Premiere Pro system compatibility report unsupported video drivers Just had to wipe my windows installation as it got beyond repair.  Working on a Lenovo P50, 32GB memory, Core i7 HD, Intel HD Graphics 530, Nvidia Quadro M1000M.  I've got a clean install of windows, I've installed the latest version (grudgingly) of Premiere Pro.  Open it for the first time, I get a window I haven't seen before:

(FYI, at first, this showed both my video drivers as unsupported.  The other is a Nvidia Quadro M1000M)
That's weird, I think.  I click on Fix...

Fix for the Intel Graphics driver takes me to: https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/drivers-video-win-intel.html
Fix for the Nvidia driver takes me to: https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/drivers-video-win-nvidia.html

Wasn't keen on messing with the Nvidia GPU, so I thought I'd give the Intel a go first.  Downloaded the file but when I try to install I get:

So then I did Win + X and click on Device Manager.  When I update the drivers for either Nvidia or Intel, using the search online option, I get told that I've got the latest drivers.
Ok, let's have a look at Nvidia I think - go to the website, stick in the right version, download and clean install the latest drivers, and boom, the problem goes away for Premiere Pro and everything seems to be functioning normally.  (Hence the first screenshot not showing a problem with Nvidia any more)
Well, the Intel error in Premiere doesn't bother me if Premiere will work with the Nvidia driver.  So I either want to fix it or make it go away.
I downloaded the Intel tool which detects your hardware and recommends the right drivers.  This says:

So then I found this link online: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects/faq-what-is-system-compatibility-report-in-after-effects-and-premiere-pro/td-p/11200108?page=1 where an answer led me to look at this link: https://www.howtogeek.com/343287/how-to-fix-the-driver-being-installed-is-not-validated-for-this-computer-on-intel-computers
BUT there's a caveat which applies to my laptop:

I ran the Lenovo system update tool, hoping for an Intel driver update from the manufacturer, but I have all the latest packages for my system.
So what should I do?  My understanding is that if I force the update to Intel's latest driver, this could cause compatibility issues where it integrates with the Nvidia driver, and possibly Lenovo's other drivers.  On the other hand, I use Premiere Pro a lot, and I don't want to live with error popups and notifications whenever I use it.  If the error isn't going to bother me I'd be happy just to hide it.

The only solution I found is to open a new project on premiere, go to "edit", preferences, general and uncheck "show system compatibility issues at startup".
This will make that thing desappear, but it won't fix any issue.
Anyway, i hope it helps.
Bye!
Bizzarra


Shadowplay Footage Import to iMovie Introduces Audio Artifacts I've been playing around with this to vary degrees of success and I'm getting slightly confused by what I'm seeing (or rather hearing in this case).  Just playing the clips in a player like QT or VLC doesn't have any issues, so I know the source files are fine.

I started using Shadowplay recording video at the native resolution of my monitor which is 2560x1600.  It offers limited resolution and FPS options like 1080p, 1440p 4K at 30 or 60fps.

All dandy, I started by just using native resolution and 60 fps.  But when I imported this into iMovie I was getting audio issues.

In order to get over these issues I just transcoded these files in Handbrake, imported and edited those and exported just fine.  I also at this point thought that it was the source resolution that was the issue so I setup shadowplay to use 1080p 60fps thinking that I could then skip the transcoding step, preserve a bit more quality and go straight into the editing.

Nope.

Seems even these 1080p 60fps source files when imported into iMovie have  clicks and pops.

When I check the source files it seems that the FPS isn't 60 but is 59.9729 and the preset I created in Handbrake is a constant 60fps.  Could this framerate difference be the source of the audio issue in iMovie?

The source file is 4.6GB but the transcoded file is only 366mb which is obviously a huge difference so I need to check the settings again.  But I'm just curious if this framerate difference is the problem.

After some more digging around and reading on various forums it seems that this is actually a very common problem (along with other effects, not just audio artifacts) with recordings produced by Shadowplay and subsequently imported to many editors.

It seems the source of the problem is that all files produced with Shadowplay record using variable frame rates.

There is a discussion here and here that might be useful.

There is a Handbrake preset here to convert your Shadowplay files to CFR files with no compression.

Or alternatively you can stop using shadowplay completely, skip and transcoding steps and instead use OBS Studio (free) to record your footage.


FFMPEG, Extract first frame and hold for 5 seconds I'm trying to overlay a 15 second video transition on the beginning of an image sequence (png sequence with an alpha to reveal the image below), which I can do fine with the overlay filter.  But I want to hold the first frame of the image sequence for 5 seconds before playing the animation.  I've tried trim/select but I can't seem to get it be a duration of 5 seconds, I also can't seem to concat it back with the other video to do the transition. So my questions are:

How do I get the first frame and hold it for 5 seconds, the method below works but doesn't seem like the best method?

  -start_number 501 -framerate 30 -t 60.0 -i input1.%04d.jpg -framerate 30 -t 15.0 -i transition1_%03d.png -filter_complex "color=c=red:d=5:s=480x270:r=30[bg]; [bg][1:v]overlay[transhold]; [0:v][transhold]overlay=repeatlast=0[out]"

Can I then easily concat that with the original or is it better to do two overlays with the start of the actual transition offset by the length of the hold?

Thanks

Nick

Use

ffmpeg -start_number 501 -framerate 30 -t 60.0 -i input1.%04d.jpg
       -framerate 30 -t 15.0 -i transition1_%03d.png
       -filter_complex "[0]loop=149:1:0[bgheld5];
                        [1]loop=149:1:0[fgheld5];
                        [bgheld5][fgheld5]overlay=eof_action=pass"  out.mp4

The first frames of both sequences are repeated 149 times, so that there are 150 instances (30 fps x 5s). The 0 at the end of loop is the starting index of the frame(s) to loop. The middle 1 is the number of frames to loop starting at the index in the 3rd argument.


Recording Screens From Multiple Perspectives With Voices and Computer Audio Me and my friends are doing a video cast and we're recording our screens in addition to Skype audio. The problem is recording Skype separately from other system audio. This is so we can switch perspectives and have the audio come over correctly. We've tried both recording the call, but its kind of disorienting because the Skype audio is different from each of our audios. Our recording program doesn't let us record only one program's audio, so we're in a bit of a dilemma.

I haven't been able to figure out a solution to this, so I came here, because somebody is bound to know. Has anyone created a work around for this? I have an extra computer that I can use if there is a solution that involves that.

Thanks.

You could both record your individual screens and microphone inputs. In after effects (or another program of choice) you have the ability to separate the audio and visual so it is possible to change perspectives without affecting the audio. This would probably require a little manual adjustment of one of the audio layers given the lag of skype.

Good luck!


Highlighting buttons in a program Sorry if this question is out of content.

I'm creating tutorials on a program where I will have to highlight the location of the buttons, their functions and make it enjoyable for anyone to watch.

I use After Effects to edit my videos.

I would like the answers to be suggestions on how to achieve those goals.

You can use shapes around that icon and animate it. Like enclosing the icon by a circle and animating the circle to reveal in clockwise or anticlockwise manner.

For description of that icon you can use some nice looking lower thirds and edit the the text of that lower third to describe the content.

You can search for lower thirds pack online and download for free. There are plenty of them available for free online.


After Effects render&preview doesn't match timeline I have a problem with rendering my video. Some layers are invisible until the next layer startpoint, despite the fact that their own startpoint is earlier, and some layers are left in the bacground of next ones, when their endpoint on timeline is already passed. Purging the memory/disk helps with all of them at a time, but once I run render, or even try to pre-compose - some of those layers are broken again, and preview/render picture does not correspond to what is on the timeline again.

The first step if you ever suspect After Effects might have buggy behavior is to purge the Memory / Disk Cache (Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache).

You mention you already tried this, and that it cleaned it up at first, but then later on the buggy frames returned. In that case, you could consider temporarily disabling the disk cache completely:

  Choose Edit > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache (Mac OS), and select, or deselect Enable Disk Cache.

Other things to consider:

Are you using any unusual file formats or codecs in your project?
Are you rendering to an unusual file format or codec?
Does the same project file on a different computer / operating system work?
General sanity checks (you aren't running out of RAM, disk space, etc)


Master volume in final cut pro X I have a lot of audio tracks in a project of FCPX and I did some changes on each of them separately. Now, I want to decrease the volume of all tracks by a same amount. I was wondering if there is a simple master volume in FCPX to do that.

Create a compound clip of the clips you want to adjust the volume of by selecting the clips and pressing alt-G. The volume of the compound clip as a whole can then be adjusted like a regular clip.


Why can't my video play from where I drag the playback bar? I am stuck and really do not know how to explain it in correct manner. Thus I put it in the layman details.

I have two 30~ second length mp4 videos saved in cloud storage.

video1 is generated by somebody else and
video2 is generated by me on ffmpeg.

They both have the same video content.

My issue is

If I open video2 in Safari browser, I cannot locate the accurate time (by sec) in the video player progress bar.

What I mean is, for example I take steps:

I pause the video,
drag the progress bar to the first second,
I play the video.

the video player will jump to 0 and play, instead of playing from 1 second.

There are multiple time-slots in video2 that have this issue.

However, video1 does not have this issue.

video1 info from ffmpeg

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'origin.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf56.4.101
  Duration: 00:00:33.78, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 584 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 640x360 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 545 kb/s, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 11988 tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : VideoHandler
    Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 32 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : SoundHandler

video2 info from ffmpeg

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'my.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf57.71.100
  Duration: 00:00:35.04, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 734 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 640x360 [SAR 90:67 DAR 160:67], 599 kb/s, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 24k tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : VideoHandler
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 129 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : SoundHandler

video1 has a very short keyframe interval - it has a keyframe every few frames. video2 doesn't. Some players have the ability to decode upto non-KF silently and start playing from seek point. If yours doesn't, then it will start from the nearest keyframe preceding the seek point.

ffprobe origin.mp4 -show_entries frame=key_frame,pkt_pts_time -select_streams v -of compact=p=0 | grep ame=1

Result:

key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=0.000000
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=0.333667
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=0.667334
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=1.001001
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=1.334668
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=1.668335
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=2.002002
...
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=32.699366
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=33.033033
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=33.366700
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=33.700367

Video2:

ffprobe my.mp4 -show_entries frame=key_frame,pkt_pts_time -select_streams v -of compact=p=0 | grep ame=1

Result:

key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=0.000000
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=2.293958
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=5.171833
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=7.257250
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=9.718042
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=13.221542
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=15.473792
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=21.271250
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=24.357667
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=29.195833
key_frame=1|pkt_pts_time=32.407375

Add -g 8 to ffmpeg transcode command to place a keyframe every 8 frames.


Adobe AE with Element3D to work with Intel Graphics I use Element3D most of the time when I edit videos, however, there's a problem.
This Adobe After Effects Plugin works with NVIDIA GeForce Palit 210 1GB but I didn't use the graphics card because it performs too slow / let's say not capable for 1920×1080 resolution but for 1280×720 only.

At the moment, I'm using my motherboard's/processor's built-in graphics card/display/driver, but it happens that I can't use the Element3D because it says that it can't initialize the OpenGL. I'd check my processor graphic specs and I find it capable though of OpenGL 4.4. My question is, How am I able to make Element3D run with my graphic preference/spec/settings. (See Specs and Error Messages below)

My PC Specs:

Main Storage: 256GB Crucial SSD
Secondary Storage: 500GB Hitachi HDD
Processor: Intel Core-i3-6100 @ 3.70Ghz (6th Gen)
Memory: 8GB (7.44 Usable)
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 530, 2GB (Excellent in games and video editing, even at 1080p, it's just that Element3D Don't Work)

Error Messages:
First, when dragging the effect to the timeline:

Doing it again, and opening its dialog box / control panel or whatever you call it (after clicking ok on this picture, it makes my Adobe AE Not responsive and I'll just close it)

You should check VideoCoPilot's website in regards to system requirements.

Based off first glance; your system is not cut out for working with Element3D in AE.

AE alone is going to strain your system. At the very least you're going to want to run E3D in AE on a i7 processor setup (preferably XEON); as many cores as possible, as AE can multi-thread; and not rely on an onboard graphics card.

I run E3D on a dual E5-2697 v2 (48 Cores HT), with 128 GB Ram; and a Titan Black GPU and I still wish it could be more responsive and faster.

At the VERY least; you're going to need to bump up to 32 GB ram; recommend 64; and a much better processor.

Your OS and system services are going to tie up 1.5 GB of your 8 GB ram; and AE alone will hog another 3-4 GB with no plugins running. It's my opinion you simply don't have the power to run this config on your system.


Losslessly convert from RGBA rawvideo to H.264 I am creating a tool that generates frames of RGBA video and pipes it to ffmpeg to create an .mp4 video. Here is the command that I give ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -y -f rawvideo -vcodec rawvideo -s 960x540 -pix_fmt rgba -r 60 -i -
-an -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -b:v 995328k vigeo_demo.mp4

However, the quality is very, very, poor. The video consists of around 2-px wide lines being drawn across the screen at various angles. The lines are very blurry and blocky. What could be the cause of this and how do I fix it?

Things I've tried:

-q:v 0
crf 1 (crf 0 gives me an error)

You are downsampling the chroma, so thin lines will lose definition. Either use full chroma sampling

ffmpeg -y -f rawvideo -s 960x540 -pix_fmt rgba -framerate 60 -i -
       -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv444p -crf 0 video_demo.mp4

or keep pixels as RGB.

ffmpeg -y -f rawvideo -s 960x540 -pix_fmt rgba -framerate 60 -i -
       -c:v libx264rgb -crf 0 video_demo.mp4


Can not render After Effects CC project as mp4 / h.264 any more? I've made a 2 minute video on After Effects CC.
There is no option to save using depreciated formats.
Other answers suggest going to:

Edit -> Preferences -> output -> enable Show Deprecated Formats

however I can't see this checkbox and I assume it has been removed completely now!

All I am looking to do is upload to YouTube but the rendered AVI video is 20GB!
If I set composition resolution to half, and the output also to half the original size I can save it as 5GB but this will still take over 3/4 hours to upload on my connection.

What settings should I be using to get a decent quality video at a small size so I can upload to YouTube??  I don't need HD, but I would like it to be somewhat good quality.

I am also not too familiar with some of the other formats, so I'm a bit lost atm.

All Adobe video products are intended to target consumer formats through Adobe Media Encoder since CC 2014, After Effects has almost only intermediate formats now in its internal renderer (which is essentially the exact same thing as the one in AME).

Instead of clicking on "Add to Render Queue" you click on "Add to Media Encoder Queue" and in AME you will have all the formats you had before and even a few more.

This has the advantage that you can continue working on your project while AME is rendering your composition. No need anymore for a background render plugin.


how to synchronize text to the video timecode? I am wondering how to add text which is updated along the time code of the video.

Concretely, I have a gopro footage and a file of some performances values (speed, heart rate, cadence,...) that I want to overlay with correct values at the right moment.

I have a csv file with time in first col, and other parameters in following cols.

I'm quite new in video production, so I not particularly familiar to any software (so there's no need on a particular platform solution)

EDIT - solution : I found a nice solution perfectly answering my question : http://www.dashware.net . I'll try it later but it seems the right solution !


How to record with low file size in OBS I downloaded OBS to try to record some online lectures with low size. I tried some other software already, but the file sizes and quality were too high. I'm trying to keep the file size as low as possible. I plan to record about an 1/1.5 hours at a time of video w/ computer audio, and the resolution, frame rate, and audio quality, etc. can all be very low as I will already have handwritten notes. I'm new to OBS, so I'm wondering what settings I should change to accomplish this. All other software I've tried have huge file sizes, so I want too make the size as low as possible such that the text is still legible and the audio is still audible.

I intend to use OBS with the same objective but I'm getting pretty large files as well. Aiming to get 300mb ish videos and I'm ending up with 800mb - 1gb... and lowering bitrate and resolution didn't seem to make a difference.
While I wait and continue to look for an answer with a specific setting reccomendation, I'm using VLC to try and compress the recorded files. Don't know if this is useful to you, but on VLC go to "Media", then "Convert/Save", choose your recorded video and set the file type and settings you need. Manage to get it down to at least half the original file size.
Hope someone who actually knows what they're doing come and help soon haha


Unable to concatenate videos due to identical MOOV atoms I am cutting out segments from a long mp4 file and then rejoining parts of them. However, since FFMPEG apparently keeps the same MOOV atom for the trimmed files as the original, it looks to FFMPEG that the trimmed videos are all identical since they all have the same MOOV atom, and therefore only uses the first segment when trying to join the videos. Is there a way around this? Unfortunately since FFMPEG is embedded in an Android app, I can only use version 0.11.

Without knowing the exact details of your workflow it is hard to answer this question, so more information would be greatly helpful.

One approach would be to use raw video during your "joining" phase of the algo to strip the moov atom. The final step would be to convert your concat'ed raw video back into mp4.


What is this "light trail" effect called - and how can I reproduce it today? In several video documents from the 70s or 80s, usually TV shows or live music shows, bright objects or bright lights leave behind a color trail when the subject or the camera moves.

I remember first noticing this on a live performance of Queen recorded in the 80s. Here's another occurrence on Michael Palin's white shirt from an episode on Monty Python's Flying Circus:

I own an old 70s television camera (Pathé KC-V1) which produces the same effect, but setting it up requires a lot of time, and I haven't found yet how to digitize the video it produces, but I'd love to try and reproduce it either to make shots look vintage, or to use this effect creatively.

What is this effect called, and is there a way to reproduce this effect with digital video equipment, or in post-production?

I don't know if it has an official name but could be classed as "ringing". Tube cameras would do it if you had any bright lights in the scene. 70's music videos are full of it.

You don't mention any software, so I'll give a platform agnostic solution. This would probably be easier in a node based workflow, but I've included the AE names for things because it's what I know best.

You could use a threshold effect ("extract" would probably work in After Effects) to grab just the bright parts of the image, and feed that into a delay ("echo" in After effects) then adjust the colour before compositing it back on to the original layer, probably using an additive compositing mode ("add" or "screen" maybe in AE).


Green screen without green screen Is it possible to, rather than a green screen, take a static shot of a background image (e.g. for a Skype call with a fixed-position webcam), and use this static image as the green screen?

So, I would take a photo of my sitting room through the cam, and then be able to use that image as my "green screen".

Yes, that is possible. What you're searching for is a difference matte / difference key. For that technique, you supply a base image and the program keys everything out that equals that image. So you could key out your static background so that only you remain in the picture.

However, there are a few downsides:

This technique doesn't work nearly as good as a greenscreen. It will probably require a lot of work and there will still be some artifacts left in the video.
If you're using a bad camera (such as a laptop webcam), the result will be even worse.
If you move your camera even slightly, you'll have a problem. So if you do that with a webcam, don't touch it at all, if possible.
There probably aren't many applications that can do this effect live (as opposed to post-production). IIRC, there is some video chat app for Mac-Computers that can do this. I'm not sure if it is possible with Skype, you'll have to research that. However, keep in mind that it probably won't look as good as you imagine it.


Is it possible to speed up a video using handbrake? Is it possible to speed up a video using handbrake ?

I am looking for a software like handbrake to convert videos for faster playback. It should speed up the video up to 30x.

Is it possible with handbrake or are there similar tools ?

You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, to do this.

The basic command is

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf "setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)/30" -crf 18 output.mov

The 30 indicates the factor by which the video will be sped up.


Enter the position for a guide in After Effects numerically Is there a way to manually type the precise pixel position for a guide, instead of zooming in and dragging it to the correct position?

Sadly, no. I've wished for this many times myself.

Michael Szalapski wrote in a CreativeCow thread,

"At 100% zoom level in the comp viewer, guides move on full pixels, so you can place them on exact pixels right where you want them if you sit them on a null (or solid or whatever). Granted, it doesn't snap, but when I tried it just now, I got it right where I wanted it pretty quickly with a null as a reference. "

That's the best solution I've ever come across. Not what you asked for, I know.


Different rate distortion curves for two videos encoded with same parameters in FFMPEG I encoded two videos (ParkJoy and Sintel) in FFMPEG by H.264 with same parameters (GOP size, QP, frame rate, resolution etc.) and obtained rate-distortion plots (mean PSNR of Y channel vs bitrate). I am trying to understand the possible causes for the difference between those two plots; although they have the same resolution, GOP size etc.. The plots that I obtained are given in the following links, and any help would be appreciated.

The difference in the content of the two samples could explain the different performance of the codec. A given configuration of a codec might perform well for a static shot but not perform well for fast motion. At higher bit rates, the effects of codec settings are usually less noticeable.


How do I upload video but not have https:// I am trying to put a video in a game.  It requires a link, but the link cannot have HTTPS://  as the start.  It needs the HTTP://

Is there a service that does this?

I think that if you just use http:// instead of https:// in front of any youtube video it should work the same.


restart encoding with ffmpeg when bad source I have an ffmpeg process which saves a stream from wowza server, but when the stream in wowza is interrupted for a second or so sometimes ffmpeg cycles in:

[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9600015 DTS: 9600015 < 9629949 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9601935 DTS: 9601935 < 9629950 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9603855 DTS: 9603855 < 9629951 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9605775 DTS: 9605775 < 9629952 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9607695 DTS: 9607695 < 9629953 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9609615 DTS: 9609615 < 9629954 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9611535 DTS: 9611535 < 9629955 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9613455 DTS: 9613455 < 9629956 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9615375 DTS: 9615375 < 9629957 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9632160 DTS: 9614160 < 9649231 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9624960 DTS: 9617760 < 9649232 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9621360 DTS: 9621360 < 9649233 invalid, clipping

It never survives, even when the source is healthy and missed only a few seconds. It would be great if the ffmpeg can exit or restart (It is enough to exit on error. I can execute it in an endless while.) My command is:

ffmpeg -shortest -re -y -err_detect aggressive -i rtmp://127.0.0.1/movies/my.stream timeout=10 -codec copy -map 0 -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb,dump_extra -f segment -segment_time 60 /video/my.stream#%09d.ts

I have tested with -err_detect explode/careful/compliant/aggressive and on error in the input stream ffmpeg did not stop.  Sometimes it gets a timeout (because the timeout option I set for the rtmp), but some time it keep printing:

[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9621360 DTS: 9621360 < 9649233 invalid, clipping

It never survives - no exits, no output, so I have no saved stream until I manually restart the ffmpeg!

Although I am not sure if stderr will really help here because of the way that ffmpeg does its reporting, I can recommend the following pattern.

Use the -progress [url] flag and parse it with the tool of your choice every 100ms or so. Here is something to get you started that (with a little tweaking) might do what you want:

#!/bin/bash

touch /tmp/ffmpeg.log

ffmpeg -shortest -re -y -err_detect aggressive -i \
rtmp://127.0.0.1/movies/my.stream timeout=10 -codec copy \
-map 0 -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb,dump_extra -f segment \
-segment_time 60 -progress /tmp/ffmpeg.log /video/my.stream#%09d.ts &

pid=$!

while true
    do
         # you'll might have to change "invalid"
         # for whatever is being put into the progress log
         # just look at /tmp/ffmpeg.log to figure out what
         # grep should try to find
         error=$(grep -n "invalid" /tmp/ffmpeg.log)

         # is the length of the error more than 0 / did grep find it???
         if (( ${#error} > 0 ))
             then
                 kill -9 $pid
                 ffmpeg -shortest -re -y -err_detect aggressive -i \
                 rtmp://127.0.0.1/movies/my.stream timeout=10 -codec copy \
                 -map 0 -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb,dump_extra -f segment \
                 -segment_time 60 -progress /tmp/ffmpeg.log /video/my.stream#%09d.ts &
             pid=$!
         else
             usleep 100
         fi
    done
exit 0


Recording streaming video from my computer How would you go about recording a WebEx session that's being played in the Network Recording Player (not browser)? I cannot save the WebEx session so I thought of having a screen capture software that will record as the WebEx session is playing and then I need to capture the audio part of the WebEx session too. So how would I go about setting it up such that I start the streaming video, then 2-3 hours later I have all that stuff in an AVI file or something of that sort?

Standard screen-recording software such as Camtasia will work for this.


Issue with Opening Downloaded ASF Stream files in Adobe Premiere Pro CC I am a newbie to video editing and I've been trying to take some files I downloaded from a stream online (public government videos), to make an Adobe Premiere Pro video out of them. Here's an example link to a file I downloaded that I want to edit:

mms://stream.miamibeachfl.gov/tv20%20archive/design%20review%20board/drb_20130806.asf

The problem I am having is that the ASF files have an issue when I try to import it or just open in the Source Monitor in Adobe Premiere Pro. The "Conforming" notice shows at the bottom right, but it stalls there after about 1% and I have an error in the Events dialog which says the following:

"File importer detected an inconsistency in the file structure of XXX.avi. Reading and writing this file's metadata (XMP) has been disabled."

I thought the files were possibly too big to use in Premiere (some are over 1GB), so I used some freeware programs to trim them down, thinking this would help. However, even then it doesn't work, or if it does work to trim the file and convert to AVI, I get the following error when trying to open the new file in Adobe Premiere Pro: "Unsupported format or damaged file"

Here are the properties of a sample file I am having problems with, which I get from the Premiere Pro menu -> Get Properties For -> File:

"File Path: C:\Users\Daniel Desktop\Documents\Google Drive\Consulting\Activism\DATA SOURCES\VIDEOS\plb_20120327.asf
Type: Windows Media
File Size: 1.4 GB
Image Size: 320 x 240
Frame Rate: 29.97
Source Audio Format: 32000 Hz - 16 bit - Stereo
Project Audio Format: 32000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo
Total Duration: 11:03:16:05
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0"

I am not sure why this issue is happening but based on the file issues, maybe there is some setting I am missing?

Any tips or help would be much appreciated. I can't start video processing if it's not possible for the video to load. Thank you!

The link you gave is for a streaming media file, not a download.  Most likely, whatever ripper you used to pull down the file did a poor job and produced a faulty file.  It may actually play back since most playback applications are rather permissive when it comes to errors in the file, however a professional editing package like Premiere will tend to throw errors if there are major problems in the file since it won't be able to generate suitable output from the file.  The best bet is probably to try and find a non-streaming version, particularly since the quality of the streaming version is VERY low.


How can I Film Inconspicuously with a DSLR? I want to shoot infield videos in a mall, with a DSLR camera, without anyone noticing.

I'm interested in knowing how it's done and what equipment I'll need eg. type of microphone etc.

Here's a link that illustrates what I'm referring to: YouTube video

Any wireless microphone kit would work. Of course the more you spend the more reliable kit you will get. Wireless mic kits under US$500 are typically cheap, fiddly, unreliable, disposable plastic toys.

There are "right angle spy lens" adapters that screw on to the front of the lens and allow you to shoot to the side. So it is not obvious that you are shooting them.  They are quite inexpensive and available at the usual larger online shops.

That said, in most of the civilized world, it is illegal to use the recognizable likeness of anyone without their written consent.  And additionally, it is typically against the rules to shoot on private property (like a shopping mall) without written authority of the management. You are quite likely to get expelled or even arrested for trespassing if you try this in any kind of a mall with half-decent security forces.


Auto ISO for shooting videos with DSLR I'm just starting shooting videos with a DSLR (5DMIII). I already have a good background in photography. I was wondering if Auto ISO is good when shooting a video or if it is better to tune ISO manually.

It be nice to hear some thoughts from more experienced people.

It depends on what you are doing, but generally for video you want pretty tight manual control to avoid changes during a shot.  What I often do when I'm in a hurry (and don't want to determine optimum settings manually) is to let the camera figure out what it wants for settings and then manually enter those.

That said, while changes in exposure during a shot can be very distracting, it's still better to get the shot than not get it, so occasionally I may shoot with the camera fully on auto and use exposure compensation as necessary to adjust the exposure.  This can be particularly useful for live events where you don't have time to adjust manually.  Note that if you are shooting with multiple identical cameras however, it is best to lock everything down (including white balance) to ensure a consistent look between cameras.

Ultimately, there isn't a right answer, just be aware of how distracting changes in exposure can be during videos and balance the need to have the camera adapt vs the need to control when and how adjustments are being made for the content you are shooting.  It's best to try to avoid uncontrolled changes, but not at the expense of not getting a shot.


FFMPEG RTSP -> MPEG-DASH Stops on Long Streams I need to provide MPEG-DASH live content generation from several IP cameras.

I use ngx_rtmp_module + ffmpeg for creating MPEG DASH content.
Everything work fine, but if I leave the conversion running for long periods of time, ffmpeg stops working after 1-2 days (sometimes early, sometimes later).

This is the ffmpeg command I'm using:

ffmpeg -re -f rtsp -rtsp_transport tcp -i <rtsp_url> -c copy -movflags empty_moov+omit_tfhd_offset+frag_keyframe+default_base_moof -f flv rtmp://localhost/myapp/mystream

Then ffmpeg tells me that some RTSP packets were lost and it freezes its work process.

Does anyone know any another tools that can do this conversion that won't stop until I tell it to or there is a problem with the camera? Or possibly another way with ffmpeg that avoids this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Recently I've had the chance to research a bit in this area, and I've come across some rumors that ffmpeg's support for RTSP is somewhat buggy, i.e. it stops suddenly or yields mangled frames.
If you need only video, you can use openrtsp app from Live555 it can output stream to stdout to be consumed with -i -" in ffmpeg (Live555's client seems to be state of the art wiht RTSP)


Calculate depth-of-field on BMPC 4K using a 50mm/1.8 I stand up the back of a room on a riser and capture a speaker at podium + their presentation on the screen using a blackmagic production 4K. I estimate I am 8 metres from the subject.

Currently I'm using an f2.8 lens and adjusting it in davinci as the room is poorly lit.

Is there a way to gauge the depth of field that will be in focus if I use an f1.8 lens?

Thanks in advance

You will need an app or chart for the calculation. There are apps on both iOS and Android for this. Just search depth of field calculator.

With a 50mm lens shooting at f/1.8 you're depth of field will be very shallow; more so the closer your subject is to the camera, with your DOF becoming deeper if your subject moves away.

Some lenses have a built in Hyper-Focal chart on the top of the lens; showing what your "Reasonably considered in Focus area is at" which changes as you change your aperture.

If you need a less shallow depth of field, you can always stop down the lens. Also keep in mind; the 50mm 1.8 is not incredibly sharp at 1.8 to begin with. Most lenses have sweet spots in terms of tack sharp; typically about 1/3 into the f-stop range.

The only lenses that will give you pristine tack sharp focus at apertures like 1.8, are for example the Master Primes by Arri; running $30k per prime.

Hope this helps.


How can I make an exact 60FPS GIF? I'm trying to create a 60FPS GIF. However if I use Photoshop the frame time is not correctly even when choosing 0 delay between each frame.

I was trying to make an emote.

The project is from After Effects.

I've tried various tools, here is my only problem:

https://imgur.com/a/LuVufZx

The background color I used is #36393F

for some reason though, it has some weird grid around it, so it isn't the clean background which I need it to be. And yeah not sure how to make 60FPS GIFs now. I can not use WebP, it is not supported, that's why I need a background behind it.

I've tried various tools, XMedia Recorder, doesn't have GIF export at all.

GIFGun, the one with the grid issue. I've tried it in another project with any moveable object, the same issue.

ezgif, well that one could work if it had 60FPS.

Here is the .AVI file if anybody wants to try out something: https://workupload.com/file/4Fbdyt5g

The reason why I need it exactly to be 60fps, is because otherwise it doesn't match the length.

The gif format doesn’t work like this. You won’t be able to get an animation with this high a frame rate.

The good news is that many sites which claim to use GIFs actually use mp4 files. I don’t know your exact workflow, but you could  try making an mp4 at this frame rate and uploading it to one of the “GIF” sites.


How do I detect scene changes in Adobe Premiere? I have a single clip with multiple edits in it. Is there an easy, automatic way to detect these? Ideally I'd just like them labelled in some way with support for "jump to the next label".

I realise it won't be 100% reliable since it would need to detect scene changes automatically, but perhaps there's something that can considerably speed up the process of splitting such a clip into separate scenes?

This isn't part of Premiere, but Scenalyzer is an external tool for this that I've had some good luck with.  It can scan a large video file and split it into smaller ones based on frame change detection.  Then you can work with the smaller files much more easily.  There's a freeware version, and a more featured paid edition.


How to clean up old animated footage? Recently I ripped a couple of old DVD's to preserve them.
The original rip has a resolution of 720*576 and runs with 5100kb/s on 25fps interlaced.
I tinkered around with Handbrake and (hopefully) found the best settings.
The final file is a fifth of the size and runs progressively on 1000kb/s.
EDIT: Using h.265 NVENC
Getting to my question now. In the final product, there are a lot of colour artefacts in solid coloured planes. Is there any way to i.e. detect the mean colour in a similar coloured plane and colour the whole plane like it?

The artifacts are on the original footage because a DVD used some oldie MP2 codec, you need to live with it.

You could try using a denoiser, some of them can detect compression artifacts. I am not spamming or anything, but take a look at Neat Video Denoiser.


Is Blue screen a better choice than Green when shooting outdoor to reserve shadows? I'm going to use Green screen on the floor in a sunny day outdoor shot.

With the shadows of characters reserved, I'm going to change the Green screen background to a stony texture.

I've found in some resources that for an outdoor shoot the Blue is a better option. But still I'm not sure. Any assurance?

With a good keyer it doesn't matter as much as it may have in the past, but in most cases green is the better choice. Which you choose depends more on where and with what content you do your keying. If you're using equal-band capture, recording and processing -- 4:4:4 for instance -- then it can be a tossup. But any encoding that limits chroma bandwidth -- 4:2:0, 4:1:1 etc, will favor green because there's more green in the highest bandwidth channel (luma consists of more than 50% green). More resolution + less noise = better keying.

I think using blue outdoors might be favored because natural light is much bluer than typical studio lighting, which reduces the noise in the blue signal. But I doubt there's a significant advantage, because noise is only one factor.


Final Cut Pro X crashing I'm trying to open up a library in Final Cut Pro , it used to work fine and now everytime i open it up it crashes the entire application ,
I have a Mac Pro running Yosemite , i tried multiple solutions as restoring it from a back up everytime i load it crashes i even tried going back 6 months ago and still it crashes ,
when i open a new library from scratch it works fine
the only thing i didnt try is to remove the application and reinstall it , but i dont think doing that will help , please assist
Thanks !!!

Apple have released a recent update to FCPX, 10.2.3 which fixes lots of issues like this. I would recommended this update first as it has solved crashing issues for me.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201237

Sometimes FCPX doesn't like it when your library is saved separately to user/movies/ perhaps try moving the library there and see if it helps.

Also media from multiple drives can cause issues if FCP get's stuck trying to link some. If any media is stored on external drives, are they fast drives i.e. thunderbolt, USB3, firewire 800? Potentially FCPX is getting stuck trying to locate the media and can't connect to everything properly. Perhaps try moving media to a reliable drive to try it out like your system drive.

Hope that helps.


What can cause Bluray disks burned from Encore to get laggy/skippy? I have a bluray disk that I burned from an image I made with Encore CS6.  The source footage is a timeline composed of multiple different video assets that are linked Premiere projects.  They run back to back within a single timeline.

When I burned it to disk, most of it works fine, but there are a couple of spots where the playback stops and gets gittery and then jumps ahead.  If I try to chapter skip to a part that is in this area of playback, it simply hangs for a while before jumping forward to a later section.

Any ideas what could be causing this?  I've tried two different builds of the disk and both have had the problem, but in different spots.  The only odd thing about the build is that both times I was attempting a build and then had it fail part way through because of not having enough disk space.  I then freed more space and restarted the build, but I figured it could have something cached that is corrupt, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

It seems that this may have just been that the burning software in Encore doesn't work well with my burner.  Since burning a folder itself with Nero worked, this seems to be the only logical conclusion.


Leaving white balance for post-processing. Is it a bad idea? I am new to video. I have a HandyCam (CX405). I don't like trusting in the auto-white balance because it is variable and unpredictable, but changing manually between indoor/outdoor or doing re-calibrations with a white paper can be a real pain in the neck because in that camera everything must be done through one single small button that can be pressed or pushed in four directions to navigate menus.

My idea is leaving one fixed setting (either indoor or outdoor) and then doing the white balance in the post-processing stage in blender.

I know that some things must be done right at the recording stage and if you screw up there is little you can do afterwards, e.g. using a wrong shutter speed. And I know there are some other things that are done internally on the recorded footage inside the camera and you could do them equally well in the post-processing stage manually, and I think white balance may be well be one of them because essentially consists on a numerical multiplication of the values stored in the C_R and C_B components of the video that the CMOS has already recorded. So, probably, you will not loose any information if you do the white balance later in your editing software instead of doing it in the camera.

Is that wrong? Will I regret it later?

Don't do white balance in post, you will regret it. The problem is that the footage your camera records is compressed. That means the sensor information is not stored in RAW, but encoded using lossy compression. The encoding algorithm uses the White Balance setting to determine the encoded color values. The problem is, the original luminosity values that are measured by the CMOS sensor aren't stored in the compressed video, only the rendered color values.

Your camcorder uses the H.264 codec, which means the encoding uses spatial (intra-frame) and depending on your recording settings temporal (inter-frame) compression. This means that some information on pixel-level is dropped as well to achieve a smaller file-size.

To be able to set the White Balance in post without losing any quality, you will need a camera with RAW-capturing capabilities. Unfortunately, for video cameras, those are still very expensive and are pretty much exclusive to professional/commercial movie making.

So yeah, set the White Balance before you start shooting. I would also recommend you set the White Balance manually instead of using the automatic white balance adjustment, especially if you are just starting out. This has a couple of benefits:

The white balance will remain consistent for the entirety of each shot and between shots (if you don't change it too often). AWB will adjust your white balance even while shooting, so if you have some warm or cold light source moving through your image, you might get some unwanted color shifts in your recordings.
In time you will learn to recognize how warm/cold a given lighting situation is, which is a valuable skill to have for a videographer. This will also in turn allow you to estimate what White Balance setting you need in every situation.
You will become more conscious of the light sources illuminating your shots, as well as their temperatures. This will be helpful for your video making in general.
Finally, you will naturally transition to using warmer/colder lightsources and White Balance settings for dramatic effect. The AWB will always try to achieve a neutral grey, which doesn't always work, but even if it does, it's still only neutral grey. Depending on what scene you're shooting, you may want to go for a warmer or colder look to convey different emotions. You can achieve those looks using different lightsources or White Balance.


Is there a cheap Teleprompter software that supports foreign languages? I work for a software company that offers Video Coaches to our clients.  We are offering Coaches in foreign languages and the current Teleprompter software we are using does not support anything but English. We have been able to work around Spanish by replacing accented and special characters with standard English ones, however, this makes it harder for the talent as some words change meaning without the accent.

Beyond that, we are going to be filming Chinese Coaches soon and we will need Simplified Chinese to be supported by the software (we have been unable to think of a workaround).

I have the trial version of PromptDog but have not been happy with the 'Talent Window'.  I don't like that it cannot be expanded to full screen and the text can only be flipped horizontally (we need to flip vertically with our current setup).  It is also difficult to set up the Talent Window as I cannot see the talent monitor from the computer.  Ideally, the second monitor would be filled to full screen automatically.  It would also be convenient if the software could easily import .doc files (PromptDog does not).

I apologize ahead of time if this question is not appropriate for this forum.  I participate in the Music Practice and Performance page and software questions are generally closed.

UPDATE: Budget is up to 500 USD but preferably under 300 USD

UPDATE2: Though I have awarded the bounty, I did not receive a specific recommendation that fulfilled my specifications.  It did point me in a good direction and provided resources to find other software options but I would like to award the official answer to one that provides a specific software that meets my needs.

If you have a Mac, Presentation Prompter had a few good reviews I found when doing some research.  I don't have a Mac to try it, but it appears to have mirror modes and is listed as having RTF support.

It is also worth pointing out you may be able to setup the necessary mirroring on a particular output desktop rather than having the prompting software have to support it.  This could possibly make the software that didn't have the needed mirroring option work for you.

If that doesn't work, MirrorScript appears to have a free teleprompting software that works with PC and international characters.  They also offer an entire list of alternative prompting software that might be worth looking in to if they don't meet your needs for other reasons.


Speeding up or slowing down a clip introduces metallic noise when adjusting for pitch I'm slowing down some audio. I chose to "Maintain Audio Pitch" because I don't want it to sound like a very deep voice. However, when I play back the audio, it sounds like it's going through a metal filter.

Is there a better way to change the duration of a clip and have it sound more natural?

Most of the time you should not rely on the automatic Maintain Audio Pitch setting because it causes the audio to be distorted (both when speeding up and slowing down).

Instead, leave that checkbox unchecked, and add one of these filters instead:

Pitch Shifter (Obsolete)
AUPitch

And play around with the settings until it sounds better.

See SPEED UP Video with No Audio DISTORTION in Premiere Pro for more info.


My export preview and video doesn't match the timeline in Adobe Premier Pro I've edited several videos over the last month or so on Adobe Premier Pro and exported them at 1280 x 720 with zero issues.  Now all of a sudden my aspect ratio looks all buggered up when I go to export my video.  Everything will look fine on the timeline but there's a ton of extra space around the video when I preview and export.  Not sure what the heck I did.

Check your Sequence settings, you may set higher resolution that the most of the content is. Also your videos may to not fit well: right click - Set to Frame size.


Tracked Text Title renders "strange" I am tracking a text object and sticking it to a certain point in my clip. This all work as expected, and looks good inside the fusion tab.
But... when I view this in the "edit" tab... the text becomes "blurred" when the clip plays. Almost like motion blur. All techniques and settings are used to get a basic text track working. Nothing else was fiddled with.
I have also tried to render out this section to file, and the blurred text renders to output file, yet is perfectly fine inside fusion.
Any ideas?
Resolve 16.2.5
EDIT TAB

FUSION TAB

FUSION PAGE

The comb-like pattern on the text makes me suspect an interlacing issue.  There's a mismatch somewhere in the image pipeline regarding whether Resolve/Fusion is expecting interlaced or progressive footage, and whether or not it's actually getting interlaced or progressive footage.  It's hard to diagnose without knowing your settings, but look for options related to "fields" and make sure you haven't changed any from their defaults.  If your footage actually IS interlaced (unlikely if it's from a camera built in the last 15-ish years), then you would need to change these settings from their defaults.
Assuming progressive footage, in the Resolve Project settings, make sure that under "Master Settings,"  the "Enable video field Processing" box is unchecked.  In all Fusion Nodes, in each "Image" tab, make sure "Process Mode" is set to "Full Frames."
Another possibility is that the viewer is showing you an inaccurate preview.  On the Edit page, the viewer takes certain shortcuts to speed playback.  Exactly what Resolve does isn't documented, but it's likely to affect scaling, which might cause display artifacts.  For a more accurate (but slower) preview, you can disable "Performance Mode" under the "User" tab of the System settings, in the "Playback Settings" category.  If your rendered output doesn't display the same artefacts as the edit page, this is likely the culprit.  Setting the viewer scale to 100% would also show an un-scaled image.  Alternatively, viewing the image on the Color page will prioritize image quality over playback speed.


Adding date/time information on video for ffmpeg I am using FFmpeg for live streaming with RTMP to YouTube.
My ffmpeg command is like this:

ffmpeg -ar 44100 -ac 2 -f alsa -i plughw:1,0 -f v4l2 -codec:v h264 -framerate 30 \
  -video_size 1920x1080 -itsoffset 0.5 -i /dev/video2 -copyinkf -codec:v copy -codec:a aac \
  -ab 44k -af 'highpass=200, lowpass=3000, volume=1' -g 4 -f flv \
   rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/8b35-vkye-476f-xxxx

I want to add date and time information on live stream video.
How can I do this?

I think adding:

-vf "drawtext=fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf: text='%{localtime\:%T}': fontcolor=white@0.8: x=7: y=700"

should work. See Adding time stamp overlay to video stream using ffmpeg


Adobe Premiere Pro Green Lines Problem Can you please help me to fix this?

How can I remove these green lines from my video preview in Premiere Pro 2020?

I had the same problem when i updated my graphics driver, I use Windows 10, Intel i3 8th Gen. Version which did the problem was 27.20.100.8336.
you need Intel Graphics - BETA Windows 10 DCH Driver
Windows 10, 64-bit version 27.20.100.8425
link to update your driver https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/80939/Graphics


Can FFmpeg output time duration since the start of a job? Is there a way for FFmpeg to output or log time duration since a particular job/process was started?

I know that there are more or less complicated ways to display a progress bar which really seems more like a programmatical problem.

The reasoning is that I want to measure how long time my encoding jobs take (without having to set up a separate timer).

In Linux you can use the time command:

$ time ffmpeg -i input.avi output.mp4
  [...]
  real  0m1.927s
  user  0m7.067s
  sys   0m0.243s

This example took 1.927 seconds to complete.


Gapless audio in video It's possible to produce mp4/webm videos without sound that loop seamlessly, but if you add sound to the video with matching length it adds a noticeable stutter at the end, even if the audio is slightly shorter than the video.

Is it possible to produce a web friendly (mp4/webm) video with sound that is gapless?

I use Adobe products and ffmpeg to produce my videos, if that matters.

This can happen if the GOP structure is unclosed at the end of the video. If you can assure that your video ends with an I frame, and that the audio is exactly the same length as the video, you stand a much better chance of getting a smooth recycle. Sorry, I don't know how to force that using ffmpeg.


White Balance/ Filters I have a silly question:
Do I have to the WB before or after choosing a Color filter?
If I do it after, then the camera will "see" white and the filter wouldn't make sense. If I do it before, why just not balance for the color temperature I want, say, 2900K if I want warm colors?
I am sure I don't understand something basic
Thanks

The ability to set custom white balances largely makes color filters unnecessary.  The only thing they really (potentially) offer is better dynamic range.  With a white balance adjustment, it alters the processing of what the sensors pick up, but if there is a really bright orange area for example, it could overload those sensors and thus detail would be lost if the rest of the image was darker.

Using a filter would reduce the amount of light of that color reaching the sensor and could potentially keep more detail.  This probably isn't going to happen in the vast majority of cases, but it is one physical difference between the two processes.  For the most part, color filters are a hold over from film days when there wasn't electronic white balancing.


ffmpeg rtsp over http not working I put this conf on ffserver

HTTPPort 1234
RTSPPort 1235
<Stream live.h264>
Format rtp

Feed feed1.ffm
VideoCodec libx264
VideoFrameRate 24
VideoBitRate 100
VideoSize 480x272
AVOptionVideo flags +global_header
</Stream>

I stream with this command

ffmpeg -i file.h264 http://127.0.0.1:1234/feed1.ffm

When I watch this stream I can watch via udp and tcp on this url:

rtsp://127.0.0.1:1235/live.h264

but i want to stream with rtsp over http(http tunneling).

How can I do it please??

For requesting an RTSP over HTTP stream you would do:

ffplay rtsp://127.0.0.1:1235/live.h264 -rtsp_transport http


Source ProRes 422 Proxy / Edit / Export to ProRes 422 proxy? Wondering what exporting best practice is when working on source clips that are captured ProRes 422 Proxy.

I've c-corrected/graded these clips in DaVinci.

When it's time to 'Add to Render Queue', do I select ProRes 422 Proxy again or LT or higher?

Definitely proRes 422HQ.

While you won't gain anything by encoding in a higher quality codec, what you will do is avoid losing more.

Proxy codecs are just that: stand-ins for the real content, their job is not to faithfully encode the material, it's to be lightweight and easy to play, so you can swap in the full quality copy later. Whoever it was that shot Proxy, give them a whack upside the head to remind them not to do it again.

Export to proRes422 HQ as your master, if you need copies that don't take up so much space, say for delivery on the web, then transcode to h.264.


What's the difference between "visually lossless" and real lossless and what does this mean for future encodes? In FFmpeg's H.264 Video Encoding Guide we are told:

  Tip: If you're looking for an output that is roughly "visually lossless" but not technically lossless, use a -crf value of around 17 or 18 (you'll have to experiment to see which value is acceptable for you). It will likely be indistinguishable from the source and not result in a huge, possibly incompatible file like true lossless mode.

This raises some questions. The first and obvious one is "how did they decide that?" The important question is the one in the title. What's the literal difference and if I need to encode from this output later (e.g. I want to compress and archive old data), will a second encode on a crf 18 encoded file give me problems that a crf 0 encoded file wouldn't?

Technically lossless, or real lossless, means that when the output is decoded by a conformant decoder, the result is mathematically identical to the input.

Visually lossless is a non-rigorous term that indicates subjective transparency i.e. output which to the lay human eye looks indistinguishable from the original. The output may look different if a viewer scrutinizes it in fine detail, but not in normative viewing conditions. As to how 'visual-losslessness' is determinined: there are video quality metrics, like PSNR and SSIM, that provide a quantitative measure of the difference of an image with respect to a reference. Subjective opinion tests have been carried out to establish threshold values for these metrics that can be used to define 'visual losslessness'

From Performance Analysis of Visually Lossless Image Compression,

  Note  that  there  are  several  visual quality metrics (indices)
  such as MSSIM [6], PSNR-HVS-M  [7],  WSNR  [8]  and  some  others
  that  are  able  to characterize  well  enough  quality  of  lossy
  compressed images  [9].  Recently,  it  has  been  shown  for
  grayscale images  [5]  that  it  is  enough  to  provide  MSSIM
  values larger  than  0.985  or  PSNR-HVS-M  values  larger  than 40dB
  in  order  to  guarantee  practically  invisibility  of distortions
  in  lossy  compressed  images.

As for re-encoding resilience, depends on what the goal of the re-encoding is. For viewing-only or casual re-editing purposes, CRF 18 in x264 should be fine. For professional re-editing, I would drop the CRF to, say, 12 or 14. Information, once lost, can't be perfectly recovered. But you can set your own standards by encoding at different CRFs and comparing manually. See https://video.stackexchange.com/a/17639


Transcoding during ffmpeg overlay My question is related to the technicality behind video overlaying. When a 3D object or an image is added to a video sequence as an overlay to render, does ffmpeg fully decode the original sequence to a raw file, then mix the object or image to the desired position and re-encode back to the desired format?.
I'd like to know if this is the process followed by the industry to mix 3D objects, images or other material with generic video contents. Or is there another approach to perform this task.
Your assistance is highly appreciated.
Thanks.

From FFmpeg Documentation – Detailed Description:

  ffmpeg calls the libavformat library (containing demuxers) to
  read input files and get packets containing encoded data from them.
  When there are multiple input files, ffmpeg tries to keep them
  synchronized by tracking lowest timestamp on any active input stream.

  Encoded packets are then passed to the decoder (unless stream
  copy is selected for the stream). The decoder produces
  uncompressed frames (raw video/PCM audio) which can be processed
  further by filtering. After filtering, the frames are passed to
  the encoder, which encodes them and outputs encoded packets.
  Finally those are passed to the muxer, which writes the encoded
  packets to the output file.


Add subtitles to an audio track I need to synchronize an audio track and a video track (that is, cut the video so that it matches perfectly a voice-over), except that the audio track is in chinese and I don't speak chinese, so I don't understand what is being said and I can't synchronize it with the image!

What I would need is a way to "tag" the audio track or to add subtitles to the audio track, so that I know that at time 1'02, the word "hello" is pronounced, at time 1'13 the word "mister" is pronounced, and so on. Then I would import this file in Adobe premiere to be able to edit my video.

So basically I have:

one audio file, a voice-over in chinese
one text file, the text spoken by the voice-over but in english

And I need to create "something" that will match the two files and will help me synchronize my video and audio track afterwards in Adobe Premiere (a chinese speaker will make the match, but he won't be able to edit in Premiere). How would you do that?

I'm not perfectly clear on your process, but it seems you could approach this in the same way you would captioning (subtitling). The thing that ties the two together is time code: in your text file, each phrase is preceded by an "appear" time code, set apart (in brackets, etc) to indicate that it's not part of the spoken text.

[01:02:03:04] These words are being spoken now.
   [01:02:09:10] And this is the next spoken phrase

There are established formats for this, some very elaborate, using XML for example (see Universal Subtitle Format), and very simple ones as laid out above. Since it's for your eyes and not a machine's, simpler is better.

There are utilities (sorry, no links) that can capture the current running time in a readable form and insert it into the text, making the process reasonably efficient for the Chinese translator to accomplish.


What's the difference between an Engineer and a Producer? People seem to be making a point of the distinction of the role of Engineer and Producer. What's the difference?

The engineer is the "equipment operator".  His expertise is choosing the right equipment for the job and using it in the right way to achieve the desired effect.  His role is analogous to that of the cameraman in film production.

The producer is kind of like a project manager.  His job is to get all the individuals - musicians, vocalists, engineers - to each do their part to achieve the overall goal.
For example, he might decide a certain song should be quiet and soothing, so he'll advise the musicians to tone down the accompaniment, the vocalist to soften her voice, and the engineer to add the necessary processing to achieve that soothing sound he's after.


How to make flickering white spots and moving effects in After Effect I want to know how to make those particle-like spots and you see the transparent effects and the fast moving text? I want to know what that effect is called and how to make it. Please help me!(Please watch the video first)
Also, how do I make that smoke effect behind the text?

Stock footage. The spots and fast moving text are from old film leaders. When you are projecting film the first dozen feet or so is the "leader" it protects the inner film from dust and scratches, and lets you thread the projector. It often has the name of the reel written on it. That's what you're seeing over the video.

Prelinger film archive has plenty of old films with leaders, many of which are in the public domain. Composite one over your footage with the luma inverted, and adjust the brigtness / contrast and opacity until you get the look you want.

The "smoke" is probably ink in water. It's a common stock footage effect.


ffmpeg stream options for mp3, cover art of mp4 I have potentially millions of HLS streaming videos to create from cover art and mp3s.  Obviously, I'd like to keep the resulting bandwidth to a minimum.  I tried various ffmpeg flags specifically suggested for this task and even some on the apple media segmenter that claimed to put a cover art in each segment(meta-file/meta-type).  I had a lot of problems getting chrome to display the cover art when playing back using HTML5 despite it working in VLC.  I ended up with a working command line like this.

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i 1k_image.jpg -i song_219kbs.mp3 -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p  -profile:v baseline -c:a aac -strict experimental -b:a 64k -r 1 -shortest song_64k_2fps_baseline.mp4

The -pix_fmt and baseline profile seemed to be key.  Can you see anything I am doing that is unnecessary?  Is there a better way of achieving my goal?

Also, I look at several of the commercial cloud transcoding solutions and didn't see how to configure one to do this.  Did I miss the options?

If you just want to embed a cover you might consider keeping the result as mp3, for example:

ffmpeg -i original.mp3 -i cover.png -map 0:0 -map 1:0 -metadata:s:v title="Album cover" -metadata:s:v comment="Cover (Front)" -id3v2_version 3 -write_id3v1 1 result.mp3

If you are creating mp4's, e.g. for YouTube, then I suggest to split the process to two steps - first create the video movie with no audio track, duration somewhat longer than that of the audio. Then mux the video and audio together with the -shortest option which will truncate the video to the exact duration of audio. In terms of time these two steps will take a tidbit longer than a single pass but your whole workflow will be much simpler and more manageable.


Add image as intro and outro to video Here is basically what I'm trying to do.

I have two files : 1. image.png 2. video.mp4

I'm trying to create a new video file (mp4) with :

IMAGE.PNG for the first 5 seconds

VIDEO.MP4 for the duration of the file VIDEO.MP4 (example 60 seconds)

IMAGE.PNG for 5 seconds

is it possible in FFMPEG?

thanks a lot !

One method is to use the concat filter:

ffmpeg -framerate 25 -loop 1 -t 5 -i image.png -i video.mp4 -f lavfi -t 0.1 -i anullsrc -filter_complex "[0][2][1:v][1:a][0][2]concat=n=3:v=1:a=1[v][a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" output.mp4

The anullsrc filter generates silent audio as filler for proper concatenation. The concat filter will automatically pad the silent audio, so you only need a very short duration for anullsrc (this example uses -t 0.1).
This assumes your image is the same width, height, and aspect ratio as video.mp4. If it is not then you'll have to filter the image to match with the scale, pad, crop, or scale2ref filters. There are plenty of example of how to do this on Stack Exchange.
You didn't provide any info on your inputs or ffmpeg build so I only provided this basic example.
An alternative method is to use the concat demuxer which can avoid re-encoding video.mp4, but it can be somewhat harder to use because you'll have to make the video from the image first and made sure all of the parameters are the same as video.mp4. See the FFmpeg Wiki, and again search Stack Exchange for dozens of examples.


What are the various desktop streaming software used by justin.tv and similar sites? I want to create a channel to which various users could stream their desktop. I’m looking for the best solution for them.

So far I’ve found Dyyno (free but too simple), WireCast (expensive and too complex), and Flash Media Live Encoder (free).

I need one that is free, simple to use, yet powerful enough (notably, it must be able to stream a specific area of the screen, and to include audio from the software or from the microphone or both, and to run on both Windows and Mac OS X).

Do you have any suggestions?

P.S. LiveStream and Ustream have proprietary solutions (incompatible with others).

If you want to stream with Justin.TV, you can download FFSplit !

http://www.ffsplit.com/

It is still in a BETA State, but it does run quite well !

Don't forget to follow every instruction that is put on the site.

Good luck !


Seeking free and simple way to brighten a dark video The title says it all. My video is too dark. I Learned how to avoid it next time (after the horse had bolted).

Is there anything I can do to lighten it up? Preferably freeware and not to complex. THe video is .AVI format

[update] Windows 7 pro (and I am wondering whether brightness or contrast is the way to go (ans if some magic s/w has an "auto" feature))

Thanks a 1,000,000 in advance

Windows:
If you are on windows 7/Vista, you should have Windows Live Movie Maker. You can open your video in that, go to the Visual Effects tab, and select the brightness button. Then you have to re-encode your video. This will decrease the quality.

Free Windows Live Movie Maker

The problem with Windows Live Movie Maker is that there are limited effects and no way to create custom effects. However, Windows Movie Maker from Vista (i.e. WMM 6.0) does support custom effects, etc.

You can download WMM 6.0 for Windows 7 here.

Blaine also provides an extensive list of add on effects here. Which includes contrast effects to increase the contrast.

Mac:
If you have a MAC and iMovie, I found this link. You hover over the thumbnail and a "sun" symbol should show up, clicking that should bring up color controls.

Hopefully one of those will work. If not, you'll have to dive into the world of opensource video editing tools, which is a nightmare.


What is the correct setting in Adobe Premiere CS6 for Nikon Video? I have a Nikon D600 and when I set up a new project in Adobe Premiere CS6 there are many options available for Sequence Presets. I suppose this could be a subjective question, but what is the best preset for Nikon DSLR video? ARRI? Digital SLR, etc.?

Thank you.

The best option is going to be a format which matches the resolution, pixel pitch, frame rate and color format/color space of your original footage.  These settings can typically be changed based on the shooting mode you used on your camera, so there is not enough detail in your question to give a specific setting.  If you actually open up the footage file, it should show these details in the properties for the clip and you can choose a sequence preset accordingly.


ffmpeg - Draw a box and scale its size with time I need to draw a box that grows in size horizontally over a video (scaling its width as time goes by)

Since drawbox does not support the 't' (as in time) variable, I'm at a loss here. I've seen some solutions using overlay, but they are fixed width and are rather used to move the box around.

What's the workaround here?

EDIT
This is where I got trying to use drawbox and scale:

ffmpeg -y -i c81e728d9d4c2f636f067f89cc14862c.mp4\
  -filter_complex "\
[0:v]drawbox=0:0:20:20,scale=eval=frame:w='if(gte(t*20,600),600,t*20)':h=20[vb];
 [0:v][vb]overlay=x=80:y=350" a.mp4

With this I get an error of:

[Parsed_scale_1 @ 0x5596b5c61e40] Error when evaluating the expression 'if(gte(t*20,600),600,t*20)'.
Maybe the expression for out_w:'if(gte(t*20,600),600,t*20)' or for out_h:'20' is self-referencing.

Now, if I set the width to a fixed value, it runs, but then there's the problem that the overlay contains the whole video itself as it is the input of the drawbox filter. I'm not sure how to draw the box and scale it separately from the source video.

Thanks to @Gyan comments I've been able to come up with this solution, in case somebody else is interested:

color=c=red:size=1920x1080,
scale=eval=frame:w='if(gte(t*20,600),600,t*20)':h=20[cl];
[input][cl]overlay=x=0:y=0[finalOutput]

Just note that it is important that you download a current git version of ffmpeg because, from what I understood, previous ones do not support the 't' variable in the scale filter.


How to Overlay Text in Premiere Pro or After Effects? I am a newbie to both Premiere Pro and After Effects.  We are making exercise instructional videos and want to overlay text instructions - very much like this video:

            .

What would be the recommended way to do this. We have both Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Thanks for any assistance/tips.

Premiere Pro have more basic text tools, but it is easier to work with. Also, it is better for long files.

After Effects allows you to manipulate with your text in much more various ways. You can use there more different text effects. But it is also more complicated.

So, it is up to you to decide. If you are looking for something basic, use Premiere. If you want to use some fancy effects, then use After Effects.

For example typewriter effect, which is used in video in your question is one of the standard AE effects. You can also achieve that with Premiere Pro, but you will spend more time on each text.


Light wavelengths and color reproduction / grading I have some typical LED desk lamps that I am using to light a human subject indoors.

The light hue from these lamps looks white to the naked eye.

The intensity of light is more than sufficient, but when it comes to grading the footage it looks almost colorless when I reduce the red component.

Could this be because the wavelengths of light emitted from these lights is not uniform across the spectrum?

Does this mean I need to get film lights that emit light right across the visible spectrum?

Will cheap LED photography light panels deliver wide spectrum light that will enable accurate color reproduction in post?

You are facing a low CRI index.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Color+Rendering+Index

CRI is the Color Rendering Index, and this means, effectively that you do not have enough light across the spectrum.

Some lights emit only portions of it, and our brains adjust the color to what they think the color should be, but as a mechanical/electronic device, a camera is more limited to what actually is receiving.

Look for higher CRI lights. The scale limit is 100, meaning that the light emission spectrum would be the same as the daylight. So the closer to this number the better color you will get. For practical purposes, a CRI above 85-90 could be decent enough. One above 95 can be considered a "Pro-level"

If you search a store, a lot of led lights mention the CRI value, use those terms on a search, for example on the Amazonian river store "LED LIGHT CRI".

  lights is not uniform across the spectrum?

The spectrum does not need to be uniform, it just needs to be "uniform" enough compared to daylight spectrum (which is not uniform at all)

  It looks almost colorless when I reduce the red component

You need to differentiate the CRI to the color temperature. You need additionally to check two factors.

The color temperature of the Light (Warm, cold)
And if you are setting your white balance correctly on camera.

It also could be corrected to some degree using a custom color profile or using some "pro-grading" program. Give Davinci Resolve a Try.


How can I insert a censor bar into a mp4 movie? I have a feature film in mp4 format. There is one scene where I just want to place a black censor box to conceal one part of the screen, no more than 7 seconds.

I'm a beginner, so my concern is that if I import the two-hour, 700MB file into, say, Windows Movie Maker, make the minor change, and then convert the finished product back into mp4, then the finished file will have a huge size that won't fit on a 4.7GB DVD.

Is that a valid concern? Are there video editing softwares out there that somewhat retain original file size?

Any decent video editing software will allow you to specify bitrate and resolution in export settings. Sony Vegas Pro or Movie Studio, Adobe Premiere Elements, as should Cyberlink Powerdirector among others.

For a 2 hour movie with 700MB as output size, you want a target or average bitrate of 670 kbps for the video and 128 kbps for the audio.


How do I use get audio from multilpe screens using split-screen in Filmora I am using Filmora to create videos and would like to have several videos put together via split-screen.  I am able to do this, but I would like the audio from each of those split screens to come through.  It appears that Filmora is only allowing audio to come from one of the videos.  Is there a way to have it come from multiple videos simultaneously?

The only way to do it is by using PIP function, but it looks bad and won't allow you to split evenly and symmetrically like the split screen functions.  And Synching is nearly impossible, or I should say, cumbersome.


Sharp video cutter in Windows I'm using free video cutter joiner, it's simple and very fast. However, sometimes it's not that sharp. I mean I set cut point from A to B, for example 01:25 (1 min 25 sec)to 01:55, then the output vid is like from 01:20 rather than 01:25... a five seconds shift, which is terrible.

Would anyone suggest a simple video cutter that is sharp in the same time. Thanks!

The issue you are seeing is a limitation of your video file format.  In order to get such high levels of compression, modern video is encoded such that only some frames are fully described.  The remaining frames are described by how they differ from those frames coming before or after them.  The frames of video that are based on a given full frame are called a GOP or group of pictures.

In many file formats, it is not possible to setup the video to start or end on a point that is not the beginning or end of a group of pictures without re-encoding which would result in quality loss.  What your file splitter/joiner is likely doing is grabbing the nearest start/end of a group of pictures that includes the part of the video you wanted and starting/ending there.  If the GOP is large, then this could potentially be some amount of time away from where you actually tried to make your cut.

You could use a transcoder to re-encode the footage, but this would result in a loss of detail since you would have an additional generation of compression loss.  You could also possibly try moving it to a container that allows arbitrary start and end points when playing back (basically just skips the start and end of the GOP on playback) but that would depend on the video players you use supporting the feature and having the actual encoding in a codec that is supported by such a container format.


How to have an overlay move to specific points at specific frames using ffmpeg The folliwng should basically have an image appear on frame 438, and then the same image move to a different position on frame 339, then basically disappear for the rest of the video.

ffmpeg -i C:\src\assets\video\base.mp4 -r 25 -i C:\card.png -y \
    -filter_complex [1:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+(1/TB)[1v]; \
    [0:v][1v]overlay=x=0:y=0:enable='between(t,438/25,439/25)'[1v]; \
    [0:v][1v]overlay=x=300:y=300:enable='between(t,439/25,440/25)'[2v]; \
    [1v][2v]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[out] -map [out] -map 0:a -ss 17 C:\temp\j7kthb0v\composit.mp4

I can't seem to get the actual command correct or output anything that resembles what I need.

I know I'm close, I can get one frame overlayed, but I can't get more than that.

Use

ffmpeg -i C:\src\assets\video\base.mp4 -i C:\card.png -y \
       -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v]overlay=x='if(eq(n,439),300,0)':y='if(eq(n,439),300,0)':enable='eq(n,438)+eq(n,439)'[out]" \
       -map [out] -map 0:a -ss 17 C:\temp\j7kthb0v\composit.mp4

You may need to escape the commas in filters depending on your shell i.e. n,438 -> n\,438


Dropping framerate when recording games with Bandicam I was umming and arring if this is the right place to post this, however the FAQs say this site applies to software and recording, amongst other things.

I've recently started recording a certain Java based video game on my PC - along with audio commentary - using 32 bit Bandicam and Audacity for microphone input. My computer is as follows:

Windows 8
3GB DDR2 RAM
Core 2 Duo CPU
256MB RAM graphics card (nVidia of some sort, few years old)
120GB 7200RPM SATA drive - OS
1TB 7200RPM SATA drive - Videos

I've been tweaking settings in my graphics control panel and within the game to get the FPS up. Finally I got to the point where I could comfortably record at 30fps. Yesterday, I installed Microsoft Office 2010 and VMWare vSphere for work purposes (sometimes I work from home). These had large installation files and fragmented the machine a bit - I ran a defrag and everything seems OK.

Unfortunately since then, my framerate will start around 40fps when recording and drop over 5-10 minutes to 30-40, then 20-25, then around 10-15 and stay there. This persists even if I stop the recording and start it again; When not recording I have the game set to limit to 60fps, which it sits on quite comfortably. Closing the game and reopening resets the FPS for the next recording.

I did notice Audacity writing its temporary files to the OS drive, so I tried without Audacity - no change. I've monitored the CPU, memory and disk I/O during recording - none of them hit anywhere near their max.

I realise I need to get new hardware and I'm hoping to over Christmas, however until then I'm trying to get this machine to work. Could anyone provide any suggestions to help me get a stable framerate?

If this is not the right place for such a question, please do point me to the right part of Stack Exchange or any external forums you think may help.

You are hitting a bottleneck of some kind - from your description it is hard to see whether it is CPU or I/O based, but things that could well be culprits:

You are only running with 3GB of RAM - this is pretty low. The Java engine can require large amounts of RAM. I play a fair bit of Minecraft and 8GB really helped me out!
A Core 2 Duo is not exactly cutting edge - get a nice fast Quad Core i7 CPU if you want a gaming machine.

Until you upgrade, the following may help:

Your drives should be on separate controllers, otherwise they will have to share the bandwidth.
Reduce screen resolution and graphics depth/quality
Shut down all other applications (including background apps)


Smartphone vs camcorder Okay, so I'm a young A/V tech, and I'm looking into picking up some equipment for video recording. The guy who is mentoring me said that for the kind of work I do, which is primarily speaking events indoors, with varied lighting, I want a camera with at least ½" sensor.

The Canon XA20 Professional Camcorder seemed to be the best choice for the money, but then I got thinking, phones have come a long way, so when I looked it up, the Samsung Galaxy S6 has a ½" sensor and is capable of shooting 2160p@30fps or 1080p@60fps video, which compared to the camcorders 1080 @ 59.94p seems like it's pretty good, minus the fact that you can't get the same zoom on the phone.

So for the same price of the camcorder, I could pick up two S6s plus accessories and ask for roughly the same price or less that the camcorder with no accessories.

Am I missing anything here? Would love to hear what I'm missing being an amateur and all. If anyone would have a better suggestion on how to maximise our invest my money, I'd love to hear them. Thanks in advance.

Edit 1:
Okay, so to add some clarity, I was just asking about video. My experience is almost completely in audio, and I always use separate equipment for that.
Also, when I'm talking about speaking events, I'm currently only dealing with small groups under 75 people, so I can get the cameras pretty close to the speakers without intruding on the group's attention. My only major issue to date is lack of lighting.

There are a few things you are missing, and a few more you just aren't fully appreciating how much of a difference the things you mentioned make.

First, the S6 sensor is not over 1/2 inch, it is 1/2.6 inch, which is substantially smaller than a 1/2 inch sensor, particularly since sensors are measured diagonally.

Second, lenses matter a lot more than the sensor.  The inability to zoom optically is a deal breaker for what you are trying to do with covering speaking events.  Typically, video is a secondary concern to a live audience and camera positions will be far off to avoid impacting visibility.  Without strong optics, you will not be able to get the footage you need.

Third, most (all?) cellphones do not use a global shutter, while most camcorders do.  Global shutters ensure that an entire frame is captured at the same time instead of scanning line by line while the frame is exposing.  The lack of a global shutter results in the "jello" effect that you can see when you pan a camera quickly.  Global shutter is a bit less of a concern for fixed camera position shooting at a relatively static target, but it is still work mentioning.

Forth, reliability.  Smartphones are more likely to crash than a stand alone video camera, they are subject to recording length limits that may interfere with your recordings.  They will have lower battery life while shooting which may also cause issues and the S6 in particular does not have a replaceable battery at all, so when you are out of juice, you are done unless you have an external battery pack that can keep up with sufficient juice.  Even then, it's a disadvantage to the much more compact battery placement directly on a camcorder.

Fifth, stability.  While you can get tripod mounts for a smartphone, camcorders are built from the ground up to support tripod mounting in a secure way.  You can work around that on the smart phone with complicated cases and mounting systems, but those also drive up the cost.  When shooting off a tripod, camcorders also still have a stability advantage.  You can hold them up to your eye and form a 3 point support that is easily held steady.  Accomplishing the same with a phone would require expensive rigging running up in to hundreds or possibly over $1000 unless you want to try to do custom fabrication yourself.

There are probably a few other things I'm missing too as I've just been writing these from what has come to mind as I go.  Smartphones are up to the point where they can make a pretty decent (though less durable and more expensive) alternative to a go pro, but they are really not an alternative for a camcorder by any stretch of the imagination.


How to add Subtitles to already created video file for .avi format on Windows 8? Can I create subtitle (.srt) file manually (to add subtitle) for .avi file?

I have created .avi file using Snagit but there is no option to add subtitle as well. So can I create subtitle file manually by myself? Or Do I have to download a specific Software for it?

Does it follows any structure?

This can also be accomplished if you have VirtualDubMod and a TextSub provider installed such as VobSub or VSFilter.

To use VobSub, during installation you must select the Plugins -> TextSub for VirtualDub and Avisynth option.

To use VSFilter, you must locate the VSFilter.dll file in the installation directory and copy it to the plugins folder with the extension changed to .vdf (e.g. VirtualDubMod\plugins\VSFilter.vdf).

Once you've installed one of them:

Open the .avi file in VirtualDubMod
Select Video -> Filters from the menu or press Ctrl + F
Click Add and select TextSub from the filters list and press OK
A file navigator should have appeared, select the .srt file.
Optionally, at this point set up the compression under Video -> Compression. Save the merged file with File -> Save as AVI


How to set ffmpeg encoding framerate? in short: I set -r 25 , but I see in the converting process that it's fps=18. Why?

I am trying to convert a video to H.264 format using ffmpeg, and I am trying to set the framerate(out framerate) to 25. I am willing to accept more than 25 if possible but not below.
so I use this command:

ffmpeg -i Millionaire.mp4 -y -c:v libx264 -r 25 file.h264

But I see that in the convertion process in the cmd that: fps=18
Now I understand that fps means "frames per second".
And right after I hit the enter key, it starts as fps=25 but then it drops by 1 every few seconds until it reaches 18.

The input file is 1.61 GB
ffmpeg version:
ffmpeg-20170130-cba4f0e-win64-static.zip    47340467    30-Jan-2017 06:02
from the website:  https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win64/static/

System information:
i7-4702MQ CPU 2.20 GHZ
RAM = 8 GB
Windows 10 x64

Anybody knows why it doesn't stay on fps=25? And how can I force it to not drop below 25 fps?
Thank you

That's processing speed i.e. ffmpeg is encoding 18 frames per second, not the output file's framerate. You can set -preset fast to speed it up but again this has nothing to do with output file's framerate.


AfterEffect. Arrow with stationary origin, moving head need help animating an arched arrow in adobe after effect. Here is an animation “draft” of what type of movement i need to create:

That is: The origin of the arrow stays static, but the arrow head moves along a path. And the arrow is not straight but curved just like in the linked video.
P.s. any linke to the youtube videos or articles would be appreciated. Thanks.

Use an easy path arrow preset like this one:
http://cinemaspice.net/product/path-arrow/
It’s “pay what you want”.


Does 4K impact quality when filming in low light? (other parameters being equal) I'm wondering if filming with a 4K camera, possibly downsizing to Full HD, will give better detail than filming with a Full HD camera (other parameters being equals).

Sub-question (maybe I should make it a different question?):

I have some more experience and better equipement for photography (Canon 6D),
I want my video camera to behave well in low light in moving environments,
I'm often filming moving things/people, I don't want much bokeh/focus loss (I never really remember if that means more or less depth or field).

I currently own a Sony Cybershot RX-100 M2. Very unimpressive body size, but makes excellent 1920x1080x50p videos. I am thinking about an upgrade anyway, max budget for an outstanding camera would be 2000 EUR, but I am not sure if I want to put money in it right now since 4K market is still evolving fast, and so far I cannot really decide because other devices I got info about seem to be very similar or trade-off one advantage for another.

For example compared to Sony RX-100, Sony FDR-AX33 has a smaller sensor. Sony FDR-AX100 only opens at f/2.8 and I use for a wider aperture, so has far as I know RX-100 would have a better low light score than both those cameras. GH4 has more bokeh and seems kind of grainy in low light, ... and yet no camcorder in my budget has more than 30p with 4K.

Suggetions would be welcome, because I cannot really tell what would be a serious upgrade or just wasted money.

There are three key factors in your cameras low light performace:
1. Lens (Aperture)
The lower your f-stop, the more light gets through to the sensor, you will also have a very shallow (narrow) Depth of Field. Often this is a requirement at night, since cutting off most of your light is generally a bad idea. When looking at any camera, see what lenses are available to suit your needs.
2. "Pixel" Size
Each little diode on your sensor collects light, the size of each diode directly effects low-light performance. There are two significant factors in the size of diode: sensor size and resolution. If you have 1920 pixels across your sensor and your sensor is an inch wide each diode will be about 1/1920 of an inch across if you sensor is 3840 pixels across your diode will be about 1/3840 of an inch across, much much smaller, and therefor able to collect less light.
3. Sensitivity
The sensitivity of a sensor can be controlled with ISO. The max ISO is very important for low light capture. Some excellent cameras in other regards have very low max ISO's, and are therefor unable to shoot in low light. Some cameras have very high max ISO's, and are designed for low light. Such cameras are the Canon C-Hundreds series, and the spectacular Sony A7s. The A7s has a relatively low resolution sensor and very high resolution.
The simple answer is yes, 4K will negatively effect low light performance, but most cameras already have a 4k-sized sensor that they simply fail to utilize (the canon 6D suffers equally from small diode size as the A7s for example). In your case, no 4K will have no effect, but if you're going to get a 4K camera for low light, buy the A7s and an external recorder. Out of it you will get 4K raw. For about $3k. It will put your 6D's performance to shame. Some people have lit A7s shots with moonlight/an iphone. Gulp.. did you see that last one, it out did the C300..... :O!
PS:
I first mentioned lenses for a reason. The sony A7s takes Sony E mount lenses. In my opinion they are some of the worst selection of lenses on the market. (Some are good glass, but there are no versatile zooms). Be wary of the lenses, they are half the key to getting your night shot. Also you HD will look amazing with a good lens, they've shot Hollywood features in HD (like Scorsese's Hugo), utilizing the power of $30k lenses.


live stream saved or not Trying to work out if you upload a live stream if it is routed and just played or if it saves into a folder. So for example if you set up a webcam 24 hours and relay that online if that just broadcasts and you then can configure options to save, otherwise it just plays? It would take up a lot of space if were saving to server so trying to be clear on it. Any help to understand greatly appreciated.

It depends on the configuration and choice of streaming server.  You can generally configure stream servers to either record live streams or simply relay them.


Improve chroma key effect in Sony Vegas I'm performing some tests with the chroma key, I already noticed that blue screen will not perform well for me (the subject is often in black, which doesn't match well with blue), so I got a green screen.

I managed to light it quite correctly with some cheap work lights and managed to have a pretty good result with a few minutes playing with the Sony Vegas 11 chroma key effect.

My problem is that it is not absolutely perfect because of the lighting and I find that the chroma key effect is lacking some options. I'd love to have the kind of options I can get with the Secundary color corrector effect (with this one, I was able to replace my first blue screen with a flashy green ! But the same imperfections are still there).

I read somewhere that one should not select one color but a range, but I couldn't find how to do that in Vegas.

My question is : what can I do to improve the quality of the chroma keyer match, in term of effects or settings, in Sony Vegas (not considering the lighting, I'm already working on getting better lights, but I guess there will always be some imperfections that I want to be able to deal with).
Is there any other plugins (free or reasonably priced) that have more options for the keyer ?

Let's first review the basics of green screen:

1) screen about 5 or more feet behind subject so it is out of focus from subject.

2) flat screen, no wrinkles.

3) flat lighting, no shadows, no hot spots.

4) subject can not wear green or wear shiny things or see through things.

Review Vegas Chroma Key: Once you engage the chroma key effect, use the eye dropper and take a sample of the green screen to set the baseline color, engage the mask and tweak the level until you get a flat black on the screen area and white everywhere else then turn the mask off. If this can not be done then something in the basics above was not done correctly.

Another idea to assist. Make sure when you shoot your subject that you have properly set the white balance on the camera so that you have the correct color baseline.

Here are some tutorials to assist:

https://vimeo.com/34365256