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How to reduce wind noise from a video?
I am using a Canon EOS-650D to record video and I have a problem with wind/noise on my recordings. Can anyone tell me how can I reduce noise/wind from the recorded video. I usually edit my videos on Windows movie maker and having some knowledge of Adobe Premiere Pro too.

The best bet is to avoid getting it on the recording.  The use of a wind cover can help break up the wind and prevent it from interfering with a recording.  Once it is there, particularly if it is really loud, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it that will result in satisfactory audio.  You can reduce it some, but it is unlikely to be able to be removed entirely and may well produce artifacts in your audio in the process.
The old adage crap in, crap out still greatly applies to audio.  Once something is mixed in to a signal, it's part of the signal.  The real world doesn't often fit digital models very well and thus there isn't a sure way to separate one part of the signal from another part.  This is why audio recordings are done with multiple tracks rather than recording everything to one output.
As far as what you can try doing with the existing audio, any software with noise reduction or wind reduction can try to reduce it or you can try to EQ the frequencies of the majority of the noise down some to help suppress it, but short of re-recording the audio and dubbing (or just re-shooting) there isn't anything I know of that will get rid of it entirely.

I agree but why not mention some of the goodies like a RODE Blimp for the mic and a Dead Wombat furry cover? According to one review this camera has an external mic input.

@filzilla - yeah, I did mention use of wind covers in my second sentence.  There is no guarantee there won't be a better wind cover next week though, so I try to avoid mentioning specific products unless specifically relevant. (ie, the question asks about a particular product.)

Yes I see that but Rode has been pretty much the leader for the last 3 years or more. None the less a very good answer.

@filzilla - yeah, I agree your recommendations are good and I'm glad you commented on them.

I use audacity for this not perfect but gets the job done.
You will need to extract the audio and reattach it with you editing software.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Noise_Removal

Can you please tell me about these noise reducing terms ??
Noise Reduction(db)
Sensitivity
Frequency Smoothing
Attack/Decay time
Also please tell me which sliders I have to maximize or minimize to get my desired result

The EOS 650D does have a wind noise reducer built in.  I can't say how truly effective it might be (and imagine that there is some loss somwehere because of the processing.)
Otherwise there are now DSLR focused wind deflectors called Wind Jammers and Micro Muffs.  In the broadcast industry a boom microphone usually has a 'zepplin' or wind cheater covering it.
If you can get your hands on a large piece of soft foam (1m x 2m) then it could be used as a wind break if positioned between the wind and the camera.
Another way to reduce noise is to record an audio 'wild track' at the same time on another machine but keep it significantly far away from your subject's voice / the sound your subject is making e.g. presenter.  This has often been done on TV dramas where shooting on location is open to the (audio) elements so to speak.  I have first hand experience of this on Coronation Street where the 'whistling' sound on the newly constructed Beetham Tower nearby was causing havoc in the recordings.
Often, low and high frequencies from things like air conditioning machines, compressors, refrigerators etc might be a lot louder in the recording because of the dynamics of the recording system.  Machines are fairly easy to cancel out.
If a second recorder isn't available and the noise is fairly constant then just record a good sized chunk of the background noise separately.  This may not work too well with something organic like wind however.  Again, a muff or wind cheater would be the weapon of choice.
The audio on the second recording can then be used with certain software as a reference for noise reduction in that it can be used to cancel out the noise in the original recording.
But, as AJ Henderson points out - if the background noise is particularly disruptive, there's a limit to what you can do with that recording material and a re-shoot or audio dub will no doubt be the only way to cope with the results.

Use Adobe Audition. Find a section where there is only wind noise (no speech) and use this to analyse the noise in the Noise Reduction effect.
Then apply those settings to the rest of the audio.
If you don't have 10 seconds or so of noise, you can edit some together.
A high pass filter set to about 40Hz can help too, but it's never going to get rid of all of it.
Finally, manually adjusting the filters for the worst sections can also improve things.

A high pass filter might help. Set to about 100Hz, depends on the character of the wind noise.

As already mentioned, Audacity is good free audio editor that can be used for cleaning your audio. There's no magic, you have to read its manual and to experiment to achieve good results. There is also Magix Video Sound Cleaning Lab - it's not free, but you can freely use it for 30 days.


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How to re-transcode sequence Encore CS4?
A short while ago I made an Encore project from my Premiere CS4 project and spent some time sorting out the menus, credits and timelines, etc. I then told Encore to build the project, which of course caused the rendering of the original Premiere video.
Unfortunately I found some errors in the original project, so went back to Premiere and fixed them. However if I just re-build the video it rebuilds from the original render. I did find the option to set the status of the Premiere Sequence back to Original, but when I build from that, I get a large video full of 'media offline' images... not quite what I meant!
So, how can I build my final video?
In case it matters:

Original footage: Full HD/50p, destination to "DVD Folder", using the default Encore settings.
Encore project has a DVD main menu and per-Chapter shortcuts appropriately
linked up.

I really don't want to have to rebuild the Encore project :(

It sounds like your Premiere project is missing assets.  When you embed a Premiere project in to Encore, it will actually run a render in Premiere when you go to encode it in Encore.  If the Premiere project can not find assets that are used in the Sequence that you have embedded, you get a "media offline" image.
I would suggest opening the Premiere project and verifying that it has proper access to all the source files it needs.  I'd also verify that the Premiere project link itself is still intact.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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How to fix choppy/lagging video from Canon t3i?
I recently started using a Canon t3i to record video. When I upload the files to my computer (PC), however, the video is very choppy-- it lags even more dramatically when I try importing it into my video-editing software.
I tried looking up some solutions online, and I found some that seem to recommend using a program to convert the video files into a different format before editing them. I haven't found any programs that do this and are compatible with Windows. I tried renaming the files to ".avi" instead of ".mov" (their original form) but that didn't do anything.
My knowledge of computers/cameras/technology in general is extremely basic, so I would appreciate any potential solutions in layman's terms :) Thanks for your help!

There's a number of things that can be the issue, and a number of ways to try to work around them.
The first is that depending on the specs of your computer, it might not be able to decode the video files quickly enough, which could cause a stutter. Similar to how people used to have issues trying to watch 1080p videos on Netbooks that didn't have much horsepower. What kind of PC are you using?
What video editing software are you using? Different editing softwares prefer different file formats. What kind of footage and for what purpose? Family footage or more professional presentation work? Are you planning on uploading it to youtube or the net or preserving it on a large hard drive somewhere? With those questions answered, I can recommend some codecs for editing, and codecs that you'll want to export to when you're all edited and finished.
There are a number of free tools for converting video files. FFMPEG is a great one, but it has a little bit of a learning curve if you're not familiar with command line applications. If you'd like to take a stab at it, link below:
http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
If not, there are some GUI front-ends that you can use along with FFMPEG, that basically make it more user friendly by giving it buttons and sliders like applications you're used to. One of which is below:
http://avanti.arrozcru.com/

Video files are relatively complex beasts that have multiple factors contributing to how well they play.
First, a video file has a container format, this is generally indicated based on the extension the file has and simply defines how the file is physically organized.  A MOV file is an Apple Quicktime file, an AVI is a windows audio/video file.  Other formats also exist such as MP4, M4V, MPEG, etc.  You can't simply change the extension in most cases because the files are organized differently and the extension tells the computer which format the file is stored in.  Some players are smart enough to figure out what the file actually is by looking at it though, so you won't always have problems when you change the extension.
Next, a video file has what is known as a codec (short for encoder/decoder), the codec is responsible for actually taking the raw video information (which is really simply just a sequence of photos and some audio) and convert it in to easier to store format.  Many, many different codecs exist, but the most standard one for HD video is h.264.  h.264 defines how the pictures are broken up and stored so that we don't have to store the video uncompressed (which would be VERY large, like 149 megabytes a second large).
Finally, we have a level of compression within that codec.  The amount of compression that each codec can apply is often variable (though it varies based on the codec being used).  The level of compression balances the overall quality of the video, the amount of disk space required to store the video and the amount of processing power that is needed to decode the video for playback.
For relatively low levels of compression, it is a fairly light processing load, however since much more data is used, you need fast access to the file in order to be able to read it quickly enough for live playback.
For relatively high levels of compression, either the quality of the video must be decreased or the complexity of the compression must be increased.  The smaller file size means that less data has to be loaded from disk per second to support live playback, however more processing has to be done to read the more complexly compressed data and get it back to the color of the pixels that should be displayed.
This all brings us back to your original question.  Since the video plays back ok on the camera, but you have issues on your computer, it means that you probably have a bottle neck on your computer preventing it from playing back in real time.  This could be any of several things.  It may be that the video is not compressed enough and your hard drive or system memory is unable to move the data around fast enough for smooth playback, it may be that the video is too compressed and your processor is not fast enough to decode the video on the fly.  It also could be that you have a version of the codec that doesn't perform very well and thus results in being overly taxing on the system.
You can make some guesses based on file size or you can look at memory and CPU utilization in task manager to see if there are any obvious bottle necks.  You also have a few options for fixing it once you have the source of the problem determined.  You may be able to alter the encoding options on the camera to have it use a different level of compression (though this will likely impact video quality as well).  You may be able to add either more or faster memory to your computer or use a solid state drive to supply the data faster.  If you are processor limited, it's also reasonably low quality loss to transcode a high compression video to a larger, lower compression video.  There is still some quality loss, but less so than increasing the level of compression.  (Alternately, you can also increase the compression if you are disk speed limited, but this will result in much more severe quality loss.)
As far as trans-coding goes, you can do that through most any video editing package or numerous stand alone packages for encoding video.  Quicktime Pro supports transcoding through using Save As, ffMPEG is a free option, though it can be somewhat trickier to learn to use.  If you have the Adobe software suite, Adobe Media Encoder is also a decent option.  You could also just import the file in to your video editor of choice and then export it again without any editing and it should produce a new video based on what ever export settings you want to use.

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


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Adobe Encore and DVD Subpictures inconsistency
Good evening,
What do I need to do in order to make DVD subpictures be rendered exactly as I designed it in Adobe Encore or in Adobe Photoshop?
Please, take a look at the pictures listed below (because I don't have permissions to post links and pictures are a little big):

This is what I see while editing the menu template in Adobe Photoshop. I've toggled the visibility of subpictures layers so they can be seen, because Encore guidelines says they must be hidden to work properly.

These picture show what I see in Adobe Encore Project Preview. As you can see, the subpictures work fine, just as expected.

These pictures show what I see in the Video Player (VLC in this case). When hovering the action buttons, which trigger the subpictures, the one associated to to the number "2" is misaligned while the one associated to the number "3" seems to be clipped.
Initially I designed the subpictures as a normal Text Layer. Now I see it was a terrible workaround but the last two pictures I took after re-render the project whith these layers rasterized, and the problem continues.
This is all I need to finish this gift.
Note: I would like to add the proper tags (dvd, photoshop and, maybe, subpictures) but I'm not allowed to do it too. <_<

Just to clarify, you are talking about the underlines on the number correct?  It took a little bit to spot the differences between the frames.

Exactly! These subpictures are driving me crazy!


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How can I cut a few seconds at the beginning of a large video file?
I have a large (~3GB) video file and I would like to trim just a few seconds at the beginning (~3s).
What would be the fastest way to do this without having to process all the video file?

It would help us if you specified the file format! And the editing tools available to you!

Try this:

Open the file in the Quicktime player -- it'll have to be Quicktime Pro.
Select the frames that you want to remove with the input and output markers.
Hit 'Delete.'
Then save as a 'self-contained' movie.

Welcome to Video Production. Thanks for the answer, since you weren't able to post a comment yourself, I converted the comment part of the answer for you.

Libav can do that as well, but it is not clear what you mean by 'process'. With avconv you can remux without reencoding, so you will still read the whole file and write it again, but will use only minimal processor power to split and then recombine the streams.
The format of the command can be along the lines of:
avconv -ss 3 -i in.mkv -c:a copy -c:v copy out.mkv

The results will depend on codec, since you cannot really copy all the codecs at any arbitrary point. IIRC libav will start at the next possible point in such cases, but that maybe a full second later (or perhaps even more, even though i didn't run into such things).
If you require an "in-place edit", and cannot afford even the harddrive load that will happen due to you reading and writing large files, then you should really provide much more information about the format (as much information as you have, but at least: container, streams, codecs for each stream).

You could try using a tool like VirtualDUB, but your options will depend on the type of file that you are working with.  Some files don't support arbitrary adjustment without atleast some amount of re-encoding.

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


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Reconstrcuting images from MPEG
I wish to export all frames of an MPEG video as individual frames.  How can I do this?

Export it from any transcoding software to a frame by frame format such as motion JPEG or an actual image sequence.

MPlayer has GUI and command line options to extract JPEGs for frames. You could give it the following command line, for example, to get 1000 frames out of the specified video:
mplayer -vo jpeg -frames 1000 my_video.mpg

I wish to extract the reference frames and intermediate frames. How to do it ?

I usually use ffmpeg.
mkdir video_seq
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 video_seq/video_%05d.png


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Is it possible to wirelessly transmit 1920x1080 32-bit color 30fps video through VGA from laptop to HDTV?
Is it electrically possible to transmit a 1920x1080 32-bit color image at 30 frames per seconds just being powered off of a laptop's USB2 port?
I am looking for technical information regarding power requirements of VGA at different resolutions, refresh rates, and color depth to see if I could explain to a co-worker whether it is or isn't possible using theoretical math and known benchmarks. (Boss wants to find a wireless VGA transmitter that doesn't require external power source other than USB if it must + driverless/softwareless.)

I'm confused as to whether you want wireless or not.

Does it have to be VGA? The only HD transmitters I know of are HDMI or SDI.

On a side note, I believe the power is required for the analog to digital converter in wireless transmissions, and not the signal itself, since there is +5V DC power running through one of the pins. So you might actually have better luck searching for USB powered signal converters, because once the signal is digital, you're home free.
Something like this:
http://www.atlona.com/Atlona-VGA-to-HDMI-Scaler-Converter-USB-Powered.html
Once it's digital, you could use something like this if the little bit of latency isn't a big deal:
http://www.amazon.ca/Nyrius-Transmitter-Streaming-Satellite-NPCS549/dp/B009E6R89C

Without the power requirement it is certainly doable, however I'm not sure it is going to be easily doable with only a USB port to go on since VGA is analog.  If you were to expand to digital options, then WiDi is an option


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What's the best way to set up a live webshow with multiple Skype video inputs?
I'm running a small weekly live webshow with an investor on the other side of the planet.
We are using Google Hangouts on Air, but it's not really great.
What is the best system to set up for improving our quality, such as getting guests on (via Skype, not Google+), improve quality, reduce lag, increase production quality etc?
I have been looking at using Google Live and Wirecast, but it seems to be kind of a hack in terms of Skype. I want something simple. Also been looking at Newtek-products.
I need some input.

Is it really a show or a meeting?  Have you looked at online tele-presence systems such as WebEx, GotoMeeting or Adobe Connect?

I would recommend, try using RHUB. Its web conferencing servers are best for conducting Webinars and online meetings and it works flawlessly. I don't know much about Skype and Google hangouts, as I use them mainly for one to one social interactions.

The popular VLC media player offers low latencey multicast video streaming solutions. This is not as one-clickish as Skype, but hey, thats what you get for becoming more professional.
Video streamed by VLC can have any properties regarding video resolution and quality - within the limits of your network bandwith of course.
Ususally your PC will be behind a home router which acts as so called NAT-Gateway and firewall. Much to the annoyance of network administrators Skype sees to it automatically that this firewall is cranked open, and multidirectional video casts can flow through. It also handles IP address and port negotiation. VLC does not, as the concept behind it is different (its main use is streaming, not video conferencing).
So for this post I will assume that you are willing to invest a degree of brain juice in creating a clean media flow over the internet. After all you are working on a global technological scale. Do not worry, we still will not need to get into the advanced internet routing stuff.
With VLC you will have to configure your home router manually to present a service running on your computer to the open internet. This is called port forwarding, look it up.
I will not get into details about setting up VLC streaming, as it is pretty much straight forward and you can handle this yourself: Open VLC, press Ctrl S, follow instructions. Best use RTP or HTTP streaming as they are well standardised.
When setting up your VLC to stream media from a webcam, you will configure a network port, on which the webcam stream is offered to the internet. Make sure this port is forwarded by your home router.
Decrease media caching to improve latency, increase caching to prevent stuttering. 200ms will be fine. A h264 stream with 720p resolution will look OK at about 2000 kbps but only if you let VLC handle compression. If you let your webcam handle the compression internally you will need much more bandwith, as the hardware encoders are somewhat limited.
Once both parties (you and your cohost) have set up this stream, you can connect to each other using a media player like VLC, mplayer, Windows Media Player, Quick Time... streaming really is a standard ;-) Any guests you are hosting can connect to this stream too, and so can spectators. VLC also lets you record remote video streams to disk for post production.
To get guests on your screen, you can let them use a tool of their convenience like Skype or Hangouts. Once VLC is using your webcam, you will not be able to offer video from the same cam via Skype. But this will not be necessary, since guests can see you over the VLC stream. You would only need Skype to see them, while video streamed from you and your partner remains fluent.
To have people connect to your stream, they will need to know your public IP address, which you can look up on http://www.whatismyip.com or similar sites. You can use a dyndns service like http://no-ip.biz (or other) to use a convenient DNS name instead of an IP address.
With this description you should be able to get started, ask me anything if you need to know more.


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How can I change the movie format from .MOV to .AVI in canon 650D
I have Canon 650 D which I use for Video Shoots mostly,my question is:
How Can I change the video format inside camera setting? is there any possibility to do that ?
the reason because my Video editor doesn't support .MOV files for which I have to convert it into different formats like WMV.
I dont want to compromise with the quality of video
Help me out!
Thanks.

It is likely not possible to change in camera.  For power and efficiency reasons, cameras generally use dedicated encoder hardware to encode the video in real time (this is why your camera can encode h.264 video live, but when you try to encode it on your PC, it takes longer, even though your computer is far FAR more powerful.)  The caveat of this is that there are a limited number of options for how it can store the file.
Many Canon cameras record as an h.264 stream embedded in a MOV file.  While this isn't super convenient in your case, it also isn't the end of the world.  MOV and AVI are both simply container formats.  They store a particular type of stream within them that is based on a codec.  Since both MOV and AVI support an h.264 stream, you should be able to use a software package of your choice to take the h.264 stream out of an MOV container and store it in an AVI container and then your software should work fine with it.
I believe that QuickTime Pro offers a Save As option that will go to m4v or mp4 (which is more of a raw h.264 stream) if your editor supports either of those options.  It might support Save As an AVI as well, but my memory is a bit fussy on that since I haven't had to do such conversions in a while. (My editing software supports both.)  There are literally any number of other tools (including free ones) that can do the same thing as well.


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Creating stereoscopic video from two video files
I've got two video files, each created with ffmpeg from a series of JPEG images, which I've obtained from rendering with a stereo camera in Maya.
I would like to somehow merge together these videos to form a single stereoscopic video file, but I can't find anything that would do it.
I've looked at as much of the documentation for ffmpeg as I could find, but haven't found anything. Is there some way of doing it with ffmpeg, or should I be looking for some other piece of software.
An alternative solution would be to turn the two sets of jpeg files into a single set of .mpo files (a 3d image format), and then merge them into a 3d video, but I haven't had much luck working out how to do that either.
Thanks!

See the stereo3d video filter, and also see Stereoscopic 3D movies with ffmpeg.

This depends entirely on what kind of 3d video you want.  There are numerous formats for 3d video.  Some are as simple as placing the left and right images either side by side or one on top of the other (typically compressing them spatially to still take up the original space, for example 1080p video done like this ends up being wither 540 vertical pixels per eye or 960 horizontal ones.)  Others involve doubling the frame rate and interweaving the frames alternating between left and right.  Still other formats store the video files separately and stream them in parallel, possibly combined via timecode.  Some even use entirely separate files and just synchronize the players via the timecode (such as with 3d projection with dual projectors).
The split video is the easiest way to do it.  Most of the interwoven options involve special authoring (for things like 3D bluray) and I've only ever seen authoring options for 3D bluray on pretty high end (and expensive) authoring software.  The split option is easy to do and most 3D displays support it, the only downside is the resolution loss and the fact it typically has to be manually configured for playback.  It's by far the simplest and cheapest approach though.


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Use Canon T3i as a HD Webcam
I am looking to be able to use my Canon EOS Rebel T3i as a webcam on a computer, both Mac and Windows based. Some uses for this would be a HD live stream or the ability to record video directly to my computer. I know I would need to use an HDMI cable to connect my T3i to my computer. Since there is no HDMI in on the computers I will be using (or any computer that I know of) I would need a way to connect my T3i's HDMI out to my computer. I am looking at the Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle for USB 3.0 and the elgato Game Capture HD. It needs to be able to work with USB 2.0, as that is the only port that I have on both of the computers I would be using this with. The elgato runs from USB 2.0 and where the Intensity uses 3.0. I need to know 100% that the Intensity would work on 2.0. I also need to know if they would show up as a webcam on the computer. The apps I would be using would be Skype, EasyWorship, and an Twitch.tv.

You can probably do it directly through the EOS software.  It is possible to get a live video stream from the camera over the USB connection.  Note that USB2 is not going to be able to carry a full quality HDMI stream though.  This is why the Intensity is USB3.  It requires USB3 because the bandwidth requirements for the quality level it is working at require USB3 data rates.  If you have a firewire port on both, that would be an alternate option.
There are systems that have HDMI capture, but they are due to having an encoder card like the internal version of the Intensity.  If it is a desktop that doesn't have USB3, it may be possible to get a USB3 card for that system.  I personally have used an addin card for USB3 support on my desktop (a first gen i7) and it works great.
No matter what you do, there is a good chance you are going to have to hack your way to getting it to show up as a webcam.  It would likely show up as a capture device though, which should work with EasyWorship or ProPresenter.  (Personally I'm an old MediaShout fan that is looking at swapping to ProPresenter since Media Shout went pretty awful with version 4, but I've used all 3.)
One other option you haven't considered is that there may be a way to use the USB connection to pull the LiveView feed that EOS Utility uses, but it still wouldn't be as good of quality as something like an Intensity, but free is good and it would likely support USB2.

What frame rate can you achieve with usb 3.0 and liveview?

I don't know of any DSLR bodies that support USB3 yet.  If maximizing quality is a concern, you should really get an HDMI capture card such as the Black Magic Intensity and then use a DSLR with clean HDMI output.  That's the more professional way, but the cost goes up too.

It seems that the T3i (the DSLR I have) has clean HDMI output, it turns SD when the record button is pressed, so streaming with Black Magic would work right?

If you have a clean HDMI output, then you could capture via the Black Magic devices and then should be able to use any streaming software that supports a video capture device.


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What is the name of the transition where the new image slides left to right over the old?
Whats the name of transition where the new image slides left to right over the old?

This transition is called a Wipe.

Should be a comment??

Nope, found answer, shared with other members


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Lossless Editing by Combining Clips with FFmpeg x264
My new Canon Vixia HF G30 video camera has an option to encode directly to 35 Mbit/sec Mp4 at 1080p60 and it does a nice job. I primarily use it to record my daughter's high school basketball games.
I need to make highlights from the camera files AND I WISH TO RETAIN AS MUCH QUALITY AND CLARITY AS POSSIBLE. Here is the workflow that I have developed with my limited understanding of FFmpeg:
STEP 1.) Join the camera produced mp4 clips into one mp4 file representing one game. Here is a representative command that I use for this step from a Windows command prompt (DOS box):
ffmpeg -f concat -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\gameclipsfromcamera.txt" -c copy "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\joined_fullgame.mp4"

This joins the game clips into a game video with no transcoding (I believe), and so this is good (it is quick and no additional compression artifacts are introduced).
STEP 2.) Cut highlight clips from the game video. Here is a representative command that I use for this step:
ffmpeg -ss 00:00:06.00 -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\joined_fullgame.mp4" -acodec copy -vcodec copy  -t 00:00:20.00 "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1.mp4"

This produces the following 20 second clip starting at 6 seconds into the game video:
Highlight Sample (85 MB)
STEP 3.) I require a 2-second pause at the beginning of each highlight clip where a text overlay identifies my daughter. To get this I make a bitmap image from the first frame of the clip :
ffmpeg -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1.mp4" -ss 00:00:00.00 -f image2 -vframes 1 -deinterlace "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframe.bmp"

Here is the result.
Then loop the video for 2 seconds with CRF 0 to introduce no additional artifacts:
ffmpeg -loop 1 -r 59.97 -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframe.bmp" -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p  -t 2  "\\Excelhero\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframe.mp4"

Then add the text overlay label identifying Fiona:
ffmpeg -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframe.mp4" -vf drawtext="fontfile=/Windows/Fonts/Corbelb.ttf:text='Fiona':fontsize=40:fontcolor=yellow:x=1321:y=417"  -b:v 35M -minrate 35M -maxrate 35M -bufsize 35M    -profile:v high -level:v 4.2  -refs 2  -pix_fmt yuv420p  -bf 0    -r 59.97 "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframeannotated.mp4"

Which produces this file:  [ ehasamples.excelhero.com/video/1freezeframeannotated.mp4 ]
(SuperUser only allowed me to include 2 live links)
Now we add a silent sound stream to the clip:
ffmpeg -f lavfi -i aevalsrc=0:0:sample_rate=48000 -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframeannotated.mp4" -shortest -c:v copy -c:a aac -b:a 255k -strict -2 "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframeannotatedwithsilentsound.mp4"

Resulting in this:  [ ehasamples.excelhero.com/video/1freezeframeannotatedwithsilentsound.mp4 ]
(SuperUser only allowed me to include 2 live links)
The above is a 2-second video with my daughter labeled in suspended animation with a blank sound stream.
STEP 4.) The final operation is to join the 2-second video to the full clip from the camera.  I can easily re-render by filter producing one output file from these two input files in this fashion:
ffmpeg -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1freezeframeannotatedwithsilentsound.mp4" -i "\\Excelhero\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1.mp4" -filter_complex "[0:0] [0:1] [1:0] [1:1] concat=n=2:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -c:v libx264 -r 59.97 "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1done.mp4"

But this is not a great solution. It is slow because the original footage from the video camera is re-rendered with the introduction of new compression artifacts.  I can choose to add " -crf 0 " to get a lossless re-rendering, but this bloats the size of the clip by well over 1000%, in this case bringing our sample clip to over a gigabyte.  So this is not a practical solution.
So I want to use the concat demuxer instead of the filter:
ffmpeg -f concat -i "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\clipfiles.txt" -c copy "\\mylancomputer\f\Canon\2013.09.21_san_francisco_game2\1doneBAD.mp4"

With this approach the operation is quick as there is no re-encoding.  BUT, the resulting file does not play properly.  Here it is:
[ ehasamples.excelhero.com/video/1doneBAD.mp4 ]
(SuperUser only allowed me to include 2 live links)
The 2-second image displays the entire 22 seconds. Although the video does not play properly, the sound seems to work just fine.  So my guess is that the two files (the clip from the camera and the 2-second label clip) are simply too far apart on their relative encoding. I have attempted to get them as close to identical as I can in terms of encoding by using MediaInfo and by using FFProbe, and the above series of commands are my best, but apparently are not sufficient.
So the question I have is simply this: is it possible with FFmpeg to make my labeled clip enough like the encoded footage from the camera in order for the Concat demux to succeed?  If so, how?
This entire workflow is driven by batch file and is really simple on my part and so I like it and hope to use this methodology to allow me to quickly edit highlights from games going forward.
Conversely, is there a better (quicker, no transcoding) workflow using FFmpeg?
Thank you kindly for your assistance.

I think you might be getting overly concerned about quality. I do stuff for broadcast and rarely use a CRF of less than 19. Seriously, compared to the compression you're getting in the camera to start with, a bit of re-encoding aint going to hurt too much. Also, the last ffmpeg command only had one input - typo?

This looks like the same question as, http://superuser.com/questions/649412/ffmpeg-x264-encode-settings which I posted an answer to.


text:
VSDC No audio when editing tracks?
In VSDC, when making a PIP effect, it doesn't play any sound.  It has sound on the preview, but not while editing.  This makes it very challenging to make the PIP at the correct point.  Is there a way to fix this and get audio while editing rather than just previewing?

Export it as AVI mode. As soon as I exported as AVI mode the sound and video tracks started working

Open your Projects Explorer Panel and Properties Panel
Click on the Project that you are working on
Make sure that the Audio settings for the project is set to Mono or Stero

I have been struggling with this for a day now and just stumbled across my own mistake. When I initially started the project I set the sound to "No Audio." I did not want the sound in the videos that I was merging.
VSDC gives you independent control over video audio in each of the property windows of the specific video. The Project audio settings is a global sound control. Of course, if you set it to No Audio that's exactly what you get.


text:
ffmpeg framemd5 format explanation
Does a frame consist of audio and video or just video? I am trying to verify if this can be used for confirming both audio and video data were successfully sent or if I need to handle the audio separately.

According to the framemd5 muxer documentation:

This muxer computes and prints the MD5 hash for each audio and video
  packet. By default audio frames are converted to signed 16-bit raw
  audio and video frames to raw video before computing the hash.
The output of the muxer consists of a line for each audio and video
  packet of the form:
stream_index, packet_dts, packet_pts, packet_duration, packet_size, MD5

MD5 is a hexadecimal number representing the computed MD5 hash for the
  packet.

If you want to omit a particular stream or stream type use the -map option. This example will only process the video stream while ignoring audio:
ffmpeg -i input -map 0:v:0 -f framemd5 -


text:
Name of the software used for the given animation
Which software has been used to produce the Wildebeest animated short by Bird Box Studio?  It can be seen here.

The short film, Wildebeest was rendered in Adobe After Effects and Flash.
This is the quote from an interview by the director Ant Blades.
"The film is animated in Flash and AfterEffects. The main aim was to be funny. The secondary aim was to develop a style I hadn’t tried before."
Source:"Filmmaker Ant Blades, Wildebeest"
Workflow of Mr Blades is to first sketch in Adobe Flash. As he puts it, it is an easy way to sketch out an "animatic" of an idea. He then renders it with After Effects, I assume he would be using the plug-in Cinema 4D to render the 3D work but that is a guess on my part. A more complete interview and the process in how he creates his works for Bird Box Studio. "Interview Ant Blades, Bird Box Studio"

Seems like a mixture of a few 3D renderings composted together with 2D Elements. The heads for example seem to be partially a 3D rendering, also the island they are standing on could be a 3D rendering.
The rest seems to be a 2D compositing. This can be achieved with any 3D software suite out there like Cinema 4D, Autodesk 3Ds Max or the open source Blender.
Then a 2D animation/VFX suite is used, the most prominent one being Adobe After Effects but there is also Apple Motion and The Foundry's Nuke.


text:
Premiere Pro doesn't play AC3 audio stream from .MTS file
I have video clips from two cameras. They were recorded in AVCHD, which I've imported as .MTS in Adobe Premiere Pro.
The clips taken from one camera works fine. The others don't play audio.
I've investigated into the complimenting .xmp files, and realized the following string was missing from those without audio:
 xmpDM:audioSampleType="Compressed"

When I open these AVCHD videos in Quicktime, they work perfectly fine with audio.
How do I fix this and make audios from the video clips play in Premiere Pro?
Edit: Here's what I got from MediaInfo.
From the video clip that plays audio:
General
ID : 0 (0x0)
Complete name : /Volumes/LACIE 3TB/Film Projects/Anime Salon/001_clannadas/footage/front/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/00000.MTS
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 73.4 MiB
Duration : 25s 491ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 24.1 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 24.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 25s 459ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 21.6 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 22.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.348
Stream size : 65.5 MiB (89%)

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Muxing mode : Blu-ray
Codec ID : 128
Duration : 25s 525ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 4.67 MiB (6%)

Text
ID : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Duration : 24s 960ms

From the video clip that doesn’t play audio:
General
ID : 0 (0x0)
Complete name : /Volumes/LACIE 3TB/Film Projects/Anime Salon/001_clannadas/footage/closeup/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/00001.MTS
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 131 MiB
Duration : 48s 967ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 22.5 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 24.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 48s 982ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 21.3 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 22.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.343
Stream size : 124 MiB (95%)

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 49s 56ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.50 MiB (1%)

Text
ID : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Duration : 48s 483ms

It appears that recording format is different, PCM (playing) vs AC-3 (not playing).

Have a look at the tool "Mediainfo" its available for all plattforms and tells you a lot about the internals of a media file. It would help the debugging if you could post the output of the text view from that tool.

@ProfessorFartSparkle Added output text in new edit.

It sounds like there is a problem with your Dolby Decoder for the AC3 audio stream.  If you are on a trial or pirated copy then you may not have been able to activate the AC3 decoder that normally comes with Premiere. (Adobe has to pay Dolby for each copy used.)  If you are on a legit copy, something may have become corrupt with the Dolby decoder.  Try doing a deactivation of Premiere (Help...Deactivate) on your system and reactivate and see if it manages to activate the Dolby Decoder.

If the problem persists I would completely uninstall premiere and install it again. I had similar issues in the past with the royalty codecs.

Well, I do use a trial version... Is there any workaround? The video clips are viewable on VLC and Quicktime, and how come not on PP?

@ric.row - unfortunately, Dolby is a licensed audio format.  That means that anyone who uses the decoder has to pay Dolby royalties to use it.  Quicktime uses just a decoder and Apple picked up the tab.  Premiere on the other hand uses the encoder/decoder which costs more (retail price is like $10 or $15 a seat).  Due to the way that Dolby licenses it, they can't give it out with the trial without footing that bill, so they only activate the Dolby codec on purchased copies.  It might work to buy your own copy of the Dolby codec (it used to not be included) but I'm not sure.  Probably not.

As AJ Henderson already said you can not use the Dolby codec in a trial version of Premiere due to licensing costs on Adobe's side.
What you can do to circumvent this is trancode the audio with a different tool like FFmpeg.
With ffmpeg you can use this command below to transcode the audio to PCM but leave the video untouched. I chose avi for the container instead as its a more generic container that isn't so picky and usually well taken by premiere.
To specify the TS format instead, encode with -f mpegts.
ffmpeg -i input.mts -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16le -f avi output.avi

Does FFMPEG have a dolby decoder?

Well of course not the Dolby decoder/encoder but the OSS implementation of an AC3 decoder/encoder which is fully compatible with AC3 that was encoded with the Dolby encoder.

Just like x264 and h264, usually you would need to pay for an h264 encoder as well.

Ah, makes sense.  I didn't realize there was an open source capable implementation since I thought Dolby was patent encumbered, but good to hear it isn't.


text:
How to make a vehicle number visible?
Due to all the lights in the video the vehicle number is not visible. The video was captured by a CCTV camera. In the video the car comes close enough to be able to read the vehicle number if it were not for all the lights which make it completely unreadable. Not even the form of 1 letter or number can be guessed. Really nothing can be seen except light. Is there a way to edit this video so that the vehicle number becomes visible?

If you are able to post a sample frame of the license plate and/or more information on the video format, it would be helpful for verifying if there is any unlikely situations that might be able to help.

Agreed.  Crowd source it.

Depending on the fidelity of the video you can try to do a high pass filter on the video, in essence it will sharpen edges of the scene and help bring it out.
The two steps I would do:
1) De-noise it (I use the neat video plugin for after effects)
2) Run a high pass filter (photoshop has this, but not after effects).
To emulate this:
a) Create a duplicate of the video (command D)
b) Drop the tint effect to turn it into black and white
c) Add the find edges effect (only the black areas will be sharpened)
d) Drop the levels effect onto it, adjust it to to bring in more black (to sharpened more) or bring in more white, to leave out areas not to sharpen.
e) If the edges are to harsh you can always blur it to shoften or feather the sharpening effect.
f) Add an adjustment layer, drop it below the duplicate layer
g) Change mode track matte of the adjustment layer to luma inverted (it would hide the layer above when this is done automatically).
h) Add unsharpen mask effect to the adjustment layer, put it 100, radius 2, adjust as needed.
You can already see that this type of work you can tweak a lot of things.
Hopefully this gets you going in the right direction
All the best,

There isn't really a magic "enhance" button like on CSI.  If there isn't enough information to see even part of the numbers (at least a blur where they are) then it is impossible to tell what is there because the information simply was not captured.  It is most likely clipping, which means that everything in that area is the maximum possible whiteness and thus any detail that was beyond that is lost.
If there is some detail, there are some options available.  There is forensics software that can analyse the data from various frames and interpolate what the numbers are.  It doesn't actually enhance the image, but from process of elimination it can tell what the license plate can't be and that lets it figure it out.
The next best approach after that is to try something like what eLouai suggests to try to sharpen any details there and adjust the contrast of the image such that it increases the contrast of the near washed out portion to make any detail that is there more visible.  It won't be magical results, but it might be enough to get a slightly better idea as long as there is something there to work with.
You might find this related post on Photography.SE to be interesting as it is kind of related.

Actually I have seem miracles performed on videos I thought that was either blown out (white) or crushed blacks and it was impossible to see any detail on. In post production they were able to bring out a ton of detail I never thought possible. Again it depends on the video source and its dynamic range, also dependent on the compression codec used (or not used), ideal is of course a raw format.

@eLouai - yes, I'm over-simplifying a bit.  If it is RAW video, then it will have a lot of leeway in to the highlights to recover, but based on the context of the question, I highly doubt he was using a $50,000+ video camera and recording video that takes terabytes per hour as a CCTV camera.   It is an assumption on my part, but I'd hazard it holds up. :)  If it is entirely crushed to white, outside of a RAW format, there isn't going to be any recovering anything useful unless the display itself was causing the crushing, though that's relatively unlikely as well.

CCTV can be improved upon with some very simple filters. Here is an example http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=26441 You really shouldn't be so dismissive. Ideally if he provided actual screen shots it would have been easier to judge.

@eLouai - yeah, I updated it to ask for a bit more clarification.  My read of "Not even the form of 1 letter or number can be guessed. Really nothing can be seen except light." is that it is completely washed out to white, but if that isn't a correct read then there are options, that's also why I included the link I did.  It goes over a lot of options if there is some data there.  I did think you covered the "some information there" case pretty well though so I didn't bother to hit on it initially, but my answer should be more complete now.  Thanks.

@eLouai - also, very much agree on the screenshot.  It's really hard to judge something like this blind without knowing what we're actually looking at and what format it is in.


text:
What software can be used for pre-visualizing video presentation environments?
D3 Technologies offers both a previz and a playout platform for video presentations. I'm interested only in the software part, for pre-visualization of complex, multi-screen presentations.
Using their software you can import or construct a 3D model of a stage or venue, including display screens, and apply your video elements to the screens. You then use a virtual camera to view the set interactively to evaluate sight lines, projector and lighting placements, etc.
Is there any other software that is generally used for the same thing, like maybe MESH or FrameForge?

I took a stab at trying to rework it in to something that I think is a bit more long term usable and less asking generally if anyone has used it.  Let me know if it has strayed too far from your original question.

Your edit is fine, thanks. I admit that the subtleties of what is on-topic sometimes escape me. Often it's obvious, but not always.

Yeah, good questions are hard sometimes.  It's still a little borderline as list questions don't really lend themselves to a best answer, but the occasional list question is sometimes necessary to cover a topic that is sufficiently meaningful.  I was also half out of it last night when I looked at this question apparently, because I completely misunderstood it until I re-read it this morning.  I was thinking 3d animation pre-vis and realized you were talking about something completely different this morning.

Wow, this is a late reply.
Here's the technologies I know that are available at the moment for it.
ESPVision (via Vectorworks/3DS Max): (However camera inputs are broken at the moment which is how I arrived here at this thread--I do expect they will fix it in a reasonable amount of time).
http://www.espvision.com/
Capture: (I have not used this for video in recent history but theoretically it works)
https://www.capturesweden.com/Products/Software
And there are a horde of other options. I'm not a huge fan of Watchout due to their licensing scheme with the dongles--you need two to have output ~ $6000--but it technically has previsualization and it is significantly more affordable than anything from D3.
Frankly, you can do a lot with QLab (Mac only) which is my "daily driver" for most small projection gigs. You can just route that as a Syphon output and "view it" as a texture.
You also might want to keep an eye out on TouchDesigner and VVVV modules if you have programming experience.
However, due to the limitations in most of this software I tend to work off a model and a cheap 480p LED projector. (I design lighting and video for theater, hence my workflow tends to lean towards models)
Hopefully this helps someone!
EDIT April 2018
Apparently this did help someone:
I've been using Capture for the past year and it is a fairly solid 3D previz tool if you are willing to use NDI or a series of capture cards. Right now it is my preference for usability/workflow.
You might also check out Light Converse
http://lightconverse.com/
Or for PC, Realizzer
http://www.realizzer.com/
There's a few others by some major brands, Martin has Martin Show Designer and GrandMA's previz can theoretically work.


text:
What are the most common project formats for modern NLE software?
For my sound syncing tool I'd like to implement saving project to file which will be suitable for most modern non linear editors. I try to avoid looking into each proprietary format of major vendors, because some of them are closed binaries.
Surprisingly there is only Apple provides clear description of its XML-project format.
So far I know about these formats:

Advanced Authoring Format (AAF)
Open Media Framework Interchange (OMFI/OMF)
Edit decision list (EDL) - plaintext

Are there any other common XML or plain-text based project formats to transfer between different software applications?

Those are the three I've ever worked with.

Those are the three that are industry standard, XML is a useful one to include though because Final Cut (which oddly is still highly utilized in the industry) uses it.  Also XML can easily talk between all Adobe applications and Da Vinci.

Premiere also allows you to export footage as an XML, making it play nice with other programs.

It isn't that odd it is still used, it just shows how many people don't like being locked in to having to pay whatever the competition asks to stay in business. (Ala Adobe CC)

The question was not in reference to whether or not XML is useful or not, but rather as to what the most common NLE file formats.  And if we ignore that the better majority, well not the majority, almost all professional editing is done with AVID (by professional I am not referring to the guy who does wedding videos, but rather the guy who cuts feature films with distribution and commercials) then yes, XML is a commonly used file.  But since XML does not talk with AVID, or any of the Autodesk software, or Pablo, and quite a few others, I would say no, it is not a common NLE file format

Autodesk doesn't have an NLE other than a basic one in Smoke, so I don't find them not supporting XML to be an issue.

But they support AFF and EDL, I am not saying they need to, but again I am simply answering the question that was asked


text:
Video editing with text to speech
I am trying to do some screen recordings and uploading them to YouTube. I have a terrible voice and frankly I cannot maintain a stream of speech meaning the the end product will end up being bad. I saw some videos online:

The uploader made use of text-to-speech (TTS) voices. Even though the voice is obviously terrible, the audio was perfectly synchronized with the video.
I am not asking for any sophisticated way of editing videos. All I want to know is a way I can easily add audio to my screen recordings. I have an old version of Camtasia and it doesn't provide a TTS engine meaning that I have to use another program, type what I want to be converted to speech, save as an audio file and import to Camtasia. The problem is that my videos are about 15 min long meaning that it will be an extremely tedious task to be using the two software simultaneously. In fact, what I'm most worried about is having to change some word and maintaining a good synchronicity between the video and audio.
So, I hope anyone with experience in creating such videos can direct me to the easiest way of doing it.
Thanks

You can do this, but why bother.  It is far faster and easier to record your dialog in multiple takes.  As long as you can naturally speak a sentence or two at a time, you can narrate your own video by carefully editing your dialog from multiple takes.  DAW tools will even play the video for you while you are dubbing over it and let you hear what happened before and after your take in order to give you context.  This is faster and will sound better than your text to speech solution.
If you still really want to do text to speech, I would recommend taking the same kind of approach.  Make clips for each of the phrases you need and then move them in to the video and place them as needed.

That takes a long time and that is why I'm posing the question in the first place. Do you know of any video editor with a TTS engine ?

It's still going to take longer to get the timing correct on synthesized speech than on natural speech, even if you have an integrated TTS engine unless you need a whole lot of takes of each sentence to get something you are comfortable with.  I don't know of any software that has TTS built in because there is no good reason from a production stand point to do it.  It adds absolutely zero value to the software.

The problem is I can't even stand my own voice. Did you check the video I referenced in my original post. Its perfectly synchronized.

@user47181 - then you can do the other thing I suggested of TTSing the lines and placing them.  That's how you get highly accurate sync of dialog is placing it by hand.

Use a voice filter or pitch down/up your voice and you should be fine.

Like AJ, I don't know of any built-in text-to-speech video editors, though MacOS supports speech reading of text in any app that uses standard text controls. (For example TextEdit.app.) I assume Windows has something similar.
If that's too much work, you could always "hire talent" (i.e. get a friend to do it) if you don't like your own voice.
bakkelun's suggestion of using audio filters on your own voice is not at all unusual. There are many people on YouTube who have done this.


text:
Help needed in choosing video production device for use with Matterhorn Capture Agent
In our institution we need to record every class hours and upload it to our Matterhorn server with schedule recording, so i need a good video capture card which need to support a fixed camera and input device for mic and projector and a VGA option, If i'am i scheduled for a class it will automatically record the content and send to Matterhorn server and it will produce the video to other user interface to get watch could any one there to help me out to find a good capture card, asking here because you experts are in video production and you all sure know which card will provide the above requirements.   Thank you..

One of the best resources you will find for this is probably the Matterhorn documentation itself. The Capture Agent Hardware page has samples of hardware that was used at a number of schools that have implemented capture agents for Matterhorn.  It appears that the Epiphan VGA2USB is the near universal standard for VGA capture.  There seems to be a wider range of video capture devices.
Personally, I'd probably take a look at seeing if the Black Magic Intensity or Matrox MXO2 works with the capture agent, but there are also other listed devices there such as capture devices from Hauppauge or Bluecherry which have actually been used successfully already.

Yes i have seen the capture agent hardware from Matterhorn, but it seems to be some old more than 2 years, so what i need to be up-to-date with any other compatible cards. at first we need to test before deploying in real environment.

Thanks a lot @AJ Henderson for Bluecherry, very cheaper than other brand let you know in future if any help needed for me.


text:
video lighting output levels
I am a long time still photographer beginning to work in video. I understand lighting pretty well, but what i am having trouble getting a hold of is the output level (wattage?) I will need for shooting various projects.
For the most part, I am looking only to light smaller 'sets'. What I am faced with is figuring out how to gauge continuous lighting rigs so that I am not having to return items a few times.
I have a small group of 5 or 6 people in a setting (couch and a few chairs) which I am shooting from a couple of fixed points about 5 or 6 feet from the subjects and a main shot from 10 or 12 feet away.  I need to keep the lighting out of the frame for the main camera.
For a single key light, what kind of output would i need in order to achieve 'ordinary' video set lighting (ordinary meaning: not dramatic or artistic, just an 'expected' interview lighting level?

The question is very broad/unspecific. You probably want to refine it a bit to get an answer, its really not clear what exactly you want to get answered.

point taken. hm. i'll edit the question to see if i can get what i'm looking for.

You're going to need to do a little experimentation to find out what works best for you, but here are a few things to consider:
First, the minimum amount of light you need depends on the performance of your camera and lens.  Stanley Kubrick shot parts of Barry Lyndon in candle light, but he used a f0.7 Zeiss prime which was built for NASA and customized to his specification.
Second, light falls off as a function of an inverse square.  So it really matters how close you can get your light to your talent.  A light that's 22 feet from its subject will appear twice as bright when placed 16 feet from the subject.  This doubling occurs at distance intervals which you'll be familiar with as a photographer:  22, 16, 11, 8, 5.6, 4, 2.8, 2, 1.4, 1.
Of course, you probably don't want to put a 1K HMI right next to your subject because he or she might melt or catch fire.  This brings me to my third point:
Not all lights are created equal.  Day by day, more efficient lights are available for film and video.  LEDs, fluorescents, and plasma now come in a variety of form factors.  These efficient lights are particularly useful because they can be placed close to your talent, without generating too much heat.  However, if you choose one of these kinds of lights, be sure to evaluate its color accuracy (color rendition index or CRI).  Tungsten lights output full-spectrum, 100 CRI.  Cheap fluorescents are notorious for having a greenish tinge.  The problem with poor color accuracy is that it's nearly impossible to fix.  A simple white balance won't work.
Lastly, since you're talking about shooting interviews, you probably want your key light to be soft, so that it's more flattering.  LED panels or Kinos are great soft light sources, but the price you pay is versatility.  A hard source can be made soft (through diffusion or reflection), but a soft light can't be made hard.
Personally, if all I were looking for was a key light for a medium to close-up shot in an interview situation, I'd be prepared to spend around $1500 on a 2bank Kino fixture, bulbs, mount, extension cord, ballast, and c-stand.  [edit] But now that I re-read your question and see that you're talking about lighting 5-6 people, I'd probably expect to spend closer to $4000.  We just spent $6k on lights, giving us the capacity to strike 22 4'bulbs at once.  I think this would be slight overkill for your situation.
A more objective answer might be that, according to Wikipedia, 1000 lux is typical for studio lighting.  ARRI has a handy calculator to give you an idea of what you need to get your scene to this level.


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

Edited frame (building looks better but mountains look worse)

Why is it tedious to use region based filters (I assume you mean a mask)? By this video is amateur, do you mean that the footage is very shaky?

I can't give an After-Effects specific answer, but maybe this will help..
1 - If you want to color a specific part of the image, deal with "region based filtering."  In DaVinci-speak, that's Power Windows.  Masks, Shapes, Roto.  However you phrase it.  That's how you tell the computer what part of the image you want to effect.  Tie the mask to a tracker so you don't have to hand-animate it.  Also, make the edges of the mask VERY soft.  Don't try to mask the building exactly.  Have a several hundred pixel soft edge on the mask, and even if the tracking isn't quite perfect, you can still get away with murder.
2 - A Local Contrast Filter.  AKA "Fake HDR Look."  Used sparingly, this sort of thing can be used without turning the whole image into a horrible fairy dreamland nonsense picture.  It will help "pop" some of the low contrast regions without doing global color shifts.
3 - You may be able to gamma up the mids while leaving the lows dark.  This would reduce the contrast between the lit and shadowed snow, but leave the dark rocks.  If you have a really specific goal for what it is supposed to look like, it just won't be a 1-button process.

You may be able to simply use an adjustment layer in Adobe Premiere Pro and use the Three Way Color corrector to deal with this. It is similar to editing a still in Adobe Photoshop. You will want to adjust the levels initially then the tonal range and possibly the curves.
If that doesn't work, then the next step would be to try to incorporate masking. If you use masking  you can edit a singular area of the video while leaving the rest alone. This would allow you to use curves and levels to reduce the shadows in the building while keeping the contrast in the mountains intact. Try reviewing the following tutorials:

Can you please describe the first part in more details? I tried to use levels but got a bad result with it (second image)


text:
YouTube Network Partnership Needed for Minecraft Tutorials?
Copyrights around video games videos are complex.  If I want to create and post tutorials for a video game on YouTube (specifically Minecraft), do I need to have a partnership with a YouTube Network?

Where did you hear this?  The only thing I am aware of is that some companies, such as Nintendo, will submit take down notices for footage from their games if you aren't press affiliated, but that's them specifically, not anything that I'm aware of Youtube doing systematically.

By the way, down vote is because the question isn't clear in it's current state.  I'll remove it if you can clarify what you're asking so that we can make it a more useful question.

(This isn't a real answer. It's just info.) I've been making YouTube videos since 2006, but I don't do gaming vids so this information is second-hand. What I heard is that your video MAY be flagged for copyright infringement if it uses someone else's content -- either videogame visuals or the music from the game. If you're in a network (especially a gaming one like Machinima), they have agreements with the copyright owners. Tha can eliminate the copyright claims ... but check with the networks you're thinking of joining.

For Minecraft you don't need to be on a Youtube Network.
Mojang says you can monetize your Minecraft Youtube videos.
Even if you use the game's music in it (however you can't use the music outside the video).
The Minecraft EULA says:

If you upload videos of the game to video sharing and streaming sites
  you are however allowed to put ads on them.

And the Mojang brand guidelines says:

You are allowed to put footage of our game on YouTube or any other
  website. In fact, we like you doing so.
  ...
  ...
  you may make money using your videos of our game by, for instance,
  through ad revenue, as long as you also add your own unique content
  to the video, such as audio
  commentary.

It depends entirely on the policies of the game manufacturer and what they tell Youtube to do.  Some game makers claim copyright over any content produced using their game.  Some do not allow any video to be posted, some allow only videos from certain networks, some allow videos from anyone as long as they aren't monetized and some allow anyone to post videos regardless of monetization.
We can't speak to the policy of any particular video game maker.  You would have to inquire with them what they consider to be allowed or you could simply make a video and post it and see if it gets a take down notice.  There is no blanket YouTube policy that I'm aware of though, they just take down content if a take down request is submitted.  (They also do have some automatic filters for detecting music in clips that have previously been taken down.)

And let me emphasize something @AJHenderson wrote:  "some allow only videos from certain networks". To put it another way, some networks (like Machinima) have agreements with certain gaming companies that allow you to upload their copyrighted content. That doesn't apply to all networks, and it doesn't apply to all companies. But it's worth noting.

Having said this, Minecraft's EULA specifically states it's ok to post commercial (monetised) videos - BUT CHECK FOR YOURSELF!


text:
Insert Video Still onto MPEG2 video?
I recorded a conference with my Sony camcorder that saves files as MPEG2.
Since I only had a single camera and the speaker didn't provide the PowerPoint slides afterwards, every time a slide was shown through the projectori, I had to move the camera from the speaker to the slides and back a few times during the talk.
So now I need to edit the file to get rid of those movements, and display the shots of the slides long enough each time so the video is steady; I don't know how it's called ("video overlay"?).
Is there a newbie-friendly, free NLE that can do this, such as VirtualDub or AviDemux, or do I have to buy a commercial solution such as Sony Vegas Studio?
Thank you.

You can probably do it with either VirtualDub or AviDemux,  certainly AVISynth could but I'm not sure I'd call any of those three "newbie-friendly".  More like, "almost not obnoxious for a power-user."

there are other better and cheaper options than Vegas available to you.  Vegas (at least the pro version) is overly complicated for your needs as well and thus not particularly newbie friendly either.  I've personally however not been in the newbie friendly scene for about 15 years, so I'm not sure, personally, what works well in that space.  We do have some other posts that talk about beginner friendly video or cheap/free editors.

iMovie comes free with a Mac and can easily do what you want. Here's how I'd do it, for each section you want to replace with a freeze frame:

Decide where you want to start and stop the freeze frame.  Cut the video clip at each of those points (right-click and select "Split").
See how long (exactly) that section is.
Within that section, click on the frame you want to use for the freeze frame.  Right-click it and select "Freeze Frame".  That will create a 4-second freeze frame.
Double-click the freeze frame and set its length to exactly the length of the clip you're replacing.
With the freeze frame clip still selected, click on the "Crop" tool.  The crop will automatically apply animation (called "Ken Burns").  I would change it to "Fit".
Right click on the first half of the clip you're replacing with the still frame.  Select "Detatch Audio".  Drag that detatched audio over the first half of your freeze frame.  Select the now-silent clip and delete it.
Do step 6 again for the second half of the clip you're replacing.

That should do it! Let me know if you have any questions. (And please mark this question as "The Answer" if it's useful!)

Even Windows Movie Maker could probably handle what you are looking at doing.  If you export a still of the slide from the video, just about any software can insert a still image in to a video.
There are also a number of other cheap video editing solutions targeted at consumers that would meet your newbie friendly requirement while still accomplishing your needs.  Most of the free options on Windows are a bit difficult to understand due to the very limited controls.  On the flip side, most professional software (Vegas Pro, Premiere Pro, etc) have so much complexity and power that they become overly difficult to use due to the breadth of controls and the number of options.
You really want something in the middle.


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Please tell me if i can use this song and it's title in my promotional film?
I am making a film promoting a health product. I want to use the words "eat, sleep, rave" as screened text throughout the film. This is the name of a Fat boy slim song. I also want to know if I can use this remix of the song as background music. It holds a creative commons license. But I am very ignorant towards copyright laws and what I can and can't do. Obviously the product is not related to the song, other than its use for rejuvenation after a late night. Here is the link to the creative common's remix. https://soundcloud.com/riotten/eat-sleep...
Here is a link to the old promotional video-

For this, you'll really need to see a lawyer to determine if the original re-mix has sufficient rights to the song to place their remix under Creative Commons in the first place.
If they do, then it depends what Creative Commons license they used.  As long as it allows commercial usage (not a NC license) then you would be ok as long as you followed the rest of the terms of the applicable Creative Commons license.  (For example, you would need to post the video under the same type of Creative Common's license.)

I agree. Also, I remember hearing that in addition to a "commercial use" license, there's another type of license that allows you to promote another product or service. Like using background music in a YouTube video is one thing, but using background music in a commercial for your product is another.

@BrettFromLA - do you know if that was a CC license?  I'm not aware of anything more specific than the NC option on the CC license.  There are some other licenses that allow more granularity though.

I might be thinking of the licenses offered by AudioMicro.com. I can't remember where I've seen that. (I use others' music in my YouTube videos when I don't have time to compose it myself.)


text:
Cheap Method for Audio/video transmission in a building
I would like to know how I can handle video transmission in the a 2 story building, from the upper floor to the down floor?
There 2 possible cases:
-unidirectional transmission: the transmission will be done from the upper floor to the down floor;
-bidirectional transmission: the transmission will be done from the upper floor to the down floor, and also from the down floor to the upper floor.
I have a very low budget for this so need cheap options.

Can you provide further clarification on cheap?  Does it need to be wireless?  The cheapest possible approach is going to be a distribution amplifier and a length of cable, but the exact type of signal you are sending makes a big difference, as does the distance and materials of the building.

Hi Henderson, I think that a wired solution is better than a wireless one to avoid constraint on building materials. The budget is between 500$ and 1000$. I wish I could have a solution using a local network configuration, and another one using not a local network but an analogical signal. Thank you.

still need to know what kind of signal you are sending (HD, SD, one feed, multiple feeds, etc) and distance.

I will use HD. About the feed and multiple feeds question, I don't know what it refers to. I would like the simpliest solution due to budget constraint. We would like to be able to broadcast audio/video from the upper floor in live to the down floor. If the solution is not expensive, the possibility to be able to send an audio/video feedback from the down floor the upper one will be appreciate. The distance is approximatively 50 meters.

There are two options, neither of which is particular expensive.  You can either use a component cable with a distribution amplifier or if you prefer a digital signal, there are wireless HDMI transmitters that will also work well.
A distribution amplifier and a repeater are essentially the same thing, just slightly different purposes. A distribution amplifier boosts the power of an analog signal to account for the attenuation when sending it over one or more lines or a long line. A repeater is similar, it reads the signal in on one side and outputs it again on the other. The main difference is that the repeater will reduce line noise since it is interpreting the signal rather than just boosting it.
You could try doing a wired HDMI, but it would likely be quite pricy.
HDMI is a digital signal that is designed in such a way that it doesn't handle long distances well on the wire. Currently, the effective reliable limit for an HDMI cable is about 10 meters. To make a 50 meter run reliable, you would need 4 repeaters and 5 10 meter rated HDMI cables. This is going to be far, far more expensive than a wireless HDMI unit that is rated for even twice the distance.
You could try just using a 50 meter cable and hope that your hardware on each side is powerful enough to make sense of the data on the line, but I wouldn't expect it to be a reliable connection if you use a physical HDMI wire without at least 2 or 3 repeaters minimum.
So for reliable solutions, you can probably do the analog wire & distribution amplifier solution for about $150 or the wireless for about $250 to 350.  Putting a DA on both sides of the wire solution would allow for you to choose which way you wanted to send signal by plugging in the DA on that side.

Hi Henderson, thank you for your answer. Following this link, you'll find an image illustrating how I understand the implementation of the system. Is that correct? Also, what means «DA» in your answer?

DA is distribution amplifier.  You won't be able to use HDMI without repeaters at 50 meters length because it is too long for the HDMI standard.  You will either want to use wireless HDMI transmitters or use an analog component signal and a distribution amplifier.

Thanks Henderson. Do you confirm that the above picture can be use to implement the audio/video transmission system and that I will have to add to that HDMI repeaters and DA? Please what is the utility of DA, I mean why use it? Where should I place the DA on the picture? Also I guess that the HDMI standard cable is better than the wireless HDMI transmitters for audio/video transmission. Wireless communications often have to pass by many obstacles to offer a good quality result: signal strenght, air density, building materials, medical restrictions for some people, etc. Thank you for your help.

@cProg - see the updates to my answer that should provide further assistance.


text:
How do I render each time increment on Premiere Pro CS5/6?
I want to write a script that automates rendering in a way that each, say, 30 seconds of a longer video becomes a separate video file. How do I approach this without having to manually highlight and render each time increment?

Does it have to be with Premiere? This kind of job suits a command line application like ffmpeg.

It can be done with FFMPEG?

I would honestly suggest outputting the whole thing to a lossless format and then using another tool to split the file.  Depending on if you have audio, it could be particularly easy to do by exporting as an image sequence and simply moving and renaming the images for each 30 second clip and then encoding each.  If they have audio, then you'd want to actually use something like FFMpeg for splitting the file though.

The file would have audio, yes.

I do like that image sequence idea. I'll keep that in mind for another project.


text:
Start and stop capturing while video is playing
I have a long video that I am trying to shorten.  I want to be able to play through the video and, while it is playing, select the points at which I want to start and end my clips.
I want to do this for multiple clips until I play to the end of my video without having to stop.  Some of my clips will be very short shots so it needs to be fast enough for that.
In the end I should have a shorter version of my video composed of all the pieces I've sliced.  This way I can quickly achieve a first draft of my edited video.  Later I can slowly improve it and fix all of my mistakes.
I would like to know how to do this with Premiere. If it is not possible, do you know any other editing software that can do this?

There are two main way I can think of to do this, the first, which requires a little work after the fact, but certainly won't interrupt your play back, is to set marker points as you watch through the timeline.  Put the entire video in the timeline and then use the M key to place timeline markers at each point you wish to make a cut.  After watching through, you can place razor cuts on each marker and ripple delete every other section.
The other option, which I'm not sure if it will work without interrupting playback or not, is to set in and out points using shortcut keys.  I will set an in point, O will set an outpoint and Ctrl-K to add the edit to the timeline.  If that does end up interrupting playback, there is one other option that might work indirectly.
You could also try using a multi-cam edit with nothing on the second track.  This would let you monitor what is on your main playback and you could cut to and away from it whenever you like.  At the end you would just have to remove the empty space and get rid of the other track.

I'm not professional video editor familiar with Premiere but I know your requirements can be met by some simple video editing software I recommended here: Simple Video Editing Tool?
Here are the solution steps I recommend for you. I won't recommend the best video editing here, but you can pick up anyone (most of them can achieve it as long as it has "Split" and "Delete" function.)

Firstly, download any of free simple video editing software in your
PC as per different version.
Secondly, Import the video you want to edit and then drag to the
timeline (or other editing area like board).
Thirdly, Play your video in preview windows and click "Stop" in the
first clip you want to second-editing. Now use the simple but
powerful "Split" button, which is always designed to "scissors".
(Let's set it as point 1)
Fourthly, continue to preview the video and stop in the end of the
first clip you want to second-editing. Use "Split" again. (Let's set
it as point 2)
Fifthly, Then continue to find the third "Split" point for your next
clips you want to second-editing (Let's set it as point 3) and end
with point 4 as the end of your second clip
Sixthly, now you need to use "Delete" function which is can delete
the clips you don't need (the part from point 2 to point 3) in
further editing.

Then repeat the steps from 3-5, you will get multiple clips you need to second editing.
To this point, you have 2 options:

Save all those clips in your PC (which will merge to the whole video
automatically) and then edit them later with more professional video
program.
Zoom in/out all those clips to further editing in this simple video
editing software with other functions. I may need more details about
your questions to solve your further problems.
Check the image below to get more intuitive understanding.

This doesn't really address the problem that the OP wanted though.  He's looking for a way to do it without having to stop the video for each cut.


text:
restart encoding with ffmpeg when bad source
I have an ffmpeg process which saves a stream from wowza server, but when the stream in wowza is interrupted for a second or so sometimes ffmpeg cycles in:
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9600015 DTS: 9600015 < 9629949 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9601935 DTS: 9601935 < 9629950 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9603855 DTS: 9603855 < 9629951 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9605775 DTS: 9605775 < 9629952 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9607695 DTS: 9607695 < 9629953 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9609615 DTS: 9609615 < 9629954 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9611535 DTS: 9611535 < 9629955 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9613455 DTS: 9613455 < 9629956 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9615375 DTS: 9615375 < 9629957 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9632160 DTS: 9614160 < 9649231 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9624960 DTS: 9617760 < 9649232 invalid, clipping
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9621360 DTS: 9621360 < 9649233 invalid, clipping

It never survives, even when the source is healthy and missed only a few seconds. It would be great if the ffmpeg can exit or restart (It is enough to exit on error. I can execute it in an endless while.) My command is:
ffmpeg -shortest -re -y -err_detect aggressive -i rtmp://127.0.0.1/movies/my.stream timeout=10 -codec copy -map 0 -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb,dump_extra -f segment -segment_time 60 /video/my.stream#%09d.ts

I have tested with -err_detect explode/careful/compliant/aggressive and on error in the input stream ffmpeg did not stop.  Sometimes it gets a timeout (because the timeout option I set for the rtmp), but some time it keep printing:
[segment @ 0x671a10] st:0 PTS: 9621360 DTS: 9621360 < 9649233 invalid, clipping

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

What do you mean by "and never survives"?  Does the video fail to produce anything or does it simply stop encoding?  It isn't exactly clear what the error you are getting is from your description.

The ffmpeg never stops and the there is no video produced. It just keep printing such lines....

You should include the first ~50 lines and the last ~50 lines of your ffmpeg console output if possible.

could you pipe stderr to another process that kills and restarts ffmpeg if it detects the "invalid, clipping" comment?

Although I am not sure if stderr will really help here because of the way that ffmpeg does its reporting, I can recommend the following pattern.
Use the -progress [url] flag and parse it with the tool of your choice every 100ms or so. Here is something to get you started that (with a little tweaking) might do what you want:
#!/bin/bash

touch /tmp/ffmpeg.log

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

pid=$!

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

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


text:
Is it possible to shift a video track a fraction of a second in Sony Vegas Pro 10?
I've got 2 video sources and they don't line up perfectly to the second.  One is a fraction of a second behind the other.  When I click-and-drag one of the video tracks, it automatically snaps to the nearest full second mark.  I've tried unchecking the "Snap To Grid" option but it still snaps to the full second.

Shift+dragging ignores grid, markers, fade-in/fade-out marks, and all other time points that otherwise would cause "sticking".
The same applies to dragging the Event entirely and its start/stop borders.


text:
Are there technical issues with doing video reviews of software?
I see plenty of people online reviewing physical products and video games, but rarely ever plain old software. Is there a technical reason for this? Is it more difficult?
I have an interest in providing video reviews of desktop software and phone/tablet apps, but I saw there's very few people doing that online and don't want to jump into something just to find out there's a good reason no one's doing it.

It's a question related to video production so it's totally fine to ask it here.

I think it is mostly a structural thing.  Games generally involves simple interaction with a lot of similar content.  Hardware devices have a physical interface and while they can run lots of different software, the capabilities of the device are reasonably easy to describe.
For general productivity software, the interactions are complex, but not so deep, thus it is harder to review in video form.  You see many video tutorials about how to do particular things, but a review is concerned with glancing over a lot of information about the product and doesn't give much interesting visual content to go along with it.
For a game, you can show some gameplay while you talk about the review, but what do you put on the screen for a video review of say, Photoshop?  The main screen of Photoshop is the main screen of Photoshop.  You don't have enough time to show all the new stuff and if you don't have time to fully show it, then what do you put on screen while you mention the new things and how they work?
Try it for yourself, read a software review sometime and think about what you would put on screen while reading it if you were to produce a video form of the review.  It's really hard to come up with visually interesting content that would fill the space.  Now you could simply have a video of you sitting there talking about it, but that is slower to consume than reading an article and so doesn't add a whole lot of value.
There simply isn't really any interesting visual interaction that video can handle better than text and simple screen shots that can setup in advance and put into a written review do a better job of naturally showing how a new feature works in a concise manner than video could.

Sounds like a fascinating challenge to take up :3

I'd say fewer people may be interested in this than in fancy electronic gadgets but there is no technical reason not to review software. It's actually a lot easier as you don't have all the complications that come with shooting "real-life" footage.
There are actually quite a few people reviewing mobile apps with huge success. I'd say mostly the general desktop app realm is something that isn't that much covered by video reviewers but again just because the audience doesn't seem as big with the rather recent up-rise of mobile devices.


text:
Automatically load Blackmagic ATEM preset on launch?
How can I load setting from xml file in ATEM television studio automatically on launch?  For example, I may need to launch it in one mode and have one set of presets and click another icon to load it with a different set.
This can be done manually using the "Restore" button in the file menu, but I need it to be done automatically. I have one idea to parse xml with setting and set all parameters one by one, but maybe there is a way to do this automatically.

I need to load these settings automatically at the start of my program without user intervention

thanks, that's what I was looking for.  I have made an attempt to make the question easier to understand and incorporated what you mentioned about needing it without user intervention.  Feel free to edit the question further if I misunderstood what your meaning was.

From StackOverflow sent to here, in principle, the question can be deleted or closed, it is no longer necessary.

If SO didn't want it, we can let it hang here.  It's not a whole lot more technical than helping someone with FFMPEG command lines and we do that quite a bit.

Since the ATEM Software Control communicates via UDP, it would be possible to create a script (that you run before starting the program) that would send the given XMLs via Ethernet. Of course this needs to be developed which might be too much of a hassle, but they do have a nice SDK.


text:
How can I fix time-lapse image sequence exposure in Premiere?
I have created some time lapse animations using my Canon EOS camera.
When I imported these sequences to premiere I noted small changes in luminosity between some frames.
Is there any way to correct these changes inside premiere? Maybe something similar to camera stabilization but for luminosity?

possible duplicate of Correcting exposure flickering in time-lapse footage (in After Effects)

Also relevant: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/5537/repairing-brightness-problems-caused-by-auto-lighting-optimizer/5538#5538

To help in the future, you said in comments below you used manual exposure. The flicking is coming both from variation in the light source itself (sun passing through clouds/dust in atmosphere), but also the aperture of the lens. Set your aperture, and whilst holding the "Aperture Preview" button on your camera, unscrew the lens, as if changing it - about 15 degrees is enough. The lens can't communicate with the camera, and the aperture is stuck in the correct, unchanging position.

There is no easy way I'm aware of. It's really important when shooting a timelapse to use fixed manual exposure so that you get consistent exposure from shot to shot.  It's a non-trivial task to get color to match from one image to the next if exposure doesn't match because you have to worry about not only the black point (darkest point) and white point (brightest point) but also the gamma or rate of change of colors in between.
Additionally the actual light level may have changed while shooting and you don't want to cancel this out.  Also, depending on how you had the camera set, it is also possible the white balance may have been changed which would further complicate things.
If it is really, really far off, you could try doing a batch auto-level or auto-curves operation on all of the images in Photoshop and see if that gets a usable look or not, but if the exposure was calculated differently by the camera, then most likely the result from the auto-level and auto-curves will also differ.

Yes, I used fixed manual exposure, all sequences were done in studio using flash units. For some reason there are some differences in some parts of the sequence so I guess maybe there was a problem with the current. The easy way, or less hard way, I believe, is using Lightroom to make these small adjustments. Anyway, thank you for your reply.

@Nicoli - if they were manual exposures, then you might actually get improved results from using a batch operation to do Auto-levels in Photoshop, though you may still have gamma problems if the mix of light actually changed between ambient and flash due to the level of flash power changing.