text:
Transcription Methods/Times
I figured I'd leave a question here while I did the manual labor, but what do you find is the best way to transcribe footage?
I'm an editor and the first thing I like to do is create a script of people said, then piece together parts of their takes, and THEN get to the actual footage editing. That way I'm only working with what I need ahead of time.
Basically what I do now is load up the videos in VLC, and open a TextEdit (mac), then watch it through normally or double speed until I get to a part with the interview, then I mark that timecode on the TextEdit, and go watch through the interview in triple-quadruple slowdown, so that I can keep up with what they say and not have to constantly stop and start it back up.
With this way it seems like I'm doing somewhere around 5 minutes real time to transcribe a minute, which comes to about 12 video mins a realtime hour. And I was just wondering if there was a better way you guys already know about. I'm not sure I trust auto-transcribe-type things.
Do you think this slowing the vid down and having to go back 5 seconds only a few times when I can't quite tell what he's saying because it's so slow, is saving more time than watching it in real time, pausing, writing, going back and watching the next part?
Or do you know better ways? Seems transcribing is the most time-consuming part of my workflow.
Since VLC is opensource, would it be possible to combine VLC and a Text Editor...something like VLC on the top and the text editor on the bottom, and whenever you hit a certain key, it automatically puts the timecode in the text, and you can use VLC's shortcuts while typing? Etc?
Again, non-automatic preferred. For one, it could be wrong, and two, I'd like to get used to the footage.
Thanks
Please help?

Speech Detection with Adobe Premiere
You haven't mentioned what NLE you use to edit, however here is a method you can use to transcribe if you are using Adobe CS4 or later.
This method uses speech detection to automatically transcribe videos - a feature brought in with CS4. It then adds the the text into the metadata of the file.

Analyze speech to create text metadata

Select a file or clip.
At the bottom of the Metadata panel, click Analyze Speech, or Analyze (Adobe Premiere Pro).
Set the Language and Quality options, and select Identify Speakers if you want to create separate speech metadata for each person.
  Note: Speech Search can use any of several language-specific and dialect-specific libraries, such as libraries for Spanish and UK
  English.
Click OK.
The spoken words appear in the Speech Analysis section.

To retain the speech metadata, save the project.

Obviously this depends on the quality of the audio. Good clean audio will provide the best results. Its also worth noting that Premiere uses Soundbooth to process the detection, so if your audio wasn't up to scratch you could clean it up in Soundbooth, and then perform the analysis there.

VLC Scripting
I came across this article explaining how to take the current timecode from a video and add it to a text document for transcribing. The title of the article states its a method for Linux. However I'm sure it would be easy enough to take the method and apply it to Windows or OSX.

Manual
In regards to your current method, it depends on how many times you fall behind. When I have transcribed video I have done it at full speed but I haven't bothered to fix errors while I'm typing. Usually I'll go back and fix it up later - and being that they are just for editing purposes they don't need to be totally correct.
Manual live tagging with Adobe Prelude
You might also want to have a look at Adobe Prelude CS6. It's an ingesting and meta logging program. One of its features is that it lets you add markers (and name them) in realtime as you are watching the video.

Hey thanks OrangeBox I gave you the bounty. I'll check out the VLC scripting article thanks so much! I use FCP to edit. And I have no idea how you can keep up with full-speed speech...I can barely keep up with half-speed...

Well, no need to worry about. Transcribing footage is something very easy now-these-days. What you have to make sure is that just write down all your audio in chronological order and he time codes of when each section begins and ends. Try to include punctuation and how phrases are expressed, so your are as close to the video as possible.
If you are seriously very much keen, then you should go ahead and try to use the real transcription symbols, which can indicate pauses and overlaps in speech.

oTranscribe Web App
I've tried using oTranscribe with some success. It let's you input a local media file or a YouTube link. And it also works off-line. (!)
For a free web app I think it's quite decent:

Hotkey for timestamp insertion: CTRL+J

Clicking a timestamp jumps to that moment.

Hotkey for rewind: F1 (or CTRL+1)
Hotkey for fast-forward: F2 (or CTRL+2)
Hotkey for slow down: F3 (or Ctrl+3)
Hotkey for speed up: F4 (or Ctrl+4)
Hotkey for pause: ESC

However:

No way to enlarge the video decently (and not enlarge the transcription text at the same time). (I've tried to transcribe conference video feeds, and the projected slides are not really readable anymore.)
No way to un-letterbox videos. (Again with the conference videos. This conference video for example is absurdly letterboxed: top, bottom, left and right. Try to read anything there.)
No current timecode visible while playing. Needs mouseover action to fade in.

Also: Rewind via F1 will not show you what time you have jumped to.

So, while not perfect, it's way, way better than the tab-back-and-forth-between-windows approach.


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Video stream with delay
I need to capture a video stream from a web cam and then show it non-stop with a delay of 30 seconds or more.
A server side linux software would be the best but a Windows GUI application will be ok as well.

simultaneously capture and stream?

@TravisDtfsuCrum I think he means to capture the footage, wait several seconds (30, 60, etc...) and then play it. I'm not sure if that counts as simultaneous or not.  To OP: Could you elaborate a bit on the question? What is the final goal of this? What sort of stream is it (wmv, asf, mms, etc...)?

to me it sounds like he wants to restream something essentially

Yes you right. I want to capture and replay. It's stays in some buffer. Immediately after X seconds you can see it on some projector/display. I don't care about formats(any mp4, wmv asf, raw data in memory or on disk drive). I need cheap/reliable solution. As less programming as possible since I believe VLC and FFMpeg can do it somehow.

What is the source? Is it an online stream? Could you provide a link? Why don't you just use the original stream on the display? All this info would help to find a solution and make the question more helpsful to others as well.

Normal web camera connected to computer is source of stream. I cannot show immediately cos task is show with delay.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


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How to force After Effects to interpret footage at a specific framerate?
I just started using after effects CS4, and created my first video.
But if i look at my final (rendered) video, its 2x the speed it was originally.
I recorded a 22 second clip, and traced etc.
Looked awesome, but after rendering, its only 11 seconds, so 2x speed.
Here's the video

The Cam is a Logitech C920 Pro HD Webcam
EDIT
I found whats wrong, but don't know how to fix it. The recorded videos are 15 fps, but AE imports them at 30, how do i change that? Immediatly when i import, its speed up
How can i make it so it goes normal speed?

The camera specs you've added are not very helpful, as they're a bit generic. Could you maybe add the camera brand and type? Even better would be if you would add properties of the recorded video, especially the framerate.

To answer your edited question:
If your footage is 15fps and After Effects thinks it's 30fps, you need to tell After Effects to re-interpret the footage.
You do this as follows:

Open the Project panel (by default on the left of your screen)
Right click on your footage and go to Interpret Footage -> Main... as shown below.

In the screen that opens up input the desired framerate (15fps in your case) in the textbox next to Conform to framerate. Press OK.

Now After Effects should know that the footage is 15fps.

Best answer, thank you for explaining it that well

The first thing I would check is frame rates of the input, the composition and the output.  I would also check the render settings on the output to make sure it isn't only rendering 50% of the frames.  Check the properties of the input, the properties of the composition and the render settings in the render queue.  Let me know if you can't find the problem in one of those places and I'll try to think of some other possible problems.

Hi, thanks for the answer, i added the frame rate etc.

@JoppeDnbCuyper - I would update my answer to reflect how to do the update, but Bart made a great answer with screenshots that show how to handle it.  If you still have any issues, I'd be happy to update my answer though.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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How to connect a camera to a computer 100ft away?
We are trying to live stream our worship service on Sunday morning.  We have located an ideal spot for the video camera. Unfortunately it is 100 ft away from the sound and network connections which are "behind" the front wall of the worship space.
What can we use to connect a consumer level ($400) video camera to a computer that is 100 or so feet away.  My understanding is that FireWire will run 10 ft max, and composite video no more then 30 feet without the image becoming soft and having color bleed issues.

Are firewire and composite the only outputs on your camera?

Is Wi Fi impossible?

Could you please add what camera you have exactly? This will help answering the question.

We have not yet purchased a camera. But we cannot afford more then about $400 for this part of the project.  @Steve, if you can tell me how to make that work write you answer below.  We have 802.11g in place.

As you have Wi-Fi access you could buy a Wi-Fi capable camera. For example the HP T450 costs $134 and is able to stream to Ustream via Wi-Fi. The pages 39-42 of the manual (PDF) elaborate on the use of Wi-Fi to stream to Ustream.
This is just one of many Wi-Fi capable camera's. Sony's Bloggie ($150) can also stream over Wi-Fi, but it uses Qik as its footage server.
If your Wi-Fi signal turns out to be too weak to stream over Wi-Fi, both camera's have a HDMI out so you could use a HDMI -> RGB converter and utilise AJ Henderson's answer.
I'm not affiliated with any sellers/companies listed above

Streaming needs to be through MegaMeeting sense that is who we have a contract with.  Can any of these cameras just send the stream to a PC on the local network and let us deal with the issue of sending it out to the right place?

According to page 33 of the T450 manual you should be able to use the camera as a webcam. I'm not familiar with MegaMeeting, but I think it should handle a webcam stream.

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

You can absolutely run composite video over RG-59 or RG-6 without any trouble up to a few hundred feet in my experience. (Analog style security cameras utilize composite connections and run hundreds of feet.) You could even use a video amp to extend further.
Also consider that when you encode/compress the stream for broadcasting, you are essentially throwing away a lot of the original quality. There are two ways to look at this, 1… Start with the highest quality image possible because you are going to loose a lot of quality in the codec. Also, the less noise in the input signal, the better the codec will perform. 2… The input image quality doesn't matter because the output is still going to look poor by comparison. You may be in the 1st group or the 2nd group.
Another thing to consider is the camera itself. It will affect the image quality far far more than composite vs. s-video vs. component vs. 1394 vs. HDMI. A prosumer 3CCD camera connected via composite over coax will give you a far better image than a consumer 1 CCD camera connected via 1394.
Other things to consider...

SD or HD?
How many cameras do you want to use?
Will you use a video mixer? Digital or Analog?
How are you feeding the audio into the encoder?
What are you using for encoding?
What are you using as a streaming host?
Size of online audience? If two people are watching
online, that suggests a small investment. If one hundred people are
watching online, that suggests something else.
How many people are available to run the system if there are multiple cameras?
Are you recording to DVD or some other media?
Are you feeding into a CCTV system for nurseries or overflow areas?

That's not an exhaustive list, just what came off the top of my head.
I would advise against using a WiFi camera for this type of application.
If you have other questions let me know.

Convert the signal coming out of the camera to SDI and run a long SDI cable (it's designed for long runs - it's what they use in TV studios and outside broadcasts) into an SDI capture card on the computer which will let you do whatever you want with it. Blackmagic sell all the gear you need:
Get a Decklink card and a HDMI to SDI mini converter and that will let the computer stream to the Internet. Alternatively, just buy a Teradek VidiU or Livestream Broadcaster, and plug it in to the network (ethernet or wi-fi) and into the HDMI port of the camera. It will live stream to the Internet without the use of a computer.

I suggest you purchase a name brand 720p CCTV camera, connect to the LAN you have, then embed the video to the web page of your church and let the WWW enjoy the show.

Unfortunately this won't really address the issue since it needs a sound feed.  Granted, they could run a line from the sound board to the camera if it has an external audio input, however many CCTV systems don't run full motion video either.  A lot of such systems do frame uploads instead which wouldn't do all that well for these purposes.  There probably are models of IP camera that could do what you are describing, but it would be more involved than simply picking up any name brand CCTV camera.


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Motion and shape tracking in After Effects CS5.5
My footage consists of someone with black sunglasses moving his head tilting slowly back and forth. The glass of the sunglasses is visible in the footage. In the beginning the head is tilted back, the glasses are turned up from the camera, so only a small portion of the glass is visible. The more the head tilts forward, the more the glass approaches being parallel to the camera.
I want to track the shape and movement of the glass. So the movement would be saved to the position/rotation path and the shape to a mask shape. I have tried this using After Effects, but I only managed to track the motion of the area movement.
How do I track the changing shape of the glass as well?  I also have access to Mocha and Boujou.

What end use are you hoping for? Is it a glass/reflection replacement?

I found a tutorial which uses Mocha for After Effects to accomplish my task exactly. Here is the link to the tutorial:
http://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/mocha-ae-paste-mocha-shapes-to-after-effects-mask-channel/view

I would suggest as a starting point to use Corner Pin Tracking, found on the tracking panel of AE.
Track each side of the sunglasses separately and when done, you should have two solids that move with the area of the glasses. Add a mask to each one, and rotoscope the actual shape of the glasses.
I think this would be easier than rotoscoping from scratch. These two solids can then be used as track mattes or precomposed etc.

I ended up using Mocha for AE. This link contains a tutorial which covers exactly my topic.


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remove black frames from vob files with ffmpeg
I have a few .vob files with "black frames" (it seems that an issue during the acquisition from VHS did that).
I can get where these black frames occur with the command
ffmpeg -i source.vob  -vf blackdetect=d=0:pic_th=0.70:pix_th=0.10 -an -f null - 2>&1

which gives me
[...]
[blackdetect @ 0x7fab5b40a3e0] black_start:137.68 black_end:137.72 black_duration:0.04
[blackdetect @ 0x7fab5b40a3e0] black_start:161 black_end:161.04 black_duration:0.04
[blackdetect @ 0x7fab5b40a3e0] black_start:181.96 black_end:182 black_duration:0.04
[...]

(black_duration is always 0.04s for some reason)
I've built a script that cuts the parts between black frames and creates one file for each.
basically, for the three lines above, it runs:
ffmpeg -i "/Users/simon/Documents/projects/encodage VHS/source.vob" -ss 00:02:17.720 -t 23.28  -f avi -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -crf 0 -preset veryslow -vf "setpts=PTS-STARTPTS" 13.mpeg;
ffmpeg -i "/Users/simon/Documents/projects/encodage VHS/source.vob" -ss 00:02:41.040 -t 20.92  -f avi -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -crf 0 -preset veryslow -vf "setpts=PTS-STARTPTS" 14.mpeg;

then I merge those files with the concat plugin of ffmpeg.
My issue is: I'm sure the values I use to cut are right, but running the blackdetect filter again, I can see black frames at the beginning of some fragments.
Do you know why I'm still getting those black frames ? Is there a better way to remove them than cut and concat? I'm using a Mac.

This is the script I used to solve this.
1/ It finds black frames and put them in a file
2/ It reads the file and compute a (really long) command line which will remove those frame with the "select" filter.
It's not beautiful, but it gets the job done!
ffmpeg -i "$1" -vf blackframe -an -f null - 2>&1 | ack  "(?<=frame:)[0-9]*(?= )" -oh > blacks.txt

printf "ffmpeg -i \"$1\""
printf " -f avi -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -crf 23 -preset veryslow"

printf " -vf \"select="

cat blacks.txt | while read a; do
printf "not(eq(n\,$a))*"
done
printf "\""
printf " "
printf "$2"
printf "\n"
rm blacks.txt

Do note that you may still have motion artifacts and possibly audio sync issues where the removals occur.

No audio sync issues, but I do have some motion artefacts. Still, it's good enough to me.

What you experienced are called dropped frames.  These shouldn't be confused with drop frame video formats (such as 29.97fps NTSC video, which is otherwise known as 30 fps drop frame (because a frame is dropped to get 29.97 frames per second.)
Dropped frames occur when the system capturing is not able to keep up with the rate of playback.  They are duration .04 because it is a single frame, which works out to around .04 seconds.
Dropped frames are a relatively tricky issue to deal with as they interfere with the flow of the video and also the audio sync.  Even if you clip them out of the source material, it results in a spatial and auditory gap of .04 seconds that is often detectable by a viewer.  Due to this, the best practice is to re-capture if you experience dropped frames during capture.
If re-capture isn't an option, your best bet is to interpolate a frame to fill the gap by averaging the preceding and proceeding frames of video.  This frame often doesn't come out super well, but it is still often less jarring than removing the frame entirely and allows the audio to continue normally (provided the audio didn't also cutout for the dropped frame).
As a last resort, you can simply cut out the dropped frame, but as previously mentioned, this results in a .04 second gap in your footage and is non-ideal.

because a frame is dropped to get 29.97 frames per second -> no frames are dropped. Timecode runs at 30 fps, which differs from actual framerate so every 900 frames or so, one timecode label is skipped to preserve time sync i.e. 29:29 -> 30:01, skipping 30:00.


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How to position spheres that are created with the CC Ball action?
I'm using the CC Ball action to make some spheres to illustrate a chemical reaction.
When I make the balls, the circle to move it is thrown to the left, and the actual sphere is to the right. I tried changing the anchor point, however I can't move the shapes wherever I want.
How do I change the position of the created shapes?

Try using CC Sphere on a large texture instead.  It will wrap the texture into a sphere, which you can then move around in two dimensions.  If you need to pass the spheres behind or in front of each other, you could place the layers in 3D space, even though the spheres will still really be flat layers.
The other option would be to use some particle generators.  Make a single particle that doesn't move in each particle generator you need, then manipulate them within the generator.
Finally if you really need true 3D, use something like Cinena4D, then import the rendered animation into After Effects.

CC Ball is a video effect to make an array of balls that video can be displayed on.  It isn't designed for making circles that you can move around like this.  What you want is a 3D shape object.  Unfortunately, unless you have a 3rd party tool like Blender to make a geometry you can import, there isn't an easy way to make a true sphere in AE.
The only real option I know of without using a third party tool is to take a period or circle shape layer, extrude it by its diameter and apply a curved bezel and adjust the strength until it results in a fully round sphere.


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Best practice recording VHS to digital
I have a home video on VHS which I want to transfer to someone else. As I don't have two VHS recorders I am looking into other ways to duplicate the footage.
I am considering two options to do this:

Using a Canon 550D with a
Sigma AF 18-50mm f/2.8-4.5 DC HSM OS lens to film the footage from a full HD 27 inch TV in 1920x1080 at 24 fps.
Using a cheap VCR to USB adapter to capture the footage directly to the hard-disk.

What is the preferable option in terms of quality?

The best option would be either to send it out to someone that has a good capture capability or invest in a decent quality RCA capture card.  The USB option will work the best of your two suggestions, but it is still likely going to be a decent quality loss (granted, VHS in general may not be that high to begin with.)
The first option is not worth considering as the result would be completely substandard.

For me this are the possibilities:

VCR to USB adapter
VCR / DVD recorder device (you can still find them second-hand)
Video card for computer with video input

Don't do your first option, it's not worth, the quality will be very bad.

In my experience the USB capture cards are really good.

The second option is likely to work better, as it is converting the signals electronically, rather than optically.
The first option relies on the calibration of the monitor, the synchronisation between the camera's shutter and the refresh rate of the screen, and the ambient light in the room whilst filming etc etc.
Also if the frame rate of the TV is 24fps, this will be different from the VHS, which would have been recorded at either 25 fps in the UK or 29.97 in the US.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Premiere Pro CS6 preview problem: other application shows through
Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this question, but, I'm having a issue with Premiere Pro CS6 from Creative Cloud.  Whenever I put footage in the timeline this happens: .  The file's encoding is fine and it happens with every file.  I'm running it on a MacBook Pro Retina.  Does anyone have any ideas on how I could try and get Premiere working?

You might also get knowledgeable answers on superuser from people who know the Mac display libraries well if my suggestions don't work.

It looks like a problem with the playback engine.  I would try updating your video card drivers and/or making sure the playback engine (in the project/ project settings/general menu) is set to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only.  If that doesn't work, I'd try uninstalling and re-installing Premiere.
I don't know what can cause it on Mac OS, but on Windows seeing something from another application through a portion of a window is generally a sign of a graphics driver being misconfigured or misused by the software in question.

That fixed it! Wow, thanks so much.  I would have never thought of that!

@SamBaumgarten out of curiosity, which one of the suggestions fixed it?

Changing the playback engine :)


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See layers beneath the solid I'm editing in After Effects
I have imported a photo into one layer and I created an opaque solid on top of it.
I want to animate the solid with the Brush tool (Write on).
When I enter layer edit mode for the solid I can't see the photo layer underneath it, and hence can't use the photo as a guide for the Brush tool.
Is there a way to increase layer transparency so I can temporarily see a guiding layer beneath it?

Don't apply the brush tool to the solid - apply it to your photo instead.  There is an option in the tool to choose whether to apply the brush over the image, or to reveal the image.  When you're drawing your brush strokes, set it to apply over the image.  When you're ready to animate the strokes, set it to reveal the image.

The selected answer already addresses your question with this specific effect, but if you run into other similar situations where you want to see your results while editing, you can either add another Comp Viewer window, or lock the one you're using.
At the top-left of the comp preview, there's a small dropdown where you can choose which comp to display, or open a new Comp Viewer.

Next to this dropdown is a small padlock icon. When unlocked, the Comp Viewer will switch to show whichever comp timeline is currently active.
When locked, the viewer will keep showing whichever comp you selected/locked, so you can change comp timelines, do whatever editing you want in the selected comp (effects, text, animation, etc), and view the results in the parent comp immediately. (Note that if you click to directly edit an image, solid, etc it opens a new "Layer Viewer" with the same padlock, so you could edit that layer in the same way while viewing the comp separately.


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Combine multiple videos as separate streams in one mkv file
So I have multiple videos of the same scenery from different angles. These are stored as separate files. Can I combine these as multiple video streams within one file?
For example I know this is possible with MKV, I just don't know how to "join" them.
Is this possible using ffmpeg? If so, which command sequence do I use?
If not, what other application would be able to do this?

Yes, this is possible using ffmpeg and the mkv container.
An example command sequence would be:
ffmpeg -i input1 -i input2 -c copy -map 0 -map 1 output.mkv

source
Breaking down the command:

-i input1 This selects the first input file. Could be something like my video_track1.mov.
-i input2 Here you can specify the second input file. You can add another entry -i input3 if you have more input videos. I don't know what the maximum amount of videos is you can place in one mkv container.
-c copy This copies all the streams (audio and video) in their original encoding.
-map 0 This maps all the streams (audio and video) of the first input file to the first track of the output file.
-map 1 This maps all the streams (audio and video) of the second input file to the second track of the output file.

More information on the -map option can be found in the documentation of ffmpeg.

Thank you Bart. Just a quick follow-up question if I may. Suppose the 2nd video is a bit shorter than the 1st video I want to combine, is there any way I can offset at which point the second stream should be available (eg. 1 second later), to keep the two streams in sync?

Not sure, I'm not an expert, just a happy Googler, but you could experiment with the -ss option. Please edit your question with the addition and add an answer yourself including the ffmpeg code if you find that it works. This will help future visitors.

This almost worked, but my input video didnt have timestamps. I created them with ffmpeg -fflags +genpts -i input1_no_ts.avi -c copy input1.mp4 and ffmpeg -fflags +genpts -i input2_no_ts.avi -c copy input2.mp4

'map' selects input sources, files in this case. Your command combines all the tracks into a single stream, not separate ones as desired.

The command in @SaaruLindestakke answer keeps them as separate streams. map does not combine streams; it can only select input streams (not files).


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How to downsample 4k to 1080p using ffmpeg while maintaining the quality?
I have some 4K 3840x2160 footage in MP4 format that I need to bring down to 1080p. I tried running
ffmpeg -i orig.mp4 -vf scale=1920:1080 smaller.mp4

but the result is very poor quality, with the entire image being composed of square "tiles" as if I was magnifying 4:1.
Here is the output of running this command:
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'origs/P1000003.MP4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : mp42
    minor_version   : 1
    compatible_brands: mp42avc1
    creation_time   : 2015-02-19 17:10:38
  Duration: 00:05:14.48, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 95903 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264 (High), yuvj420p, 3840x2160 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 95792 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-02-19 17:10:38
    Stream #0.1(und): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 125 kb/s
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-02-19 17:10:38
Incompatible pixel format 'yuvj420p' for codec 'mpeg4', auto-selecting format 'yuv420p'
[buffer @ 0x22a3420] w:3840 h:2160 pixfmt:yuvj420p
[scale @ 0x22a3ce0] w:3840 h:2160 fmt:yuvj420p -> w:1920 h:1080 fmt:yuv420p flags:0x4
Output #0, mp4, to '1-short.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : mp42
    minor_version   : 1
    compatible_brands: mp42avc1
    creation_time   : 2015-02-19 17:10:38
    encoder         : Lavf53.21.1
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 1920x1080 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-02-19 17:10:38
    Stream #0.1(und): Audio: libvo_aacenc, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 200 kb/s
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-02-19 17:10:38
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
  Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Press ctrl-c to stop encoding
frame=  125 fps=  6 q=31.0 Lsize=     968kB time=5.00 bitrate=1586.7kbits/s
video:842kB audio:123kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.421047%

I know from experience that ffmpeg is an excellent tool, so I must be screwing up the options/parameters somehow...
How can I do this?

Please show the full, complete console output from your command. You can just encode a short segment, so add -t 10 to make a 10 second output. Why do you want to downscale? What is the use case for your scaled output? This info will help me provide a more accurate answer.

@LordNeckbeard I have just added the console output. I want to downscale so that I can more easily share these clips with people who are working with me.

Looks like some stuff was omitted. I'm also looking for the version info and how it was configured. Can you show the whole output?

I will still provide an answer with additional info if the complete console output is provided.

Don't forget -c:a copy, since you don't want or need to re-encode the audio stream.  Use -map 0 to copy any chapter metadata, or other stuff.  (ffmpeg only takes 1 vid + 1 aud by default.)

Also, -sws_flags lanczos+print_info will use a better scaling algo than the default (bilinear I think).  stlb's answer covers the video encoding part of the process.

@PeterCordes Alternatively, scale=1920:-2:flags=lanczos. I was also going to mention the -2 for scale in my non-existent answer. For those who don't know you can put -2 in width or height, and it will automatically provide the correct value while preserving aspect ratio and making the value divisible by 2 (required by libx264 for yuv420p outputs).

-sws_flags will use lanczos for scaling chroma when going from 4:4:4: to 4:2:0 or vice verse, for example.  So I think it's not a bad idea to have it on your command line at all times, in case you do something that auto-inserts a scale filter.  But yeah, auto-calculated height = win.  You won't always get perfectly square pixels in your output, if the required height isn't a multiple of 2 (or even a whole number), but ffmpeg will set the display aspect ratio in the output so players will scale it correctly if up or down-scaling.

The default settings for ffmpeg are very low quality, and since you don't specify any codec or quality parameters it's just using the defaults (I don't know why the devs don't fix that because it generates a lot of questions on forums everywhere).
Edit: the defaults are now quite sane. With a recent (as in later than 2017) build of ffmpeg you don't need to specify anything more than input and output files to achieve good useable results. You can, of course tweak to your heart's desire.
Try adding -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset slow to the command.

-c:v libx264 tells it to use the libx264 encoder, this is the default now, no need to specify it
crf 20 uses the Constant Rate Factor quantiser (which paradoxially means variable bit rate, but constant quality) with a value of 20 (pretty good quality; lower is better quality / larger files, higher is crappier / smaller)—default is 23,
the slow preset is a shortcut for a bunch of encoder settings that means it puts a bit more effort into it than the default (medium). Note that the speed presets don't change the quality of the encoded file, just the efficiency, meaning a slower encode will result in a smaller file of the same quality and a faster encode will mean a larger file of the same quality.

You can tweak these settings, see the h.264 encoding guide for instructions on what knobs to twiddle.
And if you're using the audio as-is, add c:a copy. That will do a straight copy of the audio stream without re-encoding.

The defaults depends on the encoder. libx264 is usually used for MP4 output by default, and it produces a nice quality output with no additional options, but the ffmpeg build in the question appears to not support this encoder and therefore uses the ancient encoder mpeg4 producing MPEG-4 Part 2 video, and the defaults for it were more sane during its heyday (such as for 320x240, etc).

It's good to hear that libx264 is the default now.

I'd say crf 20 is pretty darn good. 18 is functionally lossless. I do most of my videos at 23.

Most of my work gets displayed on playback devices working locally from an SD card. I don't need to optimise much for size, so I leave the quality as high as I can. I agree, I'd dial it down if I was delivering over the web.

This didn't help me. I still have blocky weirdness wherever motion occurs in the video. crf of 18, preset to slow. 2.7k->1080p.

@rewolf post a question, rather than asking in the comments.

@stib I'm not asking a question. I'm saying that this is not a definite answer the problem posed (or one of the same nature). That is useful to others in the same position.

What if the quality is lower than 1080 already and we don't want to upscale it?

@OliverDixon I'm not sure what you're asking. If the resolution is lower than 1080p and you don't want to upscale it then you can display it at its current resolution..?

@stib I found a solution using 'min'. I was seeing performance problems with this because low quality videos were trying to upscale from users.

Convert 4k to 1080 (no change in codec)
ffmpeg -i input4kvid.mp4 -vf scale=1920:1080 -c:a copy output1080vid.mp4

Convert h.264 to h.265 (no change in resolution)
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx265 -vtag hvc1 -c:a copy output.mp4

Convert 4k(h.264) to 1080(h.265)

Downscaling + Change in compression codec

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx265 -vtag hvc1 -vf scale=1920:1080 -crf 20 -c:a copy output.mp4

Options Explained
-i input file name or file path
-c:v libx265 -vtag hvc1 selecting compression. Default is libx264
-vf scale=1920:1080 specifying output resolution
-c:a copy copy audio as it is without any compression
-preset slow ask compression algorithm to take more time & look for more areas for compression. Default is medium. Other options are faster, fast, medium, slow, slower
-crf 20 Compression quality

-crf 0 high-quality, low compression, large file

-crf 23 default

-crf 51 low-quality, high compression, small file

Use avconv if you want:
avconv -i 4kfile.mp4 -s hd1080 -c:v libx264 -c:a copy fullhdfile.mp4


text:
How to record webcam output locally while the video is also streamed in a video conference?
When I record video interviews over Hangouts / Skype / Zoom, I often ask the guest to record the audio locally using QuickTime Player, then get them to send me the audio file afterwards. I also record the video conference "in the cloud" using Google Hangouts record feature.
This means I get better quality audio that I can resync afterwards.
Is there a good way to do the same thing with video as I do with audio on a Mac? When I try to record their webcam in Quicktime Player, it stops the video stream working.
How can I let the guest record their webcam output while at the same time the webcam is streamed to Hangouts?

When you say When I try to ... video stream working., how are you recording their webcam with QT? Via the screen record utility?

I open Quicktime, click New Movie Recording, choose their webcam, hit record.

And you do this on their computer? In that case I think I understand the problem: the webcam can only send its recording to 1 app at a time, when you choose the webcam in Quicktime, the webcam switches its signal from Hangouts to Quicktime. You need some kind of software that can reroute/duplicate the webcam signal such that it goes both to quicktime and to hangouts (something similar to a video version of Loopback.

yes - I'm wondering whether such a thing exists

Problem interpretation
I'm interpreting the issue you're having as follows:
On the computer of the guest you want to record the audio and video stream from one or more devices. The same streams need to be available to the online meeting software (Skype/Zoom/Hangouts).
The issue you're running into with Quicktime is that a webcam can (often) only supply it's video stream to one program at a time. It first supplies it to Hangouts, but when you ask Quicktime to record, it switches the stream to Quicktime, stopping the video stream to Hangouts.
You need some way of "splitting" the signal.
Possible solution
You can use OSB Studio to achieve what you want. It allows you to record and stream the webcam video at the same time, the meeting software can then use OBS (not your webcam) as the video input device.
Rough steps are:

Install OBS Studio
In the sources panel, add a new "Video Capture Device":

In the properties window that pops up, select the webcam you want to use in the "Device" dropdown, leave the rest of the settings at their default:

Now OBS studio should show you what the webcam is seeing. You can move/scale the image and apply effects or corrections as needed.
Now you can let OBS start a "virtual camera". This will provide the video stream you see in the OBS screen as if it is coming from a "webcam" named "OBS Virtual Camera":

In the meeting software, go to the device settings and select "OBS Virtual Camera" (screenshot shows Teams as an example):

In OBS Studio you can now turn on the recording, it will record the webcam (and any other sources you've added in step 2):

When you start your online meeting, the meeting software will use "OBS Virtual Camera" as the camera. OBS Studio will record the webcam output in the background.

I've described the steps for the video part, but I imagine you can do something similar with the audio such that you get a synced recording right away. Then you don't need to re-sync the Quicktime recorded audio with the OBS recorded video.

Great answer, I hadn't thought of that... The trouble is the people I'm recording are often not very technical!

I'm not too familiar with OBS, but I believe you can store configurations such that you only need to set steps 2-4 once after which you can load the configuration on different machines. However, it still requires the installation of OBS and the reconfiguration of the video conferencing software.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Can't import some .mov files into Adobe Premiere, it says "Codec missing or unavailable"
I am trying to import some .mov files into Adobe Premiere project, but I keep getting the following error message "Codec missing or unavailable", this only happen for certain .mov videos which have been recorded with certain camera, but videos from other camera like canon with the same extension .mov can be imported without any trouble.
I've tried to install K-lite codec package but it didn't make a difference in Adobe Premiere.
I've read somewhere on the web that not all the .mov files are the same and that the .mov extension is only a wrapper. The inner formation of the file may differ from one .mov file to another.
I've opened the file with the GSpot tool to get some info and here is the output:
qt  : Apple QuickTime (.MOV/QT)
File Type: QuickTime (.MOV)
Mime Type: video/quicktime
Recommended Display Size: 1920 x 1080
Created:     2013 Jun 06   17:53:53
Modified:    2013 Jun 22   01:10:47
codec:xdvc name: unkown
frms:146
kbps:36774
qf:0.709
pics/s: 25000
sar:1.778 (16:9)
dar: 1.778 (16:9)

What version of premiere are you using? Apparently, native support for it was added in June 2013 with CC. http://forums.adobe.com/message/5315765

First off, codec packs are often more problem than they are worth.  They tend to cause conflicts as much or more than resolve them.  You are far better off targeting the particular codec that is needed.  If you look at the information about the clip, it should indicate the codec that is used within the MOV and you should then be able to get that particular codec for your machine.
From the info you listed.  It appears to be an XDCAM format.  I would recommend going to the camera manufacturer's website and looking for their XDCAM codec.  If you can't find it, I suggest posting the actual camera model here.


text:
How to create a video sequence made up of random frames in Final Cut Pro 7?
I am editing a music video in Final Cut Pro 7.
I would like to create a random frame sequence, a flashing-frame effect to insert into the video.
Any ideas on how to create it?

frame by frame manually

Ok, I'm not familiar with FCP7 but it should approximately work like this: Collect random frames in a folder, name them in the order you want them to appear (frame001, frame002, etc.) and import those images into FCP. The naming can be done with software. Here's a forum post explaining it. I will leave it to someone who has used FCP to write an actual answer.

are these frames images from elsewhere like photos, stills, artwork etc ? or have you exported each frame of the videos ?


text:
What software is used to produce this video?
Any suggestions for the software used to make this video?
http://vimeo.com/65571323
The drawings can be made in illustrator, but I can't figure out how to animate it.

It honestly looks hand animated to me, however the digital equivalent would be to start with vector graphics and animate them in something like Flash or After Effects.  Either product is capable of keyframe animation of various assets including vector graphics.
Personally, I'd rank them by likelihood as by hand and scanned, followed by Flash, followed by After Effects as the possibilities.  Keyframe animation allows for objects to be set at a start point and an end point and the computer fills in the values in-between.

His vimeo tags seem to point to it being made in Flash. You could produce similar in most animating software though, such as After Effects, once you've created your drawings.

It is worth pointing out that while After Effects can be used to do some particular basic animations, it is not an animation software, it is a compositing software designed for layering and effects work.  Animation software, such as Flash, is a different class of tool entirely.


text:
How to mark multiple ins and outs in Adobe Premiere?
I need to cut multiple fragments from one video. If I use IN and OUT markers, then I can't accomplish the task, because when I set second IN marker, previous one disappears.
I would like to mark multiple fragments.
How to do that?

The best way in Premiere is to use "I" and "O" to set ins and outs as you scroll through your Source. Then for each in and out, use command (ctrl) "U" to create a Subclip in your Project. Then when you drag all those Subclips from Project to the Timeline, they will lay down in the order they were clipped and you can move them around as needed.

In and out markers are used for clip selection, however you have to put the clip somewhere once you select it.  You can either drag or insert it to a sequence or you can drag it to your Project window to have a copy of it saved with that in and out point.  You could later drag from that copy of it in the project to the timeline and it will use the in and out point you had set on it.
The reason you can only select one clip at a time is because the in and out point are designed to be used as part of three point editing.  In three point editing, you specify any 3 of these four points... source in, source out, destination in, destination out.  Whichever one you have the beginning and end of defines the length of the edit and the beginning or end on the other tells it either where to pull the clip from or where to place it.
This is a traditional way of editing and is how linear systems were used back in the day. The practice carried over to NLEs (non-linear editors) because the process itself is actually pretty quick and easy to use and is what many editors were used to.  It is the least information you need to define an edit.

To make a subclip from the I to O marked section,   shift-U   (not ctrl-U or cmd-U on my MBP). Also under the Sequence menu.

You should use subclips to manage each of the fragments individually. Check out this article.


text:
Can I use a computer as the processing unit of a video camera instead of the onboard chip?
I have been wondering for a while if we could connect a camera to a computer and let the computer do the processing, that way we would have access to things that the camera wouldn't be able to do independently. For example higher frame rates, higher resolutions, etc.
If a technology like this exists please redirect me to it otherwise I think it should be considered.

Can you elaborate more of your end objective?

@Dipan what I intent to do is increase the frame rate on the olympus ep-1 and have the ability to change things like the iso and shutter speed when shooting video. And since the processor in a computer could probably handle more than the processor in a camera, I thing there should be a way to put that to use.

Well, you can use MatLab and it's video processing toolboxes.. Simply import webcam feed and do your realtime processing.

The processor in your camera is not the only thing you need to override for your proposal to work. Consider the focus system, the iris, and the shutter system, and their respective upper and lower performance boundaries. What you are suggesting appears to be a design up idea not an after it was built idea. In other words you need a whole team of engineers at Olympus at your service to redesign the camera from the ground up. The exception may be, some engineering hack that allows for the higher frame rate perhaps through the firmware.
I am not clear on what you mean by changing the ISO and shutter speed while shooting, do you mean change the ISO or shutter speed in the same take? If so, I've never heard of any camera being able to do that, nor do I understand what you are trying to get?

What I'm really looking for now is a firmware hack on the Olympus E-p1 to get manual controls on the video. You know, on the 550D for example, you can change the shutter speed, iso, and all that stuff before shooting a video.

In that case you want to connect with an Olympus users group as they are going to be looking for the same hacks. Thanks for making it clear that the ISO and shutter changes are not in shot but before the shot begins. I get it now.

In some sense, shooting to a raw format with something like a Red camera or an Alexa does what you want.  The camera doesn't do any in-camera image processing to alter the image (except maybe compression), leaving all the data in the original sensor color space.
You can then use your computer to do whatever you want to generate a final image.
ISO can be set in post, for example.  Shutter speed, OTOH, still depends on things like the actual sensor parameters.
There's nothing about the CPU in the camera that would likely be the limiting factor.
If you have some control software for the camera that has useful features like allowing a particular frame rate that the camera vendor doesn't expose in the camera's controls, then it doesn't really matter whether that custom software is running on some frankencamera with a bunch of custom soldering to somehow connect your computer directly to the camera internals, or running directly on the camera.


text:
Multi Projector Setup
Has anybody had experience with Multi Projector setups? I've been looking around and run across several options:

Watchout
Wings
Millumin
Pandoras Box
Christie Projectors

The only type of presenting I've done is with a single Panasonic PT-D6000US, we want to branchout and do a really wide screen show. It will not be for a live performance (it seems like that is a big feature with most of those applications).
There isn't a need for 3D mapping, the projectors will be mounted above the screen, so we'll need to correct for distortion. We'll have a curved screen, and will need some sort of triggering system, whether it is a motion sensor, sound or light sensor or just a button that can be pushed. So the question is, what is the most cost effective simple multi-projector setup.
Thanks in advance for any advice!

Could you elaborate on te triggering system? What does it trigger? Just the next slide or transition?

@Bart Arondson as far as the trigger, what we want is a way to start the presentation when someone enters the room. It might mean that the presentation starts when a door is opened, or someone passes a sensor.

Ah I see. Isn't it easier to just have someone press the button when someone enters the room without fiddling with sensors? Of course it would be nice if it would work, but I would consider it more as a bonus.

@Bart Arondson It's absolutely a bonus! I'd just wanted to through it out, because it would be very nice...

Depending on your needs, it might be as simple as using the drivers that come with your system.  I know that certain NVidia cards can make multiple video outputs appear as one single screen to Windows.  In a case like that, it would simply be a matter or properly aligning the projectors (if they can handle the key-stoning themselves)  A lens might be able to handle correcting for the curve.

The screen is going to be curved, so we need a way do digitally manipulate the lens distortion.

@circleb I am suggesting you may get better results with an amorphic lens.  It depends if you have a regular curve or not, but may yield better results than digital alterations. (Or at least cheaper)


text:
Why doesn't the duration of a Premiere Pro encoding scale linearly?
I have a long sequence (canon dslr and titles) (1hour) and as a
test export 1 minute at h264 Blu-ray pre-defined setting (pal 1920x1080, upper
field, low quality). This takes approx 1 minute to export. I then export the
entire sequence but rather than the expected 60mins to export it takes 3 hrs.
I'm running a i7,6Gig ddr3 ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470, windows 7 64bit.
Exporting directly from premiere cc. I've also noticed sometimes the hard drive
gets thrashed when opening another program, could this be memory / page faults occurring
?
The question is why is export time not linear? and how can I
improve export time?

I've found the same thing. Also opening the project can take ages, as premiere loads up the previews.

I doubt it is memory or page fault related.  Encoding is more of a stream operation, you load a frame, process the frame, hold the frame until you finish a group of pictures and then encode the group of pictures.  It is not a memory intensive process unless you are doing fancy effects that require memory to process.  It is a potentially HDD stream intensive process as it has to stream the video sources off the HDD and then record the output back to the HDD, which could involve lots of seeks potentially to move between reading and writing.
The two things I would try would be to try CUDA acceleration first and see if you can offload the processing to your GPU.  If that doesn't get sufficient speed I would try making sure your system is defraged and if that doesn't give sufficient speed, I might try SSDs for processing to and from for better random access of assets.
It is also possible that it is simply harder to encode later parts of your video though.  Depending on the exact settings you are using, changes in the content of the video can make a significant impact on how difficult it is to encode the video, so it may not even be unexpected that the encoding time changes between the first minute and the rest of the video.

'CUDA acceleration first and see if you can offload the processing to your GPU' - Where do I check this?
I think I have GPU accelleration switched on but this was to render only and not export. Where can I check the settings? Thanks

@user32056 - if you have CUDA rendering turned on, it is most likely using it for the encode as well.  I don't think they've split out the behavior yet, but I also am still on CS6 because I refuse to rent/be held hostage to Adobe.

in one of premieres settings I can see option for Merury Playback Engine.. still the export is too slow.

@user32056 - did any of the other steps help?  I include the CUDA thing in case people haven't turned it on yet or don't have CUDA support, but the other ideas may also help.


text:
How to display static image if the input stream ends using ffmpeg?
I am receiving a stream over the network with the following ffmpeg command:
ffmpeg -i rtmp://server:port/input.stream -f flv rtmp://server2:port/output.stream

When the input stream stalls, I want to display a still image. When the input stream continues, I want to continue showing the input stream. I have tried this:
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i Error.png -i rtmp://server:port/input.stream -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=0:0" -f flv rtmp://server2:port/output.stream

That works, except when the input video stream stalls, it keeps showing the last frame received from the stream. I want it to show the .png file  (i.e. the video input becomes transparent).

What happens when you change your filter from "[0:v][1:v] overlay=0:0" to "[0:v][1:v] overlay=0:0:repeatlast=0" ?      repeatlast is an option for overlay.  https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html#overlay-1

A combination of mkfifo and rtmp could be a kind of solution

You could probably do it with https://www.liquidsoap.info/ (I only just found out about it, but it looks to be pretty advanced)

TL;DR : Nothing simple. Both solutions use a relay, and it's not suitable for real production.

Actually, you only have two possibilities, and both are ugly.
There is absolutely no open-source software capable to handle a non-permanent stream (GStreamer+forks, FFmpeg, VLC, MPlayer). Every single one of them have the same behavior: last frame still visible, and everything is stopped until data come again.
Option 1 — Tunneling + cache
You need two FFmpeg running, and a script using FFplay.
The first FFmpeg pull the RTMP stream. The output is a local port and the protocol need to be based on MPEG-TS. It's better if the input is tuned for the lowest latency.
Also, you need to optimize how FFmpeg start: no analysis of the stream (set the fps in the command line), early start, etc.
The second FFmpeg pull the local MPEG-TS stream, and transcode the stream to a new RTMP. You need to reencode it with x264, because the video packets will broke at the first switch (so you need a better quality for your original stream).
You need to increase the input latency : default is 3s for FFmpeg, but you need something like 8s. It can be lowered, but only after you really understand what is going on and where is your margin.
The magic is with FFplay.
You have a script running, where FFmpeg read the original RTMP stream. When the stream as no more data, FFplay send an error and stop.
Then, the script kill the first FFmpeg instance, and launch a new one.
That FFmpeg is the “offline” stream. Whatever input you want, you need to encode it in x264 MPEG-TS, to the local port. And with the same fps/size than your normal stream.
During this time, the second FFmpeg is still playing his input cache. So the 4 or 5 seconds for the “offline” FFmpeg to launch is not a problem.
In the actual loop of the script, you need a new FFplay. When your stream is back, it kills the offline FFmpeg, and relaunch the normal one.
The input cache do the job, and the reencoding clean the broken video packets.
It works, but it's not a proper solution, like an overlay on FFmpeg, and FFmpeg not stopping when an input is unresponsive/missing/empty.
Option 2 - OpenBroadcaster Software
If I don't have a full script to post here, it's because I found a new solution :
Use OBS on the server, capture the original stream, put your offline image behind, and send the stream to your distribution server.
But, there is a catch, OBS need OpenGL 3.1 (2?), and a desktop. So you need a real PC & GPU, or virtualize the desktop with ESXI (I don't know if VirtualBox make a virtual GPU compatible with OpenGL 3.1).
The logic is the same, but more friendly.
The only Good Solution
FFmpeg is capable to handle everything on a single instance. If you use overlays, you can have the offline layer and the original stream on the top of it. FFmpeg even know how to restart a stream when it's republished.
But, actually, FFmpeg stop everything when one input is offline/missing/empty.
An option to change the behavior of FFmpeg on an input is the only thing missing.
I tried the dev mailing list, no response. Same thing for my predecessors. The dev “community” of FFmpeg is not friendly, based on old tools (you better not criticize the use of a mailing list!), and conservative.
If someone has a better solution, a magical program to do a simple offline switcher, it's really needed ;)


text:
How can I automate creating a sequence from a set of clips?
I have a large amount of DV footage, which I want to convert into a video per day.
I've tried doing this by scripting ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -safe 0 -f concat -i day1-files.txt -fflags +igndts -ac 2 -ar 32000 -vf scale=768x576,setsar=1:1,yadif sq08_output.mov

but results varied from perfect to garbled audio or video.
Then I tried this manually in Premiere Pro with the following steps:

Import footage of a single day
Automate to sequence
Export media

Results were perfect (for the same clips that ffmpeg couldn't decode).
As I have thousands of clips I don't want to repeat the Premiere Pro steps manually, so I looked into Premiere Pro scripting
I completed step 1 with app.project.importFiles:
app.project.importFiles(["day1-1.mov", "day1-2.mov", "day1-3.mov"], true, app.project.rootItem, false)

I tried to do step 2 with app.project.createNewSequenceFromClips:
app.project.createNewSequenceFromClips("sequenceName"
    , [app.project.rootItem.children[0]
    , app.project.rootItem.children[1]
    , app.project.rootItem.children[2]]
    , app.project.rootItem);

But got greeted with:
createNewSequenceFromClips is not a function

How can I automate creating a sequence from a set of clips?

Apparently createNewSequenceFromClips was not available in my version of Premiere Pro (v14.0.1). When I updated to v14.4 all worked as it should.
This example script using that function works as expected.


text:
What media can I legally include into my videos?
When making videos for YouTube, what media can I include without getting sued or breaking the terms of YouTube?
What are the differences when being a YouTube partner?
Take for example the gaming web show IGN Daily Fix. They include images, audio, and video of games into their own videos. Do they pay a fee to every single video game producer, to a general organisation, or can they just include anything they want for free under fair use?
PS: I don't know if this is the best forum for this question, but I don't really know where else I could ask.

Preface: I am not a lawyer. These comments aer based on my personal experience navigating copyright law.
The general rule of thumb is that you can only use media that you have created.
If you have not created the media, it's best practice to get or buy permission to use it, and get that permission in writing as a release form.
That being said, something like IGN daily fix could likely get away with demo-ing games under fair use as part of a review or demonstration. There's also the fair use exemption for something "newsworthy". There's a little bit of leeway when you shoot the video of the game yourself rather than capturing the output from the console. There you start to get into derivative work.
Personally, I would get releases for everything. In the case of IGN, I'm sure they can go to EA, and EA is more than happy to provide amterials for their use. You can do the same. Ask for a press kit that includes video clips. Those are licensed for that type of use.
If you don't have a license, here's what you risk. Let's say Google wants to buy your videos and feature them for something. Their lawyer is going to ask for chain of title documentation. This is signed, verifiable contractual agreements that say you have permission for everything. Sign a release form for you own voiceover jsut to please the lawyers. People will sue Google because they've got deep pockets. The lawyers need to mitigate that risk by making sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed. Are you willing to potentially lose a deal because you didn't get permission to use a clip? I've made the decision NOT to risk that...but that's me.
As many people as I know who are under-the-radar enough to get away with a lot, I know enough people who've been "made an example of" that I don't want to play with that lit match.
I'd recommend a.) talking to an attorney and b.) asking permission for everything. You'd be surprised who says yes to the latter.

Thank you for your answer. I understand that you have to put the ask a lawyer disclaimer etc, however that's currently too expensive for me / I'm not informed enough yet. So say my friend is a musician and he lets me use his song for my video, what forms do I need him to sign such that I can prove to YouTube/Google that I have the right to use his music? Any link to an example document would be appreciated! Also, if I use royalty-free music (e.g. from http://www.incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free), is it enough to just put a link to the site where I got it / that states the licensing terms?

Becoming informed while not being able to afford a lawyer: Mark Litwak's "Contracts for the Film and Television Industry". Find it used at www.half.com. Visit filmcontracts.net & read their terms of use. Royalty-free music is tricky. Royalty-free means you don't pay a per-use fee: it's a flat fee and you have the right to use it under the conditions of the use agreement. http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/faq.html explains this guy's license. Pay close attention to attribution, it changes depending on how you license the work. One is free, one is paid. Also check out creative commons.

attorneys: spread the word out to EVERYONE that you need an attorney to look at contracts in exchange for producer credit. Film contracts are just contracts; entertainment law speciality not needed. Modify an existing contract/release to suit your needs, then have that attorney give it a looksee to make sure you didn't shoot yourself in the foot. You'll likely find a friend who knows a lawyer who'd be ~tickled~ to get a screen credit for ten minutes of his time. Know any law professors who need a contract to discuss in a class? Volunteer yours and sit in. DIY means thinking way outside the box


text:
What codecs/formats are appropriate for full motion video recording for youtube?
I'm recording video game footage via lossless methods, after which I need to compress them and upload them to youtube. I'm not sure which format and/or codecs are best for this. I've been experimenting with various formats and I've found MP4 (and whatever Camtasia 7 uses as a codec for that) to be mostly effective, but the quality varies by game.
Particularly I've noticed that lower-motion games like platforming games (Super Mario) or RPGs (Final Fantasy) seem to be fine no matter what format they're in; few "blocky" compression artifacts, almost no issues due to how often key-frames are used. But higher motion games, especially First Person Shooters (Halo) and scrolling shooters (Gradius) suffer relatively severe issues with "ghost" images between keyframes and generally blocky or choppy video.
Is there a generally acceptable video codec for high motion gameplay footage? I want to absolutely minimize compression artifacts like ghost images between keyframes, blocks of colors, etc. To maximize quality my recordings are at 30 FPS, 32 bit RGB at naitive resolution and file size isn't a major limiting factor (but I'd like to keep files under 1 GB due to low upload speeds). So assume the source file is basically pristine. How should I compress these high quality source files of full motion gameplay to be uploaded on youtube?
To reiterate the general requirements:

Lossless or high quality source file at 30 FPS, 32 bit RGB
Full motion recording, minimal compression artifacts wanted
Resolution only limited by the game's res; generally 480p, 720p or 1080p, occasionally weird resolutions when a game requires them (but if those come out less-awesome it's not a big deal, I accept that those are problematic).
Youtube will receive and process the final product, so their processing determines the final quality. I want something that Youtube will butcher the least (their videos do not always match my upload file's quality and I'm not sure why)

If it matters I'm using Camtasia Studio to edit/render the video before uploading, and I use a combination of Camtasia Studio and Fraps to record videos. I have the K-Lite Full codec pack on my PC, so Youtube is the major limiting factor for codecs. Fraps records lossless, and Camtasia can be lossless but I've been taking to DivX for encoding the initial recording in  Camtasia. My videos are at the whim of Youtube's re-encoding process for the final product as well, but I'm not sure exactly what they use for that.

Relevant: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/5318/what-codec-will-my-youtube-uploads-be-output-in-and-what-codec-should-i-use-to-u


text:
Is Open-Source -film production possible with open-source tools?
Samuli -- of the Iron-Sky -film -- mentions (3.40 here) their used software:

adobe.com, Adobe Creative Suite 5
autodesk.com, Maya
newtek.com, Lightwave 3D 10
renderpal.com, RenderPal
thefoundry.co.uk, Nuke

Now I am total newbie here but I would like to know whether it is possible to replace the software with some open-source alternatives? Look they cost a lot of capital to even trial so trying to find some good open-source alternatives. It would be cool to engage into project which does not require massive capital boundary to start from the participants. Suggestions highly appreciated!

To make your vector artwork into a playable movie file, it will have to be rendered, and another term for rendering is rasterizing.  For example, in printing, a single image is rasterized when a vector image of a page is converted to the tiny dots the printer produces on the page.
Digital movies exist in pixel-based raster formats, so each frame of the vector animation must be converted into a pixel-based representation of that frame, for each frame in the movie. Most software today uses the word render. Rendering will also apply some form of video compression to the resulting movie file, you'll want to experiment with different codecs to see what kind of render quality they offer.
You are trying to identify a 'workflow', a path you can take to make your project, that uses open source software.  The programs that have been brought up are very good, and could be the tools for the whole workflow, for many projects. You may also need some kind of video editing software. I'm not sure if there's a good open source video editor, or if Blender allows you to edit.
You should proceed by figuring out your production workflow, and looking for tools that can fulfill that workflow.
I would like to suggest Celtx as an excellent open source script writing tool.

The production group you refer to has a team of 20 guys ("no girls") and 40 computers. Do you think there is an open source for 20 CGI professionals and 40 computers too? This is a very real production company with a budget to get things done. They have created enough attention to fund the project 'Iron Sky'. No easy task.
What you are asking is like this, you see a beautiful Lamborghini Murciélago and want to know if you can make one of these with free tools and labor. By the way, what you are asking costs way more than a Lamborghini Murciélago. I would say that you have a very ambitious mind. However, there are no free open source tools that can do all the things these guys are doing and I would include the skilled labor of these 20 guys and the cost of 40 64 bit i7 machines as well.
Even if it were possible to replace all this great software with a free open-source version, where are you going to get 20 skilled and seasoned artists with 40 computers to do this work for you? I can't stress the importance of who the people are that run the programs and make the editing decisions. Software will come and go, but the imagination and talent of a skilled team is priceless and timeless.

Please, leave rhetoric away and answer q. One can use pen-and-paper, Gimp, InkScape, ImageMagick (all open-source) -- and do simple short demos -- but then the next technical puzzle is to find the filming tools where you can move the camera and make the nice vector-graphics etc work together. We have currently everything in SVG -format so it should be easy to scale and change things later in the production, layer -stuff. Also I have no idea what the heck the rendering actually means and which tools to use for it, I hope some more talented op could addres this with genuine answer.

Rendering is the process by which software turns zillions of decisions into a video output. For example, I just 'rendered' a 15 second logo, and it took 15 minutes. Rendering time is dependent on how complicated the tasks are and how much CPU and Memory horsepower you have under the hood.

Yes but where is the line between rendering and morphing for example? The term "rendering" feels extremely broad term to me, more about morphing here with ImageMagick.

Morphing is an effect, so is a cross fade, so is adding spherical distortion, and so on, these are assigned in the editing cycle and then RENDERED! I get that you have never used any video editing software yet? Is that correct? You will see the 'light at the end of the tunnel' once you try even the simplest editor, e.g. iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker. Dabble, get your feet wet so you know what the heck 'render' means.

Please, stop patronizing -- please, be as informative as possible. Look I want that even the dumnest person on this planet can read this thread, perhaps it is me but there is still the question.

I am not patronizing you. You seem to be getting all up tight about nothing. My answers are genuine and come from over 35 years as a tech. I would hope that even the dumbest person on the planet could plainly see that there is so much more to making moives than expensive software, cameras, and gear.

Lolz, now you are patronizing :p If you really have 35 years' experience, why are you not trying to answer as informatively as possible? I want information, no talk about experience --. Now things such as controlling rendering flows is unanswered and probably many other things -- perhaps it requires more than 35years' knowledge to answer this :D

Sorry, but we don't understand each other at all. End of discussion.

The very simple answer is yes - all these tools have open source equivalents...after a fashion. But they haven't had as much development, as there is less money going into them - so you may need to work out alternative ways to create some effects...
and that will take more time for skilled people - which costs more than using tools
So I reckon @filzilla actually has the right practical answer, despite the answer really being "yes you can"

You do need to keep in mind that, there is an entire production team behind that movie, with some money to start.
However, a lot of this can be accomplished in Blender.

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available
  for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

Full movies have even been made on Blender, its awesome. You can check them out on Youtube.

GIMP is a great tool for image editing too

...yes but Gimp is a general tool (not doing the vector -graphic) and in Film -production it is pretty essential to use vector -formats such as SVG so if you make a small mistake so it is easier and faster to fix it later (scale things to different things etc). Anyway +1 for the right direction. Is there some camera mode in Blender btw?

@hhh Yes there is. Blender has some awesome camera tools, and full options for animation, as well as exporting your videos. Click the youtube link to see some awesome stuff thats 100% blender

Any idea whether there is some built-in demos with Blender to trial? (Trying Blender with Wacom Intuous 4 and it is freaking cool -- double nicer than with mouse :)

@hhh http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-261/blender-261-demo-files/


text:
What video codecs can provide "adaptive quality"?
Background:
I am trying to compress lossless bluray tracks to a more storage friendly size without a huge loss in quality.
What I've been doing thus far:
Exploring compression options with ffmpeg. Mainly around h264 with the -crf argument.
Restrictions:
Linux and open source tools. Please don't suggest anything Apple/Microsoft specific.
Question:
Most of the options I see around compression involved bit rates or fixed output sizes. I am looking for a video codec that has more of a "quality threshold". I don't mind if more complex portions of the track require more bytes to deliver the same level of visual quality. Does anything like this exist?
Edit:
I am having good luck with the -qscale argument and libxvid. If I don't get any other suggestions, I'll just go with that.

What's wrong with crf in x264?

Documentation states that crf sacrifices runtime speed for quality. Since I could potentially run these videos on lesser machines, I didn't want to place too much burden on them.

You can't get both quality and computational efficiency. There's a tradeoff.

Have you looked at Lagarith or HuffYUV? I generally use these for storing footage. They are both lossless however the compression can actually be quite good, granted I'm not sure how they compare to h264. I'm also not sure about Linux support.

Your bluray source is highly unlikely to be lossless.  Easy way to check: ffplay -vf showinfo.  If it has any B frames, it's not lossless h.264.

You're on the right track with -crf and x264 (the best H.264 encoder), and it should provide the "quality threshold" that you're looking for. CRF is recommended if you want a certain output quality and output file size is of less importance. Conversely, performing a two-pass encode with -b:v is recommend if you are targeting a specific output file size and quality is of less importance.
Encoding HEVC/H.265 with x265 should follow the same basic guidelines. You'll generally get better compression in exchange for a longer encoding time.
1. Choose a preset
A preset is a collection of options that will provide a certain encoding speed:compression ratio. A slower preset will provide better compression (compression is quality per filesize). General usage is to use the slowest preset that you have patience for. Current presets in descending order of speed are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow, placebo. Ignore placebo as it is a joke and a waste of time (it helps at most ~1%). If it's encoding too slowly then use a faster preset.
2. Choose a CRF value
The range for x264 is 0-51 where 0 is lossless, 23 is default, and 51 is worst possible. A lower value is a higher quality. A subjectively sane range is 18-28. Consider ~18 to be visually lossless: it should look the same as the input but it isn't technically lossless. Increasing the CRF value +6 is roughly half the bitrate while -6 is roughly twice the bitrate.
General usage is to choose the highest -crf value that still provides an acceptable quality. That is if the output looks good then try a higher value and if it looks bad then choose a lower value.
3. Encode
Use these settings for the rest of your videos. They should all end up with the same quality.
Example
ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -c:a copy output.mkv

Also see

FFmpeg Wiki: H.264
FFmpeg Wiki: H.265

-ssim 1 -psnr on your ffmpeg cmdline will measure some video quality metrics (which don't always match human-perceived visual quality).  Can be useful to get an idea of how much your video is getting mangled.

At the end of 2.: “General usage is to choose the highest quality” - probably should be lowest instead of highest.

@MarianD Fixed, thanks. Wow, that answer is 7 years old.

Your answers were always superior and helpful (I remember your previous name, too), thanks for them.

Maybe this is going to be helpfull K-Lite Codec Pack
When you install there is pack of codecs so you can choose what best fits you.
This is the list of codecs:
• DirectShow video decoding filters:
- ffdshow [version 1.2.4475]
- LAV Video [version 0.51.3] (- Decoding of: H264, VC1 (progressive only), MPEG2, MPEG4-ASP, MS-MPEG4, MJPEG, VP8, RV40, WMV1/2/3)
- On2 VP7 [version 7.0.10.0]
- DScaler5 MPEG-2 decoder [version 0.0.6.0 IVTC mod]

I don't see how this answers the question.

download K-Lite Codec Pack, find options in coder/decoder and that's it. There is the option of choosing quality and the size of commpresed video. The answer is here, but I shorten in particular reason. Good answering by you though

Your answer would be more helpful if you suggested which of the codecs would suit the questioner's needs.


text:
Options to speed up Hobbyist Rendering?
How can I speed up hobbyist animation-rendering project? It would be cool to see things faster, I use tools such as Blender.

Better CPUs? You could be more specific on what kind of stuff you actually want to render, but for the tasks they can do at all GPUs are obviously more effective.

You have some links to Blender related stuff, but you don't actually say anything about what you are rendering.  It's impossible to offer any advice without any specifics whatsoever.  What's slowing you down?

another idea -- export in the same format as the source material (in final cut), which will skip rendering/re-encoding. See: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26174?viewlocale=en_US

You could try:

Turning off ray tracing
Lowering the resolution
Turning off soft shadows unless needed
In Blender, use the Simplify option

These and others are covered in this blenderguru article

Some novel ideas

physical: better CPUs, more RAM
crowdsourcing: render farms & distributed rendering like here
knowledge & experience: elegant simple shortcuts -- keep things simple: no smoke or fluid etc CPU-expensive stuff

Perhaps Related, found after some googling but not sure

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-246/distributed-rendering-new-render-options/
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?86521-How-do-you-set-up-a-render-farm
http://burp.renderfarming.net/
http://www.respower.com/

Renderfarm.fi is reworking their website, the first linked blog post isn't yet migrated to the new platform. Please link to main page http://www.renderfarm.fi instead.


text:
How to create a rolling ball with Python in Blender?
My friend told me that you could create games in blender and it has an game engine in it. Now I want to do some simple things with blender such as rolling ball, the topic now in this question.

Basically, my problem contain
Problems

a learning problem and reference-request.
I am using DVO -layout where many keys such as " and ' are broken -- and many hotkeys are broken (things are apparently hard-coded to QWE -layout).
I find it hard to find help about using python inside Blender, besides broken window-paste-board in X, lack of TAB as auto-completion
  and lack of good examples.

Helper questions

what kind of modules and functions does it have to edit and tune the Blender -objects?
How can I do a rolling ball such as from (-500,0) to (50,0) with 7-turns in 7 seconds?
Is it possible to handle basic operations in the Python console?
Where can I find Blender-Python code to see examples?
How can I render and open up the render-result to a new window with the console?

Answers

I. a learning problem and reference-request.

Please, see very good examples here. The code can also become
  useful
  here. Good tutorial video here. Main docs here.

II. I am using DVO -layout where many keys such as " and ' are broken -- and many hotkeys are broken (things are apparently
    hard-coded to QWE -layout).

Press AltGr + <quote key> or select no-dead-key-keyboard, keys such
  as shift-space tend to interrupt with Blender -keys.

III. I find it hard to find help about using python inside Blender, besides broken window-paste-board in X, lack of TAB as auto-completion
    and lack of good examples.

The key is auto-completion (not with TAB for some odd reason but
  CTRL+SPACE) and the key command is $ bpy. I haven't yet found a solution for the clipboard, investigating.

Example 1: specify a ball to origin with Python in Blender
Select your ball in 3D mode and then:
$ bpy.context.object.location.xyz=[0,0,0]

so you have your ball in origin.

Animation
It is not easy to explain this so some puzzles while also working on it.

Puzze 0: show the details about things
>>> for object in bpy.data.objects:
         print(object.name + " is at location " + str(object.location))

Puzzle 1: create cubes (source)
 >>> mylayers = [False]*20
 >>> mylayers[0] = True
 >>> add_cube = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add
 >>> for index in range(0, 5):
 ...     add_cube(location=(index*3, 0, 0), layers=mylayers)

Puzzle 2: perhaps useful things
>>> bpy.context.object.animation_
data
data_clear(
data_create(
visualisation

Related Questions

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10972637/how-can-i-access-bpy-in-standard-python-console-bpy-is-the-blender-python-thin/10973302#10973302
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3924294/blender-python-scripting-tutorials?rq=1


text:
How to join 2 youtube videos with different ratios (16:9 and 4:3)?
I need some help with the youtube video editor? I need to join 2 youtube videos but one is in 16:9 and the other in 4:3. The final result should be in 16:9. Is it possible with the youtube video editor?
Thanks

The default Youtube player is 16:9, and the Youtube video editor creates a new video, so there's no harm in just trying and making a new merged video. If it's not fine just delete it.

I tried it and in the part correspondent to the 1st video the result is still in 4:3

@vascobunes; what editing software are you using, or are you just uploading raw clips to youtube?

I have the raw videos on youtube already. I wanted only simple editing capabilities available on the youtube video editor.

You're either going to have to resample your 4:3 video as 16:9 which will add black bars at the top and bottom, or crop the 16:9 video to fit in 4:3. Either way, the video will need to be re-edited, maybe even re-uploaded. I assume you have editor/owner access to both files?
As far as I can tell there is not way to do this on YouTube via the enhancement section on the Video Manager section. It looks like you will have to re-upload.


text:
OBS Studio multitrack audio exports only one track
I have OBS Studio configured to combine different audio inputs into several audio tracks/channels using its built-in mixer. But when OBS saves a local copy of the stream, the video file only has one audio track, not the several I configured. I'm exporting the video to MKV file, as I thought it would be the most versatile format and had support for multiple audio/video tracks.
Is this a configuration issue or is there something else to keep in mind? Perhaps a different export file format would be better? I'd still like to retain all (multiple) audio tracks within the single exported file.

In OBS Studio go to Settigns->Output->Recording and under Recording Format you have Audio Track. You have to enable audio tracks that you set up in audio mixer. You can also name them in Audio tab.

Unsure of what operating system you're using, but I know that personally, myself, using Mac OS, I have had great luck with similar issue either fiddling around with the Audio MIDI configuration app in the /Applications/Utilities folder.  But, better than that, there's an awesome application called "CaptureSync"(http://www.bensoftware.com - there's a free version floating around) -- and it's got the nice feature to be able to not only be configured for up to 4 different audio inputs/video inputs (including, for example, having one of the 4 choices being your actual total output style from OBS studio, to act somewhat like a "mix-minus" setup for lack of a better term to use), and this way you can utilize the mixer within OBS, and then use this app (or another one like it, if this helps you) to then get a separated group of files, each with their own audio tracks and video tracks.  So you can set them up with one of the 4 inputs being linked to a USB webcam, or an internal/external monitor display, a video file, etc.
It's quite useful, hope that helps.


text:
How do I change the audio on a H.264 MP4 without re-rendering the file?
Is there any way to swap out the audio track on a rendered H.264 MPEG-4 without having to re-render the entire video project? Can this be done with Premiere, MPEG Streamclip, ffmpeg, or some other tool that I'm not familiar with ?
I have a long video project that took many hours to render, and I would like to swap out the audio (minor mixing changes) without having to re-render the entire video project. The new audio is exactly the same length.
Is this feasible? I'm primarily a Premiere user, but I'm happy to hear solutions for other tools.

ffmpeg is a good choice for this task. You can do this with this command:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i input_audio.aac -map 0:0 -map 1 -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mp4

Yes, ffmpeg can do what you need, which is to demux the MP4 into audio and video components, then remux using the new audio. Actually, you can extract just the video since you don't need the existing audio. I'm not an expert in ffmpeg, but the demux command line would be something like ffmpeg -i myfile.mp4 -vcodec copy myvideo.h264.

See amimciptimdim command for remuxing the .h264 into a new mp4. Instead of input.mp4 you provide the path to your myvideo.h264.

Yes, actually it looks as if you can do it in one step: combine the video from the original MP4 and a new AAC/MP3 into a new MP4.

You could endup with 2 audio stream though depending on how the original audio is mapped in the container and how ffmpeg handles this situation, it either creates a second audio stream or replaces the first when using -map 1.


text:
Removing horizontal scan lines from video?
I recorded some supposedly 720p video on my phone which usually yields nice results. However something about the conditions of how it was set up has resulted in the whole sequence having these lines that flicker and run up the screen as if its trying to adjust to the lighting repeatedly, I'm sure its this because as I move around in the video occasionally blocking the light it stops but returns when I unshadow the area that is been filmed.
I have the Adobe CS5 suite which includes Premier but I only know a few basic functions. Is there anything in there I can use to filter this out? Ultimately I'd like to convert the video to youtube so I don't mind a bit of format loss.
TIA
Youtube clip of the offending lines:

Could you show an example of how these lines actually look?

I tried to capture a screen shot of it but I couldn't it's to quick. Short of uploading the video I don't think I could. I'm just about to start trying random settings in premier to see if I can remove it.

This may be subject dependent, a subject with inherent lines like a fence or pin stripe shirt that are the source of the interference. If you can not show the subject, how about your best shot at describing it?

I've added a clip of what I'm trying to describe.

I wouldn't describe those as lines. Looks like a sync issue with your lighting, do you use fluorescent lamps?

No its just natural sun light. Anyway to adjust for such issues?

If your video was shot indoors with fluorescent lamps illuminating the room, then the lines will be due to the frequency of the camera's shutter being similar to the frequency of the lights flickering on and off (usually 50Hz in UK, 60Hz in US).
It's not really possible to fix this in post production. You'd need to reshoot with different lighting or at a different shutter speed on the camera.
See link below for more info:
http://www.davidsatz.com/aboutflicker_en.html


text:
What software and technique would I use to achieve this effect?
How would I achieve the digital distortion effect seen in this David Bowie video from 6:20 to 7:10?  Is there a term for this effect to help guide future searches?
Can't embed the video, so here's a screenshot

See Adding random visual noise and errors to an existing video – specifically the noise bitstream filter and forcing a pixel format examples. It won't be exactly the same but it will be a good start.

Welcome to Video Production.  Could you please add some more detail as to what you are trying to accomplish.  It wasn't clear from the video exactly what it is you are trying to do and if the link goes dead, it will be even more unclear what the question is asking.  If you can describe the effect further, that would be a great help.

Tough question, and I imagine that those effects may be combinations of many other effects (probably in a 3D package given the context of the video itself). Barnaby Roper has a pretty interesting skill set, and we could try forever guessing what he did without getting it exactly right.
That said, you should be able to accomplish a similar effect with purposefully induced compression artifacts. Getting those artifacts to animate seemingly organically like the video will be tricky.
Otherwise, dig into After Effects and start playing with combinations of all the distortion. Trapcode's Particular is (unsurprisingly) used throughout, but it's hard to pin down exactly what they're using it for everywhere. Still, Trapcode does have a small blog about the video, which might be able to direct you to further expertise:
http://www.trapcode.com/journal/2013/11/19/david-bowie-love-is-lost-hello-steve-reich-mix.html
You may also want to look into Trapcode MIR: http://vimeo.com/46449353; I don't think it was used for the distortion you've highlighted, but it's possible.
Happy hunting!

If your editing software can produce motion from the still image you can just take the last frame of from the previous portion of the video and set the stationary and moving points (and if you are doing some 3D-like effect akin to rotating in the Z-axis also the depth values).
Another approach is if you have a video that records the 'effect' and then you would replace the B-frame in that video with the previous frame of the last segment, but keep I-frames the same. I-frames are encoded in relation to the previous output... in fact that is what the effect tries to emulate i suppose, when B-frame becomes corrupted or just wasn't read, and you get that not only in GIF, but in many video codecs as well. However, for this approach some hackery is needed, as you have to know how to edit a stream that is already encoded.
I am not aware of any tools that do that automatically for you. But good luck.

There's a good discussion of it – "it" being "datamoshing" here. Not just how it's done, but also why you probably should not do it.

Thanks for the answer.  As it currently stands, there isn't a lot of detail in this answer other than the link.  If you could summarize a couple of the key points from the link (just in case it goes dead in the future) in your own words, that would make this answer much better.


text:
What do I need to learn in order to repair an ogv or ogg video that is defective? Where to start?
I recorded a video chat session with recordmydesktop in linux, but it is somehow defective. I give more details in a (big) footnote down here. I badly need to repair and play that video.
Please put me in the right direction, what should I learn about, which internet sites provide that information, and any clue on what you should thing the problem could be. I don't shy away from doing any learning efforts, but the question of Video Production is just too wide. Any help on narrowing the search for the probable cause would be very helpful.

This is the capture of the konsole during the recording:

inma:~> recordmydesktop
Initial recording window is set to:
X:0   Y:0    Width:1366    Height:768
Adjusted recording window is set to:
X:6   Y:0    Width:1354    Height:768
Your window manager appears to be KWin
Initializing...
Buffer size adjusted to 4096 from 4096 frames.
Opened PCM device default
Recording on device default is set to:
1 channels at 22050Hz
Capturing!
^CShutting down.

Cached 72482 MB, from 215345 MB that were received.
Average cache compression ratio: 66.3 %

Saved 54287 frames in a total of 54245 requests
....
STATE:ENCODING
Encoding started!
This may take several minutes.
Pressing Ctrl-C will cancel the procedure (resuming will not be
  possible, but any portion of the video, which is already encoded won't
  be deleted).
Please wait...
Output file: out.ogv
[89%]   [Cache File 141]
Encoding finished!
Wait a moment please...
Done.
Written 921301705 bytes
(885658169 of which were video data and 35643536 audio data)
Cleanning up cache...
Done!!!
Goodbye!

But now I try to play the file:

inma:~> mplayer out.ogv
MPlayer svn r34540 (Ubuntu), built with gcc-4.6 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer
  Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote
  control.
Playing out.ogv.
libavformat version 53.21.1 (external)
Mismatching header version 53.19.0
libavformat file format detected.
[ogg @ 0x2b4a70f82940]Codec not found
[ogg @ 0x2b4a70f82940]Codec not found
LAVF_header: av_open_input_stream() failed
Ogg : Warning found none bos page from unknown stream 1091944242
libavformat file format detected.
[ogg @ 0x2b4a70f82940]Codec not found
[ogg @ 0x2b4a70f82940]Codec not found
LAVF_header: av_open_input_stream() failed
Exiting... (End of file)

What is happeing with this recording? Will

none of those messages indicate anything is wrong with the recording.

@dark
I wasn't. But I learnt how to avoid it in further occasions. This is the point: you need to plan ahead before using recordmydesktop and have at least 100 GB free in your hard disk for a ~30 minute video. With less than that, recordmydesktop will exhaust the available space during the recording with temporal files, and the result will be a defective video with no warnings or error messages. The program is pretty fragile: be careful too not to activate desktop effects or anything similar while using it or you get a segmentation fault and the recording will be destroyed.

It appears you do not have the necessary codec to play the video in mplayer. You will need to find a codec that can decode it. I can't tell from the posted information what codec it is.

It is not a codec issue. I can play videos recorded in identical circumstances after AND before that one.


text:
Analog (PAL) Frame Grabber capable of arround 4 fps
I have a video camera with a external trigger. I have been experimenting with the external trigger and it looks like I'm ready to grab some frames.
I'm new on this field of hobby, and therefor I have no clue what to look for. Are there any consumer frame grabbers with flexible OR low frame rate?

I'm honestly not sure what you are asking about.  What are you trying to accomplish?  Why do you want a slow frame rate?  PAL is 25 frames per second.

It's a hobby project I'm working on.
All I'm asking for, is a frame grabber capable of 4fps

I get that it is a hobby project, but it sounds like you may be going about it the wrong way.  It's a very unusual request that would likely require specialized hardware as nothing runs at that slow of a rate?  If you are trying to do a time lapse for example, there are better options available to you.