Final Cut Pro X — Connect audio clip to another audio (not video) I have a simple video with some background noises added and a background audio track.
However, background audio track is too long, so I carefully cut it into multiple pieces and seamlessly mix:

It works fine, but my second audio part is now connected to the video on top — every next change in the timeline will break my carefully mixed audiotracks.
I want it to be connected to the first audio part instead.
Is it possible?

Create a compound clip with the music on the audio track. This will fix them in place. Replace the individual clips with the compound clip.


When making an educational video, does citation need to be in the video itself? I can't seem to find any information on this. If a person is making an essay, or a research paper there are specific rules about citation. Such as, if a specific fact is used in a paraphrased way, a citation has to be listed for where those facts came from. For video making, I haven't seen any information about it. I've found how to cite a video in a paper, but not how to cite a paper in a video or if it's even necessary. Since I'd be making a Youtube video, I could have my sources in the description, maybe even at the end of the video itself, but would I have to cite things as I'm saying them? I don't think so, but I'm also not sure either. To be honest, I've seen educational Youtube videos that don't do this, but a lot of those videos don't even cite their sources either.

The big disadvantage of citations that are part of the video itself is that they can't easily be a link, or even copy-pasted into a search engine like a text citation. So if it's a URL, the viewer will have to pause the video, and type the URL manually. You could use YouTubes "cards" function to add links as pop-up interactive overlays, but I think you are limited to 5 links per video.

I would put my citations in the description, and in case the video gets embedded somewhere else, give them at the end of the video as well, perhaps with a link to a page where they could be found.

There is no set convention that I know of, unlike citations in papers or books. There is a podcast that I listen to that does give citations, but they just tell you how many at the end and send you to their website to read the transcript to find them. I don't think most viewers are expecting them, except for the implicit citation you give when you say something like "in a 2019 study by Dr Stib, it was noted that…" when citing other's research.


Want to set the in/out points but modified the existing clip I am new to Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014. The source pane is in such a state:

and when I want to mark a new in point for a new clip, it will be like

which will erase one of the clips:

How to exit this "edit mode"? Thank you.

Update: if I right-click the source pane, I can see the "Clear In", "Clear Out", and "Clear In and Out" are greyed out.

My best guess is they did some kind of ability to load a clip in to the source viewer to view the clip in it's entirety.  My expectation is that you need to load the clip from the project window in to the source window.  That should disassociate it from a particular edit.


exporting .mov vr to multiple still frames Ive got a quicktime VR in .mov format i need to strip the all still frames (in total there are 250) out of it and have them in as individual images, preferably pngs or jpegs.

I was looking at using quicktime pro for this, is that the right software to do it ? Would you suggest trying another method ?

thanks in advance.

Using Quicktime Player 7 you can export any movie file as an Image Sequence

Open your .mov file using Quicktime 7
File > Export
In the Export dropdown select Movie to Image Sequence

Open the options and set the export format (eg JPEG or PNG)

If you want just the current frame leave the frames per second blank. Otherwise, enter hte videos frame rate and you will export ALL the frames.


What's the difference between a DVCAM tape that is mini and a MiniDV tape? What exactly is the difference between a DVCAM tape that is mini and a MiniDV tape? They look pretty much the same in terms of size. It seems like Sony is making DVCAM tapes that are the same size as MiniDV tapes now, and it’s getting hard to tell what, if anything, is different. I’m cataloging videos that have either been captured on tapes that say DVCAM, MiniDV, and some tapes that actually have both DVCAM and MiniDv printed on them. I’m basically trying to figure out what I should put as the "media format." Any ideas?

Originally there was miniDV which is a standard consumer tape format (using ME tape) holding DV (at the time DV wasn't really a file format in it's own right).

Sony released a professional version of this called DVCAM with locked audio and which records at a shallower angle, running tape faster at the expense of running time, to reduce dropout.

You could use either DVCAM tapes (now known as DVCAM-L) which as well as holding more tape for longer runtimes used higher quality MP tape, or you could record on miniDV tapes in either DV mode (to remain compatible with miniDV cameras) or in DVCAM mode to take advantage of the better format.  (The larger tape format uses the same width tape so the same head is used for either.) More recently DVCAM mini tapes have been available which use the better quality tape in the smaller package.

So DVCAM encompasses a file format, a recording format, the larger tape format and a marque of professional quality tape in the mini size tapes.  DVCAM mini and miniDV tapes are interchangable but they are branded towards their intended use and there is a general difference in quality/price between the two.

In your case regardless of the brands written on the actual tape you should probably use miniDV if it holds DV and DVCAM or DVCAM mini if it holds DVCAM.  If there is nothing recorded on the tape then it is suitable for either.


Preset/macro for complicated nested effect I have a few animations that I need to do with some frequency, the steps are as follows:

Generate the image from an external program from a template.
Add the image to the second nest in a doubly-nested sequence.
Determine how long the image should play and apply two animation (motion) presets I made, clamped to the in and out of the image. The animation presets are the same, but since they depend on the in and out I have to determine the length first. (Scaling messes up some of the intermediate keys).
Add some audio at the beginning and end of the image (same audio, but clamped to the in and out).
Add a matte image (same every time) to the first nest, and apply a track matte effect on the second nest referring to it (same every time).

The image is always of the same resolution.

This is very time consuming and I have to do it 5-10 times per video I make. Is there any way I can build some sort of macro that does this (except part 1, obviously)? Preferably it would automate as much as possible. Ideally, I could give it an image and a length parameter and it would generate the whole thing, but even automating just the nesting and track matte would save a lot of time.

Can I make a macro/preset that I can use across projects that does this? I don't have any experience with the Premiere API, but I have programming experience if this would be really straightforward by writing a plugin.

I'd try to export a sample project as XML and then let a script change the necessary parts of the XML project file.


What's wrong with this MP4 file? Is the pixel aspect ratio wrong? Similar to this post, I've sent some video tapes off to be digitized.  In this case, they are mini-DV tapes which should be 720x480 resolution (more or less).  The resulting MP4 files do claim to be 720x480 but the images don't look right.  I uploaded one such movie here, it's a little hard to tell but even for dancers they aren't shaped quite like that.  The video makes them look more like elves than humans, which is probably better than looking like hobbits, but still not right.  If I play this MP4 using the standard Windows player, pause it, and grab a screenshot, the resulting image is 1118x832 which is an aspect ratio of 1.34 which explains the elvishness.  But why?
I was not familiar with the concept of pixel aspect ratio until I started reading up on DV format but I'm guessing that's what's happening here.  The Wikipedia page on DV says there are "different pixel aspect ratios for fullscreen and widescreen video" but doesn't say what those values are.
Since Windows is stretching this video when it plays it, it makes me think that there is a pixel aspect ratio embedded in the MP4 file, but the standard Windows "Show Properties" doesn't display it.  Or maybe Windows always plays videos using a 1.33 pixel aspect ratio or something?
What I'm thinking, is that since DV is recorded with 480 scan lines, and the resulting image is 480 pixels high, they don't need to re-digitize the video.  I could drop the MP4 into my video editing software (Sony's Vegas Movie Studio) and hit it with a "compress vertically" deform, but it seems like that's going to end up blurring the video.  I have all the right pixels, it's just that my pixels aren't the right shape (right?)  Is the pixel aspect ratio stored in this MP4 file in a place where I could adjust it and get my video to look right?
EDIT
Initially, ffmpeg reports this for my video :
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 720x480 [SAR 10:11 DAR 15:11], 2886 kb/s, SAR 109:120 DAR 109:80, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)
A DAR (display aspect ratio) of 109:80 is 1.36 which is basically correct for full screen DV, so I'm guessing my video is actually wide screen (16:9 = 1.77777).  If I run ffmpeg using this command:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -aspect 1.7777777 -c copy output.mp4
I get a video which ffmpeg describes like this:
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 720x480 [SAR 10:11 DAR 15:11], 2886 kb/s, SAR 32:27 DAR 16:9, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)
which looks almost OK - it says DAR 16:9 but then also says DAR 15:11 which is 1.36 and not what I want.  And sure enough, if I play this video using Windows 10 "Movies & TV", the screenshot shows that the video is still at the 1.36 DAR, not the desired 1.77.
Is there an ffmpeg command that will produce what I need?  Or is the Windows 10 Movie Player unable to actually handle the DAR setting?

You are correct. The pixel aspect ratio is wrong. DV has a fixed horizontal resolution, but can display 16:9 frames by stretching out the pixels. The display resolution is set in metadata, so it is possible to make the file play back properly without re-encoding by changing the metadata.
The free, open-source tool ffmpeg can do it. This would be the command you would use:
ffmpeg -i infile.mp4 -c:copy -aspect 16/9 outfile.mp4


get metadata for video start time with ffmpeg I need to get the start time of some videoclips (very precise, ideally precise at 0.1 sec). I have been told that I may be able to do so using ffmpeg. I managed to install it but am not sure how to obtain this information.
I tried with
path > ffmpeg -i test.mp4 -f ffmetadata test_metadata.txt

But then the test_metadata.txt file just contains the following
;FFMETADATA1
major_brand=mp42
minor_version=0
compatible_brands=mp42isom
encoder=Lavf58.77.100

Any suggestion? Also I am happy to use other commands/software. Can't use online services as video are sensible and I must adhere to GDPR

You can use the companion ffprobe tool, which really is meant for machine-parseable text.
ffprobe -v 0 -show_entries format=start_time -of compact=p=0:nk=1 "input"

This will print a value with the form x.yyyyyy or N/A for formats without timestamps.


Side by side videos in shapes I have a basic After Effects question, but I don't know the right words for it to find what I need.

I have a composition that consists of three side-by-side videos. But, for now, it's just three layers on top of eachother. I created three skewed rectangles (Shapes). I want each of the layers to be shown on top ONLY of one of the shape layers. So, I want footage A to be shown on top of shape A, footage B on shape B, footage C on shape C. There is also some whitespace, between the shapes, so the background video is shown as well.

How would I accomplish this?

The easiest way would be to use the shapes as track mattes for the video layers.

Put the Footage A video layer directly beneath the Shape A layer and in the Modes column choose Alpha Matte "Shape A" from the Track Matte drop-down. Repeat for Footage B and Shape B and Footage C and Shape C

What track mattes do is use the alpha (transparency) or luma (brightness) of a layer to set the transparency of the layer directly below it. The Alpha Inverted option reverses wht is visible or invisible.

There's always at least two ways to do anything in After Effects, so I should just mention that other ways to do the same thing include copying the shape paths and pasting as masks on the video layers, or using the silhouette alpha mode on the shape layers and pre-comping. All methods have advantages and disadvantages. Read the page here for more.


What exactly do the sequence settings do? Sooo, this may sound fairly stupid, especially for professional editors, but I'd like to know the role of the sequence settings in Premiere Pro. I know that the format of the preview files depends on the sequence settings, but apart from that, do they serve any purpose? I mean, regardless of the sequence settings, I can export my video to any format I want. So I'd e.g. like to know if it makes a great difference if I choose AVCHD 1080p25 or DSLR 1080p25 ...

The entries for the creation of a new sequence are only presets.  They load things like pixel pitch, resolution, color depth, etc.  Many of these can be changed after creation, particularly if you haven't added anything to the timeline yet.  You can also make additional presets if you have frequent use of settings that there isn't already a preset for (or you can even manually select all the settings and not use a preset.)

This is the actual sequence settings:

As you can see, the framerate(timebase), frame size, pixel pitch (aspect ratio), fields, display format, audio sample rate and audio display format make up the primary settings.

There are additionally settings for how previews are rendered, which particularly matters if you intend to use previews in the rendering of final output, otherwise it just impacts what you see during editing (after preview renders have finished.)

While you can export in different formats, that will result in scaling if the resolution differs.  The sequence settings determine how the video renders, the export settings determine how the rendered frames are saved in to a final output.


Fixing ISO value of each frame of a recorded AVI video As the ISO value is dynamic in video recording, is there a way to somehow force the camera to record the whole video in one fixed ISO ?
Camera: Nikon D3s

You can just turn off the AUTO ISO feature and set the ISO manually. This way it won't change throughout your recording, and this will also produce more consistent lighting, unless the lighting conditions change (i.e. your scene involves turning the lights on/off, opening/closing a window or something like that). Instructions on how to do that can be found in your camera's manual.
A quick google search yielded the following result:

By default the D3s won't give you much control of video capture and you'll have to unlock the manual video control by using a secret method. Don't worry, nothing will happen to your $5,000+ camera!
All you have to do is set your Live View-setting to "Tripod Mode", enter Live View using the Lv-button on the back of the camera and then press the OK-button on the left side of the LCD. That's it. You've now gained full manual control of video on your D3s. Congratulations!

Source
And here's an excerpt from a more extensive guide to the camera's shooting menu:

ISO sensitivity settings
ISO sensitivity
This duplicates the ISO button. I use ISO 200.
ISO sensitivity auto control
This is where we set the AUTO ISO feature ON or OFF. Auto ISO magically bumps up the ISO as the light gets weaker, saving you a lot of time since you no longer need to watch your lighting or shutter speeds. Set this and just shoot, from daylight to moonlight.

Source


Is the boom mic recording audio? Is the boom mic recording audio or do I need an audio recorder to hook it up to?
Sorry I am the biggest amateur.

The boom mic is a sensor. It converts audio into an electrical signal. To record that signal you need a recorder of some kind, one that is capable of amplifying a microphone level signal and recording it. Usually that means a digital recording device, which could include something like a Zoom recorder, a camera with an external mic input, a phone with a mic input, or a PC with a mic input.

The type of device depends on your needs and budget. The recorder you have is the the best recorder, so if you don't want to spend money you could investigate whether you can plug an external mic into whatever equipment you have at hand.

Depending on your microphone you may need an adapter to change the plug into the plug on the device. Professional microphones almost all have a three-pin connection called an XLR connector (pictured below on the right), consumer grade mics usually have a mini-jack connector (below left). So if you have the former on your microphone, but the latter on your recorder (e.g. the Zoom H1n pictured above only has a mini-jack input), you'll need something like this:


MediaInfo Fourcc Values I'm trying to figure out what fourcc value I need to use but I'm a bit confused between file formats and codecs.
I have a .mov file and MediaInfo reports it as shown below

I need to specify the fourcc value but can't see it explicitly listed. Is it the Color Space and Chroma subsampling values?
If it is the text I'm using suggests I call the file a .avi but does it matter if I call it a .mov?

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : Main@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP                     : M=2, N=5
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1h 8mn
Source duration                          : 1h 8mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 3 224 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 768 Kbps
Width                                    : 1 024 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.942
Original display aspect ratio            : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 25.000 fps
Minimum frame rate                       : 3.125 fps
Maximum frame rate                       : 25.000 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.219
Stream size                              : 1.53 GiB (100%)
Source stream size                       : 1.54 GiB (100%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2016-01-16 15:40:20
Tagged date                              : UTC 2016-03-09 18:41:42
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.601 PAL
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.601

FourCCs are Microsoft's ID tags for streams e.g. avc1 for H.264/AVC or mp4a for an AAC audio stream. The container doesn't really matter.

If you want to change the FourCC, use ffmpeg like so

ffmpeg -i input.mov -strict -2 -c copy -vtag ABCD new.mov

where ABCD is your new 4CC/tag.

You current file already shows avc1 for the video stream, which is default and expected.


Adobe Encoder fps and duration doesn't match I have After Effects project file 25 fps, 29 seconds duration long. After exporting i get 725 png files - looks normal so far. But then i merge it to mp4 using Adobe Encoder, I get total 24 seconds duration instead of 29.

Math:
725 frames,  25 fps  -  29 s
725 frames,  30 fps  -  24 s

The strange thing in mp4 file properties - 25 fps and 24s duration which doesn't make sense, it doesn't match math. Please any ideas what i'm doing wrong?

EDIT:

I find out in AE Preferences > Import image sequence footage fps by default was set to 30. After changing it to 25 imported image sequence looks good.

Unfortunately I couldn't find it in Adobe Encoder preferences - there is no such settings, and by default it loads 30fps sequence.

Unfortunately I couldn't find it in Adobe Encoder preferences - there is no such settings, and by default it loads 30fps sequence.

You can change the default in Media Encoder by going to the Preferences/Media and then change "Indeterminate Media Timebase"


Will I lose quality when converting avi to mkv? I have a lot of *.avi files with either 1 audio track or several. All of them are mp3 encoded. The video codec is xvid4.

However, when I play these avi files I can choose between the audio tracks (if there is more than 1 audio track) but they are named "audio track 1", "audio track 2" and so on.

That's why I want to convert them into mkv files since they support audio track names.

Would I loose any quality if I convert them?

AVI and MKV are both containers, so in theory it should be possible to transfer your contents with no further loss. I can't say for certain if MKV can wrap xvid4, but it's very likely. You shouldn't need to decode / re-encode to transfer the contents, just demux / remux.


What is the cheapest camera I can plug external microphone to? I am working on some homemade lectures so I need good quality of sound, but unfortunately I do not have any budget so far(amateur stuff).

I am looking for a camera that can shoot in Full HD and can have an external microphone attached. I do not need anything further than that, though.

I was considering SONY HDR-CX240 until I found out it cannot have external mic.
(What if it is a USB mic? It does have a USB slot.) So, should I quit this choice and buy a more expensive camera? Which one whould you recommend?

Is it possible that I record with the camera and external mic attached to my laptop at the same time?

Do you own a high-end smartphone? You can plug-in pretty much any microphone and have very decent audio quality. Some Android phones even support usb mics.
So you probably need a cheap adapter for standard stereo or mono mics to work with the 3 channel type headphone+mic jacks in modern phones. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-headsets-separate-headphone-microphone/dp/B004SP0WAQ/

It then only depends on the video quality of your phone. If that is satisfactory just get some sort of tripod adapter or other type of stand for phones and you're good to go. Definitely the cheapest solution if you already own a fitting phone.

If your phone is not an option I recommend you go with a webcam and USB microphone attached to your PC or Laptop. Most recording softwares have the option to choose a different audio source than your video recording device.
You can get a decent quality webcam for 20-30€ and a decent quality USB mic that can capture room audio for 15-20€.


How to mask an animated layer in After Effects? After effects noob here. I'm working on an animation where a ball falls through a hole. I created a Shape layer to use as the mask, but I can't get it to mask the ball layer.

I've also tried adding a mask directly to the ball layer, but it moves with the rest of the animation. Is there a way to turn the mask on and off without affecting the rest of the animation?

I found this post helpful: Preventing a Mask From Animating

  Create a comp size solid above your text layer.
  Apply the mask to the solid.
  Set the Track Matte setting of your text layer to Alpha Matte.
  The text layer will now adopt the alpha channel of the masked solid.

  You can freely animate the text and mask independently.

I did not know the name of what I was trying to do. I needed to convert the mask layer into a Track Matte.


Is there a way to capture RTMP-stream and output it to SDI? Is there any way to capture an RTMP stream and output it to SDI?

Here is my situation: We specialize in producing local sports for web streaming. Occasionally we are asked to deliver a stream to a local TV-station. Paying for uplink truck and the whole satellite thing is way beyond our budget.

I'm not really familiar with IP-based workflows, that's why capturing RTMP-stream was my first idea.

I found this rack mount device called DVEO D-Streamer IP/DIG. One of DVEO's press relises announced $4000 price for the device.

Inputs: HTTP Live (HLS), UDP, RTP, RTSP, HTTP, RTMP (Open Flash), MMS.
Output: SD/HD-SDI.


Is there any way to make text transparent when it is in a shape and make non-transparent when it is outside the shape? I am a beginner in After Effects. I came to know the TrkMat - Alpha Inverted Matte "Text" option to make the text transparent within a shape like the below image.

But when I move the text outside of the shape, it will stay as transparent.

Is there any way to make the text non-transparent when moving out of the shape like the below image?

So that when an animation occurs, the text will be non-transparent at first and the portion going inside the shape will become transparent immediately. Please help me to know if I can do this. I couldn't find any solution from the internet.

It's harder to do than it should be, I guess because AE is layer-based rather than node-based like Fusion etc.

You're going to have to make a copy of both of your layers, parent each copy to the original layer – so you only have to move one of each – and arrange them so that your layer stack looks like

text
solid
solid
text

(or vice versa). Now make the bottom solid a track matte for the text layer, using alpha-inverted, so that the text is only visible where the solid isn't, and make the top text the track matte for the top solid, once again using alpha -inverted, so that it punches a hole in the top solid layer. The top solid will form the left hand part of the design and the bottom text the right side.

You could also use just the original layers and have one of them use difference mode, pre-comp them both and then use a extract effect to turn the black parts into transparency, but you'll then have to do the animating in a separate comp, which can make it harder to work with.

There is also the Set Matte effect. A lot of people struggle with this effect, it's a lot less intuitive than the slightly more complicated solutions above, so you'll have to do some research. A good explainer video here.


How to create an effect of eyes opening and closing in first person perspective when awaking from syncope? How to create an effect of eyes opening and closing in first person perspective when awaking from syncope? AE, PR or Final Cut Pro any software is OK. How to create this effect? Or are there any templates or tutorials relating to this?

Syncope is also called "blacking out". So it kinda follows that you might fade in from black…? This effect is in every NLE usually as the default transition.

If you wanna get artsy, maybe you could add say, a blur that gets progressively less blurry as the transition proceeds.

But really, it totally depends on what you want it to look like. Is there a director for this video? Making creative decisions about stuff like this is their job.


How should I light two people teaching a dance video tutorial? I want to film dance instructors teaching about 10 - 20 feet from my camera.

Since I am an amateur I have no idea how to light this. I would try to make sure the room has plenty of light from "standard" sources (ie, ones tha that come with the building). But I imagine I need some lights in front of the dancers too, ideally on the cheap side and portable.

From my research it seems that perhaps LED light panels may be a good option? I don't know how many to use, or if they should be in the front or at diagonals.

I don't know if I need some kind of hair light, or how to acheive that if I do. I don't know if I should light the background behind the dancers.

Thanks for any suggestions, and if this is a common problem / technique perhaps you can tell me what the "name" of it is and point me to any reading/viewing material?

Below are some common rooms and setups where dance might be taught (these are not me by the way. I'm just trying to understand how lighting might be set up in these contexts.

Thanks

I've been in similar situations/venues in the past. It reads to me like you have little to no budget and no crew to speak of, since you are asking the question yourself which suggests that you are going to do the lighting yourself.

So, unless you have the budget to rent a proper yet smallish dance venue with already set up ceiling lights, with enough money left over to hire the services of a professional lighting technician to make those ceiling lights work for you on the day or of the shoot, I would suggest you don't really bother with getting lots of unwieldy lights, as (1) you're going to need a lot of them (or powerful ones) to do it properly/evenly, (2) you're going to be working in dance studios with probably low ceilings (not good for good lighting), and (3) you'll have little man-power to adjust the lights as you shoot, set up the gear, etc. (try not to over-extend yourself).

Still, here's what you should consider:

Make sure you get a space that's already well lit by nice-looking natural light. The light in your screen grabs looks fine to me, although I would draw the curtains seen in the background of the middle venue (too distracting because bright/overblown).
Start your shoot early to get as much natural light as possible over a long period.
Restrict the space that your dancers can cover: you're not going to bring huge lights but smallish ones, like three or four 650s. Whatever you bring (no kinos 'cause they're no good for large spaces), your lights won't probably be quite powerful enough to give your the output you need to light the dance space evenly (with bounce/diffusion, etc). So, again, restrict the space your dancers can cover to help you light a smaller area of the stage/space as evenly as you can ("evenly" doesn't mean flat).
Since you're not going to be able to bring a lot of lights nor be able to raise them high-enough to get a proper look, concentrate mainly on increasing the overall brightness levels of the room by bouncing light of off the ceiling/upper corners. Venue One, as seen in your screen grabs, looks good to me, thanks to its white ceiling. Avoid the space with yellow walls as your subjects will look like they have a jaundis!
If you still have time and energy to spare, give your subject some back rim light by blasting them from 3/4 back, either from one side of the stage or two sides. Use light or heavy diffusion, etc. to control it as you wish.
Make sure to keep your subjects far enough from these light sources (which blast them directly) to avoid their getting super hot as they get closer to the lights as they dance around.
Keep an eye on your lighting scheme color temp if you're mixing light sources (natural and artificial, etc): play with CTOs or CTBs until you get a proper look.
More importantly, AUDIO! I would actually make sure that your subjects are properly miked and recorded: bad audio will make your video(s) really feel amateurish. You can get away with quite a bit when it comes to lighting, not so much with bad audio.
So, hire the services of a good production audio person, or do it yourself by putting lavs on your two subjects and getting good levels throughout.
Note: dance studios with lots of heavy curtains covering the walls sound better: less audio reverb/bounce! Box-like rooms will sound like shit.
Also, I suggest putting tape over the soles of your dancers' shoes (or whatever you can do) to muffle their tap-tap sounds as much as possible.
Clothing: your subjects' outfits work well generally. Avoid white ('cause it's white!), and avoid black tops (if the background in black, of course).

Good luck.


How can I merge/link two video clips in Premiere? Every time I search this problem in Google the only options are how to link audio clips to video or how to sync audio to video clips.

I need to combine/link/merge a picture to a video clip, so that if I edit one the same thing happens to the other clip, like merging layers in Photoshop.

MERGING VIDEO CLIPS

To combine video clips there is something called Nested Sequence.

A very powerful technique.
When adding clips to a timeline you are working in what is called a sequence (normally named Sequence 01), drop your two clips into your timeline and rename your sequence 01 to something like 'My day trip to the market'.

Select a different video clip and drag and drop it onto the 'new item' button. Bottom right of the Project window.
That would create ANOTHER sequence which you can rename as your 'master sequence' from what would probably be called 'sequence 02'.

Now you can drag and drop your original sequence like a clip INTO your master sequence. And tada.

The wonderful thing about nested sequences is you can go back and re-edit it and it would update in all your other sequences where you use it.

MERGING AUDIO AND VIDEO (original answer regarding merging audio and video)

Import your clips into the project.
Select your video and audio clips (so they are both selected)
Right click and 'Merge Clips...'
It will ask to sync on in (start of audio and video) or out (end of audio and video).
Click ok and you would now have a merge file of both your video and audio clips that you can manipulate as a single clip.

Hope that helps.


How to find/detect the real video resolution? Imagine you have recorded/captured the screen at 1080p, but it was displaying a 480p video maximized to fullscreen.
The result file is technically 1080p, but it really is showing a 480p video, that is what I mean by "real resolution".
Now imagine I have a lot of these 1080p videos, having different and unknown "real resolutions", how can I find/detect these resolutions?
The goal is resize the videos to the real resolutions and not waste disk space.
(same question for FPS)

The tool that I prefer to use is ffmpeg, but i'm open to other tools/apps if they are free for personal use.

If you satisfy with your video outputting on a 1080p device, the original video aspect ratio has to be 16:9; therefore, the original video has no choice to be 480p, 720p, or 1080p. The next step is the transformation, there are plenty of filters you can choose to determine it is 480p; on the other hand, choosing transforming to 720p or no transformation, stay in 1080p, depends on contours detection on white background.
As you mentioned ffmpeg and opencv, you should find such APIs easily.


ffmpeg adds unneeded zero samples at beginning of resulting m4a file Input file original.wav

ffmpeg -i original.wav
...
  Duration: 00:03:36.93, bitrate: 1411 kb/s

Convert wav to m4a with fdk-aac encoder:

ffmpeg -i original.wav -c:a libfdk_aac -vbr 5 ffmpeg.m4a

Check duration of resulting m4a:

ffmpeg -i ffmpeg.m4a
...
  Duration: 00:03:36.98, start: 0.046440, bitrate: 240 kb/s

So, ffmpeg adds ~2000 zero samples at beginning of resulting file. How to disable this?

I try few different codecs and all work fine, problem only with fdk-aac.

ffmpeg versions: 2.2.10 and 2.4.3
fdk-aac version: 0.1.1 and 0.1.3

UPD1: I try fdkaac and vlc (it also use fdk-aac library). Both produce correct file (no zero samples at begin). So problem only with ffmpeg+fdk.

I have seen this also with libfdk_aac and x264 and am not sure what causes it but I have had success using the itsoffset flag like this:

ffmpeg -itsoffset 0.046440 -i original.wav -c:a libfdk_aac -vbr 5 ffmpeg.m4a


I want to produce a scrolling image I have an image (say .png) of big vertical size. I want to create a video that shows this image slowly scrolling from the top to the bottom. How?
ffmpeg? pymovie?

Most quality editing (Adobe Premier, Final Cut, etc.) will allow you to do this pretty easily with both text and images using "keyframing". You can make them scroll, zoom in, or whatever other movement you need. There's tons of videos on how to do this on Youtube, but here's one for Adobe Premier:


Lighting a table is just not working We are trying to take short videos of a small product.
The video happens on a table of 1x1 Meters, where the camera is about 40cm above the table-static.

I have 4 6000k led bulbs each 20W (=100W) , 1 meter from each corner
I have a little light comes out of the window

What happens is that only when I film very close to the object ( 10-20cm above) I get great video. If I go up to 40cm and more - you do not see details good enough.

Have tried good Cannon, and Fugi with different lenses
Tried iPhone 6 that surprised me with much better videos.

But still, 40cm above that table you see good picture but not detailed enough.
On 3 of the camera I used, I get great picture only when close to the product.

What else can I do on a budget ? if I put diffuser around the table would it help ?

That sort of "product shot" is frequently done by firing your lights through a diffusing "tent" that surrounds the subject.  You're looking to get good "modeling" of the shape and detail without specular reflection.

Cars are frequently lit the same way, but with a bigger tent.

Here's an example, although you can rig your own cheaper: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1123911-REG/surface_light_ltd_68056998365_pop_up_photo_studio.html


Decrease video size post-editing I am using a video editing software to edit my videos for YouTube. The scenario is as below:

Input file size: 80mb.
Input type: webm.

My expectation after editing :

Video size: around 100mb.
(Any format can do)

I have a wide range of options to select for the video output (Such as video output type, codec, quality, etc). Currently I am outputting in mp4 format with some other options selected. However, I am getting a very bulky file of 600mb in the output.
I want to know what output options (format, codec, quality etc.) can I select so that the output I get is   smaller in size. (I can compromise with the video quality to some extent).
I can give more info if asked.
Thanks in advance.

Webm and mp4 are container formats. Those itself don't have any relevant influence on the file size.
The codec with a set bitrate determines the filesize. For YouTube uploads, follow the current recommendations and you'll see, you should use h264 as video codec.
First, make sure the export has the same resolution and frame rate as the input, unless you intend to change it anyway. If that's fine, my guess is that the bitrate was set too high. The above mentioned recommendations for YouTube show you how high the bitrate needs to be to get excellent quality. However, if your source material is far below that, you should use a bitrate that's closer to its quality.
To calculate a suitable bitrate in advance is difficult, when the codec of the source is different from the codec of the export. It's good to have a higher bitrate than strictly necessary because YouTube will re-encode the video anyway. Chained re-encodings with lossy codecs will reduce quality further and should be generally avoided, but in this case you cannot do anything against that.
WebM uses VP8 or VP9, both need slightly higher bitrates to achieve the same quality as h264. This means as a rough estimate, set your maximum target bitrate to something like 90% of the bitrate of the source material. Make sure it's a variable bitrate, not a constant bitrate, because the variable bitrate is almost always the better choice for quality. Then you should get a file size roughly the same as the source video.
And then there's audio. It makes up a smaller percentage of the filesize. However you should check that your editor is not accidentally using much higher bitrates for audio as the source.


Strange behaviour of false colors mode on field monitor I just bought a Feelworld MA7 and did some test yesterday regarding false colors.

Here are my tests:

1) video capture of the scene, together Final Cut Pro X's oscilloscope:

2) photo of what the Feelworld MA7 field monitor was displaying:

Close-up on the scale:

We can see that although pink should be for totally black areas (IRE < 0), MA7's false Colors show pink even in areas holding information, like the left side of the t-shirt which, according to the oscilloscope (and according to our eyes), hold some luminance values.

To push the test a little bit further, I used a lut which applies false colors onto clips in FCPX (https://luts.iwltbap.com/false-color-lut/). Here's the result with the corresponding scale (I think it's Atomos' scale):

In this case, the results are much more intuitive (and better corresponding to the oscilloscope): nowhere do we see dark purple (IRE < 0 on this scale).

Why is that? And ultimately, can I trust the Feelworld MA7 field monitor to help me accurately expose my scenes?

Such cheaper monitors often don't have enough power to calculate it correctly.
Often they are just added as a sales pitch.
I wouldn't totaly trust it, but you can take it as a rough estimate.


ffmpeg - video with timer I am currently working with the drawtext and drawbox filters to recreate a similar video appearance to what is shown below in the image. I am trying to see of a possible ways to add a count down timer to display video duration. The timer could either be placed in the upper left or right hand corners.

I am able to generate a test video showing a timer this way: ffplay -f lavfi -i testsrc OR  ffmpeg -f lavfi -i testsrc -vf crop=29:52:256:94 -t 10 timer1.mp4. However, how can I display a timer?

drawbox/drawtext filter settings

ffmpeg -i "/media/test/test.mp4" -vf drawtext="fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/open-sans/OpenSans-Regular.ttf:text='Title of this Video':x=(w-tw)/2:y=(h-th)/2"  /media/test_edited.mp4"

desired output

This is possible but will require scripting. ffprobe will be used to determine the duration of the input, then the countdown and background box will be created by the drawtext filter.

A 30 second input will start from 30 and count down to 0.

Example:

input=input.mp4
duration=$(ffprobe -loglevel error -show_entries format=duration -of default=nw=1:nk=1 "$input")
ffmpeg -i "$input" -vf "drawtext=fontfile=OpenSans-Regular.ttf:text='%{eif\:$duration-t\:d}':fontcolor=white:fontsize=24:x=w-tw-20:y=th:box=1:boxcolor=black@0.5:boxborderw=10,format=yuv420p" -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -movflags +faststart output.mp4

If you prefer rounded corners you may be able to make a PNG file with alpha, and then place it in your desired location using the overlay filter. Doesn't seem worth it to me though.
If you find the duration from ffprobe to be inaccurate then you will have to completely decode the file to get the actual duration and then parse the console output. One method would be: ffmpeg -i input -f null -.
This may be possible to do without ffprobe but I don't have an alternative method at the moment.
You can combine this filterchain with the one from ffmpeg drawtext filter - create transparent background with text to get exactly what you want. An oversimplified command could then look like:

-vf "format,drawbox,drawtext,drawtext,format"


How to retroactively extract media out of a Final Cut Pro library? I see that in Final Cut Pro, I can go to File > Library Properties > Storage Locations > Modify Settings and see the following screen:

  Set storage locations for the library...

  Newly imported or generated media, custom Motion content, cache files, and library backups will be stored in the locations you choose. Existing media, Motion content, and backup files remain in their original locations.

This seems like a great way to create a lightweight backup (e.g. similar to how I had to manually do it in iMovie).

However, I accidentally started editing my project before having this setting enabled. My Final Cut Pro contains duplicates of all the media I imported, and is now Gigabytes larger than I'd like it to be. (Since I already have the original media saved in another location.)

How do I retroactively extract my media from my Final Cut Pro library, in such a way that preserves all the editing I've done?

Update: In Preferences, there also seems to be a setting that affects how media is imported:

  Import

  Files: Leave files in place (instead of Copy to library storage location)

However, this also appears to only work for new media that is imported rather than retroactively applying to existing media.

I think the best way would be to create a new library with a new project, then select the entire timeline in the old project, then drag all into the new project in the new library. That should give only the media used. Make sure that in the settings the leave file is selected.


How do I set up an RTMP stream server and URL endpoint? I've got a Haivision Barracuda, which can stream RTMP to a URL (secured by username/password) set in its interface, but have very little experience of streaming video. What software do I need (Windows or Linux, but ideally free or open source at the moment) to set up a server that can provide this URL on which to receive the stream, please?

Can I then rebroadcast that (also as RTMP, to a remote URL endpoint), and how can I view the live stream to test that it's working?

If you have a Windows server, Windows Streaming Media Services works nicely and is included with most versions of Windows Server.  You just need to install the role and then configure a publishing point for the URL.  Their is a GUI provided for doing the configuration.


Outputting 1x3 Video Wall at 5760x1080 I'm looking for the simplest way to create a 1x3 landscape video wall. Where the animation plays at 5760×1080 across the three screens.

The orientation is like this:
I've seen PiWall and that might do what I need (although seems to max out at 1920×1080 total resolution) but if there was some sort of HDMI splitter solution that works like this it would be great and could just run off a laptop. But I feel like a lot of them just clone screens as opposed to the video wall effect?

The screens are three consumer LG 55UK6470PLC TVs. I see there is an LG SuperSign software to do with WebOS for creating video walls but can't get hold of anyone in LG to confirm or deny that it would work with our screens. And I can't find it to download anywhere.

Any advice or help would be appreciated.

Depending on which kind of animation you want to run, the "simplest" solution would be to build a Linux or Windows PC with 3 graphics cards and hook these up though 3 HDMI cables and then anything that runs on that PC can be shown on the 5760x1080 video wall...

As the TVs are 4K-ready, the above solution would also work for a 11520×2160 video wall.

If you need something small (a laptop would be too small), you can go for the MicroATX form factor with 2 Graphics cards for 2 screens and the on-board Intel graphics for the 3rd, but depending on the kind of animation that could limit you to maximum 5760x1080.


Premiere writes the text in the wrong side I'm trying to write a title on a video but Premiere writes in in the wrong side : from right to left. Let me show you, when I try to write HR, I have  RH

And when I add "&AI" I got "&AI".

Can you help me writting it in the left to right side, that is to say to have "HR&AI" ?

Check under your Preferences in the 'Graphics' section that the 'Default Paragraph Dirction' is not right-to-left.

After adjusting the setting, you may need to create a new text layer to see the changes take place.


Post processing - image stabilisation I own a Panasonic HC-V130. Recently I've read an article about image stabilisation in a computing magazine. Can this be achieved without a special camera?

I am using too much zoom to hold the camera still - causing the image to bounce up and down. Can I correct some of this shaking using software after? If possible can anyone suggest a few pieces of software that can achieve this - if possible a free one.

I use windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04 (Linux).

FFMpeg's vid.stab filter works well.  You have to run it as a 2-pass process: detect, and then stabilize.  If you're going to do more with the video later, after stabilizing, output to a lossless format and then point your other tools at that.


Vector layer is blurry if it's in composition So the problem is -- I moved .ai file into sub-composition and then zoomed this composition inside of the main composition.
And now it's blurry.

I know for the vector files I can choose "Continuously Rasterize", but in my case it's not just a vector layer, it's vector layer inside of the composition.

There is a option called "Collapse Transformations", it helps and makes vector layer nice and smooth, but it ruins the puppet-animation that is inside of the comp.

What should I do?

About the only thing to do is scale up the nested comp (the one with the puppet animation in it), so that it matches the size it needs to be in the outer comp without having to zoom it.

There's a script that will do this for you, if you look at the File>Scripts> menu there should be one called scale composition.

This script basically just attaches everything in the comp to a null, resizes the comp using the comp settings, then scales the null to match. So if the script doesn't work for you you can do it manumatically.


Software used for Film Colourization Recently watched this video showing colour restoration of a Black & White film. Which software did they use for this purpose? Any guess?

From the youtube video description you linked:

  The in-house developed and customized cutting edge software tools
  provide better image quality and colors very close to the original.


How to stop Sony AVC/MVC encoder from adding 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 videos? I am using Movie Studio Platinum 13 (essentially, light version of Sony Vegas).

I am creating a project based on mp4 files recorded on my Sony Alpha camera. These files have pixel resolution 1440x1080 and aspect ratio 16:9, which means that they are anamorphic (pixel aspect 1.333) and are stretched to 1920x1080 when playing back. All the video players I tried are playing the files with correct aspect ratio. Mediainfo tool shows the following information:

When creating the project, I specify that I want to detect project settings from an existing file and I pick the file from the camera.

When rendering the movie, I pick Sony AVC/MVC encoder and specify the settings as in the original videos (1440x1080@30p, 1.333 pixel ratio for anamorphic aspect ratio, 25 FPS):

But the final rendered movie plays back with black bars and 4:3 aspect ratio on some video players! When I inspect the media information, I see the following:

The Sony AVC/MVC encoder has added "Original display aspect ratio" as 16:9 and set "Display aspect ratio" to 4:3, whereas in the source files "Display aspect ratio" was 16:9 and there was no "Original display aspect ratio" at all.

Why is Sony encoder doing this? How do I force it not to add 4:3 ratio but keep them all at 16:9 while using the same anamorphic pixel ratio for 1440 -> 1920 stretching?

In project properties, set your pixel aspect ratio to 1.333 as well. Furthermore, make sure that when you right-click a video on your timeline that both resample is disabled, and try fiddling around with the "maintain aspect ratio" option. I have a hunch that it has got to do with these settings.

Try using different formats/encoders as well to see what effect that gives.


What is causing these horizontal lines moving vertically up the whiter portions of the video? The camera model is a Sony, remote control model, I don't have the exact model# with me but can get it if needed.

I'm not sure when it started, but it's very noticeable now, the lines scrolling up the flag in this video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw1rEMBACTmYU2huY21IU3dFWFE/view?usp=drivesdk

Can anyone tell me what is causing this,  is the camera going bad, or do the settings just require adjistment?

Update

Model: Sony BRC-Z330 (Purchased in 2010)

Settings:

Exposure Mode: Full Auto

Iris Limit: F11

AE Speed: MID

AGC Limit: 18dB

Ex Comp: Off

White Balance: Indoor

You seem to have a flickering light source that is out of sync with the camera's rolling shutter.
Traditional lights
You should first verify that you are filming in 60/30/24 fps in regions whose power grid uses a 60 Hz frequency, or in 25/50 fps for 50 Hz.
If that is impossible to achieve, you can also adapt your shutter speed or angle to be a multiple of the utility frequency. Red provides a nice calculator for this.
LED lights
Flickering can be particularly bad if you use low quality LEDs because their flicker index (or depth of modulation) can be worse than conventional light sources.
They might also flicker independently of the utility frequency. This is especially true for RGB lights or when dimming.
If you can, choose good quality high frequency switching or flicker free LED drivers, or ones that are made for video. You shouldn't have any flicker problems with good LEDs. You can also try to disable dimming or setting the highest power output to reduce flicker.


Clips not sitting on top of each other in FCPX This may sound odd but I'll try and describe it properly.

I have my main video in the timelime all ok, I then drag in a picture on top of that, or possible a compound clip of multiple pictures, still all ok.

I then drop in another image on top of that compound clip/first image (possible an element like a shape).

Sometimes when I drop something in rather than the clip sitting on top of the clips underneath it like normal it drops into the same line as the clip underneath and is not visible, I try removing the last added object and re-adding but it doesn't work, usually the only way round this I've found is re-adding the clip underneath that the above clip is falling "into" if that makes sense?

All clips (barring the last one thats dropping into the clip below it) are visible in the video fine, am I accidentally setting a property on that clip item with a random accidental key press somehow?

Sounds weird. Maybe try deleting the FCPX preferences:

Hold Command Option and start FCPX. A window will pop up and ask you if you want to delete the preferences.


Lines on my H.264 video export I exported a music video using H.264 for the first time (I would normally just use a simple Apple intermediate codec) and as the 1st shot fades up, for the duration of the fade up, there are ever so slightly visible 'lines' across the white background. It is literally just for the 1st second of the clip, but being the opening shot it's rather important. check it out, it's more obvious at 1080p

By the way, yes it is meant to be out of focus and grainy.

I set the quality to 10,000KB/s which as far as I'm aware is pretty good for online streaming?? I use Final cut express 4.1

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have no H.264 knowledge at all

Ok, now that I'm home I think I see what you are noticing.  That is just an error with the block transitioning from black to white.  You can either slow down the fade or increase the keyframe frequency.  H.264 works by storing only certain frames and then storing the change in-between.  It breaks the image in to sections to analyse and so you can see if you go frame by frame that it is having a hard time figuring out what the change is around the edge between black and white.

Either decreasing the rate of change or increasing the frequency of keyframes should give it a better idea of what is happening.  You might also try 2 pass VBR if you were only doing one pass or CBR prior as the analysis pass should help clean up artifacts like that by directing more bitrate to harder areas to compress.


Replace the video edit with another video keeping the in and out timings I'm editing a pre-rendered photo gallery template in Premiere Pro CC 2014.

The entire photo gallery clip is a single video clip, which I have cut in many places to make some changes. I have made several edits to this include speed changes, perspective correction, etc..

Now I have a second set of photo gallery exactly same as the first one with different set of photos and wish to keep the same edits as the first one.

Is there any way to replace the second set with first set edit.
I'm aware of the Replace Clip from Bin feature. But it always sets the In point to the beginning of the clip. Is there any way to replace the clip as well as sync the mark in and out points?

A possible workaround:

Open the new clip in its own project.
Set the "in" point and the "out" point.
Export that as a new clip (with lossless video quality, if you can pull that off).
Open your other project.
Use Replace Clip from Bin, and replace it with the clip you just exported.  In the new clip, the "in" point is the beginning of the clip!


Problem exporting a mixture of PAL and ProRes 422 in FCP I have a FCP sequence made of a mixture of ProRes 422 and PAL clips. As soon as I export it using "QuickTime Movie" (Apple ProRes 422 PAL 48KHz option), the quality of the ProRes clips is superb, but the PAL section look horrible (they look fine in the timeline). The same happens for the transitions effects, even if the transitions are between two ProRes clips. During the transitions, the quality of the exported movie drops dramatically.

What could be the issue?

I've never encountered this problem, so unfortunately I can't give you advice on how to fix it. However, next time, I would suggest that you convert all your footage to the same format before you begin editing. Prores 422 is a great editing codec.

Go to this website and download MPEG Streamclip. It's a free program that converts your footage to different codecs. Much better than Compressor IMO.

I usually convert all my footage to Apple Prores 422 (HQ) and then, upon completion, export a Quicktime H.264.


OBS custom filename for recordings OBS allows you to change the pattern for the recordings filenames but there is no simple way to update the file name with any custom string before every recording.
You need to visit the options pane and change settings manualy.
The default for the filename formating is: "%CCYY-%MM-%DD %hh-%mm-%ss"
Let's say you've changed the pattern to "MY-HOME-VIDEO %CCYY-%MM-%DD %hh-%mm-%ss" and recorded a file.
Then if you need to make another recording about something else with the prefix "MY-OTHER-VIDEO " you need to change the pattern again, manually.
How to update the filename formating without visiting options pane every time?

I've managed to achieve this using obs-websocket and simple/dirty python script.
The obs-websocket plugin can get/set the pattern used by OBS to save recording files.
Steps:
Install/configure obs-websocket plugin.
Then use obs-cli (https://github.com/leafac/obs-cli) or obswebsocket (https://pypi.org/project/obs-websocket-py/).
cli example (under Windows os, beware of double quotes):
obs-cli-win SetFilenameFormatting="{ ""filename-formatting"": ""TESTNAME %CCYY-%MM-%DD %hh-%mm-%ss"" }" && ^
obs-cli-win StartRecording && ^
obs-cli-win SetFilenameFormatting="{ ""filename-formatting"": ""%CCYY-%MM-%DD %hh-%mm-%ss"" }" && ^
obs-cli-win GetFilenameFormatting

python example:
client = obswebsocket.obsws("localhost", 4444, "")
client.connect()
print(client.call(obswebsocket.requests.GetFilenameFormatting()))
client.call(obswebsocket.requests.SetFilenameFormatting("TESTNAME" + " - %CCYY-%MM-%DD %hh-%mm-%ss"))
client.call(obswebsocket.requests.StartRecording())
print(client.call(obswebsocket.requests.GetFilenameFormatting()))
client.call(obswebsocket.requests.SetFilenameFormatting("%CCYY-%MM-%DD %hh-%mm-%ss"))
print(client.call(obswebsocket.requests.GetFilenameFormatting()))
client.disconnect()


To MP4V, or to DX50, or not to be Should i compress my final outputs down to FOURCC of DX50 or MP4V?  Tis the question.  I'm having a hard time deciding on this, since im not really sure what to expect in future technology development.

I do want mac compatibility lending support to MP4V, i do run windows almost exclusively lending support to DX50, and there is a nice feature in DVD players playing divx files which think also supports DX50(among others, incluging DIVX)

However i can give a flying crap about dvd player support for the most part because i did away with using those 'Circular Silver' things altogether for audio and video media, on all fronts.

What i really want is only future compatibility, and playibility by any operating system in 10-25 years, and i only want to use either DX50(ill consider DIVX, but prefer the newer), or MP4V.

CONS of MP4V, dvd player compatibility, and what else???

CONS of DX50, no native MAC support(i might not be here in 20 years to explain to my children and grandchildren how to install alternative legacy players to play all my "old crap")

Trying to avoid becoming Legacy..

MP4V?  or DX50??

If it's just a matter of which FOURCC to assign, and not the codec, then choose MP4V since it has broader compatibility, and the tag can always be changed later, using a tool like ffmpeg i.e.

ffmpeg -i input.avi -c copy -map 0 -vtag DX50 tagged.avi


I got less quality video when I uploaded it on Youtube I recorded a video using Camtasia software trial version. I produced the video in MP4 HD. The video quality is very good when I play it on my desktop. When I uploaded the video to Youtube, the video on Youtube had less quality than it has at my desktop.

So can you help me have the very good quality (supoorts HD) at Youtube or at least having the same quality as it has at my desktop?

Thank you

It's impossible to maintain the original quality when you upload a video to youtube since youtube reencodes all videos. For a detailed explanation of why it does that, check my answer here. To minimise quality loss, export your video with a high bitrate.


How can I really see the benefits of 10-bit footage? I want to see the benefits of 10-bit footage in software like Premiere Pro. To me it behaves exactly like 8-bit video. How can I "see" the benefits?

REC 709, the current standard for HD delivery (and YouTube), really only requires 5 stops of dynamic range (since the legal range is 16..235 out of a full scale 8-bit encoding 0..255).  Now, in much the same way that a 2x4 piece of lumber is milled from a starting point of 2"x4" down to 1.5"x3.5", an 8-bit encoding gives one the freedom to shave down the highest and lowest bits (where noise lives in the shadows and where clipping occurs in the highlights) and still have one more bit of slop to adjust brightness.  Which is not very much room to be creative.

A 10-bit source file allows for two bits more dynamic range that can be used to pull down highlights or lift shadows.  That may not sound like very much, but against a delivery format that encodes a total of 5 bits, it's quite a lot!

Now, it's true that with careful processing (especially noise reduction), one can make more use of the top and bottom bits of dynamic range, which means even more opportunity to stretch the dynamic range of the source material to conform to the intended tonal range of the output format.

Another place where 10 bits becomes essential is in the world of HDR video.  YouTube now supports HDR playback on devices that support HDR10 (and Dolby PQ).  HDR 10 really does can use all 10 bits of dynamic range, but as Ansel Adams teaches in his books on The Zone System (The Camera, The Negative, The Print), the art of photography (drawing with light) is not merely creating a 1:1 mapping between acquisition and exposition, but in how one chooses to distribute the tonal range to best effect.  Starting with a full tonal range in the source makes it that much easier to push things around to get them where you want them to be on output.


GIF video thumbnail with FFmpeg I'm trying to generate a GIF thumbnail out of a video, similar to what youtube thumbnail works when we hover the mouse on a thumbnail as a video preview.

Is there any ways to do it with FFmpeg? Say I want to generate a 2-3 second GIF out of a video. How can I do that? Based on what I see from youtube, apparently it takes one frame out of multiple consecutive frames, not all of them.

I'm not really concerned if that GIF is a good representative of the video as that is more semantic problem to investigate.

There is thumbnail filter just for that, and palettegen/paletteuse to create high quality gif.

Example command: "scale=vga,thumbnail=100,split[a][b],[b]palettegen=reserve_transparent=0:stats_mode=single[b];[a][b]paletteuse=new=1,settb=1/25,setpts=N"

Thumbnail filter selects one frame from set of 100 frames. To get gif of 3 secs, you will need to adjust this number to smaller or bigger value depending on source file number of frames.


Video in After Effects composition panel is pixelated during scrubbing I am new to AE and following a Lynda.com essentials course.  In the course, the video in the composition panel stays sharp during scrubbing, as below:

But in my AE application, it shows as pixelated during scrubbing, as below:

My AE CC 2014.0 installation is brand new, without any configuration tweaks.  I am on Windows 8.1, using an Acer V5-571 laptop (i5).

It's because you're using Adaptive Resolution, where AE will attempt to let you scrub through quickly, by reducing the resolution it shows in the viewer.  Higher powered computers will be able to show higher resolution in the viewer more quickly.

There's an explanation in Adobe's help here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/previewing.html

There are also many things you can do to adjust the quality of your preview, depending upon what you're working on.. For example, if you're checking the movement of something, maybe you don't need as high resolution an image but full frame rate... Whereas if you're checking the pixel-perfect quality of a matte, maybe you don't need as high frame rate during preview.

Also bear in mind that there are different render engines in AE now - if you're using the 3D raytrace renderer for 3D work, previews will be very slow unless using a super-fast machine.


How can I make videos like Minute physics I understood the fairly simple process behind the older Minute physics videos.

But I would like to know what kind of software/workflow is used for these new videos. What can I learn to make these kind of videos?

I am primarily a programmer, attempting to change to making educational videos.

He used this:

(source: monoprice.com)
He probably captured all of that with a plugin for After Effects and just added images and stuff.


Is there a standard target level for spoken audio in a tutorial video? I record a lot of tutorial videos for my work. I don't use background music or sound effects, just a voice over a screen recording.

One thing I have noticed is each of my videos (so far) has a different overall volume. If people were to listen to the videos in succession, they would be constantly adjusting the volume level. I want to normalize the audio so that it is all at the same level.

My problem is I can't seem to find a standard anywhere for a general decibel level to normalize all my videos to. Is there an ideal audio level that plays at exactly the level a typical viewer would expect for their volume setting?

In other words, if a viewer was just watching, say, a professionally made movie, and then watched my video, ideally they should not have to adjust the audio setting on their computer when switching to my video.

There's no single answer - it's a series of trade-offs:

When you record your voice, it should be as loud as possible, but making sure never to go over the maximum level that can be recorded.  This is known as clipping, and sounds distorted.  Too quiet, and your audio will be hissy relative to the noise floor of your setup - too loud and it will clip.

In order to smooth out the overall levels, you can dynamically compress your audio (this is not the same as data compression), either before it is recorded (between the mic and recorder) or after it has been recorded.  This is effectively like having an automatic volume control, where levels over a certain threshold are turned down, so that the overall effect is smoother.  Too much compression can sound pumping and aggressive - like an FM talk-radio host.


PCIe video capture card Is it better to go with a video capture card with h.264 encoding or just a raw input port? I have powerful pc but not sure best card to use for high quality image, reliability, and ease of install.

Hardware encoders used for best performance, not quality. So, if you don't need realtime, I suggest to use software encoder with many options.


Is there any way we can show live tweets? Is there any way we can show live tweets ticker as we see on news channels, when projecting any presentation or live video on the screen?

I suggest you try out OBS with it's Twitter plugin.

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/transparent-borderless-scalable-auto-updating-tweets.12277/

Complete instructions how to set it up, in the linkage.


What exactly does "Ethernet-capable HDMI cable" mean? What exactly does "Ethernet-capable HDMI cable" mean?

Does this mean I can stream content wirelessly to my projector?

No it does not mean you can do anything wirelessly - it is a cable - and it isn't likely to help you stream anything to it either, unless you have a requirement for HDMI devices to share a network connection.

Version 1.4 of the HDMI standard allows for 100Mb ethernet to be transmitted along the cable between to HDMI 1.4 capable devices.

Check out the HDMI wikipedia page for some basic info


How to merge 4 Audio and 1 Video .MXF files in to one h.264 video file on Linux using ffmpeg? On a recent video shoot, the camera man gave us output as .MXF files. Incidentally, Audio and Video are saved in separate .mxf files.

eg:
0007WA00.MXF - Audio  (probe)
0007WA01.MXF - Audio  (probe)
0007WA02.MXF - Audio  (probe)
0007WA03.MXF - Audio  (probe)
0007WA.MXF - Video  (probe)

I am trying to figure out how to merge these in to a single video file. So far I couldn't find a way out.

[Edit: 20 Jun 2019]
I managed to get audio and video stitched. However, audio is mono. Want a little clarity on whether I can have stereo or surround by utilizing the 4 audio files.

Command that worked:

ffmpeg -i 0007WA.MXF -i 0007WA00.MXF -i 0007WA01.MXF -i 0007WA02.MXF -i 0007WA03.MXF -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -strict experimental ../ffmpeg-stitch-mxf.mp4

Let me add that I am not an expert at this. Perhaps some may find my questions naive.

I used ffmpeg with only '-i' switch to figure out which stream was audio and which was video. Then executed the following to merge two audio channels and its video.

ffmpeg -i 0007WA.MXF -i 0007WA00.MXF -i 0007WA01.MXF -filter_complex "[1:0] [2:0] amerge" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -strict experimental -qscale 0 -y  ../ffmpeg-att2.mp4

I think there can be more options by utilizing all four audio files to make stereo or surround. However, I stopped here as the output was acceptable. Note - used '-qscale 0'  to limit quality-loss.


"Unable to open key file" error when remuxing a set of encrypted .ts files (as a .m3u8 playlist) into .mp4 with FFmpeg I'm trying to remux a set of encrypted .ts files (as a .m3u8 playlist) into a single .mp4 file with the next command:

"C:\Users\~\Desktop\test\ffmpeg.exe" -allowed_extensions ALL \
    -i "C:\Users\~\Desktop\test\chunklist.m3u8" -c:v copy -c:a copy \
    "C:\Users\~\Desktop\test\output.mp4"

but getting the

  Unable to open key file

error. I tried the URI as “key” with and without quotes as well as the key in hex format but the error is still there... What I'm doing wrong?

Here is the cmd output:

ffmpeg version 4.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers
      built with gcc 8.2.1 (GCC) 20181017
      configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-sdl2 --enable-fontconfig --enable-gnutls --enable-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libfreetype --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libzimg --enable-lzma --enable-zlib --enable-gmp --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libmysofa --enable-libspeex --enable-libxvid --enable-libaom --enable-libmfx --enable-amf --enable-ffnvcodec --enable-cuvid --enable-d3d11va --enable-nvenc --enable-nvdec --enable-dxva2 --enable-avisynth
      libavutil      56. 22.100 / 56. 22.100
      libavcodec     58. 35.100 / 58. 35.100
      libavformat    58. 20.100 / 58. 20.100
      libavdevice    58.  5.100 / 58.  5.100
      libavfilter     7. 40.101 /  7. 40.101
      libswscale      5.  3.100 /  5.  3.100
      libswresample   3.  3.100 /  3.  3.100
      libpostproc    55.  3.100 / 55.  3.100
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Opening 'key' for reading
    Unable to open key file key
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Opening 'crypto:media_b6000000_0.ts' for reading
    [crypto @ 00000215fa3c6f80] Unable to open resource: media_b6000000_0.ts
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Failed to open segment 0 of playlist 0
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Opening 'crypto:media_b6000000_1.ts' for reading
    [crypto @ 00000215fa3c6f80] Unable to open resource: media_b6000000_1.ts
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Failed to open segment 1 of playlist 0
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Opening 'crypto:media_b6000000_2.ts' for reading
    [crypto @ 00000215fa3c6f00] Unable to open resource: media_b6000000_2.ts
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Failed to open segment 2 of playlist 0
    [hls,applehttp @ 00000215fa3a9f00] Error when loading first segment 'media_b6000000_0.ts'
    C:\Users\~\Desktop\test\chunklist.m3u8: Invalid data found when processing input

The files I'm working with are in the test.zip archive.

(The original playlist has more .ts files but I've included only first three, it shouldn't matter anyway).

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!

Ok, looks like I solved the problem... Basically, I used relative paths in a couple of places where I should have used absolute ones instead.


Mask clip with transparency in DaVinci Resolve Is it possible to use some combination of Color nodes and power windows to hide parts of an already partially transparent clip such as one whose frames might be made from transparent images like

?

I'm specifically looking for a solution without resorting to Fusion.

My unsuccessful attempts at trying to cut out a hole in the middle following this advice:

Yes.

Navigate to your .png in the media browser and import it into your project
Create a bin, make sure the new bin is selected.  Unfortunately, Resolve won't let you import the same image twice, regardless of which channels you're interpreting.  Using a second bin is a workaround.
Right-click on the .png again in the media browser, and select "add into media pool as a matte"

Drop the original .png onto your timeline above whatever footage you want to be the background
open the color page and select the fox.png clip in the timeline
right click on the background of the node editor and add an alpha output, wire the output of node 1 to the master alpha out.
right click on node 1, and from the context menu, choose your matte from the Add Matte submenu at the bottom

use any other roto tools you need to knock out whatever you need to knock out.


Moving Crop in Video I have an HD video of a speaker giving a lecture.  I would like to resize the video by cropping each frame, but the cropping rectangle needs to be centered on the speaker's head as he moves around the stage.

I can generate a file that contains the cropping rectangle's X, Y, Width, & Height for each frame in the video.

What's the best way to apply this moving crop to the video?

It should work if I..

Use ffmpeg to extract each frame to a folder
Use another program to crop each image file
Use ffmpeg to rebuild the video using the cropped image files

Is there a better way to do this?

Similar to Gyan's overlay answer, a slightly simpler version can use a basic -filter_script with the "swaprect" and "crop" filters.  Move the crop target to 0,0 and then crop the target area at 0,0.  The target has to be swapped to 0,0 as otherwise the other swapped rect can overlap.  This worked with ffmpeg version 3.4.6-0ubuntu0.18.04.1

Make sure the frame numbers are relative to the offset passed with "-ss".

An example targeting 1280x720 crops from a 4096x2160 source.  The source is 24fps and the tracking info is 8fps.

crop-filter-script:

swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1568:594:enable='between(n,0,26)',
swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1552:598:enable='between(n,27,29)',
swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1565:583:enable='between(n,30,32)',
swaprect=1280:720:0:0:1603:576:enable='between(n,33,35)',
crop=1280:720:0:0

ffmpeg -ss [start offset] -t [duration] -i input.mov -filter_script:v:0 crop-filter-script -acodec copy out.mov


Video transitions and filters - how to create custom ones? I am wondering if there is a possibility to do custom video transitions or filters. Like the video spiraling out, little squares appearing, circling out or something like that. Wiping the video out sideways, sliding it over like a page. Stuff like that. Adding a semi transparent image as filter over the video. Applying instagram style filters. Is there a tool that supports that at all?

Is there a tool with a manifold of transitions or filters?

best would be it works from command line in linux. But anything helps.

To get filters, you can use photoshop for that. iMovie can do all of the effects that you were talking about, and iMovie has a pretty nice collection of filters too.
Hope that helps!


Sci-Fi intro logo animation I'm trying to make an intro in After Effects (I'm a beginner) and I was wondering if anyone could assist me in reproducing the following logo animation:

In order to dive into this topic and understand the basics, can anyone point me in the right direction? How this effect is called and how to implement it roughly?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

In the example given, typical motion graphics techniques are used. There are several ways to achieve this animation in After Effects. Probably the easiest way is drawing a mask shape per letter on top of the 'logo layer' and keyframe the Mask Shape property. In most cases this is fast to implement and good enough, but in order to achieve a uniform motion I'd recommend to split up the logo into separate letters and use a trim path on a shape layer.

Instructions

Bring your Shape/Text from Illustrator into After Effects or simply use an After Effects Text Layer (If you don't want to switch between the applications)

Make sure that no layer is selected in your composition and hit G to enable the pen tool
Draw your animation path from the beginning to the end of the shape

Set the contour width of the new created shape layer to a value which covers the shape below
Set the fill color  to None by holding Alt and clicking into the color field
If you roll out the shape layer by clicking on the arrow  >  button left to the layer's name, there should be a appear another  > Add  Button in Track Mattes column. Click it to add a Trim Paths property
If Trim Paths is assigned to the shape layer go to your last frame, roll out Trim Paths property and click the stop watch of the end value, this should create a keyframe with a value of 100%
Go to your first frame and set the end value to 0% to get something like this:

To use the path animation as matte, set the track matte of the text layer below to Alpha

Note: Consider that the type in the given example is very suitable for this kind of animation.


Color correct to compensate for low blue Everytime I create a video,it looks good in a normal screen but considering half of the people have the low blue light effect enabled, I would like to balance somehow the colors of my videos to counter the effect of blue light, since otherwise my videos look orange.

I am not very certain that I understand your question, but if you want to shift the color-grade of your image away from the orange, you can use the temperature to shift it towards blue, effectively making your image less orange. The temperature setting is available in any popular grading-tool, such as lumetri, resolve or nuke.
Another option might be to actually grade your footage using a monitor that is tuned to the blue-reduced setting. I would like to add though, that you will likely lose some brightness, since most blue-reduction methods simply take away from the value of the blue-channel. So additionally taking away from the orange-channel to compensate will likely darken your image. Also also: People who watch movies on blue-reduced monitors should not be your main focus when grading. Professional studios often grade on 10-bit, calibrated monitors that will look quite different from the average consumer-display. We still grade for the calibrated monitor though, to ensure the best experience on average for most the people who consume the product.


Video Keywording, captioning and sorting software I am looking for suggestions on software to help catalog my growing video library of GoPro MP4 and other (iPhone, dSLR video) files.  This software would be similar to Adobe Bridge or Lightroom - neither of which will write out XMP files for video files to make them portable.

The end result, I hope, is that when I import GoPro footage from a MTB ride where there's a crash, I'm able to keyword & describe the file so I can search the library for MTB, Crash.

I'm on Mac, but ideally the app should be cross platform with Windows.

Since you mention Adobe software, what about Prelude and Prelude Live Logger?  It's my understanding that these apps are tailored to ingest, logging, and metadata entry.


Avid Media Composer Not Importing MP4s I just installed Avid Media Composer 8.4.1, and am trying to edit some screen captured MP4s H.264 format I recorded with OBS.

However, when I try to import,transcode or link to file the video layer isn't there and I only get the audio. Also I have no AMA option.

I've made several projects thinking maybe the file configurations were different then the project's but that hasn't helped. Am I missing a plugin or something, because I can import these same files into Adobe Premiere Pro just fine?

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

If it helps my specs are:
AMD FX-8350 4.2GHz 8-core CPU
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 960 4GB GPU
16 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws 1600 DDR3 Memory
and 2 Western Digital Black 1TB 64MB Internal HDD

The problem is that your video files are encoded using variable frame rate, which is typical of screen recorders. Premiere is trying to kind of grunt through it, but on longer clips you'll probably notice that you get some synch drift with the audio.

Transcoding for a constant frame rate file, either going back to H.264 (where you might lose some quality) or to something more editing-friendly, like DNxHD. ffmpeg can handle this pretty easily. Just be aware of the limited number of video formats that DNxHD supports.


Premier Pro versus Final Cut Pro I am thinking about getting some video editing software and I was wondering if Premier Pro or Final Cut Pro is better in  terms of ease of use, compatibility with other audio and video editing programs, and how powerful they are.

In my experience both Premiere and FCP will do pretty much the same thing.
They have similar lay outs and, I would say, are as easy to use as each other. I first used Premiere when I had a PC but moved to FCP when I went to university and got a mac. I find it a lot easier to edit with FCP and the transition to other programs are very simple and effective (file > send to > Color/Compressor).

If you have a mac I would suggest buying the final cut pro studio. It comes with Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Color and Compressor. Everything you need (pretty much except Adobe After Effects). And if you have a PC then go with Premiere. That's my advice.


Live-stream HD camera to stream on one's own Wordpress website I was wondering if someone could help me with this project with live-stream cameras. I am not sure what the best camera / broadcast transmitter or internet package I should purchase to ensure that it goes smoothly. The project will take place in Italy. Thank you so much for your time in advance!!!

The IDEA: 4 live-streaming HD web cameras that are mounted to a headpiece at a petting zoo. The cameras have wifi transmitters that stream footage to a wordpress-based website where all four cameras are showing their live video feed (using the VideoWhisper plugin). The visitors will wear the devices so it is their POV so via the web, it is as if one is virtually petting the animals. Online viewers can choose which camera of the 4 they would like to see in full HD or switch to view another to see/virtually pet other animals at the zoo.

I think the answer to your question depends largely on your budget. A pretty easy and standard config (but which is not really cheap) would be using GoPros with the corresponding helmet / head mount and plugging it into something like a Teradek VidiU http://teradek.com/pages/vidiu - configuring it for your favourite streaming provider and pointing your WordPress plug-in to show that stream.

A wired article about the vidiu and two other streaming devices:
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/hd-streamer-boxes/

Depending on how long this needs to run, you should maybe add an additional battery solution to the setup, the vidius internal battery only seems to run for 60 minutes...

Apparently GoPro themself announced a streaming transmitter / receiver System called heroCast but it seems to be even more expensive than the teradek.

Alternatively you could use a smartphone to do the recording / transmitting with something like the bambuser app / service, most certainly the quality will be worse than the GoPro / vidiu solution, but cheaper. For both solutions you additionally need to make sure you got a decent WiFi coverage for the areas you want to be part of your project or - broadcast the stuff over LTE / UMTS, involving extra cost for the appropriate data plan you need to get in that case.


How to translate face tracking offset values into a 3D null position I want to put a 2D hat on a video clip of a person, whose head is tilting as he speaks.

I can face-track the face using After Effects CC 2017.
I end up with detailed tracking data, which includes face orientation information.
I can link the orientation information to a 3D null, but how do I link the positional information of the head?
The head appears to only be expressed as a percentage (of what?).

Is there an easy way to connect this percentage data to 3D positional data on a null?

Equally, if I do a simple face track, I get an animated mask.  What's the right way to translate one of the points from that mask into a null that could be parented to another object?

You can access the position of a point in a mask with expressions (in AE CC 2017+) with expressions. To access the first point of a mask called "Mask 1" on layer called "my Layer" you'd use

pts = thisComp.layer("my Layer").mask("Mask 1").maskPath.points();
pts[0]

note that the points are numbered from 0, so the second point is pts[1], etc.

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you';re trying to do, have you tried doing a standard motion track using the inbuilt motion tracker or Mocha?


3D composition shows up as 2D in main project view? Camera
[comp 3D]
  ellipse mask in z-axis
  layer1 2D
  layer2 2D
  layerN 2D

The layers are aligned in the Z-axis along the ellipse, forming a 3D text by the layers.
When I'm inside the composition, I can actually see a aligned layers in the 3D space.

But when I go to my main project view just seing the "comp 3D" layer, everything is plain 2D! Also moving the camera I can just see a plain 2D image, even though inside the comp it is 3D. Why?

Update:

There are 3 lights being aligned differently in the z-axis (see TOP view).

When I move a camera around inside the "light comp", everything is fine and I can see also my lights moving.

When I move the camera in my main layout, the lights are static! No movement is reflected to the light comp layer! I can just see the camera mask moving, not the comp content.

You need to click the Collapse Transformations (sun icon) on your [Comp 3D] layer.
Otherwise your main comp will treat your other comp as a flat layer in a 3D space, if that makes sense?


how to Checkbox Control one item twice in after effect? I have a checkbox for background and its items. , write the script
if(thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox background ")("Checkbox")>0) {100} else {0};

it is working
But when checkbox for another one of the items above that background write the script
if(thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox percents")("Checkbox")>0) {100} else {0};
if(thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox background ")("Checkbox")>0) {100} else {0};

but not working

Expressions are evaluated until they return a value. Your first line will always return a value, and the expression will stop there. Think about what you're telling the property to do. If the percents checkbox is ticked then you're set to 100 otherwise you're 0 Okthxbye. Oh and also if the background checkbox is ticked then 100 otherwise 0. What happens if percents is ticked but background isn't?
What you need to use is boolean logic. So if you want the opacity to be 100 if either checkbox is ticked you'd say: if percents is ticked or background is ticked then 100, otherwise 0. The javascript way of writing this is to use the logical or operator: ||
let percents = thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox percents")("Checkbox");
let bg = thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox background ");
if (percents > 0 || bg > 0) { 100 } else {0}

the two let statements just assign variables to the checkbox values, to keep the logic bit tidy, otherwise it looks like
if(thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox percents")("Checkbox")>0 || thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox background ")("Checkbox")>0) {100} else {0};

Which is a bit hard to read. You could also shorten the last line by omitting the > 0 bit. If something is equal to 0, javascript treats it as false and anything > 0 is automatically truth`. So the last line could be simply:
if (percents || bg) { 100 } else {0}

Now if you wanted the opacity to be 100 only if both the checkboxes were checked then you'd say: I want you to be 100 if percents is checked and background is checked. The javascript notation for a logical and is &&. So now your expression would look like
let percents = thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox percents")("Checkbox");
let bg = thisComp.layer("Controller ").effect("Checkbox background ");
if (percents && bg) { 100 } else {0}

Boolean logic can be more complex, you can use not or in JS ! to return true when something is false, and you could group things together to make more complex expressions. E.g.:
if ((! percents) && background){100} else {0}

returns 100 only if percents is unchecked and background is checked. Boolean logic can be represented by Truth tables, like this:


DVD created with ffmpeg and dvdauthor doesn't start at the beginning I'm trying to create a DVD from a video file. While I've done this in the past and had a method that usually works, it has been a few years. This is my process:

I have ripped an old VHS tape with a video capture device that has generated an MP4 file. This original file plays perfectly in VLC.
I use ffmpeg to convert to VOB:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -target pal-dvd -qscale:v 3 output.vob"

The resulting file also plays perfectly in VLC.

Next, I set an environment variable to specify the format to be used for dvdauthor:

export VIDEO_FORMAT="PAL"

Then I create an XML file that describes the DVD for dvdauthor:

<dvdauthor>
    <vmgm />
    <titleset>
        <titles>
            <video format="pal" aspect="4:3" />
            <pgc>
                <vob file="output.vob" />
           </pgc>
        </titles>
    </titleset>
</dvdauthor>

Next, I use dvdauthor to generate the DVD file structure:

dvdauthor -o output -x info.xml

If I point VLC to play this structure, it works perfectly.

I burn the resulting folders to disk.

For some videos, it seems I can play the DVD on an actual DVD player without any issues

However, for some videos, the DVD starts not at 00:00:00, but further along. One some DVD players I can rewind, on others I cannot. If I use dvdauthor to put multiple files on the disk, the chapters (by default at the beginning of each file) are also not placed correctly.

In such a case, if I create an ISO file instead of an actual DVD, I can also reproduce the issue in VLC when trying to play the ISO file.

My best guess is that the original source video is corrupted in some subtle way, probably something timestamp or framerate related, and needs to be sanitized first in some way. I tried some extra conversions and remuxing, but that doesn't really seem to help.

Does anyone have an idea what is going on here?

I've resorted to using mkisofs to create the ISO image, and this seems to fix the problem. Creating the ISO in another way (e.g. on a Mac with hdiutil, or directly burning it to disc with Finder) creates malfunctioning DVDs. Apparently there are some restrictions on the ISO format for DVDs. If these are not respected, the DVDs have incorrect chapters and might even start in the middle of the video. These restrictions are best explained in mkisofs' man page:

  -dvd-video
  Generate  DVD-Video compliant UDF file system. This is done by sorting the order of the content of the appropriate files and by
  adding padding between the files if needed.  Note that the sorting
  only works if the  DVD-Video filenames include upper case characters
  only.


Does oval-shaped bokeh indicates that the aspect ratio of the image was modified? In Mission Impossible III, I notice very often that bokeh is not circular, but has a shape of an oval. For example, here are two images where such bokeh is noticeable:

Does it necessarily mean that he was filmed using chroma key and the background was filmed separately and then resized using a different aspect ratio, or this is specific to the lens (maybe anamorphic lenses)? Is this made on purpose, or is just a side effect?

This is likely the result of using an anamorphic lens: http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/anamorphic-lenses

From the page:

Standard Bokeh

Anamorphic Bokeh


Setting timecode in Premiere Pro by using file creation date of clips I have filmed a small rock concert with 4 cameras.

One of the cameras was filming short sequences (about 3 mins Clips), then paused for a few minutes and than resumed. Now it is quite a lot of work to synchronize These Clips. I'm using Premiere Pro and synchronizing by Audio is not working for those short Clips.

To solve this Problem I want to try to set the timecode of each Clip to the file creation date, which should be more or less relyable - and then do the fine Tuning Clip by Clip.

I use right click on a Clip, Modify>Timecode. But there I can only set the timecode at the beginning of the Clip (requires some calculation for each Clip).

Do you know an easy method to synchronize These Videos? Can Premere Pro 8.2 automatically set the timecode relative to the file creation date? How can I set the timecode at the END of a Clip?

edit:

I used this CygWin script to get file creation Dates:

stat -c '%W %n' *.MOV | sort -k1n > creation-times.txt

and converted the timestamps in Excel with this formula:

= A1 / 86400 + 25569

Then I used this CygWin script to get Video Durations:

for f in *.MOV
do
  echo -n "$f;"
  /cygdrive/c/Path/MediaInfo_CLI_0.7.72_Windows_x64/MediaInfo.exe "$f" | awk -F: '/Duration/ { print $2; exit}'
done

Afterwards I used standard excel formulas to calculate the start-timecodes of those clips.

https://www.cygwin.com/
http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download/Windows

I'm not sure about how to set the timecode of the clip from the datestamp of the file but Red Giant have a fantastic plugin called Plural Eyes which does a great job of syncing multiple clips most of the time if the audio is even half decent.