals) and my HDTV Toshiba 29PB200ZE. Is performance can be improved by installing other higher density cable like Coaxial?

What you are talking about is upscaling and any current HDTV will do upscaling automatically.  Upscaling doesn't work miracles though, it will only make it so that the lower quality signal can be watched on a higher quality display.  It just multiplies the pixels so that a 720 by 480 (.9 pixel compressed) signal for example doesn't end up only taking up 1/4 of your screen.  It doesn't make the video any higher quality (it in fact will be slightly lower quality than if you were to watch it at the native resolution).

Your problem however is not lack of upscaling.  Your problem is using the wrong signal.  You are currently connecting your cable box to your TV through what is known as a composite cable.  It's an old type of analog connection that includes all the video information on the single yellow pin and sends left and right audio on the white and red pins respectively.  It is only capable of reproducing a standard definition signal so you are not actually using HD signals.

To benefit from 720 or 1080 signals, you will have to either use analog Component video (the red/green/blue connectors) or use an HDMI cable.  It's worth noting that as long as your TV and cable box both have component inputs/outputs, you can actually re-purpose the existing Composite cable to carry a component signal, but there will be no audio (you need a separate white/red pair for the audio, which is the same format as with the composite signal).

Once you fix the cable and hookup issue, you should see better image quality.  Personally, I'd recommend using HDMI if it is available on both your cable box and TV as that is the easiest to setup and will give a nice digital signal.


How to make a film in black and white with some objects in color Final Cut Pro X I'm trying to produce a short film in black and white and occasionally make only certain objects appear in color, using Final Cut Pro X

The simplest way to do this (also known as the Pleasantville effect) is to apply a Color Correction effect to your clip and then do the following:

Click on the Color Board to open the Color / Saturation / Exposure menu.  Select the Saturation menu and pull the Global (leftmost) slider to the bottom.  Your image should be fully desaturated.

Return to the Color Correction menu and select Add Color Mask.  It's disguised with an icon that shows an oval in a square.  When the eyedropper is blue (default), you can click (or better, click-drag) a spot on your image that has the color you want to preserve.  You can do this again and again until you get enough of the color selected to achieve the effect you want.  Select Invert Mask to get only the color you selected, or leave the mask as-is to desaturate only the color you selected.

This will work well for simple cases, but it is a far cry from the HSL qualifiers offered in programs like DaVinci Resolve, for many reasons.

A much, much more complicated thing to do is to use masks and manually composite in FCPX.  Compared with other NLEs, which all seem very intuitive to me, FCPX utterly baffles me when it comes to masks and layers.  YMMV.


Video blurry after dragging it to composition I am having an issue with a video that I am adding effects to. The video is clear when I import it, but when I drag it on to a composition, it gets blurry.

Your resolution is on a third
But most importantly, your video is 720 x 480 resolution but on a 1920 x 1080 timeline (so it seems), so you are scaling it to fit (you can't make up for a lack of resolution but upscaling your footage).

To get the right comp size, you can:

Drag your video file onto the little film icon to the immediate left of the 8 bpc selector below your footage tree
Or create a new composition based on the dimensions of your footage

There is no real point in making 480 footage 1080, it will not increase the quality.


Why does Adobe Premiere CC change my "Ease Out" keyframe interpolation to "Bezier"? In Adobe Premiere CC, I keep trying to set my position keyframe's temporal interpolation to "Ease Out". After I set it, I recheck the context menus immediately, and it has reverted to "Bezier".  Why does it do that, and how can I get it to keep the temporal interpolation that I set?

This is the expected behaviour. It's a bit confusing, but as you can see in your screenshot, the Temporal Interpolation context menu is split in two parts. The part above the seperating line (see your screenshot) sets the keyframe type. From the documentation:

  Linear: Creates a uniform rate of change between keyframes.
  Bezier: Lets you manually adjust the shape of the graph, and the rate of change, on either side of a keyframe. You can create very
  smooth changes using this method.
  Auto Bezier: Creates a smooth rate of change through a keyframe. As you change a keyframe’s value, the Auto Bezier direction handles
  change to maintain a smooth transition between keyframes.
  Continuous Bezier: Creates a smooth rate of change through a keyframe. However, unlike the Auto Bezier interpolation method,
  Continuous Bezier lets you adjust direction handles manually. As you
  change the shape of a graph on one side of a keyframe, the shape on
  the other side of the keyframe changes to maintain a smooth
  transition.
  Hold: Changes a property value without gradual transition (sudden effect changes). The graph following a keyframe with the Hold
  interpolation applied appears as a horizontal straight line.

The two options below the seperating line – Ease In & Ease Out – are rather like presets or shortcuts. They switch the keyframe type (since easing in/out requires bézier curves and is therefore not possible in Hold or Linear modes) and set a smooth transition. If you open up the graph view in the Effect Settings panel, you can see the effect the two options have:

Linear.

Ease In.

Ease In + Ease Out.

You can still adjust the velocity interpolation manually using the Bézier handles seen in the screenshots above.


I can't use more than one color in the same material in C4D I am new to the 3d world and Cinema 4d software.

When I try to use gradient color and apply the material to a sphere, for example, it just uses the first color in the gradient and ignores any other colors. What am I doing wrong?

Moved from C4D a while back but It could be something to do with UV projection being set to a surface that isn't there.  Another reason for this could be flipped normals (in this case you would have to flip them back.  Have a look in the UV settings and change the projection type.  I'm not sure this is a lighting issue, you could always add a light to the scene but I'm under the impression there is ambient lighting by default.... Hope this helps.


Do I really need to keep CPI file from AVCHD container? CPI files accompany MTS files in AVCHD containers created by camcorders.
Various posts on video forums suggest that CPI files should be archived together with MTS files, as they contain metadata about the video. Usually it's even recommended to keep the whole structure of SD card. However, it only works fine as long as an SD card contains recording from a single event. In my case, the videos may be completely unrelated and even taken in different years. Therefore I typically store MTS files only, and organize them by date. Sometimes I also rename the MTS files to something descriptive. Maintaining the AVCHD directory structure or even just MTS+CPI files is an extra burden I'd like to avoid.

In my few attempts MediaInfo seems to extract at least as much information from MTS files as it does from CPI files. Frame rate, resolution, bitrate, recording date and time etc. seem to be all saved in MTS.

So what is the added value of keeping the CPI files?

None of the editing tools I know of uses any files other than MTS/M2TS. Supposedly, these CPI files can be used by a Blu-ray player when it plays the content of a card - which is why the structure of AVCHD media resembles the structure of Blu-ray media - but I never play raw videos from my cards.

I preserve MTS/M2TS files only and throw away everything else. Not once in twelve years I needed them.


Play 24fps video smoothly on 50Hz monitor Most of the content that we download or get from media is 24fps. Which can not play smoothly on 60Hz/50Hz monitor as 24 frame can not directly sync with 50/60Hz monitor.

Now my question is it possible to directly play 24fps video smoothly on 50Hz monitor by increasing the speed of video by 1.05x by which it will become 25fps video which can directly sync to 50hz screen. If I'm technically correct what is the best way to accomplished this.

I believe you are technically correct but that in practice it would not be done in that manner.

In other words, if you simply increase the playback speed there will be visual and/or audio artifacts from the speed change.

What you would want to do is use software that would adjust the frames directly, like by dropping every 20th frame.

While I said you are technically correct, I believe your premise is slightly misguided.  Have you noticed any artifacts from playing video on monitors with different frame refresh rates?

Your brain is an amazing tool and can fill in gaps so dropping a few frames wouldn't usually be noticed.  But your brain has a top speed that it can process things like you describe.

24 fps is selected for cinema, as I am sure you know.  Video these days is usually recorded at much higher rates.

But think for a minute about why they chose 24 in the first place.  it is because if the frame rate drops below about 18 or so you can actually see the jumps between frames.  This is partly why interlacing was introduced, so a 30 fps transmission is half-drawn in between frames and the interlacing lets your brain melt one frame into another.

That's why stills from those kinds of programming - like old Betty Boop cartoons - look funny.  It is hard to capture a single frame unless your software is aware of the format.  Simple screen captures are not.

The point of mentioning the 18 fps thing is that above that most people can't see any syncing problems like you describe.

I would suggest you put this kind of question into Google in various ways and find others who have asked similar questions.

Have a great day.


Traditional animation techniques and 30fps software animation? I'm putting together a very basic software to animate a few pixels frame-by-frame. I've skimmed through Richard William's Animator's Survival Kit in the past and noticed most traditional animation uses 24fps and he used to "animate on twos" for most motion and on "ones" for fast motion.

Since my tool will deal with frame by frame animation I'd like to make use of those principles, but I am constraint to 30 fps. Because of this, I'm wondering how would I workout at what frame interval(every frame, every two frames, every three frames, etc.) a 'keyframe'/changed frame should be placed to look good ? Is there a way to work that out arithmetically ? Does it make a bit difference/ is it safe two stick to twos even for 30fps ?

Yes, repeating every other frame works the same way at 30fps as it does at 24fps.

Animating on twos is done not because it looks better, but because it means less drawing and you can 'get away' with it. Nothing stops you from drawing every frame if you want the smoothest possible motion, and nothing prevents you from repeating a frame indefinitely when there is no motion.

If you really want to work at 24fps, you could always animate 'as though' you were working at 24fps -- your work will look sped up when viewed at 30fps -- and applying a cine expansion (3:2 pulldown) as a final step.


Trimming MOV clips / Saving as mp4 I am trimming extraneous time from some MOV files using the Microsoft Movies Anywhere app on my desktop. They're saved as MP4 files and have proportionately much smaller file sizes than the trimmed length would suggest (e.g. 18 sec, 228 MB MOV file / trimmed to 10 sec, 50 MB MP4 file). The content is relatively static so that wouldn't explain the difference. My principal concern: Am I losing quality by doing this? Would I be better off trimming in Resolve and saving in the same MOV format? Thanks.
Phil

My two cents...Video quality can be determined by several things (e.g. codec, bitrate, compression, etc.), so just looking at the container (i.e. MOV vs. MP4) isn't a sufficiently in-depth way of finding out the best option.


iPhone Background Video I am developing an iPhone app that has a background video at the login screen. Everything works, but the video is small because the iphone crops it down.

I guess my question is. Is it possible to make a video "cropped"? I would like to make this video fullscreen while the iphone is in portrait mode.

Cropping the video won't help, necessarily. What you need to do is render the video with the proper aspect ratio (roughly 9x16), and at or above the iPhone's native resolution, which is 750x1334 for the iPhone 6.

Source: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

It's mainly the aspect ratio that is causing the problem you're seeing. Your video is probably 16x9, which will look fine in landscape orientation. For portrait, it needs to be rotated.

If you're filming footage, you could just rotate the camera on its side. If you're working with existing footage, you will have to crop the video and pull out a 9x16 "tall" rectangle out of your existing 16x9 "wide" frame. Any decent video editing program is able to do this. Unless your source footage is high-resolution (1080p or better), though, you'll have trouble getting sharp results, since you're essentially zooming into a very small portion of the frame.


Why does FFMPeg sit at 00:00:00.00 if I start cutting a video a long ways into the file? I'm cutting audio out of files, and I'm running into an issue. When I run FFMPeg with this command

  FFMPEG.exe -i in.webm -q:a 0 -map a -ss hh:mm:ss -to hh:mm:ss -y out.mp3

If the -ss parameter is rather large (lets say 00:30:00), it takes a long time before it even starts cutting -- It just sits on the below statement for a long time before finally starting.

  size=       0kB time=00:00:00.00 bitrate=N/A

Does anyone know why it would do this and how I could fix it?

-ss after the input name performs a slow seek where ffmpeg decodes all frames but discards till it reaches the seek point.

With -ss before -i, ffmpeg performs a fast seek.

FFMPEG.exe -ss hh:mm:ss -i in.webm -q:a 0 -map a -t hh:mm:ss -y out.mp3

But you'll have to specify a duration instead of to with most formats.


Ffmpeg gui tool to apply filters Are there any GUI applications (linux or windows) that allow you to apply ffpmeg filters to a video and observe the changes in a preview in real time?

FfmpegGUI seems what you want: https://github.com/RomanSichkaruk/FFmpegGUI


Is there any way to get light flares in a canon m50 and its 15-45mm lens? I recently got a canon m50 for recording music videos, and despite several bad reviews I have read, I think it works quite well generally.
There are some things though that I do not like that I am trying to solve.

One of them is that whenever I have a source of light (like a lamp) in front of the camera or irradiating the edge of the lens I cannot get light flares (which would give a very aesthetic look to my videos).

So is it there any way to get light flares with the lens I have (a 15-45mm lens)? Or do I have to buy another lens for it?

The focal length of your lens does not necessarily determine wether or not you will see lens-flares. Lens-flares appear by reflecting light within the lenses, often bouncing around which in on itself would be considered a mistake. So chances are that with cheaper lenses, you will actually see more lens-flares than with an expensive zeiss-prime lens.

There are some tricks to make lens-flares more apparent: You can use a rubber-band and stretch it in front of the lens horizontally - the rubber-band will be almost invisible since it's so out of focus, however, the reflected light will be caught by it and give you an almost anamorphic-looking lens-flare. For more dyi-tips and tricks concerning lenses I recommend you check out the FilmRiot Youtube channel, or the IndyMogul one. They hinted me towards the rubber-band trick for example.


ffmpeg: How to fix `Unsupported channel layout "1 channels (FL)" error`, when I convert the source containing separated FL/FR audio streams? Problem

I want to convert the MOV file containing the separated FL/FR audio streams to MP4 file, transcoding the video to h264 and the audio to AAC.
However, it fails with the following error:

[aac @ 0x7ff515000c00] Unsupported channel layout "1 channels (FL)"

The source video and command what I used is as the following section.

How To Reproduce

Download ticket1474.mov as the source from https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/1474,
this source contains the following streams:
(The streams in issue are #0:1 and #0:2)

    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: mpeg2video (Main) (xdvf / 0x66766478), yuv420p(tv, bt709, progressive), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 34801 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 2997 tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2012-06-19T21:18:43.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Video Media Handler
      encoder         : XDCAM EX 1080p30 (35 Mb/s VBR)
      timecode        : 00:00:00;00
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, 1 channels (FL), s16, 768 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2012-06-19T21:18:43.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Sound Media Handler
    Stream #0:2(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, 1 channels (FR), s16, 768 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2012-06-19T21:18:43.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Sound Media Handler
    Stream #0:3(eng): Data: none (tmcd / 0x64636D74)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2012-06-19T21:18:43.000000Z
      handler_name    : Time Code Media Handler
      reel_name       : Untitled
      timecode        : 00:00:00;00

Then run the following command:

$ ffmpeg -i ticket1474.mov -b:a 128k -map 0 -y sample.mp4

You'll get the following error:

(snip)

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (mpeg2video (native) -> h264 (libx264))
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (pcm_s16le (native) -> aac (native))
  Stream #0:2 -> #0:2 (pcm_s16le (native) -> aac (native))
  Stream #0:3 -> #0:3 (copy)

(snip)

[aac @ 0x7ffbd203e400] Unsupported channel layout "1 channels (FL)"
Error initializing output stream 0:1 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:1 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
Conversion failed!

ffmpeg Version

$ ffmpeg -v
ffmpeg version N-93875-gc2771bbf81-tessus

Note: Stable version (ffmpeg-4.2) also fails.

What I Tried (Converting FL/FR streams to dual mono channel)

I guessed the problem can be solved if I could convert FL/FR streams to dual mono streams.

But I couldn't find the appropriate usage of ffmpeg for such scene.

The command I have tried is the following which also failed:

$ ffmpeg -i ticket1474.mov -b:a 128k -filter_complex '[0:1]pan=mono|FC=FL[mono];[0:2]pan=mono|FC=FR[mono]' -y sample.mp4

(snip)

Filter pan has an unconnected output

Any ideas?

No need to use pan filter, you can reassign channel layout using the channelmap filter.

ffmpeg -i ticket1474.mov -af channelmap=0 -b:a 128k -map 0:v -map 0:a -y sample.mp4

See docs for channelmap filter.

I've skipped mapping the timecode track. ffmpeg will set it as metadata in the input file, and the MP4 muxer will pick it up from there.


Surround sound for cinema feature film (Pricing of Dolby Surround) We are planning to shoot our first feature film with a budget of around 100'000-2'000'000$. And we'd like to master it in 5.1 Surround sound.

Normal procedure would be to do it with Dolby Surround, is there a source where I can find out how much this will cost? Or do I need to contact them?
Will it be realistic for our budget?

If not, what is the best way to make Surround sound for cinema?

We use Adobe CC and probabbly easyDCP for export.

If your plan is to deliver the end product as a DCP, you don't need any Dolby licensing or approval, you can just deliver the theater mix as a 6 discrete channels 5.1 mix in the DCP container.

Nevertheless, you will need an experienced sound mixer and appropriate dubbing theater. Budgeting the audio production and post-production will depend on many factors and the help of a sound person might be needed.


If I use a normal build of ffmpeg how take advantage of video acceleration for scale? I generally use ffmpeg for encode in h264 and also resize media

My common command is something like:

ffmpeg -i in.mov -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -b:v 5000k -s:v 1280x720 out.mov

I have an Nvidia GeForce 1060 card.

I also use the Zeranoe Builds or various generated with the crosscompile scripts (but i'm not very pro with it)

What i would like to know is:

1) It is possible to SCALE for example from 4k or FHD (1080p) to HD (720p) by taking advantage of GPU acceleration instead of using the normal SCALE ? It is possible also to specify if use bicubic, bilinear and so on?

2) It is possible to encode in h264 faster by taking advantage of GPU acceleration ?

And what syntax/options to specify in ffmpeg to do so.

Thanks in advance.

The answer to your second question is yes. Change -c:v libx264 to -c:v h264_nvenc.  I use those builds as well.  If you use the option -encoders you can see a list of included video and audio codecs.
This is a good resource for encoding with FFMPEG.

See the warning on this question if you try this


How to correct shadows when parts are too bright and other parts too dark? I have a scene with lots of highlights and some contrasting mountains. The problem is that the building (bottom-center) is too dark. When I try to fix shadows using curves the building becomes better but mountains lose contrast. Is there a way to fix the building without affecting dark mountain regions? This video is amateur so it is to tedious for me to use region-based filters method.

Source frame

Edited frame (building looks better but mountains look worse)

I can't give an After-Effects specific answer, but maybe this will help..

1 - If you want to color a specific part of the image, deal with "region based filtering."  In DaVinci-speak, that's Power Windows.  Masks, Shapes, Roto.  However you phrase it.  That's how you tell the computer what part of the image you want to effect.  Tie the mask to a tracker so you don't have to hand-animate it.  Also, make the edges of the mask VERY soft.  Don't try to mask the building exactly.  Have a several hundred pixel soft edge on the mask, and even if the tracking isn't quite perfect, you can still get away with murder.

2 - A Local Contrast Filter.  AKA "Fake HDR Look."  Used sparingly, this sort of thing can be used without turning the whole image into a horrible fairy dreamland nonsense picture.  It will help "pop" some of the low contrast regions without doing global color shifts.

3 - You may be able to gamma up the mids while leaving the lows dark.  This would reduce the contrast between the lit and shadowed snow, but leave the dark rocks.  If you have a really specific goal for what it is supposed to look like, it just won't be a 1-button process.


What software was used to create this stylized screencast for Disqus 2012? I am making a video and want to have a stylized screencast like the Disqus 2012 video: https://vimeo.com/43917945

What software is used to create these sorts of animations?

In order to grab the screencast itself, a number of applications have been discussed here before.

Then use whatever video suite you feel most comfortable with - the angled view used in that clip can be done in Premier or various others, but it isn't very complex.


Easy way to create AudioGrams, ideally with waveform & Subtitles / Closed Captions with progressing marker on them? Free to start with? Easy way to create AudioGrams, ideally with waveform & Subtitles / Closed Captions with progressing marker on them? Free to Start with?

Easy way to take my writings; quotes, poems or short insights into video with Narrated voice over,

Ideally with waveform &
A karaoke style or jumping/ progressing cursor/ marker on the text - Subtitle/ Captions?

Keeping some chosen static background image or the writing as an image.

Basically, give my writings a little bit of voice, diction, feel, vibe.

Thoughts/ suggestions on simpler easy mobile apps that can be used to this?

Or a

SIMPLER - REPEATABLE way to use a Video Editor for this PURPOSE? without having to master A VIDEO EDITOR?

Setting up an automated pipeline for this would take days for a trained person, weeks for someone who doesn't work in the industry. I would recommend you use After-Effects for those motion-graphics. Trapcode sound-keys has very good possibilities for audio-spectrums and wave-forms. Animating the text and highlighting it, karaoke-style would be quite easy. However, both After-Effects and Trapcode (by Red Giant) come with a cost.


Why is there a “2D” disc in every Blu-Ray 3D package? Wikipedia says:

  MPEG4-MVC compresses both left and right eye views with a typical 50% overhead compared to equivalent 2D content, and can provide full 1080p resolution backward compatibility with current 2D Blu-ray Disc players.

So if a Blu-Ray 3D is completely backwards compatible to a regular Blu-Ray, why do all consumer Blu-Ray-3D packages contain a 2D as well as a 3D disc? Is that just marketing (so people will even buy it if they don’t yet have a 3D-capable setup) or is there some technical reason behind this?

Disk space.  The 3d content takes more space so there is generally not enough room for special features.  The 2d special features are only on the 2d disk.  They take up the room that the second eye takes on the 3d disk.  They could make a special features only disk, but this is generally more expensive since it requires another master and another production line.  It's more cost effective and better marketing to just include the 2D copy.


How to connect a camera to a computer 100ft away? We are trying to live stream our worship service on Sunday morning.  We have located an ideal spot for the video camera. Unfortunately it is 100 ft away from the sound and network connections which are "behind" the front wall of the worship space.

What can we use to connect a consumer level ($400) video camera to a computer that is 100 or so feet away.  My understanding is that FireWire will run 10 ft max, and composite video no more then 30 feet without the image becoming soft and having color bleed issues.

Do you have a component out.  An R/G/B or R/G/B/V/U feed should be stable over a 100 ft run as long as you can separate the components on different wires.  We do this for the Excel and Break Out youth conferences with Youth For Christ and our runs are significantly longer than 100 feet.  If you don't, you could probably get a reasonably cheap firewire to component breakout.  There are also wireless HDMI options available if you have HDMI output.  The analog HDMI output is the same signal as DVI which is an RGB component type signal.


Mount a Camcorder on my Hat? Aside from just gluing (or velcroing) the camcorder onto a baseball hat beak, is there something better? Would this type of thing work?

http://www.amazon.com/Calumet-Quick-release-Video-Head-Adapter/dp/B003LRWB3S/ref=sr_1_102?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1347397880&sr=1-102

or is it irrelevant. If your answer is "get an Go Pro" or whatever, I still need to know how to mount it.

Thanks!

The key thing to remember about mounting any camera is stability. What makes Go Pro so attractive to many cinematographers are the many mounts available for it that fit the camera snugly on a helmet, car, surf board, or what have you. There will always be some motion when attaching a camera to say a helmet, but with the Go Pro helmet mount, you have minimized any residual motion. The only motion that is left is that of the helmet moving.

Trying to mount a camera to a baseball hat and expecting the stability of a helmet mount Go Pro or Contour camera is not easy or trivial.

First of all a baseball cap is not rigid like a helmet, there is flex built into the cap even in the beak. Adding an adapter may make things worse. You will have to experiment. Consider ways to make the cap as rigid as a helmet and ways to attach the camera so it moves with the cap without any swaying or extra movement.

For every design you think will work you will need to make test shots that cover the conditions of the actual production.

I think this can be done. But without your camera or your cap in my hands I would not venture a guess on how you go about it. This is truly hands on experimental kludge-0-matic work.


Would repeatedly importing and exporting H.246 video result in loss of quality? After exporting a time lapse video as H.246 mp4 using Adobe Premiere I realized I wanted a second copy without sound, but I had already changed the settings.  To save time I simply imported the mp4 to Premiere and then exported it again with the same H.246 settings but without the audio channel.

After close analysis of the 2 files I can't perceive any loss in quality, but I worry that I may have lost a tiny bit of quality through this process. Would repeating this process eventually result in noticeable loss of quality?

Compression by default is removing information. “Lossless” compression, if repeated, will indeed result in degradation after a few generations.

Higher compression rates will degrade after fewer generations.


Is a UK PAL video tape compatible with a continental Europe PAL VHS/S-VHS player in terms of video and sound I've read that the difference between UK PAL and Continental PAL is the carrier frequency used for the audio. But is that referring to:

the (now former) analogue TV broadcasts
the encoding on the tape
or both?

I am aware of the VHS PAL I standard for the UK and the VHS PAL B/G etc standard in continental Europe.

According to these links, if the SCART output is used, then the audio is available. The links say that the difference in audio encoding is only related to the RF (Radio Frequency) signal i.e. broadcasts:

VHS tape recordings in the U.K. where else do they work?
can I convert a PAL-B/G signal to a PAL-I signal?

My use case is for using a continental video player from Germany to play UK VHS PAL tapes and convert the video and audio digitally.

Setup:

Model: JVC HR-S9600EU (not EK - UK) - one of the apparently higher quality machines, according to:

VCR Buying Guide 1
VCR Buying Guide 2 - details of model codes such as EK and EU

Canopus ADVC100 attached to computer via Firewire

PAL standard references:

http://martin.hinner.info/vga/pal.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL#PAL-B/G/D/K/I

The UK PAL VHS tapes will play back in a German PAL deck. The actual method of audio recording is not related to the PAL specification. VHS records up to two linear audio tracks. HiFi capable decks record additional two HiFi tracks that are  multiplexed with the video signal. I don't remember the details.

A non-HiFi deck will ignore the HiFi tracks and use the linear tracks which should have the same content recorded.


Path created with an expression will not draw other than being selected I am trying to create a heart shape using an expression like this:

Start AE
New Composition + Ok
Layer, new shape layer
Expand to get the contents node and click add Path
Path -> Edit expression

Then I paste this expression:
var path = thisProperty;
var allPoints = new Array();
for (var a = 0; a < 360; a++) {
  var theta = degreesToRadians(a);
  x0 = Math.cos(theta);
  x = 300 * x0;
  y = 0.75 * 300 * (Math.sin(theta) - Math.sqrt(Math.abs(x0)));
  allPoints.push([x,y]);
}
path.createPath(allPoints, [], [], true);

and I see this on the screen

But this will only be visible in the designer.
If the object is deselected, it will become invisible.
There is no way to control the stroke width, color or fill.
How can I control those properties?
I am trying to add a stroke alongside the path, but they will not "connect".

Apologies if I've misunderstood, but you can just click on the Add triangle, and add a fill or a stroke to your shape:

The modifiers in the "Add" menu are hierarchical - so you have to add them below the path's hierarchical level.


Sync picture in picture clips in Davinci Resolve I'm trying to transition from Lightworks to Davinci Resolve. My question here is about the right way to sync 2 video clips and show them simultaneously.

In my case I have a video of a sporting event and another video of the game clock. I want to crop the clock video and show it in the corner of the game video. Obviously getting them synced is important.

I've seen how Davinci Resolve makes it very easy to create a Multicam clip and sync the angles. However that seems to work to show just one angle at a time, and I want to show both at the same time.  How do I accomplish this?

Bonus question - I want to cut out some spans of time in the game (timeouts, etc) which creates a challenge with the clock (at least in LW).  In LW I would sync both clips, then cut out time with them together so they stay synced. How do I do this in DR?

Thanks!

I've seen how Davinci Resolve makes it very easy to create a Multicam
  clip and sync the angles. However that seems to work to show just one
  angle at a time, and I want to show both at the same time. How do I
  accomplish this?

It does only show one angle at a time.  The way you accomplish it is to create two tracks on the timeline, drop an instance of the multicam on V1, duplicate that instance by alt/option dragging upwards to V2 (add shift after you start dragging to constrain the movement vertically, and to keep the clips synced temporally).  Then switch the angle of either one of them, so that V1 is showing angle A and V2 is showing angle B, for instance. Then adjust the transform and crop parameters on the topmost clip (V2) to expose the one underneath.

As for the bonus question, you can either be careful how you blade by making sure you have either both or neither clips selected when you hit command/control-B, or you can lasso-select the two clips, right-click, and select "Link Clips", then make sure clip linking is on by toggling the chain link icon (cmd/ctrl+shift+L).  Clip linking lets you move clips as groups, blade them as groups, and displays a red frame offset badge if the clips accidentally loose sync.  I'm not sure how lightworks works, but it's very similar to Premiere and FCP7.


How can I automatically remove pauses from a video? I have dozens of video files containing scenes of movement interspersed with 5-10 second periods of nothing happening (many identical frames in a row). There's no audio track and I'd like to strip the identical frames to remove those pauses and keep only the movement.

Is there a (preferably free) tool to accomplish this?

This can be accomplished with the mpdecimate filter in the free program ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i "in.mp4" -vf "mpdecimate" "out.mp4"


ffmpeg - video conversion with multiple audio tracks I am converting an mkv h.264 video to HEVC. The file has two audio tracks. How can I copy all audio tracks?

I used this command (from a .bat file):

ffmpeg -i "!original!" -c:v libx265 -preset medium -crf 28 -c:a copy "g:\Prepare\Convert\!file!"

This exports only one audio track, but I always I need to copy all audio tracks.

Use

ffmpeg -i "!original!" -map 0:v -map 0:a -c:v libx265 -preset medium -crf 28 -c:a copy "g:\Prepare\Convert\!file!"

FFmpeg by default only picks one video, audio and subtitle track (if they are present) from among the sources. Express map assignments are required in order to include other streams. 0:a selects all audio streams.


How to generate decryption key from m3u8 manifest? (OR) How to decrypt an excrypted MP4 using URI and IV? I am downloading an HLS video which is AES-128 encrypted. The issue is that the downloaded video is also encrypted and hence, not viewable.

The website is serving 2 M3U8 manifests:

The first manifest (playlist.m3u8) refers to a chunklist_alphanumeric.m3u8. A sample is here.
The second manifest (chunklist_alphanumeric.m3u8) seems like this.

In this context, I have the following two questions

How can I generate the decryption key?
How can I decrypt the video using the decryption key?

I'm using Windows-10 (64-bit).

You cant generate the key. You have to download the key. The URL is in the manifest. In this case it looks like you need to substitute some values first.

To decrypt, since this files uses AES-128 and not SAMPLE-AES, you can just decrypt each file using OpenSSL


Add overlay video and animated text (textbox and shadow) with FFmpeg I'm trying to figure out how this works, but I couldn't find the final solution.

ffmpeg -i input -i overlayvideo \
-filter_complex \
"[0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS [v01]; \
[1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS [gradient]; \
[2:v] drawtext=fontfile=...font.ttf: text='Test': fontcolor=white:fontsize=54: shadowcolor=black@0.6:shadowx=4:shadowy=2: \
box=1: boxcolor=a60000@0.4:boxborderw=10:x='310':y='350',format=yuva444p,fade=t=in:st=1:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=7:d=1:alpha=1, setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1][txt]; \
[v01][gradient] overlay [v02]; \
[v02][txt] overlay=[outv]" \
-c:v libx264 -profile:v main -level:v 3.1 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -map [outv] \
-f mp4 -y 'output.mp4'

The error message:
No output pad can be associated to link label 'txt'.
Error initializing complex filters.
Invalid argument*

I've studied these solutions, but for the time being, I don't understand where I made the mistake.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47322739/ffmpeg-overlay-multiple-fading-texts-with-different-colors

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Create%20a%20mosaic%20out%20of%20several%20input%20videos

What have I forgotten why the output is not good?
Thank you for your advice and help.

You only have two inputs, so 2:v can't exist. Instead, you'll need a base canvas to draw the text upon. I've used the color source filter for that. And you probably want that canvas to be the same size as the video. I've used scale2ref for that.

ffmpeg -i input -i overlayvideo \
-filter_complex \
"[0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS [v01]; \
[1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS [gradient]; \
color=black@0:duration=8,format=yuva444p[txtbase];[txtbase][v01]scale2ref[txtbase][v01];[txtbase] drawtext=fontfile=...font.ttf: text='Test': fontcolor=white:fontsize=54: shadowcolor=black@0.6:shadowx=4:shadowy=2: \
box=1: boxcolor=a60000@0.4:boxborderw=10:x='310':y='350',fade=t=in:st=1:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=7:d=1:alpha=1[txt]; \
[v01][gradient] overlay [v02]; \
[v02][txt] overlay[outv]" \
-c:v libx264 -profile:v main -level:v 3.1 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -map [outv] \
-f mp4 -y 'output.mp4'


How to insert dynamic data into a produced video I was wondering if anyone knew the technique or how to place dynamic information into a produced video?

The idea is that you could, say connect to facebook, and then display your friends faces in a movie about missing persons or similar. It's the same principle as the Intel Museum of Me where you grant access to facebook and it creates a gallery of your facebook pictures.

Or similar to this video where you can upload your face into a video, http://vimeo.com/25392805

I've been searching for ages for a method or technique for this but I can't find anything. Searching for "how to insert pictures in video" or "how to load dynamic data into video" doesn't seem to yield the right kinds of results.

Thoughts appreciated.

You should try googling for something like green screen software or chromakey software

There is a wide range of free, cheap and very expensive applications to do this. Some of the free ones actually work okay - depends on your requirements.


Whats the name of this Effect? I've been seeing a lot of Motion Graphics work including this special destruction like effect. It looks like this:

Watch Video here

Does anyone know, what this effect is called? Or what program is used to create it? Propably something like C4D or Maya? Any Suggestions?

I don't think there is a name to the effect. If I were to describe it, it would just be "the effect of a shell of an object cracking up and falling / peeling away in fractured pieces".

I am sure you already know the compositing side of things, where you do the colour grading, atmospheric effects and such in After Effects.

For the 3D software I work primarily with Maya and 3D Studio Max. I am very certain any 3D software that can simulate dynamic objects (rigid bodies / soft bodies / cloth) will be able to achieve an effect like this. These include Blender, Maya, Max, C4D, Houdini, Softimage XSI and a host of many others.

In motion graphics C4D is definitely a good choice for procedural effects like breaking, cracking, fracturing. In some software (like Maya and 3D Studio Max), creating the fractured pieces procedurally could be a challenge. The artist might need to use a fracturing plug.

After the objects are properly fractured, the dynamics portion of any the software listed aboev would definitely be able to achieve the physically believable simulation of the pieces falling away.

Thereafter you would need shading/lighting/rendering skills to render out the full image, or portions of it in passes, in order to achieve the final image.


Premiere pro transition presets Where can I find some presets or plugins for premiere pro to do some fancier video transitions?

Here's a list of free third-party plugins for Premiere Pro, including additional transitions.

Here's the official Adobe Add-on Website, where you will find both free and paid-for plugins, also including some transition preset packs.

Here's a great tool which will help you find even more transition presets on your own!


Color-correcting super 8 video from 1975 I've got some super 8 video from 1975 that I had digitized, and the color is pretty wonky (here's a screen capture, we're actually skiing down a snow-covered road)

I assume it's the film itself and not the digitization, but now what?  I don't have a professional editing setup, but I do have Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.0 which has a color corrector filter but I have no idea how to set the color corrector to improve the video.

How do I figure out what settings to use?  Will this tool do what I need?

Play with color corrector controls. Use "High" control to adjust snow to the tint you prefer, use "Mid" and "Low" to adjust face and hat. As you see, I moved "High" and "Mid" to the green/blue zone to offset red tint, but I moved "Low" to the red/yellow zone because this way the face and the hat looks better to me.

Or you can convert it to black and white with the Black and White effect.


Hardsubbing ASS onto MPEG4 I have an ASS as the subtitle stream (with these fonts: - Orotund, jagb_.tff, jagw_.ttf, JUST.ttf, Gabrielle.ttf) in an MKV.

What technique should I use to hardsub this subtitle stream onto the MPEG4 (ISO/AVC) without losing quality?

Thanks for all suggestions

I'm pretty sure it's impossible to hardcode subs without quality loss.

Unless there's a new technique developed in the last 4 years, the file needs to be converted to a lossless type then the subs need to be coded frame by frame and then compress again.

So: There is no technique that may be used to hardsub onto a compressed video without losing [more] quality.


How to decode the PTS timestamps and extract the video frames I want to extract the video frames and get the PTS timestamp for each one of them. I have an input MPEG-2 TS file and I prefer to use some open source tool like ffmpeg or something similar. The problem is that when I am using -vf showinfo option it shows me a restamped PTS. This is the command I am using:

ffmpeg -hide_banner -i input.ts -vf showinfo -vsync 0 -start_number 0 fr%05d.jpg &> log.txt

So here my result is something similar to:

[Parsed_showinfo_0 @ 0x5629810a2000] n: 435 pts:1593000 pts_time:17.7    pos: 55729780 fmt:yuv420p sar:1/1 s:1920x1080 i:T iskey:0 type:B checksum:27AB3255 plane_checksum:[B27F2CE8 F1689963 59E56BFB] mean:[142 127 129] stdev:[36.5 2.8 4.1]
[Parsed_showinfo_0 @ 0x5629810a2000] n: 436 pts:1596600 pts_time:17.74   pos: 55690112 fmt:yuv420p sar:1/1 s:1920x1080 i:T iskey:0 type:B checksum:94AD9CBE plane_checksum:[FB0C9721 C477122C 2AA6F362] mean:[142 127 129] stdev:[36.5 2.8 4.1]

While when I execute the ffprobe command:

$ ffprobe -i input.ts -show_frames -select_streams v:0 -print_format flat | grep pkt_pts=

frames.frame.435.pkt_pts=4205067450
frames.frame.436.pkt_pts=4205071050

And I need to find out the pkt_pts timestamp on the extracted files possibly with only one command. On top of that, I was checking the SCTE-35 and there I had an offset with 150 frames between the insert intervals. For example according to the PKT_PTS the start and stop frames are 1650 and 2550 which are signaled over SCTE-35 but the actual frames are 1500 2400 when I look only on the extracted frames.

FFmpeg will, by default, remove the starting offset. To preserve it, add -copyts.

The description of -vsync 0 isn't accurate and was written 8+ years ago: Each frame is passed with its timestamp from the demuxer to the muxer.. Video sync takes effect only once the frame has exited the decoder(+filtergraph) pipeline. But you should keep it to avoid dropping/duplicating frames.


Is it possible to automatically generate highlights from video? Given a video of a soccer/futbol match recorded from a single camcorder. Is there any way to create a highlights video that would only show the goals?

Since the view is static, is it possible to say something like "every time the ball is in either one of the goals, go back three 3 seconds create a clip of the goal". Do it for every goal scored and then merge those goal clips to create the goal highlights.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Theoretically, sure, it is probably possible to devise a computer program that could recognize the ball entering the goal and cut video around it, however this would have to be custom computer vision code and not something that would be generally available to the public.

It probably isn't as simple as just a motion trigger either since it needs to be something just the right size moving.  It would also be exceptionally hard to tell a goal attempt apart from a goal, though perhaps you could have it watch the net for movement using security camera software or something related assuming that the net is otherwise pretty static (and depending on your angle).

Overall, I wouldn't expect the greatest of results from such a system though.  It sounds problematic at best, even if you can get it working in the first place.

If you can synchronize a clock with the start of the recording, your better bet may be to hit a button during the game to take note of the time each time a goal is made and then try feeding the list of times in to a scripting based video editor that can cut 15 seconds before the goal and a few seconds after from the video and put them all together.  It's probably less work to get configured and more reliable, but it still would be a fair bit of work to do.


Recommendations for Video Recording/Editing I am going to portray Mark Twain lecturing on his life "so far" at the age of 60 (the monologue/one-man, one-act play will be set in 1896).

I plan to perform in small ampitheateres, opera houses, and suchlike venues.

Although I have decades of public speaking experience, this will be a new venture for me ("show business"), and I will need to market my performance; specifically, I need to have a performance videotaped and then a "trailer" made of a section of it that will provide booking agents with a good feel for how the performance "plays."

Is my best option (naturally, I'm "on a budget") to hire a videographer to film and edit this, providing me with the electronic files, or can I get by with having a friend film it and use software (preferably open source) to do the editing and post it on youtube?

This is always one of the biggest questions when a consumer finds they have a need to record something, just once. Couples wonder if their friend can record their wedding, dad's try their best to record their son's baseball game, and actors on a tight budget hope to capture their performance without the expense of a professional videographer.

In short, I'd say you get what you pay for. If your performance is only an hour or two, you can probably get a good videographer for $500 or even less. Depending on the venue, theater houses might already have dedicated locations for cameras, and could probably refer you to good videographers.

Editing is as much art as it is skill, and usually comes under different expense terms. Editing a single shoot production should be very cheap and easy. This, you could probably do yourself for free, as long as you're willing to put in the time.

You mention a "section" of your performance. I imagine you mean like a several minutes long movie trailer. I would see if any of the performance houses you will be performing at will let you record sections in the morning or something, when there's no audience, and the cameras can be set anywhere in the theater. I would hire a videographer with two or three cameras, then perform the parts that you want in the trailer. Later, this videographer or another can edit the parts into your final production, the marketing trailer. For the best success, you need to storyboard the trailer; make sure you have a very clear and exact idea of what it will be. Then start the shoot and stay on target. Do not deviate from the planned story. You should be able to get all of the shooting done in a few hours.

Editing will be difficult if you've never done it before, so I would definitely hire someone for this. They will know how to artistically mix the clips together, add animations where necessary, find the right music to put over it, laugh tracks and the like, etc. If you're already starting a new career in show business you probably shouldn't try a concurrent hobby of video editing. Minimum I would budget for this is $1000. It might seem expensive, but you won't regret it. Show business people are extremely impatient and if you don't keep their attention, they'll move on. A professional level trailer will keep their attention.

So total budget, I would go for the videographer and the editor, is at $1500. Doable and I think you'll be very pleased with the product and the attention it will bring.

Again, if you don't want to do that, as in, don't have the money, you can certainly try to enlist friends and edit yourself, but it will cost you a lot of time and you probably won't be very pleased with the product in the end, and neither will the talent scouts.


Any software with high quality vfx graphics? I am planning to make my own movie and I need a software that produces high quality video graphics. I am new to this and am sorry if this is not the place to post this.

I assume that you want to add lower thirds or logos to your videos. You also seem to have already an NLE (video editing program) for cutting your videos. Choosing one would be out of scope of this question.

There is a simple way of creating high quality vfx graphics for videos:

Design them as static images in photo software like the Gimp or Adobe Photoshop
The image resolution should be the same as your video resolution
Use transparency for all areas where the video should show through
A practical advice: I usually put one frame of my video on the lowest layer and design the vfx on an upper one. This is to have a visual reference how these two would fit together
When finished, make the lower layer with the video frame invisible, so that you only see your vfx on the transparent background
Save it as PNG image with transparency
In your NLE, add a new video track on top of the other ones and put your PNG image on it
To add a bit of animation, you can fade this image in and out, or let it move in from one side and move out to the other side

These animation effects are very basic, but usually you don't need more for lower thirds. If you need more animation, you should look into software like Adobe After Effects, Blender, Nuke, Fusion, ... But these are more difficult to use than creating a single image with the photo software of your choice.

Update

Since the OP asked if there are free solutions, I add the following:

You can use free software like the Gimp as well as paid software like Adobe Photoshop to design these lower thirds. Any photo software that can work with transparency and layers can do this. Having linear gradients in image as well as layer masks would benefit your results, though are not strictly necessary.

The key point is that you use the software that you are already familiar with, to have some quick, but professional-looking results.

If you want to go the way of software explicitly designed for VFX, then you have some free options too with Blender, Natron (both open source) or Fusion (commercial, but has a free version).


Can I make m4v files "better" before archiving? (adding keyframes, or lossless optimization, or ?) I've got a decent bitrate DVD rip of an animated TV series, and before sending it to it's forever home (currently my PS3's extra HD space), I was wondering: can you take existing m4v files and make them somehow "better" losslessly?  Maybe adding more seekable points, or optimizing headers, or sprinkle in more video chapter marker thumbnails, or ...?

H264 MPEG-4 AVC, 720x480

No and yes.

For one, you cannot magically pull out more information from the video you have. On the other hand side, you can try to use NVIDIA's AI-Upscaling, which works fine on documentaries and nature, but it turns humans into horrible creatures. The Ai practically guesses what information is hidden between the pixels, so it's not 100% accurate.

But just thinking about the problem at hand should make it clear, that there's nothing "hidden" between blurry pixels. There just isn't enough information in the stream and you cannot simply enhance the video like you see in csi:miami. You can try using post-processing, such as sharpening, upscaling to 4k using Red-Giant's plugins (which are expensive though) and enhancing contrast. All of that is just post-processing though, so if the file's a turd, you'll be polishing a turd.


add Audio to two Video in below command here i have one command that is working properly but i want to add audio to second and third video not only second video.So, how to proceed?

fmpeg -y -i intro-17may.mp4 -i video.mp4 -i outro.mp4 -i energy-song.mp3 -i vcs-watermark-video.png -filter_complex "[0:v]drawtext=fontfile=FutuMd.ttf: text='Hello World': x=300: y=450: fontsize=40: fontcolor=white: enable='between(t,2,5)',fade=t=out:st=5:d=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
[1:v][4]overlay=W-w-5:H-h-5,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1,fade=t=out:st=63:d=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1]; \
[2:v]fade=t=in:st=0:d=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v2]; \
[3:a]volume=enable='between(t,34,36)':volume=-8dB,volume=enable='between(t,36,42)':volume=-10dB,volume=enable='between(t,47,51)':volume=-8dB,volume=enable='between(t,51,58)':volume=-10dB[3a];[1:a][3a]amix=inputs=2:duration=shortest[maina]; \
[v0][0][v1][maina][v2][2]concat=n=3:v=1:a=1[outv][outa]" -vcodec libx264 -c:a aac -ac 2 -map "[outv]" -map "[outa]" c4.mp4

Use

ffmpeg -y -i intro-17may.mp4 -i video.mp4 -i outro.mp4 -i energy-song.mp3 -i vcs-watermark-video.png -filter_complex "[0:v]drawtext=fontfile=FutuMd.ttf: text='Hello World': x=300: y=450: fontsize=40: fontcolor=white: enable='between(t,2,5)',fade=t=out:st=5:d=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
[1:v][4]overlay=W-w-5:H-h-5,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1,fade=t=out:st=63:d=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1]; \
[2:v]fade=t=in:st=0:d=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v2]; \
[3:a]volume=enable='between(t,34,36)':volume=-8dB,volume=enable='between(t,36,42)':volume=-10dB,volume=enable='between(t,47,51)':volume=-8dB,volume=enable='between(t,51,58)':volume=-10dB,adelay=6000|6000[3a]; \
[v0][0][v1][1:a][v2][2]concat=n=3:v=1:a=1[outv][outa];[outa][3a]amix=inputs=2:duration=shortest[outa]" -vcodec libx264 -c:a aac -ac 2 -map "[outv]" -map "[outa]" c4.mp4

The BG music is delayed by 6000 ms (duration of intro) and then mixed with the audio after concat.


How to convert an mkv file with hevc encoding to mkv with avc I have some mkv files with a hevc encoding which is not allowing me to burn to disc in covertxtodvd as it shows no video track as the encoding isn't supported, i was wondering if it was possible to convert the files encoding into avc encoding whilst keeping embedded subtitles and the same mkv format.
Thank you for reading,
Nick W

ffmpeg, a command-line tool, can do this:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a copy -c:s copy -fflags +genpts output.mkv

Adjust the CRF for larger or smaller size (lower number produces better quality but larger size)

Download ffmpeg (32-bit static version) from here.


how to set duration, fading start time and end time video wise in below command? ffmpeg -y -i intro.mp4 -i video.mp4  -i outro.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=black:s=1280x720 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=out:st=10:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
 [1:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=10:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+10/TB[v1]; \
 [2:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=10:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+20/TB[v2]; \
 [3:v]trim=duration=30[over]; \
 [over][v0]overlay[over1]; \
 [over1][v1]overlay[over2]; \
 [over2][v2]overlay=format=yuv420[outv]" \
-vcodec libx264 -map '[outv]' merge.mp4

Your fade out timings are one second too late - the fade out should start at 9 seconds of each clip so that it can end by 10 seconds.

ffmpeg -y -i intro.mp4 -i video.mp4  -i outro.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=black:s=1280x720:d=30 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
 [1:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+10/TB[v1]; \
 [2:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+20/TB[v2]; \
 [3][v0]overlay[over1]; \
 [over1][v1]overlay[over2]; \
 [over2][v2]overlay=format=yuv420[outv]" \
-vcodec libx264 -map '[outv]' merge.mp4

If you have audio as well in the 3 files, use

ffmpeg -y -i intro.mp4 -i video.mp4  -i outro.mp4 -f lavfi -i color=black:s=1280x720:d=30 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
 [1:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+10/TB[v1]; \
 [2:v]format=pix_fmts=yuva420p,fade=t=in:st=0:d=1:alpha=1,fade=t=out:st=9:d=1:alpha=1,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+20/TB[v2]; \
 [3][v0]overlay[over1]; \
 [over1][v1]overlay[over2]; \
 [over2][v2]overlay=format=yuv420[outv]; \
 [0][1][2]concat=n=3:v=0:a=1[outa]" \
-vcodec libx264 -map '[outv]' -map '[outa]' merge.mp4

This command assumes that all 3 files have 10 seconds of audio each, eolse sync will be lost.


What exactly does the video rendering quality option do in Sony Vegas Pro? I have created a video with Sony Vegas Pro 8.5 with an intro that includes graphics, pan/crop events, and generated text. There is also a "lower third" banner right after it.

What is odd to me is that there are quite a few issues when I render it with "best" video rendering qualtiy, while "preview" gives me no troubles. While on "best" the problem is that the text, most of the images, and anything with a pan/crop event are blurred and/or wiggle. You can especially see the wiggle on the portrait images once the next image starts scrolling up and on the third slide for the duration it is showing.

Here is a "best" sample of the video on YouTube.

Here is a "preview" sample of the video on YouTube.

This makes no sense to me. Why is the "preview" setting better than the "best" setting? What exactly does this setting do? Vegas Pro 8.5, if it matters.

Sample Render settings:

Project properties:

Here are some snap shots that show it looks crisp with "preview" but not "best".

            Crisp "preview" snapshot on left                     Not crisp "best" snapshot on right.

This is the explanation for the four quality modes, as provided by Vegas tech support long ago:

  Quality: Best

  Scaling: bi-cubic/integration

  Field Handling: on

  Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)

  Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

  Quality: Good

  Scaling: bi-linear

  Field Handling: on

  Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)

  Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

  Quality: Preview

  Scaling: bi-linear

  Field Handling: off

  Field Rendering: off

  Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

  Quality: Draft

  Scaling: point sample

  Field Handling: off

  Field Rendering: off

  Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

  Scaling:

  These methods come into play when conforming sources that differ from
  the output size. They are also used when panned, cropped or resized in
  track motion.

  Bi-Cubic/Integration - Best image resizing algorithm available in
  Vegas. Quality differences will be most noticeable when using very
  large stills or stretching small sources.

  Bi-linear - Best compromise between speed and quality. This method
  will produce good results in most cases.

  Point Sampling - Fast but produces poor results.

  Field Handling:

  This refers to the field conformance stage of Vegas's video engine.
  This includes Interlaced to Progressive conversion, Interlaced to
  interlaced output when scaling, motion or geometric Video FX and
  Transitions are involved. Skipping this stage can sometimes result in
  bad artifacts when high motion interlaced sources are used.

  Field Rendering:

  When the output format is interlaced, Vegas will internally render at
  the field rate (twice the frame rate) to achieve smooth motion and FX
  interpolation.

  Frame Rate Resample / IFR (Interlace Flicker Reduction):

  Frame Rate Resample:

  This kicks in when speed changes are made through Velocity Envelopes
  and/or event stretching. In can also be used when up-converting low
  frame rate sources. This only kicks in if the resample switch is
  turned on and quality is set to good or best.

  Interlace Flicker Reduction:

  This kicks in if the event switch is turned on and quality is set to
  good or best. See Vegas' documentation for a description of this
  switch.


Make video look like it was shot in a dark room So I'm working on a video that I want to look a bit cooler. It was shot in a normally illuminated room (no special equipment, only normal light bulbs), it looks like this:

With a person sitting in front of the laptop. There are also over-the-shoulder shots with the laptop display being shown.
So, I want to make the video a bit darker and surreal. It does not have to look like it was actually shot in the dark, it would even benefit from looking a bit unnatural and obviously edited. To be more specific, I want the person sitting in front of the laptop (as well as the laptop itself) to be clearly visible, whilst the table, the chair, and everything in the background gets darker and unobstrusive.

I'm using the current version of Premiere Pro. What is the best approach to get that kind of effect?

And please, no lecture on good preparation and such. The recording was done in a rush and the whole video is kind of a last-minute thing. It doesn't have to look perfect, I'm open for suggestions ...

You are lucky that you don't have extreme lighting conditions in your shot, also you're indoors. So it should definitely be possible to get the footage a bit darker looking without making it look weird.
I can recommend working in After Effects rather than Premiere, its far more suited for advanced lighting correction.

I would start by masking the already dark areas of your footage and make them even darker. Try to create a more focused looking light that's coming from the light bulb/screen or whatever light source you want to have. If you want to create new light sources you will also have to make some masks to emulate the way the light would shine on the surrounding objects.
The whole part behind the chair should be a lot darker.
Generally make everything that is already in a shadowy area even darker and lower the brightness of the image overall to a point that feels good.

Also something that should help is this (bit dated) tutorial by Andrem Kramer. Its not perfect but definitely a good help to figure out the workflow:
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/day_to_night_conversion/


How to stitch images from DIY panorama video rig with 3 canon 60d's? I want to build a camera rig with 3 canon 60d's to get some kind of panorama video. To verify my idea before building the real rig, I've implemented the setup in Blender  to test all possible cases:

Unfortunately I don't have much experience to stitch the images/videos correctly. How can I achieve that? Which software is suitable for that? How far the images of the cameras should overlap to get the best results? Besides the lens distortion, is there still something to consider?

You could try if kolor works for you. It's not free but it's made for your exact needs. Check out the gallery for what they did. Or you can do it manually as Adam explains.


How can I create the blurring effect in a video like this? I am noticing more and more product videos being released using lots of blur and the focus shifting from one point to another.

This is an example of the technique I'm refering to:
http://vimeo.com/43763778

How is the shot accomplished?

I am noob when it comes to video editing, so I want to ask what are the producers of this video most likely using, and how are they doing it?

Sorry if this question seems a bit open ended, but I just want to ask, what techniques have been apparently used on this video to make it what it is.

Thank you.

There are no filters applied there.  It's pretty much basic shots, probably from a DSLR based on the feel of the video.  The shots with the one guy were shot with things overexposed and then they upped the contrast to try and do recovery, but it results in large overblown highlights where there was too much light to fit in the dynamic range (the amount of variation between brightest and darkest spot) that the camera could capture.  It otherwise all looks like standard footage though, nothing special done other than basic color grading.

Note that if you are talking about the shifting blur effect, that's called rack focus and is so apparent because of the use of a fast lens with a short depth of field.  It looks remarkably similar to footage I get with my 5D Mark iii and 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens.

Rack Focus can either be from out of focus completely to focus on a particular subject or from one subject to another. It generally uses a narrow depth of field and a follow focus may be used to help reach the focus points exactly and in a controlled manner.

The technique is often used either to introduce a subject from a dream or stunned like state (for example, if someone is waking up or in an accident, their pov might start out with a rack focus from being completely out of focus). It is also very frequently used to shift the viewer's focus from one subject to another in a dramatic way. In the more artistic sense, it can also be used to simply explore the depth of the scene by moving the viewer through the space.


Which is better for tracking? I have access to a camera that is capable of both 1080p60fps and 4k30fps. Which would be easier to track details? The shot I'm using isn't shaky or anything.

1080p60 will give better temporal resolution, which is key for tracking details that move within the scene.  If the scene is ridiculously simple, such as if the only object moving at all is a Mac screen on a swivel, and if you can control the speed of the swivel however you like, then framerate is no longer the sole determinant of temporal resolution.  You can achieve the same temporal resolution shooting a half-speed move at 30fps as you can a full-speed move at 60fps.  In that case, shooting at 4K will give you greater spatial resolution than 1080p.

In the normal case, temporal, not spatial, resolution is the big bug-a-boo for object tracking.


Export from Camtasia to Premiere Pro, with good audio How can I export from Camtasia to Premiere Pro keeping the two audio tracks as separate audio tracks in Premiere Pro?

If all else fails, do two different exports, one with each audio track muted and then put them on separate tracks in Premiere.


Is it possible to convert a AVCHD video stored in a MTS file loss-less without recoding into a Blue-Ray video disk? And if so which application is able to do that? I do not need menus.

Right now I copy the MTS files directly to a BD data disk, which can be played by a PS3. But I would prefer a standard BD video disk. But I do not want to recode the data. Is there any way?

Here you go, here is a list of applications on PC and MAC that open MTS files and can convert them to a more desirable file format.

http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/mts


Why have offset camera placement? I've noted in recent times that many YouTube videos show a single person not always speaking directly at the camera. I understand from my limited experience to video production many years ago that looking directly at the camera presents "eye contact" between the presenter and the viewer.

In the case of an interview or in a video with multiple subjects engaged in conversation, having a camera out of line with the face of a particular subject  provides for a broader presentation, which can be useful in demonstration type videos.

I've done a few searches to this SE, finding it difficult to determine search terms. The answer presented in the closed question:
Why use different camera angles?
provides a confirmation of the information in the previous paragraph, in that there is more than one subject involved in the video.

It is disconcerting to see a camera shot from the 2 o'clock perspective (or any angle other than straight ahead) of the presenter speaking to the viewing audience, but not looking at the viewing audience.

I have not found a rationale for this camera position and suspect that it does not belong in any videos of my own creation or in those in which I will be involved.

This may sound like a rant, but it's a search for understanding ostensibly to prevent a future gaffe. It's possible, I suppose that it's a new presentation feature and should be included?

By request and from the camera view, directly to the camera:

Same video, from a camera placed off-line:

The video is of a doctor presenting information regarding the Corona Virus from YouTube. It starts a few seconds before the camera placement switch.

It can be used with different intentions, mainly to give the footage more dynamism.

The off-camera look gives the impression to be filmed like an interview, with an interlocutor in front of the presenter but off-camera.

Of course in this example there is no interlocutor, it is the camera, so it can make the impression of combining some "behind the scenes" footage. It adds a bit of "production value".

Sometimes the second camera does not film the person's face, probably the hands, probably the full body, and sometimes the interviewer, again not present in this case.

Probably a good option is using two off-camera angles.

It is simply a matter of style. Fortunately, the rules are not carved in stone.

One psychological effect from staring at the camera vs off camera angle is that the first one can feel like someone is "lecturing" you, trying to convincing you.

The second feels more like someone is just pointing at "facts" and you can decide or not to take them into account. That is why interviewed people do not look at the camera, but the presenter normally does.

This example probably tries to do both.


Can't add Motion Blur to layer imported from Photoshop I can't enable Motion Blur on this layer:

Any ideas what could be wrong?

Thats because you have the collapse transformations button ticked:

When collapse transformations is ticked After Effects takes the options of the layers inside the 'loader' composition. So you will need to open up the 'loader' composition (double click) and then you can enable motion blur on the layers inside.

When you import Photoshop documents into After Effects as compositions, any groups in the PSD become pre-comps within AE.


Live stream from GoPro to YouTube or another video service Here is what I would like to do.

Get the cheapest GoPro camera(s) that will live stream events to YouTube without any other equipment. I would like to record the event to YouTube as it is happening.

The bandwidth is not great but I do not care about the quality of the livestream. I'm more concerned about highest quality video recording.

Here are my questions:
1) Which GoPro camera is appropriate for this job?
2) Is it possible to select some stream settings that will sacrifice the quality of the live stream for better quality recording?

Thanks..

No GoPro is appropriate for the job by itself.  Any of them (or even a basic webcam) could work as a camera, your problem is that you need something that can encode and send a stream by itself.  That is a specialized device and not something a GoPro can do.  You would want a either a device built for doing a direct stream (such as an IP camera) or you would want to have a camera with a clean HDMI (or other) output that can be fed in to a stand alone streaming device.

For the second half, recording quality and stream quality are completely and 100% independent of each other.  They are both two different captures of the same visual information, but the sensor is going to pick up maximum quality regardless of if you are recording in some low bandwidth format or not and the steam is going to run off the output which should be the high quality format regardless of what quality you are streaming at.


Print to file: Details of every NAL unit in raw H.264 file I have a raw H.264 file. I would like to retrive both length and frame number of every NAL unit in this file. The result must be printed to file.

Is there any tool to do this?

I have tried using H.264 Stream Analysis on Windows and it works well, but I cannot find an option for printing to file.

You can use the trace_headers bitstream filter in ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i in.264 -c copy -bsf:v trace_headers -f null - 2> NALUS.txt

The text file will have data like this,

[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] Packet: 102 bytes, no pts, dts -31999, duration 40000.
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] Slice Header
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 0           forbidden_zero_bit                                          0 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 1           nal_ref_idc                                                10 = 2
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 3           nal_unit_type                                           00001 = 1
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 8           first_mb_in_slice                                           1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 9           slice_type                                              00110 = 5
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 14          pic_parameter_set_id                                        1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 15          frame_num                                                0001 = 1
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 19          pic_order_cnt_lsb                                      000100 = 4
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 25          num_ref_idx_active_override_flag                            1 = 1
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 26          num_ref_idx_l0_active_minus1                                1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 27          ref_pic_list_modification_flag_l0                           0 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 28          luma_log2_weight_denom                                      1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 29          chroma_log2_weight_denom                                    1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 30          luma_weight_l0_flag[i]                                      0 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 31          chroma_weight_l0_flag[i]                                    0 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 32          adaptive_ref_pic_marking_mode_flag                          0 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 33          cabac_init_idc                                              1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 34          slice_qp_delta                                      000010011 = -9
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 43          disable_deblocking_filter_idc                               1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 44          slice_alpha_c0_offset_div2                                  1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 45          slice_beta_offset_div2                                      1 = 0
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 46          cabac_alignment_one_bit                                     1 = 1
[AVBSFContext @ 00000000027d3580] 47          cabac_alignment_one_bit                                     1 = 1

You'll have to parse the file to count frames.

Alternatively, H.264 Stream Analysis appears to be a frontend for h264_bitstream. Latest source available from https://sourceforge.net/projects/h264bitstream/files/h264bitstream/0.1.9/. It can be easily compiled on Windows under MinGW/MSYS2.


Closed shapes with Newton 2 I'm trying to simulate water filling up a closed sphere, but I'm having trouble getting Newton to recognize that my box is empty on the inside but has borders. It only sees my box as a solid object and I am unable to put anything else inside of it.

I've tried removing the fill and playing around with the box's properties but it doesn't seem to be affecting anything. I know it's possible because I've seen a few videos using the technique, but not a single one explaining how to do it.

In short, I want to be able to create a "hollow" box that Newton can see and that I can fill with a bunch of tiny balls.

instead of shape layer with outline use solid layer with masks to recreate the outline. that seems to work for me..


Help choose correct HDMI GPU resolution to get standard PAL/NTSC signal Hi im trying to go from computer's ATI GPU via hdmi->component_adapter to SD DVB-T Modulator.

According to modulator spec it does 720x576_50i (PAL) & 720x480_60i (NTSC)

Which if any of these control panel resolution choices would match either or those: (ive reduced the list to the ones i think are closest)

720 by 576 (16bit) 50 Hertz
720 by 576 (16bit) 25 Hertz (Interlaced)
720 by 480 (16bit) 60 Hertz
720 by 480 (16bit) 30 Hertz (Interlaced)

And finally how would any of these compare to the outputs from a Decklink Mini Monitor, that states it does SD 625/25 PAL, 525/29.97 NTSC.

Thank you.

Out of your list, these look like your acceptable modes

  720 by 576 (16bit) 25 Hertz (Interlaced)

  720 by 480 (16bit) 30 Hertz (Interlaced)

Although depending on your adapter, it may be able to work with the other two as well. Note that all the modes are 16-bit so you are working with much reduced color resolution.

The Decklink modes are PAL and NTSC spec signal outputs and, I suspect, it will automatically downscale and crop your full resolution HDMI feed, so no need to tinker with your computer display modes.


How to get the Cinematic look With most movies, you can tell at a glance, if it is (or supposed to be) a blockbuster or not, by how the image looks.

Even some American TV-series look better (in my oppinion) than most european films.

I don't want to adress any content here, it's just about the look and feel of the final image.

Sometimes, when you can see some "raw" footage of the films (on the making of), it looks similar to final products of the others.

Now I was wondering, what makes that distinctive difference, of the cinematic feel, to all the other films.

I know that they have a higher budget and a lot more crew members, but what makes that distinctive difference? And what do these additional people do? so that you can tell the difference in the end.

Is is the lighting, the camera, the lenses, the color grading at the end...
or something completely different, I haven't thought of?

I'm not interessted on how Motion Picture differantiates from News or Sports Photography, because they want to acchieve different things.
I'm especialy interessted in the differences of european and american blockbusters (Excludeing England, because they are similar, by the quality of produced video as the Americans). (I know, that the budget is a big factor and that for example German films seldomly have a budget higher than 10 Millions, and that 200+ Million Dollar films are almost a standart in Hollywood (for Blockbusters).

There are a few important things to consider:

Lighting is perhaps the most important aspect to creating a filmic image. A lot of filmmakers like to use natural light such as Innaritu on The Revenant. I remember from the BTS that they had maybe 2 hours a day for a week or so to film the 3 minute scene because he only wanted to use natural light. In the studio, however, there are a whole slew of LED lights, fresnels, bounces, softboxes, diffusion, .etc. all set up to make the scene, and the actor look perfect. Almost every angle is thought of, from the lighting of a plant in the background to the color temperature of each light. This is a massive undertaking, and I wouldn’t be surprised in any given scene of a blockbuster movie you will have upwards of 100-200k worth of lighting working on set.
Dynamic range/camera. More and more, directors and cinematographers are opting for using digitial cameras because of their epic post production workflow and there easy integration into vfx. Cameras like the Arri Alexa and the Red Epic can record up to 18 stops of dynamic range. Take the Sony A7Sii for example, a rather pro-sumer grade camera used in a lot of indie productions, with only ~11 stops of dynamic range it is miles behind the Red in terms of the latitude one can get in post-production. This latitude, or the ability to adjust the exposure of minute details to larger troublesome areas such as a blown out window is why dynamic range is so important. Naturally, in order to get the most out of a cameras dynamic range, blockbuster films typically record in logarithmic formats. Arri and Red cameras can record in a RAW format (sensor data, rather than processed sensor data is recorded) which is just like DSLR raw where exposure and color temp (among other things) can be altered after the fact without loss in quality.
Color grading/color correction. Dynamic range would be almost useless if it weren’t for a skilled hand behind the knobs adjusting each and every aspect of the scene to perfect exposure, color temp, .etc. Using power windows with track masks the colorists can add definition to one side of an actors face, or darken it more to fit an ominous scene. They can color a certain act to be warmer when the actors get married, and then can color the next act to be bluer when they get divorced.
Lenses. Lenses have the power to imbue a certain je ne sais quoi to a scene. Cinema lenses such as those produced by Cooke or Panavision are made to a technical standard that most consumer or pro-sumer manufactures couldn’t economically match. In addition, these lenses all have different characteristics that distort the way the camera, and by extension, the audience, experience a space. Some directors prefer to use anamorphic lenses because it instills a classic cinema-type vibe, and gives the movie a certain look.
Audio. No-brainer. Good audio can make or break a scene. From ADR to using multiple mics on an actor; picking the right mic for the job .etc. a good image is nothing without good audio. Naturally, this audio is mixed to perfection in post.
So in general, if you are a small-producer of wedding films or corporate docs; whatever the case may be. You can take some tips from Hollywood. Focus on lighting. I cannot stress this enough. A 70d can look cinematic if you have the right lighting. Learn about large diffuse light sources, negative fill, bounces, .etc. You may not have a big boy toy such as the Alexa or the Epic, but you can get the most out of your A7S or whatever the camera you may have by spending time doing color grading and learning about how to properly expose for and use LOG. Experiment with different lenses. And of course, don’t let your audio fall by the way side.
Overally, what makes a blockbuster a blockbuster is the combination of many many different skilled professionals acting in unison. It is unlikely you can economically match the level of a blockbuster film, but you can get close.

** I’ve only focused on technical aspects. If your actors suck, or your setting sucks… well you won’t have a very good video.


Screen Capture in ffmpeg with jerky movement I'm using ffmpeg to capture a portion of my screen, save it as a movie file, and stream it to a Youtube live event.
The result is a jerky movement. The log has some issues I'm not able to understand and solve. I did a lot of different try, but with no result.

This is the actual Command line I use:

"C:\\mbiWebTV\\programs\\ffmpeg\\bin_x86\\ffmpeg.exe"
-thread_queue_size 512 -report -re -rtbufsize 2000M -f dshow
-i "audio=Missaggio stereo (Realtek High Definition Audio)"
-f dshow
-i "video=screen-capture-recorder" -filter:v "crop=713:379:018:043"
-s 848x480 -video_size 848x480 -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast
-maxrate 6000 -bufsize 2000M -pix_fmt yuv420p -g 60 -acodec libmp3lame
-b:a 128k -ac 2 -ar 44100
-f flv rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/xxxx-xyyv-0rrm-f9g2
-filter:v "crop=713:379:018:043"
"c:\\mbiWebTV\\Capture\\Capture_20170225_165829.mkv"

I could send the complete log file.
This is the error messages that frequently occurs:

  [dshow @ 049a4240] real-time buffer [screen-capture-recorder] [video
  input] too full or near too full (545% of size: 3041280 [rtbufsize
  parameter])! frame dropped!

The rtbufsize is only affecting the audio.

Try

ffmpeg.exe
-thread_queue_size 512 -report -rtbufsize 100M -f dshow -i "audio=Missaggio stereo (Realtek High Definition Audio)"
-rtbufsize 1000M -thread_queue_size 512 -video_size 848x480 -f dshow -i "video=screen-capture-recorder"
-vf "crop=713:379:18:43,scale=848:480,setsar=1"
-vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -maxrate 6M -bufsize 12M -pix_fmt yuv420p -g 60
-acodec libmp3lame -b:a 128k -ac 2 -ar 44100
-f flv rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/xxxx-xyyv-0rrm-f9g2
-filter:v "crop=713:379:18:43" "c:\mbiWebTV\Capture\Capture_20170225_165829.mkv"


How could I make a map zoom in effect? I'm the only one that knows how to use a computer in the family and so I've been asked to produce a video for a wedding. One of the main requirements for the video is that a map location must be zoomed on. Something similar to this:

I guessed Google Earth would be the best tool for this, however it wasn't as simple as I first thought as the app takes a while to download map data and sometimes the camera location jumps when zooming in. I tried using the built in video tool within the mac Google Earth app to achieve the effect, but then discovered that you have to pay to export the video. Unfortunately the price is too steep for this one project...

How can I overcome this problem? Or are there any other methods I could try to achieve this effect? Would screen recording Google Earth be the right thing to do (potential copyright issues)?

Thanks in advance.

There's a good tutorial of how to do this at videocopilot, called earth zoom.  The tutorial uses after effects, but the technique will be the same for whatever software you use.  I'm making this answer a community wiki in case anyone wants to elaborate.


Why does Adobe Premiere increase video size even when nothing has been done? I record my screen using Adobe Captivate. A 10 minutes recording results in a video of 15 MB in size, with acceptable quality for educational purposes.
Now I take that video into Adobe Premiere to edit. However, even if I just open it and export it, I can't get that 15 MB size anymore and it always export in a much higher size.
Adobe Captivate's recording info:
Windows Properties:

Media Info:

As you can see, Captivate records videos in MP4 format. Thus in Adobe Premiere I choose H.264 as the export format to get MP4 file type. Now no matter what I do to reduce the size, it never gets less than 25 MB. This is so frustrating, specially that these two apps come from the same company. Even with any Preset and even if I reduce the Target Bitrate to the lowest value, still I can't get below 25 MB.
How can I export in Premiere so that I get the same size as what I had in Captivate?

You cannot do this with Premiere.
The media info of the recording tell us that you need a maximum video bitrate of 0.108 Mbps to achieve 15 Mbyte. However Premiere's smallest available bitrate is 0.19 Mbps which would yield a 23 Mbyte final video (including the audio) in theory which is pretty close to what you see. As far as I know you cannot get below that.
If this bothers you, contact Adobe for help. Technically there is no obvious reason to stop at 0.19 Mbps. Tools like ffmpeg can work with even lower bitrates with this codec.


How to add notes/tags to specific times while watching a video? I have a large archive of video that I want to catalog, so that I can go back and find clips about certain topics. So far, I've done a couple videos by playing them 1.5x and writing the time code and making a note about the topic... on paper. Then, I transfer everything into a spreadsheet. It's certainly effective, but relatively inefficient.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to create a list of tags that I can choose as I'm watching the video. Alternately, the ability to type a quick note that's tied to a particular time signature would also be good. If I have to pause the video to do it, that's a no-go. I'm thinking of something a lot like SoundCloud's feature where you can make a comment while you're listening to something.

Is there any way to do something like this in Adobe Premier, AfterEffects, or some other tool?

This seems possible in Adobe Premiere Pro (CS6 at least).
From your question I understand you want to do three things, I will treat every one of them separately. The steps can be used to achieve your goal.
First, open a new project in Premiere Pro (PP) and import the media you want to add comments to.
Additionally, I found the Metalogging window lay-out convenient for this task (Windows -> Workspace -> Metalogging or Alt+Shift+6), but you might find another lay-out fit your needs better.
1. Play video at 1.5x speed
Double click the video you want to play, it will open in the Source panel.
Press Spacebar to play the video and use the L key to increase the playback rate and the J decreases it (credits to this answer).
2. Create a list of tags during playback
While the video plays hit the M key to create a Marker at the timecode currently shown in the Source panel (markers pointed out):

Make sure the Source panel is in focus (i.e. has a yellow line around the panel):

3. Add comments to the tags without pausing the video
Make sure the Markers panel (Window -> Markers) and the Source panel is visible (Window -> Source).
When you add markers during playback, these will show up in this panel with a comment field:

While the video plays, you can add markers in the Source panel and then add comments to these markers in the Markers panel. The video is not paused.
In your comment you mention you would like to export the markers to a file. Unfortunately I did not find a straightforward way to do this in CS6, however, PP Creative Cloud does have this option according to this tutorial.
The option can be found in File -> Export -> Markers and allows you to export an HTML file of your timestamped markers, including comments and a screenshot of the video at that time.


Different in and out animations for text in After Effects I can not figure out how to make text animate in using one style (for example, slide in based on characters) and later animate the same text out using a different style (like, slide out based on words). Animation based on characters/words can not be automated.

The only way I can think of how to do this is by creating 2 layers. But in case I need to change the text, I would need to change it twice. Are there any other ways to do this?

You can add more than one selector to a text animator. Selector 1 can control the slide in, twirl down the Animator>Range selector>Advanced properties and look for the control called Based On, and set that to character.

To have a slide-on you would add an offset to the position, and then change the selector so that it progressively de-selects the text. The best way is to set the start and end to 0% and 100% respectively, and the add keyframes to the offset property, starting at 0 and ramping down to -100%.

Now hit the Add button next to the Animator and choose Selector>Range to add another selector to it. Make sure that it is selecting none of the text to start with. Change the Based On property of this selector to words. You can change the way the two selectors interact with the Mode control, this changes whether the selection properties add together, intersect, subtract and so on. Using the **Add* mode should work for you. With this selector you would keyframe it so that it progressively selects the words in the text when you want it to slide out. Use the same technique as the first selector, but with the keyframes reversed.

This will make the slide go back to where it came from, you might want it to continue in the same direction. To do this you would add another animator with a different offset, rather than just a selector. You can add as many independant animators to a text layer as you like.


What happens if you uncheck key frame distance in Premiere Pro CS6 The default is 72 which is in frames I suppose. However what happens if I simply uncheck it? Does it work like AVC Intra where key frames doesnt exist and every pixel in every frame is processed like in MJPEG?

AVC intra and MJPEG are intra frame (keyframe) encoding only, each frame in your video will be encoded as a whole. Distance between key frames is a parameter for inter frame compression, where some pictures are encoded either as a whole (i-frames a.k.a. keyframes), and pictures between keyframes are encoded in reference to other frames either before (p-frames), or before & after (b-frames).
If you uncheck custom distance between key frames, you essentially tell your encoder that you don’t care about it, and it will chose to add a key frame whenever it needs to, mostly depending on the amount of motion in the scene, and encoder implementation details. The more keyframes in your encoded video, the heavier the average bitrate / file size.
AVC intra is actually based on h264, but uses only keyframes, and no inter frame compression. MJPEG is basically a sequence of jpeg muxed in a video container.


Is firewire better than USB for live webcasting - Video I am building a 2 camera, 4 mic webcasting setup.

Using firewire to connect the 2 cameras to a laptop is more involved as it requires 2 analog to digital converts and 2 firewire ports, whereas most laptops usually have at least 2 usb ports.

I need the video quality to be good (possibly HD), stable and reliable.

Which route should i take?

For the best quality and/or High Definition you want to use the fastest computer input you have that your streaming app will accept. That would normally be Firewire. Most online streaming sites will accept both USB or Firewire.

Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDxTalks/search?query=tedxsanantonio+2011. These are TEDx Talks we shot using a SONY PMW-EX1 with HD/SDI out and a few other SONY HDV cameras with SDI adapters ($200 each I think) into a Newtek Tricaster that was streaming and recording 1080i. The HD files were uploaded to YouTube.

Hope that helps


Script to create video in standard format? I've been making videos (episodes) for my YouTube channel. They are all in a standard format with an intro which has the episode # and title, then the clips fade in always using the same simple cross-fade. I'm putting it all together using After Effects CS6. It seems to be too time consuming to manually trim/align the clips and then apply the transitions.

The first thing I do is watch my source content and note the in/out times for all of the clips (could be one or more in/out per clip). Then I mark certain things like "speed up 4x" or "no audio", etc. I wonder if there's a way I can write a script and then have the video be produced for me, quickly. I'd need to supply some values  for some variables, such as episode # and name, and then the in/out/etc. for each clip.

What tools exist that would allow me to create the final video from a "script"?

PS: I'm a software engineer so I'm sure I could just write a program to do this for me, but I'm sure it already exists!

I'm not aware of any software that does what you are looking for.  The workflow doesn't really fit within a typical post-production workflow, so there isn't really a reason for it.  You can find software that will do things like adding the beginning and ending leads to a video based on meta data, so doing the titles automatically should be possible.  However, actually making automated edits based on timestamps is fairly non-typical.

Generally, the clips are cut in as they are reviewed if you are reviewing that way.  You can watch a clip, set an in and out point and then send it to the timeline.  This way you document the edits and build the sequence at the same time.

Your best bet would probably be to use software for making EDLs (editing decision lists).  If you can produce an EDL with the cuts you have defined in your "script" then software that can process EDLs (such as Premiere) should be able to make use of them.  Normally EDLs are used for transitioning between different editing systems, so it should be possible to modify or create your own EDL fairly easily.