How to range-check luma in After Effects? Where do I find the luma range clip indicator that I have in Final Cut?

You can add a new adjustment layer at the top of your composition, with the Levels effect set to the following:

Input Black: 254
Input White: 255

This will have the result of causing any luma values that were below 254 to become black, while anything above it becomes white. Here is an example of it over a fractal noise pattern:

Before

After


Adobe Media Encoder Flicker Issue When rendering my video in Adobe Media Encoder using either h.264 and mpeg-2 I get random flickering appearing.

I have rendered directly out of After Effects using a lossless codec. The video is fine, however the file size is obviously way too large.

The source DNG raw files are fine - they have no flicker whatsoever.

Does anyone have any advice for me so I can deliver a flicker free video to the client without a massive file size?

Thanks,

Andy

Are you using a keying effect? Does your flicker look anything like the original images posted here?
https://forums.adobe.com/message/5112063

If so, this issue has been around for a while, and we never seemed to get an accurate response from Adobe. However, there are some workarounds spelled out in that post.


Create a MXF media with a video and audio clip at specific timing compatible with Pro Tools I have several media:

one video file
several audio files

I would like to create a new MXF media with the video file and mixing the audio files at specific timestamp and tracks:

Starting time of the video file on the track 0: 00:00:00:00
Starting time of the audio clip 1 on the track 1: 00:00:30:00
Starting time of the audio clip 2 on the track 2: 00:00:35:00
Starting time of the audio clip 3 on the track 2: 00:00:45:00
...

I made a first try with just with one video and one audio. I used the following command:

ffmpeg -y -i picsou.mp4 \
  -itsoffset 2 \
  -i picsou.wav \
  -shortest \
  out.mp4

Unfortunately, when I import it in Pro Tools, I cannot see the audio.

The method in my comment still stands.

Let's say you have two audio tracks. Basic command syntax is

ffmpeg -i picsou.mp4 \
       -i audio1.wav \
       -i audio2.wav \
       - filter_complex "[1:a]adelay=30000|30000[1a];\
                         [2:a]adelay=35000|35000[2a]" \
      -map 0:v -map "[1a]" -map "[2a]" -c:v copy -shortest \
  out.mxf

The adelay filter here expects two channels per input stream. Channel delay values are in milliseconds.

On linux / OSX you may have to use single quotes around the arguments.


A program for Windows 10 to turn photos and videos into a birthday clip The requirements:

Turn 250 images and videos into a video clip
The process should be as automatic as possible. Drag the resources, select background music. Tadam!
Should be possible to make some adjustments to the clip (trim videos, change the duration of display etc.)
When a video is used, the sound should be of the video and not of the background music.

I have been searching the web for such a tool. At the moment, the best thing I found was Windows' "Video Editor" that holds true for the first 3 items in the requirements list. But not for the fourth one: I still can't find a way to mute the background music when a video is played.

Is this the right tool for that?
Is there an option to do it with "Video Editor"
Is there a more recommended program?

At the time of writing (Sep 2020), it looks like Video Editor does not provide "audio ducking" for videos with audio. As a workaround, you could use Custom audio (button next to Background music) and trim the music around video clips. From this thread on Microsoft Community:

The Video Editor does not currently have an audio ducking feature as you describe. Here are two potential workarounds:

Make the background music quieter throughout so your speaking can be heard
Use Custom Audio to add the same piece of music several times. You can trim very precisely by selecting a card on the storyboard to move your playhead, and then back in Custom Audio, drag the music trim handle to snap to the playhead location. Once you have the music in segments you can control the volume of each individually.

Unfortunately, if you have hundreds of clips, this may be very tedious work.


What is the drone for a low budget production Hi I'm wanting to do a overhead shot of a bike on the road. i'm wanting to know what the best drone is on a budget. I'm wanting the best blend of quality yet affordability

The DJI Mavik is one of the most affordable ready-to-fly drones with enough quality (4K) for expert-looking video production.

Alternatively, you could strap an action camera, like a GoPro, to a non-camera drone. You'll likely have to heavily stabilize your footage in post.

In the lowest of budget situations, if you just need a top-down aerial shot, simply rig a phone to some tethered, helium filled balloons. This has worked well for me in the past.

In any case, there are a few extra steps you can take do to improve the footage.

Buy a lens filter kit including Neutral Density and Polarizing filters for the camera.
After importing the footage, correct the wide angle lens warp in After Effects.
Color grade your final cut


ffmpeg- What's the difference between "NN000/1000 fps" and "NN000/1001 fps"? I'm trying to select the correct capture options for ffmpeg and I'm confused by this kind of listing:

[decklink @ 00000000010564c0]   17      3840x2160 at 24000/1001 fps
[decklink @ 00000000010564c0]   18      3840x2160 at 24000/1000 fps
[decklink @ 00000000010564c0]   19      3840x2160 at 25000/1000 fps
[decklink @ 00000000010564c0]   20      3840x2160 at 30000/1001 fps
[decklink @ 00000000010564c0]   21      3840x2160 at 30000/1000 fps

Based on the fact that 24 and 30 have two entries and 25 only has one, I assume that the two 24 options are true 24fps and 23.9fps, and the two 30 options are true 30fps and 29.97fps.

But which is which?  And why is this kind of notation used?

Yes, 24000/1000 is 24 fps and 24000/1001 is 23.976fps. Some refer to the X/1001 frame rates as "drop down" (as in "dropped down from the integer") but this is easy to confuse with "pull down" which often refers to the cadence of frames when fitting 24 or 25 fps material into a 30 fps program.

You can also think of these notations as 24,000 divided by 1,000 equals 24 and 24,000 divided by 1,001 equals 23.976023976 repeating. This notation is also the exact same thing as saying 24 divided by 1 equals 24 and 24 divided by 1.001 equals 23.976023976 repeating. It is, of course, quite ridiculous to articulate the repeating decimal values.

The 1001 options and their resulting notation are a legacy from analog color television systems. As Mulvya points out "it's because that's the smallest set of numbers that represent the value as integers". These standards are still around today mainly for backwards compatibility (with black and white television sets) and 'cause that's just the way TV grew up. Prior to color television, the NTSC frame rate was actually exactly thirty frames per second.

As for the 30000/1000 and 30000/1001 notation it comes from the NTSC video standard. "30"fps NTSC is actually displaying 30/1.001 frames per second (sometimes referred to as "29.97" or "30DF" for short, but to be precise 29.97002997... repeating frames per second). Due to this slight difference (.01%), NTSC uses either Drop-Frame (DF) or Non Drop-Frame (NDF) time-code counting. Drop-Frame "drops" frame counts in a pattern such that every ten minutes the time-code duration will correspond to the actual playback duration. No image frames are dropped and this was mainly a consideration for broadcasters fitting their programs with commercial breaks. Non Drop-Frame on the other hand more accurately represents a count of the total number of frames in a program (for those who enjoy counting in base 24:60:60:30...)

As for 25000/1000 there's no 25/1.001fps standard because 25fps is a PAL standard and PAL video systems were engineered using 50Hz AC power which did not have the same issues as NTSC when color came about.


What is the proper workflow for slightly different framerates, i.e. 30, 29.97, 29.976? Same curiosity applies for 24 and 23.976.

My primary concern is loss of quality. I want to work exclusively in 30.000 frames per second; if I understand correctly, some software defaults to 29.97, and some recording devices use 30 implying 29.97, and some screen capture software use exactly 30 as it should be.

I'm just concerned with recording 30.000 1080p RGB video with my Canon 60D and editing it at 30.000 1080p RGB (not YCK or whatever) in Premiere Pro, so I'd like to understand how these standards work with each other, how they convert, and how they play back.

Are there dropped frames or interpolated frames? If I convert a video from 30 to 29.97 and back and forth many many many times, will video quality degrade? What codecs and file formats should I work in to ensure 1080p or UHD support at exactly 30fps or 60fps RGB?

First off, you are correct in your assumption that 23.98 and 24 are indeed different. They are not effectively the same, and they are not "rounded up". Sometimes 24p means 23.98, and sometimes it means 24. They are both separate and it can be quite problematic to treat them the same.

But in practicality, you don't need to worry about the quality, especially if you are using something like Premiere, which is very good about matching your sequence settings with those of your footage (and warning you if they aren't the same).

Your 60D does indeed shoot in 23.98, and modern editing software will know the difference. You can make a 23.98 sequence yourself if you wish; your footage will suffer no quality loss, as no conversion is actually occurring.

Thankfully, the reason we have to distinguish between 23.98 and 24 is that we are moving on from the standards and hurdles that lead to drop-frame frame rates. Plenty of new cameras (such as the RED) can shoot 24fps, and they actually mean 24. And doing exactly that can be quite nice.

So yeah, don't worry about it. Just always match settings with your footage, but newer versions of Premiere do this without fail, faster and accurately.


Image blocks anything that's underneath it to be shown Normally, when putting a video clip over another in Davinci Resolve, the latter can be seen where the former ends if you move it out of the way. However, this doesn't seem to be the case when working with images. In the screenshot below, I have a png file on top of a mp4 file. I've shifted the position of the image and the black boarder represents part of the frame which the image no longer cover. However, the video underneath it still doesn't show up, which would be the case if I used two videos. What's going on here?

I've had Resolve behave unpredictably when using PNGs as watermarks.  Does the same thing happen if you turn it into a JPG with the same resolution as your project?


How can I make an actor cry? In a film I am making I need and actor to start crying, but I cant think of how I am going to do that without actually making them sad.

One thing I have heard is that there are eye drops you can get.

Are there any other options?

Eye drops or saline are certainly simple. Alternatives include blowing dry air at the face just before action, or rubbing the eyes.

Can your actor not use the old tried and tested method of remembering the death of a childhood pet?


How can i do series command in ffmpeg I have to issue a series of commands, all in the form as shown below:

  ffmpeg -i 1.mp4 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 2.mp4
  ffmpeg -i 2.mp4 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 2_2.mp4
  ffmpeg -i 3.mp4 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 3_2.mp4
  ffmpeg -i 4.mp4 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 4_2.mp4

Please show me how can I issue all commands automatically or do it with one command.

use a loop

If you're a Linux or OS X user then you can use a Bash for loop:

mkdir outputdir
for f in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -vf scale=640:-2 -c:a copy "outputdir/${f%.*}.mp4"; done

Maybe a Windows user can add a similar example that works for that OS.

or simply cram it all in one command

ffmpeg -i 1.mp4 -i 2.mp4 -i 3.mp4 -i 4.mp4 \
-map 0 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 1_2.mp4 \
-map 1 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 2_2.mp4 \
-map 2 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 3_2.mp4 \
-map 3 -s 640x480 -c:a copy 4_2.mp4

You have to use -map otherwise the default stream selection will choose the same input for each output.


How to replicate final crop parameters in after Ken Burns effect I'm using a Ken Burns effect to zoom in on a section of running video.  After the zoom completes I want the next section of video to continue with the same crop dimensions.  How do I find out the exact dimensions that the Ken Burns effect finishes with?

Instead of using a Ken-Burns-type crop to create the effect, I did it using Transform effects, setting a Keyframe at the beginning and the end of the zoom.  I think the relative rates of zoom and pan may be a little different with this method, but it works for my purposes.  It should be possible to tweak the settings to create a steady zoom/pan.

So now I can just click on the final keyframe in the Transform row of the Video Animation display for that section of video to get the final X, Y, and Scale values.


Use android camera and usb mic on pc Apologies in advance if this is a very noob question - I barely know anything about video production.

I'd like to record video and use my fancy-ish USB microphone as the audio source. Unfortunately I don't have a camera (or any other equipment), and thus would like to somehow use my android phone's camera.

The setup I had in mind would use a pc app that allows me to hook my phone and USB mic up to my pc, and select them as the respective video and audio sources, and record everything into one file on my pc. What I don't want is a scenario where I'm separately recording video and audio and then I have to learn how to edit videos and try to manually synchronize the video and audio in post-production.

I've been researching for a couple of hours, but couldn't find anything that does what I want, other than the following semi-solutions.

IP Webcam. An Android app that allows you to stream video from your phone to your pc via wifi. The problem I had with this is the terrible video resolution and lag. This put me off so quickly that I didn't even bother to look if I could select an alternative audio source.
Open Camera. This is an Android app that allows you to connect and use a microphones other than your phone's built in mic. This seems to be the best solution, and I'd have loved to go with this, but the problem with this one is that I don't have a USB to Micro USB converter and thus won't be able to plug my microphone into my phone.
OBS. I came across a video on youtube where a guy (seemingly) records video (with a camera - not screen capturing) using OBS, but I don't know if he's using an older/different version of OBS, coz I don't have half the settings he does (not to mention that he didn't actually show which setting allowed him to choose his video sources). And from the production quality of his video he clearly uses actual cameras and not a phone, so I'm not sure if I'd even be able to hook a phone up to it anyway.

So my first question is whether or not what I'm trying to do is even possible? If it's not, what's the closest I can get to it using only an android phone, usb mic and pc?

If it is possible, please guide me through the setup. I'm not looking for crazy bells and whistles, so the more basic we can keep it, the better.

Let me know if I need to provide any additional information.

There is no good way to use an Android phone as an attached camera in the way you want. Your best bet is to get a GoPro or other dedicated camera which has a USB or hdmi output, or to use a microUSB adapter to connect your mic to the phone.


cc slant not working in after effects I put the cc slant effect on an image just to slant (move) the clouds, but it ends up sliding the whole image. The same goes for many other images even after adding a mask. The whole image keeps sliding with the slant.

Not exactly sure what the problem is. However, try making a adjustment layer above your footage. Apply your mask to it. Then add a transform effect. It has a skew and skew axis that can be keyframed


AVCONV to transcode MJPEG to RTSP I have an MJPEG test source (local business has publicly available source) that I’m trying to transcode to an RTSP stream for consumption by Evostream.

I have tried with and without the -vcodec copy parameter, but I cannot seem to get it to stream properly.

Here is my streaming command:

#avconv -f mjpeg -i http://sics.com:9001/mjpeg.cgi -vcodec copy -f rtsp -muxdelay 0.1 -metadata streamName=mjpStream rtsp://127.0.0.1:5544/

And the resulting output:

avconv version 0.8.17-4:0.8.17-0ubuntu0.12.04.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2014 the Libav developers
  built on Mar 16 2015 13:26:50 with gcc 4.6.3
[mjpeg @ 0x20ae9e0] max_analyze_duration reached
[mjpeg @ 0x20ae9e0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, mjpeg, from 'http://sics.com:9001/mjpeg.cgi':
  Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0.0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj422p, 320x240, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1200k tbn, 1200k tbc
Output #0, rtsp, to 'rtsp://127.0.0.1:5544/':
  Metadata:
    streamName      : mjpStream
    encoder         : Lavf53.21.1
    Stream #0.0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj422p, 320x240, q=2-31, 90k tbn, 1200k tbc
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?)

The 'copy' codec tells avconv to skip decoding and encoding. It is useful if you are trying to change the container format but in your case, you are changing the format of the stream from MJPEG to H264.

Just leave '-vcodec copy' out and let avconv figure out that it must transcode from mjpeg to H264:

avconv -i rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.11.11/streaming/Channels/2 -map 0  -f H264 udp://192.168.10.11:5014

[mjpeg @ 0x113f1d0] Changeing bps to 8
Input #0, rtsp, from 'rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.11.11/streaming/Channels/2':
  Metadata:
    title           : Media Presentation
  Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 320x240 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 50 tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tb
No pixel format specified, yuvj420p for H.264 encoding chosen.
Use -pix_fmt yuv420p for compatibility with outdated media players.
[libx264 @ 0x116a980] using SAR=1/1
[libx264 @ 0x116a980] using cpu capabilities: ARMv6 NEON
[libx264 @ 0x116a980] profile High, level 2.1
Output #0, h264, to 'udp://192.168.10.11:5014':
  Metadata:
    title           : Media Presentation
    encoder         : Lavf56.40.101
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (libx264), yuvj420p(pc), 320x240 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], q=-1--1, 50 fps, 50 tbn, 50 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 libx264
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (mjpeg (native) -> h264 (libx264))

Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
frame=   51 fps= 34 q=31.0 Lsize=       9kB time=00:00:00.98 bitrate=  71.7kbits/s dup=40 drop=0
video:9kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB  muxing overhead: 0.000000%


How to tell ffmpeg to copy all streams except one audio stream (to encode)? Input:

 * One Video
 * 4 audio streams
 * Many subtitles
 * Chapters

I want to re-encode one of the audio streams (the first one) and keep everything else as-of (copy).
Is it possible to do that in one command-line in ffmpeg?

So far my best 2 guesses don't work:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map_metadata 0 -map 0:v -c:v copy -map 0:s -c:s copy -map 0:a:0 -c:a ac3 -vbr 3 -map 0:a:1 -c:a copy -map 0:a:2 -c:a copy -map 0:a:3 -c:a copy output.mkv
Copies everything

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map_metadata 0 -map 0:v -c:v copy -map 0:s -c:s copy -map 0:a -c:a copy -map 0:a:0 -c:a ac3 -vbr 3 output.mkv
Re-encodes all audio streams

Use

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map_metadata 0 -map 0 -c copy -c:a:0 ac3 -vbr 3 output.mkv

See https://superuser.com/a/1219824 for an illustrated guide to how stream options are parsed.


Matching colors for video It appears that loading a graphics asset into Premiere’s new (2017.1) layered drawing tools does not do any kind of profile matching.  Furthermore, the play preview image looks different on my (color calibrated) monitor than it does on a real television.

Generally, the encoded video played on the TV looks more washed out, showing more shadow detail.  Specifically in this case, the desired green is significantly lighter and perhaps is more yellowish but that could just be the impression due to the brightness difference.

How do I convert a specified color into the RGB codes to use in Premiere’s titling tools?  I’m guessing at this point that I want to know the colors in the BT.709 color space, and that “hex color is #00853E” is sRGB.

It appears that BT.709 is a larger standard that includes the sRGB color space as part of what it means.  The Wikipedia article says “based on”, but looking carefully at the chart of numbers, they are identical.  So there is no need to convert from one to the other.

Of the various mixing recipes given (which do not agree with each other), the hex code is said to be for HTML/CSS, so that one I can assume is for the sRGB color space.

I used that value in Premiere in the new Graphics drawing tools, and it looks like the right kind of green.

The green background in the white-on-green EPS file they provide for the logo is not the right green when simply imported into Primere, as I noted.  So I loaded it into Illustrator, turned off the background, and saved as the white logo only.  This I imported into Premiere which I layered over the background color, drawn using Premere’s shape tool.


How can i create DVD menu with moving scene I have DVD  its open menu with moving parts of movie (chapters)

each chapter keep moving like 3-5 second from movie

when i click on it , its open part of movie with length 10 min

what is the name of software can do that

Here is the screen shot of my DVD

You need DVD authoring software.  Any decent DVD authoring software should support this.  It uses video menus and chapter breakpoints to do this.

Adobe Encore (included with Premiere) does this in Adobe's product family.  DVD Studio Pro did this in Apple's product family, though it hasn't been updated since 2009.  There are also a number of over vendors who make DVD Authoring software capable of this functionality.


What video production softwares are typically used for the following This may be a subjective question, but I'm not sure where else to ask, so apologies in advance!
A lot of websites for softwares of various kinds have marketing videos of user-interfaces in action.  These aren't the actual ui's that have been recorded -- they are instead "faux-ui's" that are simplified and usually more animated versions of the real thing.
eg:
https://a.slack-edge.com/5f6f2/marketing/img/homepage/hp-prospect/channels/bring-your-team-together-in-channels.mp4
https://www.helpscout.com/
I am wondering:  What kinds of video softwares are typically used for the production of these?  Are there are certain tools that are industry standard for this?

I'm not sure whether there is specific software that does this but my go-to would be after effects as it allows you to build all this within itself, or it can animate a file that was build in photoshop/illustrator


Encode MPEG-4 to DVD Format Without Doubling File Size I want to encode a group of low-quality MPEG-4 video files to DVD format (to eventually burn to a DVD).

The problem is that when I encode the video, the resulting files are often 2-3x as large as the original video files.

How can I encode the video files so that they are in DVD format, roughly the same quality, and roughly the same file size as the originals?

Well, the short answer is, you can't.

The longer answer: DVD uses MPEG2 compression, which is a lot less efficient than MPEG4 (aka h.264). In other words it can't get the same quality from the same file size as MPEG4 does.

So you can choose: similar file size, or similar quality, but not both.


How do I rescue a Final Cut 7 project that elicits "File Error: Wrong Type" when I try to open it in FCP? When I try to open this project, Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 running on Mavericks pops up an error box that says "File Error: Wrong Type."

I've fixed this in the past using the Project Repair tool in Digital Rebellion's great Pro Maintenance set of tools but I'd like to find a free option if possible.

I've seen people discuss setting the file type and creator, possibly using a command line tool, SetFile, that is part of the OS X developer tools but none of them seemed to have complete instructions and there were a number of claims of it not working anyway.

After installing SetFile (instructions below), go to terminal and execute this command:
setfile -c "KeyG" -t "FCPF" INSERT_FILENAME_HERE

According to SetFile's man page, "-c" sets the creator and "-t" sets the type.
I found what the type and creator should be set to in Peppy's second post on this thread: http://hintsforums.macworld.com/archive/index.php/t-16983.html
SetFile can be installed as part of the Xcode Command Line Tools by opening Terminal and typing:
xcode-select --install

But if I recall that sometimes fails so you might also try downloading it from the Apple Developer site.


Console Audio and Commentary Capture - Is it possible to capture both? I've been scouring google to see if it's possible to record gameplay audio for consoles as well as live commentary from a microphone or headset. Most of what I come across, from either forums or product FAQs say that it's possible to do one but not both. On PCs, it's easy, but on consoles you can only do one. Or so I'm told.

However, I see quite a few videos on Youtube from consoles with both game audio and live commentary. So it must be possible.

Can anyone tell me how how it's possible to do both on a console? I know nothing about video editing and production so I'm curious what devices and programs are needed to accomplish this. Also, is it possible to record the console audio and live commentary as two separate tracks?

Thank you for your time! I appreciate any help.

There are numerous ways to handle this and none are particularly difficult, though some are mildly technical.  The most direct is through use of a mixer or a capture device with multiple audio inputs.  Most input devices only take a single stereo audio stream to go with the video input, so without buying a specialized capture device, the most promising way to do it live is with a mixer.

To use a mixer, you would branch off the audio from the video, feed the audio from the console in to the mixer while also feeding a microphone in to the mixer for commentary.  The output of the mixer (most likely a tape out) would then go to the audio input for the capture device.

Mixers add a decent amount of cost in most cases though, so if you want to avoid that, the easiest way is to dub after the fact.  You can record the video from the console directly and then record a separate audio track once you have the video edited however you want it.  The nice things about this approach is that it has no additional cost, allows you to fine tune your commentary to your final video, and allows you to substitute different commentary tracks over the same gameplay footage.


Davinci Resolve 16 split a clip in timeline and actual shrink the file Lets pretend you add a 15 second clip onto your timeline which has a 100 MB filesize. If you only need 5 seconds of that clip you can blade edit it to that exact time. But in reality the full clip length (and size) remains as it was before. I wonder if there is a nice method to actually get rid of the 10 seconds you dont need from that clip and as a result, shrink the projects overall filesize by that cut off amount.
To split my videos, I am using another tool to create separate files. I could potentially use davinci's deliver section to split the file and save the results separately. Not a big deal, but this is a separate process and it would be nice if there is a smooth way to do exactly that while you're editing your clips on the timelie.
Have a nice day and stay healthy.
JJ

There is a way to do that.  It's in the Media Management tool, under the file menu.  It has plenty of options.  You can go clip-by-clip, do a whole timeline at once, or archive a whole project once you've finished editing it, and keep only the footage you used.  You can also add "handles" if you want, which means that Resolve will save an extra second or so (user definable) to the beginning and end of all clips, so you have wiggle room in case you need to make changes later.  There's also options for transcoding, if e.g., you wanted a smaller footprint for old projects, but it also comes in handy for generating proxy media.
A big word of caution, though:  Not all of the features in the Media Management panel work like you might expect (the automatic re-linking comes to mind).  Some of them are contingent on the TYPE of footage you're using; whether it's intra- or inter-frame.  READ THE MANUAL, and BE SURE you test your Media Management workflow, COMPLETELY before you destroy any of your media.  That is, don't just export it, and trash all of your originals before you make sure you can re-link your project.  Ideally, you should:

Use the Media Management tool to render out whatever clips/timelines/projects you want to trim.
Take the original media (but not the archived media) offline.  It can be tricky to do this if your projects aren't organized.  An easy way to be sure is to keep your original media on an external hard drive, and eject the hard drive for this step. You want to be sure that when you delete the originals, your timelines can find all of the archive material they need, without accidentally pointing at things you're about to erase.  If something in your project is living in your "Downloads" folder by mistake, it'll eventually go missing.
Re-Link your project to the archived material, and make sure everything works.  It may be years before you return to it, so you want to be sure it's in working order before you put it in cold storage.
Export a .DRP project file and save it next to your archived media.  Resolve's normal way of saving is database-driven (disk databases by default, now, but postgresql is necessary for advanced features).  It saves all of your projects together in a big file that isn't meant to be moved around, and is vulnerable to corruption.  If you're ever going to return to the project you're archiving, don't count on the database.


How to mask out brush in After effects I've run into a little snag.
I can't seem to mask out some of the brush that I've used on a an empty layer.

I create the mask but it simply doesn't mask out anything, it does however mask out pixels when I did some experiments.

How can i get this done?

Thanks!

Create a white solid, mask out what you want with that...then use it as an alpha matte to mask out what you do not want.


FCPX Crashes again and again I was working on a project in FCPX. Suddenly it crashed. After that the library on which I was working is not opening.
Whenever I try to open it it crashes again. It was my 2 weeks of edit. How can I recover that lease help me ?? The error message I get is attached.

Hold down the option key while you open Final Cut in the Finder.  This will open a dialogue which asks you to select a library.  DO NOT select a library from the list.  Instead, click the "new" button, name it "blank_Library" or something, select a destination, and click "OK".  This process should start Final Cut cleanly.  If FCPX has crashed at this point, then your problem is with the application itself, and you need to re-install.  If everything's OK at this point, you might have a corrupt library.

Assuming that FCPX is running, now you'll want to try to open the project upon which you're currently working.  Go to File->Open Library.  You should see the library which contains your project in the list.  Click it.  If FCPX crashes on this step, you know there's a problem with the current library.  If it doesn't crash, it could have been another open library which was corrupt and causing your crash.  If everything works at this point, carry on with your day.  If not, proceed to the next step.

Option-double-click to start FCPX again.  From the dialogue, select the blank library that you created in the first step. Click "OK".  Quit Final Cut.  This will ensure that the next time you try to open the program, it won't try to open the corrupt library.  Next, Spotlight search "Final Cut Backups".  This folder contains backups of all of your projects.  If the library which contained your project was called "Skateboarding_Kids", you'll see a folder called "Skateboarding_Kids".  Open that.  Within, is an iterative list of backups sorted by date.  Open the most recent one.  Did Final Cut crash?  If not, carry on with your day.  If so, repeat the steps in this paragraph, but open the next-oldest-to-the-last-backup-you-just-opened.

If none of this works, then my guess is that you're running a NAS or a SAN, and it's a network problem that's causing the crash, but I don't know enough about your system to say.

Hope this helps.


Video editor for cutting a video into multiple short clips and store them quickly Note: Alternatively the question is: "How to cut a video in multiple slices and store each clip as a separate video quickly (!) with Kdenlive?", but I don't think Kdenlive supports an easy way to export single clips.

I am looking for a tool that allows me to slice a video (in a quick way).
At first I tried Kdenlive but it's not really a good tool if you just want to cut a video into multiple short clips and export them (rather fast). In Kdenlive I can only export a selected part of the video or the entire project. But what I want is basically "Cut at frame t and t + n and then just "right click" that slice and save it away as mp4 (or any other common format - it does not really matter).
Kdenlive would be fine if I'd had to do this just to one video but I need to do this to multiple videos as I am trying to create a dataset for a machine learning project of mine.
I know there are a bunch of free tools out there but does anybody know which (if any) of those might be suitable for this (rather boring but necessary) manual task?

shotcut
I would suggest shotcut. It's really fast and allows you to select where to cut at the right place (to the frame). It's also visual making it really easy.
Basic Setup

Start shotcut
Give your project a name
Drag & Drop an MP4 in the screen video area
Click on the video now playing, move it to the timeline

Cut + Export

Click on the timeline time (top of the timeline) to select a location.
Click on the ][ icon to do a cut.
Right click on the left side and do "Remove".
Click on the right side and do a "Remove" as well.
Then Export (File → Export Video ... | Ctrl-E).

Next Cut
Once the export is done:

Hit Ctrl-Z to restore the clip on the right side.
Then cut/remove again...
Repeat until done.

Under Ubuntu, I can install shotcut with:
snap install shotcut

ffmpeg
If you know the start point and duration, then you can use ffmpeg like so:
ffmpeg -ss 0:0 -t 5:0 -i in.mp4 out.mp4

The -ss defines the start point and -t defines the duration. You can use those two and create the cuts in the command line. You can always use shotcut or some other tool to determine the start/duration parameters.


Mask "shadow" showing up in the middle of the scene Ok, I've got a question which is pretty hard to explain.

I'm using Premiere Pro CC to produce a short movie.

Here's a picture describing (or at least trying to) my set:

"A" is the main track. "B" is the second track which I placed in the bottom right corner and "C" is an opacity mask on that track. On this track I've used Ultra Key to remove the background. I've also added a Cross Dissolve effect on "B".

So here's the problem. During the cross dissolve the mask ("C") shows in the middle of screen ("D").

Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? How do I remove "D"?

Thanks!

During the time range in which the dissolve occurs, split the clip on A, place that segment on a track above B, and apply a mask on A so that C shows through. You can do this by creating a mask to show the C region and then invert it.


Automatically split takes into individual files in Final Cut Pro One of my 'favourite' features in Adobe Premiere Pro CS family is automatic scene detection - its  ability to spit out individual clips when capturing from tape using pause/stop information. As far as I know, Final Cut Pro has no automnatic way of doing this. Splitting clips during import manually is so tedious. Is there something I'm missing out, or a plugin perhaps that provides this feature in FCP 7?

Select the clip you wish to work on in the browser, then in the top menu bar for FCP, select Mark > DV Start/Stop Detect. This will break the clip up by the start/stop metadata generated when you were shooting.

The options in the user preferences are for timecode breaks that occur during capture.

ps: I don't know when this DV Start/Stop Detect feature was first included, but it was in FCP3 in 2002...


Best way to edit mashup video of downloaded movies? So I wanted to do a mashup video for personal usage, meaning scenes cut from downloaded commercial movies or Youtube. This is typically relatively highly compressed h264-material.

The workflow that I attempted, but feel is not optimal, is to:

Remux losslessly to .mov containers and stereo-only audio where applicable
On 2x speed, watch through in QuickTime Player X. Whenever I want to use something, I use the Trim function, Duplicate the trimmed movie, save the duplicate, and then undo the changes in the original and continue.
In FCPX, I import the clips and put them in a project.

The problems in my workflow is, that it would be great with a tool that is more optimal to scan large amount of video (e.g. a full length movie) and mark sections to become clips. Secondly, FCPX frequently crashes when I try to use the clips natively. I have converted some of them to Optimized Media (Prores 422).

Is there a better tool, or a workflow combining tools, that makes it particularly easy to do these types of video mashups?

Not on FCPX, but on Avid.  However, this is what I do and it may help:

Download at the maximum possible resolution you can download at.
Use AVIDemux as my rough-cut tool to mark 'A' and 'B' and save as clips with meaningful names.  Leave a few seconds on either side.
Import clips into Avid

Sometimes, I have to convert the container to 'MP4' or resample frame rates and AVIDemux handles these well.


"Cannot find a matching stream for unlabeled input pad 2 on filter Parsed_amerge_2" ffmpeg The error I'm getting is in the title.
I want to merge the two audio streams from a video into one (yes, I've checked if there is two and there is). This is the command I'm using:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]scale=-2:720,format=yuv420p[v];[0:a]amerge=inputs=2[a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset medium -c:a aac -ar 44100 -ac 2 output.mp4

Any ideas why I could be getting the error?

Inside a filtergraph, each pad is associated with a single stream. And a specifier such as 0:a will match the first stream that qualifies. You need to specify two pads and fully specify the input streams.
[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge=inputs=2[a]


How to place a picture into an object and zoom into it to make it big? (After Effects) Im working on a simply animation movie and saw this cool effect were theres a computer screen or phone screen for example with a picture on, than the camera zooms into the picture, like a transition into a further story.

How do I make something like that? I got a magnifying glass, in which I would like to pllace a picture of a caste in small and then enlarge it, so the castle fills the screen...

I would be soooo thankful for help!

There's a few ways to do this. The simplest is to make the castle layer the parent of the magnifying glass (use the parent drop-down or the pick whip), so that as you scale the castle up the magnifying glass scales up as well. This will let you move the magnifying glass independently, because child layers inherit the parent's transformation, but not vice-versa.

To scale up the castle:

hit s to bring up the scale property and with the playhead at the point you want the animation to start click the stopwatch to turn animation on
or hit alt / ⌥shifts which does the same thing, but ninja style.
move the playhead to where you want the animation to stop, and scale the castle however you want. This will automatically create a new keyframe. A lot of people get confused because they click the stopwatch a second time, which you might think would add another keyframe - it doesn't it just turns animation off.

Now if your castle is not in the center of the screen in the zoomed-out frame you'll need to either add keyframes for motion (same technique, just substitute p for s), or you'll need to use the pan-behind tool to adjust its anchor point so that it's in the right spot at the end of the zoom. Often it's easiest to do it in reverse, so you frame up the castle like you want and then move the playhead backwards and zoom out.

A slightly more complex (in some ways, but easier in others) way is:

make both layers 3D layers (click the 3D box on the layer properties column)

Now move the magnifying glass forward (hit p and increase the value of the third column, the z coordinate).
create a new camera (Layer>new>Camera or ctrl / ⌘alt / ⌥shiftc). Just use the defaults for now.
use the camera tool c to move the camera around. Set keyframes on its position (hit p to show it) and target property (hit a - a bit confusing, but it's like anchor points for normal layers). Put a keyframe where you want the camera to be at the start of the zoom, and another at the end.

For bonus points play around with the speed of the movement. A linear zoom in is going to feel a bit jerky, try adding ease to the keyframes to smooth it off, or even anticipation and follow through to make it cartoony.


How do I dub just the dialogue for an existing movie? I am not a moviemaker or have any experience at all in the department. But I saw this video of BTS dubbing some scenes from Lionking, Zootopia etc. I want to do the same.
I tried movavi, which allows me to record my own voice but it replaces all the audio for that segment. But I only want to replace/dub over the dialogue while leaving other sound effects intact. How do I do that?

You would need a version of the audio track without any dialogue on it.
You could attempt to remove the dialogue from the a sound track, but the results would be pretty bad.


How do I get good at animation even though I'm not good at drawing and digital art? I've been struggling for a long time to get good at animation. I'm a storyteller at heart, so I have been trying to write books for a long time. It's just that I'm a visual person and while I am getting into books, it's not something that I value above the other ways I can tell a story. Animation is something I know really well, since I grew up with cartoons, anime, and video games.

When it comes to digital art I always have trouble getting used to the interface and making good art on it. This involves any program really. I have been reading The Animators Survival Kit, but so far it hasn't helped me much. No matter what tutorial I watch, read, or listen to it doesn't really help. I don't know if it has to do with my mentality or procrastination or anxiety or whatever. I'm just a beginner artist, I haven't developed my style.

I seek to revolutionize animation. Since (in my opinion anyway) we're kind of limiting it with American animation almost always being comedic, web animation always being parody and usually not original, I'd talk about it more but I'd be here all day and it's not what I'm focusing on.

I only got into digital art and animation recently (2016 I think, it was when I was turning into an adult.)

Hard work. One does not become a god in animation overnight.

Learn to master Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects. That's virtually all you need for professional animation. Or go and look for programs that fit your workflow best and stick with them. Don't try to be "moderate" at every program, master your few.

There are great books and masterclasses and guides on sites such as pluralsight. Create something, realize it sucks, do it again, improve. That's the natural way all of us had to learn design, animation, compositing etc.


Syntax error when compiling vlc media player I try to compile vlc, but I always get this syntax error:

Unterminated quoted string

make: *** [.a52] error 2

contribs:make failed

cd a52dec && CC="arm-linux-androideabi-gcc --sysroot=/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/platforms/android-9/arch-arm" CXX="arm-linux-androideabi-g++ --sysroot=/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/platforms/android-9/arch-arm" LD="arm-linux-androideabi-ld" AR="arm-linux-androideabi-ar" CCAS="arm-linux-androideabi-gcc --sysroot=/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/platforms/android-9/arch-arm -c" RANLIB="arm-linux-androideabi-ranlib" STRIP="arm-linux-androideabi-strip" PATH="/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/bin:/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/extras/tools/build/bin:/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/extras/tools/build/bin:/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.8/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-i386/bin"
:/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/contrib-android-arm-linux-androideabi/../arm-linux-androideabi/bin" CPPFLAGS=" -g -mfpu=vfpv3-d16 -mcpu=cortex-a8 -mthumb -mfloat-abi=softfp -I/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.8/include -I/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.8/libs/armeabi-v7a/include -I/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/include" CFLAGS=" -g -mfpu=vfpv3-d16 -mcpu=cortex-a8 -mthumb -mfloat-abi=softfp -I/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.8/include -I/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.8/libs/armeabi-v7a/include -I/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/include -g" CXXFLAGS=" -g -mfpu=vfpv3-d16 -mcpu=cortex-a8 -mthumb -mfloat-abi=softfp -I/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.8/include -I/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.8/libs/armeabi-v7a/include -I/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/include -g" LDFLAGS=" -L/home/timliu/test/android-ndk-r10e/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/4.8/libs/armeabi-v7a -lgnustl_static -L/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/lib" ./configure --prefix="/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi" --datarootdir="/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/share" --includedir="/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/include" --libdir="/home/timliu/net/android/vlc/contrib/arm-linux-androideabi/lib" --build="i686-linux-gnu" --host="arm-linux-androideabi" --target="arm-linux-androideabi" --program-prefix="" --enable-static --disable-shared --disable-dependency-tracking --with-pic
contribs: make failed

My specifications:

OS: (Ubuntu 14.04 32bit) linux ubuntu 3.13.0-32 generic 2014 i686
NDK: android-ndk-r10e
JDK: adt-bundle-linux-x86-20140702 32bit
java-version: "1.7.0-79" |
OpenJDK runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.5.5) (7u79-2.5.5-Oubuntu0.14.04.2)
vlc:
git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc-ports/android.git

I have solved this problem. An error happens due to environment variables.

I added :/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-i386 to etc/profile

export JAHA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-i386

Now , I can compile libvlc, but new problem arises:

libvlc:compileReleaseJava FAILED
*what went wrong:
Execution failed for task 'libvlc:compileReleaseJAVA'.
> Cannot find System Java Compiler. Ensure that you have installed a JDK (not just a JRE) and config used your JAVA_HOME system variable to point to the according dirctory.


Why must a sample rate by at least twice a frequency in order to reproduce that frequency accurately? I read this:
To reproduce a given frequency, the sample rate must be at least twice that frequency.
Why is this so?

That's Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. Think about it in the other way: imagine you are given a set of samples (the black dots in the image).

The most intuitive way to recover the original analog signal would be by joining these samples. But you can easily notice that there is not a unique way of joining them. In fact, there are infinite possible signals that would contain the whole set of samples. Obviously, given the sample set, you would join them the easiest way, i.e. the blue signal.

Now, what about sampling? In the image you also have a red signal (which frequency is 1 Hz) that has been sampled too slowly, resulting in the black dot sample set. To have a clue about the real signal, we should have sampled it at, at least, 2 Hz. That way, we also would have samples (dots) at 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, etc seconds. And, as you can draw in Paint, the easiest path to join all the samples would be, again, the red signal. So we would have recovered our original signal successfully.


Add an image as frame of video using ffmpeg all day I'm trying through ffmpeg to add this frame to this video ..

    mpca86@mpca86-HPPro6300SFF:~/sklad/Stiahnuté$ ffmpeg -i 20190224_081118.mp4 -hide_banner
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '20190224_081118.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : mp42
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: isommp42
    ro.build.version.sdk: 28
    ro.build.version.release: 9
    creation_time   : 2019-02-24T07:11:42.000000Z
  Duration: 00:00:17.81, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 4564 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 896x1920, 4553 kb/s, SAR 1:1 DAR 7:15, 27.29 fps, 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 180k tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2019-02-24T07:11:42.000000Z
      handler_name    : VideoHandle

Is anyone willing to help me?

Basic syntax is

ffmpeg -i 20190224_081118.mp4 -framerate 30 -i frame.png -filter_complex "[0]pad=1920:1080:576:0[vid];[vid][1]overlay" -c:a copy -movflags +faststart out.mp4

This pads the video to the size of the frame image, and then overlays the frame on top. You may need to adjust the horizontal placement of the video by adjusting the x value ib the pad filter, currently 576.


Create a spherical hologram I am clueless how to create a spherical hologram in After Effects without CC Cylinder effect …

Do I need to animate it in a 3D software and then import that model with the animation in After Effects or is there an easier way to create it solely in AE?

NOTE: The sphere needs to be scaled on the y-axis. I don't want a perfect sphere and therefore can't use the CC Cylinder in AE (I think).

This is not something you should ever do in After-Effects. Primarily, After-Effects is a motion-graphics program, so it works in 2D 99% of the time. Something like this scene from ghost in the shell was probably created using a 3D-Program to model out the cylinder (Modo, Cinema4D, Maya or Houdini could have been used), and then send over to a compositing-program, of which I'm pretty sure they used Nuke. If I was to get a job like that, this is how I would've worked:

Track the original shot and create a 3D-Camera (using Pf-Track or something similar).
Create a mask around the Lady and export it as a matte-image-sequence.
Import the camera in your 3D-Program of choice and set the original Clip as your background, so you can see where the cylinder is supposed to be in space.
Model out the Cylinder and texture it accordingly.
Set the 3D-Kamera to fit the real camera, i.e. Lens-distortion, Chromatic-Abberation, Mono-Chromatic Abberation, etc.
Light the scene to perfectly fit the video-clip.
Cut out the back part of the cylinder using your matte-image sequence from prior.
Export the sequence as a tiff or exr with alpha-channel (the transparency)
Import the image-sequence into Nuke.
Add some finishing touches such as grain, glow, etc.


How to play a clip only till an Out mark in Adobe Premiere? In Adobe Premiere there are shortcut keys to play a clip right from the In mark to Out mark. Shortcut on a PC  is Ctrl + Shift + Space.

However, how can I play a clip only till my Out mark? Not my full selection from In to Out, but from an arbitrary point of a selection only to my Out mark? It should stop playing on my Out mark.

To "Play from Playhead to Out Point":

PC: Ctrl + Spacebar
Mac: Ctrl + Spacebar

To "Play In to Out":

PC: Ctrl + Shift + Spacebar
Mac: Opt + K

from: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/keyboard-shortcuts.html


How to skip/minimize encoding workload in OBS? I am a beginner and I am trying to stream a local file to YouTube Live.
I noted that when I start streaming on OBS using the below settings, the CPU usage is at 35-40%.

Since, I am using a local file which then OBS encodes (converts my local .mp4 (H.264) file to a data stream) using the settings given above and streams the data to the YouTube server, is there a way of capturing the data that OBS has streamed to YouTube, saving it as a file and then sending that data directly to YouTube without going through the conversion/encoding the next time I want to stream the same file?
I am sorry if this is a stupid question.

If you're streaming, OBS will re-encode the output each time.
You can stream and record to disk at the same time,
However, there's no way to "replay" that data directly to YouTube, it must be re-encoded.
I notice that you have your stream encoder set to Software x264 which is CPU based.
I also noticed that your recording encoder is set to NVENC which is GPU based.
If you use NVENC as your stream encoder, it can offload encoding from the CPU to the GPU, which could drastically reduce your CPU load.
However, the CPU load maybe coming from the decoding of the video file your trying to playback so you may not be able to reduce it massively but NVENC will definitely help.


Can ffmpeg downsample pixels perfectly? I've tried all the swsflags options and figure the answer is no, but it can't hurt to ask just in case.  For example: downsample from 1920x1080 to 960x540, then upsample back to 1080 using the neighbor flag to recreate a perfect copy of the original 1080 image.  Neighbor comes very close but there seems to be some color shifting happening in the downsample.  Can another filter accomplish this, or is it simply the nature of the beast that downsampling will never be perfect?

That violates the rules of information theory. Look into the work of Claude Shannon if you wish to understand why what you are asking is mathematically impossible.


After Effects: Parent a Camera's position to a Null-Object with specific Off-Set I am just struggling with a simple expression thing I guess.

I have a camera looking at an Object in 3D Space. Actually The Object is at [0,0,0]. The Camera's position is at [29,-1637,-2248].

What I am trying to do is, to move the camera. For a better workflow I want to parent the camera's position to the position of a Null-Object, also at [0,0,0]. The thing is the camera has to keep its offset from [0,0,0] and just move parallel with the null at [0,0,0].

Can somebody help me?
Thanks in advance!

To drive an animation by another layer use the pick whip or the selection list to parent it. In the following example the Camera (layer) adopts all animation properties of the Null.

Note: Camera is a 3d layer in your case, make sure 3d layer toggle is enabled for the Null too.


Fair use of short clips from movie that I bought I bought movie(s) from ITunes,
and I would like to share short clips from the movies to my friends on Facebook/Line,
and maybe publicly on Twitter.

How do I know whether my short clips usage falls within fair use or not ?

IANAL, but I'd guess that if you have to circumvent any DRM just to copy clips of the movie (which you probably do), then it's probably not OK.  Try taking a screenshot of the movie playing in iTunes (ctrl-shift-3 or ctrl-shift-4 on mac).  If it shows up black on your desktop, or if you get an error message, then you probably don't have rights to share it.  But like I said, I'm just guessing.


Why headphones doesn't work with mic out port? It seems I'm the only person who doesn't understand why Mic out port on Sony ecm-xyst1m external microphone doesn't work with headphones, while having the same jack.

I bought that one and first thought it is broken, but at service they told it is not supposed to be used with headphones. I tried to google the topic but it seems nobody even care about that.
At the same time very similar microphone from Sony, just wireless - Sony ECMW1M does have headphones output.

Taking into account that A6000, A6300 and even A6500 cameras doesn't have headphones output as well, that sounds like a really stupid design from Sony.

What's the point of having all those switches on sound recording if you can't hear what is being recorded?

Microphones output at mic level, which is a signal that ranges from around 0.001 volts to 0.01 volts. Headphones work at closer line level, which is around 1 volt. Based off that information, you can see there isn't enough power in the output of a microphone to hear it by directly plugging headphones into the microphone. Just because they have the same connector, doesn't mean that the signals are compatible. This isn't Sony design flaw, it is how all microphones work.

Instead of plugging the headphones directly into the microphone, you need to use a headphone amplifier. Connect that directly to the mic and then plug your headphones in to the amp. There are headphone amps available in a number of price ranges, depending on the features and quality you need.


Software to create videos from multiple songs I have a lot of songs that I want to upload to YouTube.

I already uploaded close to 1000 videos. Those videos were created using Windows Movie Maker (for each song) + a macro to automate everything. (I used macros when I need to upload an album, but instead of a video with the whole album, I uploaded each song then created a playlist of the album in YouTube.)

Most of the songs are from albums, so it's a lot of work and time to do it manually. Plus Movie Maker is giving me nightmares... Errors coming up, freezes, etc.

So I would like to know if there is a software out there that could do this easily:

Select one image for the video track.
Select, let's say, 10 songs.
Create 10 videos with that image, and those songs. Each song to each video.

Or create just one video with the whole album, and then split the file into multiple videos with each song.

Thank you guys.

With ffmpeg, on Windows, create a batch file AudiotoVid.cmd

for %%A in (*.mp3 *.m4a *.wav *.flac *.ape) do ffmpeg -i "%%A" -i "c:\path\to\image.png" -map 1:v -map 0:a -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest -f mp4 "%~nA.mp4"

Run it in each folder that you wish to convert.

For each audio file of the given extensions. it will create a MP4 in the same folder as the audio file. This batch file does not recurse through subdirectories. If you want to do that, use the command below.

for /r %%A in (*.mp3 *.m4a *.wav *.flac *.ape) do ffmpeg -i "%%A" -i "c:\path\to\image.png" -map 1:v -map 0:a -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest -f mp4 "%~dpnA.mp4"

Copy a few of your files to a new folder and test this there first. I don't batch often.

Get FFmpeg for Windows from https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/


How can I convert the caption file format (.xml to .vtt)? I'm looking for your help and suggestion how to get started with CC conversion from .xml to .vtt.

We are having lots of flash files where we have xml to vtt during a project migration. I tried with many online tools most don't have solution for this.

Could you please help me how to start on this. Suggest me any tools/online converters which can do this job for me.

Thanks,
Siva

Closed Caption Converter claims to be able to convert from TTML (XML) to VTT captions. I don't have a source file unfortunately, so I cannot confirm.

What tools have you tried thus far?


Upload a video to Youtube without losing contrast I've been trying to upload a video to Youtube which had been created in Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 and rendered as an MP4 file. You may notice the text has become sharper and the watermark is now almost impossible to see:

Video on PC (Played in Quicktime)

Video on Youtube

The entire video is affected by not just the first slide. I have tried to increase the colour settings in Sony Vegas and with Youtube's built-in editor. I have also tried using the built-in Vegas Youtube uploader.

Video Properties

Created and rendered in Vegas Movie Studio HD.
Rendered as HDV 720-25P (Matches project settings)
Audio: 384 Kbps, 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, MPEG
Video: 25 fps, 1280x720 Progressive, YUV, 18.3 Mbps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.000

I worked out a satisfactory solution to this problem. It involves adding the 'Computer RGB to Studio RGB' Video FX to each video track in your Vegas Studio project. This effects the rendered file and project quite a lot but appears normal when uploaded to Youtube:
Quicktime

Youtube

It's possible to disable the track Video FX whilst you work on your project so you don't have to deal with dimmed video. The effects will need to be be re-enabled before you render the project.


How do I make animated subtitles to go with music? The subtitles in this video look amazing.  They are able to make the words dissolve and fall off the screen as the song progresses.  Most subtitles are just plain text.  How is it possible to make animated sub-titles?  Are there any ways to make it match up with the music quickly or is it a manual process?

The author of the subtitles, Jefferz, says:

  "... I animated the text to match the original subtitles use Adobe After Effects (CS6 specifically) keyframing the text movements ...".

Source Jefferz's Tumblr Blog.

It's a manual process.


What cable for 200' run between camera (video/audio) and ATEM switcher I am running a video/audio signal from a camera in a lobby to a Blackmagicdesign ATEM switcher that are about 150' apart but cable run will be closer to 200'. The video/audio from the camera in the lobby will be streamed online.
My initial design for your feedback...
Lobby will have camera with a Hollyland Mars 400S SDI/HDMI Wireless Video Transmission System. Once the signal is at the HDMI rx in the lobby it will output on an SDI port and make a 200' cable run to the Blackmagicdesign 8 port ATEM switcher.
Lobby Camera <--HDMI cable--> HDMI tx <--wireless--> HDMI rx with SDI output <--cable?--> Blackmagicdesign ATEM switcher to the live stream.
Will RG59 75ohm cable work for that 200' run or does it need to be a special "SDI" rated cable? Again, it needs to transmit both the video and audio.
Thanks.

You need to use cable specifically designed for SDI. RG59 essentially only defines the impedance and capacitance of the cable, not the return loss and attenuation characteristics. You can use reference charts from cable manufacturers like Belden and Gepco to select the right cable for your situation.


Video rendering taking 13 Hrs to render for a normal video less than 2 minute ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DT 15.6-inch FHD Laptop, Ryzen 7 3750H, GTX 1650 4GB GDDR5 Graphics (16GB RAM/512GB NVMe SSD/Windows 10/Stealth Black/2.20 Kg), FX505DT-BQ157T
Hi all above mentioned is the spec of my device. When i try to render after effects composition which is just  1.5 minutes duration it took me around 13 hours to complete. Dont know why this is happening. I did many searches in youtube to speed up the output video rendering. But none works out. Does any one know why this happening. All my drivers are up to date. There is no problem when iam Just previewing the videos in after effects but rendering part is very slow.

Rendering speed depends on a lot of factors. Things that slow the render down include

using a lot of CPU intensive effects,
lots of CPU intensive precomps,
effects which require multiple frames to be calculated, such as echo or time displacement,
using many source layers, particularly high resolution sources that take time to read from disk,
some effects are just dog slow because they've never been optimised that well,

and lastly, but probably most importantly:

memory issues: if you run out of RAM then it starts swapping to the hard drive, which even on a fast SSD is an order of magnitude slower than memory, so even simple compositions will take an inordinate amount of time.


ffmpeg convert .png to DNxHD .mov and scale color to bt709 I have an 8bpc .png sequence in RGB color space (full range 0-255 of course) that I need to convert to DNxHD bt709 "legal" range (16-235). Here is where I am so far:

ffmpeg -framerate 23.976 -i input_%04d.png -vcodec dnxhd -b:v 175M outfile.mov

This throws an error: pixel format is incompatible with DNxHD profile. I used to do this all the time in a earlier version of ffmeg with no issue... I assume it has to do with the color space, and in looking through the "colorspace" filter documentation I am uncertain what the proper command would be. As mentioned I do want to actually transform the values to bt709, legal range.

ffmpeg -framerate 24000/1001 -i input_%04d.png -vf format=yuv422p10le -c:v dnxhd -b:v 180M output.mov

Use 24000/1001 or ntsc-film instead of the inaccurate 23.976 byname.
This encoder only supports the following pixel formats: yuv422p, yuv422p10le,  yuv444p10le,  gbrp10le. See ffmpeg -h encoder=dnxhd.
This encoder only supports specific combinations of bitrate, width, and height. See a list with ffmpeg -f lavfi -i nullsrc -c:v dnxhd -f null -.
bt709 should be automatically chosen, but verify it is what you want. See output of ffmpeg -i output.mov.


Creating a sith lightning effect How do you create a sith lightning effect? I am getting into special effects, and was wondering how you do this. I have FCE 4 & 3.5. I'd rather not have to use a different program, but...

With FCE I think your best option would be a plugin or something. I know you can make them with Apple Motion and After Effects though, or a really simple one with good ol' iMovie HD.

Good luck in your search for the force.


ffmpeg: how to convert to DNxHR in Windows 10? I have installed ffmpeg version 3.2.2 from the ffmpeg.org download page.

When I enter ffmpeg formats, I see dnxhd but not dnxhr.  What do I need to do to be able to manipulate dnxhr?

I have downloaded and installed Avid Codecs LE 2.7.3 as well but that didn't seem to help.

There's a single decoder/encoder which reads/converts to both DNxHD and DNxHR.

You have to set the correct profile switch. Available options are

 dnxhd                        E..V....
 dnxhr_444                    E..V....
 dnxhr_hqx                    E..V....
 dnxhr_hq                     E..V....
 dnxhr_sq                     E..V....
 dnxhr_lb                     E..V....

Basic minimal syntax would be

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_hq out.mov

The Avid codecs package has no interaction with ffmpeg.

[19-1-2017] At this time, the encoder does not support 444 or HQX profiles.

[4-2-2017] Now, it does.


What do I need to take into consideration to take video of molten glass which I will later postprocess? I want to take video of one part of the of production process of glass pressing: gob delivery. I want to assess the shape of the gob, dimensions, and position in the mold.

I do not know much about video techniques, so I tried to use my cellphone camera with very bad results. The main problem seems to be the brightness of the glass.

So I was wondering, what are the most important factors to take into consideration when taking this kind of footage? Should I use special camera? Maybe I should use filters, or maybe I need to know a particular postprocessing technique.

Can anybody shed some light on this issue?

What this comes down to is what's referred to as dynamic range. The wider the dynamic range the more detail you will see between the darkest darks and brightest lights. The human eye has a very large dynamic range, much larger than a camera. Cell phones are alright but dont have a very large dynamic range compared to a dslr or camcorder.  (This is immediately evident if youve ever tried to take a photo with your phone of a beautiful sunset only to be underwhelmed by the resulting photo compared to the reality.)

It sounds like all you need to do is manually adjust the exposure down a few stops until just the glass is exposed. If you have a dslr try snagging a set of ND filters for the lens you'll shoot with. The ND filter (neutral density filter) works to allow you to adjust the exposure of the image if you are dealing with extreme brightness either from the environment or due to your aperture/shutter/ISO settings.

Hope this helps! Feel free to message me if you need any help!


Can duplicate frames effect motion? I understand that sometimes when editing, converting, and rendering new videos you can end up with duplicate frames. In other words, two successive frames can be exactly identical.

To what extent can duplicate frames affect the appearance of motion in a video? I've seen the charge that it can make motion appear faster or slower, but I don't really buy this as one frame in a 30 FPS video is only 0.033 seconds. One frame on a 15 FPS video might be noticeable, but again, I doubt it.

What effect you see will depend on the content, and your own perception. In a static scene dupes will have no visual effect, but they always lengthen the clip.

With motion in the scene, a duplicated or skipped frame might be quite noticeable. I usually find them visually disruptive, but others might not -- it depends partly on what you're trained to see, and how engaged you are in the content.

On the other hand, a repetitive sequence of duplicated images will generally not be disturbing, though a trained eye may see it. This is the essence of 3::2 pulldown, for example. That doesn't serve to lengthen or shorten the scene, but to convert a taking frame rate to a presentation frame rate.


What is a good workflow when using speedgrade and transitions and effects in Premiere Pro? I want to try using speedgrade to get an overall cinematic look and I've heard that it is preferable to do speedgrade work before aadding any transitions or effects in PP. When I import from speedgrade to PP ( using an image sequence which I heard was the most typical/professional way to do it ) it has the sequence as a single clip in PP. What would I do at that point? Would I spit the single clip back into mutliple clips so I can add the transitions?

It might not be possible to do it that way.
The best way I'm familiar with is actually the other way around.

You start a project in Adobe Premiere Pro

Use the "Direct-Link" function to import your Premiere project into Speedgrade.

Now, all editorial changes from premiere will update into Speedgrade.
A lot of Speedgrade functions will disappear (raw debayering for instance)
That is because Premiere is now "the boss" over Speedgrade and you should change those in Premiere.

Sorry for the bad news, but this is the only way I know, how what you ask is possibe.


exporting video from flash for html5 video changes colors I'm exporting video from Flash CC 2015 to video - it renders a quicktime (.mov) file which seems to retain the quality and color palette of my original flash file, but then when I use adobe media encoder to create an h264, the colors get washed out, which would be ok except that there is a discrepancy between the background color of my website and the background color of the video.

I can't use alpha channel video to get rid of the background since h264 does not support it. Anyone have any pointers on how to retain the color palette of my flash file / best way to convert flash into a video file?

Broadcast video codecs such as H.264 (typically) store color as YUV, not RGB. Conversion from RGB to YUV will cause a subtle color shift but also the YUV range used to represent pixel color value is compressed compared to RGB, which may also affect the hue. And finally there's the chroma subsampling, a technique used in video where a block of pixels share the same color values.

If the specific hue of your webpage BG cannot be changed then there are two broad ways to go forward:

1) Avoid a sharp interface between your video and the surrounding page by feathering the edges of your video or flash canvas.

2) A cruder, trial & error solution is to apply a tint overlay over the HTML5 video canvas so that the resultant look matches the hue. This will be a subtle tint and will affect the other colors in the video as well.

Of course, you can always take a screenshot of the webpage with your current video in it, sample its color in an image processing app and make that your webpage background color.


Premiere failing to export long video "file does not exist" error I'm trying to export a long (2h20m) video interview from Premiere CC 2015 on a mac for translation purposes.

The source video is ProRes 422 mov files

I'm adding timecode & source file name effects as overlays

The export is to h264, Vimeo preset.

I've tried HD 1920x1080p, and SD 480p

Every time, the export fails with the error "file does not exist".

See screen shots:

Try doing it as a two-step process:

Export your movie with the identical format as your sequence, using a reasonable high-quality ProRes format as your output (so you don't suffer much the damage of double-compression)
Compress the output of Step 1 into the format and codec you like

Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder have all kinds of problems right now, and not only with El Capitan.  Many others have hit the same glitch you have, both on Yosemite and El Capitan, with or without hardware rendering.  CC2015 has been a big disappointment to many.


Hardware or software Gen-Lock for different actioncams I have a GoPro Hero 4 Black and a Rollei 5S Wifi looking at the same scene from a different angle.

How can I hardware - or later in software using ffmpeg - gen-lock them?

My ideas:

Software

interpolate between frames and align matching frames using machine learning

Hardware

Control them via wifi to start them at the same time. Still the question is when they actually start after getting the command and how to control them using only one wifi adapter or bluetooth adapter or whatever protocol they use. Without knowing that it will work, it's a lot of effort to do it.

I'm not sure there is really a good answer to this problem without custom hardware.  General wireless products aren't really going to be a great option as wifi and bluetooth will both have variable latency issues and missed packets.  What you'd really want is something akin to flash triggers, but capable of firing repeatedly at your frame rate.  It would need to be a custom wireless solution for the problem though.

On the software side, you can try frame interpolation, but I'm not sure that the quality loss associated wouldn't be worse than the minor timing difference of not being gen-locked.  It still isn't going to match up exactly as it is a guess rather than what actually happened.

This is also ignoring the fact that rolling shutter greatly reduces the advantage of gen-lock to begin with.  The sensor itself is taking time to read the scene and so not even the top and bottom of the frame are truly in sync.  Genlocking is really something that more mattered for doing live switching where you needed to be able to keep a constant frame sequence and needed a frame to send.  It can also be useful in fine tuning audio/video sync, but that's pretty secondary to the technical needs to it, especially if you are shooting high framerate video.

That may actually be the real solution to your problem too.  If you shoot at a higher frame rate than your intended final product, you'll have frames much closer in timing to each other and can pick which frames to use.  This will work best if it's an even multiple, but pull downs may also work acceptably.  So if you shot 60 fps and were planning on going with 30, you could pick your frames to pull out to make sure you were at most half a frame off and on average be only 1/4 frame off.  That's a pretty tight sync without needing any weird magic.


How does scaling work in ffmpeg? I am new to ffmpeg. I just want to know how I could keep the original scale of the video. The original size of the video is that its frame width is 1820 while its frame height is 720. The original data rate is 1429kbps while the original total bitrate is 1589kbps. The original frame rate is 30.00 frames/second
How can I keep the original ones. Like I mean is that what should be my version of this below:
ffmpeg -i Happy.mp4 -vf scale=800:-1 -r 20 Lucky.gif
You see I am trying to make a gif while keeping the original properties of the video so please help me.
Also, how does scaling in general work in ffmpeg?

Remove -vf scale=800:-1 to avoid rescaling. Remove -r 20 to avoid changing frame rate. You're transcoding from a stream in a MP4 to the GIF codec, so the bitrate will not remain the same, nor is there any sense in trying to keep it the same.
A stream is scaled by using the scale filter in a simple filterchain -vf or a complex filterchain -filter_complex or using the -s WIDTHxHEIGHT output option.


Can't Get Playable Video From Images in FFMPEG for Oculus Go I have a series of PNG images created in Blender that I need to combine into an mp4, or really any video format playable on the Oculus Go VR headset. This page has detailed information about video specifications for their platform Oculus Video, although I'm actually trying to use the apps Oculus Gallery and Skybox VR for local playback, so I'm not sure it applies the same.

ffmpeg -r 24 -vcodec h264 -i my_images_%04d.png -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

This command is failing and giving me the following output: https://pastebin.com/xyNck7fa. If I add the corresponding audio with -i my_audio.wav, I get an audio-only file with a .mp4 file extension.

I was previously able to produce video that was playable on my PC but didn't play back at the correct speed to match the corresponding audio. (This is quite clear because it is specifically a music visualization video.) When transferred to the headset, it was unable to play at all in Oculus Gallery (would try to load indefinitely), and it would kind of play in Skybox VR but at maybe 1 fps, clearly struggling. To be honest, I'm not sure what I was doing differently before that allowed me to at least get a video. I had thought this was the exact command I was using, but I let some time go by and I guess I forgot some option.

I played the video I was able to create before in VLC and pulled up codec information to compare to other MP4 files I had downloaded. There were only two significant differences: the resolutions and the 'decoded format.' The resolution of my frames is 2880x810 (which I'm aware now is not the ideal aspect ratio for VR, but I can work on that once I have playable video), whereas a typical video I have is 864x480. All of my downloaded MP4s have the decoded format field blank when viewed in VLC, but the video I created reads 'Planar 4:4:4 YUV.'

That is all the relevant information I can think of. Can someone help me figure out what I need to do differently?

Thanks to u/jesus_is_imba on Reddit for the following answer:

ffmpeg -r 24 -i my_images_%04d.png -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset slow -g 48 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart output.mp4

  The -g argument defines keyframe interval in frames and according to Oculus should be 2 seconds, ie. 2x your frame rate.

This command produces video that plays back perfectly both in VLC and in Oculus Gallery.


Morph between 100 portraits I`m looking for a workflow to morph between 100 portrait photos without animating every single transition in After Effects.

Are there any tools to achieve this automaticly ?

There is a "new" "Morph Cut" as Premiere Video Transition. You could just place all images in a new Sequence and then copy paste the Video Transition. Remember to adjust the length of the transition itself before copy´n paste and also the length of the images.


Practical algorithms for rate adaptation I am interested about reading material on rate adaptation, by which I mean the process of adapting the bandwidth/rate allocated for a streaming application, ranging from services such as YouTube, to Netflix or Skype calls.

I would like to have references to papers or any kind of material where are described practical solutions that adapt the rate of the media to network and environmental conditions.

I am especially interested about algorithms that can be applied from the perspective of the end user.

You may want to read the spec for Apple's HTTP Live Streaming
and see their recommended settings.

While the standard seems to be quite well thought through, its real-world performance on iOS still needs some improvement. Switching qualities and streams (for ads) often results in less than stellar experiences. Encoder support also needs to be more accessible, I think.


Flash effect with Adobe Premiere How can we simulate a camera flash with Premiere Pro? I know the stroboscope effect but it's not very realistic.

Insert a single white frame and/or crank the brightness up very high for one frame.  A photo flash  is very fast (much, much less than a single frame) so the impact in video would only be for one frame of video.


FCPX is getting stuck all the time I have a MBP 13” with a 1.4 GHz quad core i5 prosesor and 16 GB of ram.
All the footage Including the project is on a external usb stick with usb 3.

When I am editing a simple video clip, not in 4K, fcpx is getting stuck a lot. Mostly when I want to move a video a second back or forth or when I want to watch right after moving a video.

Does anybody have a idea what this could be?
Thanks

Your bottleneck is the USB stick and USB 3.0 itself. There's simply not enough bandwidth to get smooth playback.

From your specs (quad i5, 1.4 GHz) I'm guessing you've got a the 2019 13" MBPro which should be powerful enough to handle quite some video editing, so I'd highly recommend getting an external SSD connected via Thunderbolt 3, or at least USB-C. While USB-C is optically the same plug as Thunderbolt 3, the protocol and speeds are different. Thunderbolt 3's max throughput is about 4x of what USB-C can handle.

For maximum performance get a NVMe SSD (M.2) drive and a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. You can get 1TB with case for ca. 250 USD and the maximum throughput is just as fast as the internal drive (same technology), up to 1400 MB/s which should be enough to even edit 4k footage.


ffmpeg overlay tranparency video loop I'm trying to superimpose a transparent video on another video. If the original video has a longer duration than the transparent video, then the transparent video should be looped until the end of the original video.
I wrote the following operation, but the transparent video does not repeat.
How can I change this ffmpeg command to make the overlay video loop?

-i preresult.mp4 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -i Overlay.webm -filter_complex ""[1]loop=0,setpts=N/FRAME_RATE/TB[bg];[0][bg]overlay=shortest=1:x=(W-w)/2:y=(H-h)/2"" -preset ultrafast output.mp4

If you're using a recent git build, use stream_loop and drop the loop filter:

-stream_loop -1 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -i Overlay.webm -filter_complex "[0][1]overlay=...

For older builds, you'll have to supply the loop filter with full details,

[1]loop=-1:C:0,setpts=N/FRAME_RATE/TB[bg]

where C is a value greater than the frame count of the file.


Adding a sport watch timer I'm looking for a way to display a timer to measure things happening during the movie, a swimming event for example.

Can I add a timer that will start once the race is started and displaying in MM:SS:MS?

I have Adobe After Effects 2014 running on my Mac.

The Timecode effect (effects>text>timecode) will add a timecode, but it's measured in HH:MM:SS:FF rather than milliseconds.

You could do it with an expression by adding a text layer, and applying an expression to the Source Text property. Below is an expression that returns what you want.

To apply it, alt-click on the stop watch for the text layers Source Text property and paste the expression in.

This expression includes an offset, because the time constant in AE starts at 0, no matter what your comp's timecode. So if you wanted the time on the dispay to be 0 at 1 second ten frames in your comp you'd subract 1.4 seconds (at 25 fps) from time on the first line. Or if you wanted to start the count at 1 second 234ms you'd add 1.234 seconds. Or you could precomp it if that's too hard. Here's the code to copy 'n paste:

offsettime=time //<--subtract or add a time offset (in seconds) here

//a hacky way to zero pad the end of the ms field to
//three digits, but easier than doing it numerically:
ms=((offsettime % 1)+"000").substr(2,3);

//zero pad the seconds if they're less than 10.
//"%" is the modulus operator, aka the remainder, so at 60s it rolls over:
s=Math.floor(offsettime % 60 );
ss=s>9 ? s : "0"+s;

//and so on. Thank you ancient Mesopotamia for our weird time measurement system
m=Math.floor((offsettime / 60) % 60);
mm=(m>9) ? m : "0"+ m;
h=Math.floor( (offsettime / 3600) % 24);
hh=(h>9) ? h  : "0"+ h;
//if whatever it is runs longer than 24hrs you're on your own

//now turn it all into a string:
hh + ":" + mm + ":" + ss + ":" + ms

note that the precision is limited by your comp's frame rate, so for 25fps the results will be just multiples of 40 ms.

Here it is applied (the red background is just the comp bg). Use normal text formatting to change the font etc (a monospaced one will work best).


Understanding Video Formats and Attributes for use in FCP7 My question(s) for you today regard the converting of videos from various cameras for use in Final Cut Pro 7. I have footage of the same event from different angles all shot on different cameras (Sony DV Handycam, Sony Hard Disk Handycam, Panasonic Hard Disk camera) that all shoot to different frame sizes, and, inconveniently, different frame rates.

My first question is (while I know FCP can handle different frame rates within a project by frame skipping, it is not advisable) how should I convert my footage so that they are all same frame rate? Should I convert the Panasonic (that shoots at 50fps) down to 24fps that the Sonys record to, or should I upconvert those two up to 50fps? Obviously I would like to lose as little quality as possible, what is the best plan of action when it comes to this?

My second question is regarding converting formats. I use Compressor, and am very impressed with it, but what common format should I convert the footage from the two hard disk camcorders to? The DV tape is captured into DV by FCP, but what should I use for the others? HDV, Prores, DV?

My third is to do with frame size and aspect ratios: one of the camcorders records to 16:9 1080p, how will that work alongside the 576x720 4:3 footage from the other camcorders on the timeline?

The codec question is the easier one: use ProRes.  It preserves quality very well and FCP likes to edit it.

As for what frame rates, image dimensions, etc. the general approach should be to go to the highest resolution of any of the originals so you aren't discarding any data.  So, upconvert to 50 fps rather than downconvert to 24 fps.  Similarly for image dimensions, conform to 1080p rather than 720p.

But I might moderate the advice above depending on what output format you are targeting.  An alternative strategy is to conform everything to a format that more closely matches the output characteristics.


What part of this video is good and how to improve it? I am new to video editing. I recently made this video and I was wondering which edits of my video is good and what improvements I can make for any future videos. I used VideoPad if you wanted to know which video editing software I used.

I would appreciate any feedback! Thanks

Since you asked for general feedback, here's a few things I noticed:

0:00 The logo animation is too long in my opinion, especially since the video itself isn't that long.
0:12 Make the text much smaller, use the same font and font weight as in the inspire of the logo, it will look more coherent and sophisticated. Text doesn't need to fill most of the screen. It also doesn't need to be centered. If you have enough good B-roll footage, you can also use that as a background for the text, makes for a nicer introduction.
0:19 In general, for this kind of impression videos, it's not a good style to use a shot that starts with camera movement (e.g. a pan) and then stops. It looks like the cameraman started out with a pan and then didn't know what to do with the camera. If a shot starts with movement, end the shot before that movement stops. Inversely, if you have a still shot, cut it off before it starts moving, it's much less distracting that way. In this case this effect is increased by the shaking of the camera, could probably use a bit of stabilizing.
0:28 Why is the font green now? Lose the color and the stroke. If the text is hard to read against the bright background, use subtle shadows, not thick strokes. It's optimal if you can read the text without a problem, but don't notice a stroke or shadow on it without a closer look. Also it sounds like you cut the Mayor off after 'to be honest', could probably end the shot after 'what a great idea'.
0:30 This looks like you just put the poster for the event into the video, it doesn't look good. Better use text annotations to communicate what the event is about, or just use the Logo with background footage. Nobody is gonna read the text in the green field or the smaller text below, so you don't need it. The poster is not very good in itself, but that's a different topic. And if you absolutely want a poster in the video, make a dedicated 16/9 graphic that only contains text and images that can be read/perceived within the 3~5 seconds for which it is visible.
0:36 In general I like the text in front of the blurred video, but there's a few problems with it:

It's clearly visible that the blur was applied in post editing. It's much cooler to use a video where the cameras focus was intentionally off by a large factor. This way you get nicer bokeh (if you use a good camera/lens combination) and graduated sharpness.
The blurred video stays in the background for too long and there's too much movement. This draws attention away from the text and onto the video. In this sense it's quite frustrating that you can't make out anything because of the blur, especially at 0:38 where the camera is centered on the little girl. For text with blurry background video, you wanna use static shots, for example a static camera that records people coming in or out of the hall at the start/end of the event. If you only have footage like the one seen in the movie available, don't use blurry video at all, just make the text smaller and put it in one of the corners.
At 0:48, if everything is blurry it makes no sense to divide the video in four parts. Again it draws the attention away from the text and onto the video. I like the composition of that scene in general, but make the text smaller and lose the blur for that part. You overuse the blurry background/text combination anyway, so that would be a good place to start.

0:52 The transition of blurry to sharp is cool in general, but again it's cooler if it happens during filming than as an effect. You can do this by setting the camera to manual focus, focus as close to the camera as possible, start recording and then slowly and steadily move the focus onto the subject. There's a name for this technique, but I can't recall it at the moment.
1:03 You can't hear what they say very well. You want to lower the volume of the music whenever someone talks. Use keyframes for gradual volume transitions (about 0.5 ~ 1 seconds), never hard volume cuts.
1:10 Not sure about the text here. I get that you want to underline his statement, but in this version it's not visible long enough to actually read this and it's too distracting from the video itself. Maybe try putting the quote in front of a black screen or again blurry footage after the man has finished talking to put more emphasis on the statement (not sure if this will look good, you will have to try it out). Or make it smaller and put it on the bottom as a caption. And again, in general be more consistent with your usage of font/color/strokes.
1:27 - 1:57 Get rid of that part entirely. It doesn't help your video in any way. Also it's way too long, it takes up 1/4 of the entire video. If you insist on having this kind of outro, make it 10 seconds at best.

General stuff: The video could use a little tone/color grading. You don't have to shoot for a high-profile Hollywood look, but adjust the brightness a bit to correct for the overexposed shots (e.g. the food scenes). Be a bit more subtle with the text, slow it down a bit, it will look more relaxed and professional. Try to be consistent with font, font size/weight, colors/strokes and placement/alignment of the text. And most important, use one shot/scene for every point you want to get across. The blurry scenes with the text do to much (communicate text and show video) and ends up being distracting.


How is "definition" (SD, HD, UHD) actually defined? OK, so at first it might sound like a stupid question but I'm trying to get my head around all these definitions...

It seems that they don't have a specific resolution, but they do at the same time. It's as they have their own resolution but also are part of a group of resolutions.

Wiki says:

HD

720i
1080i
1080p

UHD

2160p
4320p
8640p

But generally we say that 1080i is HD and 1080p is FULLHD.

UHD has resolution 3840 x 2160 and 4K is 4096 x 2160 but 4K is UHD. Same vertical resolution (2160) but different aspect ratio, making the horizontal slightly longer by 256 pixels. And it also includes 8K...

Is UHD a resolution, a group of resolutions or both? If it's both, why?

The problem is that definitions such as HD, UHD and 4k etc. are partly hype. Marketers for AV equipment like to be rather elastic with the truth, hence the rather rubbery definitions. They're not standards such as ATSC or DVB, or graphic display resolutions such as VGA, WXGA etc., they're really just buzzwords.

There are other complications - like the different broadcast standards for SD — so that SD PAL is 576 visible lines and SD NTSC is 480 lines — or non-square pixels in digital video meaning that even a 16:9 HD 1080p image can be either 1440x1080 or 1920x1080*. So it's pretty understandable that you're confused.

For what it's worth, the general consensus is that:

SD refers to 576i / 480i (with the unusual EDTV variant being 576p and 480p). Display resolution is 768 × 576 PAL or 720 × 534 NTSC, often the actual pixel resolution is reduced, as in the case of DV: 720 × 576 PAL or 720 × 480 NTSC, with non-square pixels
HD refers to 720p and 1080i / 1080p. The display resolution is 1280 × 720 or 1920 × 1080, but sometimes the horizontal pixel resolution is reduced, e.g. HDV which is 1440 × 1080 with non-square pixels. You could also say that resolutions higher than this are also High Definition. So in one sense it's anything that isn't standard definition. Note that there is no 720i.
Full HD or FHD means the 1080 flavour of HD (either interlaced or progressive)
2K describes the Digital Cinema Initiative resolution of 2048 × 1080, this resolution is based on the historical resolution of scanned super 35mm film. As with 4K it is a little slippery, and can sometimes be used to describe FHD. As the wikipedia article states it describes content "having horizontal resolution on the order of 2,000 pixels". So in other words: near enough is good enough.
QHD or Quad HD - 2560 × 1440 is a whacky one, it's twice the resolution of 720p. The "quad" refers to there being four times the pixels of a 720p frame. Not to be confused with QFHD - see below.
UHD refers to 3840 × 2160, and like HD also sometimes to higher resolutions like 4K and UHD 8K
QFHD is 3840 x 2160 "Quad Full HD", the quad referring to the fact that it has four times the pixels of a FHD frame, which sounds better than saying it has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution. QFHD = UHD
UHD 4K - 3840 × 2160, is double the HD 1080 frame size, and is also sometimes called 4K, even though the horizontal resolution is less than 4000 pixels. UHD 4K = UHD
UHD 8K or FUHD is 7680 × 4320. I'm guessing that as the FUHD sets hit the shops they'll be called "8K" by the salespeople.
4K usually refers to Digital Cinema Initiatives 4K which is 4096 × 2160 but the term is sometimes used to refer to UHD 4K
Similarly 8K should properly refer to 8192 × 4320 but is also applied to FUHD

Note that there are cameras such as the Red cameras that shoot in-between resolutions such as 3K, 5K and 6K. But that's just for production, the finished media will usually be cropped / scaled to a more standard resolution for display or broadcast.

TL;DR If you're trying to define anything in technical terms and want to be unambiguous just give the pixel dimensions; terms like HD, UHD etc are really FUD. They're more for marketing than anything else.

Edit: Here's a handy chart:

pdf version available here


Adding edge for open captions in Adobe Premiere Pro I'm on Mac OSX El Capitan, Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 V10.3. I've created some open captions and I want to add some edge to them, to make them more readable. Only that I find no option for this. What should I do?

Screenshot:

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Turned out that edged captions is a new feature in CC 2017, and is only available for open captions. My bad.